Legend [YEONBIN] ✓

forty-eight ; soobin

It was the first time I’d said the words. And they caught at my throat.

I watched Yeonjun struggle with my confession.

“I didn’t want to admit it . . . before.” I paused, hesitant to bring up the past, but I had to say it at least once. “You made me feel like I could let go for the first time in my life and that scared me. I’ve lived my whole life letting fear control me. And I hurt you because I still don’t know how to let go.”

“And you think now that you’ve come back and said these things, all should be forgiven?”

I backed away from the anger in his eyes. The full moon broke partially free from the clouds obscuring it, shining against the swing set. Like a boundary between my space and his.

It called to me, urging me to relinquish control. Instead of pulling the beast from me, it pulled out the words from my heart.

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Well, you did. I hurt all the time, but I’m too tired to stay angry anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I want to forgive you,” he admitted.

I took a step, my heart spurring me forward into the slanting light of the moon. Pain rocketed through my muscles. As if on cue, Yeonjun winced, an echo of my suffering.

It reminded me why I’d returned. And it wasn’t for a redemption I didn’t deserve. A part of me wanted to peel back the last curtain and reveal what I had done to his halmeoni. It would cure him of his suffering, thinking he could still love me. He wouldn’t be so foolish as to believe that after he knew what I had done. But another part of me, the selfish part, kept the secret to myself for now.

I came back to help and he won’t let me if he knows what I did, but I knew I was a liar and a coward.

I took a step back, away from the moonlight, away from Yeonjun.

His eyes fell, the hope that lit them dimming to nothing.

“Just go,” he said.

“Yeonjun-ah.”

“I said get out of here!”

His words shot into me, a command I couldn’t deny. Said with such force that I knew I couldn’t stay if I wanted to. But after seeing the anger in his eyes, I didn’t want to stay. And I called myself a coward as I fled.