Black-and-white editorial. An exploding flower. Noir derangement.

The slow motion encapsulation of Wendy storming through the double-doored exit; a flash of operatic terror ringing in Jeno’s ears.

A few seconds ago he was leaping in the air mid-performance on stage, now he’s chasing through the empty hallways after the human personification of daffodils, summery romance, and golden love.

“Don’t!” Wendy yanks her arm out of his grasp and whips around to tearily glare at him. “Don’t you dare touch me!”

“What’s wrong?” His own voice is shaking, worried pupils darting all over her crying, angry face. She’s staring at him like he’s a monster and it has him trapped, bleeding profusely in a vice of thorns. “Talk to me, what happened to you??”

“You tell me!” She cries out into her hands, all fragmented syllables and chocolate eyes filling with more tears. “Tell me with your own mouth what have you been doing behind my back? All this time!?”

“Noona, what do you mean—”

“She knows.” That voice. Jeno’s head whips back to a glowering, evil-eyed Karina. Now, he doesn’t want to see her, doesn’t want to deal with her insanity-fuelled antics until. . . His eyes widen in silent realization before he turns and meets his wailing girlfriend again. His cold skin prickles. Anxiety trembles his fingertips as he reaches but she backpedals out of reach — violently, as if he were the plague and not the love of her life.

“Wendy, please—”

“Answer my question!” Her resentful glare blazes all over him. That’s not right. It can’t be. He shakes his head, moving to grip both her shoulders but she weakly punches against his chest.

“Let me explain!”

“Jeno,” She releases a painful sob, “I’m begging you, please give me some ounce of respect and tell the truth. Did you really cheat on me?”

“It. . .” He painfully swallows, holding back hot tears. “Wendy, it wasn’t like that. Please just—”

“Are you serious?” She gasps, palms flying to cover in horror. “You walked out of our relationship and slept with another woman multiple times and it wasn’t like that??”

His mouth helplessly falls open then shut. “. . . I. . . Listen, we’ll get through this. We can put this behind us, we have so much history, so much planned. Are you willing to throw away our future together because of this?”

Karina’s humorless scoff in the background interrupts while Wendy feels all the knives of his words digging mercilessly in her gaping heart. “Do you even hear yourself right now?? This wasn’t a one-time, drunken mistake, Jeno. . . This was going on since the beginning of the semester. You deliberately made the choice to cheat on me. You did this! You call that a future? Now, you’re just insulting me.”

“You’re right. You don’t deserve this, and I hate myself for doing this to you but. . .” What more can be said honestly? The damage has been done, the cards dealt. What was there left to say? “Wendy, please, please. . . Don’t be like this. I love you—”

“Love?” She whispers like it’s a cruel joke. What kind of love did you give me to feel like this in the end? With what heart did you send love just for me to be drenched in this hellish rain parade? She rubs her reddened nose and sniffles, searching into his torn gaze. “Don’t you regret doing it?”

Aching, confused, and the sky falling over him, Jeno drowns in showering exasperation. If the world only had Wendy, he would fall to his knees and worship her every day and night. If only Karina existed, he’d let her body drip over him as he spent eternity drinking from her.

His silence is enough for Wendy. She knows he knows this is the end. “Jeno, it’s over. We’re done.”

“No, wait—”

“Lee Jeno.” Karina’s iron claw grip on his arm halts him in place. A mixture of bitterness and scorn frantically swirls in her snowflake obsidian pupils, but a rum on fire surges through her veins. She’s sure his blackened heart is disintegrating like hers right now, it’s all evident in his anguished, distorted expression. It’s like when Juliet stabbed herself to death after seeing Romeo’s dead body, it’s as if all the lovers in the forsaken world perished. Somehow — being in his view — feels like a goodbye long overdue. Sadness. Sorrow. Longing. A token of worthlessness because losing means gaining a bigger hurt. All the embedded loneliness just spills over like liquor, or a running faucet. The devastation of losing someone to the point where being alive and suffering the heartbreak tastes no different from poison. Poison fills her senses as she stares up at the mirror of his turbulent face, azure misery resembling his glassy eyes. He looks like beautiful chaos. He looks like he’s falling apart. No, this is nothing like Romeo and Juliet. It’s Narscissus drowning after seeing his reflection in the water. 

He looks like herself.

“We’re finished if you dare walk away from me now and go to that woman.”

The mere glance doesn’t last a few seconds until he’s ripping his bicep from her fingers. She falls to her knees in disbelief. His dashing footsteps in the quiet corridor sound like heartbeats.

The days pass on in static. Everyday repeats in a bleak blur of standstill nothingness and grey events. Jeno doesn’t come to school anymore and no one on campus can figure out his sudden disappearance. Karina doesn’t know about Wendy, except from blue bubble text messages via Giselle who gossips like her life depends on it. Karina stops responding after a simple ok, wondering if Wendy decided to keep the break up a secret. Not that it matters, she doesn’t want to know if the elder is barely getting by or already moving on. She doesn’t even know about herself, if she is going to classes and tournaments out of the pure will to move or if it’s because of a manual routine wired in her body. If there is one thing that stayed the same, it’s the throbbing insomnia that possesses her each night and the inability to stomach any food down. She just feels empty, lost, and hollow. Jeno doesn’t pick up the phone, or return her messages — We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed to dial. Please check the number and dial again.

