Preface: On Pain

This is a story of love and pain, and the relationship they share.

Mina and Momo were long-time best friends who have known each other since their childhood days. They grew up together. They shared secrets they’d never tell their parents with each other. They ran away from home together, as rebellious young teens would. They matured alongside one another, leaving behind their childhood and entering adulthood, where they chased their futures in college. Everything they ever did, they did together. They were best friends, who knew everything about each other.

Nearly everything.

There was a secret Momo had been keeping for years, and it was a secret she’d never share with anyone, especially not Mina.

Before they entered college and were still figuring out their lives in high school, Momo was busy sorting something else out. Since junior high, Momo’s developed unusual feelings for her best friend—feelings she wished never surfaced. It created a conflict in Momo’s mind. For a few years, she argued with herself on whether her feelings were real or not. Desperately, she hoped it was the latter. But years passed, and the topic remained on her mind. Years passed, and Momo would notice things about Mina; how womanly she’s become with the years, how much more beautiful she gets with every passing day, how much brighter her aura was growing each second she was with her. Years passed, and it couldn’t be denied much longer.

Momo loved Mina.

She couldn’t admit it to Mina, but she tried to embrace the feeling. She accepted that she was in love. For some time, she hoped. She hoped the possibility that she could have Mina existed, however slim or great. Months passed, and soon, Momo’s hope would too.

Every time Momo would look into Mina’s eyes, as magical as her eyes were, she would lose an inch of hope. There was something about the endearing way that Mina looked at Momo that irked her. She was unsure what it was that bothered her, until finally, she figured out. The day she figured it out was the day she lost all hope. Mina’s eyes became proof that she could never reciprocate Momo’s feelings. Mina looked at her as a friend would, with endearing eyes that Momo blamed for causing her to fall, but also dull eyes. Dull, because she didn’t love Momo back. It felt bittersweet, looking into Mina’s beautiful eyes. Most of all, it hurt.

Consumed by pain, she forgot how to love. She locked her feelings away, in the darkest part of her heart, like she should have done in the beginning. She remained friends with Mina, and she tried to be okay with that. In the daytime, she’d force herself to forget her true feelings. But in the nighttime, she’d be kept awake by the voices in her head. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move on.

Endlessly, she would hurt. But the pain didn’t stop there.

FRIDAY, 5:20 PM

Dahyun stares quietly at the woman before the front desk, trying desperately to keep her lower jaw from dropping to the floor—but failing miserably.

The woman stares back.

Momo stares back, with those eyes full of pain.

To Chaeyoung, she looks a bit terrified and confused by Dahyun. But Dahyun doesn’t recognize that and can only see the pain in the woman’s eyes.

Chaeyoung laughs nervously, earning the woman’s attention.

“Sorry about her. She doesn’t work here,” she says plainly. She side-glances Dahyun, who doesn’t notice. Dahyun remains staring at Momo, kind of creepily if you ask Chaeyoung.

“I’ll—uh… How about I just walk you to the restroom?” Chaeyoung decides, standing from her chair. “Stay here, Dahyun.”

Dahyun nods, although it’s questionable she even heard Chaeyoung.

As Momo leaves alongside Chaeyoung, Dahyun’s eyes follow her.

How does Momo exist?

Not just any Momo, but Hirai Momo with that look of pain in her eyes exists.

They say that eyes are the windows to the soul and the doorway to the heart. It’s the soul and the heart that tell you the most about a person—their feelings, their thoughts, their truth. The soul and the heart, although hidden deep in someone’s being, can be seen through the eyes. Maybe the windows are foggy and the door is cracked open, and you can only see so much of a person’s truth. Nevertheless, eyes tell a person’s story from their perspective. When Dahyun looked into Momo’s eyes, she saw a broken window and a door off its hinges, and nothing but darkness beyond them.

Dahyun looked into Momo’s eyes like they were an open storybook of her life. Like written in her eyes were words on paper, detailing every instance of her life up until that point. But it wasn’t what she read in Momo’s eyes that told her story, but what she felt. That pain and darkness that Dahyun felt acted as narrators in the author’s mind, that told a story of unrequited love and heartbreak.

It was the story Dahyun had written down on paper.

It must be impossible. It’s impossible for any fake reality to actually become reality. So then, how?

“Hey.”

Dahyun looks up from her trance. Her eyes move from where Momo was to the new student at the front desk. Standing there is a girl—a very pretty girl.

It’s Tzuyu.

“Huh?” is all she can manage to say. It’s not a very good response for someone who should be saving her tarnishing reputation as the rude student who sits beside the librarian.

“Where’s the librarian?” she asks briefly.

“Uh, somewhere…” Dahyun stops to think, sincerely unsure of the librarian’s location. She glances between the empty chair and Tzuyu, who only stares back with a blank gaze.

“The restroom…?” she replies, as if taking a snag at a question on the jeopardy board. She takes what she thinks to be a wild guess, but is actually true, although she doesn’t know that.

“Okay. Well, I’ll come back later then.”

“Wait, do you need help? I can help.” Dahyun offers her aid, although she sounds desperate. Desperate to save her reputation, that is.

