Y/N sat on her luggage as she stared at the lake from the Gwangan Bridge. It was August and that was when she began to dream of drowning.
Gazing at the dark blue water, she sighed heavily. She didn't cry, but she really needed to. Her insides started aching and the lump in her throat started feeling unbearable. She really wanted to cry. But a bitter smile appeared on her face as she closed her eyes, feeling the cold breeze dance through her hair and hit her face, reminding her that she was alive after all.
Seoul didn't feel like home anymore and she wanted to run away, so she did. And there she was, alone in Busan, running from her miserable life.
No one knew that she was there, not even her parents. Something that she felt guilty over, but it was better than them pitying her when the last thing she wanted to see was that look in their eyes.
I'm gonna be fine. That's all she sent them before she left her phone on her desk and walked out of her apartment, leaving the city and her life behind. It started feeling suffocating, but not more than the day her heart shattered to pieces.
No one could believe that one day the bubbly and sweet Y/N would turn into the cold and depressed girl who was staring at the lake with her arms wrapped around her. Not until her boyfriend of six years got into an accident. Not six months but six years, a relationship that started in high school when they were only fifteen and sixteen.
It was a hit-and-run, they said. A truck crashed into his car, and the driver was drunk. She could still remember the news she watched at the hospital, perhaps she even memorized it. About three months ago, in the early morning when she woke up rather tired and confused - that until the memories of the previous night began to fill her mind. Y/N acted recklessly as she tried to leave the bed, only to be stopped by her parents and her sister who refused to let her go.
"We almost lost you! Tell me, do you love Sungho so much that you almost left us to see him?" Her mother's question made her freeze on the spot. She recalled the moment when she took many sleeping pills to just rest and stop the pain, and she didn't know what to say. Would she be selfish if she argued how lucky her parents were that they got to hold each other in moments like this when now she couldn't? Would it be selfish to let out her pain and frustration, her anger to Sungho because he left the world too early?
It would. It indeed would.
For the next few days, Y/N couldn't talk to anyone, not even her parents or her three-years-older sister. She attended Sungho's funeral, not able to face his family; the people he spent all his life with - who loved him more than anyone else did. Even though she loved him a lot as well.
And as the days passed, emptiness had become a regular company of hers. Sungho's accident left her half and numb and she gave up on herself entirely. Sometimes she felt guilty about it, thinking that she didn't deserve to be the one taking care of her body. But on some days, she got out of her bed and took a shower, brushed her hair, ate the food her father made for her, and went back to sleep.
She sometimes felt like she'd, perhaps, save her life a little. But then she felt like there was no point in telling anyone about what was happening inside of her, that maybe she'd do it one day if she ever finds the right language to express her heartbreak.
Kang Sungho wasn't someone to easily forget, not when he made her feel like the happiest woman in the world. He had beautiful light-brown hair that Y/N loved running her fingers through, and his smile always warmed her heart. And as she thought of him, she felt this weird science of comfort rush over her. As if he was right there with her, protecting her from the thoughts that told her to just jump in the water and end all that pain.
