maybe it's when she sits down in the hustle and bustle of the city and turns her head around, stares hard at the unceasing motion that she realizes how hard she has to work to earn the attention and appreciation from the world. nobody waits for you to catch up.

she watches her hands go clammy, her toes are suffocating in those court shoes and they want to breathe so badly, but are trapped within because 'formal wear', they said. and she feels the blouse and blazer collude to entrap her, the difficulty she remembers having to put them on every single morning, to button up to her neck and try not to exhale too heavily for fear of ripping it (she has more inclination to breathe in though, because she feels the oxygen doesn't reach her brain fast enough in her attire. it's not so easy, she comes to realize.) joohyun wonders when she'll finally be able breathe, too.

rejected proposals, deadlines brought forward and unending meetings and she never feels she's up to it. for every step she climbs in attempting to fulfill her duties to the best of her abilities, she watches her expectations skip three steps higher. she wonders when she'll ever meet them.

and the world doesn't stop to tell her she's incapable there and then. because the world is despicable and ruthless, wants to watch people rise and fall and try so hard to rise but may never rise to that level again. who can, joohyun thinks, who can keep wanting to rise, when the stairs of expectations behave like escalators at full speed, and you keep falling, scraping your knees. who can keep rising to meet the expectations when you're all bruised and broken, and these expectations never stop mounting.

it's a vivid reminder, when she retreats to her home late at night, shrugs off the attire that suffocates her. she thinks, maybe she can breathe now. but she inevitably glances around, her eyes dart to the polaroids shaped in a heart glued to a board and to the bathroom where excuses were made to allow for a shower together, and finally to the bed where she remembers coldness wasn't always the only thing that accompanied her at night. thinking, thinking, thinking, she thinks she still catches wisps of her favourite perfume floating in the stagnant air of her home at this moment. she sighs, because a reminiscent her thinks back to times when she wasn't always alone.

---

"we have a bunch of polaroids, what should we do with it?"
"hmm let's paste it up on a board. it'll always remind you of us and of me," seungwan smirks (and joohyun wonders if she still remembers, because joohyun has never forgotten)

---

"what the hell are spraying your perfume around my home for?!" joohyun is chasing after her. she is skipping around, randomly spraying her marc jacobs daisy perfume. what the hell, it's stupid, and a waste of expensive perfume.
"your home smells so stale i think it needs some life maybe it'll grow daisies after this" and joohyun continues chasing, the perfume does remind her of seungwan, but it reminds her more how she prefers to smell it on seungwan herself.

---

she slips off her clothes, steps into the shower and starts humming. an arm pulls her from behind, and hums the harmony to whatever she's humming.
a pause, "what are you doing?"
"saving water" and sungwan pulls her even closer with both her arms. she smiles, continues singing.
love like this, by kodaline.
"a love like this won't last forever / i know that a love like this won't last forever / but i, i don't really mind, i don't really mind at all"
(and she thinks now, well, she minds, she really minds)

---

you see, that's the problem with memories, because by remembering the good times. you also remember the bad times, which is now. and she wonders if there is anything she could have done to salvage the relationship.

and maybe it is then, when she relishes (regrets?) the vastness of her bed, her arm draped over her eyes that she realizes how the world makes a continuous joke of her. because it is when she allows someone to fix her that she gives that same person the power to break her, toss her back to the emptiness of her sheets at night, and leaves joohyun wondering in what ways was she ever not enough.

her mind is vicious, doesn't let her eyelids peel open and instead throws her back to when she catches seungwan on the streets, hands clasped with another. her side profile reveals her giggling to whatever the other taller girl is saying, and she sees seungwan's hand tighten a little more over the other's. foolish, foolish little joohyun trails them from a distance, hears her heart break but continues walking, imagining herself stepping over these shards of her heart, shattering them further.

she sees them stop at an alley, and she tries to be less conspicuous, peeking her head over once in awhile and catches them embracing and before they can proceed further she backs away. she doesn't know how it is possible but she hears her heart keep breaking breaking breaking and she can't cry and it's the worst thing because without crying there is no purging and she feels so so so entrapped with nowhere to escape; to release all these brokenness.

the world doesn't want any of it stained on its streets, anyway.

she flings her arm away, lets the night light in her room blind her vision so she forces open her eyes to stop hurting herself with those horrid memories. she looks around and remembers herself trying to cook ramen (she admits she's not good but seungwan's hungry) and ends up undercooking them, watches seungwan swallow hardly the rubber taste of undercooked noodles. she remembers wanting to help seungwan as the latter mops the floor but all she does is fall and delays seungwan because now seungwan has to rub her bruises. joohyun remembers always trying, never succeeding (who defined success anyway and why did she have to adhere to that definition?)

she stares hard at the board of polaroids on her wall. one of the polaroids tilts a little to the side, the heart is a funny shape now. she stares harder. perhaps the adhesive on the polaroid has faded and she sees it dismantle from the board and fall with a light thud to the floor. she stares again at the heart, incomplete now.

sometimes she wonders when she'll ever be enough.

---

a/n: this is random because i needed an outlet to vent. got a bad grade for an assignment and finals are coming and life is not good. i hope you all have a better week ahead than me <3