The light blinded me and I just wanted to be alone in the dark again.  I didn’t want to talk. 

“Honey, how did it happen?”

My parents and Zelo’s peered down at me with worried and tear stained (in the case of Zelo’s parents) expressions.  I closed my eyes and whispered my answer.

“We were on our way back from the park… I looked back to say something and… there was the car.  It just hit… it didn’t even stop.”  Tears poured down my cheeks hitting the creases in my wrinkled chin.  I was trying so hard to keep talking.

“I didn’t know what to do, all I could do was hold… hold…”  my voice trailed off and I breathed deeply feeling the air shake as it went into my lungs.  A sob began to build in my chest but I choked it off as best I could.  A hand rested on my shoulder and I flinched with my eyes still closed and tears running glistening tracks down my face.  I heard a sigh and footsteps leaving the room.  The light flicked off and I moved to my bed in a haze, looking out at the stars, the same stars from a night ago.  How they could keep shining and sparkling when he wasn’t any more.  More tears came.  They had been running for the night and I still couldn’t think, accept for to relive the feeling of his cooling body in my arms.  Limp and unresponsive, even when I answered the words he left me with.

I shuddered against the cold seeping into me.  I hadn’t slept all night and I sat still for hours looking out into the dark sky.  I didn’t want to do anything else, or couldn’t.  The sky began to lighten in color, so I shut my curtains and stayed in the dark.  At some time, a dark figure came into my room, wreathed in the light from the hall.  I just curled up on my bed, squeezing my eyes shut and hoping they would go away.  Instead they were followed by another silhouette who sat down on my bed.  The door shut and it was just me and the silhouette in my room.  It laid down next to me and I flinched away from its grasp until it whispered to me.

“I’m sorry Haneul.  I love you.  Shhh”

I started crying as Hyesun hugged me tightly, rocking me back and forth and comforting me with whispers.  I sobbed and shook.  My fingers and toes were cold so she put socks on my feet and covered me with a blanket, then she continued to rock and my hair.  My shaking continued and she just stayed there, hugging and comforting me.  I couldn’t feel but to feel the warmth of her embrace and the steady stream of her own tears falling onto my hair.  I couldn’t help but let my tears flow and flow, because they never stopped.  And the sobs wouldn’t quiet.  She started singing softly, singing a child’s lullaby in a shaky voice.  I started quieting, trying to stop crying and focus on her soft fragile voice.  It was working and she kept singing while crying.  I eventually fell asleep and slept for a little bit.  Judging from my exhaustion, I didn’t sleep that much.  She led me from my room, whispering to me about food and a shower or some other, at which point I realized I was still covered in blood.  Blood from…  I squeezed her arm at the thought.  The light blinded me and I tightened my grip on her hand, wrapping my other arm around hers and hiding my face in her shoulder.  We walked across the hall to the bathroom and she started getting me undressed.  I must have said something about being capable because she left the bathroom, saying she would be sitting out side, waiting for me.  I got in the shower and the hot water, steam rising from the contact of the water on my cold skin.  At first the blood wouldn’t come off so I had to scrub.  It took me a while because I stopped periodically, grasping at the wall and looking at the floor trying to stop breathing hysterically.    I finally got clean and made it out of the bathroom with a towel on.

“Sweetie.”  She said,  “do you want his clothes?”  she asked tentatively.

I just nodded numbly and followed her back to my room.  She closed the door and brought me a pile of fabric.  No not fabric… his clothes.  I held them like they were a baby, hugging them to my chest.  Hyesun just gazed at me and took the shirt from the pile.  It was a brown shirt.  I looked more closely at the pile as Hyesun slipped the shirt over my head, and I realized it was the same shirt and pants that he was wearing when he woke me up that one morning, long ago.  I pulled the flannel pants on myself and had to roll the waistband several times cause he was so tall.  With these clothes on me, his clothes, I could almost close my eyes and pretend it was still his arms around me, his body next to mine, his heartbeat I could hear.  Almost.

