"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it?"

― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

***

Tears are shadows in a world of oceans

where you don't exist and I wonder

if night swallows hearts

the way you make mine stop.

...

And if I could tell you I love you

I think the world would stop spinning because

hurricanes are nothing compared to childhood romances

and dances with love.

Changmin. Sooyoung.

[I hate] love.

Tears are shadows in a world of oceans

where you don't exist and I wonder

if night swallows hearts

the way you make mine stop.

When Choi Sooyoung was twelve and fell in love with the idea of love after hearing her mother's failed but still exciting romance stories, she never thought that her twenty year old self would ever use the words 'I', 'hate', and 'love' in the same sentence.

Yet here she is today, twenty years old, and the words coming out of are, "I hate love." 

Wrapped around those three words is the face of Shim Changmin, patron saint of failing hearts; the curves of his smiling eyes grace the fast-beating loop of the 'o', and the corners of his mouth punctuate the sentence with Sooyoung's breathless silence.

He's always smiling she knows, but never for her (and she knows that, too). He has a certain air about him that makes her feel helpless, like a moth drawn towards flames, and there's something about the way he walks that knots the strings of Sooyoung's heart into alphabet pasta, spelling out whycan'tyounoticeme in the cavity of her chest.

She's in love, she's in love, she's in love, and it's the most horrible thing in the world, because Shim Changmin doesn't look at her the way she looks at him, like there are unexplored seas in her eyes and velvet on the slopes of her cheekbones.

In January, Sooyoung makes a note that the only thing he's ever said to her is, "Hey, is this your pencil?" and it doesn't count for anything, because it wasn't her pencil and his eyes were pinched in a half concentrated expression, lips not pulled taut by a smile.

"I hate love," Sooyoung mutters.

They're both music majors; Sooyoung doesn't know what kind of music Changmin likes or what he likes composing, but she knows the pieces she writes these days are descending into increasingly bitter rhapsodies; tears are shadows in a world of oceans/where you don't exist and i wonder/if night swallows hearts/the way you make mine stop.

She wonders what Changmin writes about.

In August, she catches him smiling at her, and over time these occasions start popping up more frequently on the calendar, but Sooyoung tells herself firmly each time that she must be imagining things, because she's supposed to hate love, and things she hates do not smile at her with adorable, uneven eyes.

"You know when people have uneven eyes?" Sooyoung asks her friend, Yoona, rhetorically. "Like, when they smile and one eye is smaller than the other."

Yoona laughs and asks her if she has anyone particular in mind, and Sooyoung dips her head because Changmin has just entered the cafe and his eyes have found hers. Another smile.

"No," Sooyoung answers.

November 6 stands out as a specific date in Sooyoung's mind because it's January-cold in the auditorium, and her scarf is bunched up so close to her neck that she can't even hear herself singing the lines of her bitter rhapsodies to the tune of raindrop piano notes.

She doesn't hear the footsteps that approach her, either, and she doesn't notice the second body behind her at all until his arms surround her on both sides.

The most undignified sound in the history of undignified so