This is getting a little crazy. I am going a little crazy.

Lying here tonight in near absolute darkness, I thought of him again.

I’m not sure if I miss him.

I had just returned from the wedding dinner of my cousin to this hotel room where I’d be spending the night because there wasn’t enough room to accommodate all of us over at my uncle’s. And now I lie awake with my brother snoring lightly in the adjacent bed and a very dangerously empty heart. 

Watching the video of the wedding procession and ceremony in the morning, the beautifully taken wedding pictures and a compilation of the newlyweds’ special moments; from their meeting to falling in love and eventual tying of the knot… I found myself wondering, once again, if I will find that one person who will love me for everything about me.

And just like this, it’s like the floodgates of my heart that I had been extremely careful to keep bolted, in all the time since I lost him, came bursting open. Memories, like a merciless tsunami, crash into me. One wave after another, relentless and overwhelming, crumbling the resolve and self-control I had tried to maintain for so long.

I still remember all these things. Too many things.

And some nights like tonight, I know I can do nothing but surrender myself to these emotions. Tonight, it is just me and the memories.

Like countless other nights, I go through the reasons why we didn’t work out. How we could have and should have worked out. What it would be like now if we were still together. I haven’t done this, thought about us, in a long time. I didn’t allow myself to. But now that I am facing these suppressed feelings again, it feels long overdue and strangely cathartic. I dwell on the last one particularly, thinking about all that we could have been, how I would learn to love him better and never again pick on the imperfections in him that was the basis of our breakup, if only he would just come back.

I think about all the little pieces of him that I was never able to break out of, that I still keep close to me, even after so long. The little massages he would give me after each of my particularly strenuous trainings, his steady hands working out the tight muscles in my neck and shoulders with the right amount of strength that only he could grasp. He would wait for me for my practice to end, and he would take my shoe bag and hold my hand as we went home together. He would turn the air-con vent above my head away from me and put his arm around me when he saw me cover my arms as I slept on the bus.

If only I had remembered all these little things he did for me when we were still together.

Do I still love him? I thought that was a clear no. I thought I had already come to terms with myself that I don’t still want him back.

But do I still love him? That’s not the same thing as not wanting him back… right?

The question unnerves me too much and I try to soothe my frazzled nerves by summoning my favourite memory of us together.

The scene that came into view in my mind’s eye was the same one as always, the one that always plays right before I fall asleep thinking of him. I remember one of the rare nights that we got to spend together, lying beside each other in the same bed; I had an arm on his tummy as I lay on my side, facing him. He had put one of his arms on top of mine, tracing patterns that only he can see on it before finally lacing his fingers through mine and leaving it there through the night. We lay there in the halfway land of unconsciousness and waking, not kissing nor touching in need, but just basking in pure affection and love for each other. Just a gentle of my hair, a chaste peck to his shoulder, a simple connection of our hands.

The longing for a replay of that scene was so strong it became unbearable and I find myself losing any last strand of self-restraint I had when it came to letting myself think about him. I had been careful, extremely measured in reminiscing the past for the exact reason that I am going through right now: that I might reach a kind of breaking point and not be able to keep the emotions at bay.

Yet right now, I just don’t care.

“Kibum…” His name slips from my lips before I can stop it and I squeeze my eyes shut, wrapping my arms around myself and bringing my knees to my chest. I want so badly for him to hold me again.

I imagine his arms around my body. Strong, gentle and warm. Our legs touching, tangled underneath the sheets. His breath tickling my neck before he kisses it and coaxes me to sleep. I imagined that he still loves me. It calms me and helps me sleep when I miss him like this.

I miss you so much, I think. Can we exchange our positions? Can you be the one who loves me to the point of losing your own sanity? Just once more, can you hold me, say you love me? Can you tell me you’re not leaving, not now, not ever?

When I wake up in the morning, these feelings will go away. I will be the same resolved and strong Jinki I have learnt to become. Not needy, not lovelorn, not the Jinki who becomes powerless when it comes to anything Kibum. But tonight I am, and I let myself be.

Can’t you please just come back to me? I plead to the darkness in vain, aware that I was already in the twilight zone of half-consciousness and incoherent sentences.

After all these time, I can’t believe that he is still the only one I really ever wanted.

In the darkness, I’ll miss you with no warning.

***

Chasing. That’s all I’d been doing since I ended things off with him, so many months ago that I’d even lost count. Chasing after him and desperately trying to grab on to whatever little he can still offer me.   

There’s no telling why and how things turned out the way they did. What with the way I used to incessantly complain about his insensitivity and everything he just couldn’t do right, anyone would think that I should be well over him and happy about life in no time, myself inclusive. Well, I guess even I surprise myself sometimes.

At the start, I was thrown into the basketball team’s intense trainings for the annual competition to have any time or energy to pay attention to the hole that had opened up in my life. But when the heat of the season faded away, leaving me with little to fill my days which would have otherwise been spent with him, everyday became plain difficult to get through and his absence, only more obvious than ever.

