fandom: dreamcatcher
ships: jiyoo/jibo
warnings!
angst

Time does not stop ticking when you get your heart broken. Time flies by instead, the days blurring and whirring together until there is no time left to count.

00:02:30:00:00

She’s underwater.

Head hurting from an invisible pressure that’s crushing her head, eyes sore after a waterfall of tears from some time ago (she can’t remember). She’s floating, but she’s not. At the very least she feels as though she’s suspended under deep waters, voices drowned out and always too far away to grasp and she’s left watching their lips move, wondering why anyone is able to do that, wondering how no one wonders how anything happens at all. 

She takes a deep breath. Then releases.

Her ears ring at the sharp intrusion of noise, feeling as though knives had stabbed through her eardrums and she winces at the dizzying lights that suddenly fills her eyes, gone are the darkness at the edges of her vision. Everything’s moving again, as if the world was on hold in the first place but the drowning feeling remains.

“Minji,” She finally hears and she finally sees Yoohyeon staring back at her with something dancing in her eyes but Minji can’t see, can’t feel, can’t anything.

“Are you okay?”

Minji breathes shakily but as soon as she talks, it’s stable yet she can’t feel her own voice.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

She remembers what Yoohyeon said too late, her words finally reaching her when she’s staring at the empty walls, lost in thoughts and in time and finally she can feel bit by bit until it becomes overwhelming and she closes her eyes, chanting numbers and words to hypnotize herself into a restless slumber, drowning out whatever she feels.

“Let’s break up.”

Minji’s now asleep.

00:01:20:00:00

“Where are you?” Bora’s voice is loud, even through the phone, and it echoes and reverberates inside Minji’s head for a few moments and yet despite that, she struggles to understand. 

It takes her minutes of processing and a short break of tense silence from Bora for Minji’s thoughts to catch up with her. Still she doesn’t understand the anger.

“Oh I’m…somewhere,” Minji answers, unsure of where she actually is. There were colors, muted browns and peaches and maybe she has an inkling of where she was but at that moment she can only focus on Bora’s rambling on the phone and the coffee stain on the book she had been apparently reading.

“What do you mean somewhere?” Bora immediately asks, “Are you not coming to class?”

Minji looks around. A café. The one from their first date. Seems fitting.

She looks back on the book she was supposed to be reading, the words becoming incomprehensible as soon as she reads them and everything in the world starts to fade again, Bora’s voice drowning away, her vision dimming on its edges.

“No,” Minji answers. It wouldn’t matter anyways.

She doesn’t come for a few more days but no one else looks for her anyways. Life was moving on and so was everyone. Minji was too, although in a different way. Each day comes faster after every sleep she takes and when she comes back, nothing has changed so she goes on the days, feeling nothing. She doesn’t know how to feel about the nothing.

00:01:00:02:13

Minji stares at the numbers, lips tugging into an insincere smile. If she could feel, she would be happy. She thinks. 

She’s heard about it, read about it in the books back when she could consume happiness and things. People tell tales of their clock starting to tick and tick until it drops to zero, taking away their breath as the numbers sink into their skin. She’s heard they’re suffocating but Minji’s already suffocated, something clogged at the back of , heavy on her chest and she wonders maybe for her it would be different. 

Maybe when her time comes, she could finally breathe again. She wished she could breathe again.

“Why is it so hard for you to just talk to me?”

Minji looks at her, Bora’s face painted with a frown and worry etched on every inch of her movement. She’s squeezing Minji’s hands, perhaps an attempt at comfort and Minji smiles a bit, this time genuine, feeling some kind of warmth seep into her heart. 

“I’ll be fine,” Minji replies, this time more convincing with the lighter tone in her voice because at that moment, she felt a small taste of happy. 

Bora visibly relaxes, relief obviously washing over her, shoulders sagging but there’s still determination in her eyes.

“You’ll tell me when you’re not okay?” 

Minji nods, sincere. Because she can’t be not okay when she can’t even feel anything at all. So she’s okay. Definitely.

She’s not okay.

Or at least within her own thoughts, alone, she isn’t. 

She’s been staring at her screen for hours, watching her friends fill her inbox with messages that she had no strength to reply to. She’s not even sure if she should. 

Somehow she feels different, like she’s an outsider. Well kind of but not really. Minji’s not sure how to explain it but she’s imagining life without herself. It’s as though she’s disconnected, watching the future that has yet to happen play out in her head and she’s nothing but a bystander, hearing everything and nothing at all. Seeing everything and nothing at all. She still feels nothing at all.

Bora comes every now and then, and so every now and then Minji would feel something other than the numbness she’s used to seep into her being. She’s not sure how, or when, or what really but every time Bora’s eyes would light up with concern, Minji would at least feel a bit sorry. 

Sometimes it’s in the way Bora would mindlessly hold her hand, or when the smaller girl’s fingers would roam around Minji’s exposed skin, as though she’s trying to map out the girl and at times, these times Minji would cherish, Bora’s touch would leave something electric, sparking some feeling in her cold shoulders, neck, arms, everywhere Minji had felt the girl.

Some days, Bora’s presence is enough to fill her with something other than nothing. 

00:00:12:00:00

Minji wakes up to the smell of coffee. And pancakes.

