Lia ties her hair into a low ponytail. It was convenient for her to teach her class without the falling strands of hair bothering her face. 

 

She inhales and exhales while closing her eyes. Her mind lands on the thought of what today's date is. 

 

May 29th

 

It has been a good five and six year course without the two she remembers and considers as the ones who will stay for a lifetime. 

 

She felt a wave of sadness as she faces her students, who were all ready to start the class. She teaches at the same school she and her closest friends attended. Lia stands in front of the room with a box with varying doodles on its outside. 

 

She turns to the whiteboard and writes, Romeo and Juliet, which earned a groan from the students. They've probably heard and read about the two lovers numerous times already. 

 

"No, don't groan yet." She chuckles a little. "We'll talk about modern day Romeo and Juliet today for literature. And this, I got to witness." 

 

"Do they die too, similar to the old one?" 

 

She nods a little and fakes a smile, "No Romeo and Juliet story has a happy ending, dear." 

 

"So, let's start." Lia opens the box she's been holding since her entrance in the room. "Here, I have pictures, films and polaroids of two wonderful women. I'm guessing you are all familiar with these media." 

 

She picks up one polaroid that has both Yeji and Ryujin on it, "These two are our Romeo and Juliet." 

 

She then opens pieces of folded papers and turns it to her students, "And this is Yeji's little compilation of short letter entries she has dedicated to her late beloved, Ryujin." 

 

"May 25th..." Lia starts.

 

—

 

May 25th

 

Dear Ryu,

Good news, I didn't cry myself to sleep last night. Isn't that a progress? Though, I still feel downhearted about you. I don't I'll ever be able to get over you. 

 

I visited your house yesterday. Still has the gloomy aura, and even gloomier now that no one lives there. I thought of going inside but the doors were locked so I just sat outside. The mail box you and your sister painted is still standing there. Also, I also realized that Sohee really is the better painter between the two of you. 

 

I wonder how your parents are doing now. I don't have any contact with any of your family members except your sister. And even if I have Sohee's contact info, I don't have the courage to ask their whereabouts. I will just hope for their safety and good health.

 

I have to go now, I have an upcoming class. 

 

Bye. I love and miss you everyday.

 

Love,

Yeji

 

It's almost been a year since Yeji started her 'how a heart unbreaks' agenda, even though she doesn't know if she's really coping with a heart unbreaking. 

 

She still believes Ryujin shouldn't have died, and should've been her. She was dog-tired, still is. She kept going back to the past when there was almost nothing from before. Nothing, but the existence of Ryujin.

 

Almost all her life, she believed that she's some kind of bad luck that brings out the worst of everything. But Ryujin made her slowly believe that she really isn't the bad luck she thinks she is, at least for a moment. 

 

The late Ryujin would lay beside her and do nothing else other than sit beside Yeji, who is always a mess and in need of comfort. 

 

She has never felt the same comfort she had when she's with Ryujin. Ryujin brought out the best out of her worsts; embraced her many, many flaws. 

 

She thought that if she'd get a thousand years to live on this long dead planet and she only gets to choose one person to be with, she would totally choose Ryujin. It was also something her friends accepted: Yeji would choose to save Ryujin at all instances rather than save her friends who've been with her for who knows how long.

 

—

 

May 26th

 

Hi Ddaeng,

It's my birthday today! I'm not as excited and enthusiastic as I used to be but maybe a tiny smile will do?

 

I had a little thought while I was preparing myself earlier: Isn't it unfair that you're happier and I'm sad? Like, you're having the best times of your life up there and I'm here, feeling all the weight bestowed upon me. 

 

But I wouldn't blame you, you had it harder than I am having. And it's better you've already achieved you well deserved rest from throbbing anguish handed to you.

 

Missing "your" apple pies a little extra today.

 

All for us,

Yeji

 

Yeji wakes up to her conservative and religious mother's birthday greetings, with never ending prayers for her college daughter. 

 

'What's a big disadvantage with having a religious mother?' you may ask. Well, she applies the whole Bible to everything but her motherly senses. 

 

It was not that Yeji despises the religion she grew up off, it was just useless to use the gospels and readings in times you could've instead used your proper morals. 

 

And plus, her mother made the whole concept of their religion irritating and absurd. Yeji understands but lost interest. 

 

Ryujin never judged her for how she views her own religion, never gave her a comment that would make her insights invalid and almost illegal. 

 

It was painful and saddening for Yeji to celebrate her birthday without Ryujin who would never forget to jokingly blow her candle and put pie filling on her face. 

