The ringing went on and on. The trilling that sounded into your ear had a hypnotizing effect.

You knew this was useless. You knew he wasn’t going to answer. The knot inside your stomach had grown its own roots by now, sinking down spiny hooks that would require a professional to remove with how persistent they clung to the soft flesh of the inside of your guts.

Kyungsoo had been upset. This was probably an understatement, but you tended toward understatements lately. For survival. Particularly when the alternative was the sort of scary painful that you didn’t dare touch with your bare fingertips.

His voice mail picked up again. You had lost track of how many times you had called now. You tried to space them out, not calling immediately after hanging up and once again not leaving a voicemail. Who listened to voicemails anyway?

Maybe he was just busy.

Or—

Maybe he forgot his phone again. Maybe it was hidden away inside the top drawer of his nightstand where he kept the small black box with the tiny treasure you had given as a gift the last time you visited.

He told you he couldn't wear it out anywhere with the tiniest frown on his lips. His eyes though...as he ran a fingertip along the wooden edge and picked up the handwritten card inside with the photo of the old woman and her story, his eyes sparkled in wonder the longer he looked down into that box.

You had never intended to buy him a ring. What kind of crazy person must he have thought you were. But your last translating assignment had brought you to a small village so far removed from the modern world you were beginning to forget what it felt like to have internet access. You’d wandered during your off time, out of unparalleled boredom. You didn't even have a cell phone signal and yet you still pulled the useless thing out, again and again, begging for it to just work so you could send the final text message with the three little red hearts to ‘the love of your goddamn life,’ as his contact information read at the time. For the record, it didn't say that anymore.

It was just a small shop with trinkets and baubles. Hardly anything precious from the look of it, but something about the building caught your eye. Once inside the door, the place bloomed with its own positive energy and the woman at the counter looked ancient. Perhaps the people in small villages didn't retire. She had to be over 100 and she lifted her face toward you when you walked inside; soft brown eyes took you in with a blank and passive expression on her face and after just a few seconds you saw the pull of her lips as she bared a smile composed of about three teeth.

“Welcome, my dear,” she said sweetly and her hand swept over the glass countertop. “Come. Let’s find something for your love.”

“Oh, I’m not—” why you couldn't bring yourself to deny it was a mystery to you, but you tried just once more, “I’m not in lo— He’s not really the type to wear these things,” you laughed through the answer. It didn’t matter. She was watching you closely with her knowing eyes and your own eyes were already drifting over her many offerings. Precious stones, precious metals, simple designs, and wildly ornate jewelry that hadn’t been in style for decades.

You were taken aback suddenly by the intricate detail of some of the pieces and the undeniable style that was recognizable throughout all of them.

“Wow, do you make all of these yourself?” The closer you looked at her, the more you saw. She wore a dusty stained apron over her clothes and her fingertips were calloused and worn. You saw bits of incomplete works behind her. Tools for prying and hammering and shaping and her eyes watched your face as you made your discoveries, suddenly looking down into the case before you with a fresher mind and sharper focus.

“What is he like? Is he very handsome?”

You giggled at her question and bit down on your own lip to try and keep your composure in front of the old woman who knew too much already. You simply nodded your head at her question and pulled your phone out again. What was the harm in this? It wasn’t like she would know him. She didn’t look like the type to even own a tv.

On your phone, in your photo gallery, hidden well within folders of folders you found it. The picture you had taken with him the last time you felt his hands running along your skin and his lips pressed against yours. It was the last picture you had taken before leaving for the airport and he had held on to you for much longer than was safe. You worried about missing your flight. You worried about traffic to the airport and you nuzzled into his warmth with a whine when his hands refused to let you go. He was the one to snap the picture and the smile in the shot was tense. You could see the sadness in those eyes at your departure.

“Very strong man,” she said and she was pulling something out from the bottom of the case. “I made this one just for him. It protects him so he can protect you.”

Cradled within her shaking fingertips was a small black ring and something surged up warm inside your belly as you looked down into her hands. It looked like him. It felt like him. How could this old woman have made this tiny thing so perfectly with her old trembling hands?

“What is it?” You knew there had to be a story behind this. It felt too perfect and she seemed to completely sure just by looking at one picture of Kyungsoo on your phone.

“Obsidian,” Kyungsoo read on the card in his fingertips and his lips were moving as he read quickly and silently to himself.