She blinks and she remembers Bora staying the night, offering her some junk food and a list of Netflix shows to watch in her hands. They’d talked for hours, Minji forgetting her thoughts and everything else that lingers in her mind whenever she was alone, even for just a night. She hadn’t realized when she’d fallen asleep either but for once, her dreams weren’t troubled by nightmares and memories and she’s not somewhere deep in the sea, swallowed whole by the darkness.

Instead, she’s opening her eyes to Bora with a proud smile on her lips, pointing a spatula at her as she enters the kitchen with a groggy yawn.

“I’ve conquered your kitchen,” Bora exclaims and Minji remembers not allowing the smaller girl to use it way back the first year they knew each other. 

A bubble of laughter escapes Minji’s throat and she feels like crying, feeling as though she’d opened and conquered an obstacle herself. Laughing made her feel lighter. Better.

“Thank you, Bora,” Minji breathes, this time really smiling.

Bora grins, “Anything for you my friend.”

Friend.

Suddenly, the nothing is back. Feeling as though all her feelings are shoved down to be locked somewhere inside her again and Minji doesn’t understand but she keeps her smile anyways, and she’s slowly losing it as the seconds tick by.

Yoohyeon calls and her chest constricts painfully.

Minji savors the feeling, smiling through the silent tears that keeps flowing. There’s still a heavy feeling against her chest and everything is still muted but at least she’s feeling.

“Is your clock ticking?” Yoohyeon asks, her voice a whisper and Minji imagines the girl as they were before. Yoohyeon always looking at her with care.

Her emotions are a waterfall but she’s drowning in them. Or rather it’s drowning in her, threatening to spill out the bottle she’d kept them in but there is only a few cracks to spill out through.

Her voice is hoarse when she answers, sounding even more foreign than the last time she talked because she’d always preferred to be silent these days.

“Yes,” Minji speaks, itching.

Yoohyeon doesn’t speak for a minute. Minji thought the call ended until she hears the girl’s choked cry.

“I’m sorry.”

It doesn’t take a second for Minji to reply.

“Don’t be.”

“You know it’s impossible to stop, Bora,” Minji mutters, eyes never leaving the stars.

She’s lying down the rooftop, cold seeping into her back and lulling her into some kind of drowsiness. Down there she’s able to hear Bora’s heavy footsteps easily and the other girl’s warm presence was even more palpable against the freezing night.

“You know that’s not true,” Bora replies in a whisper, moving to lay down beside her and Minji could hear her heave a sigh as she holds her right hand, Minji’s cold fingers interlacing against Bora’s.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

Its Minji’s turn to sigh, the numbers imprinted on her other hand suddenly heavier. 

00:00:00:00:10

“Would it have changed anything?”

Bora is silent. Minutes pass and Minji counts thirty stars before she speaks again.

“Maybe,” Bora answers, squeezing their intertwined hands lightly, “If you had given me a chance.”

00:00:00:00:01

“What do you mean?” Minji asks, finally turning to look at the smaller girl, a surge of emotion starting to rise up but never actually coming.

Bora looks back, beautiful under the silver light of the moon that bathes her, Minji realizes. Her smile is bitter when she speaks and Minji’s breath hitched.

00:00:00:00:00

Inside her head she can hear the seconds left ticking, painfully as she feels something build up, chest constricting excruciatingly again, three seconds and-

“I can love you too.”

A beat. 

Her clock stops ticking but it doesn’t fade. It doesn’t sink into her skin like how she’s told, like how she’d imagine. It stays, and she stays and she’s breathing and Bora’s staring at her like she’s a miracle.

Minji thinks she can finally breathe. Not entirely but bit by bit, the weight in her chest becoming lighter as Bora pulls her into a tight hug. 

Slowly she can feel the cold breeze she hasn’t felt before, amplifying the warmth in Bora’s embrace and suddenly, she’s crying, her fingers freezing, the embarrassment and hopelessness she’s supposed to feel months ago coming late and hitting her like a speeding truck, feeling everything all at once. 

She’s heaving, as though she’d run a hundred miles. Like she’s been holding her breath all this time, and maybe she kind of really is and its painful, like when she’s exerted herself too much, her heart feeling like it’s going to burst out of her chest with how fast it’s beating.

Minji could finally feel her heart beating.

She’s wrapped in a blanket, curled up in her couch with Bora at her side and Minji just staring at her. It’s overwhelming, feeling things. So they stay like that for hours, mindlessly watching some show Bora had put on again but sleep never comes like it used to, thinking and wondering and dreading too much because Minji doesn’t think she can take it if she has someone that might leave her again.

Minji doesn’t want to be left behind again so she clutches on to the smaller girl, desperate hands clinging on Bora and her warmth and her everything. She doesn’t have to say it but she knows that Bora understands. And so she stays the night.

Time keeps on ticking until it doesn’t, not because you’ve stopped living, but because you’d start living in the moment.

Minji wakes up to the smell of coffee. And pancakes.

This time, she’s not drowning. She ceased to be. 

Everything is brighter and in full color, the morning much more beautiful than she had remembered. 

She’s opening her eyes to Bora in her kitchen again, this time frowning as she pours coffee into a cup before shoving it towards Minji with a disgusted groan.

“How come you still keep making me coffee when you hate it?” Minji laughs, and she’s even more delighted at the feeling of laughing.

Bora grins, “I’m conquering your kitchen and I will not be stopped by mere coffee.”

They share another laugh, more hysterical each time and when they stop and Minji has to take a deep breath to calm herself, she realizes she’s actually happy.

Minji is finally breathing and happy.