Hey, gang! Thank you to everyone who voted, subscribed and left comments so far, it means a lot :~D This is an angsty chapter, enjoy!

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September 2014

 

That day one month ago should’ve been the precursor for happier times between the two young lovers.

 

But life doesn’t often follow that hallowed pattern of romantic euphoria.

 

Much like the Theory of Chaos studied by mathematicians everywhere, love can be summed up in a similar way: when meaningful predictions cannot be made, the system appears to be random.

 

And so it seemed that after sharing momentary bliss, Sulli and Lay’s relationship slowly began deteriorating into swirling disorder that couldn’t be defined nor resolved.

 

It began with little things, which slowly grew into the sum of greater things that picked away at their mutual trust and affection for each other, like a rabid woodpecker chipping away at the lifeblood of their romance.

 

Sulli’s administrative work at her school tripled as summer vacation ended and the second semester began with a flurry of activity and events.

 

She spent nearly every evening at work till 9pm for two weeks straight compiling meeting minutes for the teachers’ numerous discussions about changes in the new curriculum; adding the new changes decided on for the scheduling of After School classes. And then there were the copies of lesson plans compiled by all the homeroom teachers for each grade that would be sent to all the parents in aid of Open Classes, which were happening a few shorts days from then.

 

Lay’s commanding officer approved of the young recruit’s discipline during their rigorous drills. So he subsequently appointed him to a junior position of leadership in his squadron after just a few months.

 

Which meant that Lay was helping with running drills and assisting with orientation for the newer recruits. And this meant he was eating dinner later and sleeping for less time than when he first joined the army.

 

Because of the strain they were both taking, Sulli and Lay found it more convenient to either re-schedule their Skype sessions and phone calls or just lesson the amount of time they spoke to each other.

 

They gave up on writing letters altogether as they were both physically and mentally drained from working throughout the long days.

 

As they became more familiar with one another’s personalities, their conversations became less romantic and spontaneous and more focused on complaining about the various difficulties they were undergoing in their professional lives.

 

And bit by bit, it became a chore to listen to the same old stories repeated with the same tone of weary cynicism.

 

“Let me guess: your boss accused Victoria of making personal calls during work again?” Lay interjected with a tight smile after yet another tedious discussion about Sulli’s job woes.

 

He was tired as it was from helping his commanding officer run team drills all day long and this was the last thing he wanted to listen to before he turned in for the night.

 

“Actually, I was going to say that my boss wants me to work this weekend,” Sulli said in a huffy tone.

 

It really annoyed her how Lay always seemed to think he knew exactly what she was going to say after only listening for a record 5 seconds to the conversation.  

 

“Again?” Lay questioned in an incredulous tone. “I thought we were supposed to Skype on Saturday.” He complained.

 

“We still can,” Sulli chided in a placating voice. “It’ll just have to be a lot shorter than I initially thought. And maybe later too on Saturday night. After I’m done working, me and a few colleagues are going out for drinks in Hongdae.”

 

“Terrific. When were you going to tell me about this?”

 

“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

 

“Gee, thanks for the consideration.”

 

Lay instantly regretted his sarcastic tone when Sulli sighed painstakingly on the other end.

 

Their conversations over the phone seemed to be ending like this a lot lately and he didn’t know what to do to make it better.

 

They’d only been together in person that one time when Sulli surprised him in his dorm room.

 

And Sulli was already upset by the fact that he could only take a few days off from the army to visit her and his family a month from now.

 

When he’d asked her to give dating him a chance, he honestly didn’t expect it to be this frustrating and lonely.

 

It was just as miserable as being single.

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I’ve just had a long day.” Lay apologised after a long and awkward pause.

 

“It’s ok, I’m sorry too. I should’ve told you sooner about my plans.” Sulli said in a low murmur.

 

And when the apologies still felt insufficient, the bargaining soon started.

