My eyelids felt heavy. My whole body felt heavy.
“Why are you upset?”
Becka wiped her eyes with the tissue and ran a hand over her hair. She leaned closer to the screen, and I saw the pinch to her lips as her eyes took me in. I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“Babes,” she said quietly, “I’m upset for you.”
“Me?” I asked doubtfully.
“Of course, you!” She seemed affronted I would even need to ask.
“Okay,” I began, “so to clarify – you’re crying, and looking like… that, because of me?”
“Well, now I don’t think you deserve it,” she sniffed.
Impossibly, my lips twitched, and I felt it there, a little spark that wanted to break through the fog.
“I know what it feels like,” Becka said. “I guess I got carried away.”
I nodded. Everyone kept telling me they understood how I felt
“Won’t you tell me how you’re doing?” She asked, a tinge of desperation in her voice.
I shrugged, because how could I articulate this feeling? I was hollowed out. Shelled. I was what was left when an entire future suddenly disappears.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Becka’s chin wobbled.
I shut my eyes to not see it.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Know what?” She replied, sniffing loudly.
“How did you–” The words cut off before they could reach my mouth and I shuddered.
“Oh,” Becka said quietly. “I, er. I saw him. On social media,” she clarified quickly as my eyes darted to hers. “I was just scrolling a couple of days ago, and there was a live stream. One of those gossip outlets was following someone through Incheon airport, and – it was him. They practically chased him all the way to security. I saw his face.” She said the words like they should mean something to me, but all I heard was that while I’d been here, falling apart, he’d been living.
I rubbed my chest again, trying to relieve some of the ache that had gathered there.
“He looked like… I don’t know how to describe it, babes.” Becka shrugged helplessly. “Even under a facemask, Jihoon looked… wrong. If someone had told me he was flying to attend a funeral, I would have believed it.”
When she said his name, my gut twisted. It brought me no joy to hear that he’d been visibly suffering, and it frustrated me to realise that hearing that sparked an immediate impulse to check on him.
But I would not.
“So, then I tried calling you, but your phone was off, so I just kept sending you messages. Didn’t you see them?” She asked with a tinge of frustration that would have been scolding on any other occasion.
“My phone was off.”
“For days?”
I shrugged, absentmindedly twisting my ring around my finger.
“Oh, babes,” she sighed. “Will you tell me what happened?”
“No,” I said quietly.
