It’s been approximately eight months since she’d been gone from the comforts of her hometown. San Francisco had been a completely new experience for Noeul. Skyscrapers that grazed the sky replaced the antiquated buildings and suburban family homes she grew up around. In each step, there were freshly paved roads, busy streets tightly packed with cars, buses, and trolleys, and loud noises.

She loved to sit on the trolley and see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. She liked the hue of the mountains at different times of the day. In the morning, a dark purplish tone. In the evening, the purple was touched by orange as the sun sunk and the mountains blended into the night sky.

Noeul attended UCSF which was perched on top of a mountain. Actually, from a distance, you could say that the school was built right on a mountain. The buildings were level, but the sidewalks were definitely not—evident from her aching calves after hiking up steep sidewalks to get to her classes.

The campus was always crowded at every time of the day, and when it wasn’t, she felt a little wistful. Especially when she looked up at the night sky at a time she should’ve been asleep.

But despite the perks of her new life, eight months here meant eight months away from him. God knows that Noeul dreams of him every night. On her loneliest nights, when her friend is too busy to spare Noeul a second, she imagines the tight, comforting squeeze of his arms around her. She imagines the velvety touch of his lips on her cheek, her shoulders, and the intoxicating taste of his lips when they meet hers in the middle.

Sometimes, she’d stare up at the ceiling from her minuscule twin bed and pretend that she didn’t make the worst decision of her life. It wasn’t just the moving away. It was the complete separation. Imagine if there had been a string connecting the two of them. It was a string that intertwined their fate, their memories, and their childhood that seemed to tangle together all in one complex web.

There was no other way of sparing either party without digging her hand in the gun wound. It was pulling the bullet out. Then, to save herself, it was the measly bandaid placed on top of the raw, mangled injury.

After all, Noeul had been the one to grab a rusty pair of scissors, snipping the only thing holding them together.

She blamed herself, but if she had to go back in time with the choice of changing anything, Noeul wouldn’t have changed a thing. She would choose to do the same thing over and over again. In every scenario that played in her head, there wasn’t a better way.

Their lives were far too complicated. Too messy for two very hurt people to stay together. How could she ever dare to put him through her experience? Her shoes weren’t easy to wear. So, how could she knowingly drag him into the mess of her life and feign happiness?

It got even more complicated when none of the emotions that she experienced with him were fake. They were as real as one could get. He was the only one in this entire world to make her heart feel like it was simultaneously drowning and on fire at the same time. If Noeul could just kiss him one last time, if she could just hold him—or if he could just reassure her that things were gonna be okay, despite knowing that both their lives were never going to be okay.

And despite the heaviness in her steps, the smile that she shone to people that truly never reached her eyes, Noeul would still wake up in the morning. She would get up, make her bed, get dressed, and go to school. If she was going to survive her still broken heart, she would have to continue to live her life without thinking about him.

It was a nearly impossible mission. Everything reminded her of him. The other day, she was sitting on the grass on her school campus, and as Noeul did her assignments, a soccer ball rolled up to her feet. Each time she took a consecutive breath, it felt like someone was running a pair of shears up and down her entrails.

Noeul passed the ball back to the group of guys who waited expectantly, but not without remembering the last time they were together. Just the two of them at a random soccer field in the middle of the night.

“Why did you choose soccer?” She asked him. He was lying on her lap, his eyes closed and to an unsuspecting person, he could have easily passed off as someone asleep—but, Noeul knew him like she did with the back of her hand.

He was analyzing his game from earlier that night. It was, in her opinion, what made him the most fascinating player she’d ever watched. She’d often lose track of the ball when it was traveling between his feet, quick as a rabbit. Their high school team did fairly well, but whenever they lost, there was no harsher critic than himself. And it made him damn good at anything he put his mind to. One of the things she loved about him was his ability to put in his everything—to fully immerse himself.

He was always full of life. Noeul never could figure out what drove him to live so vicariously. How he could take big, heaping breaths and crush any obstacle in his path. His resilience was truly awe-inspiring, but if only she could take his advice.

“Because I thought I’d be good at it,” he answered, only half-joking.

She shook her head, blowing out a loud snort.