 

Her mom didn't know her only daughter likes girls but she has suspected. Yeji got out of the suspicion when she faked having a boyfriend, borrowing Yuna's for a single night out just to end her mom's homophobic affairs. 

 

She blows the pink candles on top of her store bought cake. Her father would never allow her unica hija to have a cake made by someone else. But her father's dead so who's to stop her mother from serving a cake with so much excess cream icing that when eaten, it makes you want to barf. 

 

Ryujin knew Yeji liked pies more than cakes, her father's famous apple pie to be exact. Of course, Ryujin can't pull Mr. Hwang back from heaven to bake a pie for his daughter but she made sure Yeji gets to eat her favorite pie even if it was store bought. 

 

Birthdays didn't spark joy for Yeji anymore. She finds birthdays a waste of time and money because. Imagine, you have to allot so much of your attention to the celebrant who probably or totally doesn't care who you are.

 

—

 

May 27th

 

Hey Ryuddaeng,

I passed by your dormitory earlier. The building looks so different and it's only been a year. Toti, the guard I used to always see when visiting you, is still there and he still recognizes me. He was asking where you were. It's been some time since he's seen you. I just answered that you're away with your family. 

 

I don't know why but I can't get myself to tell people you are, in fact, gone.

 

Lia said I'm still in the denial stage. I don't I am though.

 

Am I?

 

I can do better,

Yeji

 

Yeji had a lot of free time, and by a lot, it means she's vacant for four hours. 

 

What would she do in those four hours other than do some, probably a lot of deep, deep, deep thinking? Plot her life for the following two years. 

 

Ever since her father's passing, she has consistently questioned the conception and ending of life. Questions about death and birth would cross her mind. 

 

She honestly doesn't know where and how she would be in the next two years. Heck, she doesn't even see herself existing the day after tomorrow. 

 

A painful realization has hit her, it's agonizing to not see yourself in the faces of the future. And you only see the people you love existing and living the best of their lives.... without you.

 

In times like this before, she'd go to Ryujin's dormitory and just lay down on the bed. Yes, she has the duplicate keys. And yes, even if Ryujin wasn't there, she'd still stay at the room. 

 

Everything and anything about Ryujin brought comfort within Yeji's systems and a zen feeling would run down her veins to calm her. 

 

Sometimes Ryujin would find her girlfriend sleeping soundly at the bed she didn't bother fixing earlier in the morning. 

 

Ryujin knows Yeji is fighting her own spirits. She knows she's tired. She knows her strings are loose and any time these strings would drop and end to no life. She probably knows more than God on how Yeji is trying to give herself lifelong hope. 

 

And Ryujin knows she has to take care of Yeji. She had to exist for her. But unfortunately, things aren't planned based on how she wanted it.

 

—

 

May 28th

 

Hey Ryu,

Mom left early today to play majong with her friends. Hyunjin has been knocking non stop while asking for food. Little boy still doesn't know how to operate a ing microwave and stove despite being a 17 year old.

 

I know I've said this before but I really do hate university with a burning passion. Imagine having to study something just to prove something to the people, and probably not yourself. 

 

And you have to pay tons of money. Unless, you're really smart, which you are, Ryu. You're a genius and waaaaay above others.

 

Hoping that you're still with me to teach me javascript. I hate java.

 

With my screaming in pain bladder,

Yeji

 

Another day Yeji has wasted doing nothing but staying in bed, instead of choosing to do her academic work. She has no energy to move. 

 

Ugh. Why is my bathroom so far away? She asks herself.

 

Even peeing was a big job to do for her. She was thinking how much her bladder can hold until it just bursts pee all over her sheets. If she ever gets diagnosed with an illness related to bladders, she won't even bother questioning the doctor. 

 

She also hasn't eaten anything other than a cookie left open with its wrapper inside their refrigerator. She can imagine the cookie plainly standing inside her stomach waiting for hours for another type of food to enter and make friends. Yeji would also imagine the cookie knocking on her inner systems, like a fetus of some sort, so she would pay attention to it asking to give it a companion. 

 

Her mother has not once checked on her today, probably busy with her friends who are hard core social climbers. Always cooing her mother over the towering wealth her father left them. 

 

Being the eldest among her and her only younger sibling, she carries the responsibility of taking care of him when their mother is nowhere to be found. 

 

But she really is at the time of her life where she does not care about anyone or anything; No other thing than Ryujin's sudden presence from heaven will make her stand up from bed. 

 

She doesn't believe in ghosts but she does now that she longs for her girlfriend. But all she gets right now is the rather presence of her brother who has been asking for help. 

