#I so want to back out i'm crying writing this but. I can't do it. i can't just let that fucker get his way.

[takes1]

Heyy can you pls write an Ushijima smut?? Plsss, also I love all your works🫶🏼🫶🏼

ushijima x reader escalated cockwarming

thanks pookie!! sorry this took a while, i wrote half of something else for him but that idea died so i had to start all the way over. also wanted to do a normal banner for him but i'm liking my new multi-panel banners a lot more. might do a full switch🤔

warnings. heavy nsfw, minors DNI

details. fem!reader / cold start / ushijima likes old movies / sweaty ushijima / dom!ushijima / calling you babygirl / doggy / lap sitting / use of vibrator / gentleman ushijima / reader making ushijima want a kid / breeding kink / 1.2k words

links. masterlist. more haikyuu here. my ao3. my imagines

"Shh," He smushes his lips against your ear, stealing a tingly kiss or two while he's there, "Can't hear the movie..."

It was loud and overwhelming, leaving you to squirm away at the sensation. But his giant arm kept you crushed back against his chest.

It's a Wonderful Life played on an intentionally low volume on the living room TV. Your His vibrator, torturing your sensitive little clit, was louder than the dull drone of their transatlantic voices.

You took a sharp breath in to let out a cry, but his palm intercepted the attempt.

Watching favorite movie, engaged in his favorite pastime, inside of his favorite girl- he gave an approving hum into a harsh nick to your shoulder and rolled his hips.

His cock stirred again and bulged against your g-spot. He was prepared this time for the flinch. He kept you still with laughable ease.

It wasn't so much about strict punishment or absolute reward when he had such a natural, domineering presence in the bedroom. It was trust that kept you from begging him to just fuck you. There was an understanding that he would take care of you, no matter what you level of play you engaged in, for however long.

You did what he told you with a smile, enjoying how he took all your worries away, how he could bear the weight of the world off of your shoulders with his touch, his attention.

The warmth of his arms around you, his hand covering your loud mouth, kept you docile for a time.

He always smelled so good after he came home. Tasted salty, like hard work, with a stimulating, natural musk to his skin that you couldn't get enough of.

"Whadd'yawant, babygirl?" He flexed inside you again, taking his palm to your throat, instead- a heavy sigh the only indication that it effected him, "Tell me."

Your thighs flexed on top of his larger, powerful ones- "Ahh-! To- watch the- movie?"

His chuckle, rare and genuine, made you smile.

Hell, you had been sitting on top of him for so long that the film was almost over. Your response, an unsure question at best, was silly.

He pressed a kiss to your shoulder and moved his hips real, real slow, "You sure?"

Another gasp. This time curling your weight forward, for him to resist against. He felt so good, if he could just keep this mellow movement for two minutes, you might cum-- you couldn't lie again.

"N-o."

He bottomed out, leaving you twitchy, a shudder on your uptake, "Please, Toshi, just fuck me-,"

You whimpered at his strengthening grip, his stalled breath at his own name, "I don't care how- I just- mmh- I want you."

Usually, he didn't tease you like that because he already knew what you wanted. Usually, he didn't come home so burnt out and touchy, placing you in his lap, pushing your panties to the side.

Usually, he wouldn't be so inspired as to get you on the cold, hardwood floor, to take you like you asked.

He let you have one hand for your vibrator, but made sure to keep your free wrist still, next to the side of your head.

"Such a good girl--," Was a strangled groan.

The lewd sound of him finally pounding you mixed with your overstimulated, grateful cries.

Sure, he had been purposefully edging you for the better half of a Christmas classic, but he wasn't exempt either. Staying mostly hard inside of you was difficult when he needed to take you all day- made more critical of a task as soon as he was home, melting at your scent, your touch.

"Mmh-ha-Ah-! Tosh-i-, I'm--," You sniffled, eyes burning.

He came to the sound of you screaming his name and clenching around his sore cock.

He didn't slow or soften. He kept your hips upright when your strength failed you, always your big, sweet gentleman.

Grumbly, and quiet, and uneven, was his voice as he finally stuttered to a stop, deep inside of you.

Wakatoshi wasn't very vocal, but his habits spoke for what he liked.

You were panting, still smushed against the floor, in the lesser waves of your orgasm, as he looked down and stared hard at all the cum he crammed inside of you. His brow twitched, but you couldn't see.

Your pussy was already letting some of it drip down your thighs, so despite the how sore he was, he stuffed himself balls deep with an overstimulated groan. The desire to do it was more of a biological trance.

"M-mmnh-!" Your body braced against the feeling.

He shushed you and weighed you down into a lazier prone-bone position. The floor was so cold you couldn't help but press back into him as much as you could.

It hurt him to move, but he didn't want to soften, didn't want to waste time not filling you up again.

"Augh-h, fu-ck," His pained vocalizations were hot and tingly across your shoulder, "So- so good, baby. F-uck..."

Knowing, more specifically hearing how good you felt was a big reason why you gave a spontaneous round two the chance it deserved.

His exhaustion from the day was seeping into everything.

The huffing, the groans, vibrated against your ear as he dropped like a box of concrete to his forearms, adding to a mixture of pain and pleasure he had slowly succumbed to.

"Ah-h, fu-c'-- your pussy feels so'good, h-mnn,"

"You- ahh- want more? Huh?"

Your face warmed at his sinful confessions. His sloppy thrusts, paired with his drunken, blunt stammer fucked you into a pleasant buzz all over again.

You were so full, but, yeah, you did want more.

His forearms hugged around your front, his chest pushed down onto you, and his hand cupped your throat again.

"Mmh--!" You went to say something, but his other hand was over your mouth- so all you could do was whine, maybe drool, against his palm.

He was breathy at how fast you could get him to the edge of his orgasm again, just by taking his cock like his perfect, pretty girl.

Why hadn't he bought you a ring yet?

"Oh-h, fuck--," He got rougher, faster, at the thought of you as his little housewife, a brief flash of your future together enough to clip him over.

Another groan, this time a little whinier, into your scalp as he fucked another load into your poor, throbbing cunt.

His breath had gotten so shaky, uneven, and he grew heavier on top of you.

You were completely gone, trembling and weak, hips sinking further from him.

Warm, gentle kisses and a softer, attentive touch flooded your senses, something to focus on, as you slowly came out of it.

That was one of the many things you loved about him. He took care of you quite well, especially after being so rough.

"You okay, babygirl?"

The first thing he made sure to do was pick up you off of the floor. He utilized a cute little bridal-style carry into the bathroom so that you could shower together.

"Mmmhm," Dreamy and soft, was all you could give him.

☆VIP☆

@integers @paradoxicalwritings @yuchacco

my masterlist. more haikyuu. (new) my imagines.

[impish-baby]

re: both arms cradle you now

how would the family get to coddling and taking care of reader :0?

I assume via reader being forced to be around them and breaking down and regressing, but I'm very curious to hear what you have in mind :3

-🐇

You have the right idea!! Reader essentially can't handle all the stress and breaks down which ends up devolving into more of a tantrum when they regress since they don't know what to do with all the big emotions they're feeling

I won't put everyone's reaction here since I'll save those for the actual fic, but here's some miscellaneous members of the family taking care of reader :>

Aunts Tammie and Lisa (Avery's moms)

"Here, how abouts a slice of pie, sugar?" The older women is already cutting it up, getting a bite ready on an airplane shaped spoon. "Your memaw made it, so you know it'll be good!" She hums, holding the spoon up before doing a winding motion to your mouth. "Vroooom...yummy, huh?" Tammie coos as you eat, getting another bite before you've even finished the first.

"You'll give them a stomach ache." Lisa remarks dryly for across the room, messing around with a stack of papers. "All that sugar at once isn't good."

"Oh, hush up.." Tammie scoffs, rolling her eyes. "What's the best thing when you're sad? Sweets! Leave the little darling alone, if their tummy hurts later, we'll deal with it."

"Uh huh," your other aunt pushes her glasses up to the top of her head as she walks over to the table, setting a few pieces of paper gently down next to you. They're Christmas activies, from coloring pages to connect the dots. "How about we work on these a little, hun? It's not too late to write a letter to Santa either, maybe he can squeeze in a few extra presents by tomorrow."

Oliver (reader's younger half-brother)

You weren't expecting anyone to come find you, at least not for a while, but a little head pokes through the doorway followed by an excited gasp.

"Hi!" The kid practically dives when he runs over to kneel in front of your curled up form, a bear stuffie clutched in one hand. "Momma said to leave you alone cause you're really upset, but.. but I wanted to try to help a little!"

His smile doesn't falter as you sniffle, holding the plush out to you expectantly. "They're my favorite, but you can hold them! Promise they'll make you feel better."

When you gingerly take the item from him, he looks like you just gave him the world. "Yeah, good job!" Oliver can't seem to sit still, hopping back up onto his feet immediately. "Do you want to watch a movie? You get to pick cause you're crying!"

[kawhh]

I need to buy myself a chew toy I am going feral over all this dark content. When do you think the obsession started? Was it the moment he laid eyes on you? Did he completely tune out what his friends were saying as you walked by? Was he dazed and jumpy until you entered his sight again? Did his friends notice how little enthusiasm he had for almost everything after that moment until he introduced you, magically cured to full life? Did they make fun of him for randomly going on a renovation kick, buying things that added a homey, maybe feminine touch that killed the "bachelor pad" vibes? Did everything else cease to be important until he had you? Was he agitated during games before you started attending each one with his name and number on your back? Was it hard for him to focus, knowing you're states away with no one to love on you, not knowing that you belong to him yet (frankly not really knowing who he is at all)?

Nonnie, please buy me an extra chew toy. My personal notes and blurb ideas keep getting more and more off the rails. I have to keep checking that I'm writing them in the right place and not accidentally sending them to anyone lmao.

I cut myself off a bit so lemme know if you want more.

If you ever found out how he started his obssession with you.. he isn't convinced you wouldn't run. He can't ever hint towards it. Until he knows you're his forever and he can make sure you can't leave him, he won't speak a word.

He'd seen you on a night out - he'd been out with his friends in the summer break to blow off some steam and relax after the straining season.

The instant obsession corroded his brain. Your hair - it was perfection. He wanted his hands wrapped in it. Wanted to tug it and make you cry. Your skin - he just wanted to feel you. You looked so soft.. you'd feel so good in his arms.

He needed you. He wanted you. Nothing else mattered to him. Not his friends around, not his drink, not anyone hanging around him hoping for a chance.

The glance at you wasn't enough and he's struggling to find you again in the crowd. Were you a dream? A mirage? He could believe that with how perfect you were for him.

He's leaving his friends without a thought. He needs to find you again. He catches another glimpse of you - you're leaving the bar. Fuck. He needs to act fast, he can't have you enter his life and leave it. He'll apologise to his friends in the morning, they'll believe he was just exhausted.

He's dashing into a taxi, tipping them extra to follow you closely so he doesn't lose track of you, but far enough way to not be suspicious. He can't scare you off. You eventually stop at what must be your appartment. He gets the taxi driver to stop further up the road.

He won't act too fast.. he'll just.. watch. You really should learn to close the curtains. You live alone. That's good to know but also concerning. Who's looking after you? You look so fragile. He needs to learn your routine. Needs to know when he can sneak in. Needs to how how he can engineer a meeting.

Do you go to a certain cafe in the week? Where do you work? You were at the bar, do you go there often?

What decorations do you have in your apartment? What's your taste? He'll start preparing his apartment. You have plants? Well now he has plants.

[rpwprpwprpwprw]

i don’t know if anyone will read this cause… long text but stay with me if you can (got a little carried away…

@dpr-moni i’ve used a lot of words in my limited english vocabulary to say many nice things to the authors here but i’m out of words for you.

what you did to me… you touched the deep parts of my brain, and my heart, and my soul that i genuinely just want to cry, like a good cry and give you a tight hug.

i can construct so many parallels here cause can i be a little personal here? i’ve experienced situations like this in two different ways.

read this was like having a dream with feelings and sensations so familiar that you thought you had forgotten but in your subconscious they are so fresh.

you open my wounds, brought my subconscious feelings to surface.

I genuinely believe that for a person to write what you have written about, such vast, complex and profound feelings, they only need to have an infinite soul.

the 1, past lives, one day… my girl crush that was just a beautiful and profound fantasy which never came to life, a the inevitable end of a relationship. It's all about love and the sad reality that it may not be enough for things to work out.

It's about people being complex and about even more complex feelings that can coexist inside someone you love and there's nothing you can do about it.

i guess “i see you come back to me… you’re my pain divine, divine”

about

“And if you wanted me, you really should've showed” “And if my wishes came true,it would've been you”

“In my defense, I have none.For never leaving well enough alone”, “I persist and resist the temptation to ask you

If one thing had been different

Would everything be different today?”

like this is namjoon, this was me.

this is the “maybe if we try a little harder”

and quoting taylor swift’s word again

“If our love died young, I can't bear witness

And it's been so long

But if you ever think you got it wrong

I'm right where you left me”

bittersweet endings right? and it’s never over, right?

but one hour it ends. Even if it continues to reverberate or even if it is forever a mark in our memory.

It reminds me of a couple of friends in high school who were always on and off and so many people got in their way and were hurt by the fact that they always went back to each other. Then they grew up and one of them had a beautiful relationship with a really cool girl. It was just a kid thing but the kind of bond you have with someone that makes you always go back to them makes me think. It's exhausting and it's scary to think that this is fate, even though I know we have the power to make decisions.

can i be your best friend at this point? cause i just overshared a lot!

It's incredible what reading can do to us, the connection it can create, but that's a topic for another review. If this reaches you, I want to thank you deeply for posting this and I'd like to talk more about all of this with you (if you want). In any case, I'm grateful that our paths have crossed despite the vastness of the universe 🌟

Pairing: Namjoon x reader (afab, she/her)

Genre: angst, friends-to-almost-lovers?

