“I mention her name and the old pain returns.

Forget her, you say? How can you forget a living human being?”

She doesn’t know what regret quite feels like until it eats her tongue.

Seulgi lets her up, and the whole time that they’re in the lift, they don’t say anything. Her mind is blank, filled with a million and one thoughts of how this is a ing terrible idea, what the are you doing Bae Joohyun? With that one thread flooding through her head, it doesn’t occur to her that it’s still appropriate enough to apologise when the lift door opens, to say that she’s made a mistake, sorry, I’m better now, thanks for the concern and your time (and then bite back awkward comments like “yeah, even though you don’t need to care about me anymore”), and then flee.

Sure, it would still be awkward, but she wouldn’t quite feel like her tongue’s swirling in a pool of acid. 

For her part, Seulgi’s only managed to toss her key card onto the coffee table. Her socked left foot is alternating between tapping noiselessly against the floor before she seems to realise that she’s working her nervous energy too obviously, and instead, she switches to sliding her toes against the carpeted ground.

Takes her too long. Or not long at all. Seulgi, wordlessly, offers her tissue. And then opens to ask, “Do you want anything to drink at all? Water?”

“I… yes please.”

She gives Seulgi the opportunity to escape the room and, god.

What do you want out of this?

What do you want?

What do you need?

Are these questions really all that radically different? Is she doomed to be struck dumb, permanently, in an unending struggle to answer these questions? Perhaps it would’ve made more sense if she had thought of the answers to these questions first before impulse seized them both.

Something reminds her that she’s thought about these questions before. And that the answers to these questions constantly wavered, that one day she would be able to convince herself of one thing, and one day she would fail to convince herself that they’d made the right decision. But what was right in the first place when the world did not feel perfectly alright?

What was right is to stick to a decision. To commit to it. To not indulge in the occasional (okay, they happened more often than she really wanted them to) fantasy that one day, their worlds will be right again and that they’d find that they were right for each other again. She’s never dwelled too much about the mechanics behind this process because the rational part of her head would scream its warnings against it, lambast her for daring to distract herself with thoughts of rather blatant foolishness, but now, oh god, she really wishes she’s thought about it, or at least, thought of some form of contingency plan for herself.

Internally, she scoffs at the thought – contingency plans. That interactions between the two of them would be reduced to thinking of escape, plan B, what the what do you mean there is no plan B?

Seulgi doesn’t say anything for a while after she returns. And it doesn’t escape Joohyun’s notice that Seulgi’s hands are shaking when Joohyun takes the glass of water from her. She finally asks, quietly, “Does it bug you too? Like…”

What kind of words can she really use to describe this? This strange strangerhood that they now share, the only commonality she was certain of. Her hand reaches out, moves towards Seulgi’s shaking ones, and for a moment, she thinks she might have the courage to hold them. But her hands, too, shake, and she lets them fall back to her side limply. Her fingernails dig themselves into her own hands in protest. There is immeasurably more in what she will fail to say than what she can say.

“Joohyun,” Seulgi is the first to try to speak again. Joohyun almost smiles at that: Seulgi’s always tried, never wanted to let their fights span longer than they had to, never prolonged silence longer than was strictly comfortable to anyone around (even when it was hard for her). “I… I… hope your date didn’t go that badly.” Points for trying.

“No, no, not… not really. He was really nice. A banker – surprisingly, very nice.”

“A nice banker? I feel like a dictionary’s burning somewhere.”

“Yeah, precisely.” Her shoulders move, in a mechanical imitation of a shrug. “For all I know he could’ve just been really nice on the outside, you know, a perfectly programmed automaton that knows what to say with all the niceties and graces drilled in from day 1. Certainly, he’s pretty to look at. His teeth were really quite shiny to look at, to be honest.”

“He sounds…”                                                                                                                      

“Yeah, you can say it. He’s a little too good.” She doesn’t quite say that he’s too good for me, because god, thinking of that line makes her insides shrivel up further. “Anyway, mother was really quite insistent on me meeting this guy. Oh god, mother. I don’t think she’s going to be very happy with me running off like that,”

Seulgi’s eyes widen. “No, that was your mother. It’s been so long since I’ve last seen her…” Seulgi muses aloud, then alarm returns to her voice, “Do you have to go back?”

