A Way Home

A Broken Song

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The days were long. Namjoo was miserable. She was heartbroken. Devastated. Very lonely.

Everywhere she looked she could see Sehun walking around her space. He was standing in her kitchen with her. Right next to her in the shower, a space so small they always touched. Sometimes she could smell him in her bed, so she always turned away from the empty bedside. Sometimes she curled up and cried.

Then she would wake up the next day and walk into work. Entering a world of masked happiness until the day ended and she returned to a desolate apartment. Where no phone call would come through for her. She wouldn't hear the voice she longed for on the other end. And then she became sad again.

She shouldn't have.

She should have held out.

But Namjoo didn't know.

It would have been better if Sehun cheated on her rather than lied. It would lessen the weight of understanding she wasn't enough of a woman for him than wondering why the lie he couldn't explain.

That would have hurt less. But Namjoo never got an answer to why.

She achingly hung on. Stuck somewhere between yearning to know and moving on.

Only, she did not move on.

She had become as much a liar as Sehun. Pretending to be happy. Show off she was a young woman embarking on a dream career. She no longer lived with her parents. She was independent and had no boy troubles.

To strut around like that, how much of a liar she needed to be. When she wondered if Sehun might call someday and ask to get back with her. He would tell her the three words she should have heard that last day. Sorry I lied; I'll tell you why.

It didn't get any better than the imaginary dialogues she wrote in her head. Sehun did not call her. Probably hooked onto another younger, more naïve woman. Yet the thought of that made her eyes burn with tears. Sehun didn't need to move on so fast just because she broke up with him.

Namjoo truly wasn't prepared to cut off that string that tied them together. Also did not have the courage to pick up the phone and call him. Just to ask how are you doing? Maybe, just maybe, she might tell him she missed him and was having a hard time.

She didn't do it.

That would just be against the whole point of having walked away.

"Meeting in five," a voice called out.

Namjoo lifted her head from the road she'd been staring at all morning. "Oh..." Leaning her head back against her fist, she sighed.

The streets were clogged with people. The man in a casual tee was probably a single man who was scheduled off work today. A young girl in school uniform who had most likely jumped over the school fence skipped down the sidewalk adjusting her backpack over her shoulder. Around the corner of 7Eleven she dashed into an older boy's arms. He wasn't in uniform but wearing low end fashionable street wear. The mix and matched couple received a stare from a woman exiting the store, a steaming cup of instant coffee in her delicate hand.

A police car raced down the street veering between vehicles with its sirens whirring. The noise indicating a nightmare had occurred somewhere in the city to unlucky occupants. Namjoo sighed, finally pushing herself up. Snatching a binder of designs she'd sketched the first day she headed toward the conference room.

A quarter of the way her mobile phone went off. Pausing, Namjoo searched her pants pocket as her ID tag swished back and forth across her front. An unknown number flashed on the screen.