Summary: No matter what you do, no matter what he does, you can't not love Namjoon. His girlfriend can't stop it, his baby, a thousand miles between you, your fiancé. Nothing makes it any less painful. Nothing makes it go away and nothing can give you the happily ever after you both want.

Word count: 20.7k

Content: INFIDELITY, pregnancy, baby, marriage, divorce, morning after pill, mild smut, lots of angst, not a happy ending, member pov

A/N: for @kkaetnipjeon who likes to hurt Namjoon as much as I do. unbeta'd * * *

Namjoon was late. 

“I really should go,” he said, taking his phone from the table and slipping into his pocket. 

You laughed. 

“Yeah, you said that twenty minutes ago.” 

“Oh, well, sorry for enjoying your company. Fuck me, I guess.” 

“Exactly. It’s all your own fault.” 

It was. When it came to you, time went out the window. Even when he told himself he only had an hour, or two, or times when he actually had somewhere to be, you were just more fun. He tried to leave. He really did. Always said, up front, he had to be gone by 2 or 4 or 7. Always pushed it a little. ‘No, I’ve got a little more time,’ he always said. He always had a little extra time for you it seemed.  

Today, he was only going home to his girlfriend; it wasn’t a hard deadline which made it all the harder to enforce.  

He pulled himself up from his chair, thanked you for the coffee that you had paid for, and made it home. 

* 

“Joon?” Hayeon called as soon as he’d shut the door behind him. “Can you get that please? I have my hands full!” 

Somewhere in the apartment, her phone was ringing. There was no contact information on the caller screen, just a number he didn’t recognise. 

“Hello?” Namjoon said into the phone. 

“Oh, uh...” 

The pause went on for long enough that Namjoon was halfway to hanging up when the man on the other line spoke again. 

“I’m calling for Hayeon?”  

As if it were a question. 

“She has her hands full right now; I can take a message.” 

Another long pause.  

“No, no, that’s ok.” 

“Shall I tell her you called?” 

“No, no thanks. Bye.” 

They hung up first. Namjoon shrugged and carried the phone into the kitchen, where Hayeon was up to her elbows in washing up. He put it on the counter beside the sink and gave her a quick kiss on the temple. 

“I’ll dry,” he said. 

“Who was calling?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. Some guy-” 

And Namjoon hadn’t thought anything of it. Would probably have forgotten all about it, except that Hayeon paused, just for a second, her body frozen with tension before she shrugged it off herself.  

“He didn’t want to leave a message or anything,” Namjoon finished, watching his girlfriend a little more closely. 

“Weird.”  

“Yeah, weird.” 

And he would have forgotten it. In truth, had forgotten about it, but then he got out of the shower and heard Hayeon speaking on the phone. 

“-ere you thinking? Why would you call this phone?” she hissed viciously, her voice quiet but her anger clear. 

She had her hand cupped around her mouth, shoulders rounded—defensive, protective—as she stood, leaning against the fridge, her back to Namjoon.  

Namjoon was not interested in spying on his girlfriend. He turned into their bedroom and got dressed, content to ignore whatever that was. 

As he lay in bed, though, he found he couldn’t ignore it. It was one thing to get a call from someone you didn’t know – spam, voice phishing, a genuine wrong number – but those people didn’t usually ask for someone by name, by first name alone, as if they knew you. The way Hayeon froze when Namjoon said it was a guy. Whatever secret conversation she was having when she knew he wouldn’t be able to hear it.  

He was not a suspicious man. Had no reason to be. He and Hayeon had been together for so long, the thought of there being anyone else was inconceivable. They were Hayeon and Namjoon; they came as a pair. Never one without the other. It just was. So there was no way, he concluded, that she would be cheating on him. Yet he could think of no other reason for her behaviour.  

He took Hayeon’s phone from her bedside table and pressed his thumb against it to unlock. It didn’t. He tried again. And again. He tried enough times that the phone refused biometric unlocking entirely and prompted him for a passcode. Well, he knew that, too, so he typed the numbers in—incorrect. When had Hayeon changed her passcode? Had she removed his thumb print? They’d always had—and almost never needed or wanted to use—access to each other’s phones. Now he did not.  

He looked down at Hayeon, sleeping peacefully, face squished into the pillow, lips pouting. He rolled his eyes: she wasn’t cheating. It was an absurd conclusion to come to on the scant evidence he had. Evidence! It wasn’t evidence. It was nothing. He kissed her carefully on the forehead, and settled down to sleep. He would forget all about it.  

* 

It came into his head when he got a call himself from an unrecognised number (it turned out to be someone offering him a new credit card). He remembered it again weeks later when Hayeon asked him to change the music on her phone and he, once again, couldn’t unlock it. 

“Oh, it’s been doing that to me, lately,” she said, when his thumb was denied entry. “I think it’s the screen protector or something.” 

She came over and unlocked the phone herself—worked first time.  

But, for the most part, he forgot about it. 

* 

Spring was meekly peeking from behind the curtains of winter and it was the first day warm enough to allow eating lunch outside. So Namjoon took himself out of his desk chair and walked to the nearest green space with a bench. They called it a park though it wasn’t really, but it was enough for Namjoon. It had been trapped for too long in construction, with scaffolding at all sides, precluding entry, but late last year, the buildings surrounding it were finally complete and the park was free to enter again. This had come as quite a relief to Namjoon, who loved the city, but loved nature, too. A relief it was to have green grass under his feet, sun on his face, nature’s fractals everywhere he looked. He liked it all the more for its contrast to the beige-grey buildings, the chrome, the chaos of the city. The traffic noise was loud and unceasing but the birds sang, too.  

He was halfway through his sandwich when he spotted Hayeon. He reached into his pocket for his phone, to call her, to say ‘I see you!’ and watch her look around herself in confusion until she saw him. Until she smiled and came over and they had lunch together. He abandoned that idea when he saw a man come up behind her. He touched her lightly on the lower back and they walked together.  

Probably nothing, he said.  

Then he remembered the phone call.  

Probably nothing, he repeated to himself. Still, he watched them until they were out of sight, out of the park, probably finishing their own lunch breaks, heading back to their own desks. 

* 

Namjoon had decided that he had to ask. He had to find out because he’d started adding things up and, well, he was usually very good at maths but he didn’t like the answer he’d arrived at. 

The phone call. The way his thumb no longer unlocked her phone. Her changed passcode. That guy. The way she was always on her phone these days, but jumpy about it. Her increasing disinterest in him; how much quicker she was to anger; how things that had always playfully infuriated her now genuinely pissed her off. She had claimed work stress, having started a new job last autumn. Was it? 

He couldn’t go in half-cocked. If he was going to confront her, he needed better ammunition.  

That was why he was digging around at the backs of drawers, rooting around in every bag she owned, hunting for some unidentified smoking gun. Something that would confirm everything.  

The bedroom carefully ransacked, he was still empty-handed. She had told him she would be working late that evening, so he decided to do the good-boyfriendly thing and take her dinner. That is what he would say, anyway, assuming that he would find her there. 

* 

“Hayeon? She’s already left for the day,” the receptionist told him. 

“Oh, really? Do you know what time she left?” 

“Mm, one second.”  

There were security gates just three feet from the desk, into and out of which everyone who entered the building would swipe their access cards. The computer would know, down to the minutes and seconds, when she left. He had familiarity on his side—people knew him, knew he was Hayeon’s boyfriend, would share this sort of information with him. He was lucky.  

“It was 5:15. Early today,” she said.  

“Right, ok, thank you. Must have got our wires crossed.” 

He pulled out his phone and checked his messages. 

[13:04]  Hayeon: remember I'm working late today, babe. Have dinner without me! 😘 

Not a smoking gun, but getting warmer. 

* 

He checked bank statements—his, hers, their joint account. Nothing really seemed off. Nothing jumped out at him, but he kept looking, whittling down anything he could twist into infidelity until he was left with only a handful of transactions.  

The nails. True, she’d only started having them done recently. She and Namjoon had been together for years and she’d never gone to the expense or effort. Also true, her salary increased, which meant her disposable income had increased. It was a popular thing to do. Didn’t necessarily mean anything. 

Some expensive perfume. See above. 

A store name he didn’t recognise until he searched online and discovered they sold lingerie—amongst other things. He tried to remember the last time Hayeon had worn anything sexy. He couldn’t. A piece of information was trying to float to the surface of his brain, and without being conscious of it, he followed it into their bedroom and her underwear drawer. He’d fished around in here not long ago, looking for something like a burner phone, or condoms (that they hadn’t used for a long time, since Hayeon switched to hormonal birth control). He hadn’t been looking for lace or satin so hadn’t seen it, but there it was. Lingerie. That he’d never seen before, though she’d had plenty of opportunities to wear it since she bought it: Christmas, New Year, Seollal, Valentine’s day, White Day just passed.  

It wasn’t a smoking gun, but he was getting hot.  

* 

He might not have gone to any effort at all, in the end. Looking back on it, he had had to laugh. She must have been trying to get caught. After months of hiding it all so successfully, maybe she had got complacent.  

Namjoon had arrived home to an empty apartment—Hayeon was away for the weekend with some friends. That was what she had said. Namjoon ordered dinner and lounged in front of the TV. He luxuriated in the space and the silence. The world was his own. Unshared. There weren’t many moments like this. 

His phone buzzed. 

Jang Yijeong: Hey, man hope youre good 

Jang Yijeong: idk if this is weird and i might be totally mistaken, i only met her a couple of times but 

Jang Yijeong: im in jinhae with my girlfriend and  

Jang Yijeong: is this your girlfriend? 

Jang Yijeong: [attached a picture] 

Well, it certainly looked like Hayeon.  

Namjoon’s screen was interrupted with more messages. 

Jang Yijeong: my girlfriend says its weird for me to take photos and shes probably right and im way off and this is just a weird thing to do! 

Jang Yijeong: maybe im mistaken! Hope so, dude, but thought you should know if not. i know id want to know 

Namjoon stared at the photo and then at the second one Yijeong sent. It was her. Undoubtedly. He would know her face in twenty pixels but the photos were clear as day. Hayeon holding some other man’s hand. Hayeon posing for a photo, kissing his cheek.  

A third arrived. Well, he’d wanted a smoking gun. They didn’t get much more smoking than a video of your girlfriend kissing another man. All this time that he’d been actively searching for evidence of this and now, here it was, presented to him on a platter. All this time, he’d been looking for something that—he realised now—he didn’t want to find.  

He was furious. Livid. Could feel the vein in his temple pulse as adrenalin coursed through him.  A smoking gun. A man kissing his girlfriend. His girlfriend kissing a man who wasn’t him. 

He sent a text back before he could forget. 

Namjoon: that’s her. Thanks man 

He put his shoes on and went straight out. Hayeon didn’t know he knew. Namjoon decided, through a red haze of rage, that there was about to be a lot more than Hayeon wouldn’t know.  

* 

“Are you ok?” you asked, opening the door to Namjoon, who had shown up unannounced, sounding agitated.  

Everyone had always told him you liked him. Liked him. They said it was obvious. They told him to be sensitive when they thought he’d overstepped in some way—with you, with Hayeon in front of you. He had never been sure if he believed them. You and he were just friends. Had always just been friends. You’d never said a word to him of anything different. Now, he was going to find out for sure. 

“What would you do if I kissed you?” he asked. 

He didn’t wait for an answer. Before your face had rearranged itself from shock to confusion, he was kissing you. He half-expected you to slap him, push him off, ask him if he was crazy (he just might have been at that moment), but you didn’t. You kissed him back. Snaked your arms around his neck, opened your mouth when he brushed his tongue against your lips. More, you pulled him forward, into your apartment, so he could kick your front door shut, so he could follow you into your bedroom.  

Namjoon didn’t stop to ask questions. Neither did you. He put his hands on a new body for the first time in almost a decade; for the first time, touching someone who was not Hayeon. He learnt that your skin was soft and your mouth was sweet. He discovered the pitch to which your voice raised when he found just the right motion. He found his own body responded to yours with swift alacrity. He discovered different things that other people did, that you did, which Hayeon did not. Found that he preferred them. With adrenalin surging through him, he found the newness exciting; he was hungry for it, desperate to learn how to use your body, how to make you tick, how to time the implosion carefully so that you came as he sank his teeth into the soft skin around your nipple.  

He did not forget, in all this rage, in all this lust, to use a condom.  

Spent, but not in any way sated, Namjoon lay for two seconds on his back next to you, before rising to clean up the evidence. 

“I’m sorry,” was what he said to you when he sat down on the edge of the bed, his back to you. 

“It’s ok,” was what you said back. 

It wasn’t what you wanted to say. You wanted to say that it wasn’t ok. You wanted to have said no back at the front door. To have not let him kiss you, not let him into your house, into your body. You wanted to be the sort of person who would have said those things.  

But you loved Namjoon. Had loved him as long as you’d known him. Had known also all that time that he would never leave his girlfriend for you. Would never leave his girlfriend full stop. Sometimes you were at peace with that. Found that it was ok, really, didn’t much bother you. Other times, you ached with it, burnt with it, cried from it. And he had shown up at your front door, asked to kiss you, kissed you and what else could you have done?  

You would have liked to have been a better person, but there he was, finally doing the thing you had wished he would more times than you could count. So you didn’t say no and you didn’t ask questions. You just kissed him back, poured as much of your love as you could from your mouth to his, your body to his.  

Did he know? How you really felt? He must have known. Why else would he have come? Why else would he be apologising to you now?  

“Hayeon is cheating on me.” 

