There was only so much time before Yulhee accidentally slipped her tongue and told her father everything. It was before then that I had to talk to Sung Gyu about the fate of our marriage, discuss what he wanted, what I wanted, what we would want for our child. But after that incident, Sung Gyu returned to his shell again. Time passed by with minimal interactions, the sole link between us being our daughter. He worked until late, I stayed out until late, mum took care of Yulhee most of the time, and I spent most of the time on my own. I realised during the calm of that week, I was only waiting for Sung Gyu to push me again; get mad at me, slam doors on my face, ask me to leave. I was waiting for him to give me reasons to leave. But us staying apart from each other despite living in the same house hindered that from happening.

During that week, at work, I received another post-it, this time delivered by Woohyun himself. He was going from cubicle to cubicle, talking to all the editors of the paper and then came to me. He pretended to talk, pulled out my notepad, took out a post-it and casually wrote something. Just like he did for everyone else, then, he cheered me up to work hard and went away. On my note pad, on the post it it said; “To my car”

After the incident at his house, we hadn’t spoken to each other much. There were several texts from him and calls that I had left unanswered. We didn’t go to the archives or his car again, nor did I meet him at his house. In all honesty, I was taking time for myself to think about everything all from the beginning, contemplate what I really wanted, what was best for Sung Gyu and Yulhee, whom I would rather spend the rest of my life with. The choice was between the man I had lived with for twelve years but could no longer stand me and a man who kept a large part of his life from me. The more I thought about it, the more complex it became. In the end, I spoke to neither of them and waited for the time to decide.

So when Woohyun invited me to see him again, I went along with it. I wanted to hear for myself what more he had to say, to confirm to myself that he was worth a man to leave Sung Gyu for. It was a little into the lunch hour when I met him at the parking lot, in his car, a sombre look on his face. When I climbed inside, Woohyun didn’t exactly start softly, making me question if I ever really knew him at all.

“I told you I was sorry, why do you have to act like this?” He asked me the first thing we met. There was an unreadable look in his eyes, something that I had only seen in the ‘chief-editor’ side of him, something that I had seen only when we had messed up.

“I just-I just needed some time for myself, that’s all” I replied, baffled by his words. I already knew Woohyun wasn’t exactly gentle at all times, that he had a stern, steadfast side to him as well. I had experienced this too, only so many times as an editor but never as a lover. That afternoon when it happened to me for the first time, all I could do was stare at him, wide eyed.

“If you do, you can just tell me first, couldn’t you? Without leaving me waiting?” He went on, the same icy glare in his eyes. “You’re always distracted now, always quiet. At this point I just think you can’t make up your mind, Eunji”

I said nothing in response, stricken by the sense of truth in his words. He may have been right, and I hated that. I couldn’t make up my mind. I despised myself for this, for standing blindly on the knife’s edge, waiting for myself to fall, intending to stay wherever I land.

“I know I was wrong not to tell you about my marriage” He was telling me, his voice quiet murmur but weighted just the same. “And I’m sorry, I really am. But I don’t think I deserve this silence from you when you’re not any better yourself,”

Woohyun had pushed the divorce on me several times. On a plethora of repetitive texts sent in early mornings and dead into the night ‘Did you ask him? Did you ask him yet?’ and it had been only an added pain in my head. Sung Gyu had only worsened by the day. Just a few days ago his assistant had to come all the way to our flat because Sung Gyu had apparently forgotten an entire day’s worth of lectures. He spent day and night sliding across the house in his dressing gown and pajamas, hair a mess, glasses askew. At times he appeared a mad scientist, coming out of his den once a full moon, and the rest, very rarely as well, he was my husband. Some days we would fight and he’d go to sleep in his makeshift bed in his study, some days we pretended neither of us existed. We had dinner together and went to see my mum together, just for the sake of Yulhee and her. When we were on our own, we were two ships sailing in different directions. I had tried to bring up him seeing a doctor, two fruitless attempts after being prompted by Gyuri and also his assistant, both of which ended up with him either reminding me that he was not mad, or calling me mad. There was never going forward in that. Divorce was imminent, it wasn’t impossible. But only, I was just one foot in for going ahead with it, the other in the shallow, just edging onto Woohyun’s side but not so much.

“It’s not like that…” I started helplessly, my hand in my hair. “It’s just…” A heavy sigh, and I turned to him. “I don’t know, Woohyun-Ssi, I don’t know how to tell him”

“You just go to your lawyer and set all that up and then tell him, Eunji, it's not that hard”

The possibility of doing it before even telling him was making my head hurt. “How could I do that?” I returned, my voice shaking. “If you haven’t realised it yet, we have a child!”