“No,” Tzuyu responds, a little harshly. Definitely Chaeyoung’s type, Dahyun can’t help but think to herself.

“I’d rather wait for Chaeyoung,” she adds.

“For Chae—” Dahyun begins to frown, upset by this girl’s mistrust in her. But as the frown forms, she gets it. The pretty girl wants to wait for Chaeyoung. Either she’s got a good reason why she’s waiting for Chaeyoung or she hates Dahyun. She hopes it’s the former, but either way, Dahyun chooses not to argue. She wipes the forming frown off her face and replaces it with a smile much too wide. Tzuyu visibly backs away.

“O-ohhhh, I see,” Dahyun nods more to herself than to Tzuyu. “Yeah, sit tight then.”

“Tell her I came,” Tzuyu instructs.

Dahyun usually doesn’t like to be ordered around, but this time, she complies willingly, nodding her head quickly.

If it’s for Chaeyoung, then fine, she can listen to the pretty girl.

As Tzuyu leaves, Dahyun’s eyes follow her figure. She’s pretty, without a doubt, but Dahyun doesn’t see the appeal. After her first interaction with the pretty girl, Dahyun can only think her to be an unfriendly person; she doesn’t like unfriendly people. Maybe they just got off on the wrong foot, and the pretty girl will turn out to actually be nice and friendly. At least, that’s what she hopes, because if she does end up with Chaeyoung, then Dahyun’s gonna have to deal with her.

Whatever makes Chaeyoung happy, Dahyun thinks. That’s all she wants for her friend: happiness. So she’ll try her best to grant what Chaeyoung wishes most.

She takes it upon herself to be her friend’s wingwoman.

But when Chaeyoung returns to the desk some minutes later, Dahyun had long since forgotten about Tzuyu. She stares at her open composition notebook on her lap, her pen frozen in her stationary hand. There are words on the page this time, and it’s not writer’s block like it was the day before. Her mind is distant for other reasons. She thinks about Momo, and her eyes.

Dahyun looks up from her notebook to Chaeyoung, forcing herself back to reality.

The librarian is hunched over the desk, drawing in her sketchbook. Really, she’s more an artist than she is a librarian in Dahyun’s eyes.

“Hey Chaeng?”

“Yeah?” Chaeyoung tilts her head up, though her eyes remain on her little project.

Dahyun pauses, as if unsure to ask Chaeyoung such an absurd question. But she needs the additional input.

“Is it possible for my story to come to life?” she finally asks.

“Hm, let me think about it—no,” she responds rather harshly.

“But that girl earlier…” she tries to object.

“What about her?” Chaeyoung’s finally looking up from her art to Dahyun, giving her full attention.

“She’s a character in my story.”

Chaeyoung snorts, returning her attention to her sketchbook. This conversation isn’t worth her full attention, she thinks. “Pft, really?”

“Yeah, Momo’s a character in my story. Hirai Momo.” Dahyun makes sure to state the full name.

“It’s probably just some funny coincidence that they have the same name.”

The author frowns, more to herself than to Chaeyoung. Dahyun isn’t the type to brush off instances as “some funny little coincidences.” She believes everything, no matter how routine or odd, happens for a reason. Or, that they are the reasons for something bigger—a moment in one’s future, an epiphany to be discovered, or a lesson to be learned. Either way, everything that occurs in someone’s life plays some sort of significance to one’s destiny.

So, for what reason did fate make Dahyun meet Hirai Momo?

If it’s not because of her story, then what other reason?

“And last name?” Dahyun points out.

“And last name,” Chaeyoung says, as if it’s enough to satisfy the author’s suspicions.

“But like… there’s also this look in her eyes.” Dahyun revisits the moment she first looked into Momo’s eyes. When the feelings of pain and darkness begin to consume her once again, Dahyun shakes the thought.

“What look?”

“This look of pain.”

Chaeyoung scoffs. “I think you’re reading too much into it.”

Dahyun sighs, but she’s unsure if her sigh is due to her annoyance at Chaeyoung’s method of brushing this event off as a silly coincidence or if it’s due to her absurd analysis of this situation.

Perhaps a silly coincidence is easier to digest than an absurd analysis.

For a writer, maybe Dahyun really did too much reading this time.

“Yeah… Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Dahyun looks back down to her open composition notebook. Her eyes fall to a brief snippet of her piece.

Consumed by pain, she forgot how to love. She locked her feelings away, in the darkest part of her heart, like she should have done in the beginning.

Isn’t that what Dahyun saw when she looked into Momo’s eyes? In her eyes, she saw her heart consumed by darkness. This darkness was home to her pain. There were broken windows and a tipping door because Momo shoved her feelings into this darkness. She battled her true feelings, and shattered the windows as she threw them into the darkness. She battled love, and unhinged the door from its frame when she tossed it away to be forgotten and discarded.

Isn’t that what Dahyun saw?

She still finds it hard to pass off Hirai Momo as some funny coincidence.

Suddenly, it’s become tiring to be thinking too hard.

Dahyun stands abruptly from her chair, startling Chaey