“Ting!”

You jumped at the sound of notification on your phone before you rushed to it just to find out it was one of those random advertisement spam messages. It was not him.

How many days had passed?

That was a question you wished you didn’t know but actually you did, very clearly.

59 days.

No, it was 3 p.m so 59 days and a half, to be exact.

59 days and a half without him.

===

Habit is scary. You heard somewhere people say that it takes 14 days to break a habit, so after about 5 days thinking about him, missing him, worrying about him, rereading all the messages you two had exchanged in the last 4 months and crying yourself to sleep every night because he was nowhere to be found, you thought it was about time you gave yourself those 14 days.

14 days of stopping yourself from the thoughts of him equals two weeks of pretending you were okay in front of colleagues. But who did you think you could fool? Those puffy eyes kept getting redder, nights kept getting longer, you blasted music all the time in your room just so you didn’t have to think about anything, let alone about him.

Yet, it was pathetic. You wished you could just stay in bed all day and simply sleep the day away. What you needed was not music, because admit it, every song reminded you of him. You missed his voice. What you needed was not a blanket wrapping around you just so you feel the warmth or a pillow soaked with tears, because admit it, you had done that many nights and it didn’t help.

What you needed was a coma, an escape from reality.

Funny how people say time flies, because your 14 days felt like 14 years. Years of devastation.

Yet, his image was still vivid in your memory. The conversations about random things between you and him still remained in your memory and they were still all there, on your phone. You couldn’t help but picked the phone up and logged in again just to see your chat log with him was still the same, nothing new.

“Where are you, Woohyun ah” (19 days ago)

“Woohyun? I miss you. I’m worried. Where are you? Just get back to me when you have time”. (17 days ago)

You thought he was busy so he didn’t log in but you waited for one day before sending your last message and it had been 17 days since then. Yet, still no sign of him.

“Woohyun. I hate this. Please answer me. It’s been more than 2 weeks and you suddenly stopped talking to me. I don’t get it. What’s wrong? Do you hate me? I told you if i was being annoying, you can just tell me right away. But it was you who said everything was okay and you liked talking to me so why are you leaving me now? You have made it all become a habit. I wait for your messsages every day. I love you a lot, don’t you know? You’re being unfair to me. ANSWER ME. Just say you hate me so i can let you go”, you typed all of the things you want to say until you realized the phone screen became blurry because of all the tears streaming down.

“Where are you? What happened to us?”, you whispered and decided to delete most of what you had typed in the chat box.

“Woohyun. I hate this. Please answer me”, you pressed send.

“I’m begging you”, you typed before deleting again. “What’s the point anyway?”, you thought, convinced he was tired of you. You knew from the start this would happen. In every relationship, the “problematic” one was always you. You knew too well that you shouldn’t get attached quickly and overly with anyone but you couldn’t help it. 4 months. He put up with you better than you thought. 4 months is not a long time but Woohyun once said that he felt like he had known you for years. You felt the same way because you two talked almost every day but look “where did that lead us”, you thought.

The thing you two had together blossomed just as quickly as it burned out. Maybe what people say is true. The star that burns twice as bright burns half as long. You were not sure if it was love, but you didn’t know what it was either if it was not love. He had always been there in the last 4 months. Woohyun knew when you were not okay just from your words. He lent you an ear when you just needed someone to listen and a shoulder when you wanted to cry. Woohyun supported you in everything you did to the point that you even recorded your singing to send to him once even though you were terrible at it. He liked singing and sometimes sent you some of his song covers. Since the first time he did, you decided that his voice would always be your favorite sound in this whole wide world.

Soon, without your knowing, every love song was about him. Every poems you wrote, you wrote for him, to him. He was on your mind all day and even if you two were half the world away and could never meet, you were happy every time you heard that notification sound from your phone.

But since when did everything become like this? You scrolled to the top of your chat logs and read everything over and over again but there was no sign. 4 months equals 120 days. It seems like such a short period of time but it took you a while to scroll back because you two talked every day, about every random thing. From how he loved rock but his voice could only sing ballad to how you liked dogs more than cats when he was the opposite.

