Months breezed by. The leaves on the trees changed colors, the air sweetened and chilled, the ice around your heart began to thaw ever so slowly. You fought it, this unsolicited return to emotion. You had watched enough romances to know that it was healthy to hurt after a betrayal of that scale. The pain meant that you were still alive. The initial hurt had been so intense you had wondered how anybody ever survived it, let alone to get to the point of meeting it head on. Then there came the blissful release the numbness awarded. It came when it was most needed – when it felt like the entire world had conspired to beleaguer you with stories about Jiyong and/or Kiko. Not an hour when by without some mention of one or the other of them. The internet was filled with photos of the former from photo shoots, award shows, concerts, variety shows and endless public appearances as well as a bottomless lake of his interviews. After the first few days you’d taken preemptive action against the sharp stab of pain that came with anything related to him and effectively deactivated all of your social media accounts. Just to be safe, your email addresses were killed off.  It was after that that the deprivation of feeling had wrapped itself like a familiar blanket around your body.

From beneath that blanket you watched as happened to those around you. Your hair grew back out. You lost weight. Clothing that Jiyong had bought for you leaked, a piece at a time, into thrift shops or Salvation Army stores. Trinkets he’d given you were pawned and the money went to charitable institutions. Anything that had born the weight of his touch was slowly eased from your life.

Each day was a blur of voices and colors that meant nothing to you. Each night was another to add to the tally of survival. Morning brought the gray of pre-dawn light and the bitterness of coffee too strong. You had a job. It wasn’t much but it was better than sitting in your pretty apartment and staring at the Victorian wallpaper until night came. You worked in a quaint little coffee shop with people who let you be. You greeted them with nods and met their words with gestures. Talking to you seemed like a waste of energy and time. They watched you closely, not with suspicion but with tender unspoken concern that annoyed you more than anything else they could have done.

Now that the ice was melting – the pain was sneaking back in fits and starts. You would be fine – more than fine, almost happy, even – and it would rear its head and pierce you through with the tip of its lance. Dark circles formed below your eyes, giving your good looks a decidedly Twilight cast. Sleep was a thing of the past. Each setting of the sun brought with it a fresh nightmare that left you curled up in the fetal position on your white sheets sobbing and clutching at the ragged edges of the hole that was your shattered heart.  

Daytime was easier. You would distract yourself with the demands of work or caring for yourself, cooking, grooming, and other things that demanded attention to detail. As time went by, the hurt started to be accompanied by a strange intense desire for Jiyong’s presence. When the nightmares hit you found yourself thinking of how he used to take care of you when he was home and wishing he was there. It was confusing and hard to try to figure out how you could hate him so much and miss him at the same time.

It hurt. Emotionally and physically, it hurt. Exhausted wasn’t a strong enough word to describe how drained of energy you felt. It was more like being sick deep down inside, in your soul, all the time. It .

+++

 Jiyong looked at his reflection in the mirror with absolutely no expression on his face. His lifeless gaze took in the sickly pallor, the circles that had been permanently affixed beneath his eyes since that first week, the lips bruised from being bitten to keep himself from screaming your name. The hair that he used to be obsessed with was back in its natural hue and pulled sleekly off his forehead to gather into a high ponytail. The shirt he wore was a full size too large. He’d lost weight and he couldn’t be bothered to go shopping for new clothing or to fix the old. He simply didn’t give a rat’s about that .

Screw it. He shrugged out of the shirt and dropped it on the floor, reaching for a slashed black wife beater and a pair of Tripp skinny jeans that had chains and zippers all over them. He pulled those one and looked around for the shoes he wanted – a pair of black knee-high leather boots with nine buckles on them. A pair of black framed Dior aviator shades, a skull necklace and three black wristbands completed the outfit. He cracked a fraction of a smile at what he saw when he looked in the mirror this time. It hurt to do that. Then again, it hurt to breathe. He pulled a fist back and smashed it into the mirror.

He didn’t know what day it was, much less what month or what interview Big Bang was scheduled to do in the next half hour. Someone had probably told him all of that information endless times in the last couple of days. He should be able to remember this stuff. He used o be capable of it. But now it was a waste of time. No matter how out of it he was somebody would prod them along and make sure they got where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there. When the van dumped them in the parking lot of SBS he noted with something that felt like surprise that there were snowflakes racing each other to the ground. You used to love winter. You’d make snow angels. He stood as still as a statue, watching a past you lie down on your back in the snow, his face aching as he smiled genuinely for the first time in months.

