She lies awake at night. Dinnertime has since passed, but she never once emerged from her bedroom for dinner. Which means to say that, once again, she’s successfully avoided The Conversation. Krystal’s not going to be pleased, but Jessica never really tried to think too much into that. Krystal will let her off. She’s her sister, isn’t she? Krystal will let it go.

Suddenly her bedroom door creaks open, and there stands Krystal in the doorway.

“Krys?”

Krystal’s expression is a little off, but she doesn’t show any reaction at Jessica’s perplexed reaction. Jessica watches as her sister enters quietly and shuts the door behind her.

“Krystal,” she calls out again, expecting a response this time around. The younger one doesn’t even flinch; instead, she watches Jessica for a moment, before taking her place at the foot of Jessica’s bed.

“What is this about?” Jessica asks.

Krystal’s eyes narrow just a little. She continues to stare at her sister.

“Krystal, you need to talk to me. Is this about him?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What?”

Krystal folds her arms. “I don’t believe you, Jessica. You don’t miss him.”

Jessica wants to say something, but she decides against it and quietly leans in towards her.

“You wanted an answer from me. I gave you one.”

“And I’m supposed to believe it’s not a lie?”

“What the hell happened? Is this because I skipped dinner—“

“Shut up, Jessica. I’m telling you that I don’t believe you. And that I don’t have a reason to believe that was the truth coming from you.” Krystal gets up, towering over Jessica, who remained on the bed. “Do you know why?”

Silence was clearly the only response Jessica could offer.

“Because people who don’t feel emotions have no idea what on earth missing someone means. And you,” she points an accusatory finger at her sister, “you’ve been acting like one of those cold-blooded beings ever since it happened.

“You broke up with a boy who made it his mission in life to love you and make you happy. You broke up with a boy who, for the first time, made you feel like you were really, seriously, truly falling in love. You even fought with our parents for him. And yet the most you’ve cried was only on that night.

“You came out of it as if nothing had ever happened. You avoid the topic, you never tackle it head-first… At first I thought you were doing all of that because you weren’t ready. But now I’m thinking it’s because you never saw it as an issue in the first place.

“You broke his heart and you acted like nothing happened. And until today, you’ve never showed any sign of missing him. So you’re a liar, Jessica. You’re a big fat liar, and you don’t miss him. Not—at—all!”

Jessica looks up at her slowly. “Maybe you’re right, Krystal. Maybe I don’t miss him,” she says in a quiet voice. Then she smiles a little. “But you wanna know why?

“It’s because I don’t deserve to miss him.”

=

Jessica sits alone in her bedroom that day after she gets back from school. It’s been a long day and many hours have passed since Yoona told her about her little moment with Donghae from the previous night.

She sits with her knees pulled up to her chest.

She trusts him; she always will. So she never put much thought into what Yoona said. Donghae was Donghae; her Donghae, the boy she was in love with. The boy she’s completely in love with. She’s never felt this in love before.

But that was the very thing that put the chills down her spine; that scared her to her very core.

She bites down on her lower lip.

She saw a future with him. She wanted a future with him.

But it was impossible to have the road leading up to the future paved with every step they took.

So when Yoona walked away from her earlier, what sunk in wasn’t what she said. What sunk in, and sunk all the way to the bottom of her heart, weighing down like sandbags in the sea, was the fact that Yoona had even said anything.

Because at that moment, Jessica felt human—she felt so vulnerable, and she felt so scared… Of what could happen.

It could be in the blink of an eye, or it could be the next day. It could be a few years later even.

But anything could happen—so what if something did and she loses him?

She’s scared. She’s so scared of there being a day when she would watch him slip away from her grasp.

So she does something stupid, something drastic, but something that would protect both of them from feeling the pain stab them like a million knives. She would give up their future together if it meant that they don’t fall deeper into this. The lesser feelings and time they put into this, the lesser it’ll hurt when they see a day they have to part.

She chose to let them hurt now, rather than perish later.