Joohyun sighs. “Can I just… sit down for a sec?” When Seulgi nods her assent, she settles into the pleated aluminium chair, one of those things that Seulgi probably first saw online on Instagram or some Pinterest board. “I don’t think going back now is going to fix anything. And besides, well… Mother can sort it out first, I don’t know.” It’s too much to think about now.

Then, Seulgi asks: “Why did you run after me?”

Ah, Seulgi’s much bolder than Joohyun would ever dare to be.

She’s always envied that about Seulgi. Seulgi, whose sunny demeanour and sweet smiles belied the sheer steel that’s wrapped beneath the sunshine and honey. People tended to forget what Seulgi would do, could do, simply because she didn’t appear like a raging thunderstorm that the life out of everything around her. Seulgi’s always surprised her, and even after all the months they’ve spent together and apart, she doesn’t think that Seulgi’s ever going to be less of a surprise, ever.

The other part of her brain not musing over Seulgi formulates enough of a sentence to have Joohyun’s mouth say, “Because I thought I would’ve made a mistake if I didn’t.”

“A mistake?” Seulgi gives her a probing look. “I don’t quite understand what you might mean.”

“I… you… everything about us has been a bit of a mistake,” Joohyun offers. Then she frowns, as if registering what she’s really said. “Yes, but no. I don’t know. I don’t know how to say it.” She wishes she was better at talking about her feelings, but it’s not that easy.

“I…” Seulgi frowns, a somewhat contemplative look crossing her face. “You can try, yes?”

She’s tried. And failed. And tried. And failed. So many times.

She brings the glass of water to her lips and takes a huge gulp.

“You. I. I messed up. I think. I think, with us.” Another sip of the water.

There are so many things she wants to say, so many pages of a journal that is filled with line after line of brooding angst, an entire litany of regrets. The journal’s at home and the script’s long-forgotten – not that she’s ever written anything that would help her in this scenario. She’s never thought that she’d ever get the chance to talk to Seulgi like this. Openly.

Oh. Hmm. How did she get here, really? Sitting here on the sofa in Seulgi’s new apartment, a space foreign to her save for all the knickknacks scattered around the place, some of the stuff old and that which used to sit in their apartment, but some of the stuff is definitely brand new but screams Kang Seulgi still.

Openly. It’s an opportunity she never knew she would get. Never knew she wanted.

Water. ’s dry still.

“I want to apologise. For everything,” she tries, “and for not trying enough for either of us.” 

Seulgi’s frown doesn’t disappear. If anything, her lips turn further downwards and the overcast expression darkens. “Joohyun, it’s…” She wonders if Seulgi was about to say that it’s okay, it’s alright, but held herself back (this time). “It’s been a while, you don’t have to bring apologise again, not for all that.” Seulgi grimaces. “We can put it behind us. It is all in the past now.”

Have you put it behind you then, Seulgi?

Hadn’t Seulgi been seen on dates, hadn’t she been rumoured to be dating one of the juniors whose name Joohyun (admittedly, wilfully) blots out of her memory?

“You’re right. It is. Guess I shouldn’t be bringing that up, huh. Like you said, it’s all in the past. It’s been a while now, anyway. I’m sure you’ve moved on.” The last part escapes Joohyun before she realises that it sounds somewhat childish, a little bit immature. She’d rather take it back, allow her some space to emerge as the bigger person in this equation. 

Seulgi her head to the side, and repeats her question again, “Why did you run after me?” There is more insistence this time, some confusion. Less sureness. Joohyun is unsure if it’s a good or bad thing that Seulgi neither confirms nor denies anything about the moving on bit, but perhaps she is a little bit grateful that Seulgi doesn’t comment on how petty Joohyun thinks she sounded.

Instead of answering, Joohyun only responds with a question of her own, “Why did you run from me?”

Seulgi blinks, as if she didn’t expect that question. “I… Your mother would’ve recognised me, wouldn’t she? She likes me.”

“She does, I think,” Joohyun confirms. How could anyone dislike Seulgi, really? They were sure Joohyun’s mother would love her, if not for the fact that Seulgi had been dating Bae Joohyun for a pretty extensive amount of time. Too long to have her mother brush it off as an (erroneous) experiment that young people nowadays would do.

“Didn’t think neither of you would’ve appreciated your little date being interrupted on my account.”

