“HoSeok, please pick up. This isn’t funny anymore...” I whispered under my breath as I stared at the still ringing phone. An automated voice declared coolly that the number dialed was unreachable. But how could that be when it had only been minutes since we’d last spoken? Anxiety made my heart kick up a few more notches as I prompted the phone to call once more.

“C’mon HoSeok please, I didn’t mean it!” I begged to no one and there was no reply. There was nothing but the continued ringing and my own harsh breaths as tears began to run down my face. Where had it all gone wrong?

I had always been attracted to people who seemed cold, men anyways. The ones who stood on the sidelines but had organized and created everything that was taking place. In command and in charge, I liked that. They were passionate but it was a hidden passion; I would be the one to soften them, to make them laugh and play like they couldn’t do out in the world. All that softness and love would be only for me. That was what I wanted, a somewhat selfish love maybe but could it truly be selfish to want just one person for yourself? Devotion would go both ways, I would make sure of it. I just wanted to be needed and to be free to need someone else in return. Did this sort of love even truly exist?

HoSeok and I had begun so happily. So full of love until everyday felt like it was better with his presence. Every hug, every kiss, every accidental touch of our hands felt like a live wire caught between us, sparking us until we burned. A single shared look could set us to fighting or threaten hot intimacy. But soon the looks came a lot less often, the words of love stopped being spoken aloud, and even the arguments had dwindled to nothing. Somehow all that frenetic energy had gone away. It was like it had happened over night; how could love just stop so easily?

Maybe that’s where I had screwed up. I was with a man who had ambition. Jung HoSeok was not a man to sit idle; he owned three hotels and was working on a fourth. In what spare time he had, he jogged, played tennis and generally wore himself out. All so, he said, to keep his mind clear. Of course I saw this as a good thing, he went after what he wanted with single-minded determination. And when we first dated he had given me the same treatment. I had felt more than special when he called me late at night, exhaustion thick in his voice. He was making time for me, I’d thought mindlessly. But now years had gone by and he continued to do his hobbies without me, he would balk at my attempts to get his attention. He wanted silence and aloneness when everything in me had always wanted someone with me.

I didn’t call again, the thin phone in my hands now too heavy to hold. I let it fall from my grasp onto the bed and I fell alongside it. Maybe if I shut my eyes tightly enough, all of this would go away.

I had always wanted simple things and a simple life. I wanted emotions, affection and trust, things that money couldn’t buy. And even if the reality wasn’t perfect, well then, perfection could be the relationship itself. But that’s not what he was after. Maybe in the end it wasn’t only that we were different. It was that we wanted different things down to the core of our beings. So different that even if there was love we were bound to break apart as the boundaries between our wants grew larger. Destined to smash into tiny pieces, the fragments of us floating by each other.

Sometimes it felt that way. That everything we had was comfortable and the love had died long ago. Is this still love between us, or am I only addicted to the feeling?

“HoSeok, answer dammit!” I cried while looking at my phone, and almost like magic the call finally connects and I hear a harsh intake of breath in the phone’s speaker.

“Miya, are you there?” His voice is crisp but holds notes of worry. I jump on my chance.

“HoSeok, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” I tell him, cradling the phone in my hands as if they held his face instead. That once precious face, I couldn’t remember the last time I had touched it.

“I know, I didn’t mean it either. And I didn’t mean to not pick up, my phone died,” he explained in a rush.

A heavy weight lifted off of my chest but still I hesitated. So scared of saying it, not sure what it would mean…

“HoSeok,” I asked with trepidation, “we’ve been dating for five years. Do you even want to get married?”

There was a long silence and then a sigh. My heart knew what was coming next even before he spoke and those bits of me that loved him broke with no audible sound.

“…No.”

A/N: Heartbreaking!!! Apologies guys for being in a mood but man, I am loving angst these days. A happy fic with our happy virus Hobi almost had me creating a completely different type of fic, but here we are and I don't know, this one seems more true to life then some fluff. But that's my opinion, I wanna know what you guys think! Let me know down below and COMMENT, UPVOTE and SUBSCRIBE for more content!