Because surely that’s what happened when everything, absolutely everything in you shatters. It falls apart, doesn’t it?
I’d thought I was doing well. I’d been so proud of myself. I’d made it to lunchtime yesterday without thinking of him once. Freelancing was going well, I was keeping up with my uni work. Life was ticking over.
Except, I think it had been ticking like a bomb.
Which is why I couldn’t move now.
Breath moved in and out of me in steady, calm streams, but the action was manual. Every inhale, every exhale was a conscious decision, and it really felt like I could just…. Stop. Just choose not to, and for a moment… I considered it.
The thought jerked me out of autopilot, and a keening, quiet wail escaped. I put my fist to my mouth, desperately trying to reclaim the numb, but calm exterior I’d let slip.
I tried not to close my eyes, because every time I did, I saw the headlines, the photos. Felt the way my heart cracked so solidly in my chest that I heard the pieces shearing apart.
Fans lose it as Jihoon and Hyejin go public — agency says “They’re happy they can finally declare their love.”
K-pop stars Jihoon and Hyejin confirm relationship after years of rumours
“We knew it!” Netizens reactions to the confirmed news of JiJin – K-Pop’s lovebirds
It could have all been just another baseless rumour, had it not been for the pictures. Nothing hidden, no ambiguity. He and Hyejin had boldly walked through Incheon airport together, holding hands. It had all the subtlety of a public declaration, for surely that’s exactly what it was intended to be. They’d even been wearing rings.
No more rumours.
It hadn’t stopped there, though.
It had gotten so much worse. Had it just been the dating confirmation, I might have been able to bear it. Now, I wondered how I’d ever move past it.
I wondered if it was possible to fix what had been so irrevocably broken in me.
Coming clean! Spokesperson for ENT confirms Lee Hyejin IS the now-infamous ‘dark-haired girl! Shocking revelation!
I had been erased.
It didn’t matter that the world had never known my identity, because even that had been taken from me.
Now, I wasn’t even a mysterious rumour in his history, because my history had been replaced with the image of someone else. It didn’t matter that I immediately understood the logic in accepting the narrative, because whatever relationship they had now, had over written the one we’d had.
He had allowed that.
It wasn’t that I had been holding onto the hope that we’d somehow come back from this – because truthfully that hope had died in me the moment he’d changed his number – it’s that he saw replacing me with her as an acceptable price.
I’d always known he would probably move on before I could, because I’d always harboured the suspicion, deep down, that I felt more for him than he had for me. So, seeing him with her… it made sense. That it also confirmed what Hana had hinted at was just another hurt I would have to learn to live with. I’d add itto the list of wounds I carried under my skin, always just a hair's breadth from the surface.
Lee Hyejin: The dark-haired girl. The girl in the rain.
It’s like I was never there. As if none of it had ever happened, and the thought that it would all fade into a memory that only I could ever corroborate terrified me.
That was why I couldn’t get off the bench. Because if I did, if I tried to move… I would fall apart.
I didn’t know how to move on from this. I suspected I might never, and that was almost a more comforting thought than being forgotten.
But maybe in the meantime, I could learn to pretend.
Chapter 29
September
Irubbed absently at my chest before I wrapped my fingers around the little, gold swallow hanging around my neck.
