Love and Let Go ↔ Yang Jungwon

13

✧○ꊞ○ꊞ○•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙○♡๑•୨୧┈┈┈୨୧•๑♡○•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙ꊞ○ꊞ○✧

It was raining.

Dark clouds hovered in the sky ominously. The fog in the distance was as thick as soup. Rain poured down, pitter-pattering on the black umbrellas. It was as if the sky was acknowledging the death of a great person.

Kim Sakura.

A cold, rainy day. How fitting it was for today's occasion.

His clothes stuck to his skin, still moist from this morning when he ran out of the house. Shivers were sent down his spine. He tilted his umbrella upwards, revealing a blurred view of a deacon standing up in front of the crowd. His hair was damp, leaving a freezing sensation on his head.

Yet, all of it didn't matter.

"Let us pray for Kim Sakura, a fighter of heart disease."

Murmurs erupted from the people that surrounded him. Dozens of people clasped their hands in prayer and bowed their heads. Strangers. He didn't even recognize any one of them.

Who were these people? Family friends? Relatives? Friends from school? People who just felt obligated to go because of pity?

One thing was sure: not one of them knew her the same he did. In their minds, they only knew her smiling, friendly face and cheerful personality. None of them knew the other side to her. None of them had their eyes peeled wide open to see how much pain he had been in. Not a single soul.

How could he even describe the feeling of losing her? It was just an empty black hole in his heart that no one could fill up. As if someone tore a chunk of his heart out and threw it away. The feeling swallowed him, burying him inside its dark abyss. Despair. Anguish. Desperation. It was worse than physical pain and it hurt like hell.

He had never felt ever so alone in a sea of people. Holding an umbrella as he stood awkwardly in the crowd. Outcasted and alone.

Often, he zoned out, unable to focus on the funeral rites. His eyes were fixed on one thing: her gravestone. Droplets rolled down the granite and disappeared into the ground. Through the rain, he managed to make out the engravings:

Kim Sakura

2004-2020

"Live life to its fullest and have no regrets."

"I have no regrets."

Her voice echoed in his mind as he stared at the slab of stone. Swirls of thoughts spun in his head, but one stood out: the truth.

It dawned on him like the sunset: she was gone. Forever.

It was hard to believe that a person he had cared about, had died. And it was no nightmare. Only reality.

Eyes watery, he teared his eyes from stone. A lone tear trickled down his cheek before he swiped it away. He blamed it on the rain.

He didn't know how much time had passed, his mind was solely focused on her. All their memories they shared were gone, just like that.

After the ceremony, several people came up to him and offered sympathy, which he only responded with a simple nod or hum. Sometimes, people could be so fake. He knew that if not all, most had never had their love taken away from them. How could they ever understand him? They would never know how he felt inside. The twisting pain in his stomach. The endless feeling of hopelessness.