Chapter 6: How to get over a breakup (or at least try)

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JB's pov.
Apparently, JB hasn't fully gotten over his first love.

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When JB spots Mark near the toilet, all he’s thinking is, about time, we need to film the closing parts for the video so I can get out of these damn heels. Rushing over, he has just been about to tell Mark exactly that when he sees a familiar figure exit the toilet.

Black hair styled in a boyish cut, wearing a cardigan over neatly pressed shirt and ankle-length slacks, Jinyoung is the last person JB expects to see.

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Sometimes JB writes for catharsis, but mostly he writes because it’s his way of understanding himself. Even though he prefers the medium of film and videography to communicate with people, JB finds words are the best way to communicate with himself. Somehow, his clearer subconscious mind has a better control over his hand than over his inner voice, so when he writes freely, he discovers things about himself that he had but an inkling of.

When he had first broken up with Jinyoung, JB had been a mess. He didn’t eat much, he drank a lot, and he had skipped most of the lectures he could get away with. Even though it’s been 4 years since they’ve gone their separate ways, JB still occasionally thought about how their relationship might have turned out if they had been more mature when they met. He knew he shouldn’t really entertain such “what ifs”, that he should move on already, but even through the 2 short relationships he’d had since Jinyoung, JB found it hard to really fully let go of his first love and move on.

It was one of these nights when he was feeling torn like that that JB sat down at his laptop to start writing. He didn’t think too hard, just allowed his fingers to type. When he had stopped, JB wasn’t terribly surprised to see that he had ended up typing out a story of a gay boy, so young and naïve, falling for a biual boy, only for the 2 of them to eventually break up due to the gay boy’s insecurity over the other’s ual orientation.

I’ll never be able to match up to a girl… What if I’m not enough for you? Do you regret choosing me because now you can’t be with a girl?

JB remembered asking Jinyoung these questions, his boyfriend assuring him every time that JB was enough for him. Yet somehow, that did little to ease JB’s growing insecurity. Eventually, Jinyoung, lovely understanding Jinyoung, had grown weary of having to constantly reassure JB that he truly loves him, when there was nothing he had done to suggest otherwise.

Eventually, Jinyoung had asked to break up.

A few nights after that, beer in hand, JB returned to the story he had written, opening a new document to rewrite the story. This would be his what if. This would be what could have happened if JB had met Jinyoung when they were older, more mature, and much wiser, and JB had learnt to reel in his tendency to jump to conclusions and get riled up over nothing.

After letting the draft of the rewritten story sit in his laptop for a few weeks, JB decided that, as cathartic as it had been to write the story, maybe his story can be a lesson for other young people like himself. Debating between publishing the story as an article and making it into a short film, the film lover in JB prompted him to choose the latter. However, he had quickly realized how much it would cost to film the video by himself.

Thinking about the short video series that he often works on in Buzzfeed, JB considered whether he should submit his story for one of the Buzzfeed series. Although doing so would reduce the creative freedom he would have over the video, JB thought it’ll be the most likely way to actually produce the story. So, after finding the relevant people, JB had ended up submitting the story to Buzzfeed.

JB supposed, given his initial reservations about the lessened creative freedom he had over his story, he had been quick to defend it to his original direction during the first meeting he had