(Yijeong POV)

...

You don't know why you keep falling back into him. Just when you think he's gone forever, he shows up again, at your door or on your phone and he always ends up in your bed. Okay, sometimes he ends up on the couch or in the shower, but that doesn't sound nearly as poetic. (Not that you're that kind of poet anyway.)

Sometimes he finds an excuse to drop by, something of yours that you accidentally left on his floor months and months ago. Sometimes it feels like he kept your things on purpose just in case he needed an excuse because you're not usually quite that scattered, even when you're with him. Sometimes he texts your pictures of his cat or one of his dumb buddies or a ridiculous video clip he found on the internet. Sometimes you try to ignore him, but he's always been hard to ignore, and the harder and weirder and more complicated things get, the more you don't want to ignore him. Sometimes you feel like you're stuck in an endless loop that you'll never be able to escape. (Sometimes you're not sure if you want to.)

It's unpredictable, he's unpredictable and that's not something you're fond of, but you can't deny that you spend most weekends wondering if he'll decide to knock on your door and make you feel like nothing's changed. You spend most days wondering if he'll text you a picture or a stupid joke. He makes it hard for you to focus when he's not even around and you think that's quite a talent. (An obnoxious talent, but all the same.)

Sometimes he doesn't show up. Sometimes he doesn't text and he doesn't call and you're not sure why. You know you didn't, but you wonder if you did something wrong. You know he's not, but you wonder if he's hurt or sick. You know it doesn't mean anything, but you wonder if it does. You're always waiting for him. You're always wondering about him. That's the way it's always been and that's probably the way it will always be. (But it's okay. You've always hated change too.)

Sometimes he drops by really late, but you don't mind because you're always still awake and working and you're always waiting for him to come. That's the 'sometimes' you find yourself in tonight. It's after midnight when he stumbles up to your door and knocks harshly. You open the door for him and notice a plastic bag in his hand and a blush across his cheeks, water spots speckling his hoodie and his hair soaked and clinging to his forehead. "Hi," he says as he steps inside and kicks off his shoes. "Were you still working?" You nod. "What happened to you? It's been raining all week, why didn't you bring an umbrella?" He shrugs and hands you the plastic bag, heavy with glass bottles. "It's just rain. Catch up," he says and plops himself down on the couch. 

You sigh and set the bag on the table. "I'm good, thanks." He scoffs. "It's the weekend. Can't you ever stop long enough to have some fun?" This is not the first time he's said something like this, not by a long shot. He's convinced that you're wasting your youth and not having any fun and you're going to die someday never having experienced the good things in life, according to him. (Maybe you'll tell him one day that you have.)

"I can have fun without drinking," you tell him defensively. "Good for you," he replies sarcastically. You smile, because the snarky kind of drunk is way better than the other kinds you've seen him be. You sit down on the couch and toss him a towel to dry off with. He tosses it back to you. "If it's bothering you that much, you should do it." He immediately lays his head down in your lap and your breath catches because this is not something that usually happens and you'll never get used to the unpredictable. You try to towel dry his hair, but his positioning isn't ideal and now your jeans are going to be soaked and he doesn't seem to care so you run the towel across his hair gently and hope your jeans will dry. "Are you okay?" you ask softly. "I'm just having a rough week." You give up on the towel and use your hand to play with his damp hair instead because you haven't been having the best week either, if you're honest, and somehow he makes you feel better just by being around. (Sometimes. Sometimes you end up feeling worse.)

"You're so nice," he mumbles. "What?" you ask with a chuckle. "You're nice," he repeats, louder and less muffled. "You really are drunk," you tease and he sits up from your lap, your hand catches in his hair before falling back to your side. "Are you saying you don't believe me?" You forgot how cute he can be when he gets like this, when he tries to defend you to yourself. "I believe that you believe it," you say because you like it when he's flustered. "Because you're nice to me even when you shouldn't be." He has a point. He must not be that drunk after all. "Which means you must be really nice." 

