End Of The Road

“Hey it’s me, what you saw earlier was not what it looks like!”

“It’s me again, let’s talk about this like we normally do. Answer my calls.”

“Jin please, I know you’re there… just please talk to me or text me, anything!”

Jin is sitting alone at the dining table looking at the telephone on the kitchen counter as he recalls the voice mails he had received that night. How he deleted every single one as he drank the cold beer he just took from the refrigerator right after.

It has been a year since then, the days pass by so fast unnoticed and now, that day has become a memory, a treacherous fragment of Jin’s past he no longer wants to reminisce about. The pain he felt that day was too much, it was unbearable. He felt as if his heart was being torn apart into pieces.  For him the sky faded to complete darkness.

* a year earlier *

Not wanting to see the person that caused his heart ache, Jin left the place he shared together with him for six long years and went back to his parents, who welcomed him with open arms.

He remembered waking up in the middle of the night crying in his old room, curling up into a ball as he brings his legs to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Even his old super mario toys on the shelf that used to make him happy before did not make any difference. It still hurts and he felt hopeless. Every night after that, he’d fall into sleep crying in silence, but as soon as he closes his eyes the scene of what happened that day flashes back and his supposed dreams turn into a nightmare and he then would feel pain worse than anything he has ever felt before.

It wasn’t the fact that he had left him, no, it was Jin who walked out of the relationship but it was him who ruined it. The pain he was feeling could’ve been avoided if he just stayed faithful, if he just didn’t break his trust, if he just never did what he did. Jin was heartbroken, devoid of any emotions.

But he thinks he was partly to be blamed, this whole thing would have never happened if his heart didn’t flutter for the cutest boy in college, with that handsome facial features and charming voice, who also reciprocated his feelings. It was his fault too for falling deeply in love with him.

At the same time something deep within Jin thinks that had all of that not happened, the outcome would have still inevitably been the same. One way, or another, he would have still met him, being in the same university and having the same experiences they shared would have simply been taken as a different route in which the same emotions would be conveyed but ultimately, arrive in the same destination. They would have still met and fallen in love with each other, and arrive at this current situation, the mess Jin is at this point in time. He would still be left without him.

But the whole thing was not as easy looking back.

He tried to win Jin’s heart again. The calls continued until the late nights.

“I’m sorry Jin, it was my fault, I didn’t know what I was thinking.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, that didn’t mean anything I swear, you’re the one I love.”

“I know you’re angry at me just tell me what to do. I’ll do whatever it takes. I will fix this, I’ll do better.”

Each time his voice sounded more and more desperate.

He came to Jin’s parents’ house as well, and it took all of Jin’s mother’s strength to refrain his father from going out and beating the hell out of him.

Standing on the family house porch, clutching tightly onto his jacket in the cold night, Jin noticed the dark circle under his eyes. It was good to know he was not the only one having a hard time.

He only saw him through the windows, he never went out. The man he loved for six years is waiting outside, in the cold, asking for his forgiveness. He thinks he is weak, weak enough that he might give in the moment he sees him up