There were good things and bad, fine lines and thin lines, dancing stars and destructive particles, all the same, really. Knowing how to tell between them is rather a skill rarely owned. Complete rationality had always been someone else’s forte, and now she’s completely lost. It’s not like she deliberately tries to fend off the shouts and truths in favor of whispered lies, it’s just easier not to listen. Listening meant that she heard the truth, even if she won’t acknowledge it, it’s edged into her subconscious and she’ll dream of it over and over until the blurred words make sense. That would be terrible.

Bae Suji loves all the wrong people. Min tells her that she had a knack for falling people she can’t have. She agrees wholeheartedly, although she only has a fraction of her heart left by now. With each unrequited love, she gives away a piece of her heart. Which each of her failed relationships, her heart breaks over and each time, it gets harder to mend. “Don’t love; don’t attempt things that can’t happen.” Min would say. But, as everything else is, it’s easier said than done.

Min had the easiest of times slipping into relationships and escaping them unscathed. She carries on being happy and doesn’t take anything seriously. She doesn’t fall all the way—how does she even do that? Suji doesn’t know. Things are often too jumbled for her to decode. Suji just doesn’t know who to trust and who not to, how to stand up without someone’s help, or how to stand alone in the dark with thunder booming so loudly outside. Destruction, although evident in its aftermath, comes stealthily.

Suji doesn’t understand how love works, she feels it, she accepts it, but it seems to reject her.

She crosses too many lines and doesn’t know how to get back to the other side, how to mend something already so broken and tattered. Min sighs and brushes away hair from her face. It was nice to have a best friend who was so strong, who she could give her a hand when she falls and a shoulder to cry on. Min doesn’t have a lot of patience, she has quite the temper, but there’s something strong and safe about her. Something Suji didn’t have or know she had.

“Say, Min, is it that easy to fall out of love?” Lunchtime had been quiet despite the loud chatter that surrounds them. It feels like they’re in their own little bubble, sound-proof and sealed.

Min sighs, something she does without even knowing, and says, “If you really love something, would you let it go? Think of it that way, and if you really let something go without a second thought, that’s a noble romance, worth more than a thousand kisses and hugs. It’s a sacrifice not most women will agree to. Suji, love has many forms. It’s not just date or not date, marry or divorce—it’s watching from a distant and letting that person smile truly. Their happiness should make you happy.” When had the little girl Suji had known all her life grown to say such wise things? That was the first time Bae Suji realized how little she had grown, how selfish she had been, and how willing she was to let go of the pain she had forced herself to hold onto. Once they go, they never come back if they never loved you. If you set something free and it feels for you, it will find your scent and trace it back to you of its own free will. That is true love that will never be tested again.

--

Knowing and understanding doesn’t make it any easier. Suji soon finds herself falling for someone again. She knows nothing about this boy’s life, but memorizes the line on his forehead that would show when he smiles and the sparkle in his eyes. She had a few classes with him as the new semester had started. Her heart flutters and she hears Min’s words echoing in her head. Easier said than done, she reminds herself, but that’s something selfish to say. If you never try, how will you know?

Suji doesn’t bring up the boy during their conversation at lunch, like she would’ve done a few days ago. She talks about regular things, things that don’t relate to love. She finds her heart healing much quicker, and sooner or later, she doesn’t remember her first kiss at all. Letting go is easier when you don’t hold on. Suji thanks Min randomly in the hallway. Min looks confused, but nods a welcome anyway. “Thank you Minyoung, really.” Minyoung sounded a lot nicer than just Min, but Suji never does call her that again. It feels sacred.

Myungsoo is his name, Suji learns as the teacher yells at him for sleeping. The boy he always hangs out with, Sungyeol, she learns later, laughs loudly. A smaller boy with a feminine face Suji admires and strong eyes makes a snarky comment. All three of them are sent outside and they laugh the entire way there. Suji wonders if she looks like that with Min—she wonders if she looks happy.

When she gets home, she wonders what it’ll be like if Myungsoo would hold her hands, what it’ll feel like if he kissed her (worth more than a thousand kisses? will a one way love like that branch into mutuality?). She smiles all day long until her father comes home from work a bit more than drunk could be described. Her smile is immediately wiped off her face and she goes to hide, fitting her small body into a closet (the closet he never found her in) and cries until her mother gets home. They immediately start fighting and she hears something break. They don’t have the money to buy another one, so whatever it was she hoped it was just a vase or a plate, and not a window or their only TV.

She finishes her homework when they both go to sleep, when their screams stop. She goes outside to inspect the damage and finds shattered glass all over the kitchen floor. She cleans it up and goes to bed, forgetting Myungsoo completely. She doesn’t dream, she never dreams. She only has nightmares that leave her crying into morning or darkness she can never remember.

