Jaemin the Icy Prince on Campus - Na Jaemin NCT

19. Never Let Me Go

I shall write in the present, because I am not ready for a memory yet. 

If I write in the past, you, and what we shared, will become a memory. 

And you are so alive in me, a vibrant, joyous filling of me. I feel you in every pore of my being, in every part of me. 

So let me dwell on your presence, revel in your love, for a moment...allow me this luxury for a fraction longer...

I wake first, before you. 

You are still sleeping, your breaths gentle and rhythmic, an arm flung possessively over my breast.

I take your hand and kiss it, and you stir, and mumble my name.

"Shhh..." I whisper. "Go back to sleep..."

You drift back to sleep once more.

I get up quietly, untangling myself from your arm, taking great care not to wake you.

I stand in front of the long mirror, built into the door of the wardrobe.

I look the same.

But I feel different.

My eyes are different.

They are wiser, darker, older, filled with a new knowledge, a woman's knowledge.

I left my girlhood behind me tonight.

Tonight, with your guidance and your love, I became a woman.

Your woman.

Na Jaemin's woman.

I stare at myself in the mirror, and I close my eyes, and say to myself, I will remember this moment, forever and ever. I will lock up this memory, this most precious memory of you and me, and of the consummation of our love; I will bottle it up in my secret little bottle of memories, and unlock it, and relive it over and over again, tomorrow, and the rest of my life.

I open my eyes, and take a step forward, right up close to the mirror, so the only thing I can see are my eyes; they fill up the whole mirror, and the rest of me blur into a haze of nothingness.

 "Remember," I whisper to myself in a low, fierce voice. "You must never forget."

 My eyes stare back at me as though they know everything, and understand.

And suddenly, tears spill down my cheeks, and my stomach is wrenched with pain. 

Because, in a few hours from now, I would have to say goodbye to you again.

"I have to go," I whisper to my eyes in the mirror. "I have to go. I have to go."

Soon, you will be gone from my sight, soon you will be somewhere between a memory and a thought. 

Why, oh why can't I freeze time, clench my fists on it, stop it from slipping through my fingers?

But the clock ticks on cruelly, relentlessly, and every second that passes becomes the past.

Soon, too, the consummation of our love will be our past. 

For happiness passes all too swiftly, and time slips through the cracks all too soon, and a moment, no matter how precious, how beautiful, is gone forever, and we can never get it back in its original form, in its original essence. Sometimes it is short, and sometimes it is long, but the truth is, when it's gone, it's gone forever.

Because what I want is you, for you to always be there next to me, with me. 

You, the living you, the flesh and blood you, next to me, lying beside me, walking with me, laughing with me, holding me, kissing me.

What I want is your living presence, not a memory, not a shadow...

I don't want a disembodied voice on a crackling line, or a text on a phone, or an image on a screen.

I want you.

I love you.

I am so selfish.

The tears flow faster.

I take a tissue, and wipe my face; I will have to stop crying, or my eyes will swell, and my nose will become blotchy and red.

"Don't cry," you would whisper, your eyes filled with sadness and pain. "I can't bear to see you cry."

Just the thought of your words laced with sadness, and your eyes torn with misery, rips my heart, and makes me fall into a fresh storm of weeping, and I cover my mouth with my hands, and stifle my sobs, pressing my face against the cold glass of the mirror, wetting it with my tears. 

I pad quietly back to bed, and drag the covers over you and me. I smooth your hair back from your forehead. You look so young, like an angel, deep in sleep, your mouth curved into a faint smile. 

I lie very still, and look at you, and memorise you, your face, and every inch of your body.

I have a few more hours left, a few more hours of rest, to prepare me for the long hours of melancholy ahead.

"Come away, come away, death, and in sad cypress let me be laid."

I read that once, and the lines ring in my head.

They speak of the yearning for death, and I draw a strange comfort from them.

I will be dying soon. 

I look at the window.

The curtains are drawn against the shuttered window. A cat is mewing somewhere in the dark outside. I hear the faint hoot of an owl. 

There is no moonlight tonight. 

There is a light patter against the window. 

It is raining.

It will probably be raining in the morning when I leave you. I can imagine the sort of morning it will be, misty, grey, melancholic; better perhaps, like this, I think, than golden or bright, better to go off with windscreen wipers slashing from side to side.

Perhaps with luck, I might skid and crash in a ditch, be carried to hospital, become delirious, and clamour for you to stay by my side, and you would kneel at my bedside, and hold my hand and say in a broken voice, your eyes brimming with tears, "I should never have let you go," and I would cry softly, and beautifully, my face pale but glowing, and not red or blotchy, tears pooling in my eyes, and whisper achingly, "I love you, let me stay with you, never leave me, never let me go..."

I fall asleep imagining you cradling me in your arms, and when I wake up, it is morning, and it is time to go.