𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 | (𝐆)𝐈-𝐃𝐋𝐄

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞 𝐔𝐬

The city buzzed under the neon haze, its heartbeat echoing through honking cars and muffled music drifting from open bars. Life moved on outside—but inside the dim café on 9th and Kira, time had stopped.

It always did with her.

Soyeon sat across the chipped wooden table, her fingers clenched tightly around a lukewarm cup of coffee. Her eyes flicked up, meeting the storm brewing behind Yuqi’s glassy gaze.

“I told you I’m sorry a million times,” Soyeon whispered, voice low, shaky. “What do you want from me?”

Yuqi didn’t speak right away.

She couldn’t.

Her throat burned. Her chest felt too tight to breathe properly. There was a hollow in her heart where warmth used to live. Where Soyeon used to live.

“What do I want?” she repeated, her voice breaking, her knuckles pale from how tightly she clutched her own hands. “I wanted you to think before you acted. I wanted you to care enough to stop yourself before you crossed the line. I wanted you to remember how much you said you loved me before you let one night erase everything we built.”

Soyeon’s eyes dropped.

She couldn’t look at her—not when her words hurt this much. Not when they were true.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen—”

Yuqi flinched.

“Please don’t,” she said softly, almost pleading. “Don’t minimize it with that line. You didn’t ‘mean for it to happen’? So what—did it just happen to you? Like you were some helpless bystander while my heart shattered?”

Silence.

“I loved you so much,” Yuqi said, voice quiet now, barely above the soft jazz playing overhead. “You don’t get to come here and ask me what I want as if you didn’t already take it from me.”

Soyeon opened her mouth—but no words came. What could she say? That it was a mistake? That it didn’t mean anything?

None of it would undo the damage. None of it could rewind the way Yuqi’s world collapsed in a single message, a single truth delivered too late.

“I thought…” Yuqi continued, her tone steadier now, like someone who had rehearsed this breakdown in the mirror a dozen times. “I thought I’d always be able to forgive you. But then I realised—I can’t keep loving someone who doesn’t know how to protect me from themselves.”

Soyeon’s vision blurred. Her fingers trembled.

“I didn’t want to lose you,” she whispered.

“Then you shouldn’t have let me go."

//

In the weeks that followed, the days blurred into one another.

Yuqi went back to work, throwing herself into 12-hour shifts and late-night takeout. She started reading again. She picked up a new routine—sunsets at the park, coffee in silence, soft jazz and solitude.

And every now and then, she’d pause and wonder where Soyeon was. If she still passed that café. If she regretted it all. If she missed her too.

But she didn’t let herself go back.

Because she was learning that letting go wasn’t the same as giving up.

It was protecting herself now. It was choosing herself, for once.

And it was time.

Soyeon, meanwhile, stayed quiet. She deleted their photos, but not their memories. They played on loop, especially at night.

The moment she said “I love you” too late.

The sound of Yuqi’s voice cracking.

The look in her eyes that said this is the last time I’ll let you hurt me.

She cried. She screamed. She apologized to the wind, to the moon, to the night sky. But none of it changed the ending.

She knew that now.

—They didn’t cross paths again for a long time.

Not physically.

But sometimes, when the city was quiet and the lights flickered just right—Yuqi would think of Soyeon’s laughter.

And Soyeon would think of how she once made someone feel safe.

And even if their story ended in a whisper, it still mattered.

Because in between the heartbreak, there was love.

And from that love, they both learned how to begin again.