It has been days since I expressed my need to be with my daughter. It has been nights since I last slept due to my concern of her welfare. I miss her terribly. They didn't even let me see her face. It had been hours since I last had a fight with Joo Hyuk, yet here we are again. He refuses to acknowledge the fact that I want to give more attention to the matter at hand—that he shouldn't give me an ultimatum that's incredibly difficult to choose between. I always knew that I didn't quite deserve all the things that have been handed to me so easily and I am currently hating myself for refusing to think about it before.

     "How many times do you have to keep on breaking my heart?" he asks so silently—so sullenly after another round of pointless fighting, that it almost made me think twice about the decision I just made. But at the same time, there's still a part of me that's slightly angered by how selfish he is. He asked me this without thinking about how much pain he has caused me as well. He left me more times than he came back and in many ways, it's got me questioning a lot of things between us. Was it to soon for me to forgive him like how I did? "How many times does this has to happen—"

     "—how many times are you going to keep being insensitive?" I ask, the fury slowly creeping up my veins as we both stand there; a rumpled mess of words wrongly said and misunderstood feelings, engulfed in the stale air that makes up what we really are—a pair of toxic beings pushed together by an inconsiderate fate. "You've left me countless of times, yet you don't feel the least bit of remorse for it now that I forgave you. Are you not gonna learn?"

     "Don't use my mistakes as an excuse."

     "Then stop using your stupidity to cover it up," I retort. "You're going to sacrifice my daughter's life just to keep someone as damaged as me," I grip the ends of my shirt, trying so hard to keep the fear and the anger at bay despite the helpless look that he has swimming in the depths of his brown eyes. It's been four days since we read the letter and we still found ourselves in the same situation that we've been in ever since I gave the ring back to him. I should have gone out of the house the very moment that I returned the damned piece of jewelry but I still had much to do especially in terms of easing Joon Seo into the idea that I'll be gone for a long time. "At some point, you're gonna have to accept that you need to let me go."

     "So is that all that we mean to you?"

     "Stop—"

     "No, Sung Kyung," he answers with finality. "I'm not gonna stop trying to dissuade you from this insane idea that you have inside your head," he points to his own temple as if he's drilling the thought on my own. "You can't always be the savior in every damn story that you have for yourself," he says slowly like a man letting himself drown in shallow waters. "I know that you're strong and you're an incredible woman. You know how to stand up for yourself—" his voice softens, and my heart feels along with the tone of his voice. "But it's okay to ask for other people's help sometimes. There's nothing wrong with it."

     I look at him with a facade of defiance, my eyes downcast on the floor but my heart beating with a hint of the wrong kind of prid