“Did this really come out of a volcano?” His eyes were wide with wonder and he pulled the ring out to look closer. You nodded once, your eyes down on the ring he held in his fingers and you felt a little dip of nerves in your belly when he slipped it carefully onto his ring finger. It went on smoothly and fit perfectly; as if the woman had really made it just for him.

“Hmm…” he mused quietly to himself, “my aura does feel healed.”

You snorted quietly into your hand, the laughter bubbling up against your will with the dead-panned delivery he’d given.

“I’m serious, don't laugh.” His eyes were motionless and wide on yours and there wasn’t a hint of a smile on his face. “Look at me, I’m trying to think a negative thought. I just tried very hard right now and nope...all positive. All of the dark is gone.”

You were openly giggling now and he didn’t break the serious expression on his face.

“You can take it off now, Soo. I know you can’t wear it. I just saw it and I had to get it for you.”

“I love it,” he said with his eyes down on his hand still adorned with the black band, “and I love you.”

Perhaps he had just put the phone inside the drawer beside the ring and left without taking it with him. Perhaps all of these calls were ringing into an empty room in an empty home somewhere in Seoul and he would return home tonight to find dozens of missed calls from you and look at them all with a smile on his face.

The knot in your belly, the uncomfortable somewhat painful ball of anxiety swelled up higher and you swallowed it down. When was the last time he had answered your calls?

Had it really been a week now? Had he really been so upset about the blind date; about your omission really, which he called a lie, did he really need to take it this far?

You had worked up the nerve all day today. You’d practiced what you would say to him.

‘I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I pretended I was single for one night. I was bored and I was lonely and I was wrong. You’re right, it was really ty of me to do. I’m so sorry I hurt you like this.’

Again and again, the phone rang. Again and again, his voicemail picked up; just an automated voice telling you again and again that the user could not come to the phone at this time.

‘I’m sorry I blamed it on Anna. It was my decision to go. I accepted the date and I met with him and danced with him and I never thought of how you might feel about that.’

It had been months since you had seen Kyungsoo in person. It had been weeks since you had video called with him. It had been days since your last short and dismissive phone call with him and his schedule had him so busy you felt like you had been abandoned. When Anna called you up to go out with a friend of hers; told you single girls like you shouldn’t just waste away in their apartments all night; told you that you were young and you should go out and live a little, you caved so damn easily and agreed to meet her at the club. ‘She was right,’ you thought back then. You deserved to have fun. You thought at the time, you deserved to be desired by someone. It was a moment of weakness. It was a mistake.

‘It was Anna. She made me go and you’re always so busy you won't even talk to me sometimes. I was bored and I wanted to go out.’ It was stupid to try and blame anyone else. Blaming Anna was one mistake, but when you said that, implying that somehow he was to blame you getting drunk enough for an attractive young man to your and leave sloppy goodbye kisses on your cheek that were documented by Anna’s phone, well...everything just blew up then. Do Kyungsoo, the man you loved the most; the only one you loved...he had a temper and he was going to let you know it.

‘But I thought about it now; I put myself in your place and I can see now that it was wrong. You’ve never done anything like that to me, Kyungsoo, and I’m sorry I did that to you.’

After what felt like hours of calling, something suddenly changed. Instead of the ringing, there was an invisible switch flipped and you got a new message. A message telling you that the phone had been turned off.

He had turned off his phone and you never got to say those words you had planned to say.

The minutes of waiting turned to hours and you must have fallen asleep.

You were only aware of the sleep because something was vibrating against your face and you were answering a phone call half between sleep and awake.

“How can you be sleeping right now?” It was Kyungsoo’s voice but the effect was wrong. The tone was biting and the vowels were sluggish and heavy. “You must not have a care in the world to be sleeping so soundly when I’ve been—”

Your living room was dark and you lifted your head from the arm of the couch where you had briefly, only for a second, rested your head in between the calls that didn’t even go to his voicemail anymore.

“—I’ve been killing myself with work...and some other things.”  His words paused only with the sounds of swallowing.

You had to wipe hard at your eyes and you steered your vision toward the spot on the bookshelf where the green illuminated numbers would tell you what time it was if you could only get your eyes to focus.

03:49

“Kyungsoo?” Your sleepy mind that was jarred awake with such a force was pushing the name through your lips well before your stomach could sink with the sudden drop of the shaking elevator you had been riding in your dream.

“Were you expecting someone else to call you?” Sarcasm and a definite blurriness sat on the tip of that tongue. Your ears were humming and the sinking came.

