#7 - Are You Sure?

Plot: Jessica's gone, but the memories follow Jiyong as if she isn't.

Genre: Angst

Word Count: 2,002

It has been a month since Jiyong has felt in his own skin, in his own mind, or in the world around him. He feels like a vessel of flashbacks, a museum of every second he has ever laid eyes on Jessica. Friends have told him that it gets better over time, but if anything it gets worse. He has more time to remember everything he and Jessica have gone through, and as the hours add up, he loses more and more of himself. He lost the ability to think clearly ages ago. 

He's sure he's lost his mind, and if anything, his head sits on his disjointed heart. 

He goes to the club every night, drinks as much as he can, and it's a gamble if he can lose all feeling or if his heart weighs more than ever. 

Tonight he's drunk before he can even see the street the club's at. He stumbles along the street, collides shoulders with anyone who doesn't see him early enough to avoid him. Some push back, but he doesn't care. If they're girls, he continues on. If they're men, he shoves them back, and when they see the look in his eyes, they know better than to do anything other than back away.

He swears he sees Jessica walking toward him, but he realizes it's another memory of her waiting for him, not stopping in her tracks, but looking over her shoulder, waiting for him to run to her. He runs, but as slow as she walks, he can't catch up. He tears through the air, and the air is so bitterly cold against his skin, but he fights through it and continues running, trying to grab onto the hand that isn't there, but is so clear in his mind.

He stops when he gets tired and he's angry at himself. He wouldn't have caught something that wasn't there, but he gave up anyway. 

When he enters the club, he looks around and sees so many happy faces. He imagines Jessica sitting at a table all alone, her eyes on him and nothing - no one else. She leans her chin on her palm, and when he backtracks and looks more closely, it's not her. Of course it's not. 

It flickers through his mind again and again. Jessica opening the car door, Jessica stepping out, and Jessica continuing on, the click of her heels gradually fading against the traffic. His mind tries its best to reverse it: the click of her heels nearing, the door opening, and Jessica slipping back inside, but if it happens once, then it'll repeat the way it actually happened a million times after that. 

He clutches his head and plunges into the crowd of bodies. He throws his head back and rocks to the music, trying his best to be consumed. He tries to tell himself that she's gone for good, but that only makes him more desperate to cling onto the memories and exist with them. 

He looks up at the glowing lights overhead and thinks of the glow in Jessica's eyes. Instead of looking away, she looks at him. He thinks of the lights at his apartment hanging over Jessica's head as she waits for him to come home, the look in her eyes telling him she only wants him. 

He stumbles out of the crowd and knocks a line of drinks off of the table in front of him. Jessica was the only one who could help him control his impulses, but she's not here, and neither is his mind.

He collides with the bathroom door and he's now sitting on a toilet seat, clutching his arms as he bites down and tries not to cry. He can only think about how much he still loves her, and how she's now nothing but years of memories crammed in a mind that's half awake. He wants to call her but her number's changed. He wants to see her, but she's in a new apartment he doesn't know how to find. He wants her to find him, but he's chasing her while running away.

He hopes and pleads that she'll find him more than anything, and he always convinces himself that she just doesn't know where to find him, that she's always looking in the wrong places, but those excuses only work sometimes, and not well. 

He's back on the streets, now too drunk to stand. He drops down and stares numbly at the street, imagining Jessica's sitting in front of him, her eyes soft and inviting. He can only see her eyes, nothing else. It's the eyes that love him, the eyes that haven't left him yet. He's numb, and can't move, but he knows the second he gets up, she'll be gone, so he just sits.

///

He dreams about her. She's an angel, her eyes on him as she sinks into the clouds and smiles. She looks like a reflection of all that is left good in the world, and it's not an idealization. Whenever she stood in front of him, he thought the exact same thing.

Sometimes, he imagines her laying beside him, her back turned towards him, but she's happy and comfortable, and right beside him. Her body is loosely curved and peaceful, and just dreaming it makes his throat thick and his body stiff, as though any reach out toward her will remind him that it's all a facade.

When he wakes up, he has an arm out on the cold sheets beside him and he lifts his head up and stares numbly at his pillows. Sometimes he thinks she's only gone because she woke up first, her slender fingers carding through her long brown hair as she walks throughout his apartment.

