What if dating becomes a gathering only. What if your date becomes a daily routine only. What if you and your partner focus on meals only. Should it even be called as “a date”? It has been a month that our dates have become ordinary gathering. Problems are there, but we never talk about them. As we both know about the results, we tend to ignore them until someday we might dig them out and maybe fix them. Maybe. Every night is a silent night. It should be a romantic date, just me and her, no works, no lame jokes, just stares. We used to stare at each other without utter a word at meals, like the way we are doing it now; but now, it feels like that we are falling apart. A

nother night we share the silent night filled with coldness, fake smiles, sadness and hopelessness. We are right here but we are not here, our minds are not here as if we live in different planets. As usual, the beautiful girl takes her time on slicing the steak into pieces. Something is wrong. I know she cried as her eye-shadow shines even more with tears on. She is smiling, faking smiles at herself. Still, there is some part I should not reach or ask and this is one of them. Sometimes I wonder who I belong to, should not be hers? However, she belongs to herself, no one but herself. Stealing glances from each other, we both share smiles, awkward smile moments. Somehow smiles look more pathetic than cries. All I can do is to try focusing on my meal, pushing all those paranoid thoughts away. Even though I know exactly why she cried, I tend to ignore it, I tried. Our meals are finished. Time to bid a goodbye. Frowns, are found on her face, along with her bitter smiles.

“Gayoon…” She calls me after leaving the restaurant and I cannot help but panic.

It sounds like something wrong here. At that moment, I can only think of hugging her. And I do it. I hug her tight, real tight, like suffocating her. Closing my eyes, I am using my all my strength to hug her. A minute passes, finally she brings her hands to embrace me. It sends me a little hope, a little comfort. No matter how hard I try to shorten our distance, it still feels like we are miles away. A hug should be link two people together, link them up, combine them into one. However, now are still two people here. We made it for another night. Our love is hanging there, at the edge of breaking and we know it. Is it a trap? A love trap? Once you fell into it, you can never get out of it.

“Gayoon…” She calls me again.

And I know I should let go, let her go. Me and my heart fight against each other, struggling to loosen my grip. Eventually, I untie my arms. Tears on her face dried already. Her bitter smiles turn back to a straight smile. When you know the moment coming, no matter how much you thought you have prepared well for this, it is never enough.

“Let’s go to Tokyo.” When she said it, is still in straight line, no curves. Once again, I melt in her eyes, her touch as she takes my hands, caressing the back of my hands with her thumbs.

“For a vacation. Just two of us, no one else.” From her voice, I know it is real this time.

Her determinations, her stares, her acts, tell me this is only two of us. My nose feels stuffed, my sight become blurry as tears filled my eyes. As hard as I can, I try to hold thrilled feelings, my overwhelmed emotions, my joy and sad tears.

“Y…” The word ends up slipping out as the consonants only.

“Y…Yes…Y-yes, Hyuna. Yes.” Finally, the word comes out, for a few times to make sure she hears it.

Here we are in Tokyo, somewhere near the countryside, at a ski resort hotel. These days, she seems throwing all her sadness away, probably because of the video call. This is the first time I see that face in these three years. The girl named Sohyun, has a wonderful conversation with her. All her sadness is gone because of that girl. Even I am here for her, supporting her as a girlfriend, I can make no impact on her. I am just no one to her. Tonight, I sit on our bed, looking at the view outside. A couple of birds standing in the backyard of our resort house, sticking with each other, it is such a beautiful scene. They are so happy together until another bird interrupts them, taking one of them away. Seeing such scene, I cannot help but let out a sarcastic laugh.

“What a perfect description.” I whisper at myself, slip under the blanket, ready for bed.

The bathroom is unlocked and she comes out in her pajama, getting into our bed. She is right here in front of me, staring at me with her warmest smiles. This beautiful moment scares me. How long will it last? How long will she stay for me? Her phone vibrates and it takes her attention away. Unforgettable moments will not last long and this is a law, a theory. The moment she drags herself back to focus me, smiles no longer are seen. What replaces her warmest smiles is her coldness.

“Goodnight, Gayoon.” This is all she said after reading the message. Tonight is another silent night.

Like nothing happened last night, she takes me out in the next day, to ski. It is crowded and a famous one. On our way to the top of the mountain, my nervousness gets worse without a reason. She holds my hand tight, without a reason. Everything feels wrong again. My heart races and my head spins as we are really close to the top. Finally we drop off, standing on the top of the mountain. I can see her bright smiles. I can see how excited she is right now.

“Gayoon, let’s…” Her words are cut off.

“Hyuna!” A girlish voice stops her.

Both of us follow the trail where the voice comes from. A long reddish brown hair girl grins at her, waving at her. She walks towards us, hugging her in front of me. They kissed. At the moment, if there is a hole I could hide myself, I would definitely jump into it.

“Hey babe, I thought you chose another ski resort. Or you wanna know what kind of ski resort that your wife is negotiating for?”

I believe that is Sohyun, her wife. The way Hyuna looks at her wife is different, different from hers to me. Her eyes shine immediate when they meet hers. Her smiles, it feels like her heart is even smiling. Her hands place on her wife’s waist naturally, unlike the way she does to me, awkward. The girl named Sohyun completely ignores me, not even steals a glance from me. My eyes are burning from seeing them cuddling, kissing. Tears are about to break, filling my eyes quickly. The next second, I see myself down there, not at the top anymore. And Hyuna is standing right next to me, staring at me. Things in between seems like a lost memory, deleted in my head.

Starting from the beginning, I am the third wheel, the extra one in the relationship. Hyuna having a wife is not something new to me. I knew it, I knew it when the moment we met. However, I still fall for her, deeply. We both know it is only a backup relationship. I am her backup plan when Sohyun is not there with her. She wants me and I will be there for her, immediately. It sounds like a e more, right? But I love her, hoping that one day she will get divorced with Sohyun. I hope so.

We are still standing here, in the centre, with loads of people around us. She brings me back to our room. All of a sudden, she attacks me with her rough kisses once she closed the door. She strips me, taking my clothes off, one by one, fast. Soon, she guides me to the bed, pushing me to it. I fall on it, with underwear on. She pins me on the bed, interlocks her fingers with mine. Her lips trails all over my face, stops at my lips. Invading my mouth with her tongue, she tries to avoid things, things that might take us apart. Meaningless kiss, without love, without emotions, she invades my heart with a knife on her lips, leaving wounds on me. There I lay down, no struggles, no intentions to kiss back. I let her invade me, hurt me, treat me like a toy. What is this lonely love? Staring at the ceiling, I let my tears flow. She stops, pulling out, sitting up. My tears keep flowing out. The warm tears run on my cold face, dropping on the bed sheet. She gets off, sitting at the edge of the bed.

Silence fills the room again, replacing emotionless kissing sounds. Until now, she remains silence. She never tells me about her wife. Everything was found by myself. We both lied, lied to ourselves, hoping someday it will pass. I break the silence, getting up to dress up. The room is covered with the sounds of the frictions between my skin and the clothes. Tears on her face, fake smiles on her face. Without words to explain, she rushes to me and hugs me tight. There is someone in her heart. For so many times, I want her to tell me that she is tired, tired of everything but she did not. This is the moment. The moment when you want a quarrel than silence, it kills you. The most sarcastic thing is that we pretend that nothing happened, going back to Korea, continue our relationship. We are the perfect match as we both lied to ourselves, fooled ourselves and we believed things might come differently in the next day.

However, it never happens.

She lies, I lie.