Gotta fix that calendar I have

That's marked July 15^th

Because since there's no more you

There's no more anniversary

I'm so fed up with my thoughts of you

And your memory

And how every song reminds me

Of what used to be

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Kim Jaejoong opened up his eyes to a new day, feeling a streak of morning sunlight that fell on his face. He glanced at the digital clock on his nightstand and sighed.

07.26 AM. Mon, 10/06/2013.

Happy 6^th anniversary Yunho-yah, he thought bitterly as his mind went back in time to the day that some of his fans dubbed as “YunJae wedding day”.

They were in a radio broadcasting session, and a fan asked which member they would like to marry if they were a girl.

“If it’s me, I will marry Yunho,” Jaejoong answered. “Yunho is very manly and i think he will do his best to protect me.”

He made fun of Junsu for a while, comparing him with Yunho before Junsu turned to ask their leader’s answer to the same question.

“Jaejoong,” Yunho answered before bursting into a laugh. And even when Junsu said that they should take turns, Yunho said he would still choose Jaejoong because he was a good cook and Jaejoong would try his best to make food for Yunho if he had time for it.

“Thank you everyone! Yunho and I are getting married!” Jaejoong said gleefully, followed by s laughter.

“From now on, we are husband and wife,” Yunho added, much to Jaejoong’s delight.

Jaejoong felt a bittersweet smile crept up to his lips as a lone tear fell to his cheek.

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“Come on hyung, that’s enough. It’s time for you to go home,” Yoochun scolded Jaejoong, grabbing the glass of liquor in his hand.

“Just one more shot Chunnie, please?” Jaejoong begged. He could still feel the ache in his heart…which meant he was’t drunk enough yet.

“No hyung, we have a schedule tomorrow morning! We’ll take you home now,” Junsu said as he lifted Jaejoong from the bar stool, and they both dragged him to Yoochun’s car.

“Hyung?” Yoochun called him as they stopped in the parking lot of Jaejoong’s apartment. Jaejoong could hear the anxiety and hesitation in his voice, and he knew that Yoochun had realized the reason behind his weird behaviour today. Well, that is normal…they were soulmate afterall. He had acted like a kid in sugar rush when they had a photo session earlier, hiding the pain in his heart behind a laughing and smiling mask. But when the night fell and their schedule ended, he rushed to the nearest alcohol den and tried to drown himself into a drunken state.

Not drunk enough to forget everything, unfortunately.

“Pick me up tomorrow morning, OK?” he asked Yoochun before as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Are you sure you can get to your apartment on your own?” Junsu asked anxiously from the passenger seat.

“Sure. You guys stopped me before I could really get drunk, and now I’m sobered up already,” Jaejoong answered, rolling his eyes. But deep down in his heart, he felt really grateful to have Yoochun and Junsu beside him. They had known each other for years and went through so much pains and obstacles together.

Once, Jaejoong even said that they were brothers in everything but blood. A dull ache slit through his heart as he had said those words, because they reminded him of his other brother that hadn’t been present there – Changmin, his baby maknae. And Changmin had reminded him of his other half.

Jaejoong pushed the painful memory away and opened the car door.

“Thank you guys…for everything,” he said as he got out of Yoochun’s car. He knew that they could understand the depth of his gratefulness out of those simple words.

“Have a nice rest hyung, we’ll come back to pick you up tomorrow morning,” Yoochun said with a smile before he closed the door.

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Jaejoong entered his apartment and the lights before stepping out of his boots. The silence felt so profound that Jaejoong stood in his living room for a while, slightly out of breath. After some minutes, he shrugged the loneliness away and walked straight into his bathroom to take a shower, all the while his mind was filled with Yunho.

Does this day still mean anything to you?

Do you even remember it?

…..do you still love me?

“God, I wish Jiji was here,” Jaejoong whispered. That naughty russian-blue cat never listened to him, but at least his presence always provided some kind of distraction for his mind. Unfortunately, Jiji had learned how to climb, and he loved to practice his newly-acquired skill on Jaejoong’s balcony railings. Since he lived in a 20^th floor apartment, Jaejoong had decided to asked his sister to take care of Jiji for the cat’s safety, and now Jiji lived with her and her family.

Jaejoong the shower, letting the warm water washed his body. He closed his eyes, feeling the image of Yunho flashed through his mind. His almond-shaped eyes, his heart-shaped lips, his golden tanned skin. Jaejoong had a habit of checking his ex-lover’s and maknae’s activity through the internet, and he noticed how Yunho’s smile never reached his eyes in the photographs. Yunho was putting a mask to cover up his pain, and Jaejoong felt a tug of guilt in his chest for being one of the people that had caused him pain.

“Please leave with us Yunho-yah. Minnie is surely going to go with us if you decided to leave,” Jaejoong had begged with tears in his eyes.

“We’ve talked about this for hundreds of times already. I don’t bite the hands that feed me. It’s my principle. If I betray that principle, it means I’m betraying myself and turning into someone else that is not worthy of your love,” Yunho had said with hollow voice. “Don’t you love me for who I am Jaejoongie?”

“This is ridiculous! Those hands aren’t feeding you, they are chaining and slaving you!!” Jaejoong had yelled in frustation.

“Jaejoong, I won’t forbid you or anyone in this room from leaving. But I won’t leave with you,” Yunho had said with a finality. He had glanced at everyone in the room with teary eyes before returned his gaze to Jaejoong and whispered, “If you still want to be with me, you will have to stay Jaejoongie.”

At those words, Jaejoong had kissed Yunho goodbye before he went out of their dorm door into his freedom, followed by crying Yoochun and Junsu.

Jaejoong felt his tears fell and washed away by the warm water as his mind went back to the present.

+++

Since he went out of their dorm door and left his leader and maknae behind more than three years ago, Kim Jaejoong had never been never the same man again. He gained his freedom, at the cost of his heart. He had left his other half in that dorm, and it made him feel so empty and hollow inside, like a big chunk of his soul was ripped apart and missing. He had spent the first few months of their separation drowning in alcohol, blaming everything around him. He blamed Yunho for forcing him to choose between love and freedom, he blamed SME for slaving them, he blamed his brothers for not being able to convince Yunho to leave.

And most of all, he blamed himself for leaving. Had he known what it feels like to live a freedom without Yunho, he’d never entertain the idea of a lawsuit even for a second.

But what’s done is done, and there’s no way to turn back. So Jaejoong drown himself in liquor day and night to numb the pain, much to Yoochun’s and Junsu’s distress. He had lived in Kim Hyunjoong’s place back then, and they couldn’t watch him 24/7 since they lived in their parent’s house. Hyunjoong had tried to control him, but his busy schedule forced him out a lot, leaving Jaejoong alone in his house. Until one time, his body couldn’t handle it anymore and he fell unconscious due to alcohol poisoning.

Luckily, Hyunjoong came home faster than usual and found him passed out on his sofa. He had been hospitalized for a couple of days after that, and it was a miracle that no media covered the incident. Since then, Yoochun and Junsu always kept close eyes on him when it comes to alcohol.

Not long after the alcohol poisoning, they signed a new contract with a new company. The new album and world tour gave Jaejoong a distraction from his broken heart, and he put on a strong and cheerful façade in front of the media and fans. The public thought that he had moved on from the past. Some of his fans even bashed his Yunho and Changmin, saying that they weren’t good enough to be with JYJ. It added a new gash on his heart when Jaejoong found out that he had caused those people to hate his other half, the man that he loved with every fibre of his being.

All in all, life had left Jaejoong as a broken man, stuck deep in a sea of sorrow and regret. Without Yunho, without his other half, Kim Jaejoong is lost.

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