He lays on the couch, overwhelmed by the silence. He lets his head fall to the side and he sees Jessica perched up on the kitchen counter, her long legs dangling back and forth as she digs through the mail. It's abrupt, and the second she disappears, he hits his head against the couch's armrest, hating himself for starting this so early. He's so exhausted, and the nights are catching up to him, so it wears him out more than he can handle.

It usually happens at nights when he's drunk, but now it's bleeding into the daytime when he's hungover. The worst thing is that he has a concert at 6, and all of the songs he sings has a touch or an entire piece of Jessica in them. He sings them for the fans and he doesn't have the nerve to sing them weakly or disconnectedly, but for a second, or for the entire performance, she crosses through his mind and he can only remember when they'd sit on his bed, her hands on his guitar, his voice feeling like background noise in comparison to her humming. 

It's been an entire month, and time doesn't exist. He lives in the past at all times. The only moments his mind can process time are when he realizes as it goes on, things just get worse.

Does she even think about him?

///

It has been one month, and Jessica is folded up, her knees to her chest as she stares at the wall in front of her. She misses him so much she can't take it, but she doesn't know how much she can take before she runs out of the will to live. 

Jiyong is her heart, her life, all of the blood in her body that keeps her alive, but she can't take those steps. She should be running back to him, but she can't even stand up. She doesn't know why she can only think of the good, when there was so much bad. He drank, he got into trouble with strangers, and while he never for a second made her feel unloved, it hurt to see him like that.

When she finally stands up, she's sick of the walls around her, the floor beneath her, and the skin she's in. She puts on her coat and walks out onto the street, pretending every guy she passes isn't transformed into Jiyong. 

She doesn't realize how late it is until the sun is down, and the air is cooler, biting against her skin. If she saw him now, would she run to him? If he happened to be walking toward her, would she stop or would she run? If she saw him now, would she be able to have enough clarity in her mind to know it were actually him and not another facade?

She stops in her tracks when she sees Jiyong, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he walks down the street, his head thrown back as he shoulders his way through the people passing by. She stands still and squints slightly, wondering if that's actually him. If she ran up to him, would he be him?

He lowers his head and his eyes catch onto hers. She sees him look at her with sadness and a little bit of anger, but he doesn't look shocked. Is he thinking the same thing? That when he gets close, she will be air and he'll walk right through her?

She continues walking and when he gets closer, she runs, not caring that she spent a month avoiding him because it hurt her so much. She doesn't care that it might be the dumbest mistake she's ever made. She doesn't care about anything except for the fact that it's him, living and breathing and not a figment of her imagination.

When she finally presses against him, his chest is stiff but warm, a flood of memories connecting at once. His breath catches in his throat as she inhales his scent, her arms around him. She sighs. "It's you."

Jiyong swallows. It takes him a few seconds to think, to process the fact that it's actually Jessica, a new memory of her, and it's her embracing him, her loving him. It's so much for his mind to process that it all feels so surreal. His legs almost give out, and he hates that he spent so much time running to millions of facades, and the one he didn't run to is her. Actually her. He buries his face in her hair and inhales deeply. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and holds on so tight, he's afraid she might disappear at any moment.

He pulls himself away for a short second to grab onto her face and look at her directly, memorizing everything. His eyes are weak, but they're not the kind of weak that'll ruin him.

"It's really you," he exhaled roughly, his eyes wide. "I forgot how real you are."

Jessica grabs onto his chin and kisses him roughly, desperately. She doesn't care who's around to see it. She heard exactly what she needs from him to regret every second she spent gone. She regrets making him forget about her and feeling so lost in his memories.

He kisses her back so hard she has to be pressed against the wall to prevent herself from falling backwards. He presses his body against hers, one palm on the wall as the other wraps around her jaw. He feels himself going crazy, but he can't help it. He's selfish. He hasn't wanted anything so much in the world than to kiss her and to feel her against him again.

He loves her too much to reduce her to memories and dreams, when she could be breathing, touching, and kissing him.

Finally an update! I made a video to the first half of this story (well I made the video first and thought I should write a story for it. You can check it out HERE.