BAM!

You don’t have a boyfriend anymore, Jinki. You’re single now. The thought invades my conscious whenever my mind is just a little idle, catches me entirely off guard. It slams into me so hard that I instantly start to panic.

The temptation for me to just ring him, tell him I’ve made a mistake and I was not serious about what I said, to just void the entire breakup and have things back to normal was so, so strong. But I pushed it all away, thinking that I could be strong for myself, knowing that even if we manage to avert the disaster this time, it would only be a matter of time before it happens again. It was just an unbreakable cycle of us hurting each other with our pointless arguments that doesn’t change anything. After so long of trying to force things to work between us, I have finally come to accept that we are just too different for each other.

I was so sure that I wanted this, that I’d be happier without his tactless words and lack of initiative hurting me. But instead, I found myself stuck in a constant state of self-loathe and sheer misery. It took everything within my control to act like I was perfectly content with my life without him. I don’t even know how I had managed the huge smile that I would plaster on to my face or the loud laughter in response to what my friends said the moment I catch him walking into the cafeteria out of the corner of my eye. He, on the other hand, seemed perfectly collected and happy. How could he do it so easily? Funny how I was the one being so hung up over him when I was the one who chose to leave. Why did I choose to quit?

I had taken Joon’s advice then, to not let pride and ego get in the way, that it might not even matter that our feelings are not given in equal proportions and as long as I felt that there was still a cause for salvation, then I should go ahead and try to get him back. I was filled with a sort of new resolve? Hope? Only to have it slap me back squarely in the face. As I gathered every ounce of strength that I have and finally pressed ‘send’ that one night, I cannot say that I had expected his answer would be negative. I was so foolish to think that he would be waiting for me to take him back.

Kibum doesn’t love me anymore. And what was I supposed to do with that?

All I know is that I have overestimated his love for me.

With our college entrance exams looming near, I tried to focus on him less and myself more. It didn’t work too well. I was still too painfully aware of everything about him, including that girl from outside school who had been leaving overly friendly messages on his Facebook wall, promising little ice cream treats and movie nights. I could hardly believe he was the same Kibum that I know and love. Because I know that even though Kibum is beautiful as hell, a player he is not. And then I watched him throw the words of endearment around like it was nothing, wondering if I had made him this way or it had always been a part of him that I never knew about.

Even after our graduation, I was still trying to rein him close to me, simply because I don’t want to fade away into nothingness, to just become someone that he had a thing with. I wanted him to remember me, remember what we had. But I know, from his unenthusiastic replies and blatant disinterest, that I have lost him forever. His life was still colourful with the new friends he’d made and all the fun things he would do with them, he doesn't need me.

And there I was, being a complete fool. Still wishing. Still hoping that he could grant me even the smallest part to be in his life.

Why wouldn’t he just come back?

I have never really been able to let it go until Jonghyun came around and pulled me out of it. He had always been my confidante because he was just so easy to talk to, so patient in listening to all my frustrations and heartache, and he always made me feel like someone really cared and understood how I felt. He took my mind off things, brought me to places to have fun and broke down my walls little by little. I began to feel like it was much more meaningful and satisfying spending time with him than trying to chase after something that just wasn’t there anymore, and so I stopped trying to keep tabs on Kibum.

After all these time, it’s already nearly been two years, I’ve gotten better. I don’t wake up with the thought of him anymore, I don’t stalk his Facebook wall to know what he’s been up to, I don’t even try to ask him out anymore. I find that I can actually live without having to know what he is up to, without trying to slot myself into his life.

But sometimes, just sometimes, when I unexpectedly find his text in my phone, asking for a dinner together or just to catch up, I still feel a little flip in my chest before I remember to have the good sense to turn him down. It was like a game of tag between us. I can never run too far from him before he catches me again. After a few weeks or even months of silence, I would always find that text waiting for me, asking to meet me.

Why can’t he just let me live? Why would he keep coming back to stir me up when he doesn’t love me, doesn’t even care anymore? I will not allow him to weaken me again. I will not be the one who loves more. No more.

The date that marks the two-year mark of our breakup was not circled out on my wall calendar, but it still stands out among all the rest of the numbers. April 20.

Not that anything still matters to me. I bet this date doesn’t even hold any significance to him since long ago.

It's just that sometimes, I find that I still wish I had him with me.

A.N.: Presenting Jinki's POV! I tried really (like, really) hard to write this well, but it really didn't come out the way I wanted it to :/ But anyhow I'll be extending this to a short series, maybe just 2 more chapters, to perhaps write a little more about Onkey's broken relationship and something else to wrap it all up between them. There'll probably be a little Jongyu too so, just giving you guys a heads up! 

Also, thanks to everyone who'd subscribed/commented! Do keep the love coming in, comment/subscribe if you haven't already, tell me what you want to know about them and I'll see if I can address that :) 

xoxo.