The One Who Got Away

Chapter 16

His first thought as he set his eyes on her face was, ‘God damn it! She’s beautiful!’ He took a step towards her. Then he realized she was talking to him. 

“No, Jiyong, stop right there. Please. I can’t handle you up close. It’s too much.” She stepped backwards putting as much distance between them as possible.

She said the first thing that came to mind when she set her eyes on him. “You look like hell.” 

“I know. Because I feel like hell these days.” Then there was silence. Both really unsure on how to start. 

Jiyong couldn’t help but stare at her. His eyes drank the sight of her like she was a tall glass of ice cold water on a scorching hot summer day. Another thing came to mind as he kept looking his fill of her, ‘I miss her. I fxxking miss her.’

Sandara came to pick a fight with him but he looked as if he had already lost the fight. He hasn’t shaved in days. The stubble would still have looked good on him except that he also had dark shadows beneath his eyes that could rival Seungri’s. 

He did write that he was miserable but Dara refused to believe that. She’d still imagined that he’d still look suave and put together as before. She’d thought that he’d be going about still cocky and arrogant as he did once. It would have been so easy to pick a fight with that Jiyong but the Jiyong standing before her looked as if the sun didn’t shine in his world anymore.

She quietly said, “What happened to us, Jiyong?” She slid down the wall and hugged her knees, the fight slowly running out of her.

“Life happened, I guess, except it didn’t happen as we imagined it.” He also assumed a position on the floor, crossed his legs, propped his upper body on the table behind him and waited for her to speak because he honestly did not know what to say to her now that she was right in front of him. His initial reaction was to hold her close and not let go but from her actions just now he knew she would not want that.

After some time she spoke up. “I hate you, do you know? That’s why I came here. I wanted to yell it to your face that I hate you.” She told him in a monotone.

He laughed wryly at her words. “That makes two of us then. I hate myself, too. I hate what I did. I hate what I did to you. I hate what I did to us.”

“I hated you when you got over us even before we even broke up. You looked happy when I left while I felt broken. I hated how you made a success out of yourself while I couldn’t. Before I met you, acting was all I ever wanted to do. But you broke me, Jiyong. I couldn’t act after everything that happened because I had to lock up every feeling I had in me to just be able to keep myself going. But then I realized a few months back that it’s not you I should hate but myself because I allowed you to break me. That was when I started to make positive changes in my life again. It took me six years to realize that.” Jiyong hung his head at her words.

“But you know what made me hate you for real this time? It was when you wrote me that fxxking letter. You didn’t even have the guts to tell it to my face. You were so fxxking selfish. You sent me that letter because you wanted relief from all your pain. You wanted some form of absolution from your sins. Well, I’m not your priest who can just calmly tell you that your sins have been forgiven.”

The volume of her voice started to rise as she continued to speak. “Have you ever thought how I would feel once I read your letter, Kwon? You wanted to let go of your pain but you never thought that maybe by sending me those confessions you were only multiplying mine.”

“I’m sorry, Dee.” Jiyong pleaded at her. “I’m sorry I fxxked up. I’m sorry for letting myself like someone else even if I loved you. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for letting you go. I’m sorry for letting you down. I’m sorry for being an insensitive jerk. I’m sorry, Dee.”

She laughed mirthlessly at his words. “You’re sorry? Hah! You don’t even know the half of what you should be sorry for. You think you’ve been through hell, Jiyong, but you haven’t. I have. I have felt how it is to have hope abandon me. The pain I felt when I saw you with someone else was nothing in comparison to when I walked through the hell that followed after.”

She raised her head towards the ceiling, fighting back tears while Jiyong sat confused at her cryptic words. Did something happen after they broke up that he didn’t know? 

“Fxxk it. I thought I could do this but I can’t!” She stood up abruptly, swiping furiously at the traitorous tears flowing down her cheeks and ran out the door. She went just as suddenly as she came that Jiyong wondered if she had even been there all along.