When I woke up the morning after our argument I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. The only reason I got up was to find my phone so I could make sure I didn’t have anything important in my classes, then I could go back to bed. Unfortunately I found that Yongguk had left our clothing all over the place. It was an automatic reaction to nag him until he had kissed me into submission. “I’m not going to school today.” I mumbled and curled up in his arms.

“Why? You never skip school.” He nuzzled my neck as I slid my hand up his hoodie. His body was warm and the apartment was not.

I shrugged my shoulders slightly and I moved even closer to him. I kissed his chest and tried to come up with a satisfactory answer. “You were right last night.” I mumbled like I hated saying it. I didn’t like to admit that I was doing things wrong. “I want to get some sleep.”

He pressed his lips against my head and nodded. I knew he was happy that I was acknowledging that I had been in the wrong, but fortunately he didn’t rub it in my face. He was usually good that way. “Okay, sleep well.” He held me for a little bit longer before, much to my dismay, he crawled out of bed to get ready for work. Unlike me he couldn’t just take a day off. “I’ll see you when I get home Chan-ah.”

“Have a good day.” I mumbled and pulled the blankets even tighter around me. I heard him leave and then I pulled the blankets over my head. We’d had our first fight the night before and it was making my stomach turn (that could have easily been the hunger though).

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep for a while, but I found it impossible with Yongguk gone. I had no idea how he did it all of those nights when I was at work. I sighed and gave up all hopes of going back to sleep. My mind was racing, I was cold, and I couldn’t stop thinking that the fight had been my fault. If I had taken care of my health then I wouldn’t have crashed and if I hadn’t crashed then we wouldn’t have fought. I didn’t like this at all.

I rolled around for a while before realising that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I got out of the bed and decided that I needed to do something with myself. “I should have just gone to school.” I mumbled and began digging through our bedroom. I heard my stomach grumble but I knew I couldn’t do anything for it.

I reorganised all of Yongguk’s things – because he didn’t do it properly – and found an old pack of cigarettes. I knew that he had smoked off and on for six years but that didn’t mean I liked finding them in the apartment. I tended to force him to stop smoking by withholding , but he wasn’t getting any anyway so I supposed it didn’t affect him. I sighed and moved to put them away when I remembered that I’d read in one of my textbooks people said smoking made them forget about being hungry.

I sighed and put the box back on the desk. I stared at it for a while before giving in and pulling the cellophane off of the box. I nearly changed my mind again but when my stomach growled loudly enough that I was sure our neighbours could hear it I pulled one of the cancer sticks out of the box. I’d seen Yongguk do it before so I was sure I could as well.

I whined slightly as I put the horrible thing in my mouth and pulled a lighter out of the drawer. I needed this to help. I inhaled sharply as I held the flame up to the cigarette and was nearly certain I was going to die when I felt the smoke fill my lungs.  I had no idea how Yongguk could handle the feeling. For some reason it didn’t deter me though. I put the disgusting thing back up to my lips and inhaled again.

After nearly dying several times I finally got the smoking thing down I was able to inhale the toxins without losing the ability to breathe. I finished the first one and decided that I did in fact feel better and pulled a second one out. I smoked through half of the pack before lunchtime, leaving ashes all over the apartment. I didn’t even care to clean them.

I sighed as I walked around the apartment, inhaling the smoke, and thought about ways that I could fix things with Yongguk. I knew he wanted the heater and the car fixed – so did I – and I was sure that if I could make that happen that he would forgive me. I sat down at the computer and logged into our online bank. I could see everything we had purchased for the previous month. It would be the perfect way to see what I could cut back on.

I scanned the statement, reading each thing out to myself and trying to remember what exactly I had bought. “I spend a lot of money on food…” I found the receipt for a grocery visit I had gone on and realised that I had bought a bunch of things we didn’t really need. I couldn’t remember why I had thought chips would be a good purchase.

I put a memo in my phone to remind myself that I didn’t need to buy snacks any longer and lit up another cigarette as I continued scanning the statement. I noticed a couple of transactions that I didn’t remember. Both were for around 25000 won at a place I had never heard of. I looked it up online and found that it was for a restaurant near Yongguk’s school.

I tried to come up with possible reasons for him to be going to restaurants when he got free food at work but I couldn’t come up with any good ones. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that he was cheating, but I knew he wouldn’t do that. I decided that I wouldn’t bring them up with him, but I would be checking to see if the visits to restaurants continued. 

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