You closed your eyes, tried to swallow the tears that pricked in your eyes. Of course, it wasn’t about you. You weren’t suddenly the object of his affections; you were subject to his hurt, wounded pride, betrayal, anger, what else? When he fucked you, just now, on the bed where you still lay, was he thinking of her? Of course, he was.  

Was it not also true, though, that you knew that? That you knew, when he was kissing you, that it wasn’t about you. Couldn’t have been about you because you and Namjoon had been friends for years and he’d never once as much as hinted that he might have wanted to kiss you—as much as everyone knew that you wanted him to. Did you let him touch you, did you touch him, thinking that it meant something? Or did you take your scraps eagerly, desperately, like a stray dog, not asking what they were or where they came from, just eating hungrily, quickly, until they were gone? 

“I’m sorry,” you offered him. “That sucks.” 

Namjoon stood and redressed. You lay still on the bed, watching him. Waiting. For something. Anything.  

Before he turned to leave, he inclined his head slightly towards you (not looking, not looking at you, naked still, uncovered, for his eyes).  

“Could you-... I mean... would i-” 

“Relax, Namjoon. I won’t tell anyone.” 

The relief washed out of his body on a sigh. He nodded. 

“Thank you.” 

* 

If you had been a better person, you wouldn’t have let him kiss you even once. Definitely would not have let him fuck you whilst he was still in the maelstrom of reacting to finding out his girlfriend of nine years was cheating on him.  

Definitely definitely would not have let it happen again. And again. And again.  

Because it kept happening. He kept coming. To you. He said it was only you. You had no choice but to believe him because you wanted him to come again. Even as the door shut behind him on his way out, you wanted him to come back. 

You told no one, as you had said you wouldn’t. You betrayed nothing, except all your morals and principles, except Hayeon (who was kind of your friend, too). You found it hard to look at yourself in the mirror: hair messy; purpling bruises on your breasts from his teeth, yellow and green bruises on your thighs from him in times before; still flushed, heartrate still high, skin still warm, sticky with drying sweat.  

You never told yourself that it would be the last time. That this time you would put your foot down. You knew you wouldn’t. Couldn't. You had opened the floodgates and here was the deluge: the feelings you had known you had done your best to hide from now dancing in the spotlight. You loved him. Oh, you loved him. Would have done anything for him. Including and not limited to fucking him behind his girlfriend’s back and keeping it a secret. 

He never spoke about her. Never once said he was going to leave her, was thinking of leaving her, wanted to leave her. You knew he never would. They had grown up together: all the way through school, spinning in the same orbit. When they got to taste independence and adult life at university, their friendship had become something more. Then her parents had died in a car crash that almost killed her, too, and Namjoon knew he would never leave her. That was how the story went, how his friends told it.  

So you kept your mouth shut and your legs open. Told yourself you a thousand lies to make yourself feel like maybe you weren’t the worst person in the world for it.  

Namjoon would have told the story a little differently. Hayeon had almost died in a car crash that almost killed her, too, and that was when he knew he could never leave her. He was the only family she had left. She was the only love he had ever known; he her only love. He would not, could not, abandon her. Even if he wanted to. Even when he wanted to.  

He told himself this was why he hadn’t confronted her about cheating yet (that, and of course, he had gone and done the very same thing. Done it over and over again, so many times that he didn’t even think of Hayeon when he was with you anymore. That it wasn’t about her anymore). Because, despite how they may have appeared, despite what anyone might have said about them as a couple, they weren’t perfect for each other. She wasn’t his soulmate. He couldn’t blame her for cheating when, frankly, if he’d been honest with himself, he wanted out, too. He wanted out but couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger, to be the bad guy, to break her heart when he was the one who had to put it back together all that time ago. There was tragedy between them that would last forever; to Namjoon, that meant they had to, too.  

You were something entirely different. All his friends’ words resounded in his head after the first time. How much you cared for him. How sad it was, how well you bore it, this unrequited, doomed, desperate love for him. He had expected this to make you weak, somehow, to make you feel too soft, too pliable, too malleable under his hands.  He felt bad the first time, for using you, for burning you up in his roaring rage, but then he came back to you and you opened the door as if you knew exactly what he wanted—because you did know exactly what he wanted—and let him in. He had expected to feel as if he was taking advantage of you, of your weakness for him, but he didn’t. You weren’t pliable and malleable and pathetic. You didn’t get on your knees and prostrate yourself, offer yourself up on a platter for his delectation.  

He loved the taste of your moans in his mouth. He loved the smell of your lotion, faintly lingering on your skin as he kissed, licked, and bit his way across your body. He loved the hot, wet slip of your tongue, the tight, slippery clutch of your cunt. He even loved the way you were careful, dug your nails into his back, into his thighs for a microsecond before releasing him, leaving no marks. Sucked on his skin so his eyes fluttered closed and his breath caught, but not so that the tell-tale bloom of burgundy and purple would give you away.  

“I should go,” he said quietly, lying naked on your bed, sweat dry, heart rate steady.  

“Yeah, you said that,” you replied gently, naked next to him, on your side, head propped on your hand, watching him, taking him in, the man you loved and could never have outside of these moments.  

He turned to look at you, eyes catching his, and he felt desperate suddenly. Desperate not to leave. Not to go back to his house made of straw, house made of lies, to a girlfriend who maybe didn’t love him anymore. To a girlfriend he didn’t love, whom he hadn’t loved—he was sure—for some time. To a girlfriend he wouldn’t leave.  

So he left you. Returned home, with heavy feet and a heavier heart. Returned, angry, frustrated, all his old fury bubbling up again, a rolling boil threatening the edge of the pan.  

“We need to talk,” he said in greeting to Hayeon, who was making tea in the kitchen. 

“Yeah, we do.” 

His surprise made him pause for a second—was she about to confess everything? 

“I know we haven’t really talked about the future much recently,” she began, leaning with her back against the counter as the kettle rumbled slowly to a boil. “Things have been crazy with work and I feel like we’ve just been kind of missing each other, y’know? But that’s why I think this will be great. This is a good thing. A really good thing.” 

“What is?” 

And nothing could have prepared him for the words that followed. 

“I’m pregnant.” 

A cloud of steam rose from the kettle beside Hayeon, the noise of the water roiling inside grew louder. So did Namjoon’s rage. So did he sense of betrayal. The injustice (of what? He couldn’t have said, could barely manage conscious thought). The inescapability of a child. His child. His anger surprised him, the strength of it, the speed and ease with which it rose inside him. He bit down on his tongue to stop all of his worst instincts taking control of it. He reminded himself this was as much his fault as hers. Then he wondered if it was. 

He did his best to school his features into neutrality, to keep his voice level when he spoke. 

“How do you know it’s mine?” 

To her credit, Hayeon did not immediately launch into a wounded, defensive howl. She did not cry big, fat crocodile tears. She flinched, swallowed, opened her mouth and closed it again. She took a deep breath, eyes shut, and looked at him again, nodding silently to herself, but she didn’t lie. She knew Namjoon too well for that. Knew him well enough to know that he knew. And that was when it crystallised inside him: the knowledge that their relationship was fucked. Was fucking over.  

“How long have you known?” she asked. 

“How do you know the baby is mine?” 

A crease flashed across her face – concern? Anger? – and was gone again in a second. Part of Namjoon wanted to have this fight. To force a showdown and make her confess everything she’d done and who she’d done them with. Maybe he would confess, too; maybe he’d tell her all the things you did to him, all the things he did to you; maybe he’d tell her just how much you wanted him.  

He didn’t, because most of him just wanted this to be over. 

“You’re the only person I’ve slept with without protection.”  

Her voice was small, eyes downcast, her fingers picked at her fingernails, at the skin around them. Namjoon was furious at himself for the tiny spark of pride that ignited within him at her words. Sure, he was being cheated on but that guy never got to fuck his girlfriend raw.  

He was pathetic. Pathetic, too, the way he thought of you, of what you would do or say. Would you end it all? Refuse to see him again? Would this change things? A sliver of panic slid down his spine at the thought, his fingers grasping air when trying to grab the life rope. 

“You’re definitely pregnant?” 

She took three pregnancy tests from her pocket. All different brands, all positive. 

“I took three more at work earlier,” she said. “False positives are extremely rare, apparently.” 

Namjoon looked at the tests, unseeing. What he was seeing instead was a closing door, a lid on a coffin, a baby growing inside his girlfriend that neither of them had planned, neither of them had expected. Neither of them had wanted.  

Namjoon didn’t come over for a while. You saw him, socially, as you saw your other friends, and he seemed tense. There was something hiding behind his smile that you were sure everyone else could see, too; it couldn’t just be you that noticed that it didn’t quite reach his eyes, didn’t last quite long enough to be genuine. That noticed that he was checked out of conversations. That noticed his jaw tense, just a little, when Hayeon was around, when someone mentioned her name.  

You hadn’t seen him, one-on-one for a couple of weeks when he messaged you. 

[20:31]  Namjoon: can i come over? 

As if you had ever said or would ever say no.  

He had fire in his eyes again, when you opened the door to him, but it wasn’t blazing, raging, out of control. This was a rich, deep smoulder; darker, burnished light glinting at you. He didn’t ask any questions, just took your face in his hands and kissed you, far more softly than you’d expected. More slowly. He shut the door behind him, but he didn’t drag you to the bedroom; he wrapped his arms around your body and held you close to him; he rolled his tongue into your mouth and gave a quiet, contented hum when it met yours.  

It wasn’t always urgent and hurried with Namjoon. It wasn’t always needy and aggressive and high-geared. It often was, but not always. Never, though, had it been like this. Slow. Intense. Your bodies pressed together; fingers twined in fingers, twined in hair; lips brushing lips, brushing skin. It was indulgent. Wanton, with his mouth between your thighs as you whined, as your breath caught in your throat; with his head clamped between your legs as you writhed, squirming as you came, your body contorted with pleasure and your face the perfect picture of ecstasy. And later, with his length stuffed down the wet tunnel of your throat, when he was lost for words and could only moan, could only utter slurred vowels that sounded like your name. When he came for the first time and whispered quiet praise to you. When he came for the second and held you so close you could feel his heart pound. It was the kind of sex people had when they had all the time in the world and nowhere else to be—no one else to go home to. The kind of sex that made you fall in love—as if you hadn’t already. The kind of sex you assumed he had with Hayeon, had assumed before now that he would never have with you.  

When he came for the final time—sitting against the headboard with your backside in his hands, with his hair in yours, with his tongue in your mouth—and you moved to get off him, he held you tight against his chest. Whispered, ‘just give me a minute’. He cradled your head as it rested against his shoulder. He rubbed your back. He sighed heavily, closed his eyes. 

“Hayeon’s pregnant.” 

“Fucking hell!” 

You sat up with a start. You had known there was something. You had never imagined it would be this. Namjoon smiled grimly. 

“Uh, congratulat-... um-” and you didn’t know how to continue, how to ask the question on the tip of your tongue, but you didn’t need to because Namjoon had already heard it, seen it coming. 

“She says it’s mine-” 

“You asked?” 

He nodded.  

“So... she knows you know.” 

Nodded again.  

“And...” 

“And she’s pregnant,” he repeated with a shrug that looked effortfully casual. “She’s agreed to a paternity test, though she says I’m the only one who...”  

He cleared his throat, as though this was awkward, as though you weren’t sitting with his cock, soft now and still inside you.  

“She’s on birth control, so we don’t use other protection.”  

You stood, trying to understand how you felt. Trying to understand how Namjoon might feel. He moved, too, disposing of the used condom, cleaning up, pulling his boxers back up his legs.  

“You’ve always wanted to have a kid,” you offered, not knowing if he wanted this kid, at this time, with this girlfriend. 

“Yeah,” he said, but he was still facing away from you, so you couldn’t see his face, couldn’t tell what myriad things his one word might be saying.  

“Is that why...” 

But you didn’t finish the question because you didn’t need to ask it. Of course, that was why he hadn’t come to you for weeks. Of course, this would change things. It already had. It was a child—there was no question of keeping it or not, you knew that—and they would be a family.  

Namjoon sat at the edge of your bed and spoke the words you were thinking. 

“What about this?” 

“This?” 

“Us?” 

You laughed. Laughed because tears pricked in your eyes and the only other alternative was crying.  

“Is there an us?” 

And he couldn’t answer because he knew as well as you did that there wasn’t. That, whatever you were, it wasn’t real, wasn’t lasting, wasn’t love. Not for him.  

“Why do you let me come?” he asked, sounding as sad as you had ever heard him, no hint of recrimination, accusation.  

You laughed again, weaker, wetter, tears on your waterline.  

“You know why,” you answered thickly. “You know and everyone else knows, too. You know how I feel about you, Namjoon. Beggars can’t be choosers. They can be pathetic and cruel and selfish and wrong, but they can’t be choosers. I don’t get to choose, Namjoon. To love you or not love, to be with you or not be with you. I'll always say yes.” 

You bit your bottom lip as it wobbled, as the tears made tracks down your cheeks.  

“Doesn’t it hurt?” his voice a mere whisper. 

“Of course it hurts,” you whispered back. “It hurts you too, doesn’t it?” 

Namjoon was a father. 

A baby boy, 7lbs 7oz, born (unlike most babies) on his exact due date, in the final days before Christmas. Namjoon laid his eyes on the bloody, screaming gargoyle that was his son and his fate was sealed. A love the likes of which he had never known burst his heart apart. That was his son and he found he had no interest in a paternity test. Biology wouldn’t take anything away from him, couldn’t change what he knew he felt. The request for a paternity test was in Hayeon’s medical notes and it was done without anyone having to mention it. Two days later, results confirmed that the probability of Namjoon being the father stood at 99.9999%. He threw the letter in the bin. 