That sinking feeling that started at the bottom of your esophagus and pulled slowly and unendingly — it only built and built upon itself  — passed along your all-day-empty stomach deep into your guts where it wrung and coiled and throbbed with the racing of your heartbeat.

“Perhaps some other man you’ve let touch you while I’ve been working my ing off—”

Some things were becoming incredibly evident.

Kyungsoo was drunk.

Kyungsoo was very drunk, still angry, and beyond the mental capacity to hold his words back.

“Kyungsoo.”

The name came out as a warning and you slapped your lips shut and sent a noisy exhale through your nose that echoed through your own ear as it bounced back and forth from your living room, all the way to his living room or his kitchen or a secluded bar in downtown Seoul and back again to your living room, where the numbers on that clock on the bookshelf mocked you with it’s 03:53 and your skin prickled and shivered where the chill of this conversation invaded.

“Oh. Sorry, sorry — ssso sorry.” He wasn’t. The extra s sounds made his voice slither like a snake over your skin and the chill deepened and sunk down through to your bones.

“I guess you’re still not ready to talk about it, right?” The question was heavy with sarcasm and the pointed silence after his question was as hostile as a slap in the face. If you were taken aback by his words, by his anger, or by his biting tone, you wouldn't have noticed. Inside of you, everything was already too bombarded to feel anything other than intense apprehension.

It was looming. It was a tightly pulled catapult ready to fire. It was the last 10 seconds of a bomb detonator and you watched the numbers count down without a pair of wire cutters to cut the red wire.

You inhaled through the vacuum inside your chest, ignoring the tremble in your lungs that only seemed to be feeding off the tremble in your bottom lip.

“Kyungsoo, y-you’re...you sound like you’ve been drinking a lot, maybe right now isn’t the best time—”

Your attempt at rationality was cut off by a short and gruff laugh that was about as far from a response to actual humor as a laugh could get and the chuckle was short lived because he was coughing loudly into the mouthpiece of his cellphone. It echoed in your ear and made you wince with each rough hack.

“I thought grown adults could drink themselves into drunken stupors and not be held accountable for their actions, right? Wasn’t that what you decided? And I thought — twenty-three — missed calls meant you really, really wanted to talk to me. But...stupid me, I should have known—”

“I did want to talk to you. I do want to talk to you but what I’m saying is I don't think anything constructive can happen right now with you in this condition.” You knew your tone was snappish but you couldn’t help that. He was acting unreasonable; avoiding you for days and then coming to you with this attitude and in this state. It was clear that he was ready for a fight and a talk right now, with him feeling this way and with you feeling the way you felt would only end up a mess.

You were sure that with a level head, with a level heart and soul you could get through to him... just how sorry you actually felt about your mistake. Just how much you knew that you had hurt him. Just how certain you were that you could make it up to him and if you could just get him to listen with just one speck of the love he had for you in his heart he would believe you and he would forgive you and you could both move on from this...this hiccup in the relationship.

But that wasn’t going to happen right now. Not tonight, not with the anger you could feel magnified by the alcohol raging through his blood.

“Well if you don't have anything to say to me, I’ve got something to say to you.”

Kyungsoo spoke up suddenly, only this time, strangely, you could feel much less of the anger you had been sensing through most of this phone call.

The shift was abrupt and it was terrifying. You stared ahead through the darkness of your living room [04:01] and the heavy weights inside your guts sunk hard. You felt the stretch in your gag reflex and you swallowed away the excess saliva that had collected at the back of your throat.

Kyungsoo inhaled a breath and it vibrated and it gasped. It was interrupted by something halfway through his throat — the sound of a spasm inside of him for a split second — it made you swim inside of your own head. You drowned in it.

You swallowed away the saliva that built up again, your own big-baby bottom lip betraying you and continued shuttering all on its own.

“I don't think this is working.”

Everything…

Stopped.

Everything that had been urgent and everything that had been desperate... stopped and slowly, like a lazy moving fog, slippery fingers crawled lightly along your scalp on the crown of your head and your skin prickled and puckered as the blackness washed over you —

From way up top, it crawled slowly and steadily down your temples with a shivering coolness, it traveled — the blackness, the bleakness, the bloodless and lifeless shadow that was swallowing you whole.

“I tried. I really did, but I don’t ...I don't think I can do this anymore. I think...we should stop this. I want...I want to break up.”

