Minhee stormed into her apartment, throwing her phone onto the counter with her purse. Kicking off her shoes, she let out a wail of frustration as she tried to undo the strap of one of her shoes that had gotten caught on her pantyhose. Minhee's hands were shaking with rage, and it made it difficult to untagle the strap from the delicate fabric.

    The end result was a giant run up the side of her pantyhose, and Minhee nearly screamed in anger; she threw the shoes on the floor and stomped into the kitchen, opening the box of breadsticks and angrily biting into the first one. They had gone cold on the way to the apartment, and Minhee withdrew the carbs from the proximity of her face and burst into loud, ugly sobs, imagining herself on the scale a week later.

    Angry tears began to make their way down her face, and Minhee angrily wiped them away with the back of her hand before beginning the second breadstick. 

    "Screw you, Park Chanyeol!" Minhee threw a breakstick at the wall. It left a grease stain on the paint and didn't make Minhee feel any better. "This is the last time you will ever make me cry, you jerk."

    With that, Minhee stuffed the last of the breadsticks into and threw away her trash, pulling her trash can with her into her living space and proceeded to pull every photo, jacket, and trinket in her apartment that had anything to do with her now ex-boyfriend into a heap on her floor.

    Minhee sat in the middle of the pile of junk and began to desperately scoop it into the trash, occasionally stopping to gaze at certain pictures, her sobbing growing more loud and disgusting with each thing she threw away. Minhee alternated between chewing on breadstick and flipping through the mess.

    A certain shirt, however, stopped Minhee in her tracks; it was a simple pink shirt with a cheesy cartoon figure on the front, and across the front was a very unattractive chocolate stain. Minhee cradled the shirt to her chest and buried her face in it, suddenly becoming very still as she breathed in memories.

    It had been in autumn when she had first met Park Chanyeol. The local fair near their university was in full swing, and Minhee and her friend Bora had decided to check it out together. Bora was two weeks older than Minhee, and they had been inseparable from the first moment the younger popped out of the womb.

    Minhee recalled that it had been crowded and cold, and Minhee and Bora had bought matching couple shirts as somewhat of a joke; they held hands and ran from stall to stall in excitement until Minhee tripped and fell straight into someone's ice cream cone.

    "I am so, so sorry," she had begun, looking up at the person she had run into and stopped when she saw who it was. 

    It was none other than Park Chanyeol, a member of the infamous band of heartthrobs who terrorized the university with their perfection. Minhee had only seen them in passing, but this boy was everything people said he was up close. Not to mention a third generation chaebol son.

    "Hey, no worries," he responded, the ice cream off of his fingers before looking at her thoughtfully. The lights of the fair illuminated his cheeks and danced in his eyes. "You're Cho Minhee, right? I've seen you around campus."

    Minhee wanted to do a happy dance. He had noticed her! However, in order to avoid embarrassing herself, she forced herself to remain calm and place a polite smile on her face.

    "You are Park Chanyeol," she strategically flipped her hair over her shoulder. "I don't think there's a person on campus who doesn't know who you are."

    Chanyeol smiled and shoved a hand into his pocket before pulling out a pack of tissues in an adorable fashion. "You've got some chocolate on your shirt."

    Minhee ran her fingers over the chocolate stain once more before throwing it into the garbage can, wincing slightly at the noise it made when it hit the other objects already lying at the bottom.

    Into the bin went the picture strip they took on their third date, old receipts from various dinners, a couple necklaces, and a couple of his hoodies he had left at her apartment over the year.

    Minhee hoped he liked them because he was not getting them back. Before she threw them out, however, she checked the brands and kept the nicer labels because she did love to accessorize.

    Leaving out the shirt and jackets, Minhee dragged the trash bag out to the back dumpsters and was sure to stomp on it a couple times before flinging it in and storming back upstairs. She was halfway up the stairs when she turned around and ran back to the dumpsters, desperately rifling through the contents until she found what she was looking for. A soft breath left her lips and she held the object close to her chest as she turned back. 

    She ran into her neighbor Hamin on the way inside, who was obviously on the way back from the gym because he had a towel draped over his shoulder and smelled like all of humanity. Minhee took one whiff and regretted her decision to take the stairs.

    Hamin regarded her tearstained appearance with interest, taking in her smudged makeup and disheveled dress before nodding sagely, adjusting his sweaty towel. Sweat beaded on his neck and over his lip.

    "Tough breakup," he deadpanned. "How'd he break the news?"

    "It's not you, it's me," Minhee grunted, trudging up the stairs. The anger was slowly giving way to a sheer exhaustion, and all she wanted to do was sleep.