He had tried to tell himself throughout the pregnancy that he’d stop. He’d put an end to it for everyone’s sake. To see you was equal parts joy and heartbreak. To have you, knowing you weren’t truly his. To love you, without telling you. He kept so much from you during that time because you were his friend but you were so much more than that now and you didn’t deserve to hear him talk about the baby his girlfriend was carrying. You didn’t deserve to see his excitement, despite everything, his wonder and awe and anxiety. You deserved far more than he could give you.  

So he told himself, after the baby was born, he’d end it. It would be a fresh start, a clean slate. The baby, brand new, didn’t have to know anything of his father’s sins, his flaws, his shame.  

* 

Namjoon ushered you into the apartment with the baby asleep in his arms.  

“Ohh,” you cooed, almost silently. “He’s so cute.” 

“You don’t have to whisper,” Namjoon told you, his voice loud in the silence. “He’s out like a light.” 

You followed him to the sofa and sat next to him, staring down at his son.  

“I didn’t really know they were so small,” you said. “So much smaller than I was expecting.” 

“Right?” Namjoon smiled, couldn’t stop himself. “He’s light, too. It’s almost like there’s nothing there at all.” 

“Yeah, they lose weight after being born, don’t they?” 

Namjoon blinked, exhaustion slowing his brain, so that he took a few seconds to process the question. He didn’t know you knew anything about babies.  

“Yeah, about 10%,” he answered, watching you carefully, trying to gauge what you felt about this child and balance it against what he thought you felt about children as a concept. “He’s 5 days old now so he’s stopped losing weight but it can take a few weeks to gain it back. Want to hold him?” 

You looked surprised then but nodded tentatively. Namjoon still wasn’t used to this manoeuvre; he and Hayeon hadn’t quite nailed the transfer yet but he was getting better. Slipped his son into your waiting arms without too much physical awkwardness. You were quiet as you watched him sleep; Namjoon watched you watch him, felt his heart drop into his guts and those guts start to churn.  

“His name is Hajoon,” he told you. 

You were the first of his friends to be told. He saw the moment of tension in your body, the bob of your throat as you swallowed. You smiled, unable to tear your gaze away from the baby, so he couldn’t see your face properly, couldn’t look you in the eye and see into your soul.  

“Hajoon. Kim Hajoon, nice to meet you,” you whispered.  

Namjoon let his head drop, not sleeping but not quite awake. Minutes passed, he couldn’t have guessed how many. Then he felt your hand on his leg and he opened his eyes. 

“How are you?” you asked with a grin. “You must be pretty wrecked.” 

He nodded. 

“Hayeon is so jacked up on hormones that she’s fine. She’s sleeping right now but she said she honestly doesn’t feel tired most of the time. She feels normal. Whereas I am the most tired I have ever been. I don’t know if I will ever feel normal again.” 

“I expect you won’t. Everything’s changed now, hasn’t it?” 

You turned back to his son and Namjoon saw your smile drop, saw it twist into some kind of sad resignation. He didn’t argue that it hadn’t changed.  

“I have news, too,” you announced quietly, Hajoon still snoozing. 

“Oh?” 

“Yeah, I got a new job.” 

“Oh, that’s great!” 

“In Hong Kong.” 

“What?” 

“I’m moving to Hong Kong.” 

“Why? 

“I got a job.” 

Thinking for Namjoon was like swimming through molasses; he was sure he had somehow misunderstood.  

“You’re moving to Hong Kong?” 

“Yeah.” 

“When?” 

“Just after the new year.” 

“Shit.” 

You laughed and it was generous of you. Words wouldn’t come to Namjoon. He knew he should be saying things like: congratulations! That’s amazing! What a great opportunity! I’m so happy for you! He could only think things like: don’t go. What about me? I’ll miss you. Please don’t leave. 

“Obviously I wanted to meet Hajoon first and, y’know, let you know. I’m going to tell everyone else at drinks tonight.” 

“Right... Yeah...”  

“It’s a really good opportunity for me.” 

“Yeah, of course.” 

“I think I’ve been coasting at work here; it was time for something new.” 

And Namjoon didn’t know if you were trying to convince him or yourself. He didn’t care. He didn’t care how great an opportunity it was; any opportunity that put a thousand miles between the two of you was not worth it. Not for him. 

He knew he wasn’t allowed to think that. He didn’t get a say. He didn’t get the privilege of being heartbroken by this. Not after everything he had done. Not after deciding that he was going to end things himself anyway.  

But he did think it. And he was heartbroken. He could feel it, cracking in his chest, trying to contort itself around this new knowledge, your approaching absence. He could feel it, fighting with his resolve, losing. His heart, so full, fit to burst, overflowing with love and gratitude because his son had arrived safely in the world; his heart, torn in two, slivers and shreds of it going with you to Hong Kong... Would they ever return? 

He opened his mouth to say something he shouldn’t. He hadn’t planned what but if this was the last time he was going to see you (and it probably would be because you were leaving in a week and he had a newborn baby), he couldn’t let you go with everything unsaid like this.  

Hayeon opened the bedroom door and walked out, rubbing her eyes, looking a little dozy, hair mussed and face pillow-creased. 

“Oh hi,” she said with a smile, seeing you on the sofa.  

“Hi,” you returned, standing. “Congratulations. He’s beautiful.” 

“Thank you, we certainly like to think so.” 

“I was just heading off.” 

“You were?” 

“You were?” 

Namjoon and Hayeon simultaneously; Hayeon politely curious, Namjoon urgent, panicked. 

“Yeah, you know how it is this time of year. Lots to plan for.” 

“Of course. It was nice to see you; thanks for coming.” 

Hayeon approached and took Hajoon from you, turning back towards the kitchen, while Namjoon stood by and wondered how he could stop you leaving. His apartment, Korea, his life. 

“Well,” you began. “I guess I’ll go. Congratulations on the baby, really. I’m really, really happy for you. You’re going to be a wonderful dad.” 

It was testament to his exhaustion that tears stang in Namjoon’s eyes. He wasn’t really a crier. Certainly not in front of other people. But he couldn’t swallow down the lump in his throat—the lump of words stuck there, that he wouldn’t say, couldn’t say; the words he wished he could transmit to you without saying them aloud.  

You stepped closer with your arms out and he enveloped you, crushing, too tight, too hard, too long. The smell of your hair, the lingering scent of perfume on your neck, your fingers lightly gripping the hair at the nape of his neck the way you always did, the slight overbalance of your weight against his as you rose onto your toes.  

Then, too soon, far too quickly, you pulled back; you said goodbye; you walked out of his apartment and his life. 

* 

Namjoon heard Hajoon stir before the crying started because he wasn’t asleep anyway. He should have been but he didn’t want to go to sleep and wake up in a Seoul that didn’t have you. Even though you had already gone. Had left this afternoon after a raucous bottomless brunch that Namjoon saw the photos from but hadn’t been able to attend. If he didn’t sleep, the world wouldn’t settle into its new formation; the city wouldn’t bend and twist to cover the gap you had left. If he didn’t sleep, he would go mad enough to truly believe it hadn’t happened. 

So he heard his son and went to his cot in the nursery, picked him up, checked if he needed changing, held him close to his chest as he looked out of the window at the city, newly empty or so it seemed.  

Hajoon began to cry, a sweet little mewling racing into full-bodied screams. Namjoon prepared a bottle, one-handed, as he had already learnt to do, but Hajoon didn’t want it. He wanted to kick and scream and Namjoon couldn’t blame him.  

“Don’t worry, baby,” he said quietly, his own voice breaking, tears rolling down his cheek. “We can cry it out together.” 

Namjoon sat in the outrageously expensive rocking chair they had bought but not, at that point, yet used, and he and his son cried their hearts out.  

Hajoon settled before Namjoon did, crying himself back to a newborn’s dead sleep while Namjoon’s breath still shook, came in snatches, tears dropping from his cheeks onto Hajoon’s swaddle. He didn’t put him back into the cot; he rocked, slowly, gently, intent on spending the rest of the night there.  

Hayeon crept in just as Namjoon’s eyelids were dropping.  

“Hey, why are you awake?” he asked, voice thick and groggy.  

“I had to pee. Thought I’d check on him. And you.”  

“We’re fine. Go enjoy some sleep.” 

“Ok.” 

She hesitated at the door and Namjoon wondered what she’d heard, what she’d been woken by but he was too tired to follow the thought to its end, to worry what she might know or suspect. He rested his head back against the chair and closed his eyes, sleep coming swiftly this time. 

* 

The next morning, Namjoon handed Hajoon to Hayeon for his second breakfast, and was stopped in his tracks on the way to the bathroom when she asked him, 

“Did you love her?” 

Like a punch in the gut. ‘Did’ was the wrong question. He had loved her and loved her still. There was nothing past about it; it was all too present, all too painful.  

Could he tell her that? He hadn’t known that Hayeon had known about you, but it didn’t surprise him. It didn’t surprise him that she knew and didn’t confront him about it, that she was willing to let it all be swept under the rug for the sake of their family. Guilt ate at him, suddenly, sharply. Maybe they could both benefit from a little bit of honesty. 

“Yes.” 

“Hi.” 

“Hi.” 

It had been almost two years. Two really good years: you thrived at your job, had made good friends, had established a real, proper life for yourself. And had hardly missed Namjoon at all. That was your story and you were sticking to it.  

His social media were rarely updated—the occasional story of his son, ‘now listening’ songs that you did your best to ignore when you were doing well, that you did your best to decode when you weren’t. It made things easier that he wasn’t there every time you picked up your phone. It made things harder, gave you all sorts of space to imagine his happiness. You knew the big facts: he was happy; his son was beautiful; he and Hayeon were still together. As they would ever be.  

Her instagram was busier. Hajoon. Namjoon. Friends. Family holidays. Hajoon. Namjoon. Namjoon. Hajoon. Namjoon.  

You couldn’t unfollow her; you were supposed to be friends still. So you prodded your bruises, picked at your scabs, looked so closely at photos of him you could have recreated them, pixel for pixel.  

Now he was here in front of you and you had to face the devastating reality that he had the same effect on you as he ever had. You had never seen Namjoon and not loved him.  

“You finally made it back here.” 

That surprised you and you wondered how it was possible that no one had told him. Of course you’d been back to Seoul before now. You just hadn’t seen him, hadn’t wanted him to know while you were here. You hadn’t expected your friends to keep their mouths shut. You were grateful that they had.  

You shrugged.  

“Guess so... Happy birthday.” 

It was pure rotten luck that meant your visit for Chuseok coincided with this. That gave you no excuse at all to not attend. Whilst Namjoon was the birthday boy, it didn’t mean you had to spend any time with him. He was popular and there were more than enough people filling the space; you could avoid him easily. You’d ripped off the plaster, seen him again, said hello and acknowledged him. That was enough.  

You thought. He was somehow always in your line of sight. Somehow waiting for the bathroom at the same moment you needed to go. At the bar buying another drink as you stood there, emptying yours. With every encounter, you grew surer that this had been a mistake. You shouldn’t have come. You should have pretended to be stuck in Hong Kong, pretended your family were visiting you instead, pretended you’d died, who cared? You just needed to get away from him.  

How had the bar become so crowded? Why were there so many people and why were they all in your way? You forgot your manners, left them somewhere on the bar, and pushed, feeling claustrophobic in their presence, in the clinging love and pain that was suffocating you again.  

“Woah, hey!” 

An arm grabbed at you; you struggled, pulled back. 

“Let me go!” 

“Where are you going?” 

Jimin. Interfering. 

“I’m going home. Let me go.” 

“What’s going on? Are you ok?” 

“I’m going home! Don’t try to make me stay.” 

“Good lord, girl, I'm just asking if you’re alright.” 

“No! I’m not! This was a stupid fucking idea! Now let me go!” 

He did. You ran. Ran into him, Namjoon, literally; the force of your body against his sent his drink sloshing over the rim, soaking you and he both. Namjoon laughed. 

“Someone’s keen.” 

Was this funny? Could he really laugh? You thought later of all the witty putdowns you might have thrown his way, something cutting and sharp that would show him just how over him you were, how unbothered, that he had no effect on you whatsoever. In the moment, you just looked at him pleadingly, trapped, unable to look away, to move, to continue your trajectory out of the bar, out of the city, out of the country, back to Hong Kong, where you were safe, where Namjoon was not.  

“Are you ok?” 

No. God no. Was it that obvious?  

Namjoon took you by the arm and steered you to the back, outside where it was dark but still close and muggy. Where there were fewer people. Where you could be alone. You covered your face with your hands, regretting whatever number of drinks it was you’d had that night.  

Namjoon said your name, soft and sweet and concerned, his hand on your arm.  

“How’s Hajoon?” you asked, abruptly, anything to avoid a real conversation.  

Namjoon could not stop the smile that stretched his face wide. You were happy for him, you really were. Happiness was all you’d ever wanted for him so you’d got your wish. If only you had been more specific. 

“He’s so funny,” Namjoon began. “Kid never sits down for a minute. He’s really into tools at the moment—tries to hammer anything long and thin into anything wide and flat. He’s making a mockery of our deposit.”  

“Can’t believe he’s going to be two soon.” 

“It’s scary how quickly the time goes. It feels like yesterday he was brand new.” 

It felt like yesterday to you, too. How raw you felt, how fresh the wounds you’d moved a thousand miles to lick.  

“I’ve missed you,” he said and you physically wilted.  

“Have you?” 

His face fell, softened. He looked at you for a long time, a tiny crease between his eyebrows, a tiny twitch in his jaw.  

“You know I have.” 

“Do I?” 

“Don’t you?” 

“I don’t know, Namjoon.”  

You looked at each other. You wanted him to say something, to fix this, to do something that would mean you could stop loving him, stop missing him. You wanted him to throw his entire life away and kiss you, then and there, onlookers be damned. You expected he wanted no such thing.  