 

Yeji continues to ignore the loud knocks and pretends to be asleep until the sound slowly faded away. 

 

And with faking her so-called sleep, she falls into deep slumber for real.

 

—

 

May 29th

 

Dear Ryujin,

You once told me that if I am all ready to give up, I can just give up. I think today is the day I'm taking off the robe I've been wearing since forever.

 

I've noticed that I don't look the same and the paradise my father my once told me, isn't the same as he made me imagine.

 

The death rhythms of your soul continuously flows through my veins that lets out my heart's slow beats of enchantment.

 

Would it hurt if I let our tears, that have formed a thousand oceans, fill the emptiness inside me?

 

With all the love I can give you,

Yeji

 

On the day Yeji tries to die, her mother told her to dress nicely and look presentable enough to be called as their daughter; her physics professor calls her careless for always not getting the correct answer even with complete and precise solutions; her friend, Chaeryeong, tells her she chooses to celebrate her birthday with her family first before spending the following day with her, which she doubts based on how Ryeong has been treating her these past days. 

 

All the people she thought were existing for her makes her realize they're only present enough to be called her acquaintances and to let her bleed furiously. 

 

With all great pain, she lies on the grass with the shattered window tangled in her hair, her blood all around her, she looks up and sees the sky again. 

 

She begins to cry, because it's so blue, the sky. So, so blue. The plain view fills her with an odd sadness, because she had forgotten of its true beauty. She had forgotten how very blue it was, and now it is too late. 

 

Inhaling is becoming an exceedingly difficult task. The rush of cars grows farther and farther away, the world blurs at the edges, and Yeji is gripped by an inexplicable urge to get to her feet and chase the cars to redefine the world she sees as damaged and rigged.

 

Day in and day out, she's being eaten without remorse. If you'd explore her insides, her soul seeks silence and chases everything that makes her feel coldhearted. 

 

In this moment, she realizes what death really means. It means that she will never catch the little spirits running within her for so long. Wait, she thinks. Not yet. She still doesn't understand things in how equal and opposite reactions still do not quite fit together in her head, but she is ready to let go. She is ready for it all to end. 

 

It is then, when she releases her need to understand, that everything falls into place. 

 

Things just aren't that simple. And suddenly it's very clear to her that every action is an

interaction, and everything she has ever done has led to something else, and to another something else, and all of that is ending here, at the bottom of the hill by who knows where her car brought her, and she is dying. 

 

At that moment, everything clicks. And Yeji closes her eyes. 

 

Granted with crimson blood and tear soaked cheeks, her body shakens with eternal serenity, guards down from all her deepest cries at night and close to the deep end with the thought of being with the greatest Ryujin again.

 

—

 

Present day

 

Dearest Lia,

I'm really sorry if I can't keep my promise I made with you, to continue living for Ryujin's unaccomplished dreams. I really am just tired.

 

Thank you for being with Ryujin before, in times I wasn't present enough for her. Thank you for being the person we both can lean on. Thank you for choosing to exist and being my guiding star in this world I'm strange of.

 

And lastly, thank you for appreciating what I barely have.

 

I hope all the sorrows the earth has demanded you to feel disappear. I hope you get to reside with nothing but everything you've loved and desired.

 

Continue being the light in the many lives of people, especially the children you will be with in the future. I can not wait to see you shine the brightest while teaching the younger generations.

 

I love you, Lia. Take care. 

 

I'll always be listening to your sweet whispers and prayers. 

 

I'll see you again. And just like what Ryujin has told me: Smile when it hurts.

 

Your most favorite (real) person,

Yeji

 

"The end." Lia finishes narrating and finds her students with tears in their eyes. She's been trying to also stop herself from crying. 

 

Things were never easy for Ryujin and Yeji, even before meeting each other, so when they met, it was like two lost stars aligning beside each other to form a lifetime. When one vanished, the other was left in despair. But at least, Lia now knows the world can't bring them pain and sorrow anymore. 

 

"Okay, wipe your tears. Quiz, now. Get your papers." All Lia had to do was move on and let destiny and fate work for the two of her friends, even if it hurts to leave things behind. "Number one, for ten points,"

 

Ryujin was not why Yeji's heart broke, it was the ambient surroundings that brought her life to cast down and woe for its end.

 

Maybe Yeji's way of a heart unbreaking was setting a sail away from her heart-rending entity, and that it was Ryujin that set her free from the heavy chains she carried for years.

 

"how could a heart possibly unbreak?"