“Kaiya… why?”
I pushed away from him. I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t fair.
I’d spent three years putting myself back together, creating a life for myself, putting myself first and showing up, every damn day. This was my life, a life I had chosen. He had no right to bust in here and offer to make every secret fantasy I’d ever had come true, because that’s all it would be in the end. A fantasy.
“Ky,” his voice was unsteady, his eyebrows furrowed tightly together. “Why?”
I put my head in my hands, trying to keep my tumbling thoughts from spilling out. Even as I felt my heart breaking. Again.
“Because I wouldn’t survive you again!” I cried. “I barely survived you the first time. I can’t–I won’t do that again.”
“Kaiya, I–” He tried to close the distance between us, but I backed away and he paused, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“It was always all or nothing with you,” I gasped, breathless like I was mid-sprint. “Straight away, one to one hundred. And I loved that. I loved the excitement you brought into my life, but I’m not that person anymore, Jihoon. I’m not.”
I had rebuilt myself once. I would not shatter myself again just to see if I was still the same on the inside.
He ducked his head as he looked away, blinking furiously before turning back to me, and fixing with me a stare that almost had me running into his arms.
“Does this new person still love me?”
I ran a hand through my hair, stalling.
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s the only point,” he pleaded. “Tell me you don’t. Say you don’t, and this will be done.”
And in one, wild moment I opened my mouth, watching as his eyes widened in shock.
But nothing came out.
Because it would have been a lie.
God fucking damn it.
“Don’t follow me,” I begged, forcing myself not to blink, because if I did, if I let my eyes close for even a second…
“Let me leave, Joon. I need to go.”
I picked up my bag, and I walked towards the door, clenching my teeth so hard they ground together. But my chin didn’t tremble. Not once.
“This isn’t over,jagiya,” he called softly, voice carrying in the stillness of the room, like a prayer in a silent church.
I looked over my shoulder as I unlocked the door and opened it, the sudden light from the corridor hitting me in the face like the cold light of day.
He was standing six feet away, and it had never felt so far.
But what scared me the most was the quiet look of triumph on his face.
Because he’d always known me so well.
My hand tightened around my bag strap, the leather creaking in my grip, and I walked out the door.
I didn’t say goodbye, because it would feel too much like forever.
And I don’t know if that’s what I wanted.
December
