20:00
The One I Love
in every breath, there's life. between my teeth, a knife. / all i've ever known
As she walks through campus, she can’t help but wonder if it will be the last time.
Jennie was never much of a sentimental person, but even the trees seem to hold a vague memory. She came to school with a dream, but she’s leaving with empty hands and a heavy heart. The administrative building looms above her like the leviathan. With a deep breath, she walks through the heavy glass doors, paperwork in hand.
The process is painless and quick, just as the receptionist over the phone had promised her. Jennie walks down the hall aimlessly, shoes scuffing against the tile flooring. It’s only a temporary medical withdrawal, she tells herself. She’ll be back, as if nothing had happened at all.
She somehow finds herself in the glass-walled laboratory building. She wonders why she never took the time to enjoy the view, she’d been too busy with her face buried in her books or with her chin proudly raised. She can see the path from where she stands, the path she had wandered aimlessly with Minho.
The trees have fully bloomed now, their blossoms fat and pink. She never thought she would but she misses the winter.
She misses the way just the sound of Minho’s laugh made her feel warm. She misses when she could walk away from the hospital, and not have to come back if she didn’t want to. She misses thinking that losing Song Minho would be the worst thing that could happen to her.
(And maybe, just a little bit, it still is.)
The sound of footsteps is muffled by the spring wind howling at the window. She doesn’t hear him, but she feels the sudden and jarring grip of his hand on her arm.
“Did you block my number?” He asks, forehead creased. The heart-shaped tattoo peeks tauntingly through the rolled sleeve of his lab coat.
“Yes.” Jennie answers through gritted teeth, bracing herself against the window. From this angle, she could land a pretty painful kick. She bites her lip. “What do you want, Jaewon? Other than to up my life?”
He steps back for a moment, caught off guard by the venom in her voice. She takes the opportunity to shake off his grip, repositioning her body so that she’s no longer cornered.
“ up your life?” He chuckles darkly, smoothing his jet-black hair back with his hand. “You’re the one who’s got me all ed up. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep…”
His pained expression stirs the part of her that she hates the most. The part of her that cares about Jaewon, just a little bit. The part of her that sees herself in him, that understands he didn’t start out like this. It’s just the way the world made him.
“I’m not pregnant,” She tells him in a quiet voice. No anger. No venom. “Jaewon, I’m… sick.”
“Sick?” He moves away at the word, she wonders if
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