“Hong Kong is treating you well?”  

“Yes, it is.” 

“Good. I’m glad.” 

You didn’t want him to be glad. You wanted him to be cut to ribbons. You wanted him to feel skin-stripped and naked.  

“I was on my way out,” you said, when no more words passed between you, when you were standing in an endless silence. “I really should go.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes, I have to go.”  

“It was good to see you again. Don’t leave it so long next time, yeah?” 

“Yeah, sure.” 

And you stumbled away from him, through and out of the bar, walking as fast as your feet could carry you back to the subway.  

* 

You made it back to your parents’ house, took your make-up off, and brushed your teeth. You made it all the way back to the bed you slept in when you were still a child. Then you cried. Then you curled yourself up in a ball and cursed yourself for this. For being this way. For not letting him go. For somehow still being in love with a man who had never been yours and never would be. For all the things you did two years ago, for how many times you did them, for every opportunity to be the better person you didn’t take.  

It was close to midnight when your phone began to buzz. You stretched yourself across the bed and checked.  

Namjoon. 

You put your phone back down. It continued to buzz. Then it stopped. Then it started again. On and on and on, even when you shoved it under the spare pillow to stop it juddering against the wood.  

It stopped. Two short bursts followed: a message. 

[23:58]  Namjoon: please pick up. I'm outside 

You did not pick up. You exchanged your sleep shorts and vest for a T-shirt and joggers, slipped your feet into slides, and snuck out.  

He was waiting underneath the lamppost three metres away.  

“What are you doing here? Did you get the last train? How are you going to get back?” 

He shrugged. 

“I had to see you.” 

“Why?” 

He almost laughed in his surprise.  

“Why? Because two years ago, you moved a thousand miles away, and you’ve been back here so many times but this is the first time I’ve got to see you. You’ve been avoiding me even from Hong Kong. You were avoiding me all night; every time I tried to talk to y-” 

“We talked.” 

“No, we didn’t. Not really. Not properly.” 

“Well, what do you want to say to me? What’s so important that you came all the way here to tell me?” 

He looked lost, maybe even hurt. You fought the urge to push on his bruises, too. It would only make you feel worse.  

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.  

“I have missed you.” 

He took a few steps closer to you, within arms’ reach now. He lifted a hand, brushed your cheek with his thumb.  

You took a step back. 

“Namjoon.” 

Plea or warning, you weren’t sure.  

He returned your name, closed the gap between you. Before you could move back again, he held your arms, held you still.  

“I have missed you,” he repeated as if it meant anything. “Of course, I’ve fucking missed you—Jesus, I...”  

He moved closer, cupped your cheek in his hand.  

“You just fucking left,” he whispered. “Just like that. Dropped the bomb and didn’t stick around to observe the wreckage-” 

“Namjoo-” 

“I was a wreck. I think I cried more than Hajoon did! One second you were there, and then you weren’t. You didn’t even warn me. I didn’t know you were looking for jobs in fucking Hong Kong!” 

“So what if I had told you? What would you have done? Would you have stopped me?” 

“Maybe!” 

“Namj-” 

“Maybe I would have stopped you! Or at least I would’ve tried.” 

“For what? To what end? Were you going to leave her? Leave your newborn baby? Drop your own bomb and destroy your whole life? You know you weren’t going to. I knew you weren’t going to.” 

“Bu-” 

“Have you left her, Namjoon? Hayeon? Did you leave her?” 

“No,” he answered and you could taste the reluctance in it, the bitterness, see it in the way he refused to meet your eye. 

“Still together?” 

“Yes.” 

“See? We were never going to make it out alive. For all intents and purposes, we never were. Never were anything at all. We existed and left no mark. Move on.” 

“No mark? No mark? Is that why you’ve all but cut me out of your life? Is that why you had our friends – my friends – lie to me whenever you visited? Because it’s left no mark on you? What we were?” 

“What we were was nothing!” 

You were trying not to shout on this quiet residential street, where houselights were off and traffic noise was no more than the sound of water rushing.  

“You’re not going to leave her, Namjoon. You and I both know it. You’re never going to leave her. That means there is nothing for us. We aren’t an ‘us’. Never were. There’s nothing between us. Understand that.” 

A beat passed. 

“What would you do if I kissed you?”  

His name was on your tongue but before it could make its way out, he did just that. Kissed you as he had done two and a half years ago, without waiting for an answer. And just like that day two years ago, you wished you could have said no, wished you could have done something other than kiss him back, than uncross your arms and wrap them around his neck. Your chest felt as though it would cave in, your heart collapsing in on itself—too heavy, too full, too wounded to sustain itself.  

He tasted a little drunk; you could still smell the beer that you had made him spill on himself earlier that evening; his hair was shorter now, short even, nothing to grab at the nape of his neck like you always used to.  

“See?” he asked, a little breathless, lips still touching yours. “How can you say there is nothing? It’s not nothing. This isn’t nothing.”  

“Namjoon.” 

You hated yourself for the way your voice broke. You pushed him away, extricated yourself from his arms, scrubbed a hand over your face.  

“No,” you said, sounding surer than you felt. “No, god, no, we can’t do this.”  

You shook your arms, paced in a tight circle, tried to blow away all the Namjoon-sized, Namjoon-shaped, Namjoon-scented cobwebs in your heart and mind. 

“Namjoon, in about one minute’s time, you’ll be going back to your girlfriend and your son; in four days’ time, I’ll be going back to Hong Kong. Can’t we just leave it at that? Please.” 

“I don’t want to.” 

“There isn’t any other option and you know it. Go home, Namjoon.” 

You turned around and did just that, shutting and locking the door behind you, shutting and locking the door on your heart that housed your love for him, too.  

You didn’t know how you would be able to come back again. This had taken everything you had. 

Namjoon married her. Hayeon. His mother’s taunts had moved from ‘when are you going to make an honest woman of her?’ to ‘when are you going to give Hajoon a little brother or sister?’ so he’d married her just to put it all off, to stop people asking. They’d organised it quickly—there was nothing like a spring wedding in Korea. Cherry blossom everywhere, warmer weather, unlocking as he locked himself down. 

He did it a little to convince himself, too: that they were happy. That he was happy. That they were a perfect family unit, the stuff happily-ever-afters were made of.  

He wasn’t unhappy. He loved his son more than anything in the world and got no greater pleasure than the moments when he would stretch up his tiny arms to be lifted, to wrap them around Namjoon’s neck and cling to him like a koala. The pride he felt when Hajoon learnt something new, when he finally said a word correctly, when Namjoon saw him do something he had no idea he’d learnt already—applying lip balm like his mum, reading a book (albeit upside-down) in his dad’s reading chair.  

Hajoon had started going to nursery. He would begin going full-time next term and everyone kept telling him that it must be great having his time back. Having his freedom back. 

Free? Was that what he was supposed to feel? Free, knowing that his son was in the care of other people, people he didn’t know; free, worrying about whether his son was making friends or being bullied or learning enough; free, sending his baby into the world, watching that world expand around him, watching his baby understand that there was so much more than Mummy, and Daddy, and their little house? Free?  

He’d never felt more trapped.  

He set a timer on instagram on his phone and, every few days, would ignore it a hundred times just so he could look at you. Now you were free. Free to travel (most recently, Malaysia, but also the Philippines, Australia, Fiji, amongst others). Free to love (your boyfriend, Namjoon had suspected from your stories, and then had it confirmed by his friends). Free to be anything but his.  

* 

“Congratulations,” you said, with a smile that looked too big to be insincere. “I’m sorry I missed the wedding. You didn’t really give me much notice, though, so that’s on you.” 

Namjoon tried to return the smile.  

“Yeah, sorry about that. We just kind of decided, wanted to do it quickly, y’know? It was pretty overdue.” 

He watched you carefully, desperately hunting for clues, sure that he used to be able to read you much better than this.  

“Of course. You had perfect weather for it, too. The pictures were beautiful.” 

“Thank you... Your boyfriend seems... nice.” 

He knew that that smile was genuine. He had watched you, with him, in the minutes since you’d arrived at the restaurant and sat down opposite him, and you really did seem happy. He really did seem like a nice guy, which made Namjoon hate him. Made him hate himself a little, too. Because he had locked himself into a loveless marriage. Because he couldn’t have you. Because of everything that he had done to you.  

“Yeah, he is. I’m really happy.” 

“Good.”  

And then Namjoon felt like he needed another drink, though the first courses hadn’t arrived yet.  

* 

He stumbled outside, onto the roof terrace of the obnoxiously lit, trendy bar the group had chosen. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go anywhere but home. He wanted to go back three years ago, more than that now, and make different decisions. So many different decisions. He wondered just when exactly it was that his life had started spinning out of control. It wasn’t you. Wasn’t Hajoon. Wasn’t even Hayeon cheating on him. Did it go all the way back to the accident? The one that he was convinced had tied him forever to Hayeon, had made him family, an exclusive club of one.  

He had loved her. He absolutely had loved her. She was his first love. He knew that they had been happy once. Once. For a long time. He had never confronted Hayeon about her cheating, as she had never confronted him. When she was pregnant, Namjoon assumed that, whatever sort of affair it had been, it was over; she’d never given him any cause to think otherwise, nor any cause to think something new had started in its place. A blip. Maybe that’s what it was.  

It wasn’t over for him, though, was it? It wasn’t a blip for him. It was the sharpness he felt in his chest when he saw you. The low swoop of his stomach when he pictured you, all those miles away, happy without him. It was the way his brain automatically turned on the fantasy of his life with you whenever he stopped, even for a second. What you could be. What you could have. He knew it was a fantasy, but when he saw you, in person, when you were right there in front of him, radiant and fresh and just as beautiful as you had always been, he knew it could be real, too.  

“I’m the search party,” you said in way of greeting, sitting on the stool opposite him. “Jin went to search the toilets, too.” 

“Found me.” 

“Are you ok? Just wanted some air?” 

Namjoon laughed. Air was the least of his concerns.  

“Are you happy?” he asked, demanded.  

“Yes.” 

“Are you sure?” 

He saw you put your guard up, saw the way it fell across your face just as it was starting to look sad, concerned. Saw it turn that face neutral, suspicious. 

“Yes, Namjoon, I’m sure. Are you happy?” 

He tipped his head back and sighed at the sky. 

“No.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that.” 

He scoffed.  

“Fuck that.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“You’re sorry to hear that? What are we, coworkers? Surely you have more to say than that.” 

He wanted you to be happy that he was miserable. He wanted you to understand. He wanted you to take him in your arms and make him not miserable.  

You bristled beside him, sat a little straighter. 

“What do you want me to say, then?” 

He felt desperate when he looked at you, dead in the eye, your eyes doing their best to keep him out.  

“You want me to tell you to leave her,” you continued. “You want me to say, do it, Namjoon. Leave your wife and be with me. Come and be happy with me... I’m not going to do that. You know I’m not going to do that.” 

“Why not?” 

You laughed. It hurt. 

“There are a hundred and one reasons, Namjoon. First and foremost: you don’t actually want to be with me-”  

You held your hand up, pre-empting his interruption, holding it there until he shut his mouth, until he gave you the slightest nod to say fine, ok, he’d be told off. He’d take his lashings. 

“You never wanted to be with me, Namjoon. Be honest. That first time, when you found out Hayeon had cheated on you and you came to my house? I could have been anyone. It wasn’t about me at all. It’s still not about me. Do you know what that does to a person? 

“I’m not blameless: I let you. Sat myself at your feet and ate the food you dropped. I knew it wasn’t about me and I let you have it anyway but do you not understand what that did to me? How hard it has been to build myself back up? How difficult it was to love you when you were my friend and how much more difficult once you were more than that? How much it hurt me every single day? Reduced me to nothing. No self-respect, no self-esteem, just a gaping wound where my heart should have been because, every time you came, I ripped it out and handed it to you.  

“Why do you think I left? You must know. You knew how I felt about you and you knew you didn’t love me and then I come back here and you try to open it all up again. You knew why I had been avoiding you, so why did you follow me? Why? Why do you sit there, indulging in your misery, and try to drag me down too?  

“I’m not doing it, Namjoon. I've spent too much fucking time getting over you. It’s not fair for you to do this to me.” 

He sat. He took it. With his head down, empty glass in hand, he acknowledged the truth of almost everything you said, felt his shame outgrow his pride, felt tears (that were always too close to the surface these days) burn in his eyes.  

“I love you,” he said, lifting his head to look at you. “I love you.” 

“No, you don’-” 

“I do. You’re right, I’ll admit it: to start with, it wasn’t about you. You couldn’t have been anyone but it wasn’t about you. Until it was. It wasn’t about Hayeon; it wasn’t about anything but you and it’s been you ever since. I loved you then and I love you now.” 

You covered your face with your hands, fingers pressing into your eyes. You shook your head. 

“You can’t say that to me, Namjoon.” 

“Why not?” 

“Becaus-”  

You stopped, tears spilling down your cheeks, lips pressed tight to stop the wobble.  

“Because I’m over you, ok? I have a boyfriend.” 

“And I had a girlfriend. I have a wife.” 

“Exactly! GOD-” 

You stood, started pacing in front of him, hands shaking at your sides. 

“You have a wife, Namjoon! And a son! What are you doing? You can’t say this shit to me, ok? You can’t. I won’t let you; I don’t have to listen to this.” 

His hand had wrapped around your arm before you’d taken your first step. He turned you to face him, held you too tight, held you still. There had to be something he could say that would at least make you stay to talk a bit longer. There had to be some way he could get through to you. That he could convince you he loved you, if nothing else. You turned your head away, closed your eyes, face tight as if anticipating impact. Your hands still shook. 

Namjoon saw your fear and instantly his hands fell back to his side. You tentatively opened one eye, swivelled it to look at him, not asking permission but checking if it was safe. You took a big step back from him. 

