stealing glances
-haebaragi

One day, he realizes, he was fond of stealing glances.

When she walks by, when she sits in front of him, and most often at times,
when she doesn’t know.

He would look at her as swift as his tiny eyes blinked, like that of a reflex
one can never restrain; like that of his feelings which in truth, he cannot
perfectly conceal.

This was the closest he could get, he justifies; the longest he could be with her.

And so he takes all that he could from these transient moments: saving a memory
of her smiling, frowning, sleeping—as though he was building a puzzle of her,
that even in bits in pieces, she could be his.

He looks at her and he is driven back to the days when people did not care—
when he was still the unknown son of the sea (her ‘Bada’), and she was the foreign
ice cold princess from a far away land (his ‘Pretty Sica’)

—when they were free.

He looks at her during those times and his heart flutters and beats and pounds.
But they were so young then and he thinks he still cannot understand. Yet there
was nothing to understand really, because life—and love—is vague as it is.

There was never really a need for it to be understood.

It has to be felt.

(Did she feel it?)

He looks at her now and all he could see is a broken ‘them’—a painting of what if’s
and almost’s, of could have been’s and a thousand maybe’s.

He tried mending what has been broken because he, himself wasn’t sure where
exactly they fell apart. He calculates everything and in one graced chance,
pops a balloon as she walks by just to get her attention.

But she had also calculated and manages to hold back, just in time.

A million failed attempts after and he’s back to stealing glances.

They don’t see each other for a while just when he noticed she stopped
avoiding him (or was she really just fond of Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras?)

“Would you greet her if they win?” asked an advice-seeking Kyuhyun regarding
his recently sorted out feelings for Joohyun.

Donghae could only sigh.

Kyuhyun walks out on him when he says he’s given up on her.

She’d be far away and he’d be stealing glances from her—that’s how they had
managed to co-exist lately but Donghae wasn’t sure why this night hurt a lot
more than the other times that they breathe the same air and be standing
on the same stage but always never beside each other.

Maybe because as he looks at her today and recalls when he used to look at
her during those times, he now finally understands the difference.

It’s not in the way she changed and melted, or the way she smiled more often
than before.

It’s not in the way she was the same, or the way she is a new Jessica.

It’s in the way he looks at her and the way she looks at him.

Because when he looks at her during those times, she never fails to look back.

But when he looks at her today she never does (not anymore).