Jaemin the Icy Prince on Campus - Na Jaemin NCT

48. Jealousy

"You disappeared," he says. "You just...disappeared." His voice is a mix of pain and confusion.

"I had to."

I feel a catch of breath in my throat. 

I remember that day like it was yesterday.

It was the day they went on their honeymoon. My mum told me about it; she hadn't wanted to, but I asked her about it.

"So where are they going for their honeymoon?" I had said, careful to keep my voice casual, and my mum had said, after a beat,

"Tokyo. Jae - his mum said they're flying off tonight."

"Oh," I said, my voice dead, and then I walked away, back to my room, and I sat at my window. Images thrusted themselves into my head, one after another: Jaemin kissing Luna, his hands roaming over her body. Jaemin and Luna, together in a honeymoon suite, sharing breakfast in bed amid the rumpled sheets. Luna sitting up and handing Jaemin his mug of coffee, Jaemin's hand resting on Luna's bare back.

I decided, right there and then, that I was going away, the moment I finished high school, the moment I got into a university; it didn't matter which university, what I needed to do was to get as far away as I could. I spoke to Leean about it, and he told me to join him in the UK, and I started to make a list of universities I wanted to apply to. By the time they got back from their honeymoon, I had already narrowed down my choice to five. Then one day, I loaded my whole life into my father's car; I flew off to Manchester that night. I didn't want to leave anything of me behind, not even a mark on the pavement to say that I had been here. I wanted to disappear into nothingness. I wanted to erase my entire life.

But it didn't work out that way; I didn't forget. Instead, I would lie awake at night, my fists clenched, picturing them together, doing things a couple did in the intimacy of their own private, secret world. And at such times, the rage and the jealousy would swell inside me, spiraling upward, filling my lungs and thickening my throat. It should be me, I would cry out, my heart throbbing in agony, it should be me beside him, not her. 

But there were also moments of grace during those hard years, like flashes of sunlight glinting on the surface of a dark ocean, images of him kissing me, telling me, I love you, I'll always love you. I belong to you, Kim Mina. You're my everything, you're my only thing. I would dwell on those memories to lessen the pain; it soothed me to know that he would never love her the way he loved me, it was balm to my wounded pride, my ravaged heart, it gave me relief, a kind of savage satisfaction to know that even though his body belonged to her, his heart belonged to me.

"I've tried to picture you in Manchester," he says, his voice low. "Countless times, but I couldn't. Not knowing where you live, how you are - it made me..." He stops, his mouth taut.

"How did you know I was in Manchester?"

"Jerry...Jerry told me. And Luna..." 

Luna.

My stomach clenches at the sound of that name.

"I wanted to know how you were doing, what you were doing..." 

"Why?" My voice is rusty with pain. "Why did you want to know?"

"You know why." His face is white, strained. "I was worried about you. I - "

I looked away. He doesn't have to finish. Had I known when I'd made the decision years ago that leaving suddenly would frustrate Jaemin? Of course I had. If I had stayed, he could place me, imagine me doing all the things everyone wanted for me. He could keep tabs on me, he would have even been able to see me. It would have been a matter of time before we started an illicit affair. 

"Were you relieved I left?" I ask, suddenly wanting to goad him. 

His nostrils flare as I provoke him. "You know it drove me fucking insane, Mina."

It is exactly what I want to hear - that after all these years, I am still making him crazy, but oddly, his confession brings neither relief nor satisfaction. I just feel a deep, deep sadness.

"Did you ever love Luna?" My voice is thick, strangled with jealousy. It is the first time I mention her name; it will be the last.

He swallows. "No. I didn't."

"That doesn't change the fact that you've been with her, that you've done all.... ," I drew a sharp breath, the cold of the sheets biting my skin, "all this with her..." I imagine her with him on this bed, the bed where we had just devoured each other. I feel sick all of a sudden. "Did you - were you living here with - with her?" 

"No. Of course not," he says, his face white, horrified. "I would never - " He breaks off. "Good God, Mina, what do you take me for?" He puts his hands on my shoulders. "I moved in here after we separated." He stares into my eyes. "I have never brought any woman back. I swear." 

"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I just can't stop thinking about you and - " My voice trails away. I look at him, and say with an effort, "So are you still in touch?" Does she still love you? But I don't say it out loud.

"She left for Canada," he says quietly. "We don't keep in touch. I don't blame her." His mouth twists. "I lived with Luna for two years. We were married, she was my wife." His eyes are bleak. "I can't change my past, Mina, anymore than I can change yours. If I could, I would erase my past with her, and erase yours with Leean..." He stops, I can see how jealous he is of Leean, of what he imagines Leean and I have been to each other. It guts him to say Leean's name, just as much as it hurts me to say hers.

"Jaemin," I say quietly. "I have never slept with Leean, or any other man. The only man I've ever slept with is you. You're the first, and the only man I've ever slept with."

His eyes blaze with anguish and relief and triumph and a fierce possessiveness. My woman, they say. Mine. Only I knew her body. Not him. Not Leean, but me. Only me.

 If only it were the same for me. If only I had been his first, and only. But I am not, and I hurt, knowing the truth.