Baekhyun opened his eyes, and she could see a glimmer of mirth dancing in those brown eyes. “I wasn’t interested in sports at all. I grew up on books after all. But I guess—there was just something so attractive about the simplicity of the sport. You have one goal. To make it inside the net. How you do it is up to you. With soccer, there were fewer technicalities. When I’m playing on the field, it’s me, the ball, and my team. There’s truly something so beautiful about a bunch of guys, fueled by testosterone, agreeing to work together just to shoot the ball into a goal. It sounds typical of a bunch of knuckleheads, but I’m so focused on the game that for a second, my life has nothing to do with my role on the field. I’m not an orphan there. I’m a striker with a team counting on me.”

Noeul took in his words, her eyes widening as she watched his elated expression. She hadn’t expected a fully thought-out explanation. This was also the point in time when she regretted putting him off as a simple-minded high school jock.

He wasn’t so simple in the end. He was the most beautiful person she’d ever met. Someone who knew who he was. He’d been so sure of himself. Despite his adversities, Baekhyun would eventually figure out how to face them. He was miles ahead of her. She could barely begin to think about where she would go from her diagnosis.

“What?” He asked, wondering why she hadn’t uttered a single word since.

Noeul shook her head, lowering herself to press her forehead against his. “Promise me you won’t ever change.”

She reached her fingers into his hair, brushing it back from his face. Not caring for a second that he was sweaty.

Baekhyun looked up at her, and when he did, all she could hear was the pounding of her own heart, the minuscule sound of the breath that caught in , the deafening roaring of blood in her ears. He had that power. The overwhelming power to make her feel like she was the only person who existed on this planet.

Even now, he still had a hold on her. An invisible hand that came now and then to remind her that she would never love again—not like that. Not a love where two parties completely understood each other. Where they respected and admired each other for completely separate attributes.

Noeul figures that he wouldn’t have liked it here. He would’ve made comments about sky pollution. You could hardly see the stars at night from the light pollution and the smog.

Sometimes, the sky would be outright red, the result of a forest fire somewhere nearby.

Some days were better if you stayed inside.

The only thing really predictable around here was the cool breeze circling in from the Pacific ocean. Noeul wasn’t sure why she was so drawn to the ocean, despite it being the place most of her nightmares came from.

But nowadays, she tried doing this thing where she would reroute her thoughts. She wouldn’t fixate on her mother any longer. Maybe the most appealing part was having a choice. A choice to let go of her resentment. To let her bitterness dissipate, and so, whenever Noeul thought about her mother, she was just any other person whose mistakes were making bad choices and having bad traits.

It was selfishness. Having Noeul to get back at a person who wasn’t capable of raising a child. It was having the thought that Noeul would be a mindless puppet with her mother being the one to pull all the strings. Even in death, she was selfish, assuming that Noeul couldn’t live on without a mother who never saw her as anything else but a transaction.

Her father’s child. A man who wasn’t capable of loving her mother for she was.

Letting go of these chains felt like giving the girl in the lilac dress a much-anticipated hug. A hug that she’d needed all along. Some reassurance that even without parental guidance, Noeul would still somehow find her way. She would find love. A love so pure that it drastically differed from what was shared between her parents. She may have been their mistake, but choosing to love Baekhyun was not a mistake.

She missed him, and she had no one else to blame but herself. Leaving wasn’t easy. When Luhan called her every now and then to check on her, initially, it took a couple of tries before she stopped feeling bad for ghosting him several months before.

Then, he called her and told her that Baekhyun was doing better. Those words were her downfall. Some sick, twisted part of herself wanted to hear that no, he wasn’t doing well. He was suffering without her. He couldn’t live without her. But Noeul knew she was being insufferable.

Unable to fully let go of her Baekhyun, Noeul missed him so viscerally that she could feel it in her blood. The smell of him lingering somewhere in the distance. Woods and greens.

Her favorite smell of all. She used to bury her nose into his neck. It was a good hiding place. He’d been her rock after all.

It’s been eight months since she left. And there wasn’t a day that went by when Noeul didn’t have a hard time convincing herself that she didn’t make the wrong choice. That this would eventually pass. That the ache in her chest, the constant throb threatening to smother her livelihood wouldn’t kill her—despite the reminder that continues to terrorize her, the fact that leaving Baekhyun was on par with leaving behind an extremity. But if that was what it took to ensure that he didn’t have to hurt for the rest of his life, then so be it.