For the first time in a long while, Seoyul feels the depression she’s fought so hard to keep out of her life creep back into her life.

Jongin notices the pills she’s starting to eat again.

“Why are you eating those pills again?” Jongin finally asks when they’re both having dinner to celebrate their seventh anniversary. It’s nothing fancy, just a candle lit dinner at home after putting Haebit—his daughter—to bed.

“Because I’m feeling depressed. Those pills are for my depression, Jongin, and you know it.” Seoyul replies, and Jongin’s movements stutter for a moment. Both of them tell each other everything, because it’s easier like that—and more importantly because it’s part of their contract. They never found the point to keep parts of their private lives in secret, because they don’t really have anything much going on either.

Their lives are practically conjoined, either way, thanks to the marriage and the most important person in both of their lives—Kim Haebit.

“Is it because of Seojin? If anything, I think you’re only doing this because you’re sad that your only brother is getting taken away. Are you really sure that you’re going to stop wiring money into his account? Because that’s eventually going to get him killed,” Jongin inputs.

 “I’m sure. Until he apologizes to me… at least. The things he said to me—they were horrible. After everything I’ve done to him, Jongin,” Seoyul says quietly. Even though Jongin is a good five years older than her, she calls him by his name. Honorifics were never deemed to be necessary—they’ve pretty much crossed every barrier they have between them the moment they decided to walk down the aisle.

“It’s not like it isn’t true,” Jongin shrugs, and Seoyul feels the anger reignite, but she holds herself back.

“In this cruel world, I had dreams. I wanted to be a pianist. I wanted to be rich. I sacrificed it all for him.” Seoyul finds herself saying, and her voice sounds hollow even to herself.

“So be a pianist, no one’s stopping you. You’re already rich, because you’re married to me. Should I buy you another car to have yourself forgive Seojin?” Jongin’s words are true, but it somehow feels like knives against her skin having him say it so nonchalantly.

“I broke all of my fingers when that loan shark went after me for Seojin’s debts. I can never play the piano the same way again, and you know that!”

Jongin is quiet for a while.

“Suit yourself. But just remember, the contract I signed says that I have to send money to your baby brother every month—and even when you’ve told him you’re cutting him off, it doesn’t mean that I have to cut him off too,” Jongin always speaks so level-headedly, so filled with rationality, and it was one of the reasons she had agreed to marry him in a whim.

But hearing him being rational now annoyed the life out of Seoyul. She just wants him to shut up.

“Why do you care about him so much, anyway? It’s not like he’s your real brother or anything,” Seoyul’s chooses those specific words to hurt Jongin, and it works. His face contorts into something ugly, and Seoyul doesn’t care.

“You’re being impossible,” Jongin stands up so roughly that his chair topples over and falls onto the floor, the loud crash a contrast to the deafening silence they’re both engulfed in.

In the seven years they’ve been married, they’ve never fought. At least not so vocally like this, and it never involved emotions as raw as this one had. It had always been about work or something petty like picking up Haebit late from school.

Seoyul feels something gnawing inside her chest.

***

At the young age of twenty-two, the fresh university graduate Seoyul was had slumped into a spiral of depression.

Her degree in music didn’t get her jobs. Her gigs and her part-time work didn’t provide enough for both her and Seojin to eat. She had almost no friends to help her because everyone was either struggling with their own expenses to pay or too rich to want to hang out with her, and more importantly, she had been a bitter cynic who was a pain in the to keep up with.

Everyone knows that love is a luxury they can’t afford, but Seoyul’s unnecessary over the top hatred for love had made nobody comfortable to maintain a friendship with her.

It’s not like she hates the loneliness, because she always knew that her hatred for love was justified.

Her parents had fallen in love and gave birth to her and her brother when it’s so clearly illegal to do so, and kept both her and Seojin in hiding for years until the government discovered them when she was eighteen. They made her life hell.

It’s not like nothing much has changed after the death of her parents—they were always poor, anyway. The only thing that changed is the hopeless romantic that died inside of her replaced by the hatred for her own parents to have done something so selfish.

To top off her struggle, her baby brother had gone to the sketchier parts of the town to gamble the money he didn’t even have, only to tell her days after that some loan shark was after him and he needed to run away.

So Seojin did, and the loan sharks came after her instead. They kept her, and burnt and broke all of her fingers to send a message to Seojin to not mess with them. She cried for weeks before Seojin finally returned, and her fingers were never the same afterwards.

Seojin apologized with his life, but Seoyul was still devastated. She’d forgiven Seojin because she’d never be able to hate her own brother, but in that moment of weakness, chose to end her life instead.

Seoyul remembers the clear blue sky the day she met Jongin, standing on the edge of a skyscraper—ready to end it all.

Jongin, twenty-seven and successful, had been there to end his life too.

“Are you going to kill yourself?” Jongin asked, and the sound of his voice nearly toppled Seoyul over into the open space and down onto the pavement. Her heart had been beating out of her chest out of nervousness, and it doubled even more when she sees Jongin’s handsome face behind her.

“I—”

“If you wanted to kill yourself you wouldn’t have held yourself back when I surprised you just now. I think you’re just seeking for attention,” he said, a sarcastic smile adorning his handsome face. Seoyul had felt ra