The interview was . They asked the same old stupid questions that seem to be on every reporter’s checklist. He sailed through it with the typical expected cliché responses. Then they brought you up. They asked where you were, why they hadn’t seen you with him lately. It hit him like a fist to the chest and he froze, hand over his heart. He had known they would start asking questions soon. He had thought he was prepared for that. He’d been wrong.

He managed to get some sweet-sounding lie out and the interview continued without any further incident. He held his rage in until they were back in the dorm. Then he exploded, yelling at his manager, yelling at s. He promised them that if anybody pulled some surprise like that on him again he’d walk right off the ing stage. With those words still ringing in everyone’s minds he his heel and walked out into the lightly falling snow.

+++

My bones they ache

under the weight

that they take…

You pressed your middle and index fingers to the place three fingers’ breadth from your wrist and waited to see if it worked as promised. You’d been watching Discovery Health the night before and some doctor had spoken about how it would help with headaches. You had one right now, had woken with it and endured it with little difficulty until a few minutes ago when it had decided to go up from a three to a ten on the scale of intensity. The fatigue didn’t help.

The bell over the door chimed, signaling the arrival of new customers. Instinctively you plucked a small stack of menus from a tray nearby and walked over to the table the new customers had settled at. Three of them sat around a table set for four. You were about to start sharing out the menus when you realized who they were. Choi Seunghyun, Dong Youngbae and Kang Daesung. Your heart stopped.

“Noona?” Daesung was the first to react.

“D-Dae…,” you gasped for air as your mind ran through the possibilities.

“Noona, are you okay?” Daesung was leaning towards you.

“W-where’s –,” you began, stuttering like you hadn’t done in years.

“Jiyong,” Youngbae said, completely your question and announcing the other man’s presence at the same time.

You turned in a whirl of black tulle and saw him, standing just inside the doorway, eyes burning with a strange light that seemed like it was trying to blaze a hole through you. Blood drained from your face and you went cold all over. You had to remind yourself to keep inhaling and exhaling.

Jiyong couldn’t take his eyes off you. You looked great, a little thinner, but you’d be gorgeous no matter what. You seemed okay – physically at least. He saw your pupils widen in shock when you recognized him and he felt an odd twist in his gut as you paled. You looked as if you’d seen a ghost. The menus you’d been holding had slithered out of your grasp and you hadn’t even noticed.

Your headache was a drumbeat to the song of pain, ading your very breathing. It echoed in your ears, almost blocking out the slamming of the cymbals of your pulse. Your eyes shimmered with unshed tears that you were unaware of and your shaking hands gripped the hem of your blue tank top so hard that they ached with it.

Jiyong took a step towards you and another and yet another and you remained unmoving, as still as the Pyramids. He got close enough to see the diamonds hanging onto your eyelashes when you blinked and the white of your knuckles beneath the natural color of your hands. Close enough to hear the shaky exhalations that came from between your lips.

He reached for you with one hand, stretching his fingers to trace the contours of your face. You let him, lost in the shock and the mind-numbing ache of seeing him coupled with the migraine. His skin on yours, it was weird and an image of what he must have used those hands to do when he was with Kiko rushed across the landscape of your mind. It turned your stomach and you ran, sneakers thumping the ground. Outside, frozen water ghosted about you and lit on your face as you knelt down to retch into somebody’s neatly planted flower bed. If this didn’t kill you, you’d apologize to them later.

He followed you. He followed you and knelt beside you, daring to reach for you. You flinched and he cringed, pulling his ungloved hand away. Another picture assailed you and another wave of nausea rode through, another round of throwing up. You hunched over the flowers, miserable with it and all that had led to that moment.

Jiyong waited and when you ascertained that there was no longer any reason to linger over the flower bed he took you gently by the arm. Gently but it shocked you. You tried to pull away. He held tighter.

If I breathe you in

I am scared I will drown,

scared that if I get in

I will never get out.

Jiyong started to walk you back to the café but you resisted, insisting on going the other way. You led him to a pastry shop down the block. You disappeared into their ladies’ room while he bought brownies and came back to find him waiting for you, standing beside a chair at a table beside a large window that allowed a view of the street below. He helped you into your chair and handed you the larger of the chocolaty confections. You ate yours slowly, using it as an excuse to delay conversation, suddenly scared that you were here with him.

“I’m sorry,” Jiyong blurted after a few minutes of a silence that was not so much awkward as it was filled with apprehension.

“You’ve said that before,” you replied, watching a pair of ants carry crumbs to a window.

“I know. I just need to say it till you believe me.”

“I believe you’re sorry you got caught,” you said.

“I’m sorrier that I hurt you. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you banged that girl,” your voice came out as emotionless as an icicle.