He let out an impatient sigh. “Well then, talk to him! It can’t be that hard!”

I recalled the last time we did, and my heart squeezed in pain. Twelve years of knowing with a four year old child, was that really the end that we needed?

“I don’t know…” I told him in the end and heaved a sharp breath. “Just-just give me some more time”

Woohyun was quiet as he stared at me with icy cold eyes. “You had a change of heart,” He said as if he’d just had that realisation. My heart pounded, hands fisted in my lap. I opened my mouth to argue, to deny it, to clear his doubts but he left no space for me to speak. “Is it because I didn’t tell you the truth? Is it because you feel I lied to you?” He still left me not a moment to say a word when he reached out and took my hand. I gazed at the way our hands intervened, fit perfectly right. 

“I didn’t because I had moved on, Eunji. Not from my son, I’d never. But that marriage, that life….” He squeezed my hand then, met my eyes, a mysterious flicker, a shine I couldn’t decode. “I want to start all over with you. You and Yulhee and I, an all new life…” His thumb rubbed the back of my hand. “Eunji, isn’t that what you want? No more fighting, no more arguing, an all new life?”

This time even when I opened my mouth, there was not a word I could say. Hope of an all new life had been whirring in my mind like a storm for the past few days. It was the promise of his voice when he’d said that, everytime he said it. It was his dainty little house at the end of the quiet grove, it was the garden, the light that washed in through the curtain, brightening  up the home in its entirety. It was the uncertainty that lied in my life with Sung Gyu; his madness, his eccentricity, him who only seemed to get worse every day and my conscious continuously reminding me, the reason behind it was me. The more I thought of it, the more sense it made. Leaving him was the only way. But what was it about my heart that had me bound to him, unable to move on?

“Make it sooner, Eunji” Woohyun told me on an endnote, slowly retrieving his hand. “As soon as you can. The longer you drag it, the harder it will be”

And he was right. I realised this when I returned home that evening and stood in the empty hallway of my home, staring at the tall, dark figure of my husband standing in the backdrop of the late summer sky. The longer I stayed, the harder it would be. It was time. It was time I gathered all my reasons and willed myself to leave, for there was no telling when I’d find even more reasons to stay.

♡♡♡

In the evening of that week’s friday I worked until late. It was actual work, no lies, no pretense. I was held back by unreachable deadlines, and the only sensible way of going that height was staying late. It was just another day of Yulhee staying overnight at her grandmother’s, just another night where I would return to an empty house or, if I was unlucky, a distraught husband in the kitchen or gliding across the hallway like a ghost. We wouldn’t speak on those days. We would stay in our rooms, continue on our sails heading in different directions. But that night, something changed.

I walked into my house, dark, quiet, almost empty, imagining that my husband had already locked himself away. Yet, I found him seated in the kitchen island, a small, crouched figure on a tall kitchen stool, head in hand, fingers in his hair, his dressing gown shimmering loosely on his frame. For the first time in twelve years of our life together, I was seeing Sung Gyu drinking on his own. 

“Oppa?” I called him as I crossed the threshold into the kitchen. I usually wouldn’t have done that would I find him outside his room on nights like this. But tonight was different. Sung Gyu was drinking, and the Sung Gyu that I knew would never drink on his own.

It took him a moment to register my presence in the kitchen. He looked up at me from his dark spot at the end of the kitchen island, cans of beer and bottles of Soju scattered around him. His eyes flickered upon seeing me, and something tugged at my heart, painfully so, when he smiled.

“Eunji-ah...you’re home”

There was something about the way he called my name, something about the way he acknowledged my presence that seemed to ring sirens around me.

“Why…” I started in a thick voice. “Oppa...why are you-? You don’t usually...do this”

Sung Gyu nodded, smiled and poured himself another glassful of Soju. There was no joy in his face as he swallowed it in one shot; he winced, his eyes closed as the hot, scalding liquid ran down his throat. He groaned, stared at the empty glass in his hand. “I don’t” He nodded, agreeing with me, looked up and met my eyes. “But some moments are called for” He gestured at the stool beside him. “Would you join?”

I said nothing, my heart pounding, and slipped into the stool. 

Sung Gyu was quiet for a while, holding the glass catching yellow light as it glimmered crystalline. The shine was reflected in his eyes, distant, thoughtful and opaque. I remained still, my hands cold and my heart in my throat. Something about all of this just did not feel right.