In times like these, Suji wonders if others think her life is perfect. She hopes they do, because it’s too much if they found out that she gave her heart away too easily and also had a ty life. It’s too much to admit that to herself. Min looks worried the next morning when she sees the small scratches on her fingertips. “I just cleaned up glass I broke. Don’t worry.” She smiles and it doesn’t convince herself, much less Min. But Min doesn’t ask and Suji is thankful for that. She might’ve cried until she’s dehydrated if someone else spoke another word about the life she lived outside of school.

Myungsoo greets her that day and everything else is forgotten. Sungyeol waves to her as well. Suji thinks that today is the best day of her life.

--

She returns home late that day. She had missed the bus due to her daydreaming at the stop. Min offered her a ride, but Min lived on the other side of town, and Suji didn’t feel like bothering Min’s father, who was a busy business man and had better things to do.

Her mother was home today. Stew was cooking on the stove. She didn’t hate her mother much, considering she wasn’t her biological mother. She was nice to her, even. “Suji, wash up and set the table. I feel like having a family dinner today.”

Suji’s biological mother had been an absolute monster, according to Suji’s stepmother. “She did drugs and your father had thought she’d finally quit when she got pregnant with you. Turns out, she sneaked some when your father wasn’t around. Your father wasn’t always a terrible man—he isn’t now. This is his way of coping.” Suji’s stepmother, In Young, was one of his friends. He had married her because Suji needed a mother and In Young could never have a child of her own. In Young had been a lovely mother to her, but she was forever scarred with her mother’s abuse. She didn’t die when she gave birth to Suji, but around Suji’s fifth birthday, she overdosed. When she was sated with her drugs, she was the loveliest person on earth, but when she was deprived, she would hit and stab and kick anything in her way. Her father only started drinking after her death, and maybe he doesn’t realize it, but he’s much worse than her mother as he is now.

In Young treated her more like a young friend or sister, rather than a daughter. But still, someone meant more than having no one.

Suji’s father doesn’t come home that night, or the night after that. A police officer came by one day and told her they have identified a car crash victim as her father. She doesn’t cry, but was stunned into silence. She goes outside for a walk, not having spoken since the officer had left. The fresh air felt more suffocating than the silence and In Young’s shouts of disbelief.

She stumbles across Myungsoo who works in a convenience store. He gives her condolence after she told him that her father had died and Suji finds it hard not to snap at him. He doesn’t seem to down about it, more understanding, and waves goodbye with a smile when she runs away teary eyed. She had meant to apologize when she was on her way back home. He just shook his head and said it was okay. He even gifted an ice cream bar in hopes of getting on her good side again. “You’re always on my good side.”

“I wasn’t a few minutes ago.” He jokingly replies. She finds him handsome in a simple uniform and she chats with him until it turns dark outside and his shift is one hour away from being over.

“I have to go now.” She says, regret in her voice.

“See you tomorrow.” His eyes are beautiful crescents, beautiful period. She feels like Min was right—not chasing after is better and not always wanting feels free, feels easy, feels safe.

She doesn’t sleep that night, whether it’s because she is afraid of tomorrow or anticipating it, she doesn’t know.

--

“What’s with the gloomy look?” Min asks, sliding a bottle of orange juice across the table to her.

“Nothing,” Suji smiles and Min doesn’t buy it. It’s not better than any of her other smiles, but she knows she’ll cry right now if her father was brought up.

Suji doesn’t like that she cries so much, feeling weaker than ever in her life. “Okay.” Min carries on her day, looking extra cautious, as if Suji would break (she would) if one wrong word was said.

Myungsoo passes notes to her all class long and eventually, they get caught since passing notes from next to each other is a lot more suspicious than passing it back and forth. Sungyeol steals one of their notes and scribbles a dirty joke in it, which was the one the teacher confiscates and they end up in the hallway, Sungjong somehow had been dragged in.

“Hi,” Myungsoo whispers from besides her.

“Hi.” She says back, glancing over Myungsoo’s shoulders to see Sungjong and Sungyeol bickering (and were they groping each other? she doesn’t ask, ever, what their relationship was).

“This is your first time out here, isn’t it? Aren’t you a perfect student?”

“Yeah,” she agrees.

“So how is it, breaking the rules for once?” Myungsoo smiles, a smirk almost.

“Fun.” And that marks the beginning of their relationship.

--

Min gets along with Sungyeol too well, their height difference almost comedic in a way. Sungjong tags along to the lunch table occasionally, but he prefers to sit with Howon and Dongwoo.

Suji doesn’t pay attention to the rest of them, who are inevitably bickering over nonsense. She focuses her attention on Myungsoo and really, she’s never felt so happy before. Her heart sparks and jitters and does everything she’s never felt before (when does the letting go start? she doesn’t let herself think about it).

