Two years later...

Through the eyes of Sana

I don’t know why I bothered anymore, but I did. I couldn’t accept the defeat for what it was.  My heart still fluttered for her, and my feelings for her had only grown. I had doused myself in her favourite perfume, in hopes of sparking an old flame. I had hoped that she would react in the way she once did. Her eyes use to automatically glance up at my scent, and follow my every move. However that wasn’t the case anymore, she barely noticed me. Her eyes were still fixated on the screen of her phone. “Sorry for being late,” I managed to mutter as I sat opposite her. She simply nodded in acknowledgement of my presence, and resumed her focus on the string of texts that buzzed her phone. I was instantly reminded of how little I mattered to her now.

“How are you?” She eventually asked. Three words, a simple phrase that is commonly said, but when she said those words they ricocheted through to my heart. She felt so distant, so removed from me.

“I’ve been okay.” I lied through clenched teeth, as I tried to adjust to the foreign pang of detachment.

“How’s Eunha?” She asked with an encouraging smile.

“It was never anything serious.”

She didn’t say anything in response. She just looked at me, but her face had said it all, disappointment was written bold and clear. And like that an awkward silence fell upon us.

“How was Japan?” I hastily asked in attempt to revive the conversation.

Thankfully, she took the change of topic well, and happily described, “It was amazing. Kyoto was especially breath taking along the Philosopher’s Path. The cherry blossoms seemed to rain from the sky.”

Kyoto. Of course she went there, with… and all of a sudden my mind was invaded with thoughts of our past, of our dreams and of our plans to travel to Japan.

“Dahyun, can I ask you something?” I blurted, as I felt the perspiration build at my palms.

“Yes?” She answered, eyes finally fixated on me. 

“Do you regret it?”

“Regret what?”

“I don’t know.” My voice quivered, “Us.” And just like that I had thrown our seemingly innocent conversation into the deep end. Dahyun’s passive expression instantly distorted into something that I couldn’t quite decipher. The only tell tale that I could read, was her heavy sigh that followed.

“Just because we didn’t work out doesn’t mean that you weren’t one of the best things to have happened to me, because you were. You taught me how to love someone, you taught me how it felt, and you showed me my capacity for love. Even despite all the pain that you caused me, I don’t regret us.” She said.

How ironic of her to say that I taught her how to love, when I myself was so incapable. I wanted to give her so much more than what she received. But my reflection had held me captive. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was taunted by a person I couldn’t stand. I despised myself for the person that I had become. I had single handedly sabotaged my relationship with Dahyun, with the poison from my priors. I had made the formidable mistake of carrying the weight of my past fears and the mistakes of old lovers. I had unfairly held Dahyun accountable for my saving. But how was she to fix me, if I couldn’t fix the way I saw myself. She had unknowingly loved someone that was bruised inside out with the scorned words of deceit. Though her love had healed the venomous words, the scars remained and the band-aids eventually wore off. After our great effort, I still fell back into old habits, the same destructive patterns that ruined the happiness at my fingertips. Instead of accepting her love, I challenged it. I doubted its credibility, because it seemed too good to be true. I reasoned that I needed the games to test her loyalty, but it was more than that. I was trying to find her breaking point, the point in which she would snap, and I would be proven right. That I was too broken to be loved, to be accepted. But Dahyun never snapped, even when she ended it the first time, she still loved me.

I just wish she had given more time to make amends.

“Yeah, neither do I,” I answered with glistening eyes, “Are you ever sorry for loving me though?” I found myself suddenly asking, needing more of her assurance.

After a short pause Dahyun proceeded to say, “No. Someone once told me that you should never apologize for being in love and that it is one of the greatest gifts to human kind. There are many things I need to apologize for, but loving you isn’t one of them.”

For some reason her response added to my restlessness, “What are the things you’re sorry about then?”

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t quite right for you, and that you weren’t quite right for me. That our end was the fault of it being the wrong time and place, perhaps if we had met later in our lives we would’ve been a better match. Maybe we’ve would worked out the way we had hoped, maybe we would’ve made it like we had imagined our futures to be. But I guess sometimes, things just aren’t meant to work out.”

“All this time I believed that you blamed my lack of love for you, or that I just wasn’t good enough for you...” My voice trailed in confession.

“Our love was never an issue Sana. I knew you loved me. If I our love were to be measured it would fill this place and expand beyond the universe, as we know it. I loved you so much. It’s just that our stars didn’t align at the right time.” Dahyun explained, enouncing each and every sentence in genuine thought.

“I love you too Dahyun.” I said in the wrong tense. I was meant to lie and say ‘loved’ but instead my heart spoke for itself. My hand quickly covered my lips, but the words had already left.

Dahyun looked me with a sympathetic expression that was torn between confusion and mercy, “Sana, I wish you would move on from us. It’s been two years now. I want to see you happy. It upsets me to think that you’re still playing games, but this time with your own heart. Let it heal, let it grow and let it find someone that will call it home Sana. Stop hurting yourself.”

“I can’t, I don’t know how to.” My voice shook. 

“Sana I know you, and I know that you’re capable of anything you put your mind to.” She patiently assured me, as she reached out to squeeze my hand.

At her gentle touch, my body flinched as it remembered the way her fingers danced across the bare of its skin. “I have a slight headache, do you mind if I go to the bathroom to wash my face?” I announced abruptly.

“Sure, go ahead. “ She said completely oblivious to my true intentions.

I wasn’t leaving for the bathroom because my head spun, but because my heart was ablaze. My emotions had brimmed to the very top, and I wasn’t strong enough to hold them down for any longer. “I want to see you happy,”’ the words sunk down into my stomach, and swallowed me whole. Did she know what she was asking of me, when she said those words. Did she forget that I had once told her, I couldn’t be happy without her? I clutched my chest, as I bolted for the restroom door. Each gasp I took tore down my throat, as the sharp pain of heartache unravelled. No. There was no way that Dahyun could have forgotten she was my home. She was mine, dammit! I pounded my fist against the cold door, till the pain numbed and the strength left me. Even as I attempted to stand I couldn’t, my feeble legs collapsed beneath me betraying me to the fury of my emotions. My body was working against me. My throat tried to hold back something between a sob and a scream, but once the first tear fell, the rest ensued. I had been rendered to a tragic a pool of sorrow that had no end. Remembering the promissory ring that I continued to carry with me, I brought it to my chest and held it close. It pressed white-hot against my skin, as I tried to bury it into my soul. A piece that originally signified our unison and devotion to each other, now symbolised the broken promises and existed as a constant reminder of our break up. I still stubbornly kept it with me though, because it was us, because it reminded me of her, because I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t let her go. Two years, she said as if it were an adequate measure of how much time was needed to move on. Two years weren’t enough, five years wouldn’t be enough, and ten years wouldn’t suffice either. I needed an eternity to find a way to let her go. Time was not my friend, it was my foe.

When Dahyun and Momo had initially told the group of their plans to tra