He set the glass aside, then, picked up a bottle and filled it to the brim, his eyes set. “I was only nine when my mother passed away” He started soberly, and met my eyes. “I have already told you this, haven’t I?” His smile was apologetic; he shook his head and turned away. “When she passed, I didn’t feel it much. Appa was there, my grandparents were there. They kept telling me that she was just away, and I believed them. I thought that she had gone somewhere far away and didn’t want to come back home for me. I thought she was unhappy, and she was happier wherever she was. It didn’t matter to me, losing her didn’t feel like much….until it happened again…” 

A moment of silence, and he took a deep breath. “When my father died, I was barely  fourteen. I had too much to think, too much to feel. Dad was not coming back, nor was my mum; Nothing hurt me more than that day. The pain of loss hit me the strongest that when Halmeoni and Harabeoji passed away, it couldn’t even match” He looked at me again, in his eyes there was a painful glimmer. “I couldn’t see them, I couldn’t even tell them goodbye…it hurt, but not as much because, by that time, I had seen enough horror and felt enough pain than my mind could possibly take”

I knew this too. It was something that he had revealed to only so many people, and I happened to be one of them. Fresh out of highschool as soon as Sung Gyu had fled his childhood home and enlisted, he had the rare opportunity to take part in Peacekeeping missions, which set the cornerstones to his career. He hadn’t even dreamed about being involved in international politics before then, he said, until his experience in a war ridden country had convinced him otherwise. He had seen all the horrors and loss in that time that he’d returned with the realisation that no amount of guns and blue helmets could keep the world in peace. 

“Losses are something that I am accustomed to, Eunji,” Sung Gyu went on, his voice distant, quiet. “When it happens too many times, you get used to it...loss has always been a part of my life” 

He stopped, fell quiet and stared at his clenched hands for a long time. The silence was deafening, the sense of unknowingness, not being able to read his mind, see into his soul, know what he was thinking. I had a vague idea about what he was going to say, and it pained me. It was not how I had wanted things to happen.

“The reason why I’m telling you all this is, I want you to know that I will not be hurt, not anymore…” He continued after a while, despite his words, hurt being palpable in his tone. “Eunji, the only thing I want to know is,” He looked up and his eyes fell into mine. “Is he a good man?”

I felt cold creeping under my skin as blood descended from my face. He was bound to know at some point, and I was prepared for it when that would happen. But nothing prepared me for how he confronted it. I couldn’t find a word to say.

Sung Gyu was staring at me across the table. There was not a hint of anger in his eyes, not a sign of rage. There was a slight curve on his lips, a glassy sheen in his eyes. They were expressive in a way that I felt it within myself, thorns pricking my heart; sheer and intense.

“I might have known it all along….” He went on in my silence in a lowly, remorseful voice. “Or not entirely, but I had my suspicions. I knew you like an open book, knew enough to read right through you. But I just didn’t want to believe it. It’s easier that way, when you know something and convince yourself that you didn’t...but then…” He heaved a heavy sigh and rubbed his face. “When Yulhee…”

My heart skipped a beat. “Did Yulhee..?” I found myself asking before I could stop myself.

Sung Gyu nodded and smiled wistfully, his eyes set on the glass. “She’s only four, Eunji. She’s the last person you can expect to keep a secret...the moment she told me about a cat and a friend, I knew…”

I was stricken although I knew it would happen. I was stricken because this was not how I had expected it to be. I’d thought he would be livid, I’d thought he would flip the entire house around and demand that I left. It would have been easier that way, I’d have gotten just what I wanted; a very good reason to leave. But tonight as I watched him across the table as he broke apart, all I felt in my heart was shock and intense sense of regret. Woohyun’s voice echoed in my mind like a baleful reminder. The longer it takes , the harder it gets.

“I’m not mad at you” Sung Gyu went on, his voice small, distant and quiet. “I don’t blame you for anything that happened…” He shook his head. “All that I feel is regret. I was a terrible husband, and we were over before I knew it. I made you unhappy, I pushed you away... I’m not mad at you, I’m only mad at myself”

I called his name, my voice merely a shrill whisper. I couldn’t even bring myself to reach across the table and take his hand. Although he sat right before me, it felt as if he was so far away.

Sung Gyu took off his glasses, the frame gently scattered upon the table as he squeezed his eyes shut, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He remained like this for a moment as the silence of the house beat against the walls around us. When he looked up at me, my heart stopped, wrenched and doused in remorse so intense that for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

There were tears in his eyes.

