Her lips doesn't feel like lips, sometimes. It feels like paper, at times. Stiff and cracked in different places. Today, it feels green and numb and she just feels like vomitting her anxiety away.

People don't really say it, but she knows that her presence brings discomfort to them. There is something off-putting and reserved in the way Sooyoung keep her fingers clean from dirt, no crumpled piece of cloth in her body or her closet, every edge of her room owning no speck of dust and the edge of her hair all ends on the same length. Everything about Sooyoung echoes of balance and synchronicity some people would mock as boring.

Her partner, however, doesn't really reflect the choice someone like her would pick. The free-spirited and off the tracks Thailand descent who topple the balance she has on her life every Friday always make her wonder, in what right mind she was having to let him into her life.

"Come to bed with me, Sooyoung."

She sighs, unlatching her earrings before her wardrobe. "You're drunk."

He hiccups. "I'm drunk so that you can take care of me, of course."

"You're crazy."

Bedraggled hair styled by his own frustration in endless nights making music and a hint of eyeliner lining his eyes, the fact that Ten hasn't lurched upon her calms her a little bit.

"Over you? Obviously," and there he goes. Sooyoung isn't even spared five minutes to detach her clothes to a more comfortable one when his fingers spread like flames all over it already.

She wants to beg him a pardon but it's not like Ten cares about the courtesy between human beings.

Ten said that the reason that she caught his eyes (made him nuts, made him dreamt of her, having her face repeated in his dreams and et cetera which kind of makes her somewhat disturbed) is because how unreachable and distant she looks, how she is the sort of person that is out of this world; divine he said. Strange is how she doesn't feel anything when he speaks of this all. Perhaps, because it doesn't come across logical in her way of thinking, the way Ten seems all over her when she doesn't feel anything at all for him. But he indeed piques her interest, and that's why she said yes to the only sensible though radical request he made from her; to date him.

Ten said that he is committing suicide by dating her, knowing full well she doesn't love him. He's lucky that Sooyoung doesn't really care. 

To date him means living together, and Ten is barely home with all the band gigs he has. Strange how their differences don't clash like this.

Of course, after dating him, she made some research about him online, about his music and his history. Turns out he is quite a sensational band vocalist, his discography a rollercoaster of his life, some are dedicated to his past lovers. 

His home resembles a music studio rather than a shipwreck after she moved in, most importantly.

Whenever he has the time, he makes her listen to his music. He plays the strings in front of her in lazy Sundays. His fingers are rough from picking on them continuously. Sometimes, they bleed when he got angry over something; losing his inspiration, getting the wrong coffee and his guitar not in tune. But drunk Ten doesn't hit people, he just sleeps. Not really, he just doesn't let go of her when he's drunk. And Sooyoung dislikes the smell of alcohol.

"You should come to my concerts, sometimes. Watch me being amazing and all."

A raised eyebrow from her table to him peering at her laptop. "Okay."

But she never comes and he never mentions it. Sooyoung just doesn't want to watch from afar, coloured girls blinking in the distant behind his stage that would take turns to have him. She doesn't want to have any of that.

When she listens to him playing the strings, thoughts come to her. Deep thoughts of how she is fond of routine and having him around her has become a part of her routine.

"Can you play "Michelle" by the Beatles?"

He stops. Stares at her for a while as if she is saying the most incredulous thing on earth. "You listen to them?"

She shrugs it off, unaffected by his surprised face. "They're good. I do listen to music, sometimes."

He stares at her, fingers paused between strings, and she pretends to not realize that he is gazing at her intently while she looks out of the window, waiting for him to begin. She does this a lot, pretends to be aloof and unaffected when people got their eyes on her, waiting for them to get bored and moved on.

"You look like heaven and I look like hell."

Propped head on her lovely bones, Sooyoung looks back at him. "What a liar." Frown and down-turned chapped lips.

Soon after that, she hears those words laced in melody as Ten takes a shower.

Sometimes, she wonders if she walks around with a neon sign on her forehead that says "impassive", because that's her default emotion every single day. She's not someone who share her smiles very often. She hears that in his melodies, too. 

Often, she questions if he actually loves her. She is torn between surrendering to her curiosity and pride that perhaps, between the two of them, all that is alight comes from his sole desire only. But who is she to wonder, when she can't even feel love? 

Sooyoung has forgotten that at some point in her life, something had truly scarred her. A scar that is irreversible and deep, blocking it away from her was better than living with it.

She doesn't want to remember and acknowledge that it even exists.

There is a saying that every human will come across a moment where they will lose all control over their anger, become the very person they don't want others to see.

Sooyoung feels like she has missed her chance in doing that. So when Ten actually doesn't smell like cigarettes and alcohol, but scented candle and synthetic roses, her body goes cold when his fingers graze her knee all the way to her thigh under covers. His fingers are so used to the spots and landmarks of the universe Sooyoung body is that he doesn't need to peer through the darkness.

In this moment, Sooyoung wishes that even the slightest tip of his finger can graze a fiber of her heart.

Breakups are mandatory in the history of human life. Ten can see that. Sooyoung can see that. Ten is left in storms while Sooyoung walks away with nothing tearing her heart apart. 

He may be free spirited and wild like a mockingbird. But all of those who own wild hearts and roaming imagination longs for those whom they can reside as their sanctuary, a place that they can call as home.

"Sooyoung."

Ten has called her for the ninth time that day, watching her packing her life out of his, in so much composure he begins to see again the reason he was infatuated with this girl. 

"For once, I thought you'd finally fall for me."

A slight shift of her fingers grazing her hair, she suddenly is aware of the cracks on her fingers. She's not taking care of herself properly nowadays, she just noticed.

There is no laughter in his dimly lit smile. "I guess I'm just bound to fall for those who can't love me."

A slight shift of the heel of her feet, rotating to look at him. Ten sits on the edge of the bed, palms folded to each other, peering up to her. That wreckage of a hair is waiting for her to smooth them out.

Sooyoung thinks she's rigid and frail, stubborn and numb and she doesn't understand why Ten loves her. The sky that spreads outside feels like the gap that separates them even when their distance is a mere shift to brush skins. Sooyoung finds the loneliness and desolation in how they will fade away like the smoke that they purposely breath through the city, with a silent prayer that they will die this way.

"I don't want to love you, that's all."