“Here.”

I opened my eyes, hearing Luhan’s voice, and saw him standing near the sofa I was lying on, offering me a cup of hot tea he had just made. Forcing myself to sit up, I took it from him and nodded, muttering a quiet ‘thanks’ in return.

Feeling the warmness of the cup pleasantly stinging the skin on my fingers, I looked around my own living room, collecting my confused thoughts and slowly coming back to reality. I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t remember what had happened, as if I’d lost my consciousness for at least an hour. And before I’d realized what was going on, I’d found Luhan somewhere I thought I would never see him again – sitting across me in my very own apartment.

He kept looking at me with his eyes slightly squinted and his brows knitted in concern. I could tell he was just as confused and disoriented as I was.

“I don’t remember you having such huge panic attacks in the past,” he spoke, and I fidgeted in my seat, hearing his quiet but soft voice. Luhan seemed concerned, and it was pulling the wrong strings in my heart – the ones responsible for still loving him, the ones I thought I’d already cut and thrown away.

It bothered me so much how my heart was still attached to him and how I couldn’t do much about it.

“That was just a really bad dream,” I said shortly, fixing my eyes on the cup in my hands. I couldn’t force myself to look at him, knowing he’d like a proper explanation of what had just happened. I couldn’t give him that, and there was no way I was going to tell him what had been happening in my head while I’d been asleep.

He leaned against the sofa with a short and quiet huff. “And since when do you freak out just because of a bad dream?”

“And since when do you care?” I snapped back without thinking, and Luhan closed his mouth immediately, pressing his lips into a thin line. The small, soft smile on his lips quickly melted away. His wide eyes told me how amused he was because of my outburst and current behavior, as if he didn’t deserve to be treated like this, at least not by me. Catching a breath, I glared at him with anger and turned my face away, unable to maintain eye contact any longer. “Just go home,

Luhan. I’m not feeling well. I want to be alone.”

“I don’t know why you think I don’t care about you. Just because—”

“Go, Luhan,” I cut him off, before it was too late to stop us from having this conversation once again. Today I was too weak to handle another flood of tears, and I sure didn’t want him to see me crying because of him.

I heard him heaving a sigh. “Listen, I understand that you’re angry with me, but to be honest, I’m quite confused as to why I’m the only one guilty here and why you constantly give me the cold shoulder when you’re the one who broke up with me.”

My head snapped back up at him.

“You’re not being serious, are you?” I asked, but he didn’t dare respond. I forced a short, bitter laugh, placing my cup onto the table in front of me, just in case the need to throw it at Luhan became too strong to resist. He was leaning forward on his seat with his elbows propped on his knees and eyes on me. And he was serious.

“Su Jin, I was honest with you from the beginning,” he spoke softly, as I kept shaking my head with incredulity. “I told you, I need time—”

“And what did you expect me to do, Luhan?” I stood up, interjecting with a raised voice because of the sudden madness mixed with adrenaline coursing through my veins. I couldn’t believe we were really having this ridiculous argument. I couldn’t believe I was the bad guy now. Running a hand through my hair in frustration, I spoke again. “Do you think I should have just stayed by your side and waited till you got tired of sleeping with other girls? Do you think it’s fair for me to watch you have fun and pretend it’s okay when it’s not? Do you?!”

“You know it never was about having fun, Su Jin.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, how silly of me,” I said sarcastically, ignoring Luhan’s serious and impatient tone. “Of course it’s not about banging every willing girl in the city, it’s about finding yourself, right?”

I was mocking him, repeating what he had said back then, and Luhan obviously didn’t like it, mostly because I chose to recall the sentence that, back then, had only added more fuel to the fire in our break-up conversation and that he’d been dumb enough to say out loud. We both knew it wasn’t the reason he had decided to leave me, yet I’d unfairly used it against him.

Biting his bottom lip with anger, he stood up from the sofa to confront me, and suddenly I felt grateful for the small table separating us.

“I’m trying to respect you, Su Jin, but it’s damn hard when you’re acting like this,” he said with a terribly even voice, and I winced at hearing his comment. “Do you think I did it for fun?” he continued through gritted teeth. “I told you everything. How I didn’t want to lose you, how I needed time to figure out my real feelings before this,” he swung a finger back and forth between me and him, “could get really serious. We’ve been together for more than a year and a half and you know I’ve never been with someone for that long...”

He trailed off as I placed my both hands on the back of my head in disbelief and closed my eyes, not really sure if what I’d just heard was real. Was I the only one not seeing the logic in his actions? Was I the only one who thought that if you love someone, instead of walking away, you should keep that person next to you? Unless, of course, you don’t want to, which means you never loved her in the first place.

And that was the case with Luhan. He had told me he wanted a break. He had told me he was scared and confused. But I just couldn’t understand why.

“I don’t get it, Luhan,” I muttered, shutting my eyelids tighter when the sudden urge to cry crossed my mind once again. I reminded myself to slowly breathe in and breathe out, calming down my fast-beating heart before speaking again. “I don’t get why you had to do that. If you love someone, you just want to be with that person. There’s no need to try with others, no need to take a break from the relationship. If you’re with the right person, there’s no fear and confusion because you just know that person is the one for you.” I forced myself to open my eyes and look at Luhan, who was standing just two steps away from me, breathing heavily like I was. Swallowing hard, I opened my mouth to speak again. “And I felt that way about you. Damn, I still do, despite the you put me through.”

He rubbed his fingers against his lips, trying to collect his thoughts and calm down. I could tell he wanted to say something but didn’t know what words to use in order to sound convincing or less cruel. And I couldn’t tell what was more painful at that moment; this terrible silence between us, or his cold calculation of every move and word, as if he couldn’t let himself speak freely around me anymore.

“I just want to know what you think of me,” I almost cried out, feeling a sudden lump in my throat blocking my words. I embraced myself to give myself some strength and to bear with the pain of having Luhan so close to me, yet so out of my reach at the same time. I swallowed hard, forcing myself to lift my eyes and look at my ex-boyfriend, almost pleading. “Be honest with me and tell me who I am to you, if I really should wait for you. I don’t care if you’re cruel, just tell me the truth.”

He chewed on his lip again, dropping his gaze to the floor, and somehow I already knew it was a lost case.

“That’s the problem.” He lazily looked back at me, and I felt a squeeze in my heart and stomach at seeing the hopelessness in his eyes. “I just have no idea what I want now. And I want to give you the answer, I really do, but...I just can’t, Su Jin. I can’t right now.”

And right then, I realized he didn’t need to. Even if he hadn’t said it out loud, I already knew the truth – and it hurt like hell, as if someone had torn my heart out of my chest. As if someone had stabbed me with a knife, leaving me alone to die in agony.

“Isn’t the answer obvious already?” I said with a shaky voice, feeling the tears in the corners of my eyes threatening to fall with the first blink. I made an attempt to take another deep breath, but failed, choking on air. “You know I shouldn’t wait for you because you don’t love me...maybe you never did.”

“Pizza delivery!”

We both turned our heads in the direction the cheerful shout had come from, just in time to s