And it was in this teary, low voice that he spoke to me again, the small crystallite glass in his hand, his eyes set on its shine, nothing else.

“All good things end...that’s how life is, isn’t it? I had selfishly held onto this relationship for all the years we’ve put into it, for all the happiness it had given me. In fact-,” A sharp breath, as tears filled my eyes. “You and Yulhee...you’re pretty much all I have. But now, things have changed, and I don’t think I can hang onto it anymore, much less than you could, Eunji, it has to end”

He fell quiet again, and in that silence, I struggled to collect my thoughts. It was hard to make sense of his words; whether it was the mess in my mind or if it was because they truly made no sense, I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that it was not how I had expected we would end, not even a part of it. The moment was finally upon us, yet now I was truly perplexed of how I felt. Sung Gyu’s tears had broken me, ripped and shredded me apart and I was desperate to turn things around.

Sung Gyu poured himself two glassfulls, and I could only watch him helplessly as he downed them both one after the other as if drowning himself in alcohol could numb him more. He closed his eyes, his outstretched hands grasping the edges of the table, his knuckles turning white. His hair, greasy and overgrown, had fallen over his brows, nearly covering his eyes. He refused to look at me as he spoke again.

“You weren’t wrong. There’s something wrong with me” He said as my heart leapt to my throat. “I feel this too, all the time. I don’t know what it is, but- I walk out onto the street and don’t know where I am standing, I can't tell days and months apart, lose my keys, lose my words, lose my mind…” He lowered his head, and streaks of deep brown of his hair caught the yellow light. “Knowing what it is would solidify things; that I am sick, that I would only cause more pain and trouble to everyone around me. To you, to Yulhee...I thought it would wear off, somehow. I thought I could hang on until then...but it's only making it difficult to be a good husband, a good father...”

“Why don’t you just get treated then?” I interjected him desperately. “You can get treated, there’s a fix for everything, and I will-,”

Sung Gyu shook his head. “It’s easier like this...”

“But-”

He lifted his head and met my eyes. “Does he love you?” He asked, halting me mid sentence. There was something cold about his eyes, and agonizing, as if he envied the other man in my life. I knew what he was asking of me, but I did not know what I could say “Does he love you, Eunji? Does he love you enough for me to let you go? Does he make you happy? Does he make Yulhee happy?”

“Oppa…” I muttered, breath hitched in my throat. Why are you asking me this? 

“I would never be at peace if you weren’t in good hands” Sung Gyu continued, his voice breaking. “It's obvious now that it wouldn’t be mine. I had you, I had my chance, but right now all I’m doing is hurting you...and I don’t think it will change any sooner. It's only right that I take this decision...it's only for the best-,”

“What about Yulhee?” I found myself asking him as if it hadn’t been me who had started this storm in the first place. “What about your daughter, Sung Gyu oppa, what would you say?”

He was frozen for a moment, his fists clenched. I watched him, completely agonized as he broke apart before my eyes. His clenched hands pressed onto his eyes, his fingers grasped his hair. For a long time, he remained like that as I sat across from him, fighting the urge to reach out and hold him in my arms.

“She’s better off without me” Sung Gyu breathed out in the end, and my heart ripped apart seeing his tear stained eyes. He had never been so broken, so vulnerable. “She’s still young, she’d get used to having a different father...like I did”

Sung Gyu never had a different father. He had to get used to not having one at all. After he lost his mother, his father and grandparents were all he had, and when he lost him, lost them, he had grown up trying his best not letting that lack of affection get in his way. He lived like their deaths never affected him, as if he’d grown out of that sorrow. But when he became a father himself, he’d been a father to Yulhee all that he could as if he never wanted her to feel that pain of not having one.

I was cruel and selfish to never have thought this once; about Yulhee, about Sung Gyu, about that bond which would have been a sin to break. Would Yulhee ever get used to a father who wasn’t her own? Who didn’t speak to her about horrors of war and lives of children her age across the shores? Who was I to even imagine that she would come around?

“You’re just drunk” I told him in the end, reaching across the table to move the alcohol away from him. “Let's talk when you’re thinking straight, oppa, you’re not making any sense…”

But he held out to the bottle firmly and away from my reach. I sat back and stared at the man whom I had thought I once knew but appeared a stranger to me.