"I guess." You don't know what's gotten into him, but you kind of want it to stop. Maybe snarky, defensive drunk isn't so great after all. "Why don't you believe me?" he says, and it sounds genuine enough. "I'm not nice all the time." He shrugs. "You're nice to me all the time." You sigh. "Yeah, but not because I'm nice. I'm only that nice to you." He crosses his arms. "Why?" That should not be a hard question to answer, but somehow it is. "Because you're not just anyone."

"Is that why you never make me leave? Even when you're sick of me?" Partially. But he's wrong that you get sick of him. Sometimes you feel sick because of him, but you never ever get sick of him. "You're way bigger than me. I can't kick you out, I don't pick fights I can't win." Most of the time. You knew you could never win him, but you picked him anyway. (That makes it sound like you had a choice. You didn't.)

"I'm lonely," he confesses softly. "You should hang out with your friends. I'm sure they miss you." He shakes his head like it should be obvious. "I'm not lonely for them." Oh. You're not lonely for your friends either. You just didn't think that was something the two of you had in common. "I miss you," he says plainly. "But I know you already know that."

"What part of me do you miss?" you have to ask because he's been drinking and he might give you a more honest answer than your prepared for, but you ask anyway. "All of you." Well, it could have been worse. "Even the parts of me you don't like?" He nods. "But do I even have any of those?" You look away from him because for some reason it hurts to look him in the eye. "Lots, I'm sure." He shrugs. "I'll let you know if I think of one." He pauses. "Are you really going to let all that go to waste?" He gestures to the plastic bag on the table. "I don't need to be drunk for this." 

"You think I do?" You brush off your jeans which are still damp from his hair. "Sometimes you do. Sometimes... that's what it takes." He shakes his head insistently and you can see him searching for the words to defend himself, but you know it's true. You know sometimes he has to find a way to forget that you're not actually what he wants, that you're just the stand-in, just the understudy for whomever will eventually show up to play the lead role. Maybe you have a good enough reason to get drunk after all, but you know that won't make it any easier to keep your tears behind your eyes where they belong, so you leave the bag on the table, untouched. "How many times do I have to say that's not true before you believe me?" 100. Times infinity. "I've never been confused okay? I've never seen this as something it's not." It's a lie, but you spend a lot of time pretending it's a fact. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

"But you wouldn't be if you had any other choice." You know he probably thinks you're saying this because you want him to convince that it's not true, but you're really saying it to remind yourself so that you're not caught off guard when the unpredictable becomes predictable again. "I have a choice, just like you do." Technically, but not really. "I'm choosing you." Technically, but not really. "You don't have to choose me back if you don't want to." Technically, if any of this had ever been a choice for you. Most of the time, you feel like there was never a time before him just the same as there will never be a time after him. He's always there, holding you here, and he has no control over that and neither do you. (You used to think you had everything under control. You were a idiot.) 

"If this isn't worth it for you, tell me. I'll leave." You don't believe him. Even if he left tonight, he'd be back tomorrow or next week or next year. The one thing you've always been able to depend on is the fact that he always comes back if you wait long enough. (That and the fact that you never actually get to the point where you want him to leave.) "I'm not telling you to leave. I guess I'm just... lonely and tired too." He sighs dramatically. "But I'm here so you don't have to be lonely right now." Wrong. You are always most lonely when he's here, when he's sitting next to you making you wonder if he wants you, if he misses you, if he'll leave or stay the night, if you'll spend another morning crying in the shower, if this will actually destroy you this time, if he'll finally give up on you, if... he cares, even a little. "Do you want to stay the night?"

You're asking because you don't like talking about this and you know he doesn't believe you, he doesn't understand what you see, why you know this was always going to end one way and one way only, you're asking because you're pretty good at distracting him and because if you're not going to get drunk this weekend, you might as well do something reckless and irresponsible and endorphin releasing. (You're asking because you missed him too.)

"Isn't it obvious?" You shrug. "You brought booze and nothing else. How does that make it obvious that you're staying? You don't even have an umbrella." He tilts his head. "Maybe I didn't bring one so you had to let me stay." You scoff. "That may be your stupidest scheme yet." He shrugs. "Only if it doesn't work." Arguing with him has always been so fruitless for you. "It's working, but only because my umbrella is broken." Or it will be if he asks you for proof. (You don't get out much anyway.)