“What do I have to do to get your to forgive me? I’ve left you alone. I’ve given you time and space. What do I have to do?” Jiyong’s voice broke and a tear dropped from his face.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you,” you whispered, feeling the truth of it like a shard of glass in your chest.

“I love you. You have to forgive me. You have to. You love me too. Despite everything you still love me. Look into my eyes and tell me you don’t,” Jiyong challenged through the tears that were flowing openly now.

“Ji,” you groaned and laid your head on the table. The pounding was becoming unbearable. Dealing with your soon-to-be ex could wait.

“Yeobo?” Eyes wide, Jiyong knelt on the floor in front of you and smoothed the hair that had flopped into your face out of your eyes. “Gwenchana?”

You could have cried. The look on his face at that moment was every girlfriend’s fantasy. It was his emotions showing through the tiredness. It took your breath away. Pure love was in the depths of his eyes and you were sure it was echoed in yours. That astounded you – that after everything you could love him so fiercely.

And this love

it weaves in and out

between us

and to you I’m bound

That was when the change came. Sure, he’d hurt you. You had hurt him back by leaving and hurt yourself in the process of trying to live without him. It came like jolt of electricity, the realization that life alone was no life at all compared to the way it had been before. You knew, sitting at that table with his hands massaging your temples while the both of you cried that you would find a way to get past this. You had to. You were bound to this man in a way that you couldn’t explain, not even to yourself.

+++

It was easier, Jiyong found, to breathe with you in sight. It didn’t hurt quite so much just to exist as it had sitting in his empty house alone. The pain he felt now was the natural consequence of having hurt you. It was a double-edged sword because in hurting you he had damn near annihilated his own self.

He approached the bed where you lay with careful steps. The thick carpet swallowed the sounds of his movement and he paused for a moment, searching his pockets with his free hand for his phone. He found the device and held it up at an angle with a grin that flashed brighter than the camera did as the photo was snapped. Your hair was spread across the pillow and sort of circled around your face, one of your hands buried beneath the pillow and the other lying horizontally over the white blanket he had drawn around your waist. The sunlight streaming through the bedroom window was winter-bright with an illusion of warmth. In his mind you looked like a sleeping goddess.

You stirred. It was a subtle shifting of shapely limbs that spurred him into motion lest you awaken too soon. He placed the cup of peppermint tea on the bedside table and closed the light out. He remembered coming home from work a month after the two of you were married and finding you curled up in the fetal position with your hands at your temples and all the lights off. The house was in complete darkness and you could barely articulate, keeping your voice to a whisper as you told him what was wrong. You’d been in bed for three days with that first migraine and out of all the remedies his mother had told him about, peppermint tea had been the one to work.

He wasn’t sure if the migraine from last night lingered. Either way, you like peppermint tea and it was one of the few things he could make and make well. He sat on a beige Victorian era chair near the head of the bed and just watched you sleep till your lashes fluttered and then separated. Your eyes widened when you saw him and you looked around, momentarily confused as to where you were. The confusion was chased out by a frown and quickly ushered the frown out to return. You looked askance at him before yesterday came back to you.  He dared a small smile and handed you the tea cup. Your fingers touched but neither of you reacted outwardly. You took a sip of the tea, looked at him from lowered lashes and smiled.

My bones don’t break now

with the weight that you take

as your arms they meet mine,

I surrender the fight

I have breathed you in

and now we can begin,

seems my heart it has won

and my head is undone

You had fought yourself over this man, pitting head against heart. Your head didn’t want to love him anymore and your heart warned that you could never stop. You had been torn apart by his betrayal. You had missed him even in the depths of your despair. Now he had returned to your side, pledging never to stray again. You let yourself believe him because you believed in the love that flowed from you to him and back again.

And this love

it weaves in and out

between us

and to you I’m bound

If you call for me I’m here

I am always at your side

If you call for me I’m here

I am bound and you are mine

Slowly, cautiously, you began to trust him again. You moved back in with him after a month. He didn’t push, didn’t dare to try and rush you. He knew he had to prove himself and he knew it took time for a broken heart to heal. He gave that time and gave the support, unbidden, that you required. He took care and you took courage from it.  He made you a part of everything he did and put you first. You were there cheering Big Bang on at every concert, there handing them pens and markers during fan meets, dropping by YG with food when they had rehearsals. You appeared in a couple of music videos.

“Why did you take him back?” So many people asked that question after Jiyong revealed the truth of what had caused you to disappear from his life for those months.

“I had to,” you would always respond, “being without him wasn’t an option. To be at his side was a choice that was made for me by everything I am.”

They didn’t understand for the most part. That didn’t bother you. It was all forgotten when Kwon Jinyoung made her entrance to the world less than a year after the reunion of her parents.