“I’m tired of all the fighting” He went on and poured himself a glassful. “I’m tired of it and so are you...and I know you Eunji, I know you more than anybody else. The Eunji I had left behind so many times...You never went to another man” He stared at the glass in his hand for a second as if he was having afterthoughts while I held my paining heart in mind. He set the glass back on the table. “I drove you away. I did things and said things that had hurt you, I simply did not love you enough. If I had anyone to blame for what happened, that would be myself”

That was because I loved you. I wanted to tell him recalling all the times I had waited anticipating his return after long runs across the continents. But I didn’t know anymore. He wasn’t wrong; the fighting, the accusations and constant blaming had only made me want to run away. Whether it was out of this house or to another man was never the question. But I never thought of why it happened, or how. I never wondered what had changed in the man that I had loved, what had caused that change. I had only been self obsessed, caring only about treating my open, festering wounds that I hadn’t seen his cuts while they bled. If I had anyone to blame for what happened, then, that would be me.

“But you are probably sick” I found myself telling him. “The angry outbursts and forgetting things...it could be something psychological, and maybe if you-,”

“That’s nothing that I want you to think about” Sung Gyu pushed on and took a sharp breath. “The longer I don't know the truth, the better...but I want you and Yulhee away from me, having a better life…” He looked up, his eyes twinkling like glass. “That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? Be happy? And I don’t think I’m capable of that anymore, so go away, Eunji. Leave me. If he loves you enough, you can have it all”

With that, he picked up the glass of Soju again and drank it in one go. I watched him, tears glazing my eyes, unable to think anymore. I had always wanted a reason to leave him, and I had desperately clawed and scratched the walls searching for them. Whenever he lost his patience with me, it was a reason to leave. Every blame and every accusation, every cold glare tossed on my way. Every time he forgot something and acted unlike himself I’d thought he posed danger to Yulhee and me. When I’d found solace in the comfort of another man and found a place to go to, it was yet another reason for me. If I had all the many reasons to, why couldn’t I just leave? 

Sitting in this darkened kitchen, watching Sung Gyu who seemed like he was disappearing, I was desperate for reasons to stay. I would stay if he were really sick in his mind, I would stay if the only man that fit to be my child’s father was him. I would stay if he said it in so many words, reached out and held me back. I would stay if he wanted me to stay, this I knew.

Yet Sung Gyu was saying nothing, nothing at all but draining the last bottle of Soju on the table, shot after shot.

“What do you want to do?” I found myself asking him in the end. The night had gotten darker, the world sombre and cold. It had started raining outside, raindrops dripping against the glass paneled walls, racing each other to a hundred feet fall. 

Sung Gyu’s hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle. His eyes were set on the glass. He heaved a deep breath and looked at me.

“I spoke to attorney Yang. It was him I was speaking to on the day that Yulhee…” he trailed off, but I understood what he meant. On the day we first discussed this, the day he flat out refused. “Anyway” He dragged his palm down his face. “I had spoken to him and we can get the paperwork settled soon...I had asked him for some time as I felt it was something we needed to think deeply about...you know, about the house...child custody…”

My hands clenched as tears welled in my eyes. I had never thought we would come to this day, not when he had taken my hand six years ago and promised me forever. But there we were, thinking about the house we had bought together, the child that we had together, on the verge of the moment that we’d part ways.

“I will be flying out tomorrow night” he went on, and his eyes set on a dark space at a corner of the kitchen space. “I’m going down to Manila for a week on a diplomatic mission. I’ll be back sometime next week…” He pursed his lips, looked up and met my eyes. “Staying away from each other would help us think straight, understand how we want to go about this...get used to being apart. Let's take that time to work things out on our ends and finalise it once I return”

With that, he downed the last of the Soju in the glass. He opened another, the bottle he picked up from his short, drowsy trip to the fridge. For the next few minutes we were in complete silence, the devastation after a storm. I sat helplessly in front of him, wishing I had the sheer strength to stop him from drinking his way into numbness, but I couldn’t. I  felt like I no longer had the responsibility, as he slowly pushed me away. Half a bottle down, Sung Gyu started to talk again; but only, this time he made very little sense. He was drunk, his words were drawled and jumbled, cheeks tinted crimson as he went off talking. The topics kept rapidly changing, from his time in the blue helmets to his childhood, about his mother whom he’d thought had gone to Seoul to become an actress while in fact she had died, to his best friend whom he had drifted away from. It was with a weighing heart that I listened to him speak of us, our marriage, the six years of it until the end. He wasn’t crazy, he still wanted to emphasise through his drunken self, and I had no strength to argue in return except for saying that he wasn’t.

