Jaemin the Icy Prince on Campus - Na Jaemin NCT

37. Don't Look Back

FIVE YEARS LATER

BOXING DAY

The plane touches down smoothly.

It's snowing.

I haven't been home in five years.

I left the moment I finished high school. 

I flew all the way to Manchester, England. I furthered my studies at the University of Manchester. I chose to read Law. My string of A's had ensured my entry. I had thrown myself into my studies with everything I had got, with only one goal in mind: to get as far away from him as I could. It had been the only way forward. I couldn't live in the same state as them a moment longer, much less see them together. My parents understood; they scrapped every penny they had, and dug into their hard-earned savings to send me away, to put as much distance as they could between him and me. I had no other choice, but to leave; if I had stayed, who knew what I would have done in a moment of weakness. 

For I wasn't strong; I would have gone to him, regardless of the fact that he was married, and he wouldn't have sent me away, he would have kept me with him. For he was as weak as I was, maybe even weaker. We turned to fluid around each other, we could never stay strong, rooted to our feet, or solid enough when we were together. We gravitated to each other, we couldn't help ourselves. And because I knew just what we were capable of, how far we would go to bend the rules, I left. I never said goodbye to him. I just packed my bags, and left. 

My mother never spoke of him, not once, in the intervening years. It was as if he had never existed. Sometimes, I would wake up in my hostel room in Manchester, my pillow wet with tears. Sometimes, I would miss him so much I wanted to call him, hear his voice, know that he's out there, thousands of miles from me, thinking of me still, missing me as much as I missed him. No matter that there was now a shadowy figure, a woman with tousled hair and naked limbs lying beside him. She had receded into a vague, blurred memory with each passing day. I forgot what she looked like, or sounded like. She was no more real than the dreams I used to have of growing old with Jaemin by my side. 

But my moment of weakness always passed, the sobs stilled, and in the mornings, I would wake up, calm, pleased with myself. I had stayed strong, I had not crumbled. It was the right thing to do. Jaemin would be proud of me. And so the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months. Soon it became a year, then two. Time dragged, but the day finally came when I graduated with my law degree. I had clinched a Second Upper, a feat good enough to gain me entry to the English Bar. I worked hard for another nine months, passed the Bar Examination, and was called to the English Bar. I did my pupilage at a leading law firm in London, and when I completed that a year later, I decided it was time to return home.

I was 23 years old. I was a grown woman.

So five years, two months, three weeks and two days after Jaemin got married to another woman, I returned to Seoul.

I text Leean the moment my flight touches down at Incheon Airport. 

Landed. It's freezing cold. Text you later.

He replies at once.

I can finally relax. Been waiting for your text all day. Take care, sweetheart. Text me when you're home. I love you.

I've been with Leean for the past five years. He works in London as an engineer in a huge firm. He's in London now, working, and he is adamant he's going to quit soon, and follow me back to Seoul. 

We seem to have leapfrogged several conventional stages in our relationship, but it's been that way for us from the very first beginning. I've never slept with him, we kiss and make out sometimes, but that's as far as we go. Who's to say what's right and wrong with love, anyway? This isn't romance by numbers, it's real life. I  do love him, in a comfortable, friends-with-benefits kind of way, but I just can't love him the way he deserves to be loved. Maybe if I had met him first, before Jaemin, it would have been different. I'm just drained, I guess. I poured out all the love in my heart for Jaemin, and there's nothing much left inside anymore. I find Leean's adoration overwhelming sometimes; he wears his heart on his sleeve with my name scored through it. He still asks me to marry him at least once a week, and although I know he's ninety per cent kidding, I think he'd book the church if I shocked him and said yes. It makes me feel bad and guilty sometimes, when I catch him looking at me in that way, like he loves me so, so much, and he's just so happy to be with me. It makes my heart hurt seeing that look in his eyes, because I know that's the way I used to look at Jaemin, like he's the universe and the sun and the moon and all the stars in it. Like he's my whole life.

Mum and Dad are waiting for me at Arrivals.

"Mum," I run to her, and we hug. She cries a little. Dad kisses me on the top of my head. He looks a little teary.

"Mina." Mum is smiling through her tears. "We've missed you so much." And she hugs me again. I hug her back tightly. "Look at you." She beams at me. "You look so pretty. My little Mina, all grown up."

It is December and freezing cold, but at the same time, the city's first snow of the season has blanketed everything with pure white. 

Even though the snowflakes are light and airy, the sidewalks are already fluffy. I look out the window, as Dad drives, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, and Mum chatters happily beside me.

The flakes are falling a little heavier, like someone has shaken up a snow globe in my little corner. When I see a very tall dark-haired man standing at the intersection across the street, my heart squeezes in my chest. I should be used to it by now, seeing him in the crowds on Oxford Street or leaning on orange traffic cones to peer into a manhole or paging through the Times on a park bench. Because he's everywhere. He's in everything. Everywhere I go, he's there.

Through the snowy haze, this man bears an uncanny resemblance to Jaemin, except for a tailored coat, dress shoes, and suit and tie. 

I squeeze my eyes shut. It's not him. It's not him. 

I open them again.

It's not Jaemin.

The lights turn green.

The car moves forward.

Don't look back, I whisper to myself. Look straight ahead.

That's the game plan.

The rules are the same, five years on.

Move forward. Never look back.

Breathe. Live.