“Uh, guys?” 

Both of your heads whipped around: Tian was standing in the doorway, looking a little surprised, like he’d walked in on something he shouldn’t have.  

He had. 

“Um, the group is ready to head to another place; I was sent to round you up. Everything ok?” 

You nodded, turned quickly to swipe the tears from your eyes, and then smiled at your boyfriend, walking with a skip back to him. 

“Of course!” you answered, suddenly perky. “Where to next?” 

Namjoon sent a text to Hayeon. He was going to go home early and relieve the babysitter. He had a headache. 

You had been determined to pretend it had never happened. You took your boyfriend’s arm and smiled at him, rejoined the group, and walked to the next bar, aware of Namjoon’s sudden absence. You didn’t want the entire night ruined because of him. 

Your efforts were in vain. You excused yourself to the toilet once your order had been placed and tried some deep breaths. Tried some grounding techniques. Tried to will your heart to slow, your tears to stop pricking behind your squeezed-shut eyelids.  

It should not have been like this. You had been sure. Confident. Smug, even. Tian was a great boyfriend and you liked him a lot. Loved him, even. You had looked at Namjoon’s wedding photos with a pit in your stomach but then you had gone to dinner with Tian and had a lovely time and reminded yourself that there were people in the world (at least, there was one person) who wanted you around, who was prepared to say it, to live it, to love you out loud in front of everyone. You deserved that, you reminded yourself. You were happy.  

But your heart still raced and your stomach still churned and your heart still called for Namjoon: wanted to check if he was ok, wanted to run to him, wanted to tell him to leave his wife. That was the worst part: you wanted to do all the things you’d said you wouldn’t, all the things he wanted. Instead, you had to go back out to your boyfriend and your friends and pretend you were fine. That you were where you wanted to be. 

* 

Because Tian was a good boyfriend (he was and it hurt you all the more now that you knew you weren’t over Namjoon. Might never be), he picked up on your mood, asked if you would mind going home a little early, because he felt tired.  

“It was Namjoon, right?” he asked, as he shut your hotel room door and slipped off his shoes. 

“What?” 

You sat down heavily, not ready for the rigmarole of getting ready for bed. 

“You said you left Seoul because of a bad relationship.” 

You had said that. Had told Tian that you needed to take things slowly because you weren’t confident you’d glued yourself back together securely enough. So he had taken things slow, really slow, with you, because he was kind and patient and deserving of a far better love than you could give him.  

Your body sagged. You nodded.  

“Are you ok?” 

You held your arms open to him and he pulled you up into a hug. He stroked your hair and rubbed your back. 

“Yeah.” 

Pressed so close to him, you could feel the tension build in his body. 

“I was talking to Hayeon; she said they’ve been together since university.” 

“Yeah.” 

You felt him nod and he said nothing more for a few minutes; he just held you close and you finally found your heart begin to slow, your panic subside. 

“I’m going to wash up,” he whispered, pressing a kiss into your hair.  

You undressed, put pyjamas on, and swore to yourself that this was an end to it. No more. No more Namjoon. It was done. There was a man in the bathroom who accepted you, loved you, didn’t cheat on you (hadn’t cheated on anyone), and you loved him. Namjoon was in the past; Namjoon didn’t even live in the same country as you; this didn’t have to be hard (though making these declarations in his absence felt easy, easier than holding to them in his presence). 

It wasn’t long before you were back in Seoul again. Namjoon found excuses not to see you. He knew the things you said were right. He didn’t want to know it. Didn’t want to face it.  

Had not wanted to face anything difficult in his life for a long time, he realised.  

Then, one day, he checked your instagram and there it was: an engagement post. A diamond ring on your finger. Two smiling faces.  

* 

He carried the heartbreak around as rage, impatience, irritability. Scolded his son for making a mess (as if that weren’t what kids were for), snapped at Hayeon so many times, she snapped back. It wasn’t their fault. It was his. All of it, his. 

* 

“I’ve been thinking,” Hayeon began, sliding into bed next to him. “Hajoon is almost four now-” 

And Namjoon thought it was going to be about school or extra-curriculars or maybe she was just being very efficient about planning for his birthday. The moment she said the words ‘little brother or sister’, he stopped hearing anything at all. A light-headedness rushed through him, roaring in his ears.  

“I want a divorce,” he said, cutting her off mid-sentence. 

* 

And that was how it was. Long talks. Lots of tears. A better understanding of one another than they had had for years. An easing. A settling. No longer the feeling of walking on eggshells. No longer the weariness, the misery, the emptiness of their relationship echoing in their bed.  

They were polite and civil and organised. Agreed the splitting of the assets. Agreed 50-50 shared custody of Hajoon, who didn’t understand and found the transition, when Namjoon first moved out, difficult but adjusted quickly (as children are wont to do) and continued to thrive. There were still legal things to be finalised, a long process made longer by paperwork, but the practical things were achieved quickly and their separate lives began. 

Namjoon, sitting in his new apartment, much smaller than the old one, much neater, quieter, cried. He cried a lot. Some of it was sheer relief. Some of it was terror of something he had never known. Some of it was regret that it had taken him this long. Some of it was heartbreak. Some of it was because he didn’t know what else to do now. Didn’t know if he could fix it. Didn’t know if there was anything left to fix.  

Because it wasn’t about you. Not really. Or not entirely. It was about Namjoon doing what he should have done years ago. It was swallowing a bitter pill to cure his ills. Not just his, but Hayeon’s too, and Hajoon though he was too young to have them yet – preventing his future ills, making it so he didn’t grow up with a fucked-up view of what a relationship was, what it was supposed to be.  

It was better for everyone. It was. After the initial surprise, everyone else agreed, too. His friends finally confessed that they’d wanted to ask him for years, was he happy? Did he want this? When he had got a little too drunk and said things they didn’t know how to take and they had just let them drop, should they have picked him up on them? Had they done badly by Namjoon for not pushing the issue? He wanted to be angry with them. To say, ‘why didn’t you tell me?! Why didn’t you make me leave?!’. But it wasn’t their fault and, if they had said those things, he’d have hurt them, too. So he reassured them; it wasn’t their fault and they couldn’t have fixed anything. It was Namjoon’s problem and he had to be the one to realise it, to do it. That it had taken him so long was his own fault and no one else could have made it happen any quicker. 

“I left Hayeon, did you hear?” 

And you didn’t know what you had done to deserve this. Didn’t know quite how it always ended up you and Namjoon alone. You and Namjoon having this conversation. Namjoon digging up the past, expecting to find life in it, expecting to find what he had convinced himself it was, not what it had actually been.  

“Yeah, I heard.” 

You moved away from him, out of the room, without a backward glance. 

You had heard: a message coming in whilst you flicked through a bridal magazine. You were getting married and you shouldn’t have cared. It should not have opened a crevasse inside your heart. It should not have seen a tiny butterfly of hope flit from that deep wound. It should not, in turn, have made your blood boil. You should not have put the magazine down, hands shaking with rage. You should not have cared. 

You did.  

It made you furious: that he’d finally left her when it was too late; that your reaction to the news was hope. That, after all this time, since the moment you fucking met him, he had this hold on you, this choking grip that would not let go. You’d moved a thousand miles but it stretched across the ocean, eternal, endless. You decided to make your fury endless, too. 

* 

“How are things with you? How’s the wedding planning?” 

“Leave me alone, Namjoon.” 

* 

Your name. You ignored it. 

Your name again. You left the room. 

* 

“Are you just never going to speak to me again, is that it?” 

“No, Namjoon, that’s not it.” 

“Then what?” 

You turned to face him, exasperated, terrified. 

“Then what do you want me to say? I know you and Hayeon are getting divorced. Of course, I know that and you know that I know it, so why ask?” 

His face twitched, in surprise, confusion, irritation. 

“Well, don’t you want to say anything?” 

“No, I don’t. Enjoy your divorce. Goodbye.” 

* 

Then, weeks later, a letter arrived for you. It languished in your postbox for almost a fortnight, because you received post so infrequently that you almost never checked it. Somewhere underneath piles of leaflets and advertising was a handwritten letter addressed to you. You didn’t recognise the handwriting but it didn’t matter because you knew who it would be from. Knew it in your guts.  

You were grateful that Tian was out, that you had time to sit and read it properly.  

You may want to burn this, it began, but please at least read it first. I have a lot to say and I know you won’t let me say it to your face—I may not be brave enough to say it to your face after all this time—so I have written it down. I wrote it once and scrapped it, wrote it a second time and tried to make myself sound resolved and wise and like I knew, at any point, that I knew what I was doing, but I can’t hide from you and you already know all my worst traits, every bad thing I've ever done, so I’m just going to state things plainly and show myself as I am.  

I love you. I’m not sorry for it. I’m sorry for all sorts of things but I won’t apologise for loving you, not now, not ever.  

You were right, when I came to you that first time, it wasn’t about you. It was about Hayeon and my own ego and a destructive need to fuck things up (I’m good at this, as you already know). It was not about you but I need you to believe that it couldn’t have been just anybody. I came to you because I was wounded and hurt and angry and I knew you would ease that pain. I liked you and trusted you; you were my friend.  

I hadn’t known what I was going to do. I didn't have a plan. I don’t think you will believe that, but it’s true. Everything I had, everything I was, as a person, a human, a half of that whole, was tied up with Hayeon; we had been together for so long, even before we were together-together, and I felt as though she had spat in the face of that. She had. She had denigrated and undermined the foundation of our lives—hers, mine, ours. I was angry and I wanted to do something I couldn’t take back. I wanted something that was mine and mine alone. I wanted something that had nothing to do with her (though, of course, unavoidably, it was to do with her, that reaction in me, that impulse). I felt I would never forget the images of her with another man and I wanted something that I could think about, when that image came to me, something that would replace it, would remind me that I had something of my own, too. I had something special with someone special. You.  

So you see it could never have been anyone. I am glad that it was you. Looking back on it, it feels inevitable, that I came to you and that you let me in. I am grateful to you. Despite everything that I have done and you have done, everything we’ve said, I am grateful. Even if you rip up this letter, if you burn it, tear it to shreds and soak it in water, I am grateful to you.  

I have done everything wrong. I see that now. I have done wrong by everyone: me, Hayeon, you, even Hajoon, though he is still so young and understands so little, I hope it doesn’t affect his future. I am sorry for that. Please believe me: I am sorry.  

In my first draft of this letter, here I wrote all the things I wish I had done or said. There were a lot of them. I won’t do that in this one, though, because it doesn’t matter now, does it? I can’t take any of it back. I can’t make better choices in the past. I can only make better choices for the future.  

So I separated from Hayeon, a thing I should have done many, many years ago. We are both much happier now. She has a boyfriend, I don’t know if you know. He is a good man and he is kind to Hajoon and I thought I would be jealous, would be inclined to find fault where there was none, but I haven’t. Hayeon and I get on better now than ever. Co-parenting is sometimes hard and often complicated, but we are better parents because of it. We are able to be better people because of it. And Hajoon gets to see his parents happier than they were; Hayeon and Minho can show him what a happy relationship is like.  

I know you are happy. I am as happy for you as I can be, though I am also sad and lonely and I miss you more than I have any right to. I know and I accept that I have done so many things wrong and I have hurt you, not just once but repeatedly, and I am sorry for that. Truly, deeply, eternally sorry. I love you. I will always be here for you if you ever need anything, even from a thousand miles away.  

Now this letter is in your hands, to be dealt with however you wish. So am I. 

Yours always,  

Namjoon. 

It took you a long time to read. Because you hesitated over reading it, unsure if you really wanted to know what he had to say. Because your eyes were blurry with tears. Because there were never enough nails in this coffin. Namjoon, wherever he was, whatever he did, you loved him. Had never stopped, not for a second since you started. Since you met. Since your heart fell at his feet. You’d done everything you could to fight it, to hide from it, to kill it. It would not be suppressed. 

* 

Namjoon never received a reply from you. What would you have said? What could you have said? There was nothing in the letter you hadn’t really already known. He knew everything you could say, too. So you hid the letter in a diary and tried to forget its existence. 

Minho had proposed to Hayeon. She had said yes. They were planning a wedding—a proper one this time, a big event with everyone they knew in attendance, not the tiny, family-only, rushed job that she’d had with Namjoon. Namjoon tried, in his worse moments, not to be happy for them, but there was no denying that they were a beautiful couple and Minho was great with Hajoon (as were his parents, who didn’t seem to care that their son was marrying a divorcée with a kid). In the absence of a father, Hayeon had asked Namjoon if he would walk her down the aisle; he had been unexpectedly touched and was genuinely looking forward to it. He loved her, in a sweeter and deeper way than he had before, and he was so glad that, whatever he might have done wrong, she had this happiness now.  

You had been invited. You had RSVP’d yes. That had surprised Namjoon because, according to everyone else, you had fallen off the grid. Responding to messages vaguely and intermittently, socials all dead. Despite the fact that you were supposed to be planning your own wedding. He tried not to worry. Tried and failed. Tried and failed, too, not to be anxious about seeing you again.  

Would you be happy? Would you want to speak to him? Would you still be angry? Would you ignore him and walk away as you had done before? How had his letter been received? He still didn’t know. As far as you were concerned, it seemed, Namjoon did not exist, but you wouldn’t be able to avoid him at the wedding.  

* 

 “Look at you,” Namjoon cooed, beaming at Hayeon, in her dress and veil, clutching her flowers tightly.  

“Do I look alright?” 

“You look beautiful.”  

“I’m really nervous, is that weird?” 

“I don’t think so.” 

“I don’t remember being nervous when we did this.” 

Namjoon laughed. 

“We didn’t exactly do this. A quick trip to the district office isn’t really a wedding.” 