It's 2:13 in the morning and he passed out next to you an hour ago, but you're wide awake and your thoughts are racing because you don't know what to do anymore. You feel like you're suffocating when he's here and you feel like you're suffocating when he's not and you've been so miserable for so long that it feels normal and you don't know if you should be concerned about that or not. You have a locked folder on your computer full of words written in his wake, you have one of his shirts in your dresser drawer and you have three bottles of soju in your fridge, but somehow that doesn't feel as wrong as it should. You've always known where this would end up. You've known it since the night he kissed you in the dark in that hotel room, fifty million years ago. (Sometimes you think you've known it since you met him, fifty billion years ago.)

You love him. You love him so much you're about to burst into tears if you look at him one second longer, so you roll over and stare at your alarm clock instead. Sometimes you really wish you could tell him it's over, make him leave, learn how to breathe again, but you're not sure if it would be worth it. (You're not sure if it would work.) You can't take it anymore, you get out of bed and you turn on your computer and you type until you're exhausted, you type until you feel like crying a little less, you type until you feel like you can breathe a little easier. It's 5am by the time you crawl back into bed and feel strong enough to look at him a little longer. You wish you could sleep as soundly as he does. (The soju probably helps with that too.)

You wrap your arm around him, bury your head in his shoulder, press your face into his skin so hard you can hardly take a breath. He'll probably leave as soon as he wakes up and you're tired of wasting time and you're tired of trying not to need him and you're tired of thinking, so you hold your breath and hope you'll pass out before he wakes up so that he'll stay a little longer. 

You wake up to the sound of his phone crashing to the floor and you open one of your eyes so you can see what he's doing. He's crouched by the edge of your bed and he looks up at you apologetically, his phone in his hand. "Sorry, I was trying not to wake you." You yawn and rub at your eyes painfully. "Did it break?" He looks down at his hand. "My phone? Nah, it's fine."  You nod and continue to look at him despite your blurred vision. "Are you leaving?" 

"I was going to... it's late and I have some loose ends to take care of... but I wasn't gonna leave without telling you, I was just gonna get dressed and wash my face first." You clear your throat because your voice is still not working well yet. "I'm not trying to keep you from leaving if you want." You've never been able to hold him anywhere, to keep him from leaving you. He only has that power over you and that's reason #489 why this is so unfair. "I don't want to. I have to." You sigh and close your eyes because you didn't sleep enough and having your eyes open is giving you a headache. "Go ahead. I'm not getting up." He gets up from the floor and a few seconds later you hear the bathroom door close. You try desperately to fall back asleep, but it's too hard because he's leaving again and even though you're most lonely when he's here, you're still pretty da.mn lonely when he's not. 

He comes back ten minutes when he's dressed and you think he'll probably just leave, but you feel the mattress sift with his weight and he rests his hand on your back and you feel those tears again, those ones that prick at your eyes all the time, the ones you still wish you were better at holding back. "Are you sleeping?" You shake your head once. "Are you okay?" You're not sure how to answer that one. "I'm tired," you reply because you feel like saying anything else would be a mistake. "That's probably my fault too." It's not like you slept much before you met him either, but it just keeps getting worse. "I'll be okay after some coffee." He nods and rubs his hand across your back. "It's the weekend. You should get some more sleep." 

"Are you coming back later?" His hand stills and you feel like you've made a mistake. "Do you want me too?" You shake your head slowly. "Just curious." He clears his throat without reason. "Maybe. If I get everything done. Someone has to drink all those bottles in your fridge and I don't think I can trust you with that kind of responsibility." He's joking, but he sounds nervous and you wish he would just leave already because your heart aches again. "Maybe I'll see you later then." He stands up from the bed. "Maybe you will."

(He leans over and kisses you before he goes and he tells you he'll text you later and he almost seems reluctant to go and your heart just keeps breaking more and more because there has never been anything you could do to make this stop and there never will be.)