sometimes the itch in her fingers makes her rummage through her room and the mess becomes worse. what used to be a disorganized stack of notes lies sprawled on her table, what used to be drawers of chucked-away momentos lies open for her to see in all its fullness, what used to be boxes of birthday cards and postcards from friends spills and lays bare. in all this mess she wonders what she is really looking for.

because no matter, her eyes dart to the same blue box and her eyes caresses the same glittery edges that peel and fade with every year that passes. she wonders why she still makes a mess of her whole desk when her hands naturally reach for the box tucked at what she deems the unreachable corner of her room, like the far end of the universe that people forget exists but is still there, always there. she wonders why she doesn't throw the box away.

she peels the lid off carefully, but pieces of glitter still fall off and stick on her fingers (they will be hard to rub off, but they will be rubbed off one day, anyway, she thinks, she hopes). the box feels more and more fragile, the material getting flimsy by the year. if she tells herself not to touch it, the box collects dust and is eroded by it. if she tells herself to take it out, the box is triggered by the sudden movement and suddenly realizes how heavy it is to carry the things that are inside it, when it lays unsteadily in her skinny arms. it feels almost uncertain it can bear the weight of these memories and like joohyun's heart wonders when it can let all these go.

sometimes joohyun thinks it must be a little (just a little) masochistic of her, to cough through these dusty momentos (half of her was sure she did not want to remember any of this but the other nostalgic sentimental half always wins), to leaf through letters and letters of faded ink that conveyed an eternal affection for bae joohyun, the occasional "can't wait to get married and buy a house with you"s, the frequent "you make me so happy, do you know that?"s and the perpetual inevitable "i love you"s and to think, well, you, son seungwan, she wonders. where's eternity now?

but she continues to re-explore (how many times does she want to hear her heart break again?) the box anyway, takes out these little trinkets that were a proof of seungwan's (once) love for her — a watch with a cracked screen because in their early days of love joohyun has clumsy hands and lets loose the watch gifted by seungwan, watching it crash to the ground before apologizing profusely but seungwan says it's ok, there's always another time. there's also a stack of movie ticket stubs that has lost its lustre, joohyun can't make out the movie titles and dates of screening anymore and she tries to remember the one movie where seungwan secretly shyly reaches for joohyun's sweaty palm because she's so so so nervous on their first date, but she can't. there are a few polaroids of them and joohyun remembers how she tells seungwan "it lasts, like us" and ing wishes that these photos would fade away then and there. and then there's that thumbdrive of seungwan's recording of all of joohyun's favourite songs and songs on their consummation night (what the was seungwan even thinking back then) and she wants to burn it but the thumbdrive is plastic and she doesn't want to pollute and kill the world with seungwan's affections, the way the latter did to her.

so the masochistic part of her plugs it into her laptop and she puts on her earpiece and listens to the silence... and then a soft plucking comes on and seungwan's melodic voice is filling her ears and tears are on the verge of falling and joohyun knows she has fallen again. she sees herself in the days of her past, how she fell, how she's still falling and wonders when she'll stop.

"it's okay not to be okay
sometimes it's hard to follow your heart

tears don't mean you're losing
everybody's bruising
just be true to who you are"

joohyun thinks of all that seungwan has just sung, sees seungwan in her perfection and goodness, sees seungwan filling the void in her life and knows that while it's okay to not be okay, while she should be true to who she is, joohyun lives the prophecy seungwan sings but wonders how true she can be to herself when she had allowed seungwan to enter her life and re-define her. love remoulds us, she thinks, so how can we ever feel as true to ourselves as before, but only as true as our most recent loss?

she's sobbing hard now and rips out the thumbdrive in a fit of rage. she doesn't know if it was the empty promises, the ignorance that nothing could last between people like them, or simply ill-luck that leaves her in this rut. all she knows is she should have tried to stop time when she could (was that why she dropped her watch?) or reverse to that time she met seungwan and clenched her heart tight, told her heart to refrain from beating too fast for someone else, because that meant letting another entity (who was capable of leaving no doubt) be the reason joohyun breathes.

so she stares at the opened box, all these momentos laid bare, piercing into joohyun's soul, tearing her apart again and again. sometimes she doesn't know why she lets herself be torn apart. she wonders if humans have a erse inclination to experience or re-live pain because it takes them out of their numbness and reminds them they are alive. sometimes she wonders if that's the reason in her re-opening of the box, or is it just her deluding herself that opening the box meant maybe seungwan didn't really leave at all, that she still lives in joohyun's mind (is that enough, though).

sometimes she doesn't know whether she should hate seungwan, because she loves her and remembers all these beautiful horrid things.

but she also remembers how all these things she remembers are what she should have forgotten by now.

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a/n: i have a blue box too, don't we all?