“We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar, and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”

Nayeon woke up with the ring of bell from the door, a drenched man standing in front of her as she opened it. A familiar face she remembered all her life, the boy that turn into a man and left her behind. Park Jinyoung, the boy next door from a hometown back in her childhood.

“Long time no see, Nayeon...” He smiled, a smile that used to turn Nayeon into a mess, made her knees weak, and her hear fluttered. But not anymore, years had taught her to be strong, as she wouldn’t fall again in the sweet boy that gave her flower from his mother backyard. “I received your invitation…”

The man was shivering, with the cold weather and cold wet shirt sticking to his body. And so did Nayeon’s hand, as she was holding the door, keeping it from closing, and keeping it from opening too big. “I’m not inviting you today. Nor at this hour.” Nayeon said, voice tremble for a bit, becoming harder to lock the heart when he was holding the key all along.

“I’m sorry,” his eyes pleading, for something Nayeon could no longer give, “I’m sorry for all those—”

“Your apology, or my forgiveness, would not going to change anything…” she said with such finality that both of them know all too well. “This something you want right now… it’s not going to happen anymore.”

Jinyoung knew that, he knew it after seeing a flash of silver in Nayeon’s finger, that his chances were no longer present. The days when young Nayeon always followed him around, and waited for him, had already ended long time ago, as he couldn’t notice that her heart was the one he should have reciprocated. He had been caught up in a cycle of another party, the one who was not even looking at his direction. When all along, she was the one who always there for him, the one he took for granted, the one that he actually could not live without.

“I’m happy,” her voice shaking, “I have found my happiness. I’m not going to let it go.”

“Like I let you go,” Jinyoung whispered in his head.

“Someone had to put an end to this cycle,” Nayeon added.

Park Jinyoung was never a bad person in Nayeon’s eyes, he was just incredibly stupid. He was the one who always took a great care of her, taught her everything and nothing, a place where she told all her story, and also the one who told Nayeon’s everything. More than an older brother and a sister, they grew up to be each other best of friends.

But as Nayeon clung in to loving him, Jinyoung ended up waiting for another, reaching for another. She had waited for too long for him that someone else already became her world. Even if no one would replace Park Jinyoung in her heart, she would never return to him anymore. She would not repeat the same mistake she made waiting for him. Both of them were sick from the foreign place, finding comfort in each other arms. He was a familiar embrace, a comfort of home, but he was also a sickness, grown in strange place, that was going to disappear anytime soon. It will disappear, Nayeon need to make it disappear.

“This is not your home, and will never be,” Nayeon said, torn with the guilt as his solemn face looking at her, pleading, pleading, and pleading for nothing, “Go home, your home is the place where your wife is waiting for you.”

With that, Nayeon closed her door, of her apartment, and her heart. She had to let him go. Because he was just a lingering feeling, of familiar and comfort. She had to let him go.

He was not a sanctuary, she was not a home, they both had been holding too long on the feeling of pseudo comfort and nostalgia of the past.