At this, Joohyun laughs. “Well, it’s a bit too late for that. Thanks for reminding me that mother’s going to blow a top at me when she recovers enough from what face she loses today.”

Seulgi looks startled at the sound of Joohyun’s laughter. “And she’s really the sort to care a lot for that, isn’t she?”

She’s not wrong. Their family stumbled into some money in a later part of their lives – inheriting the store from an accidentally-deceased relative was a boon, allowing her parents to escape the textile factories before the factories began to shut down in their city for good. They aren’t rich, not at all, but they’re finally not struggling. The only problem is that they’re struggling to pretend like this is what it’s always been like for their family, that they weren’t penny pinching from paycheque to paycheque, that inflation of the prices for rice or gas wouldn’t affect their budget drastically. Joohyun squeezes her nails into her palm, remembering how her mother would remind her throughout her entire childhood that they were lucky and that they shouldn’t do anything that would jeopardise the luck that they’ve been blessed with.

Seulgi’s voice sounds again, repeating the same question for the third time today. She can’t dodge the question, can she? “Why did you really run after me?”

Something about her voice is strained, like she wants to hear something. What that something is remains unknown to Joohyun.

“It’s like I said, Seul. Seulgi. I… I was sorry. I am sorry.” works to form the syllables she doesn’t know if she should be saying but should is a concept she realises she’s not particularly familiar with anymore, not today. “About you. And I guess I wasn’t thinking, okay? Running after you wouldn’t have changed anything about us, I get that now, now that we’re here and all – except now that I’m stuck here and we’re trying to have a conversation, or is this a conversation? I can’t really tell – and like agreeing to meet Bogum was a mistake in itself, but not running after you would’ve been a mistake too.

“Maybe I just wanted to run from that date because I would’ve ed that up too if it went anywhere beyond the First Date thing and then we’d have a bigger mess on our hands to clean up, god, mother would’ve been disappointed anyway, I think, so I just upped and left and you were there, your face, your stupidly, stupidly pretty face, and I just had to leave. You. You were there, and I had to leave.”

It comes out of her in a rush, and she’s not sure where the words came from. But she’s standing now, her glass perched precariously on the edge of the coffee table. Something makes her lungs push the question out, “And then you, I ran after you – why did you even run, really? Aren’t we past the point for dishonesty by now? There’s nothing to save, so can any of your words really destroy anything that we don’t even have? 

“You asked me: why did I run after you, Seulgi? You wanted to know, didn’t you? I am tired, okay? Tired of telling myself that I’ve been okay like this, convincing myself that I would rather live out the rest of my life by erasing you from the parts of my life. I’ve tried, but no, you are everywhere. How could you possibly be everywhere I turn? I’m tired of trying to avoid you, damn it.”

She doesn’t quite look at Seulgi until she’s done. By this point, her chest is heaving, the corners of her eyes wet.

Tilting her face up, she finds that Seulgi’s sunk into a chair and is studying the milk-white carpet too intently, her face paled and a good imitation of the carpet’s colour.

Seulgi, say something, would you? Anything would ease the crawling of her skin, the electricity of nerves that threatens to suffocate her entire being.

Regret doesn’t quite have time to sink its teeth fully into her tongue this time before Seulgi gets up, abruptly, the chair’s two back legs scraping loudly against the non-carpeted parts of the floor.

“I don’t know if you can say any of this anymore, you know,” Seulgi murmurs. Soft, but her words clench into Joohyun’s heart – a wet squelching of the organ as it sinks into the acidic depths below. There is pity lacing her words as she continues, “I think we are past that, aren’t we?”

Her heart is fluttering desperately to stay afloat in the acid. All she hears is the hollowed-out noise that echoes in the cavernous space between her ribs.

“You know, I think so too,” she fires back, the acid coating and voice. “But you asked, you asked, okay? I don’t… I don’t know what you wanted to hear, okay? I had to say something, you asked!” She realises her voice has risen half a pitch, and she’s standing before Seulgi now. “For god’s sake, I had to say something, and I…” she closes her eyes, “I guess I wanted you to know that I missed you. But I can see that it’s not quite the same.”

When her eyes open, she expects something like disgust, or horror. That Seulgi would laugh at her, or maybe even make a scornful remark, even if it is vastly unlike her to do so. Anything would perhaps be preferable to the shaking of Seulgi’s hands, and the sheer confusion and pain that she cannot keep off her face.

