Letting Go

Let the tears wash away all the pain from yesterday

J. Cole

 May 2020

“Seungyeon-ah” Jonghyun absentmindedly blurted out in shock as he recognized his wife weeping heartbreakingly on their marital bed.

Seungyeon’s usually heart capturing light brown eyes were obviously reddened from all the crying. Jonghyun could instantly tell that she had lost weight, too. She almost disappeared in his old baseball shirt back from the “We got married” days and the white colour made her pale skin and the dark circles around her eyes stand out even more. In the dim light of the bedside lamp she looked fragile and somewhat ghost-like. Seeing her like that left him speechless and nothing but regretful.

He should have been back sooner.

“Oppa…” Seungyeon finally managed to voice out, although it was not much more than a quivering whisper. She looked very surprised to see him as she slowly got up from the bed, clearly thinking about how to react next.

Seungyeon was staring at him in anxiety and confusion. He had never seen this kind of expression on her face ever before. She somehow looked scared and hesitant, something he simply couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around since it was so incomprehensible to him and her tears just wouldn’t stop falling.

What on earth happened?

“Seungyeonie” Jonghyun mumbled, staring back at his wife. He watched her for a moment, thinking of how to treat her best; then he instinctively closed the distance between them, pulling her into a tight hug. He slowly Seungyeon’s back while carefully holding her in his arms as if she could break any second. Although he felt quite lost in the current situation; even now her sweet scent didn’t fail to calm him down somehow.

“Please, yeobo, talk to me, neh?” He asked worriedly, his voice being thick with emotion.

“I am terrible. Ottoke?” She finally admitted after a while between her heartbreaking sobs, while holding onto his shirt as if it was the only thing that kept her in a standing position.

“Shhhh… You’re not. How could you even think that?” Jonghyun told her softly, while placing light kisses on the top of her head.

“I am. I am reckless too. I’m not capable of being a good wife to you, Oppa. I am such a failure!” Seungyeon explained randomly, her voice breaking. It did not make any sense at all to him, but she seemed so sure of her words.  

“Seungyeon-ah, what happened? Tell me in the right order. Please!” Jonghyun was almost begging now, trying desperately to understand what was going on.

His beautiful, usually beamingly bright wife looked like a shadow of herself and he had a hard time figuring out what could have possibly went wrong during the last weeks they were apart. Something must have deeply shocked her and he hated himself for not being at her side to protect her when it happened.

“The day Shinhye Unnie brought me to hospital… It was only a short moment, but back then I thought, perhaps I am not ready yet - perhaps we are not ready yet. We even said we wanted to wait, so I wondered what to hope for. I hesitated, because I already signed up for such a heavy drama promotion schedule and a lot of CF’s are set already, too. But then I really just wanted everything to go well. However, it seems like I can’t do anything right. I try and try but the doctors said they would need to keep me at the hospital if I didn’t improve soon. They said we’re in danger.” Seungyeon was rambling on, still not making any sense at first, until her last sentence hit him.

We… In danger?

He moved back a little, trying to get a proper look at her, but his wife eventually got his intention wrong.

“You must be very angry…” She said in a thin voice as her hand absentmindedly flew to the side of her head to tear her hair, a gesture she could barely supress whenever she felt overstrained with a certain situation. “You wanted to wait until after your solo comeback…”

She looked at him with her big brown eyes and he had never seen her as lost before, while he was urgently trying to put the pieces together.

And then he finally remembered what conversation she was most likely referring to. They did speak about important milestones in their future marriage shortly after he came back from military service.

Could it be…? His heart suddenly started racing like crazy.

He had never cleared things with her, assuming that she would already know how he was truly feeling. Was she that scared about his reaction?   

“Seungyeon-ah perhaps…” He started but wasn’t able to finish what he was going to say.

“I am 10 weeks pregnant.” Seungyeon told him breathlessly while more tears were forming in her eyes.

However, his wife didn’t expect what happened next.

Jonghyun cupped her cheeks and carefully wiped away her tears. Then he