She wonders if everything was a fever dream and he was a figment of her imagination.

She goes through a great trouble of buying those black cigarettes he likes to smoke and lights one up like an incense in her bedroom. The air fills with the aroma of caramel and hazelnuts and closing her dull eyes, she’s back in his car, his room, his arms; back when her red painted nails grasped his crinkled bedsheets, where the seductively warm notes of coffee, white flowers, and vanilla from his tantalizing YSL cologne would lull her into deep sleep, the sweet sensuality of his mellow gaze dragging down her bare frame, and his provocative promises hushed in love poems. I love you, Karina. You’re my heart, soul, and mind. Meeting you was everything I ever wanted. Waiting for him to pick her up always made her giddy, wearing his clothes spoiled her in euphoria, and night clubbing through the neon city was paradise. She loved the scent of his shampoo, drinking his cocktails, and touching him under the covers. Fighting, crying, laughing, and hugging together. Every memory raise goosebumps over her skin. Is it really okay to say that I loved? I can say that I lost, but have I truly loved? The countless emotions I experienced everyday with him, was that not love? Did he not think the same way?

Then the horror dawns as she remembers how the look on his face the last time she saw him was like her reflection in the mirror. The way she’s missing him is probably the way he’s missing Wendy right now. Instantly repulsed by the idea, she scrambles to the bathroom and throws up bloody contents in the toilet. After tidying up, she quickly stubs the cigarette out, trashes the black carton, and profusely douses her room in fresh perfume.

Her head is complicated, her heart is in shambles. Blaming herself is easier, she was the one who ruined everything — not him. The echo of him desperately calling out Wendy’s name is just a soundtrack to her mental self-loathing. Charred petals of wilting roses occupy her lungs, distant memories get her more drunk than alcohol, and no stupid love ballad on the radio saves her. Piece by piece, she feels herself getting weaker. How could he just leave? Doesn’t he have anything to say to me? I have so many things I want to tell him, how could he end it in such an unfinished way?. . . Emptiness is all she can gripe with. When April bleeds into May, it’s still nighttime in the corner of her heart and they expand into crimson, whiskey-colored continents.

“Unnie, are you staying in bed today again?” Winter exclaims in exasperation one morning, mumbling expletives beneath her breath as she slams Karina’s blaring alarm dead. “You’re gonna end up failing this semester and repeating a year!”

“Ugh. Shut up and get out,” Not in the mood, Karina shoves a pillow over her head and flips over, eyes stubbornly remaining shut. “Just worry about yourself.”

Winter whines. “C’mon, do you know how embarrassing it is if we end up being in the same classes next semester?”

“Who cares?” Karina drowsily grumbles. “Aren’t you leaving?? Get out!”

Winter scoffs and rolls her eyes. “You’re seriously pathetic, unnie. So what if Lee Jeno broke up with you? Do you think that guy was made for relationships? You and poor Wendy-sunbae were just scammed.”

Karina sits up abruptly and shoots the younger a narrowing, deadly glare. “Yah. Get out while I’m still saying it nicely. I mean it.”

Holding up hands in surrender, Winter slithers out her bedroom. Karina sighs and cards a hand through her unwashed, ebony hair. Hesitantly, she studies her iPhone on the nightstand and calls his number again.

We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed to dial. Please check the number and dial again.

She laughs incredulously. Guess it’s just that kind of day again.

“I thought you were handling the divorce well,” Is the first words Karina’s mother utters to her when she finally regains the strength to leave her bedroom. Karina wavers. The way her mother says it reduces her to some overused cliché. Being involved with a taken man was all because of her daddy issues?

It’s not that easy, Karina darkly thinks. But justifying it by saying it’s complicated is obvious too.

“What would you know?” Karina stubbornly retorts, slamming the refrigerator door shut. Eating is another humorless joke as she has no appetite anyways. “You never fell in love with someone who was already in a relationship.”

“Why are you saying that like its something to be proud of?” Her mother shoots back, eyebrows knitted together. “Don’t you know why I got a divorce in the first place?”

Karina grimaces. “No, I actually don’t. Anytime me or Winter tried to ask, you shut us down or turned away completely. Not that asking appa helped, he basically went off the grid after you forced him to move out.”

Her mother momentarily stills, stuck between contemplation and grief. “Well, you’d react the same way if you found out he had a whole other family.”

