"Was it hard?" he asked. "Letting go, I mean. Was it hard?"

"Of course it was," she answered with a tired sigh, "but... what was harder was holding on to something I knew was no longer there." 

"I'm sorry." he said back. She didn't respond.

The tick of a clock was a sound that she hardly ever noticed. Something as miniscule and minute as that had always been easy to ignore. Tonight was different though; the tick of the clock in the living room rang loudly in her ears, echoing in her head as each second passed. She was unsure of what time it was or how long she had been there, only that she didn't seem to care and that she didn't want to move.

"How long are you going to sit there?" he asked again.

"Just... just a few more minutes." she answered. "Just give me some time."

"You've been here for a while. You should get some rest."

She ignored it as she felt her eyes sting. The room was growing darker now as the sun set behind the horizon and the cold of her empty apartment had begun to creep up her arms but, in comparison to the pain she felt, it was the last thing she felt, the last thing on her mind. She looked up to the clock sitting above her and saw that it read 6:23PM. He would be arriving shortly; on the days he decided to come home, he'd be walking through those doors any minute now. She let out a shaky breath and glanced over to the hallway, waiting for some indication that he was home. his footsteps, the jingle of his keys, his voice as he finished up a phone call, anything.

 "He's not coming back..." he spoke again seemingly sympathetic, "I'm not coming back so stop waiting."

"...I know." No one had walked in, no one had said anything, and everything was in her head. Her eyes had begun to water again as she looked back to her reflection in the black screen of the TV. She had been here for 2 hours now since she had come back from work, staring at nothing, thinking about nothing. The tears in her eyes began to build up again, blurring her vision before falling down her tear stained cheeks. First it was one, and then another, and then they cascaded down her face in a seemingly unstoppable flow. Bringing her knees up to her chest, she buried her face and began to sob. An uncontrollable sadness settled into her heart and the pain she felt was unbearable. It felt like someone, something was trying to crawl out of her chest, clawing and pounding against her from the inside. It was gut wrenching and painful, the types of pain that made her her want to claw out her eyes and pull out her hair.

"Stop crying," she said in between her sobs, almost angry at herself for crying so helplessly, "Stop crying!" Straightening herself to sit upright, she took in a deep breath and brushed her disheveled, brown hair away from her face and roughly wiped away her tears. Closing her eyes, she tried her best to take in deep, calming breaths but, all she heard were her own raspy, pathetic sobs. She knew that it wasn't working but, she needed to stop, she needed to take control of herself again. Opening her eyes again, they fell upon an open letter on her coffee table, the letter she had opened when she arrived home.

It was her official decree of divorce. She hadn't expected the paper to arrive so soon after the trial and expected it to take at least a month before arriving to their-- her home. Reaching out for it, she took the letter and looked through the paper again, reading the name of her husband, or her ex-husband again, maybe in hopes that she had misread the letter.

She didn't. Everything was gone, his clothes, their wedding photos, his belongings, everything that could have possibly reminded her of him was gone. 

"Kim Joonmyeon" it read. Her thumb grazed over his name lightly as tears escaped the corner of her eyes again, dropping into the bottom of the letter to smudge the black ink. She sighed softly and looked over to her own name, noticing how his surname, "Kim", was no longer attached to her name. He had asked her return the beautiful ring he had given her five years ago and had left her right hand feeling and bare. She had worn it so often that the skin under her ring was lighter than the rest of her finger. She had only ever taken the ring off to shower or do do the dishes, but otherwise, the ring had practically been glued onto her finger since the day he proposed. 

They had been dating for nearly six years before he had asked her to marry him. They'd met when they were 17 at a summer program their high school held and they had both been forced to go by their parents. She remembered that neither of them liked beaches and yet they had both gone to an introductory beach party that the program was hosting. She remembered that she had been uncomfortably sitting