“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”

― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

· · · ·

(( “Soojung would have liked her. They would have been partners-in-crime.”

“Like us?” Taemin tosses a can of root beer his way and he smiles, grateful as he moves to lay back on the grass.

His fingers brush the granite of the tombstone over head and finally, he feels peace.

“Yeah.” ))

Kai thinks that he never meant for things to change. He’d been content to try to move on; to be happy about who he is and what he has left. He had given his heart to Soojung and he wasn’t looking to get it back because Kai knows that Soojung is gone (dead in the ground with poppies littering her tombstone) and he loves her, loves her, loved her.

But Jinri is different (so much it is painfully beautiful). She is there when she needed and when she is not, caring when he thinks it’s all just in his head.

As the alcohol burns its way down his throat Kai begins to understand why Taemin’s heart had to change.

He only wishes his didn’t have to change too.

“Thanks.” He stands and the moment ends with him giving her a melancholic smile. He doesn’t want to think much more of it but he knows when gratitude is due. And so he tells her, in the best way he can.

“Thanks for pulling me out while I still could.”

It scares him when he thinks he hears Soojung right next to him, speaking in that exuberant way he both detests and misses. Kai finds himself turning towards the absent sound more often than he likes, aching for something that wasn’t—will never—be there again. He knows it’s crazy to think that she would haunt him. They were friends but they weren’t really friends. Not in the way Taemin liked to assume they all were, from way before everything happened. Before the accident.

They couldn’t be friends. Not with the way he felt about her.

Feels. He corrects immediately (because it is natural of him to do so), present tense.

He couldn’t be truly friends with Soojung when she had been alive. Not with the way he felt about her then, when she was laughing and breathing the same air as he. Soojung had a way of creating noise wherever she went. Letting you know exactly where she was and what she was doing just by the distinct trill of her voice. Kai could categorize her mood by the lilt of her tone. A skill he had used time and time again for Taemin’s sake because God knows how dense his best friend was to the needs of his (deceased) ex-girlfriend.

Sometimes Kai wishes things were different. He wishes that he had seen Soojung first. Had been the one to have his coffee mixed up with hers, had shared the same Philosophy course in Freshman year, had gone to the same Lyn concert with his middle school friends. If things had gone his way, maybe Soojung would be alive—laughing in his ear, loving him.

Maybe then he wouldn’t be in the stupid situation of falling in love with his best friend’s girl. Again.

They sit in silence. Watching the water run by.

It’s cold out but he doesn’t move because he knows she won’t need it. She has a jacket around her already anyway—something she pulled out of her bag and something he instantly recognizes. He’s not surprised to know that her choice hasn’t changed…

(“So this is it, huh?”

Jinri shakes her head. “Come on, Kai. There is no ‘this’. This is how it will always be.”)

But it hurts anyway.

Kai calls her Sulli and it pisses Taemin off. Because he’d introduced her as Jinri and it was only polite to use the name she’s given with and not make up new ones just because you feel like it, Kai.

He takes a long swig from his beer before turning back to look at his best friend in the eye, tuning out the rant he’d been going on about since they had arrive at a bar blocks away from the hospital where Jinri works. Taemin’s eyes gleam when he talks about her; something he knows was never an effect Soojung evoked. It makes him sad for a moment to know that he’s probably the only one of them who thinks of her still, who wishes things were different and the same at the same time.

And then suddenly he’s angry and he says so, slurring—“Don’t you miss her at all?”

Taemin stops mid-sentence, and it seems to him that his best friend is genuinely surprised.

“What the are you talking about?”

Kai wants to tell him. He wants to shake him and say everything he feels should be said—It’s too early for you to move on. To forget. How could you do this to her memory? Didn’t she mean anything to you at all?—but doesn’t.

Because Kai never likes to force things unto others and he isn’t going to start now. So when Taemin asks again, this time serious—almost worried—and looking at him as though he was about to break, he looks away and shakes his head.

And then when Sulli comes over and Taemin comments about how he couldn’t make him call her by her actual name, it pinches his heart when she laughs and says she doesn’t mind.

For in that moment Kai hears Soojung but sees Jinri and it drives him insane.

So he asks the bartender to pour him a shot and gulps it down. He decides to ignore Taemin for the rest of the night as continually he asks for another.

“He thinks of you as a brother. You know that right?”

His stomach pulls again and he lowers his head to vomit another round before replying, “I know.”