When Donghae walks in her bedroom that night, the sight of him in all his glory, here to fight to make her believe him that whatever happened with Yoona was irrelevant—

She knew it was irrelevant. Oh, boy, she knew so much. She loved him; she never doubted him.

She was just uncertain of the uncertain.

What you can’t see for now might end up blinding you someday.

=

“I cut him out from my life,” she whispers, as shakily as ever. “I couldn’t lose him, so I made him lose me.”

She doesn’t realize she’s crumbled into nothing more than running tears until Krystal’s on the bed too, inching closer and closer to her and her broken figure.

She clings onto Krystal when she feels her baby sister’s presence close enough to be touched. She puts her weight on her sister and feels herself beg. “You have to believe me, Soojung,” she chokes out between sobs. “I miss him, I really do.” She tries to stop her tears but she fails, and what comes out is another choked cry. “But I don’t deserve to, and that’s the worst part.”

Krystal holds her up by the shouldrs, her own tears prickling her eyes. “What exactly happened?”

“I was scared that one day I might lose him, that one day something unexpected could happen and I’d lose my future with him. And if that day came in future, it would kill me,” she cries out. “Because even now, with every second more I spend with him, I’m just falling for him harder and harder. And once that day comes in future, losing him will break me apart, and I could die from the pain. So I decided that I’ll break up with him, so we could just hurt now and not later—“

Jessica feels her sister’s hands loosen. She feels her sister inching away now and she has to fight to look through the waterfall of tears that blurred her vision. “Krys…?”

Krystal gets up from the bed. “You let go of him.”

Jessica desperately grabs at the hem of Krystal’s shirt. “Soojung, I had to—Soojung, you get it, don’t you? Please, please answer me—“

The younger one remains silent. “I get it, Jessica. You let go of him.”

“Then why—“

Krystal bends down to level with Jessica. She gently pulls at her sister’s hands to remove them from her shirt. “You know my story, don’t you?” She puts her hands on Jessica’s shoulders. “The story of why I came back.”

Jessica sees a kind of firmness in her sister’s gaze, and the way her sister’s eyes appeared to be looking through her into her core was untying all the knots she had spent so much time tying. She nods limply, unsure of where the conversation was headed (though she knew full well where it was headed; it was headed for the truth that would rear its ugly head and she would not be able to fight it anymore).

“He assumed he was doing me a favor by not telling me that he liked me. But guess what? I would’ve been more than glad to be there for him in his last days!” Krystal yells.

“So yeah,” she goes on, seeing as to how Jessica was too shocked to respond, “I do get what you’re doing. I just don’t get why—“ She pauses, takes her hands away from her sister’s shoulders. “Noble idiocy is still idiocy, Sooyeon. It’s just an excuse for you to avoid mentioning the fact that you’re not brave enough to trust both him and yourself to make this relationship work. You say you love him, but you’re too scared to even try.”

Krystal gets up again, and this time she heads towards the door. She gives one last glance at her older sister, still sitting there, broken and tattered and incomplete, reeling from her own actions, and decides to end with this:

“Some people don’t even get a chance to hold on tight, but here you are… Letting go.”

=

It is another normal day at school when he steps in, feeling like today could be a good day. He wasn’t fully out of his rut yet, but at least he wasn’t a walking zombie anymore.

He greets his friends like nothing had happened, though his muted responses to questions of his wellbeing have told them more than enough. They all came to a general consensus that the only thing that could make him this sad was the same thing that could make him just as happy.

So nobody asks anymore, and nobody really talks about it, but everybody knows: Donghae and Jessica, the golden couple in every one of their hearts, was no more.

Hyukjae, being his best friend, was naturally inclined to be on tenterhooks the entire time, afraid that anything that came out of his unfiltered mouth could spark another heartbreak dynamite in Donghae’s heart. He walks on eggshells the entire day and it’s painfully obvious to everyone around him, Donghae inclusive.

“Hyukjae, you know I’m okay, right?”

Even for a silly little soul like Hyukjae, he wasn’t that easily bought in. He reacts with barely a quirk of the brow, and Donghae his lower lip. “Okay, let me rephrase—you know I’ll be okay, right?”