 

“Look, it’s always busy like this every year at my school. I’ll have loads more free time to talk come the last week of September, I promise.” Sulli declared in a flurry.

 

“Yeah. And maybe I’ll start slacking off on purpose just so my commanding officer will demote me and let someone else do the dirty work,” Lay joked, which made Sulli laugh, albeit a little uncertainly.

 

“Don’t do that. I want you to do your best while you’re away. That’s the only thing that keeps me remotely sane.” She whispered, twisting the telephone cord around her index finger as she spoke.

 

“Are we going to be ok, Sulli?”

 

Her breath caught in as she processed just what Lay was asking her.

 

Physically, they were better than ok.

 

There were in the prime of their lives.

 

But just like that age old saying, youth is very much lost on the young.

 

This is especially true when it comes to matters of the heart that have an uncanny way of making you older than you really seem.

 

“Of course we are,” Sulli lied.

 

Telling the truth was out of the question.

 

Who really tells the truth about anything anymore, especially when it comes to an obscure future?

 

An unexpected silence followed, which broke Sulli’s heart just a little.

 

Lay was always so good at filling those empty silences with his jocular banter that had a way of bringing an involuntary smile to her face on a bad day.

 

But here they were on a bad day, not saying anything to each other.

 

Would they really be ok?

 

Or were they just kidding themselves?

 

“You know what? Screw drinks in Hongdae this weekend. As soon as I’m done with the paperwork my -hat boss is making me do on Saturday, I’m coming home and you and I are going to spend some proper alone time together.” Sulli declared on a sudden impulse.

 

Instead of reassuring Lay, it only made him feel guiltier and more pitiful in his own eyes.

 

He didn’t think of himself as being proud.

 

But here he was, getting exactly what he wanted, which was real quality time with his girlfriend.

 

And instead of feeling happy, he felt resentful towards her for making him cling so tightly to her to begin with.

 

He clearly hadn’t been in his right mind when he’d ask her to go out with him while he was doing his military service.

 

What if it was all just a horrible mistake?

 

But instead of saying that, Lay quashed the feeling and simply asked: “Are you sure, Sulli? I don’t want you to have to give up time with your friends just for me-”

 

“I’m not giving up anything,” Sulli said in what she hoped was a soothing tone. “I can have drinks with them any other weekend I want. My time with you is much more important to me.”

 

For the first time all night, Lay felt the tiniest semblance of normalcy and happiness returning to his dynamic with Sulli.

 

“Thank you for saying that. I hope you know everything to do with us means a lot to me. You deserve a better boyfriend than me. You deserve someone who can see you regularly and buy you flowers whenever they want to.”

 

“I don’t need flowers. I just need you.”

 

That statement had the effect of making Lay take his cellphone away from his ear and clutch it tightly against his chest for several seconds while he struggled not to shed tears.

 

There was something about Sulli (good and bad) that heightened his emotions in every form that they were wrenched from him.

 

It was an extremely good thing when all she said and did made him happy.

 

But on the days when things weren’t clicking just like tonight...

 

“We can make this work,” he finally told her after putting his cellphone close to his ear again. “I just know we can.”

 

Out of the two of them, Sulli actually did start crying while they stayed on the line together for close to 20 seconds of more silence.

 

She wanted to believe Lay with all of her heart.

 

But deep down, both of them knew how they really felt.

 

And what they felt spelled trouble for their already shaky romance.

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October 2014

 

Instead of things getting better for Lay and Sulli, they only got worse with another month that they tacked onto their time together.

 

Sulli returned to her apartment close to 9pm on a Thursday night, tottering slightly from the Soju she’d consumed earlier and crying profusely.

 

She was dripping wet from head to toe from the rainstorm that had begun just 20 minutes ago.

 

She’d been yelled at and done some her fair share of yelling at school.

 

It had been a horrible day.

 

She couldn’t find it in her to even be sorry or care.