Min says not to get too serious before Myungsoo shows that he’s equally as in love as she is. And Suji is sure Min gives Sungyeol a hard time, pressuring him into telling her truths about Myungsoo.

Suji finds that Myungsoo likes to take pictures of things. He takes pictures of everything, an orange peel, inside of Sungyeol’s mouth, Sungjong’s figure when he’s perched onto a window sill and the sun is setting already (winter, really does feel warmer when shared with the person you love).

Suji doesn’t know if she’s acting clingy, because she does it and she admits it. Min points it out readily and Sungyeol doesn’t spare a second thought before anything on his mind. Sungyeol says that Sungjong feels threatened because he hangs out with Min too often, and Suji finds it silly since Min has been in a relationship with the same guy for nearly all her high school career.

Min laughs so hard, milk squirts out of her nostrils and Myungsoo takes a picture of that too. When he develops it, he gives it to Suji because it captures her in it too, smiling widely. She hangs it up on her wall, frames it too.

It feels like this is never going to end.

--

Things do end, though, and Suji is absolutely torn. They get separated when college rolls around, Myungsoo going abroad because his family has the money and America has better scenery for picture taking. Suji finds herself in a community college and ends up with an English degree. She teaches middle school literature and spends extra time on the cover art. They drift apart not too long into the second year of college and she tells herself this is what letting go feels like. It hurts. It’s sad. It shouldn’t ever happen, but it does anyway and eventually, Bae Suji forgets what true love feels like. It goes numb, her fingertips, but she can stomach truths now and she finds herself stronger.

She does dream, (dreaming feels weird), of Myungsoo occasionally, what it would have been like if they got married.

A few days after that dream, she meets the man she ends up marrying. He makes her feel the way Myungsoo did, but he’s not leaving her any time soon. The things Min say comes rushing back to her on the day of her wedding. Her nerves run high and she can’t stop moving around the makeup room, white dress on, makeup and hair done in a way she’ll never do again (she doesn’t even know how the hair stylist got it to stay so beautifully).

She remembers her first kiss, under the tree behind the football goal, in front of the entire team. She remembers it so well and feels a blush rising to her cheeks. Who knew she’d end up marrying him? Marrying the guy who first kissed her when he still had snot dripping down his nose and his knees were always scratched? When she had her hair braided and when she still believed that boys were the grossest things on earth?

This is letting go, this is feeling love. This is the right way to love, to breathe, to feel. It’s easier now, going down the aisle, walking in confident strides and crying when she has no one to do the father daughter dance with.

That night, she feels safe in the comfort of her new husband, feels his hands warm around her waist, feels a love she’s never felt before, not with Myungsoo or anyone else. She feels like someone has finally anchored her, finally caught her and is never going to let her go again.

This love, she feels, is the love she’ll never let go again. (once is enough)

--

She meets Myungsoo in a café when she was six months into her pregnancy.

“I’m married.” Myungsoo says, and she shows him her ring. They talk for a while, catching up and laughing over old stories.

Myungsoo’s eyes are beautiful crescents, she remembers. Suji’s smiles are still awkward, still a bit fake, but Myungsoo knows they’re real.

Suji shows him the picture he’d taken of Min and her, of her awkwardly wide smile with her gums poking out on display. Myungsoo tells her that Sungjong and Sungyeol finally confessed to each other, and that it was about time. She tells him Min is going to get married pretty soon, and she would’ve gotten married earlier than Suji would’ve, but she had been picky about the date. Myungsoo snorts and burns his tongue with the black coffee when it arrives at their table. She gets orange juice because she has a baby to take care of now. Myungsoo asks if her baby’s a boy or a girl, and she tells him that he’s a boy. She tells him she hasn’t picked a name for him and asks for suggestions.

Their conversation carries on. They talk about random things, like how they used to. There were just moments of absolute silence and neither knew what to talk about. You could practically feel them panic and hear them think, but that’s how they worked. Myungsoo coughs awkwardly and Suji finally talks about her job. That topic sticks until it’s time to go home. It feels like a dream meeting Myungsoo again. But this dream is a dream she’s ready to wake up from, no matter how sweet it had been.

Neither of them brings up what they had, but Suji feels like she’s ready to let go. (but she already has)

--

Suji never sees Kim Myungsoo again and never thinks of him as anything more than a teenage crush. (anchored down)

a/n I am having a bad case of wrtier's block, so I tried and this suddenly happened because I was in the mood for Myungzy. Does this even count? I just hope everything makes sense because I started writing at like four-ish and now it's almost seven and I swore I was only going to write for a few minutes. My fingers hurt, so I'll go back to my corner now. Thanks for reading in advance, or well, since it's the end, just thanks for reading? Idek. /cries.