...with you. He wanted to break up with you. Kyungsoo was breaking up with you. This was real.

All traces of the anger were gone; stolen by the darkness and the 04:08 began to blur into one big green mass of light on the far end of your view. You stared at it until the wet warmth crested and sunk down your face, clearing the numbers again before they disappeared completely when you closed out the light.

04:08 in the morning, was the time he said those words to you. You never wanted to look at that clock again. You never wanted to open your eyes again, but the sound of the choked sob on the other end of your phone pulled them open.

You wanted to die.

04:08 in the morning was when Do Kyungsoo broke up with you and you stared at the clock in silence, wishing that when 4:09 came he would take it back. He would say he was only kidding (with tears in his voice and not even a deadpan tone on back of his throat, please, God let him be kidding,) what if...what if he changed his mind at 4:09?

Kyungsoo was silent, save for the occasional sniffle of his nose and you hadn’t said a single word.

Time… those wretched numbers on that clock just moved on and Kyungsoo was silent.

You couldn’t. All you wanted to do was curl into yourself, close your eyes and go back to sleep because this was obviously a very bad dream you were trapped in. It was probably because you’d fallen asleep on the couch in an uncomfortable position and the blood flow to your brain had obviously been interrupted by the 90-degree angle of the arm of this couch.

Sure, the tears that ran silently down your face felt real enough, and the pain you could feel in the heel of your palm as you dug your fingernails into your skin hard enough to leave marks, hard enough to break the skin and draw blood might be a trick of your sleeping mind.

The sound of your name in a soft whisper broke you out of it.

He called your name.

He said it softly and with all of the cruelest tenderness that he usually said it with and you felt the first broken sob break free from your lips. You quickly covered your mouth with your hand but it was no use. It had already happened and wouldn’t be put back inside of you quite so easily.

“I’m sorry,” he said and he was so broken. “I’m sorry,” he repeated once more and after that, the terrible silence of the call being disconnected was unmistakable.

The phone call was gone. It had ended at 04:14 and you kept the phone against your ear, listening to the lifelessness of the device that had been the instrument of your destruction.

The call was gone.

Kyungsoo was gone.

He did not call you back. You didn’t dare call him. The decision had been made and you were too broken to function that night.

The sun rose and the day went on and that clock rounded the numbers again and again and life all around you moved on as if you hadn’t just lost everything.

***

“I’m still in love with you.”

Even though he had just said it to you with his own lips, he did not look at you.

You sure as hell were watching him.

Kyungsoo held himself in a carefully posed stance, half bent at the waist as he curled into his own heavy breathing and kept his eyes trained down on the space of flooring in front of his bare feet.

You remembered how the time after the breakup was like living in a fog. You remembered forcing yourself to look away from your phone screen at the images of him at the airport; at the concerts; smiling and laughing with his friends; taunting you with how okay he obviously was with losing you; with getting rid of you, and feeling the throb inside as you tried to breathe in deep enough to stop the dizziness in your head when you simply could not stop crying enough to breathe properly.

You remembered not leaving your apartment for weeks; simply ignoring your growling stomach and ringing telephone until they both gave up.

You remembered the rejection. He didn’t want you anymore. He’d grown sick of you, as you had always deep down inside of you feared he would...and sooner than expected with only a few months of actual relationship under your belt and he was just done with you. You’d made a mistake and…he was done so easily.

You remembered the guilt and self hatred. This was your fault. You deserved this for what you had done. You did not deserve forgiveness nor even the chance to beg for it. This was your fault entirely and the pain inside your chest that was beginning to feel normal to you would be your companion for the rest of your life.

It took weeks, possibly close to a month for you to even begin to feel okay again. And longer for you to feel like maybe you weren’t the worst kind of woman in the world, the kind of woman who would destroy the precious love of a beautiful man like he was. It took so long until you could look at yourself in the mirror and not want to hide away.

And when it finally happened, when you were at last able to clean up the mess that had been your stress-wrecked skin, buy some new clothes that did not remind you of that time you took a cab in Seoul and got splashed with muddy water on the way to his home from the airport. The way he fussed and fretted over the stains and even when you told him to just leave it he insisted on soaking them overnight in his bathtub filled with soapy water and even pulled you into the suds with him barefoot and giggling as you stomped together until every last trace of the mud was gone. You could still feel the strong grip of his hands on your forearms as he held onto you, nagging about splashing so much in case you slipped and fell and hurt yourself.

You had to throw out most of your wardrobe.

