"This is all my fault, Mina. God, I'm so sorry."













They were never perfect to begin with, but no couple ever is. Or maybe it was only like that because there was one piece of the equation that just wasn’t working.

Mina – she’s perfect. So unbelievably perfect. Everything about her is perfect – her gummy smile, the silver tooth, the way her hair frames her face, her shy laugh, the shape and curves of her lips, the mole on the bridge of her nose. Most of these, she dislikes – she wishes her smile was a little less gummy, wishes her silver tooth wasn’t so visible when she smiled or laughed, wished she was a little less shy. But Momo loves all of that, loves all of Mina.

Mina – she’s perfect.

But Momo?

Momo – she’s the one thing that isn’t working in this equation. She’s like that one puzzle piece that just won’t fit but you keep trying to force to fit anyway. She’s that anomaly in all the beauty. She isn’t perfect, not the way Mina is perfect.













Mina is a ballerina. Her body is fluid and graceful and powerful. Every movement is precise; she breathes every breath like it’s the last, giving her all into her dance, her passion. She’d never been one to be talkative and often struggled to really convey her thoughts and her emotions, but when she dances, she speaks volumes. This is her language, the only way she knew how to really make people understand. She is her most beautiful when she dances, breathless by the end of it but so full of life at the same time, Momo thinks.

Momo is broken. That had been her language once, too. That had been her life once, too. Her wings have been clipped and broken.













“I don’t want to go anywhere you can’t follow, anywhere we can’t be together.”

“You don’t need me to live.”

“Jesus, Momo, don’t talk like that.”

“But you know it’s true.”

“No, it’s not. Why do you keep telling yourself that it is?”

“All I’m ever going to do is hold you back, Mina.”

“Momo...”

“Why can’t you just accept the truth that I’m no good for you? Even your parents and friends think so."

Silence.

A silence even louder than words.













Momo wishes she didn’t sometimes hate the one person she loved the most, wishes she didn’t hate how Mina shined brighter than anyone else on stage, wishes she didn’t envy how Mina can be on stage and dance when she can’t. She wishes she didn’t hate how bright and beautiful Mina’s smile is when she’s on stage or when she takes a bow after a performance, she wishes that her anguish didn’t turn this smile she loved so much into something so horrible and so ugly and so monstrous.

Momo wishes she wasn’t broken just so she could love Mina completely and wholly and purely.













Momo wishes Mina didn’t look at her the way she does, like she put the stars in the sky or that she was the most beautiful thing in the world. She wishes Mina didn’t love her as much as she did, wishes Mina would just grow tired of her and realize that all Momo will be to her is dead weight dragging her down.

But no, Mina loves her so much, so unconditionally, so madly.

It breaks Momo’s heart.













They say if you love something, you set it free.

Momo assumes and even reasons to herself that what she's about to do works around the same principle. She loves Mina, of course she does. She loves her so much that she can't bear to hold her back anymore, to be that burden Mina is forced to carry, to be the one thing stopping Mina from becoming all that she can become.

Momo also knows that she doesn't deserve the love Mina has for her, not when jealousy and anger eat at her heart everyday and every time she sees Mina living the dream that she had always aspired for and lived for. Not when Mina has become a bitter reminder of everything she could have been and could have had if she wasn't broken, if she had been more careful and hadn't pushed herself too much, hadn't pushed her body to its limit.

Mina deserved the world and Momo couldn't give her any less.

"Mina, let's break up."













Mina deserved the world and Momo could never give her that.