Everything started coming back and before you realized, you had spent a whole Saturday at home, rereading your conversation with Woohyun for God knows how many times, visiting his profile, then turning off your phone just so you would stop doing those two things you just did and logging in using your laptop just to find yourself staring at his avatar after doing the two things you swore to yourself you would never do again. You regretted not ever asking exactly what his address was. You knew he lived in Seoul but where exactly? The more you thought about you and him, the more you hated yourself.

Then, you suddenly started to wonder if what people say was true so you searched for it online. It turned out 14 days were not enough to get rid of a habit. Sources say it takes 21 days, which means you needed to give it another week and you’d better start soon.

B-but maybe not yet.

Not when you saw the selca Woohyun posted some days in October, before you guys got to know each other. He was walking on the street, yellow leaves filled the sky above his head and the ground beneath his footsteps.

Not when you suddenly wanted to hear his voice again so you scrolled frantically to January when he posted his cover of Time spent walking through memories.

“Walking through memories? You know what? I am now”, you said with a sad smile on your face and couldn’t help but let out a sigh. Your eyes were getting teary again. “Where are you?”, you thought before falling asleep again with his voice in your ears, exactly the way you had been falling asleep for 19 days since he was gone. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, maybe i should wash these pillows”, you wondered, but it wasn’t long before his voice sent you to sleep.

I still see your image,

I still feel your warmth

Now i live in your time again

...

How about you?

Are you feeling the same as me?

How about you?

Yes, how about you? Woohyun? Do you miss me? At all?

===

When you opened your eyes again, it was dark so the first thing you do is to reach for the phone to see if was Saturday’s night or Sunday’s, but the phone was out of battery.

“He drained all of your energy, too huh?”, you said to the phone before standing up from the desk and sluggishly stepped into the living room to look for the charger. Sleeping while sitting wasn’t a good idea. Your back hurt as much as your head.

“hmmm torturing myself”, you whined a bit and streched a little. When you bent down to reach for the charger in the bag, unknowingly a tear fell out. You never knew your eyes held that much water, it was like faucet, a broken one that would just leak anywhere anytime.

It was a minute or two before you the phone again. 11 pm Saturday. For some reason, the thought of washing your pillows still lingered and you decided to do the laundry. Pillows, pillow covers, blankets and bed sheets all thrown into the bathtub before being crumpled by your hands and drenched with water and foam. It took about 2 hours for everything.

At 1.30 a.m Sunday, you were looking up at the stars. Street lights were all out already so the whole city was blanketed in darkness. You liked this better since you could see the stars more clearly. Besides, street lights always brought a feeling of loneliness whenever you came home from work.

“Woohy-“, you stopped.

Since when did you start to have the habit of calling his name everytime you talk to yourself? It felt like thoughts of him always came first and his name preceeded every sentence you uttered. It was day 20 since you two stopped talking and you felt like you would soon become crazy.... but.. how come the stars reminded you of his eyes? Twinkling and sparkling. No, on second thought, Woohyun actually held the universe in his eyes.

“Maybe it’s just the filter and editing”, you thought. You two never met but you sent each other photos from time to time and updated your daily life with each other so you felt like he was your dearest friend. Dearest internet friend who you talked to when you came home. That’s right. To you, he’s home. You realized on the 20^th day since he was gone.

But you could not stand this any more. Maybe you should begin learning to forget him in the upcoming week. No, let’s just start all over from scratch.

And so you did, it was 2.59 a.m on a Sunday of March. You were determined that when the clock struck 3, you would start to stop thinking about him for the next 21 days. “I had to get him out of my mind”, you thought as you looked at the cactus.

“When does cactus bloom?”, you wondered as you had a feeling spring breeze would be here soon.

===

Who were you kidding? To you, he is home. You realized this fact on the 20^th day since he was gone, and 39 days later (18 days after the 21-day plan of forgetting him) you still felt like Woohyun owned your entire heart. He took it and left. Without knowing, 2 months had passed since the last time you texted him. The chat log still froze at “Woohyun. I hate this. Please answer me” but this time it showed almost two months ago.

59 days and a half, to be exact.

“Where are you?”