Day 1.

            I don’t know why I’m counting again. This time, it’s for a different person.

            When you have so much faith in someone, it really stings when they prove you wrong. All along I thought that Jongin cared, that he would never hurt me because he’s saved me so many times. He couldn’t possibly be doing this to me. It was so out of the blue, so odd that I couldn’t full comprehend it.

            But then I would remember his words. “No. I never liked you.”

            Even now, I still don’t believe him. The both of us had felt things, it had never been one-sided.

            But on that rainy night, he also made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with me. It felt so much like a breakup, except we never even really dated. Moreover, he continued to stay absent from school. No one even noticed.

            One thing people did notice however, was that I’d grown back into my zombie-like state. The days passed by endlessly, without any momentum. I went to class, went home, ate, slept. My routine was simply that: a routine. A routine so monotonous that it was made in the mere hopes to forget about him.

            Jackson knew that something had gone wrong immediately.

            “That’s so weird,” he was saying one day at lunch. “The way he broke things off sounds so odd. It hardly makes sense.”

            “I don’t want to talk about him,” I mutter lifelessly. My eyes were puffy from crying.

            Jackson patted my back. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “He just made you so happy.”

            I felt a tear roll down my cheek. “How can someone make you so happy, but at the same time make you so sad? I can’t stop thinking about him. I want to be with him. I want to find him and talk to him again and….”

            But I couldn’t let myself do that. If I went to go find him, I would also risk getting my heart broken again. And I didn’t know if I could take my heart getting shredded to pieces a second time.

            The dreams were starting to get out of hand.

            I’d seen him in them once or twice before, although to a mild extent. He’d just be there, standing with his hands in his pockets or something like usual.

            But I’d never seen him in my dreams like this.

            And it was starting to become a recurring thing.

            I’d see him walking towards me, and I’d run up to him. But now matter how fast my legs ran, I could never get to him. Kai seemed to be experiencing the same problem as he held his hand out to me, and I tried so desperately to reach out and grab it.

            But then he’d be disappearing, bit by bit, and then he’d be gone.

            I’d wake up with tears rolling down my cheeks, my heart aching in pain. It’d be impossible for me to go back to sleep and I’d spend the day tired and lifeless like how I always seemed to be nowadays.

One Friday night, in a desperate attempt to lift the pain in my heart, I went back to the karaoke place. I sang a couple of songs here and there, drinking away to my heart’s content. I sang Kanye, I sang DBSK, but most of all, I sang Shinhwa. Because that had been his favorite.

I remember stumbling out of the karaoke place, drunk out of my mind. People were staring at me weirdly as they passed, but I didn’t care. Some guys were looking at me and laughing, and I’m pretty sure they were saying some pretty disgusting things.

            “MHmm HAhahaHA!” I was saying.

            Then someway, somehow, I made it onto the bus. I remember leaning my head onto someone’s shoulder, hiccupping. I was crying uncontrollably. I reached out and clung onto the stranger’s jacket. It smelled familiar, and maybe that was why I did it.

            I woke up with a start.

            And a really bad headache.

            “Ow…,” I mumbled as I rubbed my head.

            The last thing I remembered was drinking and stumbling on the streets. How did I manage to make it back to my bedroom in one peace?

            I remembered getting on the bus, but I also remembered someone. A boy. One with dark skin.

            No, I thought. It couldn’t have been.

            But the feeling lingered on my skin, a feeling that I knew only his touch could bring. That was enough.