Hayeon smiled but didn’t laugh. 

“It felt like a wedding at the time, though. I liked it.” 

Namjoon nodded, knowing that he couldn’t lie and that she would see through it if he did. 

“I’m really happy for you,” he said instead. “Minho is a good guy and I’m glad you found him.” 

Her eyes sparkled with tears she tried to blink back, tipping her head as if to tip them back inside. 

“Thank you,” she replied, her voice watery, too. “We’ve been through a lot and I’m so grateful to you for everything, especially Hajoon, and divorcing me, and being friendly to Minho. You know I could never have said yes to him if I didn’t know you would be supportive. You’re still my family and I love you.” 

They hugged, careful not to smudge make-up, not to step on her dress. 

“I love you, too,” Namjoon said, a lump forming in his own throat, grateful that something good had come from all his mistakes, that they hadn’t ruined her the way they had him. “Ok, shall we do this?” 

* 

He looked for you as he walked down the aisle. Waved back at Hajoon waving from the front row, but scanned the crowd for you. Couldn’t pick you out on the short walk to the altar. Tried not to be obviously distracted as he stood at the front, next to Hayeon, handed her off to Minho, who looked as handsome and happy as he ever had.  

He spotted you, towards the back, eyes determinedly forward while everyone else let their gazes roam: Hayeon, Minho, the flowers, the other guests, the gardens outside. His heart squeezed. It was a wedding, for fuck’s sake. If he didn’t take this opportunity, on this of all days, he would be a bigger idiot than he thought. 

* 

You weren’t easy to catch, though. He knew you were doing it deliberately. Maybe that should have stopped him. It didn’t. 

It was long into the night, booze flowing, disco dancing, when he finally caught you, waiting for the bathroom.  

“Can we talk?” he asked, cutting through the niceties, which would only have given you a greater opportunity to tell him to go fuck himself. 

“No. I have to pee.” 

“Ok, you can use the bathroom in my room.” 

You scoffed. 

“Nice line.” 

“It’s not a line. I want to talk to you.” 

“No.” 

And you stalked off, apparently no longer in need of a bathroom. 

* 

He caught you again, outside this time, leaning against the wall, looking up at the sky.  

“Wondering when is an acceptable time to leave?” he asked, not sure if he was joking or being kind of a dick. 

“Oh, I’m long past that, no worries. Not that anyone would have missed me even if I’d left early.” 

“I’d miss you.” 

“Don’t start.” 

Namjoon moved closer, touched your arm with just his fingertips. Spoke softly, tried not to sound as desperate as he felt. 

“Please can we talk?” 

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath. Then you said yes. Well- 

“Ok, you talk,” is what you said. “What is it you have to say to me, Namjoon? Got some magic words that’ll fix my life? Because that’s pretty much all I want to hear. If you’ve got some other shit to say, I’m not sure I’m interested.”  

“How’s Tian?”  

He thought he was treading lightly on safe territory but you whipped your head around to face him with rage in your eyes. 

“Are you fucking joking?”  

Your voice was strained with anger.  

“What?” 

“Fuck off, Namjoon!” you shouted. “Just fuck off!! Forever!!! Ok? Fucking leave me alone!!” 

But he wouldn’t. Should have. Might have on a different day, if he were completely sober, if he were a different person. 

“No.” 

And you looked angrier still.  

“You can shout at me if you want,” he continued. “And kick and scream and whatever, but you can’t just avoid me and ignore me for the rest of time. Even if you live in Hong Kong, you have family and friends here and we’re going to fucking work this shit out. Ok?” 

He couldn’t read the look on your face, then, but you weren’t arguing or walking away, so he took you by the hand and waited for you to pull it back. When you didn’t, he wasted no more time and led you back inside, up the stairs to his hotel room, where you could kick and scream to your heart’s delight and it wouldn’t ruin the party.  

When he shut the door and turned to you, your face had settled into something mean. 

“You know I don’t live in Hong Kong anymore, right?” 

No, he did not know.  

“Uh, no.” 

“You know whose fault that is?” 

He felt like it was probably his, though he wasn’t sure why. 

“No.” 

“Of course you don’t! Because it couldn’t possibly be your fault, could it? Couldn't possibly have anything to do with you! Because nothing is your fault! You’re just a fucking bleeding heart, aren’t you, Namjoon?” 

He didn’t really know, now, what he had been expecting. Could see that maybe his hopes had clouded his judgement. He had told you you could kick and scream but he hadn’t realised that you really were going to. You weren’t usually this angry and he had no idea what you meant: not living in Hong Kong? Then where? Seoul? And he didn’t know, hadn’t known; no one had told him? 

“That’s not what I think at all,” he answered, voice calm, trying not to respond in kind, not to let the strength of his own feelings escalate this. “Lots of it is my fault but I didn’t even know you had moved back here—when? When did that happen?” 

“As if you fucking care!” 

“Of course I care! I love yo-” 

“DON’T!” 

With a finger raised against him, shaking lightly. 

“Don’t you fucking dare with that shit, ok? Stop fucking lying to m-” 

“It’s not a lie! Why would I lie?” 

“Because you can’t love me! Don’t you get it? We were nothing! Nothing! A fucking distraction for you and nothing m-” 

“Now you don’t.”  

Namjoon could feel his blood heat, feel the anger rising in him. He didn’t want to be angry with you; he didn’t want to have this argument but how could you still be saying this? Still be saying that what you had with him was nothing? It wasn’t nothing to him and he knew it wasn’t nothing to you.  

“Who’s the one lying now?” he asked. “You know it’s not nothing. If it were nothing, you wouldn’t be here spitting fucking feathers at me! Tell me: why are you back?” 

“Why do you think?! Because I fucked it, Namjoon! Because of you! Because it’s always fucking you! Jesus Christ, I moved a thousand miles away and it’s still you! Still you that I let fuck up my entire life over and over again like some insane moron! And you stand there, have the fucking gall to ask me why? How? What happened? You happened, Namjoon! You fucking existed and we met and then it was all fucked!”  

“Sorry.” 

You wiped your eyes, forgetting about your make-up, smudging it, smearing it—remembering too late to be delicate, swiping a finger carefully beneath your lashes.  

“I really fucking hate you sometimes.” 

“Yeah, I hate myself sometimes, too.”  

“I don’t want that.” 

“I don’t know what you want.” 

You didn’t answer that. Namjoon didn’t expect you to, not really.  

“Can I talk?” he asked.  

You shrugged, staring into the floor as if it might serve answers. 

“Ok, well, I’m sorry you’re back, I guess.” 

You scoffed, no heat in it. 

“Ok, maybe I’m not that sorry, I don’t know. I’m sorry you’re miserable; I'm sorry you hate me. I’m sorry that Hong Kong didn’t work out. Did... Is Tian with you here?” 

“What do you fucking think?” 

“Ok, well, sorry for that, too, I guess. Or not sorry, not really, because we’re both here now, aren’t we?” 

“Don’t, Namjoon-” 

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t suggest we get ‘back together’. We’ve never been together. There isn’t anything for us to go back to.” 

“I don’t know why you keep saying this! Why are you trying to deny what we had?” 

“NAMJOON!”  

Angry again, arms raised, a resurgence of energy.  

“For fuck’s sake, STOP!” you continued. “We had a-, god, I don’t know, an affair? We didn’t have a relationship. Did we date, Namjoon? Did we tell our friends? Do they even know now?!” 

It hadn’t really occurred to Namjoon to ask. At the beginning, he had assumed they did not know because that is what he wanted to believe. Now, he assumed they knew—surely they did? Could they not have known? They were always a little skittish when it came to you; were they the same when they talked to you about him? They had to know. How could this thing, which had dominated more than five years of his life, have passed them by unnoticed?  

“So we weren’t anything,” you continued. “It was all a mistake. A mistake that I’ve somehow let ruin everything. I think I'm worse off than I was when I left for Hong Kong in the first place.” 

You looked up at him. 

“Do you ever wish you never met me?” 

“No, never.” 

“Oh.” 

Namjoon chose to assume that those words were just anger, not a reflection of what you really felt.  

“I’m not sorry we met. I can’t be. Even if I’m sorry that you’re miserable, that I’ve caused you pain, that I’ve fucked so many things up for you. I'm sorry for those things but I’m not sorry we met, I’m not sorry I love you.” 

“Stop it, Namjoon. You don’t love me and I’m going to tell you why.” 

You steered him into a chair, sat him down, sighed heavily. You sagged, all your energy wiped in an instant. You looked tired. Looked older than the bright, young thing you had been when all this started—which of course you were. You both were. Older but not necessarily wiser, Namjoon thought. 

“Before any of this started, I was in love with you. We all know that, right? I loved you and couldn’t have you and that was fine. Not fine but it’s how it was. Then you caught Hayeon cheating and you needed to do something destructive, isn’t that what you said? Something you couldn’t take back. Me. And then it kept happening because, despite appearances, you and Hayeon weren’t meant to be but you were too much of a fucking coward to ever leave her and then she got pregnant and there was no way you would leave your kid. So you trapped yourself in a relationship you hadn’t wanted for a long time and I became your escape. 

“You can say it was about me or it became about me or whatever else you want to but that’s not true. It was about me being not-Hayeon. It was about you having something that she didn’t know about and couldn’t touch. Having something that was just yours. Something that made you feel like less of a trapped fucking loser.  

“Then I, for once, did the right thing and I left and you had all the time in the world to idealise and fantasise about what we had and what we could have had if only everything were different. And it took you so long to leave Hayeon that now, when you could have been dating and looking for someone who would make you happy, all you have to cling to is me. Memories and fantasies of me. Because you’re still a fucking coward, Namjoon. You don’t want to meet someone else because it’s horrible and scary. You want me to say yes so you can welcome me into this fantasy life you’ve created for us. Except that it doesn’t exist. I’m not a fantasy! None of this is! It’s not real! You don’t love me; you love the idea of me that you’ve concocted! You love the dream life that you have spent years perfecting! 

“But that’s not real! That’s why I keep telling you we’re nothing! Because we are! Dreams are nothing, fantasy is nothing, we are nothing!” 

“What would you do if I kissed you right now?” 

“NAMJOON! FUCK!” 

“Answer the question.” 

You might have been right, at least partly, but you were also partly wrong. You appeared to have forgotten that, before anything sexual happened between the two of you, you were friends. Good friends. You enjoyed each other’s company, made each other laugh, lent a shoulder or a helping hand when needed. Maybe Namjoon had spent a little too much time thinking about you but he would never, ever accept that you were nothing.  

Death by a thousand cuts. You felt shredded. Slashed to ribbons. Somehow still so raw after all this time: wounds where there should have been scar tissue, rough and ugly but stronger than it was. It beggared belief that you could still feel like this. That you managed to fall in love with another man, that you agreed to marry him, and then still let it all be ruined by the thought, the possibility, the memory of Namjoon.  

It hurt that he kept insisting you were something more than a fling. Because if it were true, why didn’t he leave her? Why did he stay? For all that time? Why did he let you go? If he cared so much now, why not then? Why was it not worth the leap, the fear, the risk? Why were you not worth it?  

Now it was easy. He was single and he knew you. Too well. Knew that, even after all this time, there was space in your heart for him. You hated it. You loved him. You knew if he kissed you, there would be no pushing him away. You had put a thousand miles and five years between you and it hadn’t worked.  

You took a deep breath, attempted to steel yourself for the thousandth time, feeling wrung out, brittle and fragile. 

“You don’t get to ask me that, Namjoon. You don’t get to kiss me. Not anymore.” 

He ducked his head—you weren’t sure if it was a nod—and then he looked at you, thoughtful, for a moment. 

“Ok. I understand.” 

He stood and when he took your hands in his, you didn’t have the heart to snatch them back. His hands were warm—always were—and having let him hold them, you had to fight the urge to squeeze. 

“I love you and you don’t believe that. I get it. If you’re back now, back in Seoul for good, I would like the opportunity to prove to you that I do love you and that there is something worth having here. Can I do that?”  

* 

You stood in your hotel room, trying to breathe deeply, trying not to lose it. Because what had you come back for, if not this? Namjoon at your feet. If you were being honest with yourself, wasn’t that why? Why you called off your wedding, left your fiancé, left the country, and came running back? Because Namjoon was single now and telling you he loved you and wasn’t that what you had always wanted to hear?  

When he was in front of you, right there in your presence, you couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand him being there, not being yours, not being so close to you you couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stand that you couldn’t stand it. Felt every fibre of your being tight and twisted with the effort of refusal.  

When he wasn’t in front of you, his absence clung like cobwebs. Sticky, piling up immediately after you’ve brushed them away. When it was just you and your broken heart and your confusion and your hurt, you wanted him. As much as you ever had. But you couldn’t let him.  

You took off your make-up and stood under the shower, letting the water wash over you, trying to let it relax you, but your brain wouldn’t stop. Your brain wouldn’t stop asking questions and your heart wouldn’t stop telling you to just let him. To go back to him.  

You wondered if coming back was a mistake. If you should have just married Tian and stayed in Hong Kong. If you should have broken up with Tian anyway but stayed in Hong Kong. Because if you had stayed, you wouldn’t be here. If you hadn’t come back- 

Who were you kidding? If you hadn’t come back, you would still have been wrestling with this. It wasn’t over. Hadn’t been over. You ran away to avoid a messy ending but it also meant you avoided a conclusion. Closure.  

What if you didn’t want closure?  

As you stepped into your pyjamas and drew back the bed covers, you asked yourself: if you have come back for Namjoon, why are you pushing him away? If It's not over, why can’t you let it be something? 

You were asking yourself why he wasn’t willing to take a risk, to have taken it so long ago, but there you were, not taking the risk for him. Was he worth it or was he not? If he was worth leaving your fiancé for, was he not worth the risk now? Worth breaking down the walls you’d carefully constructed around his place in your heart? 

