♡ 〉SUJEONG & HYUN. @88falling
they’ll hang us in the louvre ( down the back, but who cares )
...
and there is such a thing as planning a getaway. not the jet-off to paris and sight-see kind, but the leave bad enough alone kind. the leave her alone because she’s out of your league kind. the don’t talk to her again because all you ever do is say the wrong thing kind. but, as history has proven time and time again, the last thing hyun knows how to do is to leave anyone alone.
he stares at the messages from the airline—reminders about the trip sent to a group chat with the both of them. there are enough of these reminders to bury earlier messages. excited plans like bygone relics of another time. he tries not to look at the time. hyun glances to the entrance, and try as he might—hopeless as it is, godless as he is, as much as he knows he doesn’t deserve this—he can’t stop praying she’ll show up.
adoration and contempt both wear familiar faces, so indistinguishable as to be disconcerting. but take a step back, and it’s only a simple truth—you can’t keep a rose tucked away in some glass dome, expecting to put a pause on time and for it to be immortalized, all while denying it of life. sujeong learns this from the nights she spent sitting in bed, staring at vases of withered flowers lined up one after another. once a display of affection, then a weapon with all intents to injure when she sweeps it all to the ground in an almost crazed fit of outrage one night. the scarlet red that trickles from her fingertips leaves a blight on what was once unclouded, and that’s when she realises it—the fate of glass is to break.
but the worst thing about loving someone to the point of hating isn’t that you start feeling differently about them. it’s that despite it all, you still feel the same. it’s that however the pain clings to every part of her like a malady beyond cure, she can’t and she doesn’t stop herself from packing her bags a week before the date that’s stamped all across her email inbox, the group chat, and her google calendar. it’s that all the bits and pieces never stop lingering, like the scent of the flowers she swears she still catches a whiff of every morning, even when she’s shoved them all down the rubbish chute.
for some time she wonders if this is what love is, the sole desire to cling on to whatever semblance of hope she has with him, rather than making the sensible choice of searching for certainty someplace else. or—and this stems from all the thinking she’s had time to drown herself in, without hyun around to save her from her own mind—maybe love is somewhat of a misnomer when it comes to them. and maybe what she has is simply one of those bouts of hyperfixation she’s prone to, something like another one of those crocheting projects she keeps tucked below her bed, only to work on them through the night when the urge hits.
but she’s always been used to plunging headfirst into the seething underbelly of motionless waters, always had a penchant for weaving herself into intricate twists and turns. there’s no logical explanation for why she shows up an hour earlier than their agreed upon time, and why she allows herself to stay rooted to her seat all through the past hour when she knows all too well that she should turn and go before he arrives. disappearing acts are her forte after all, and he knows this better than anyone, knows that she comes and goes like morning breeze, the way she left him at first light the last time they spent the night together.
( if she’s being honest, he knows the entirety of her better than anyone. )
the reality is she knows she could never stay away, and it’s only a truth that’s drilled deeper into her heart once she sees him, just a few steps away from her. close enough that she sees his bleached eyebrows, and it seems he always has a way to put a smile on her face. then her heart, its fluttering so harsh against her ribcage that she feels her own body rejecting it, like a foreign object lodged within. who did she think she was kidding when she’d tried to convince herself she could ignore hyun for long enough to forget about him?
he’s someone she misses even when he’s standing right in front of her.
by now, her body no longer feels like her own, limbs moving against her will to bring her away from the wall she’d been peeking out from, and over to him. the steps she takes to close the gap between them are barely noticeable, and even when she’s standing right before him, sujeong’s grasp on reality is a losing battle that becomes apparent in her eyes, glossed over with so many emotions that they all escape her in the moment. “hey,” it’s the only word she manages to breathe out after what feels like an eternity of wordlessly staring at him passes, her throat seeming to be closing in on itself. she swallows, forcing months of anguish and guilt back down. now looking back, sujeong wonders if they’ve both wronged each other enough to negate it all. “you came. i wasn’t sure if you were going to.”
