2011.

            I was nineteen years old when I met Kim Myungsoo, my quiet, yet quirky college roommate.

            A few months back, I had moved up north to the city for college, desperate for change and a new start. After the incident with Eunji, my friendship with Dongwoo grew strained. I had single-handedly broken up our newly formed trio, and I knew deep inside that he spited me for it. Slowly, we grew farther apart, abandoning the basketball games and late night chats that had filled the days of our youth. Coupled with the secrecy of my failed first love, nothing anchored me to the town I had grown up in. So, I left.

            For a boy that had spent his entire life in the fresh scenery of the country, the environment in Seoul was suffocating to say the least. From the densely packed population to the dizzying scent of exhaust and pollution in the air, the city was hard to get accustomed to. If it were not for Kim Myungsoo, I don’t think I would have survived the year, much less the first few weeks of school.

            Myungsoo, depending on the way you looked at it, was my guardian angel. Being born and bred in Seoul, he knew everything there was to know, and didn’t hesitate to make me feel more in place in such a large city. He defended me when the other students snickered at my strange accent during class, and listened to the heaviness that burdened my heart, from Dongwoo to Eunji, and everything in between. And like a guardian angel, he simply looked after me, much like the older brother I never had, or the best friend I had lost.

            Then, somewhere along the way, I fell in love – thus began the third.

___________________________

            “Howon,” Myungsoo called as he leapt on the adjacent bed in our dorm. “Aren’t you going out to buy some sweets for White Day tomorrow?”

            I thought for a moment before lying back on my elbows.

            “Who would I give them too though?”

            “I hear that Sungjong thinks you’re good looking!”

            I laughed at his comment. “You mean Lee Sungjong? The feminine looking male in our Literature class that sits near the window?”

            “I know he isn’t exactly the Mr. Perfect you keep talking about but hey, you’ll never know if you don’t give it a shot,” Myungsoo replied before reaching for the remote to the small television.

            I glanced back at him nervously, gathering the courage to ask him the one thing that had been pestering me for the past few weeks.

            “W-what about you? All the girls in class were whispering so loudly when you walked into class that I could hardly concentrate on the professor! Surely the university heartthrob, Kim Myungsoo, must have an interest in at least one in your mass following,” I countered somewhat bitterly over the volume of the program, a grim smile gracing my lips as I attempted to gauge his feelings.

            A faint blush rose on his cheeks and his eyes darted nervously around the room. “Ah, well I’ve already gotten everything prepared.”

            I immediately sat up, my brain quickly trying to grasp the situation at hand as Myungsoo continued speaking.

            “You remember the new girl from the States that transferred last month? The one with long wavy hair and the really bright smile? Well, we’ve recently started talking and going out for coffee and stuff after class, and…”

            “How come you never mentioned any of this before?” I interrupted, struggling to keep my voice from rising.

            He smiled sheepishly, regret showing on his ridiculously handsome face. “I’m telling you now, aren’t I? I didn’t bring it up before because, we were just friends then. But the other day, she told me about her family she had to leave back home, and the hard time she has adjusting to life in Korea and I just … I just want to be protect and care for her. Almost like… like a guardian angel, you know?”

            The room suddenly felt too small for the two of us and I found myself struggling to take in oxygen, my lungs burning as a result.

            “Howon, I think… I think I might love her.”

___________________________

            This is the third type of heartbreak, the kind that occurs as you watch the person you have grown to love, love another. The third, is the most painful one of all.

            As humans, we grow easily attached to comfort and the prospect of being shielded from fracture, captured by the mere thought of becoming significant enough to someone, anyone. But the heart is never subject to our wants, beating in its own pace and its own direction despite our feeble attempts to tell it otherwise. And at times like these, there is little much we can do but accept reality, and admit the fact that we have lost.

            With Myungsoo, it was all about the comfort, especially after the rawness left behind by those horrendous White Days. There was the comfort of healing he lent in the form of a caring soul, and the comfort of friendship in the form of a listening ear. And so, I let my heart beat on, towards the man who had unknowingly filled the void called Jang Dongwoo, and Jung Eunji.

            Thus, within the third type of heartbreak, therein lies the first two.

            In the moment his words fracture my world, my mind wandered back to the events of the past – the warm arm draped across my shoulder after a day playing in the sun, those large dark eyes that haunted me year after year.

            With the third, I was transported back to the first, when my mother scolded me about loving boys, though I was too young to know otherwise, and too stubborn to love anyone other than Dongwoo.

            With the third, I was transported back to the second, when I sent Eunji away because I was powerless to change the direction my heart was beating in, towards the unknowing boy in the booth quite close to our own table.

            Each expecting different things, each looking at different places, each dreaming different dreams, each heart looking towards another person- the three types of heartbreak, those were my White Days.