But Joohyun continues, she’s not sure why she does, but she’s started this tirade and there’s no real way that either of them can really pretend that they’ve not had this conversation. “Seulgi,” at this, Seulgi jerks backwards again, putting another three centimetres of distance between them. Her pupils shake as she attempts to smooth her face over. Her whole face is torn between the mask of neutrality and the abjection of fear.

“Seulgi,” Joohyun says again, sotto voce. “I’m sorry.” For everything. But most of all, for hurting you, and for never trying enough until it’s out of her hands. She swallows all of that.

Instead, she tries to reach for Seulgi’s hand, only for her to yank her hand away, eyes-wide, all attempts at blanking her face gone, replaced by terror.

“No, no, no, you don’t get to do this, do you understand?” Seulgi squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head as she gets to her feet. “No, no, Bae Joohyun, you don’t just get to waltz into my life like this and tell me that you are sorry. I don’t need your apology, and I don’t know what you want from me by apologising to me like this! We’re over, we’ve been over for months, and you know this, okay? I know this.” Her voice cracks on her I and Joohyun can feel the molten remnants of her heart breaking too.

“You—You don’t have the right to tell me that you missed me, okay? You—I—I was doing fine, fine without you, you hear me? Do you even understand what you are saying? You can’t just throw words like this at me so damned lightly! You were the one who asked for a complete break, remember? Do you not remember? I asked for a break – for space, for time, I don’t know, something so maybe we could find a semblance of peace for ourselves, but no. I don’t think you quite knew how ing difficult it was for me to have even pulled the luggage out that day to even contemplate some time away from you.

“And , I was so damned worried about you for weeks after because Seungwan said you didn’t want to see her, and every time I asked Seungwan about you she would look at me with so much sadness because we both knew that you were… I…” Her voice breaks again. “It took me weeks to finally tell myself that I wasn’t responsible for you and your sadness and then it took so long for that to actually sink in, and now? Now? You come back and tell me that you miss me? What kind of game are you playing, Bae Joohyun?”

Joohyun bristles, “I’m not playing a game, what, do you think I like making myself sad, or if I liked hurting you? When have I ever wanted to hurt you?”

Seulgi wrings her hands. “For all I know maybe you changed and the person standing in front of me is like, a demon incarnate, because you certainly feel like someone who rose from hell to haunt me in my own apartment, okay?” Ouch. “Okay, that is unwarranted, sorry – I invited you in after all so maybe, a vampire? Should've draped myself in garlic, huh.” Seulgi’s shoulders droop when she knows that her attempt at defusing the weight of her own words with what might be called humour falls flat. “I dunno but to be honest, maybe you’ve never wanted to do it, but you’ve always hit exactly where it hurts most, alright? Did you know that? Maybe it is my fault, sort of, it isn’t like I’ve been wholly blameless either – I’ve had a lot of time to think about this – because I’ve never really tried telling you exactly how I felt sometimes. I’m…”

Seulgi wipes her eyes before she turns to face Joohyun again.

“I thought I could make you better. That was my mistake, I think.” Honey could never seal the cracks of her head and heart permanently, however much one attempts to stick the broken bits together. Seulgi's attempt was valiant, but a moment of clarity passes between them both – that wouldn’t have worked no matter how hard she tried.

“I… I thought you moved on,” Seulgi tries instead, changing the topic. “I admit, as much as I hate to say it, I would really, really have preferred to hear that you found some sort of Happily Ever After with Bogum. I…” Her voice trembles as Seulgi lowers her head, her voice small. “It would’ve meant you were finally okay, and I don’t know, you wouldn’t have hated yourself as much as you did with him as you had with me.”

“What?”

“I said what I said, Joohyun,” Seulgi's voice is clipped, short, but it doesn’t quite manage to hide the shakiness of it. “You weren’t happy. We… we weren’t happy. As much as we seemed to try, we both know we weren’t, didn’t we? You tried pretending that it wasn’t bothering you sometimes, I think. But in the end, I think we know what won out.”

Joohyun’s eyes shut for a moment. “Are you blaming me then?”

“What? No, of course that isn't what I’m trying to say. Joohyun, why would you…?” Her voice trails off in question. Seulgi clears . “I don’t want us to blame each other for anything. What’s done is done.”

