The phone rang.

Mina hurried to it, a towel wrapped around her torso, her hair still dripping from the shower she had taken two minutes ago. She picked it up. “Hello?”

Chaeyoung’s voice greeted her. “Hey, Mina.” She sounded hesitant and guilty. “I have something I need to tell you.”

Mina’s stomach lurched. She had the feeling Chaeyoung would tell her something she wouldn’t like. “What is it?”

There was silence for a few seconds. Then, “I’m getting married in two days.”

The phone slipped out of Mina’s hand and dropped to the ground. Her blood ran cold. It was like ice in her veins. She was frozen; the ice had frozen her from the inside, frozen her heart. Soon enough, she wouldn’t be able to say anything or do anything. Her eyes were staring off into space. She felt like throwing up.

With great difficulty, Mina leaned over and picked her phone up with trembling hands. She spoke quietly, so her voice wouldn’t tremble as well. “You’re getting married?”

Chaeyoung’s voice wobbled slightly. “Yeah. My parents found this guy a few weeks ago and fixed our marriage. We’ve been spending time together. He’s really nice. I like him.”

“I like him.” Those words played on a loop in Mina’s mind.. She swallowed hard. “So what we had, was that a joke? Was it a prank to you? Did you care when I told you I loved you, or when you said it back to me?”

“I’m sorry,” Chaeyoung apologized, and perhaps she was genuinely sorry, but to Mina it sounded like an empty apology. “Everything was just so fast.”

Mina didn’t feel angry at Chaeyoung. She didn’t want revenge. She was simply shocked and sad. She regretted everything. If she had never met Chaeyoung, what was happening wouldn’t have happened at all. It wouldn’t have repeated.

The first time it happened was two years ago, when Mina met Hirai Momo. She thought Momo truly cared about her. Turned out Momo didn’t. She got married to a girl named Kim Dahyun. A year later, Mina met Son Chaeyoung, and she thought Chaeyoung loved her. Apparently, she didn’t.

Mina felt a cold tear run down her cheek. “Congratulations, Chaeyoung,” she said listlessly. “I hope you’re happy with your husband.” She hung up, and the phone slipped from her hand once more.

Now Mina’s standing here, on the roof of her apartment, ready to jump from the edge. She’s done with life. All it’s given her is pain. She doesn’t want to live anymore.

Who knows? If she decides to step away from this ledge and continue living, maybe she’ll find someone who really loves her. Someone who’ll stay by her side forever. Someone she’ll get married to and spend the rest of her life with – no, she knows better. They’ll date her for a year or two, then tell her they’re marrying someone they met a few days ago. Or maybe they’ll get pregnant with someone else’s baby.

In Mina’s life, there’s no such thing as happiness. All she’s been doing is sacrificing the morsels of happiness she has. When will she ever get something back? When will someone sacrifice something for her?

Oh, wait. No one will ever sacrifice anything for her. Because she’s going to die.

Mina doesn’t feel anything. She’s a hollow shell. Her life is in black and white. She’s ready to die. She already prefers death over this pathetic excuse for a life. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. This is it, this is when Mina finally ends her life.

“Mina!”

Someone screams behind her. The voice is familiar. Chaeyoung? Mina feels like laughing. Did Chaeyoung come to personally deliver a wedding invitation? Did she think Mina needed another explanation? Mina was done with explanations. Completely done.

Bye, Chaeyoung. Have a great life with your husband. I’m not staying around to watch you have kids, to watch your kids grow up, to watch you become a grandmother, to watch you die peacefully. That’s the last thing I want to do.

Mina starts to lean forward. She can feel the world tilting around her, the fierce wind breaking as her face dips into it. She’s always liked the wind, even when it tangles her hair and forces her eyes to squeeze shut. She can die happily, among the wind, where she really belongs.

It happens suddenly: hands push her chest back, like a punch. She totters off the ledge and falls...on her hands and knees. The ledge is there, in front of her. Mina knows, instead of taking her, it took a different victim instead.

She scrambles to her feet and rushes to the ledge, peering over. Chaeyoung’s body is sprawled on the ground, three stories down. There’s something dark pooling around her head. Blood.

Mina lets out a gut-wrenching scream. She stands there in shock, unable to move. Chaeyoung, dead. Not Mina, but Chaeyoung. Chaeyoung, with her short hair, dyed a fiery auburn. Chaeyoung, with her goofy smile and her big eyes, full of imagination. Chaeyoung, with words on her lips, words Mina can’t forget, words Mina want to hear again and again and again despite everything Chaeyoung tells her. All Mina wants to hear is Chaeyoung telling her ‘I love you.’ Just one more time. Mina doesn’t care about the marriage. Mina loves Chaeyoung so much, it hurts, even more than the sight she’s seeing right now.

Mina moves. She runs downstairs and out the door, where there’s already a crowd around Chaeyoung’s body. Mina pushes through the crowd, heart jumping out of . Chaeyoung is motionless, other than for the slight rising and falling of her chest. Cuts are scattered all over her arms and legs, and the pool of blood underneath her head is growing, staining her hair and clothes.