“Sweetie, will you eat?”  Hyesun asked me as she entered the room carrying a glass of milk and a bowl of egg rice.  It was still letting off little wisps of steam and I could smell it from here.  I ate because she wanted me too, but I didn’t really taste the food.  I just did it so she wouldn’t worry. 

My days were like that.  I really couldn’t do anything quite yet.  I just didn’t want to, the pain was too much.  Hyesun stayed with me and took care of me.  She comforted me when I cried, was there when I woke up screaming from nightmares.  She was amazing.  A few days later she came into the room with her computer, looking at me worriedly. 

“Sweetie?”

“Yeah?” I responded in a quiet voice.

“I have this.  I… I want to show you it but I don’t know if you are ready.”

Tears threatened to run out of my eyes but I held them back “I want to see it.  What is it?”

“It’s the project.”

I just swallowed and nodded. 

She sat on the bed next to me and put the laptop I front of me.  I took a breath and waited as she pressed the space bar and the video began.  We both held our breath and the screen blurred to a shot of me looking pink cheeked and awkward.  I started talking.  I was sort of cute, in a weird embarrassing way.  The video entry ended and the screen was black.  It blurred to a picture of him.  Tears rolled down my cheek and my hand instinctively reached to touch the screen.  He started talking.   I didn’t breath the whole time and I could hear my heartbeat pounding through my ears.  My eyes never left the screen and I only blinked to clear the tears from my eyes.  I watched all of our video entries up until the 2^nd to last ones.  The screen said “How did a project change ours feelings toward eachother?”  As always I was first and I almost wanted to laugh at my awkward self.  Then I remembered my feelings.  I was waiting until my clip ended.  As his started, I actually did manage a wavering, shaky smile, with tears still staining my face.  I heard Minho’s voice from outside the camera shot

“And how much do you like Haneul?”

Zelo sighed a frustrated sigh and looked somewhere off to the side of the camera, thinking.  His knee bounced in nervousness as he took another breath to talk.

“She…  I didn’t like her at first.  She was too perfect.  And I didn’t like anyone to be honest.  But… I like her now, she isn’t so perfect.  She knows me, and is strong yet innocent at the same time.  She's been through crap, and if you think about it, her and I, we aren’t so different.  We are really similar…  but she makes me want to be better and actually care about something.  I don’t know what this is, but I really hope she likes me too.  I don’t really think she likes me as much as I like her, but I hope she does… I really don’t know what I will do if she doesn’t like me enough to stay my friend…”  My hand was touching the screen again.  There in that video, I could see it.  The twinkling in his eye, the life.  My eyes blurred to where I couldn’t see anything and I closed my eyes to replay that last moment.  To see him looking at me and trying to convey a thought to me, one that he knew was vitally important.  I could hear his weak whisper in my mind.  I love you.  I could hear it, clear as day now.  The way he held me and kissed me that night, the way he looked at me.  I knew all along.  I was scared though.  My eyes were still closed and tears were still slipping out of my eyelids.  I could barely speak, but I managed a whisper, a shaky, intelligible whisper.

“I love you too”

As I uttered these words, words that sounded like a sob, an iron fist of grief overwhelmed me.  These word came at a time when it was too late.  I could no longer send these words to willing ears, ears that could hear them.  The ears I intended them for didn’t hear any longer.  He was dead.  Gone from me, never to return.  He left this world with the thought in his mind that he loved me, and I did not reciprocate this love.  He left this world, he left me, feeling the grief of a one sided love.  And now there was nothing I could do to fix that.  There was no way I could set his thoughts straight, or tell him that he was not alone.  He left this world feeling alone and there was nothing I could do about it. 

I curled in a ball on my side and began my sobs anew.  They didn’t quiet through the night, and continued on until the spare hours of morning when I finally fell asleep.  I fell asleep to the sound of his voice telling me he loved me.  Telling me he loved me over and over again.

I love you

I don't know what to say bout this chapter... do you like it? do you hate it? did it make you cry? or is it just stupid.  I also have another question... do you want one last chapter of sometime in the future when she is more stable or should i leave it like this?  thanks for reading guys.  I hoped you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it!! thank you for your loyal attentions and thank you for commenting and subscribing.  I love you all!  Chu~