“Do you ever wish that we could turn the clock back?” This question escapes her without her thinking, and the second she says it, she wishes the floor would swallow her like quicksand instead of simply suffocating her where she stood.

Seulgi looks at her, all tear-stained eyes and a slackened jaw. “Bae Joohyun, do you even realise what you are asking? Are you nuts? I—you—we made a choice last year and now you’re asking if you wish you hadn’t broken up with me, is that quite it? It’s been months, Joohyun. Come on, you don’t get to say things like this in my apartment okay?”

Seulgi paces. “It’s not like I’ve never entertained the thought – no, that’s not quite it. I don’t know what you want me to say. What did you want, coming in and telling me all this? Did you hope that we would, I don’t know, kiss and makeup and all would be right again? That somehow things would mend themselves and I would fit back into your life?”

“I… I’m sorry,” Joohyun tries again, sinking as best as she can into the floor. She clears . “If it makes you feel any better – I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry. It wasn’t my place.”

Seulgi lets out a low groan, a long sound somewhere between pain and frustration that spoke volumes of her turmoiled anguish. “You’re right, be sorry! No, I don’t know, I don’t mean that, not really – but…” She chokes back a sob as she another lungful of air. “God, help me. I am sorry I even asked you to… that I was curious or… I…” Seulgi in another breath. “Please, just leave. Before I think that you’re only capable of cruelty, or before I say all the wrong things, just get out of here.”

Joohyun doesn’t really need to be told twice.

She realises that her cheeks are burning as she steps out of the small space of the apartment. As she makes her way down, her head is spinning, her skin is tingling, and her heart is pounding.

She is finally out.

The afternoon light hits her skin. The buses rumble by. A grey cat lands by the lamppost four feet away from her and doesn’t spare her a second glance as it continues its trot into the alleyway. Uniformed boys from the nearest school walking past her are laughing loudly over some lewd joke that the skinniest one of their gang just made before the tallest one complains about having to head for their next set of after-school classes.

in a fresh breath of cool air.

Her heart finally calms, reattaching itself back into the socket in her chest. It beats, slowly, calmly, lolling in its place amidst the quiet of her head. For the first time in months, nothing in her feels buoyed down by a million weights.

Maybe there are a few things she should sort out. Mother. Bogum. Apologies. Soothing of feathers. Reconciliatory actions. Maybe she should start taking some of Seungwan’s advice and go talk to somebody. Maybe she should finish the draft for her thesis way before it’s due, for a change, and make that old harpy with talons for fingers happy. Maybe, when her final semester’s behind her, she should head back home and some time with her sister before her baby sister decides that getting hitched with that long-time boyfriend should be done sooner rather than later. Maybe. Maybe, she should stop living in the thousand and one maybes and well, she’s not quite sure what she’s going to be doing after this, but this time, she doesn’t quite look back when she walks away.

a/n:

as usual, i'm shamelessly naming my chapters after Bastille's song lyrics -- this title is extracted from the lyrics of Bastille's Another Place.

as a chinese person currently living in japan -- something the east asian cultures really hold in common is the concept of "face" // in korea it's apparently called 體面 (chemyon) // social standing/honour etc. i find it very awkward ot insert into a sentence but... it was included anyway.

also honestly I hated writing this HAHAHA I was like “oh my god I wrote something and now I have to resolve this ridiculous melodrama can’t I just stick to writing aesthetic instead… oh well it was an interesting challenge anyway?”

me @ my friend: i might as well start writing scripts for taiwanese drama // her: this rly reads like a taiwanese melodrama i cant breathe // tldr i hate this fic it can burn in the trash somewhere 

pls have excerpts of my convo w friend:

• her: fisidkkf im like 2 seconds away from slapping them tbh
• her: me, about to conk their skulls together like coconuts
• her: Why Are You So Sad Its Not That Deep
• her: all of you need therapy // me: i agree lol 
• me: stupid Bastille song HAHAHA // all i wanted to do was write a fic from Happier by Bastille // like LOOK at this demon child they do not deserve a happy ending until i figure out how to write this ... (my actual quote: "but i realised they were too much of actual heads to get back together they do not deserve getting back together until they resolve their issues, ugh")
• me: u know what i will just post it
• her: yes, post first regret later