You’d shopped for a few things first. New clothes. A new clock. Things that would make you feel like perhaps you were a normal person. Maybe even a good person. Maybe.

But what?

‘Still in love...’

Just like that? If not for the tragedy of your life you might have laughed.

Kyungsoo had ended it. He didn’t call you once. Didn’t text or even make an appearance on your Facebook — which you made a conscious effort to keep up to date on the off chance that he might try, you posted the occasional happy looking selfie (faked of course) — but there was nothing from him. It was like you ceased to exist to him. At times you even wondered if you had dreamed the entire thing?

How? How in the hell could he still have any feelings left when he showed no signs of regretting the break-up? He just worked as he always did. He looked well and healthy. He looked as carefree as could be.

You’d been dying on the inside just trying to seem okay.

Kyungsoo was silent. The room had gone still after his confession (in triplicate) and you stared ahead at the man in disbelief.

Disbelief turned to questions in your mind the longer you watched the now fully clothed man standing in the tiny space that was your dining room. (There was a table and chair there at least and just because you could probably reach out and touch him from the edge of your bed didn’t make it any less of a dining room.)

“Why are you saying this now, Kyungsoo?”

You’d asked the most pressing question that had been inflating the balloon inside your head before it could burst and send bits of your sanity all over the room...apartment...whatever this glorified closet you lived in was advertised as in the real-estate pamphlet.

Why was he only saying this now? Why hadn’t he mentioned this, oh six months ago when your world had collapsed and you’d spent all those sleepless nights hating yourself for making him hate you.

Why did it take the interest of another man; a pint and a half of vodka — a drunk and easily able ex-girlfriend with just enough guilt about sending a vulnerable and recognizable celebrity away to fend for himself — to invite him in — why did it take all of that for him to realize this? And only after being cornered about his motives in taking her to bed did he actually fess up about it.

Frankly, and at the risk of sounding like a broken-ing-record, you were finding that you had more questions than you had relief at hearing his sudden love confession.

“I’m saying it because it’s the truth. I...came home with you last night, I...slept with you last night because I’m not over you—”

You knew that much. He wasn’t understanding your question and you could feel a bubbling up inside your chest with an urgency that made you sit up straighter on the bed you still occupied.

“No, Kyungsoo, I mean why are you telling me this now? Why only now? Do you have any idea what the past six months have been like for me?”

“What they’ve been like for you? What about how I have felt...how I still feel?” His incredulous tone pushed back against your own and your recognized his defenses kicking in as he straightened his posture and took a step toward where you sat with your knees pulled high against your chest on the bed. You sat in a ball now, a protective sphere that you’d adopted on some subconscious instinct when the flood of memories had taken hold of your emotions and sent you for a spin.

“You broke up with me, Kyungsoo. Do you remember that? Because you seemed pretty sure of yourself when you did it and it’s not like I heard anything else from you ever again.”

Kyungsoo’s movement had not stopped at one step and he was moving closer to where you had stationed yourself in the bed — his movements, you watched them closely with your wide and anxious eyes when you noticed he was coming closer to you — too close for what you were comfortable with right now and you couldn’t help the way you stiffened when his hand extended swiftly as he reached. Only he wasn’t coming for you, his hand pulled at the top dresser drawer that sat directly beside your bed that doubled as a nightstand for your bedside lamp and cell phone charger.

If he noticed your flinch he didn’t draw attention to it and you watched as he peered inside at the stacks of carefully folded underwear, socks, and bras. He grabbed swiftly, handfuls coming out with one of each, selecting without regard for matching colors or fabrics he merely grabbed blindly and tossed items from the open drawer toward where you had established your own shameful little bunker on the bed.

The top drawer was slid shut without a delicate hand and the lamp on top of the dresser rattled with his rough movement.

“I know what I did. Don’t you think I know very well what I did?”

The question definitely sounded rhetorical and you eyed the underwear in your hands that you didn’t really want to slip on right now with the mess you still felt all over your body. Not without a shower first at least.

He was down to the next drawer and he pulled out a pink cotton t-shirt that you used mostly for yoga or for sitting on your couch eating potato chips as you wore yoga pants and thought about perhaps joining a yoga class one day at the gym.

The shirt hit you square in the chest and you watched it roll down before making some sort of half-hearted hand motion that mimicked a catching attempt.

You opted to forego the underwear, but welcomed the cover of the shirt and as you slipped it over your head. Y