Owning You - A Na Jaemin Fanfic

81. Do You Remember?

TWO YEARS LATER

Dearest Jaemin,

I miss you desperately.

It's been four days since you left for Edinburgh. It will be another three weeks, three days and 48 hours before I see you again.

You were so torn when you told me about the offer. A one-month attachment to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Fourth Year medical students from the Seoul National University. I asked you how many of you were going, and you said that nine students had already signed up. The offer to study at the world-renown teaching hospital was limited to a maximum of twelve students, you said. What about you? I asked. You told me that you were not interested, but you were lying. I knew you wanted to go. I could see the yearning in your eyes. I knew I was what was holding you back. So I smiled brightly and I said you should go. I said that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. I said that you would regret it if you didn't go. I lied that I would be all right. I even laughed. You were so happy and relieved, I must have lied so convincingly that you believed me. It'd only be for a month, you had declared, hugging me exuberantly, and I had hugged you back, turning my face into your shoulder, so that you would not see the lie in my eyes, and said, One month will just fly by. But my heart was filled with fear. One month was an eternity. How would I live without you?

So here I am pouring my heart out in an email that I would never send to you. I created a secret folder just for it. I will delete it when you return to me. I can't let you know how I feel. I can't let you see how sad I am. I know my sadness would be a burden on you. I am a burden, I know, with all my insecurities and all my weaknesses - and there are so many of them; I get jealous. I am selfish. I am self-centred. I have darkness in my soul. I throw tantrums. I am stubborn. I am proud. I am demanding. I am not the easiest person to live with. But you tell me over and over that you love me, the real me, flaws and all, and my heart swells when you say that.

But sometimes, in one of my rare and unselfish moments, I wonder if it would have been easier for you, if you would have been happier with someone else? A girl who is the opposite of me in every way - perfect and uncomplicated and unbroken. I can't help but wonder, Jaemin.

The night you left, I went back to my lonely room in my hostel, and I found a folded note on my pillow; you must have snuck into my bedroom, somehow. I sat down on my bed, and unfolded it.

On the creased yellow paper, you had written the words in black marker ink, I love you, Haeri.

"Illegible and perfectly doctorish," I had teased you often about your handwriting.

The words, written in your firm, spidery scrawl, undid me.

It amazed me all the fresh new ways my heart could break.

I sat on the bed, clutching the crumpled yellow note between my fingers, and I imagined you sitting at your desk and writing those words. You might have been wearing those old sweatpants you loved so much, your chest damp, and your hair wet and mussed up from a shower. I started to cry silently, tears running down my face, and I felt the gasping loss of you.

Three days ago, I was on my way back to the hostel after classes. It had been raining all day. The path was muddy and I was watching my step when I saw a commotion ahead of me. There was a crowd of people gathered in front of the apartment block next to my hostel. I heard people talking. A child had wandered off by herself. Her mother had gone to the supermarket. She had left the child alone to nap. When she came home, the door was open, and the child gone. When I pushed through the group of people, the child had been found, she was in her father's arms. All the people were crowding around him. In front of friends and neighbours, he slapped his weeping wife and the crack echoed across the square like a gunshot. "You useless woman," he swore at her. "Stupid fucking woman. You can't even look after your own child." He looked at her as if he hated her, as she cowed, holding a hand to her bruised cheek. They glared at each other across the ashes of their dying marriage. I felt so sad, Jaemin. They must have loved each other once. Surely they did love each other? They created that child together. Why, oh why does love have to die?