December 3rd, 2016
Dear diary,
Looking back now, everything that happened feels like a mistake. Too big. Too heavy. Too sharp.
I said yesterday that I regretted it all, and I meant every word. I acted like a fool. I leapt when I should've stepped back. If I could rewind time and rewrite even a single moment, I would.
But life doesn't grant those kinds of miracles.
I wasn't asking for much afterward.
Just an answer.
Just a reason why he changed so drastically after I confessed.
Yes—I admitted my feelings to him. And for a moment, it felt like ripping a weight off my chest and placing it gently somewhere else. Relief mixed with fear, hope tangled with dread. My heart didn't know which way to beat.
And then he changed.
People always grow distant after an unreciprocated confession. I get that. But with him... there was something else. Something I couldn't name. Even if he hated me for confessing, there was still a shadow behind the way he acted. Something he never said out loud.
He started wearing makeup—just concealer, I think, to hide his blemishes. He was growing up too quickly, suddenly mixing with the wrong crowd, drifting toward people who chipped pieces off him instead of helping him grow.
Under the harsh hallway lights, I noticed things no one else seemed to. A dullness in his eyes. A restlessness. A weight he carried in silence.
Detentions. Suspensions. A reputation he'd never had before.
He wasn't that kind of guy.
Not at the beginning.
He began ditching his classmates, leaving the moment the bell rang, as if staying one extra second in that room would burn him alive.
And somehow, he always made me conscious of my own existence. Whenever we bumped into each other, he'd glare at me, mutter curses under his breath, swear he never wanted to see me again. His disgust felt personal, even though I didn't know what crime I had committed.
Then came that phone call.
The one that almost made me give up.
The one that turned his friends into the school's proudest jerks, right beside him.
Even so, the girls kept liking him. Of course they did. He was still Kim Seok Jin, the oldest of the group everyone adored. The one with the charm, the presence, the easy smile that no longer felt real to me.
I had a crush on him before all of that—before the unbuttoned uniform, before the dyed hair, before he decided to become someone I barely recognized.
And every day, I watched him change a little more.
And no, I definitely did not cry.
(Except I did, quietly, where no one could see.)
Do you know what it feels like?
To tell yourself to hate someone, but your heart refuses?
To try to despise them for hurting you, yet all you feel is this stubborn ache that won't leave?
Because in the end, we were both victims in two different versions of the same story.
xin ae
