Chapter 46
Breath whooshed out of me, but before I could say anything, before I could even think of a reply, he continued, like he couldn’t stop talking after saying nothing for three years.
“But I was a coward,” he went on, an edge of pleading to his voice. “I couldn’t do it. Your eomma was getting better, you were thinking of coming back.” He paused, as if he stopping the story might undo the rest of it.
But it wouldn’t
“I kept thinking I’d find a way out. But I couldn’t. There was no scenario that didn’t end with you being hurt.”
He pulled in a juddering breath, and unthinking, I reached for his hands, wrapping my fingers around his cold ones.
“Is that why you picked a fight with me, over Tae?” My words were incredulous, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to admit it. I couldn’t decide if it would be better if that whole blow up was just a convenient excuse for him to start a fight that would ultimately lead to our breakup.
His eyes slid closed, and he nodded. “It was easier to have something to be mad about.”
I scoffed and I pulled my hands from his, remembering the words he’d said, how he’d directed his anger at me.
And even though I didn’t want to, a little voice inside of me couldn’t help but recognise that perhaps he’d been lashing out at the situation, and I’d just happened to be in the way. Wounded animals often attacked the people who try to help them.
I opened my mouth to ask him why he hated Tae so much but closed it. In the past three years, I had learned to pick my battles. I swallowed the question. For now.
Jihoon continued, oblivious to my internal moderation.
“And then you told me you were struggling. I should have been stronger for you. I should have been the one to comfort you when you told me you didn’t know about us anymore, and instead I used it as an excuse.”
I looked away, remembering my words all too well. And remembering how I’d later hated myself for saying them.
He paused, dropping his eyes to the ground as his head bowed.
“I’m so sorry, Kaiya.” His face crumpled. It was as if the image of him I’d built brick by brick began to collapse.
“It was all my fault. I knew you weren’t saying you wanted us to end, but it was the only way I could protect you.
I needed it to be real, because I wasn’t strong enough to let you go.
I needed it to be you,” he whispered, like the words had sapped his strength.
“I thought that if perhaps you were already out of my reach, it would be easier for you to move on. And – maybe it would be easier for me to let you.” His voice broke on the final word, and the next was more sob than speech.
“I am so sorry.”
I pulled my legs underneath me, and wrapped my arms around myself, fiddling with a loose thread on the robe. I knew I should say something comforting, but I didn’t have the words for him.
“Why now?”
He raised his head, watching me warily.
“Why now?” I repeated. “Why tell me this now, after all this time?”
He flinched, but then he nodded, like he’d expected the question.
“When I lost you–” he swallowed, like the words hurt, “when I left you,” he corrected, “I thought the lie would protect you. It took being without you to make me realise I had hurt us both more than Hana ever could. I was scared about the wrong things. I thought the world would take you from me, but I did that.” His voice faltered, but in the next moment, I watched him draw in a ragged breath and hold himself a little straighter.
It was like watching him refuse to break.
“After everything, I was not okay. Not for – not for a long time. Minjae, eventually he dragged me to see a doctor.”
I watched, silent, as his jaw clenched.
“I knew I needed to do something, but I did not feel capable of helping myself. Everything was too much. I tried–” he stuttered, and it was like the word itself was a battle, “therapy. I started seeing a doctor. Just to talk. To try to understand.” He couldn’t meet my eyes, and though he said the words, it was like he was ashamed of them.
“It is not an excuse,” he said quickly, as though I might interrupt, instead of sitting here, watching him with a mix of what felt like shock and admiration.
“I probably would not have gone if Minjae had not have forced me. He sat in the waiting room to make sure I would not leave,” his lips twitched in an approximation of a smile.
“It took time. I did not understand because all I felt was how everything hurt me. I did not see that when I wanted to protect you, I was hurting you, too.”
His eyes flicked up to meet mine, briefly, like he was checking I was still there, still listening. I couldn’t have moved, even if I’d wanted to.
“Even now,” he cleared his throat, paused, and then “it is hard. I believed ending it was the best thing I could do for you. The only thing. It took me time to understand that because I was hurt, I hurt you. I lashed out, because I did not know how to be different. But it took me too long.” He shook his head.
