Please - Kim Hyunjoong

Chance

Trails of tears faded in the short course of a week and had darkened the once baby blue sheets of the mattress. A full glass of water stood by the empty side table untouched. The door had been kept ajar. Keys had been thrown carelessly aside, forgotten.

Photos had frozen in time. Memories were kept in the dark.

The faint scent of the morning shower still lingered in the afternoon air, causing an unwanted distortion inside everybody’s stomach. Anxiety, melancholy, wistfulness, and desire—they were all akin to the feelings that had kept Aerin preoccupied for the past week.

The remnants of her birthday weren’t much, but it sure made everything seem so discouraging and bleak. Just like how Aerin expected him to be, Heegun continued to be uncaring, acting as if nothing out of the norm had happened between the two of them. Luhan, as well, was still far from being the comforting friend that he thought he was, only making things more stressful for her and the like.

Unlike those two who hadn’t changed, Sehun had acted as if she didn’t exist. The wake up calls that Aerin used to receive from him were no longer coming, and the late night conversations had seemed as though they were just nonexistent dreams. Even the casual meetings at the sandy stone staircase by Haeundae beach had appeared to be a mere part of the past—one that was buried unwillingly overnight.

The fact that Sehun had refused to answer any of her calls or to even go out of the house even whilst knowing she was outside had brought an undesirable amount of despair to Aerin. Day and night, indifferent about the people surrounding her, she cried and refused to do anything else. She could care less about what was happening outside her sphere of depression for the pain in her heart was too much that her rationality was out of reach.

The pain was overwhelming, and yet no matter how much she wanted to blame someone for it, she couldn’t.

No one did anything wrong. No one was at fault.

Falling in love wasn’t wrong. The time when it happened just wasn’t right.

The circumstances were complicated enough, and yet fate had even managed to make it worse. Aerin wasn’t even supposed to follow the direction of which the universe was leading her. Her summer was already planned before she even stepped foot in Busan. Everything that she was supposed to do was already set in her mind, yet for some unfathomable reason, she had failed her own reasoning and followed down another path to the unknown.

It was a path with no knowledge of what tomorrow would bring.

There were so many ‘if’s' that she could think of, wondering how different her life would have turned out if she did any of it. If only she had joined her high school’s summer camp and swallowed her complaints about sleeping out in the wilderness for a few weeks, then she wouldn’t have had to go back to South Korea. If only she had accepted Minae and Ben’s offer to bring her with them on their honeymoon and put up with their greasy romance, then she wouldn’t have had to spend the whole summer in Busan. If only she had followed her plans and remained undeterred by the harsh attempts of the universe to make her life miserable, then she wouldn’t have had to meet Luhan and Sehun. If only she didn’t go with the choice that she wasn’t even sure of, then she wouldn’t be what she was now—broken with no hope of healing.

She wouldn’t have had hurt the person who cherished her existence the most. She wouldn’t have broken Sehun.

And because of those choices she made, an unimaginable series of unforgettable events and memories were claimed by her. She experienced happiness which she thought she wouldn’t ever attain. A dream that was supposed to be a nightmare became a blissful fairy tale, one that seemed to posses a happily ever after.

But in the end, fate played with her again. Reality was still the same.

Just like when she was seven years old, and on the day that she turned eighteen, she was once again reminded of the fact that fairy tales didn’t exist.

Regret was a feeling that Aerin despised. In life, she thought that there was’t any place for any regrets. Contrary to her reasoning, the current her was filled with nothing but it. She was filled with nothing but regret.

Regrets of the past. Regrets of the choices she made.

But the pain that came with it was another thing. It was endless, as if it were crushing her slowly into bits and pieces, dispersing the light of hope inside of her with the coldness of the reality, tarnishing the meaning of her existence with the presence of tears.

Yet with each teardrop that fell from her eyes, nothing changed.

The silver anklet that she was wearing was still silver. The star shaped earring that she was wearing was still a star. The uniform tucked inside her closet that she borrowed from the local high school was still white and blue. The photographs and messages posted on her pin board were still intact and unfading, imprinting the memories they held forever.

Everything was still the same.

The world continued to revolve. People died every day. Babies were born every second. The sun continued to rise at dawn. The moon continued to appear at twilight.

No matter how many mistakes one might have done, life still continued to move forward.

Aerin knew it, that no matter how much grief she went through, time wouldn’t stop and would continue to move. The problem she was facing wasn’t even comparable to the ones other people were experiencing. Albeit, she couldn’t help but wish that at