Yuju stepped into her apartment and heard the door click shut behind her. Her hand hovered over the light switch for several moments before flicking it on.

The light fell on cold air, a stiff sofa, a dusty coffee table, a black TV screen.

Home.

Yuju turned her head down and walked quickly towards the bathroom before the emptiness could get to her. But it was hard, trying to run from something that had you surrounded from all sides. Her cup was missing a toothbrush. Her bathtub rail was too big to hold just one shampoo bottle. Her towel rack looked dreadfully plain without that baby pink towel that Yuju used to secretly press her face into after taking it out of the dryer. She regretted it now, having thrown them all away in a fit of anger.

The small bathroom mirror had been adjusted to a height too low for her, and she hadn't gotten around to raising it back. And so Yuju bent a little, gripping the sink with one hand. She swiped the other hand across the mirror, and the woman behind the mist stared back at her with tired indifference.

You'd look cuter chubby, Yujya.

Hollow cheeks, hollow eyes. She used to feel beautiful looking in the mirror. Not anymore. Not for a long time now.

She didn't dare turn on any other light for the rest of the night. And yet her treacherous eyes wouldn't shut. They insisted on indulging in the darkness she had imposed on herself, until every murky detail came into uncomfortable focus once more. The silhouette of her wilted orchid by the window (I swear you never water her! What would happen if I didn't come by every day?), the pale pockmarks on the opposite wall where paint had been ripped off along with taped photographs (No way! We look adorable. This one goes on The Wall!), the scratches on the wooden floor where a bed had been carelessly shoved over to the near wall (You don't have to rearrange all your furniture, you know. I only fell off the bed twice this whole week.)

Yuju turned over in this bed now, towards the wall it had been pushed up against. Had a single bed ever felt so big? She ran her hand over the pillow, over the mattress, groping for a small groove, a faint indentation made by a body too light to make any such thing.

Yuju's hand returned to grip at her own chest after the futile search. She waited for the numbness to swell into pain and then uncompress into sorrow. Eunha was alive out there, she knew. Eunha was doing okay somewhere, she hoped. And yet, in here, Eunha was but a ghost. Forever gone, forever missed, forever haunting the nursery that was also the deathbed of their love.

And night after night, Yuju grieved.