009

For quite some time, Luhan had been my sanctuary whenever I felt sad; he filled my days with simple yet happy memories that were enough to bury what I felt with Baekhyun. Not completely forget about it, because for that time being, that would be impossible.

I knew at that time that it was wrong to use Luhan just to cover up the pain, but what else could I do? I was desperate and I sacrificed everything just for the sake of feeling some selfish kind of happiness.

Luhan walked me home every day, accompanied me to the mall whenever I’m bored, and made me laugh when he noticed that something was bothering me. Luhan was everything I wanted Baekhyun to be, the only thing was, he wasn’t Baekhyun at all.

Still, Luhan did everything for me, so I decided to bury Baekhyun in my thoughts.

One thing I’ll never forget was when during Valentine’s Day, Luhan surprised me twice, Valentine’s Day and the day after that.

Never in my entire college life had I received something for Valentines, not until I met Luhan. We were having our clinical duty then and it didn’t start very well at that.

I yearned for lunch time to come, signaling a thirty minute break and at least three hours of yet another excruciating battle with our Clinical Instructor.

Lunch came and half of our group, including me, went downstairs to the locker room to get our lunches. When I opened my locker, I saw a test tube filled with pink and blue sand, and a letter rolled inside as if it mimicked a message in a bottle.

I pulled out the cork to see what he wrote, and there I saw his neat handwriting in blue ink.

Yumi,

Happy Valentine’s Day. Will you go out with me this Sunday? If yes, please do text me your answer. I care about you. Now and Forever.

Loving you,

Luhan

I looked at the last word that Luhan wrote, forever. Something in my heart told me not to believe in that word, because I knew, I just knew, that I couldn’t spend forever with Luhan.

Sunday came and we spent the whole day together. He gave me a single pink rose and we went to the amusement park. He bought me an ice cream and I shared it with him. We rode almost all the rides, except for the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster because both of us were afraid of heights.

By lunch time, he asked if I wanted to eat in a restaurant or in the stalls in the streets. I chose the latter. We enjoyed eating our ddukboki and ssam. We laughed at each other’s jokes. We argue about something but he made me win over him. He held my hand. And although I felt uncomfortable, I let him do that, because I knew, I was safe and good with Luhan by my side.

At the end of the night, when we were in front of my door, I bid him good bye and when I was about to turn my back to him, he held my hand. I looked back at him.

“Hmmm?”

“Yumi,” he said and closed his eyes. The next thing I knew, his face was inching close to me. My eyes widened at the prospect, but I tried hard not to refuse. I obliged my eyes to close too and I felt his soft lips against mine. His hand that had been holding mine crawled to my nape and he pulled me in to deepen the kiss. I didn’t move, I just let him do what he wanted to do. When we were out of breath, he pulled out and rested his forehead against mine. I didn’t open my eyes, for one, because I was afraid that he would see how much this thing we had was hurting me.

“I love you. Now and forever.”

That night, I stared blankly at my ceiling. Thinking all that had happened today, I closed my eyes as I remembered Luhan kissing me and how I would never had the chance to say I love him too. Tears started to pour out from my eyes and I hugged myself. Baekhyun’s face popped out in my mind and I never cried this much in my entire life. I decided that I needed to stop this, my selfishness must end here.

Months came and I still didn’t have the courage to let Luhan go. I couldn’t, the thought of being alone while Baekhyun was happy was killing me. So I put up with him for a while.

But my conscience was stronger than my selfishness.

One night, I asked Luhan to meet me, and it was indeed hard to let him go, he had been my savior for quite some time and I learned to care about him as well.

“I like someone else,” I started. The words came out a struggle. He touched my hand and brushed my knuckles for a while, “I know that.”

I looked at him, confused. My lips parted, but I couldn’t find the right words to say. Instead, I hugged him tight. After a minute, when I thought of pulling back, his hand landed on my waist abruptly and he buried his face in the crook of my neck. “Let’s stay like this for a while, please.”