“W. . W-What?” Now, her life really feels like a cliché. “Stop lying, how could he have a secret family for all these years? You’ve been watching too many dramas—”

“Should I show you the pictures? It’s all on Facebook. I know where they live too. We could drive to his wife’s job and confront her if you want—”

“Why are you telling this to me now!?” Karina explodes, reliving Jeno running to Wendy all over again. She hates this feeling, hates it so much she wants to drown and dead it in fiery alcohol. “No — what do you think you’re accomplishing by saying all of this to me? What? That I’m just like the man who left you for another woman!? You’re comparing me to him, huh!? Cause I’m really my appa’s daughter, right??”

“If you know, why are you asking?” Her mother replies evenly, flaring nostrils and all. “I’m so disappointed in you, Karina. If you can’t sympathize with that poor woman you wronged, at least sympathize with me. You tore up a connection, you broke a bond between two people who loved each other.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, what connection was there if he walked out on her! There was no real bond if he could easily say he loved me, don’t you agree? Is it really all my fault? He could’ve rejected me and pushed me away so why are you only blaming me!?”

“I know you!” The elder’s raised voice bounces off the walls, even instilling a silencing fear within her infuriated daughter. “Even if you’re not sincere about something, you still have to win it because you despise losing the most! I don’t doubt that you loved that person, but isn’t your pride the worst? Even if you can’t acknowledge that you have a big superiority complex, you can at least admit the grief of losing a parent had some kind of influence on your actions. You couldn’t get a picture perfect family so you went out to destroy the picture perfect relationship. Am I wrong?”

Karina claps her hands idly. “Good for you. Does it feel nice criticizing your daughter?”

“I can criticize you because you’re my daughter.”

“Umma—”

“The most special, important person in the world to you is you. Not me, not Winter, not even that scumbag boyfriend of yours. It’s you. And because you got hurt you decided to burn and make everybody catch on fire with you. And for that, I’m so ashamed to even call you my daughter.”

She doesn’t know what hurts more. Her mother’s finality or her deafening footsteps.

No, what hurts most is missing Jeno. Wanting to take refuge in his arms. Wanting his touch to soothe her anger. Wanting nothing but his gentle words and sweet lies to implement some kind of peace in her battlefield mind. It’s why she drags her sorry self to his front door where she pathetically rings the doorbell.

“Jeno?” She calls out timidly, the fact that a single door separating them is more than she can handle. “Please open the door, please.” She can’t hear him, can’t see him, but knows he’s inside. He can hear her. She’s sure of it. “Yah, Lee Jeno. Is this some sick joke? You want to see me beg, don’t you? Well come out and tell me what I did wrong! I’m not the bad guy here. . You. . . You. .” She deeply swallows, holding back tears. “You love me. . Don’t you? Because if you don’t, that means you’ve been lying to me all this time and I. . I-I don’t know how to process that. I wasn’t using you, I meant it when I said I loved you, but if you didn’t. . . What does that make me? Was I just being a fool all by myself?”

Silence. And more excruciating silence.

“Answer me!!” She slams her fist against the door, thundering a pattern of bone-chilling knocks worthy of neighborly complaints. “Open the freakin door! You rotten, good-for-nothing piece of trash!! You’re such a coward, you know that!? The real fool here is you! You lost me and you lost that Son Wendy, now you got nothing left! Good for you, you’ve done well for yourself!” She even sends the resentful door a swinging kick. “How dare you treat me like this!? You sly bastard, how dare you mess with my love like that!? You ruined everything! Yah, Lee Jeno, do you think you’ll meet another person who’ll love you as much as I did!? You won’t! You’re undeserving of love!! I hope you never receive love in your life again!!”

She hates acting out like this. She hates herself for crying in public too. But it’s the silence thats more hateful. Tiredly, she slides down the door until she’s sobbing heavily in her palms. “You’re the worst,” She whimpers brokenly, miserably wiping at her wet mascara smeared eyes. “At least say to my face that you hate me, but shunning me out like this. . . What are you so angry about? That you got caught? Or that I crossed the line? Jeno, don’t you know? You crossed the line the moment you got with me.”

He doesn’t come out. He won’t. But Karina hopes all her hatred and resentment reaches him. What am I doing, she stares up at the ceiling through blurred vision, Why aren’t I erasing him like he did to me? Why am I changing into a crazy person as if I took some crazy drugs? Why am I being obsessive and pitiful like this? Oh, right. . . All the love I gave away came back as cold delusions. The person who wanted me desperately like a starved animal doesn’t want me anymore. Although he never looked at me properly, my bruised heart was always constricted by his eyes. It’s finished. I don’t know him. I’m done now.

Bleakly, she wills herself to her shaky feet and exits the condominium in defeat. Mindlessly, she lights a Marlboro Beyond, not even caring about the strange looks she receives from the doorman or other residents. She stops in place, noticing the familiar black Ashton Martin car parked by the sidewalk. She shoves through the glass revolving doors as if bewitched by the car, wanting nothing to destroy it, set it on fire, push it off a cliff or something. Instead, she just stubs her burning cigarette into it’s door where it leaves a mark. Her lips produce a hollow smile.

Marking things doesn’t guarantee ownership.

And like a self-destructive habit, she phones the same number.

We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed to dial. Please check the number and dial again.