 

Her cellphone rang sharply from her jacket pocket. She looked at the caller ID blinking white against the black screen and ignored it, tossing the device onto the love seat in her cramped living room.

 

Then the home phone started ringing.

 

Sulli emitted a ringing flurry of harsh laughter as she debated whether to answer or not.

 

She knew exactly who was calling, and she had no desire to talk to him at that precise moment.

 

She’d ignored every single one of his calls since it happened.

 

But even while she was sure that she didn’t want to talk at all, the inky tasting whiskey pouring through her veins was already feel making her light-headed and dangerously uninhibited.

 

She made a grab for the phone and collapsed onto the wooden floor, staining the ground with her wet boots and jacket.

 

“Sulli, let me just explain, please...” Lay begged the second the receiver clicked and he heard her breathing on the other end.

 

He was sitting in the dark corridor just outside the barracks cafeteria talking on his cellphone.

 

He could’ve talked in his and Chen’s room or even used the bedroom phone.

 

But his roommate was in there doing his routine push-ups and he definitely didn’t want to be overheard for this particular conversation.

 

Sulli chuckled darkly once more, letting the fingers on her free hand curl over to stop her lips from trembling.

 

“Explain what? What you said was perfectly clear to me.” She said in a slow and pained voice.

 

Lay hung his head and clutched the receiver so tightly to his ear that his knuckle turned white against the hard plastic.

 

“It was a mistake, I should have never said it. I was drunk!”

 

His defence sounded weak and ridiculous even to his own ears.

 

But it was all he had.

 

“Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Sulli mumbled in a hollow voice.

 

Her mother, a deeply religious woman, had always said that to her as a child.

 

She’d never known how true that biblical verse could be until now when her heart was breaking into a million shards.

 

Lay felt tears of shame and misery burning at his closed eyelids while he tried to think of something, anything, that could possibly make this right.

 

But in all honesty, he was drawing a blank.

 

While Sulli listened to the sounds of his agonised breathing, she thought back to three nights ago when it had happened:

 

For the first time in weeks, she had felt light-hearted and hopeful about her relationship with Lay.

 

They’d made time to Skype with each other last weekend and seeing his face (even though he’d looked tired) had rejuvenated her somehow.

 

Just maybe he was right; maybe they really could work.

 

She’d dialled Lay’s number without thinking about the time or what he might be doing.

 

It rang for an insanely long time before someone else answered.

 

It was Chen and judging by how hard he was laughing, it sounded like he was roaring drunk.

 

“Lay’s phone. If you’re a stripper, please press ‘2’,” he slurred nonsensically with more raucous laughter.

 

“Hi, Chen,” Sulli greeted with an amused eye-roll, “is my boyfriend anywhere in the vicinity?”

 

“I’ll see if I can locate him, Madam,” Chen boomed, clicking his feet together while doing a mock salute.

 

He, Lay, and a few other soldiers had been given the night off for doing a stellar job on their drills and military exercises for that week.

 

So he’d persuaded his roommate to come out with him to a dingy bar located a few kilometres away from their army base in Yeongcheon.

 

Actually, it turned out to be more of an outhouse of the traditional hanok architectural persuasion that had once been used for housing cattle once upon a time that had been converted into a dingy bar that truck drivers mostly frequented.

 

The air even still had that unmistakable scent of manure that permeated the wooden alcove mixed in with the smells of sweat and cigarette smoke that danced off of the long wooden tables.

 

But all the soldiers that had come along were excited by the prospect of a night of total frivolity before returning to the drudgery of their military exercises in the morning, which included a 10km hike on the outskirts of Eunhaesa Temple at 5am sharp.  

 

And Lay had already consumed two tankards filled to the brim with Cass Fresh beer, a popular brand in Korea.

 

His cheeks were flushed a deep red when Sulli’s call came through on his cellphone.

 

Chen tried to cover the earpiece of Lay’s phone, but failed miserably because of his heavy inebriation.

