I shivered in the darkness. It felt so alone without him here. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine his steady, rythmitic breathing on my neck again, his arms around my waist as we slept, the way he murmured my name in his sleep.
    I thought then that we were held together because of our love; that love could stand against his parent's demand that he leave me and leave our son.
    But no. Love... what a tricky word. It's an illusion, really. Two nineteen year olds... we were young, foolish enough to believe in a fairytales then.
    HIs parents... they were rich then, and I guess they are now.
    They never approved of me; a girl from the working class. He... he didn't care, not then. He would kiss me in the rain, when I cried after meeting his parents for the first time, just loving all my fear away. We loved the rain... because it was something that meant to much to us... it was what marked out first kiss, our first heartbreak.
    There was someone better for him, they were convinced. She was rich, beautiful... everything I wasn't. When I asked him about her, he would answer with a troubled, "Why do we need to talk about her? We have eachother, right? So that's all that matters,"
    I laugh now at my simplicity, my naivety, in believing that all that mattered to him was us. Money... money and a beautiful girl, were more appealing.
    So we ran away. It wasn't my idea... I wanted to win his parents over, show them that I was the perfect one for their son.
    It was a perfect life for two months. We were married legally, though without rings to prove it. He wasn't used to having to work for things... it all came so easy for him before. Falling sick several times from exhaustion and refusal to stand down from his numerous jobs or from me as his wife caused me to wonder if I had been wrong to love him like I did. Loving him... did that mean putting him through something like this?
    His parents found us three months into our hardworking bliss, on a day where he was sick. They were appalled at our home, which he had many times assured me was beautiful. The home we had created.
     The day they dragged him out of our home it rained. Everything I loved, lying there, white as the sheets on our bed... I clutched his hand, crying pitifully. He could only murmur my name and the words "I love you, I love you." Over and over and over again. I suppose it was foolish of me to ever think he would come back... that he would keep his promise.


    It had been weeks since I'd heard anything about his condition when his mother showed up on my doorstep one day. She was worn, her face tired and drawn.
    "I have a proposition for you," She said, glancing at me in my work uniform.
I invited her in, hesitantly.
    "My son," She cleared . "Is slowly getting better. But... he has no memory of you."
    I drew in my breath. "He doesn't remember me?"
"You're not exactly the most remarkable person, my dear," She sighed, voice tired. The fact that her comment hadn't been given cruelly hurt more... because I could tell she wasn't lying.
    "But I'm his wife..." I protested, tears threatening to spill over.
"Yes," She said, drawing up her face again. "However... as he has no recollection of you, or of," Here she shuddered disdainfully, "loving you, I would request that you should stay out of his life."
    She glared at me.
"I can't do that," I whispered, my mind, my heart, racing.
    "Do you never feel guilty for the way he is?! For his sickness? For dragging him into your pitiful life, making him work so that you can have food on the table when he could have had all the success in the world?" She hissed, and I did not hold back my tears this time. "If you truly love him as you say, you will give him his life back."
    She set the paper on the table and took a pen out from her Gucci handbag.
"Let him have his life back." It was a plea, a plea that struck me true.
    Hesitantly, I signed the line... making everything we used to be... void.

    I rubbed my stomach in the dark. The child inside... was his, was ours. The soft background speech of the TV suddenly erupted into loud cheers and aplauses, and I turned my attention to it quikly.
        
    What I saw made my heart stop.
    
    Him. With a beautiful girl on his arm.
    
    They smiled, shiny, white, smiles, flashing rings. She answered the reporter's questions... but it was him that I couldn't stop looking at.
    To others, he would have seemed like a normal celebrity. Solemn, happy for their engagement. But I knew him better than that. His eyes were cloudy, searching for a face in the crowd.
    The things he said were rehearsed, his movements well practiced but stiff.
My heart ached... "He's better off this way," I whispered to myself, tears tracing down my cheeks.
    I placed my hand on the TV screen, longing to feel the warmth of his embrace again, to kiss him one more time...
    "Lee Taemin-ssi!" Some reporter shouted at him.
He turned his plastic smile to the press member. "Yes?"
    "Tell us, what is your fondest memory of being in love? Not just with Ha Na, but from before? Have you ever been in love before?"
    "I don't think that's really neccessary-" His publicist began, but he waved her away, the noises of everything else fading away in the moment.
    Could he remember me? I dared to wonder.
He opened his mouth to speak, slowly. "There was one girl. I remember the rain..." He stared off into the distance vaguely, then gave a little laugh. "But it feels like she was just a dream, now."
    
    I sunk away from the TV, my breathing hard and labored, tears falling down my face as I stared, appalled at what I had heard come from his mouth... knowing that to him, I would never be more than a dream.

    That night... I had woken because of dreams of rain.