”I’m home!” She heard the front door close after the words was spoken. Her eyes left the TV and she looked up at the person that entered the living room. A smile was on the person’s lips, but she failed to return it. It was even more difficult to put up a fake one when she felt the smell of alcohol and smoke from the other woman as she took a seat next to her on the couch.

“Did you miss me? I missed you.” The woman said and leaned closer to her, placing a kiss on her cheek that felt like a burning sensation. Not a pleasant feeling. Not like how it had felt in the beginning of their relationship. When everything had gone up, but now everything was crashing down.

She didn’t reply to the question. An arm was placed around her shoulders. It was heavy, heavy like a burden. It didn’t feel like before, at the time when she had craved to have those arms around her, when the arms had protected her and made her feel like home.

“Where have you been?” She managed to ask, even though she already knew the answer, the answer she would be told, and the answer that would be the truth.

“I’ve been with Krystal.” The woman replied.

It felt like a stab to her heart. If she hadn’t known that Krystal neither smoked nor drank alcohol she might have believed the woman. But her knowledge was too good than that, and to not feel like she would get pushed down through the couch by the weight of the arm around her she moved away from the other woman, standing up from her seat on the couch.

“Taeyeon” She stopped in her tracks. Her body turned and she found herself standing face to face with the other woman, but she noticed something different about her. About the way she was looking at her. Every time she had looked at her before she had always felt like she had been seen, like she could see herself in the reflection in the other woman’s eyes. But not now, it felt like the woman saw right through her, like she wasn’t there, and her eyes, her eyes was black, and there was no reflection of her in them. She didn’t exist to this woman anymore.

“What?” She tried to keep her voice steady as she spoke. The woman closed the distance between them, arms was wrapped around her. She didn’t feel safe, she didn’t feel comfortable. She felt suffocated, she felt like she would die if she was this close to this woman.

“Jessica” She pushed the woman away from her, trying to make a distance between them before she got killed. A confused look was on the other woman’s face, and she wished she could make it disappear somehow. Her shoulders slump, almost like when she had had the woman’s arm around her before. The woman’s presence was weighing her down.

“Can you…” She met the woman’s eyes, trying to see if she could see herself in them, but she couldn’t. Not anymore. She gulped, her tongue wetted her dry lips, and she continued to hold the woman’s gaze. “Can you tell me your best lie?”

Jessica didn’t respond, like she was trying to figure out what she meant by the request, and Taeyeon felt like she didn’t have time to wait for the reply either. She saw Jessica open , but nothing came out of it. She closed it again, and her gaze lowered to the floor, and Taeyeon could see the guilt and regret in her now. She could see that Jessica had figured out what she knew.

Jessica looked up at her again. Their gazes met. And Taeyeon could already feel herself break before Jessica’s next words had even escaped her lips.

“I love you.”