“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I said I was fine, Seunghyun.” She turns to walk away and her hair cuts a circular path through the air with the force of the motion.

“I’m sorry,” he calls after her. She doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn back, and doesn’t give any indication that she even heard him.

He stands there, watching her go down the circular stairway, fighting with himself. Half of him wants to go after her, grab her by the shoulders and shake her, tell her how bloody stupid he thinks she is being. The other half tells him that he should let her be, wait till she comes to him. He highly doubts that that will ever happen.

The grocery bags in his hand feel as if they weigh a ton. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk to try and rearrange his load so that it doesn’t cut into his sensitive skin. Something, he doesn’t know what, makes him jerk his head up. His gaze scours the tall building on the other side of the street and the breath leaves his body in an audible whoosh. There, sitting on a window seat with her head thrown back, is the girl that haunts him. It’s her – it has to be. He’s sure that there is no-one else in this place with the same exquisite bone structure or those rosebud lips or that dusting of freckles across her nose. No-one else has that petite body in combination with those features or the gold chain that shimmers from around her slender neck.

The window is open and he starts walking towards the building without having thought about it. He opens his mouth to call her, raises an arm to catch her attention and drops it when he sees the silver tear trails on her alabaster skin. He closes his mouth and watches, seeing diamonds slid from between thick lashes to race down her face and get lost in the blue fabric of her tank top. He feels his heart shatter inside his chest.

Once again you’re home alone

Tears running from your eyes

and I’m on the outside,

knowing that you’re all I want

but I can’t do anything.

I’m so helpless, baby.

Damn. Watching her while he knows she’s hurting is the most painful thing he has ever encountered. He can’t breathe for a minute. Then he gets angry, thinking of the bastard who hurt her in the first place. That guy she always runs back to.

Every day, same old things

so used to feeling pain.

Never had real love before

and it ain’t her fault.

This is going to kill one of them. The thought doesn’t surprise the tall man when it springs up in his mind. He accepts it like he accepts the fact that he can’t place all the blame on her. She came from a loveless place. He knows her ty life story and this, the way she clings to the only person she thinks loves her, is not surprising.

She knows better

but she can’t help it.

Wanna tell her

but would that be selfish?

How do you heal

a heart that can’t feel

it’s broken?

His love is all she knows, all she knows, all she knows.

His love is all she knows, all she know, all she knows.

Seunghyun looks at her and he knows he could fix her broken heart if she’d give him half a chance. He knows he could. But she won’t even admit to herself that there’s anything wrong with her relationship. He wants to tell her, he wants to let her see what Jiyong is doing, he wants to show her what he can see from the outside. But he never takes the chance when he gets it because it would just devastate her.

“Jiyong’s the only person who gives a crap if I live or die. He loves me. I know he does,” the words come from her lips like a rehearsed speech. He doesn’t know if she’s trying to convince herself or him.

You've been livin this way so long

you don’t know the difference

and it’s killing me

cause you can have so much more,

I’m the one you’re looking for

but you close your eyes on me

so you still can’t see.

Seunghyun is always there when she needs a shoulder to lean on. He’s always there when she wants him to be. But as soon as the tears dry, she pushes him away. He tries to stay away but he fails miserably every time.

All she knows is the pain

in the corner of an empty home.

She's still comfortable.

I want her to know

it can be better than this,

I can't pretend.

Wish we were more than friends

She could leave Jiyong if she really wanted to. She could pack her things and walk out. But she never does. Seunghun wishes so badly that she would, that she’d let him show her how love is supposed to be. A flash of red goes by and he smiles, the expression as dead as his heart feels. Jiyong is back. She’ll let him in, they’ll “make up” and it will all be forgotten until the next time, and the time after that and the time after that. Seunghyun gathers his plastic bags and forces himself to walk away and not look back. He doesn’t need to watch Ji wipe the tears off her face.

His love is all she knows, all she knows, all she knows.