Woohyun POV

I was drunk. At 5pm in the afternoon.

Honestly, I didn't plan to.

I had gotten home from practice and being grilled by Coach Choi to an empty house. I was happy because I could mope around without being pestered by my mom to do chores, by my dad about the progress of my studies, or my brother Boohyun about playing League of Legends with him.

I was alone in the living room after showering, looking for something to eat, when I saw a six-pack carton of beer hidden behind the bag of apples. I knew it was Boohyun's. I also knew that he would not miss it if it was gone.

Settling down on the coach, beer and phone in hand, I pressed play on the DVD player. I didn't care what disc was in there because I wasn't planning on watching it. I just needed something, anything, to break the deafening silence of my empty house.

It was extremely ironic that it was NOLZA, the 2ne1 concert, live on DVD. This was the very concert I had attended at the very beginning of senior year, where I made a huge sign saying "Park Bom and I together, it just feels so right," after her song You & I.

It was also an interest I shared with Hana. We both loved 2ne1. At the concert, she told me to take a picture of her bias, CL.

Watching the DVD made me feel more and more depressed about everything. About life in general.

I had a coach pressuring me to keep a facade, a fake brave face, for the rest of the team and the greater population of the sports college. I had the lingering fear that Minji would come looking for me or Hana for some kind of petty revenge. I had people I didn't even know judging and gossiping about me. The girl I loved hated my guts.
So could you blame me for grabbing another beer from the fridge?

I was absorbed deep in my thoughts. Absent-mindedly, I kept sipping my beer as I just wallowed in my thoughts and felt extremely sorry for myself. I couldn't really see, well, the positive side to living. I was a miserable excuse for a boy. A human.

Usually, I could take my alcohol quite well, but today, because I was drinking on an empty stomach, I felt the room get a bit blurry. I began to think of ways that I felt, at the time, were good enough to win Hana back. To earn her forgiveness, and make her love me. They were all futile because she would never come back. The future was not set in stone but this was the only exception; only in an alternate universe where I treated her with the love she deserved would she ever take me back.

I called her name softly. If I called loud enough, would she come? If I thought about her enough, would she appear in front of me? The mind worked in mysterious ways, the prime example being myself. I didn't know I would be putting myself in such a rut by breaking up with Hana.

Do you only miss something when it's gone? I felt like God was punishing me, rightfully so, for ever treating her with disrespect.

Did I take Hana for granted? I would always tell myself, no. We had gone through a lot together - my brother, her university acceptance, senior year - and she would always be there for me. But she wasn't. Because I wasn't.

Promises. Something done so easily, so lightly and so thoughtlessly, it would come back and haunt us in the end. We always make promises that we can't keep, no matter how hard we try and no matter how hard we resist.

Emotions are void, too. Who wants to feel? I would trade anything - my soul, my existence - to be able to not feel. Emotions are so complicated and indescribable that I would rather not feel anything at all. Sure, happiness was a great feeling. But feeling lonely, worthless and undeserving was not. Humans felt those emotions more than happiness. Why feel so much pain when you only have fleeting moments of euphoria? And when we're not feeling happy, we always want to feel happy. Which makes all the difference. You spent half your life yearning for something you have felt before, trying to replicate it, only to fall short. Then, you're left with nostalgia when you're comparing. And then comes the feelings of loneliness and emptiness.

Hope , too. "Hope is all we live for, never give up hope" - all those sayings and quotes are for the idiotic, written by the idiotic. Why on earth would anyone want to hope? You can't rely on anyone but yourself, and even then, sometimes you are unreliable yourself. Hope is the worst kind of feeling. You have this feeling, this want, this need for something to happen. Your subconscious, the sensible and rational side of you knows that it won't happen. But hope erases all that. Hope erases all the negativity and doubt you possess and replaces it with a possibility. A maybe. This maybe is enough to cause your heart to break or for you to do very, very silly and stupid things that you will almost always regret later on in life. All hope is false. And afterward, all you are left feeling is humiliated, stupid and positively angry for letting something so futile, so fleeting to rule your thoughts - consuming you and making you think only of the positive outcome. Positive outcomes never happen. Happy endings never happen.

Why did Hana come to my mother's engineering dinner? When we had broken up, it was painful. And awkward. Why did she insist on attending? Was she trying to say something to me? Or signal that she doesn't hate me?

I laughed despite myself. She made it pretty clear that she despised me. She hated me from head to toe. She told me to leave her alone.

How would I organise the team on Saturday for the football match? Our opponents were known for their strong defense. I needed to break their defence down with the correct balance of offense and tactics. Coach mentioned playing man-to-man. But I wasn't sure i agreed; I was thinking a strong, structured guard to defend their goal.

Boohyun's rehabilitation was getting better. He could almost hold a spoon without his hand shook so badly that it's contents fell out.

I wondered about my engineering assignment. I was neglecting it for practice. It was due soon... I should probably start.

Why did my mom insist on buying a whole carton of mangoes when she visited the organic markets with my dad? She knew I hated eating the flesh of a mango. I much preferred mango flavour...like Hana.

Sighing, I trudged up to my bed, falling down face first. My head was pounding. I was a mess. I knew never again to drink on an empty stomach. My mind was bursting: I was so afraid of my own mind and the things it could think, twist or overanalyse.

I knew I would pay for this tomorrow morning. I had practice at 5am in the morning. I would have a killer headache. Coach could probably tell I had a hangover when I showed up. He could probably smell some alcohol residual on me.

Hana, I thought again. I'm so sorry for everything. More than words can ever say.

It's funny, though. What I was thinking before. That if I thought about her long enough, she would appear in front of me. Because when I woke up groggily in a few hours, at 7.30pm, there she was. Sitting with her back to me, at my study desk. Reading through my football brochures.

I thought I was still dreaming. I sat up immediately and regretted it. My head pounded like it had been hit repeatedly with a hammer. This pain made me realise that I was most definitely not dreaming. No, sir. I was awake.