I heaved out a sad sigh as I ran my hand on his fluffy hair. If only I could give my heart a break, and love Luhan instead. If only I met Luhan first. If only I never got to know Baekhyun in the first place, then I would never be into this situation, because Luhan would be the perfect half of my heart. If only.

“Why did you let me use you?

“I don’t want to see you sad,” his voice muffled.

No single tear formed in my eyes that night, but my heart seemed like it was being crushed in my chest.

“I’m so sorry.”

He raised his head and made me look at him, “It’s okay. I made myself do it. Friends?”

Something around us moved, making some silent distant noise. The silence of the night seemed loudly with the rustle of the trees. Something in me was suddenly alive. It was something new, something I had only felt in the last few days. It was warm, strange and beating and I wasn’t even sure what the feeling meant. And somehow, I was afraid to know.

“We’d better go Luhan,” I said quietly. “Please.” And I tried to keep my thoughts out of my words as I said it.

I had been so happy myself for the past few days that I hadn’t had time to notice. But that night, I realized something in both Luhan and I had changed. I had to admit that I was happy with Luhan, and somehow it pained me to see him go.

I was happy. For a while.

One night, when I was in third year, I received a message from Baekhyun asking how I was. Luhan and I had broken up about two weeks from then, so I couldn’t simply tell him that. I still wanted him to believe the idea that I was in love with someone else when in fact, it was always been him all along.

I told him I was fine. And then he told me about the problems concerning him and her new girlfriend, Kim Eunjung. Most of his friends who knew Eunjung didn’t want Baekhyun to date her. I didn’t know why, still, I never asked. I didn’t want him to feel that I was that interested with his new relationship because I should be head over heels to Luhan. Although I was feeling uncomfortable with what I was doing that time, I was blinded by the prospect of getting some reaction about me, being in love with Luhan, from him.

Then before I knew it, I was texting him about something I should have never asked him in the first place. “Do you have any feelings for me?” I asked.

I didn’t quite remember what and how I felt that night, only his reply was the one worth remembering.

“Yes,” he said.

I was quite thrilled with what he said that I couldn’t simply reply at all, I was with my friends during that time, and they saw how happy I was that night. I was grinning from ear to ear, just staring like an idiot at my phone screen, only to be heartbroken four minutes later.

“I didn’t mean it the way you understood. We’re friends, and I like you. But you have Luhan, and I have Eunjung, it’s better off like this. We don’t want to hurt other people.”

I felt dizzy by his reply, I suddenly held onto a chair to balance my gait. What had just happened there?

A slow thought came into my mind and it grew and grew until I knew it was the truth. I knew it as certainly as if I had read it printed on a paper. Just thinking about it made my heart hurt with a throbbing ache. Until I felt that it would calm down, if I could hold it for a moment, with its pulsing ache, in the warmth of my hands. I knew, and the palms of my hands tingled with desire just to touch him, and thinking of it made my breath feel dry in my throat. I knew then that there was no use of pretending or trying to silence my mind and heart with forced thoughts and emotions.

Sometimes. Sometimes, I felt the need to see Baekhyun again and I knew it.

Hani came to me and asked me what happened and I told her everything. She told me that what I did to Luhan, and to myself, were wrong. All of them. That hurting as much as I did with a guy like Baekhyun was not even worth it. She told me things that pierced through my mind and soul, and I knew that almost all of them were true. But I still chose not to believe in it.

“You aren’t nice to him, Hani. You aren’t rude to him but you aren’t nice to him either, none of you. None of you understood him, that was all.” There was no resentment, no bitterness. It was just something I wanted to say out of the thought of having to protect him. I just felt like protecting him from all the accusations they were throwing to him, just because of the mere fact that I loved him, and that I was hurting.

But it couldn’t end as soundlessly and as painlessly as all of these had begun–that, I knew. All the days and nights and warm weeks of sunshine couldn’t fade away into nothingness like whispers as soon as they were spoken. They were too full for that.

There was too much behind it. Even as I counted those last hours, I knew that something had to happen. I didn’t know what it would be but I knew it would come–somehow.