It was when he started breaking into tears again that I thought we’d had enough. Sung Gyu couldn’t take his alcohol well, only because he wasn’t used to drinking as much. He didn’t live a life where he could afford getting drunk to the point of falling on his nose that his tolerance was limited to just a couple of glasses. He didn’t drink often, he hadn’t had many friends he could drink with. And tonight he drank and wept like he wanted to disappear. Nothing pained  me more than seeing him in tears. I had thought he couldn’t cry for he never shed a tear when he spoke of the family that he lost. The first time that I ever saw him cry was on the day that Yulhee was born. The second time perhaps, was tonight.

“That’s enough, come on” I muttered to him gently as I pried the bottle off his hand. His grip was iron stiff, and it was a struggle moving the rest of the alcohol away from him. 

“I’m not done...not done…” He drawled, clawing at the invisible bottles out of his reach. I took his hand in mine, a gesture that I had initiated after so long, and attempted to make him stand.

“Let's take you to bed, stand up” I coaxed him to his feet, but he was far too gone to budge. He couldn’t make it to the bedroom on his own without falling over. So I carefully put my hand around his back and helped him up on his feet. Sung Gyu was good six inches taller than me, his stature lean and heavy against me. Yet, he easily let me put his arm over my shoulder and I slid mine on his back. It was with much struggle that we made our way to our bedroom, his weight against me, his deep masculin and citrusy scent in my lungs. He used to smell of summer and long voyages in the mediterranean and in-between pages of unread books. But tonight he reeked of alcohol and something else that I recognised strongly as him. 

I led him to our bed and tried to take his dressing gown off. His hands rested on my shoulders, and my breath hitched in my throat. Funny contemplations were in my mind; that he would remember this, that he would remember me trying to get a twenty six year old Sung Gyu into bed after one of his drunk escapades when he’d accidentally come to my flat instead of going to his own. It was the night when he’d muttered that I was pretty, his breath lingering on my skin, dropped his head and caught my lips between his own. That was the night we stumbled into my old covers, struggled with too many layers of clothes, laughed, rolled over and made love for the first time. It’s been more than a decade since then, and felt like an eternity had passed. But still, as I pushed his dressing gown off his shoulders, as his hands fell slack on his side, I wondered if so much about our hearts had changed since. Did he still think I was pretty? Would he still whisper it in my ears? Would he still drop down and close the gap between us, catching my lips in a whirlwind of a kiss if he could? 

The longer you take, the harder it would be.  

“Sit down” I mumbled and forced him down to his back. He stumbled backwards, his arm fell to my back. In one swift movement he had laid among the covers, yet he had dragged me along with him.

It wasn’t the first time that we laid like this. After all, he was my husband. I must have laid upon him hundreds of times, my hands cradling his head, fingers in his hair, forehead to forehead, skin slick and moist against him. I wished tonight wasn’t any different, that it was just another one of them when he’d soon shift places, move in and graze his lips along my skin. But it wasn’t. We had vowed to part ways tonight, and it was that hopelessness that was in his eyes. I was desperate to move away from him, push his hands off my back, gather my bearings and run away. But something about his eyes held me back, kept me planted in this place.

They were like stars, bursts of thousand splendors. I rarely saw them so and so up close these days, not without the thick framed glasses, not without that blurry sheen of uncertainty clouding them. But tonight I gazed into them pure pools of wonder, gazing at me as if it were the very first time. The very first time across the Yonsei university main hall, champagne bitter on our lips, minds heavy with knowledge too weighty to carry around. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you’ he’d told me, he’d smiled like blossoming flowers and I had blushed, not knowing it was with him that my future lay ahead. That future was never meant to be so blurry, so unpredictable. We had looked into happier days.

If I moved an inch, I realised, I could have kissed him like I did back then. My hand was on the pillow beside his head, the other awkwardly on his chest, his heartbeat underneath. His eyes were set on mine, gazing into them as if he was looking right into my soul. His cheeks traced crimson by the booze, lips slightly parted, hair fallen lazily on his brows. I could have kissed him, right there, right then. He could have kissed me too. We could have kissed each other, found the lost pieces within us, grasped onto the remnants of our love again.

But he didn’t. Instead, as I waited anticipantly, struggling to grab hold of my breaking heart, he lifted a hand. The tips of his fingers were warm and tender upon my skin, tracing the shape of my cheeks, my chin, my jaw. My heart was pounding and breaking apart, an impossible combination of sorrow and hope. We could have had it all, a voice sang in my ears as I gazed at him, wishing time could change. We could have had it all, but you changed, I made mistakes, and here we are now, done and gone.