“I’m just worried.” He looks at Hyoyeon, who at least has the heart to tone down on her usually snappy personality (at least towards Hyukjae alone). Hyoyeon takes that as a cue to speak.

“We’re all worried,” she adds.

Donghae smiles. He still feels empty inside but he was sure that being on the first step to recovery was a good sign to get his friends to chill out. “I know. And I’m grateful for the concern. But I’ve got to start somewhere if I want to be okay again.”

“You haven’t talked about it,” Hyukjae replies. “At all, man. Even to me, your best buddy—“

“That’s because there’s nothing worth mentioning. It just…” He evades this moment of eye contact. “It just fizzled out.”

“Really?” Hyukjae leans in closer to him. “So if she were to knock on your door asking to speak to you, you’ll turn her away with the same excuse you’re using on me?”

He freezes.

He’s not supposed to think about that. He’s not supposed to entertain any more possibilities, not after having fallen all the way from cloud nine high above.

He steels himself. “It’s not an excuse, it’s a valid and justified reason. There is absolutely nothing left, nothing to even bring up in conversations.”

“Alright, but hypothetically? Come on, just… if she were to do that, you’ll kick her out?”

He shifts uneasily in his position. “I’ll show her the door very politely, very courteously. I’ll even say goodbye and goodnight to her. I’ll hold the door for her on her way out.”

“And if she asks a second time? If she insists on it?”

The bell rings, a signal for the next lesson.

Before Donghae could make his escape from the hot button issue, Hyukjae jolts up on his feet with Hyoyeon at his side. “No, you don’t have to run from this. I’m not giving you a questionnaire, I’m not here for your answers,” Hyukjae says, the hint of a smile pulling at his lips.

Donghae’s eyes falter a bit, and he has to look away so that the guilt of giving thoughtless answers doesn’t eat away at his already-broken heart.

“It’s just that I’m your best friend, and I think that means that I have a duty to ask you the right questions.”

Hyoyeon chips in. “You know, like—food for thought.”

They smile at Donghae and get going, leaving the jilted boy reeling in their wake.

Food for thought, huh.

=

It’s in the evening when he’s finally done with all his lessons and walking into his house for a good rest. It’s also then when he sees Yoona, Heechul and Kangin walking right out.

“Where are you guys going?”

“Oh, uh,” Kangin perks up, a sheepish smile on his face. “Heechul has to see the doctor.”

“Yeah, we’re bringing him,” Yoona quickly follows up with, a very bright smile on her face.

“Are you alright? Do you need me to come with you guys?”

“No, it’s okay,” Heechul answers, the usual disdain billowng out of his lips. “It’s just the doctor, it’s not like we’re going wildlife hunting.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Kangin nods profusely in affirmation. “Don’t wait up for us!”

They leave in a haste and Donghae soon finds himself alone in the house, not quite sure what to do with himself.

=

Next door, Krystal has her headphones stuck snugly on her head, shielding her ears from any unnecessary sounds, like her sister speaking. Or breathing, for that matter.

She plays her punk rock playlist at maximum volume, but even so she can hear the knocks on her door. They’ve been intermittent, an hour or two in between, and have been going on ever since her sister returned home from school that day.

She flips a page of the book she was perusing through. The book of Jongin’s sketches. With every page she looks through, his parents’ words echoed in her head.

He may not have known you as much as he wanted to, but you gave him something to look forward to everyday. That’s what he needed to keep fighting, to keep living through each day, to keep breathing every breath that fate allowed him to. You were his fight. And that’s why we, as well as he, want you to have these sketches. Anytime you feel down, remember you were someone’s reason to hang on. He really liked you and I’m sure that he knew we would too. You’re a nice girl, Krystal. He just wanted you to know that.

She can’t help but to feel that she wasn’t all that nice, given that she’s been ignoring her sister after laying down the cold, hard truth on her like an anvil landing on her from the sky. Sure she finally realized that her sister was being a noble, but not so noble, idiot. And sure she disagreed. But it didn’t mean her sister was walking with her head held up high, with no regard for the hurt in Donghae’s heart. After all, if anyone could feel as much as pain as he did, it was Jessica.