Mina drops to her knees in front of Chaeyoung, tears dripping down onto her shirt. They’re ice cold. The ice has reached her tears now. Chaeyoung’s eyes are open. She’s still alive, but Mina knows she won’t be for long. She grabs Chaeyoung’s wrist and feels her pulse. It’s slow. She’ll die any moment now.

“I’m sorry, Chaeyoung,” Mina whispers, not letting go of her hand. “I’m so, so sorry. If I wasn’t being so stupid...this wouldn’t have happened. This is all my fault. I’m sorry.”

Chaeyoung smiles. She squeezes Mina’s hand, and opens to say something. Mina puts her other hand over Chaeyoung’s mouth. “Save your energy. Don’t waste it on trying to forgive me. I’m not worth it.”

Chaeyoung shakes her head. Mina removes her hand from Chaeyoung’s mouth. Chaeyoung speaks, softly so no one else will hear. Mina starts sobbing.

Chaeyoung takes her last breath, a smile on her face. Her eyes close. She’s dead. Son Chaeyoung, the girl who owned Mina’s heart, the girl who betrayed Mina, the girl who gave Mina another chance at life is gone.

She left Mina, and if she thinks Mina is going to forgive and forget, then she’s wrong. Mina won’t forgive Chaeyoung for everything she’s done. Nor will she forget Chaeyoung, ever.

Two years later.

Mina walks to her office, snug in her tight black turtleneck and black dress pants, though the high heels she’s also wearing are a bit uncomfortable. A fashionable bag is slung over her shoulder, and she checks it regularly, hoping she didn’t forget anything back home. She’s glad she got a job. It has a good pay and on her first day, she met new friends there. Friends who had also known Chaeyoung.

They told Mina that Chaeyoung constantly gushed about Mina to them, and with sad smiles on their faces, they told Mina how much Chaeyoung loved Mina. They told Mina Chaeyoung didn’t want to marry the man her parents picked up, they told Mina how guilty Chaeyoung felt when she had to lie to Mina about her opinion of the man, and they told Mina how Chaeyoung wanted to stay with Mina forever.

Mina’s done well to move on, to get over it. She can’t – won’t – forget what happened after Chaeyoung died.

The police asked Mina a few questions. How Mina was related to Chaeyoung, what happened prior to her death, who were her parents, and so on. Mina answered them honestly. The only thing she lied about was her relationship with Chaeyoung. The police had no idea, and satisfied, left Mina alone to grieve.

After a few months of grieving, Mina decided to do something with her life. She couldn’t just sit there and waste it on thinking about Chaeyoung. Cruel as it was, Mina knew there was nothing to be done. Chaeyoung was dead. That was all there was to it. Thus, desperate for something to do, Mina applied for a job at a high-tech agency. She got it immediately.

That was when the police informed Mina of a development in the investigation of how Chaeyoung fell from the roof. Mina herself hadn’t seen it, so they weren’t able to get much information from her, but based on the description she gave them, they told her that Chaeyoung had stepped on the ledge beside Mina and pushed her back. However, Chaeyoung had already leaned too far and ended up falling. Since Mina had already started to lean forward, Chaeyoung had to lean as well, and she managed to push Mina, but that was it. She couldn’t keep her balance and she fell. Case closed.

A year after Chaeyoung’s death (and a year into Mina’s job), Mina met people at her workplace who had known Chaeyoung personally. Chou Tzuyu, who was a few months younger than Chaeyoung. Park Jihyo, who had known Chaeyoung well, in fact, she had known her since high school. Mina also met Momo and her spouse, Kim Dahyun. Momo knew Chaeyoung, but not too well, whereas Dahyun had known her since forever. Their parents were friends, so they had been friends since they were toddlers. Dahyun described her as “the sister she never had.”

Mina got along with these women easily. They became close friends. She even repaired her relationship with Momo, and now they’re the closest out of all of them. At one point, Tzuyu confessed to Mina. She wanted to marry Mina. Mina had to admit, she did have feelings for Tzuyu. She wasn’t capable of forgetting, though.

Thus, Mina rejected her. Thankfully, that didn’t hurt their relationship. Soon enough, Tzuyu got engaged to a woman named Minatozaki Sana. Sana was Mina’s best friend in middle and high school, and it was nice to get in touch with her again.

At times, Mina wonders, how on earth did she gather up the courage to live her life again? After everything that had happened, topped with Chaeyoung’s death, how did Mina force herself to keep on living? Why didn’t she just commit suicide?

Mina knows the answers, too. It’s because of Chaeyoung’s words. Instead of ‘I love you,’ Chaeyoung had uttered words even more important to Mina.

“Don’t let my death go to waste.”

Chaeyoung saved Mina with her sacrifice. It was the first sacrifice in Mina’s whole life that saved her from agony, from pain, the first sacrifice that eventually led her to happiness.

Sacrifices can go either way. They can hold pain. They can hold happiness. It depends on the person who makes the sacrifice, if they wish to give pain or to give happiness. Chaeyoung decided to give happiness.

Mina will too.