INVISIBLE LINES

I saw him the other day. His arms were around another girl. His eyes slowly fell into recognition when they met mine. That was the problem, it was too slow, he should have recognised me earlier, but no he didn’t. Maybe it wasn’t his fault. People take time to register whatever they see, especially when seeing it for the first time in a long time. It was only natural.

I looked away, trying to stop myself from tearing up – but, sadly, I was too late. Who would have thought that after three years of separation, I would still feel the same way for him as I did before? I surely doubted myself, and I bet he did too – considering he had obviously moved on.

Is it wrong for me to reminisce the time when I first saw him in the school corridor – all alone – drawing invisible lines with his feet on the ground? The time when he had to run around the school track fifty times as punishment for smoking in the school grounds? He was a bad person, on the outside. People never understood him, his friends thought he was cool the way he was, but they never understood him… like how I did.

People are the way they are for a reason and Kim Yukwon definitely had his reasons. Some girls adored him because of his good looks and badass attitude. While some girls hated him because of him breaking their little hearts every time they managed to be in a relationship. He was never serious – about anything - until one thing made him take his life and self seriously; me.

I am not praising myself or anything, but it’s a given fact. I was the only one who understood why he did what he did, why he is the way he is. People just pass it off as ‘oh, this kid was brought up wrongly’ or ‘his family background is complicated’. His family was nothing even close to complicated. It was the simplest life anyone could ask for, no money or parental problems at all.

They had everything, even though they weren’t rich or anything, they had happiness. But what makes people think that whatever happens to a person is because of their family? It isn’t. Not always, and especially not for Yukwon. He always had on this happy face on whenever he’s with his parents. I know because I’ve seen it.

He brought me back one day for dinner. I’ve never seen him smile as sincere as he was in front of his parents. That sarcastic laugh that he always did in school never came up at all and I assumed he was just being himself. But sometimes I wonder which one is his real self. After dinner, he grabbed my hand and brought me outside. We sat down on the patio and he sighed, “You think I’m fake.”

I stayed silent. I didn’t think he was fake, I never did. He looked down to his feet and started moving his foot up and down – drawing invisible lines again. He mumbled, “Why are you still here?” I didn’t know what to say, how to respond to that question. Was it an invitation to leave or was it just a simple question? I never knew how to answer that till today. He turned to face me, “I’m a bad influence. You should go.”

I never left.

I stuck to him like a gum throughout the whole of our high school years together. Girls hated me for being close to him, judging me for saying that ‘I’m just his friend’ – they never believed me. It wasn’t a lie, at least to Yukwon it wasn’t a lie, I wasn’t so sure about myself. But just because one person didn’t leave, doesn’t mean the other will stay.

He left eventually.

With the same very reason, “I’m a bad influence on you.” Even though he knew very well how I felt for him and it wasn’t just pure love. I knew him and was probably the only person who stuck by him all those years. But he didn’t care. All he cared about was how ‘he didn’t deserve me’.

Maybe I was wrong to have fallen in love with him. Maybe all of those rumours about him being a heartbreaker and not caring about what others felt were true. Maybe I just don’t want to believe all that, because it isn’t true. He does care. He just doesn’t know how to show it well enough.

If people thought it was easy for him to break up with a girl, they thought wrong. He was too weak to say no to them in the first place and he had to break up with them anyway which only caused him pain. Hate was being thrown at him everywhere he walked in school. His friends? You think they were actually friends? Nope, none of them were worth any second from Yukwon’s life.

Before everything fell apart and he left me, I did once ask him why he was the way he was. It took him a while to actually answer me, but he did. We were by the lake near his house, seated on newspaper to prevent ourselves from staining out uniforms. He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair and sighed, “I fell in love once, and I fell hard, too hard apparently.” His hands were picking on little stones on the ground and started throwing them into the lake.

“She was perfect. She had this small face, long dark hair and small frame. I loved everything about her,” he laughed softly, “Maybe I just loved her too much.” He flings another rock harshly into the lake, grunting, he blew out hot air and said, his voice choked, “I became overprotective of her and constricted her. I stopped her from doing lots of things which made… which made her….”

I could see the tears dripping down his face which he didn’t try to hide. He stood up and held out a hand to me. I took it, trying my best not to show much reaction to his wet stained face. He mumbled, “She died.” His hands still gripping hold of mine, I could feel him shaking, “Right in front of me. She committed suicide.” He laughed softly, “People thought it was ridiculous of her to kill herself just because of me. But they were wrong. As much as I was an overprotective freak, I didn’t even know the sufferings she’s been through.”

“She tried telling me, but I never listened. She stayed home all day, because I told her too – even when she didn’t want to. Her father, or should I say, step-father, was the bigger reason for the suicide. H-He…” I stopped him halfway, hushing him. I took a step closer and wrapped my arms around his warm body. “You don’t have to say anymore.”

“And I’ve always wondered why she looked so scared when he was around. Why she had those marks around her necks, like those love bites thingies,” I always found him still a kid whenever he said ‘thingies’. He was a kid, an innocent one at that. He was just flawed. Everyone is flawed. No one is perfect after all.

He somehow enjoyed the hate he received from people; he regarded them as punishment for being such a jerk to his ex-girlfriend. It started out with him thinking he deserves all the hate for being the reason she killed herself, but after knowing about her step-father, he took it in as a punishment for not giving her a chance to tell him about it. He hated himself for it and was glad others hated him too.

And that is why he was shocked when I didn’t hate him nor liked him for his looks. Instead, I fell in love with him as a person, as a whole. But he never could accept that - which was exactly why he left. Now that I’m seeing him again after years, I wonder if he still remembers what I told him. I told him that ‘I love you for you and not anything else.’ In which he replied with a ‘but I’m not good enough for you.’

One day he left me a voice message saying, “Listen, I’m sorry about what I’m about to do, but it’s true, I love you too. I can no longer deny that. But I just can’t be with you. I don’t trust myself enough to do that,” he paused, “I really do love you, with all my heart. You understood me when no one else did. But I don’t deserve you…” His voice trailed off and the message ended.

I immediately text messaged him after that saying, “Please don’t go. I love you.” I was only saddened even more when he replied, “I am a horrible person. I’m afraid that one day you’ll stop loving me. It’s better to not start at all.”

But now standing here in front of him having his arm wrapped around another girl, I could honestly say that I should have been the one who was afraid, not him. Because I love him, I still do. I haven’t stopped. I don’t think I can. I don’t think I ever will.

He’s the one who stopped.