    Hamin hissed between his teeth. "Ouch. Must've been rough."

    Minhee nodded before waving him off and unlocking her door. She made it to the sofa before she gave up and wound up sleeping on the carpet, curled in a little ball around the ice-cream stained shirt she had worn when she had met Chanyeol.

          Minhee curled up in front of the TV and watched old episodes of Boys Over Flowers, polishing off a rather large tub of Chunky Fudge Delite that she had dug up from the back of the freezer. She always had emergency ice cream in the freezer for occasions such as these.

            The evidence of the breakup spoke for itself. The living space, normally tidy and clean, resembled a demolition site: Minhee’s coverlet for her bed was crumpled in front of the couch, the couch pillows were thrown (quite literally) into various corners of the room, and snack wrappers and tissues littered the table and floor. Minhee was in no better shape: her face was smudged with dark streaks of mascara, she was in an old T-Shirt and volleyball shorts, and her eyes and nose were irritated and swollen from days of crying. 

            She had not showered in days, and Minhee shuddered to think about the condition of her hair at the moment (which had been pulled into a sloppy bun at the top of her head instead of its usual careful styling). The anger of the breakup had faded into a devastating sense of hopelessness that literally felt to Minhee as though the corners of were being held down by weights.

            To Minhee, it felt as though the world was ending.

            A loud series of knocking at the door made Minhee look up from the very large scoop of ice cream that she was in the process of dribbling across her face as she squeezed as much as she could into . On the TV screen Lee Min Ho froze in the snow, and Minhee immediately forgot about whoever was knocking. Or she did not care- she was not quite sure yet.

            “Cho Minhee, you open this door right now!” It was Bora.

            Minhee groaned and set her ice cream on her lap as she reached for the remote, turning up the volume, and grabbing a couple of old tissues scattered in front of her. With an outrageous honk, Minhee proceeded to blow her nose into the soiled tissues. 

            “I know you are in there watching Lee Min Ho,” her friend yelled through the door. “I know you, Minhee! I hear him in there!”

            Flopping face first onto a nearby pillow and emitting a noise that was a cross between a scream and a groan, Minhee responded with a very ladylike, “Go away!”

            “Alright, that’s it!” Bora bellowed, pounding the door for emphasis. “I’m coming in!”

            Minhee groaned again and heavily flipped herself onto her back, staring blankly at the ceiling, ignoring the flickering of the screen of the TV, which was now blasting the “Almost Paradise” theme. 

            A series of beeps and clicks came from the front door followed by a soft slam, and Minhee knew her friend had somehow learned her passcode to the apartment. She scowled even deeper than she already had been and pushed the pillow over her face in hopes of blocking out the inevitable-

            “Good God,” Bora exclaimed as she took in the war zone of the apartment. “Minhee, what the hell?”

            Minhee kicked her leg in response.

            Bora’s footsteps drew near, and the pillow was tugged away from Minhee’s swollen face, and a horrified gasp left her best friend’s mouth.

            “Minhee, what is this? You look like, well,” Bora stopped herself and thought to herself before letting out a self-complementary bark of laughter, “Well, like you just got dumped.”

            “Shut up,” Minhee grumbled, reaching to take back the pillow, but Bora was faster and swiftly tossed the pillow away. Minhee whined like a small child.

            “This is ridiculous,” Bora stated, looking over her friend seriously. “We are going out.”

            Minhee shot her best friend a “have-you-lost-your-freaking-mind?” look. 

            “Yeah, not happening,” Bora deadpanned, and began to tug at Minhee’s arm.

            “Bora, what the heck,” Minhee screeched, flailing away from her friend’s iron grip, but to no avail. Bora had talons. “I can’t!”

            Bora rolled her eyes, yanking her friend up and pushing Minhee forward, her breath coming in puffs from exersion. “It’s been a week and you have spent it holed up in your apartment, getting your friends to send you lecture notes. If anything, not showing up makes this worse.”

            Minhee acted as if she didn’t hear her friend’s very valid point and shrieked the whole way down the hall and into the bathroom. Bora stripped off Minhee’s pajamas and handed her friend her toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.

            “Your breath smells like roadkill on a summer afternoon,” Bora told Minhee earnestly.

            On this, Minhee had to agree, and grudgingly complied with washing herself and other basic hygienic habits as well as shaving her legs (although only below the knee). When she got out of the shower, Minhee examined her skin with horror as she noticed her reflection in the mirror.

            And burst into another round of ugly tears. Right in the center of her forehead was a large, ugly zit.