“You had moved on, and by the time I realised my mistake, you had a new life. I was too late.”
I bit my tongue to keep the bitter laugh from falling out. I must have done a good job of pretending if ‘moved on’ was what he’d thought I’d done.
I sat there silently, thinking through what felt like life-changing information, and the main thing that I kept circling back to was that I didn’t know what to do with it. How was I supposed to deal with this?
I was as still as stone, while inside, I was an earthquake. I didn’t move because I would crumble if I did; I would shatter. Again.
Our lives had been irrevocably altered not just because of one person’s extreme desire to see things play out the way they wanted, but also because Joon couldn’t reconcile his own emotional response to a situation that could have been resolved, had he only asked for the one thing he’d never been able to. Help.
Hana may have placed the bomb that had blown apart
my life, but Jihoon had lit the fuse.
Words kept forming in my mind, a churning combination of sounds, but they dissolved by the time they reached my tongue. I wanted to say something, I wanted to rage, I wanted to ask questions, but I didn’t know how, or what words to use.
My fingers twitched, and I shifted. Jihoon’s expression went from anguish to panic in the space between heartbeats, and he reached out for me, quickly saying–
“I could not call you. I could not, because if I did, I don’t think I would have been able to let you go again. I barely survived the first time. I would have begged, jagiya.” His voice snapped, a winter reed cracking under the weight of too much snow.
“And everything I did would have been for nothing. I could not come to you. It nearly killed me.”
I inhaled so sharply it cut me, and I stared at my fingers as they dug into the carpet.
“After what I did to you, it would have been arrogant of me to think that just because I still wanted you, you would want me back. We had been apart longer than we’d been together.
All the therapy in the world could not have fixed the damage I did to us.
And if I had found you? I–” He paused and took a breath.
“If you didn’t want me, I could not – I could not bear it. Better not to know.”
My heart thumped painfully in my chest, and I quickly turned away as my face crumpled. I clenched my fists to divert my attention from the pounding against my ribs.
Behind me, Jihoon’s voice came softly, pulling me out of my body, and turning me around to him. I schooled my features just in time.
“But didn’t you see? Did you really never see me, cheonsa? All the times I reached for you?”
I couldn’t look at him, even though his voice begged me to.
“I know I should not have, but I watched you make your new life. I followed your professional accounts. I told myself it was because I wanted to see you succeed, but it was not only that. I began to see you didn’t need me anymore.
You were… you shined. I knew I had no right to intrude on your life.
I was so proud of you, even though it hurt. It was a pain I deserved.”
I raised a hand to my mouth, feeling how my fingers trembled against my lips, and I quickly put my hand down, then not knowing what to do with myself, I tried to fold my hands in my lap, but I couldn’t stop the way I anxiously picked at my nails.
He took a breath, but it hitched.
“I spent three years reaching for you. Maybe you never saw, because you did not want to.”
He huffed, a small sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry.
“How?” I asked quietly.
“My song,” he said. “The photos. There were other ways, but it does not matter.”
My fingers stilled.
The song? The photos? The ones he’d posted on his social media? I hadn’t allowed myself consider if that had been for my benefit, but I’d always…
I lurched to my feet while Jihoon watched me. Warily, like I might lash out, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I was spent. I felt like I’d been carved out and tipped upside down.
Everything I thought I knew, assumptions I’d made, conclusions I’d drawn, the ways in which I’d redrawn the lines and tortured myself for three years.
A facade – three years of a story I’d told myself was built on lies.
I needed to create space between us.
My past and my present were colliding, and it felt like too much. I paced, shaking out my hands to loosen the tight muscles.
For a moment, all I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears, tidal waves pounding a thrumming beat that drowned out everything else.
Every lie, every story I’d told myself to make it make sense. Every way I’d blamed myself.
The initial agony, and the months that had followed. The way I’d tried to rebuild my life afterwards.
Slowly, Jihoon got to his feet. His movements seemed exaggerated, cautious. He reached for me. His fingers brushed against my arms, and I could feel how badly he was shaking, but maybe that was me. Two earthquakes joining together to shake the whole world.