Third, they said to love is, "Answer without accusing."

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I got home earlier today as I started early in the morning, when I left, Jaebeom hyung was still sleeping. I decided to clean up the apartment, it was not messy, it was not dirty, it was perfectly fine, but I just want to do something so I didn’t overthink something that will hurt me more.

So I changed into a more comfortable cloth, after fed Coco, our Maltese puppy. I started from the kitchen, empty the trash can, arranged the messy fridge, list the stuff I need to grab from the supermarket. After finished, I began to wipe the rack of Jaebeom hyung’s books, when I found our photos albums.

My fingers trailed the cover of the album, suddenly remembered that it took him half an hour to choose this album, he said that it will contain our memories together, the one that will stay forever. So he wants to make sure that it was the perfect album for our pictures.

So I began to flip over the albums, I smiled at the first picture. The one that he took on our first date when we were still in Seoul, the one that I was too shy to even look at the camera. We took it in his car, even our first date happened 3 months after he confessed, that time I was still too embarrassed to even interlocked our fingers, even when no one around.

I flipped the album slowly, Jaebeom hyung, not only he loved book but also photography, he took a lot of photos, during our vacation, during our walked to park with coco, during cooking, during our movie marathon, even when I slept. Like this one, I stared at the photo, my silly Jaebeom hyung, I remembered that day he showed me this photo after he printed it out, I was so embarrassed that I even not able to look at him in the eyes. The photo he took after our heated night while my body only covered with fleece blanket with those visible hickeys from my neck down to my chest.

I closed my eyes. It hurts to look back at the past.

You know what hurts?

When someone suddenly starts acting distant with you, for no reason. When things suddenly change without any explanation. When a certain routine stop out of nowhere, and you’re stuck in a situation where you don’t know what to do, whether to move on and forget about everything because it looks like that the other person did it so easily.

It hurts.

I didn’t realize that I spend a lot of time on the floor, so I put back the albums and decided to went to do groceries shopping instead.

When I finished shopping it was almost 9 pm, so after I put all the groceries, I took a shower and headed to bed, when I heard the front door open.

I watched him walk into our room, he looked at me, “I will having a shower, go to sleep first.” and he walked to the bathroom afterward. I turned my body, my back facing the door, closed my eyes, tears falling down. This became the habit now.

He used to give me those goodnight kisses, he used to hug me soon after he arrived home, he used to always asked me, “How was your day love?,” he used to slammed his body on me and complained of how tired he was and told me that I was the only reason he wants to finish his work as soon as possible, he used to came back home with my favourite dishes and didn’t forget to bought his favourite chicken along.

But now, there were no goodnight kisses, there was no hugged shared, there was no love instead he called me by name now, there was no clingy Jaebeom hyung around me, there was no dinner together.

When he got back, I turned my body to looked at him, he stared at me, “I told you to sleep first, why are you still awake?” he said while drying his hair. I stared at him for a long time.

He put his towel on the basket when I suddenly said, “You know Jaebeom?” he looked at me shocked, he knows when I called him by his name, I want to talk something serious, “I feel like you are getting tired of our relationship.”

He was shocked, I know. The look on his face showed clearly that he was so surprised by what I said.

There was the only broken string between us.

I missed the old us, I missed the old day.

They said that, “You should ask so you won’t assume.”