 

“ZHANG YIXING! YOUR BALL AND CHAIN IS ON THE PHONE!” he yelled out, struggling to stand upright from how drunk he already was.

 

“My umma???” Lay asked, blinking furiously while taking another long sip from his tankard.

 

“Andwae-yo! Yeoja chingu, pabo!”

 

“Ah, chincha?”

 

Sulli heard the weary sigh that followed his words, as if her boyfriend were saying it in her very own living room.

 

“I don’t want to talk to Sulli, bro. She’ll just complain about work till we hang up. I need a break from her.”

 

It took Sulli close to 3 seconds before she finally found the nerve to hang up the phone.

 

She cried for a good hour after that till she fell asleep in a tired heap on the living room floor...

 

Since that night, Lay had been calling her cellphone, her home phone, even her work phone, just to try and talk to her.

 

But she’d been dodging his calls ever since that awful night.

 

“I was just drunk, Sulli-”

 

“Am I a burden to you, Zhang Yixing?”

 

Lay stopped short and swallowed nervously.

 

Sulli only called him by his Chinese name when she was upset with him.

 

And right now, she sounded so tired and sad that it tore at his insides.

 

He’d done that to her, and it physically hurt to know it.

 

“Of course you aren’t,” he finally answered, hugging his knee to his chest while he spoke. “I was just drunk and tired.”

 

“Tired of me?”

 

“No!”

 

Sulli shut her eyes, slow tears collecting in her long lashes as they made their descent.

 

“Then why did you say it?”

 

“I don’t know...” Lay mumbled, feeling helpless in the moment.

 

“I do,” Sulli said with sudden conviction. “It’s because we’ve both been ignoring what’s really going on here this whole time. This thing between us just...isn’t working.”

 

“Wait a minute,” Lay interjected, his heart plummeting in his chest when he heard those words. “Every long distance relationship has its ups and downs, Sulli. We’re just experiencing the ‘down’ part these days.”

 

“It’s been a lot of ‘down parts’ for a lot of days, Lay.”

 

“What are you saying?”

 

Sulli bit her bottom lip and steeled herself for what she was about to say.

 

What she’d been thinking for three days straight on repeat.

 

“You and I as a couple don’t make sense, Lay.  I’m not sure we ever did. We’re both so busy going in different directions with our lives. And when we are together, all we seem to do is fight. I’m tired of feeling like this...feeling alone when I’m with you.”

 

Lay’s eyes watered with unshed tears while he tried to process what he was hearing.

 

This can’t be happening, not like this.

 

“Sulli-”

 

“I love you.”

 

It was the first time she’d said it the whole time they’d been dating.

 

It was pretty ironic she’d picked this particular moment to say it, when it was all slowly unravelling at the seams.

 

“I think we should break up.”

 

The world turned even faster on its axis after Sulli said those words she’d never wanted to say.

 

That’s when Lay started crying in earnest, especially when his girlfriend (was she already an ex now?) said those eight precious words that brought with it an aching sense of loss.

 

“Ok. If...that’s what you really want.”

 

It wasn’t what Sulli wanted, not even close.

 

What she wanted was to climb into a time machine and go back to a time before she’d ever met Lay.

 

But since she was wishing for things, she really wanted to go back in time to right before Lay ever decided to do his military service.

 

“Ok,” was all she said out loud.

 

They stayed like that in tense silence for close to a minute, just listening to each other breathing and trying not to cry.

 

Sulli was the first to hang up.

 

But Lay ended up spending the night in that lonely hallway, keeping his cellphone pressed tightly to his ear all the while, just in case Sulli called back.

 

She didn’t though.

 

That’s when he knew for sure that he really loved her too. 

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Been meaning to write this break-up chapter for days now. But I've been very distracted with money problems, heartache, and all that jazz :~p I hope you guys liked this, I love writing for Sulli and Lay in this story. Upcoming chapter: 'Rebounds'. Stay tuned, cheerio!