coffee stains. | ijb & ksg.

two.

jaebum hated himself.

there were issues being a writer, people lived forever with him. haunted them. crept in the dark places of his mind. of his heart. of his soul. then they'd materialize when he least expected it. the ghosts of yesterdays. it was less romantic than you think. less sweet and more bitter. melancholy. nostalgic. he hated remembering. hated himself for always remembering every single thing.

where it went wrong; where he went wrong. what he could have done to fix it. too late now, though. he was stuck in the in-between of past and present. looking back but living every day. he had no goal. no plan. nothing. he couldn't move on when everything was holding him back.

nor did he know how to.

because what if there came a day, he was fine then she returned for him... and it was those damned what if's that kept him breathing. swimming for the surface despite waves crashing, keen on submerging him. he swam. looked for her hand to help him. all he got was nothing. and it hurt. burned his lungs. burned his heart or whatever was left of it. yet he remained so tenacious, so stubborn even when his friends told him to stop because they couldn't stand seeing him doing that to himself. hurting himself. crying to himself. he wasn't jaebum, but what was left of him.

an empty bag of flesh and solidified calcium. nothing but bones and voices. thoughts. what made things worse, his own thoughts; his own creations plagued him, and he couldn't make them stop.

he tried drinking until he passed out. he tried smoking because maybe the tobacco can kill him faster than what he was already do by skipping meals, skipping life. deep down, jaebum knew it was wrong to give up. she wouldn't want that. what if she returned to him tomorrow, and he was a wreck? he wouldn't deserve her. to go through that again, he couldn't. it'd kill him.

so, you see, being a writer wasn't all it was cracked up to be. he could romanticize the sadness, the loneliness, the pain. it would live on and on like a parasite, leeching off of him. he gave life to characters long gone and continued to do so until there was nothing left of him. until he was hollow, blowing smoke from his ninth cigarette that day, filling the barren and desolation with toxins. at least it was something. anything. as he gave up words to paper, he filled himself with poison. but which killed him more: the marlboro red or the paragraphs of a girl who meant the world to him. of a girl who no longer existed.

he refused to sleep. every night he laid on made sheets, he'd remember, he'd hear. that wasn't the problem, to hear the taunts and torments. the problem was that he listened: he wasn't good enough, he would never have anyone, he didn't deserve anyone, that she was happy with someone else. everything they used to do, she had with someone else. every phone call exchanged, she was talking to someone else. every text, every word dispelled from her lips no longer went to him but someone else. and he had to live with that. that she was in love but no longer with him.

while he's trapped, ensnared in love for her—her who didn't exist. a figment of the past and maybe his imagination.

"you know, you're going to kill yourself if you keep smoking half a pack a day." seulgi picked up the empty cigarette box he trashed on the ground, frowned at the images painted all over that warned of consequences of tobacco. they were in line for the book signing. the queue stretched from the quaint bookstore to the sidewalk.

"good," he grumbled, tossing a cigarette butt and its ashes into his black coffee and drank it like water. "we're all dying, anyway. why not speed up the process."

she only grimaced deeper. "you should go on vacation. get away from here. it reminds you too much of—" he tossed her a glare so angry, so dark, seulgi stopped right in her tracks. he mentioned naeun to her once in brief but pissed passing. "sorry."