“Then why did you say those things to him? Why do you hurt yourself and him?” She paused, rubbing a concerned hand over his shoulder, “I saw it, you know. Even when no one else did, I saw how much he cared and missed her. Shouldn’t you know it too?”

The thing is Kai does know. He does and he’s usually ever so grateful because Soojung deserved their love even when they (he) didn’t deserve hers in return. But he can’t fathom to feel thankful for this knowledge. Not when he feels the way he does and he misses Soojung but wants her. It’s wrong, wrong, so wrong.

Kai doesn’t answer any of Taemin’s calls for weeks. And reasons it to be primarily because he’s been acting strange since after the surgery.

But he does answer Sulli’s. Each and every time she calls.

“You should come over sometime. Hang out with us? Taemin misses you.”

Kai shrugs, swirling the amber liquid in his glass, “Maybe.”

A lackluster meeting of lips sparks nothing but remorse in its wake.

It is quick, practically painless, but as Kai pulls back—he knows he’s gone of the deepest end of his depression.

“I’m sorry.” He begins but doesn’t know how to end. All of him is tangled up in knots. And for the nth time in months he wishes for things to be as they were.

Before.

“I don’t want to move on.” He says finally, after a seemingly endless silence. His lungs feeling heavier and aching than before. And though he knows it is the wrong thing to say, he does anyway. “I don’t want to know how.”

Jinri’s eyes are misty when he looks up at her and it hurts to realize how much she cares for a stranger such as himself; for a cheat he’s become. She moves to hold him close, patting his back as he turns to fall sick between his knees. Her voice impeccably kind,

“You have to. Because I won’t be her for you.”

Kai drinks and…

… neglects to acknowledge that he wishes Soojung would haunt him. That he would give anything to be the one seeing (smelling, hearing) her everywhere he goes. He wants to be the one that Soojung had wanted in the last moments of her life.

(Except he isn’t—he won’t ever be—and it kills him.)

The walk is aimless at best; shaky as his feet padded one after the other in front of him. Kai knows he’s being followed. He can feel the heat from his companion’s bodies huddled close behind. But they are silent all the way to the bench he finds at the end of his walk—settling there as the wind blew harsh past him and the running sound of the river nauseates him into submission.

“I’ll get him a hot tea. Stay with him, Jinri?” Taemin says softly before jogging away.

Kai doesn’t remember how he got here with her caring for him as he empties his stomach by the river, but he is there and she is there and they are alone.

For the moment, Kai thinks, that is all that matters.

Kai drinks and…

…wishes he were someone else. Someone worthy to be loved the way he loves. He wishes he’d been smarter before and asked Soojung out before Taemin saw her. That he should’ve done more that night when she died and all Taemin had done was sit immobile amidst the tragedy. He wishes he’d been angrier then and had fought him. Had been the man Taemin couldn’t be for himself and for Soojung.

(Except he isn’t—he could be—and it’s killing him inside to want to try.)

He leaves. He has to.

“I lo’ed her, y’know. I did. I do. You st’le ‘r from me.”

Kai knows how he got here, slurring drunk and angry at the world. He takes one look at Taemin and lunges at him even as the latter tries to soothe his desperation.

“Let it out, man.” Taemin tell him in placating manner and it doesn’t help, “I’m sorry she’s dead. I really am.”

Kai cries, pulling away and failing. “No, you’re n’t. You d’nt kn’w at all. F’ckin ev’ryth’ng up. You h’d ‘r th’n you thr’w ‘r away just”—he  snaps his fingers—“like”—snap, and missteps—“th’t for some floozy nurse.”

The comment catches Taemin’s attention and for once he assembles an emotion Kai can recognize. Anger. Finally.

“Hey. Don’t talk about Jinri that way. She helped me get better!”

Suddenly Kai’s blurring gaze clears and he yells so angrily the walls shake. They stand off, scowling and hurt. And when Sulli tries to pull Taemin’s arm back, he explodes.

“And who helped Soojung?! You could have just fought it out at the party. Screamed and yelled and thrown things. I wouldn’t have minded because at least it was in my house! I would have watched over both of you! The roads were flooded that night, you ! If you’d have listened to me Soojung would have been alive right now!”

He breaks down just as Taemin moves to gather him into his calm. He knows it is the best his best friend could do for him and though it hurts, Kai is grateful for what he does.

“I’m sorry.” Taemin says.

It isn’t enough but it has to be.

“I think I’m falling for you.” He tells her this over the phone, honest and calm. And even before Sulli responds, Kai knows the answer to his statement.

He knows because he has yet to accept it.

 “I’m not Soojung.”