She shuts the book after a moment or two of hesitation, and heads to her door. The knocking has stopped, and for a moment she wonders if her sister could be lingering right outside, or if she’s headed off for dinner already.

She opens the door gingerly and sees no sign of anybody outside. With that, she eases up and lets the door open fully, and this is when she notices a piece of notebook paper lying on the ground outside her room.

If this was a whirlpool, he’ll be my anchor. And I let go of my anchor because I didn’t think it’d be enough to keep me from drowning. But drowning isn’t the real problem here – it’s the letting go or holding on that matters. So now I’m going to brave the currents and swim out into this very whirlpool so that I can find my anchor again. Will you wish me luck?

She hears the front door open, the same old creaks echoing through the house, before it was shut with a firmness that could only be from her sister.

She can’t help but to let a small smirk break through.

“Good luck, Sooyeon.”

=

He scoops a bit of homemade mac and cheese into his porcelain bowl, but has to stop when the doorbell rings. With the bowl in hand he jogs over to the front door. “Just a second!”

When he finally gets the door open, his bowl nearly leaves his hands in sheer shock-induced numbness. Even his lips went numb, so he wasn’t sure whether he made any involuntary sound of surprise.

=

Her breath hitches when she finally sees him upfront in his doorway. Her eyes wander about, but they’re really just studying his features, a habit she acquired when she was still seeing him.

She feels go dry when she notices the dark eye circles that were telling enough of how much sleep he lost post-debacle. His cheeks were a little sunken and every single feature of his told a story, of how he went from cloud nine to six feet under, and how he was taking his first steps into getting back to who he was before.

=

Neither made the first move. It was getting awfully quiet and to be frank, neither really thought about what to expect if they ever came face to face with each other. So perhaps the silence was a good sign, that there were no doors closing on your face or unceremonious banishing from each other’s lives.

But it could also mean that there was nothing left to talk about between them – one of the worst scenarios they feared to even ponder over.

=

But she came with a mission, and she wasn’t about to forsake it.

“Hi,” she greets, and it comes out softer than expected, a little meek and a little shaky.

He nods in response, before registering that she had actually said something and he should at least have the decency to reply in courtesy. “Hi.”

“Can we talk?”

A million things start running through Donghae’s head and he thinks his head is about to explode. What was there to talk about?

Were they finally going to talk about what happened?

No, it didn’t seem likely. There was no sign that the bombshell was about to be dropped. In fact, if anything, he thought she was probably here because Krystal came by just a while ago.

“Is this about Krystal? Because I didn’t ask her to drop by—“

“No,” she quickly interjects, “no, it’s not about her.”

Oh. “Then… What is it about?”

“Us.” That probably wasn’t the right word. “You and me, I mean.”

He can’t help but to think about what Hyukjae said earlier in the day. He was in slight disbelief at how everything was playing out, exactly in accordance to what his best friend had talked about.

“Is there anything to talk about?” he asks. It comes off a little defensive and he curses inwardly at this; he didn’t mean to hurt her, not even now, not even how they ended.

“I don’t know,” she whispers, gaze faltering and suddenly a little reserved. “It’s your call.”

He steadies and studies her face for a while.

He wasn’t about to go back on his word to Hyukjae. He meant it when he said he wouldn’t talk about it if there were nothing left to pursue.

“I don’t think so,” is his answer. He instantly looks away, not ready to see the change in her expressions. He mumbles a hasty apology and goodnight, and then steps back, ready to close the door.

He didn’t see it coming.

He didn’t expect that she’d stick a hand out and hold the door open, leaning all her weight against it and maybe more, just to show that she wasn’t leaving without getting things crossed off her agenda.

“Wait, Donghae,” she chokes out.

It’s the first time she’s said his name in a while and it almost burns . She looks at him pleadingly and feels tears prick her eyes. “Please,” she tries again.

And that’s how Jessica made him speechless again.