And maybe you were tired. Maybe it was watching his ex-wife marry the man she loved—a thing you hadn’t been able to do. Maybe it was foolishness or maybe it was you finally doing the right thing.  

You slipped your feet into slippers and padded back to Namjoon’s room. You knocked. Waited. Knocked again. Were sure he wasn’t going to answer, were turning away from the door, when it opened.  

He looked like he had been sleeping, eyes small and squinting in the light, door only half-opened, half-hiding his almost nakedness. He looked surprised and then confused.  

You didn’t let yourself stop to speak, to explain yourself. You pushed gently against the door so he would stand back, so you could reach out and take his face in your hands, so you could lean up onto your tiptoes and kiss him.  

He didn’t resist, didn’t pull back, didn’t stop to ask the questions you were sure he wanted to. He wrapped his arms around you, pulled you closer, let the door close as he walked you both carefully into the room.  

It reminded you of the beginning of the end. When he had come to you and said nothing but kissed you deeply and slowly and fucked you like there was no one else, could never be anyone else. Fucked you like he had never fucked you before and then told you that Hayeon was pregnant.  

This felt like that. Slow and full and heavy with the weight of things unspoken, years of unexpressed pain, joy, love, pleasure. It felt like a dream, like a memory hazy with age, like a veil drawn between you and reality, because that was all it had been for so long: remembered, dreamt, imagined. Now real, now warm, flushed in your hands, soft beneath them. Now everything you had wanted and tried not to want, yours for the taking.  

* 

When it was over, when you lay in his arms, when you felt his breath shift, about to speak, you tensed. 

“Don’t,” you asked quietly. “Please don’t say anything.” 

A pause. 

“Ok.” 

He kissed your head and you felt it anyway: everything he wanted to say. I love you and what does this mean and are you ok and what happens now. You didn’t have any answers for him, didn’t want the questions asked. You just wanted to stay there, warm and sticky and sleepy and with him. Safe, in the dawn hours, from the world, from the daylight, from the morning after.  

* 

You woke to the sound of knocking at the door. For a second, disorientated, then immediately overfull. Namjoon slipped out of bed and tied a hotel robe around himself.  

“Daddy!” 

“Joonie!” 

His son. 

A gasp you tried to hide beneath the covers. Heat in your face: fury, embarrassment, shame. You’d never wanted kids; had always taken the relevant precautions to avoid it. Until last night. Over-tired, over-wrought, whatever the excuse, you cringed silently to yourself, trying to feel disbelief that you would be so careless. Trying because, well, it was Namjoon and when did you ever do the right thing, the sensible thing when it came to him?  

Not ever. 

You listened to their conversation, grateful that Namjoon was keeping him at the door, with a growing sense of panic. There was still time, but the sooner the better, which meant you had to get out, get home, get to a women’s clinic. Your head was swimming, heart hammering. The second you heard the door close, you jumped out of bed, gathering your clothes, hastily putting them on, tripping over your pyjama trousers, crashing into Namjoon. 

“Whoa- hey, what’s going on?” 

“I have to go. I have to go.” 

And you left with no more explanation, running to your own hotel room, throwing everything haphazardly into a bag, throwing your key card at the reception desk on your way out.  

* 

You considered, for a second, if pregnancy might not have been the easier option. You lay on your floor, breathing carefully, eyes closed, trying desperately not to hurl. It had been more than a couple of hours since you’d taken the requisite pill, so you could be sick reasonably safely, but you weren’t sure you’d make it to the bathroom in time. The cramps were unlike any you’d experienced before. Breathing was about all you could manage.  

You had told Namjoon, as you sat anxiously on the subway, that you would explain later. You had left him on read when he asked if he could come over. You didn’t have the headspace to think about the conversation that would ensue if he did. Could only think about the possibility of pregnancy; swore you could feel it already happening inside you; could not stop the horrifying fantasy of what it would mean if you were pregnant, if you had to carry a baby, raise a child.  

There were worse people to do it with than Namjoon, but you didn’t want to do it with anyone. Ever. So now you were useless on the floor, sicker than a dog, listening to the insistent buzz of your phone on the coffee table. You knew it would be him, weren’t deliberately ignoring him, just couldn’t move enough to pick up.  

* 

Still prone, still cramping, slightly less nauseous than you were, you stretched to grab your phone that had buzzed itself to the edge of the table. You called Namjoon. 

“What the fuck, dude?”  

You probably deserved worse than that. 

“I’m literally on my way to your apartment right now. Jimin gave me your new address. Are you even going to let me in?” 

You took a careful breath, focused hard on speaking, slowly and evenly. 

“I’m not... deliberately ignoring you... I just haven’t... been able to get to... my phone, ok?” 

“Are you ok?” 

“No.” 

“Shit. Uh-” 

“It’s fine... I’ll text you... so you can let... yourself in.” 

“Do you want me to bring you anything?” 

“No, thanks.” 

“Ok, I’ll be over as quickly as I can.” 

“Ok.” 

* 

Namjoon’s footsteps across your apartment were heavy and loud but his arms were strong and he lifted you onto the sofa, pressed a hand against your forehead. 

“What’s going on?” 

“I’m stupid.” 

“Ok, sure, but what’s going on? Why did you bolt? Are you dying?” 

“All good questions.”  

You wanted to answer, to explain, but you were too distracted by trying to ignore the pain—the cramps, the headache, the nausea that was returning again as your stomach started to hunger.  

“Sorry... I just... It’s bad.” 

“What’s bad?” 

You gestured to the coffee table, where you had left the box and its prescription.  

“Oh.” 

You had closed your eyes, couldn’t see Namjoon’s reaction, see what he was expecting from you.  

“So you’re not... And we didn’t... Right.” 

“Sorry... I just... I just forgot... I wasn’-” 

“Yeah, no, it's fine. It’s not like I brought it up either. Guess we both should’ve been a little more careful.” 

You heard him sit in the armchair perpendicular to yours. 

“Didn’t help being woken by Hajoon either.” 

“Actually, that was what made me realise.” 

He laughed. 

“I can’t have another kid by accident. People will start thinking I’m some kind of stupid.” 

“Start?” 

You heard the quiet snort of breath, saw in your mind his rolled eyes. 

“That’s why you ran out though? No other reason?” 

“As soon as I realised... I couldn’t think of anything else... I panicked. I'm sorry.” 

Namjoon didn’t respond and you were happy not to talk, grateful that he wasn’t forcing a difficult conversation on you.  

After a minute or two, you heard him stand, start opening cupboards, moving about your apartment. 

“What are you doing?” you called as loudly as you could manage. 

“One sec.” 

He moved around. He boiled the kettle. He gently lifted your t-shirt and lay a hot water bottle across your abdomen. You sighed. 

“Oh, that’s nice... How did you know?” 

“You know I was married.” 

“Oh shit, really? ... Had no idea.” 

“I suppose now isn’t a good time to talk.” 

You shook your head.  

“Do you want me to go?” 

You shook your head. 

You wanted a lot of things. Were surer now than you had been before that you couldn’t have them.  

Because if there’s one thing a potential pregnancy scare can do for you, it’s making it really clear to you whether or not you want kids. You hadn’t had any doubt about that before now, but you had forgotten to account for Hajoon. The light of Namjoon’s life. His child. His and Hayeon’s son and now Minho’s step-son. You didn’t want to be a step-mother, not a mother of any kind. Didn’t want to worry about the school run, moving to the catchment area of a better school, the germs and illnesses kids brought with them, the homework, the patience required, the eternity of it, the endlessness, the life that will never again be just yours. 

You knew Namjoon wanted kids. Not one kid. Kids. Wanted Hajoon to have siblings. Wanted to be a dad more than just once. Wanted a great, big brood of them.  

You knew, too, that he knew you didn’t want that. Any of it. You didn’t know if he had accounted for that. If all his fantasies had included babies anyway. If he thought you would change your mind. You knew you wouldn’t, not even for him.  

* 

Namjoon stayed for the remainder of the afternoon. He made you rice porridge (the Namjoon you had known wouldn't have even known where to start). He refreshed your hot water bottle. He rubbed your back. He sounded sad when he said he had to go. 

“I have to go and get Hajoon from Hayeon’s parents. They’ve had him since yesterday and it’s getting late for his dinner.” 

“Yeah, of course.” 

Namjoon wished he had said more. Maybe you couldn’t have talked but maybe you could have listened. He had thought long and hard about what he’d say, though most of it flew out the window once he realised why you’d left in such a rush. He was surprised you’d taken the risk; frustrated with himself for not having checked, for being reckless. He’d done that before and it had cost him you last time, too.  

He knew you didn’t want kids—and it wasn’t exactly how he’d have chosen to have another one, either—but he was surprised by the strength of his hope, impossible as it was, and of his disappointment. He thought about Hajoon, the single greatest joy in his life. You would be an amazing mother to him, to any child, if you wanted to be.  

You didn’t want to be. 

As he sat in your apartment, watching you rest, watching the sickly pallor of your face be replaced by its usual glow, he thought about the future and everything you said last night. About his fantasising, about how unreal it all was.  

He was so sure. Had been so sure. About all of it. You. Him. How right you would be, were. How easy it would be. How happy you would be. Now it felt like a house of cards. He didn’t want to ask, anymore. Didn’t want to hear you say that his son was the reason you couldn’t go through with this. Didn’t want to feel the twinge in his chest that said he wouldn’t choose—as if choice would even come into it. Between his son and anyone else, there was no choice. Hajoon always.  

Maybe you were right, because in his fantasies, he would never have to choose. In his fantasies, sure, you didn’t want more kids, but you loved the one he had already. Hajoon with four loving parents. Overflowing with love.  

He thought about you doing it reluctantly. Saying yeah ok, we’ll be together, I guess I can be a step-mum, if I have to. If you have to. If you have to. It made him sadder than he had words to express. 

* 

It was days before he found the courage to contact you. He noticed that you hadn’t contacted him either but he was grateful for it, because he wouldn’t have been ready to have this conversation. He wasn’t sure that he was ready, but it had to happen. Sooner or later. Might as well be now. Before anything else could be said. Before he saw you again and faltered, his weakness overpowering his strength. 

“Hi,” he greeted you simply, opening the door to let you in. 

“Hi.” 

It was awkward, though much less strained than it had been in years past.  

He offered you a seat and you took it. He took the one next to you. Neither of you started. You looked at each other. Namjoon took the time to study your face, as if it were the last time he’d see it: the slope of your nose; the swell of your lips; the tiny mole underneath your right eye; the slight dampness at your hairline because Korea was as hot and humid as it had ever been; your eyes, looking sorry, looking sad. Eyes that had been so often angry with him, sad, frustrated, guarded, now open and soft and sparkling.  

He loved you. As much as he ever had. Maybe more now because it was ending, because all of his dreaming couldn’t save it. Because it had taken this long; he had thought you were inevitable, but he could see now that this was. That heartbreak was. That it had taken him so long to get his shit together that he hadn’t seen this coming. He had spent all his time pretending to be happy in a relationship that wasn’t, then wishing for you, waiting for you. He had spent no time preparing for this. Preparing for the possibility that there would be no you. That this could end in a way that wasn’t the two of you together, forever.  

He couldn’t bring himself to say it. The things that needed to be said. But you weren’t saying them either. He swallowed, fidgeted, preparing to say something, though he didn’t know what. 

“We both know, right?” you asked, voice quiet.  

You didn’t need an answer. You knew. He knew. The world knew. 

“It’s Hajoon, isn’t it?” he asked. 

You physically recoiled, eyebrows drawing close. 

“Namjoon... It’s not... Don’t put it like that. It’s not Hajoon; Hajoon is great, cute, wonderful. It’s all kids. It’s that you want lots of them and I want none.” 

“I don’t have to have lots-” 

“Namjoon, you want lots. Aren’t we past denying ourselves what we want?” 

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”  

“Not in the long-run. Look at what happened with you and Hayeon. You denied that you wanted out and look how long it took for you both to be happ-” 

“I’m not happy. I’m not happy right now. This isn’t what I want.” 

“You know what I mean.” 

He ran his hands through his hair, swore through gritted teeth. When he looked back at you, your eyes reflected the tears in his. 

“But I love you.” 

You nodded, looked down. 

“I love you, too.”  

It was the first time you’d said it. Namjoon wished he could have been happy to hear it. Not heartbroken.  

“And there’s no way-” 

“You know there isn’t.” 

You laughed to stop yourself from crying, because he knew you and he knew that was what it was.  

“Just think if we’d actually stopped to fucking think about this at any point in the last five years, we’d have saved ourselves this mess!” 

Namjoon couldn’t laugh, couldn’t raise a smile.  

“I don’t... I don’t want this to be over.” 

“Well, it barely started so-” 

“You think that makes this easier? Is it easy for you?” 

You scoffed, your breath hitching. 

“Does it look like it’s easy for me, Namjoon? I’ve actually been in this a lot longer than you have, don’t you forget.” 

As if he could. As if he had ever forgotten that there were years of friendship behind you, friendship that could have been more. If only he had seen. If only he had had the guts to end things with Hayeon before he did. Before any of this.  

Though it wouldn’t have changed this ending, would it? At some point, you’d have ended up here. Inevitable, the word resounded in his head and he hated it. Hated that it was true. Hated that he could roll the die a thousand times and it would never show your number. That he could shake this magic eight ball a thousand ways from Sunday and it would never show ‘yes’. 

You had been so close. He couldn’t decide if he was grateful or not, that you had one last night. That he had fresh memories stinging in the fresh wounds of his heart. Was he grateful that it had come to this: you, giving in; you, letting him in; you, loving him, letting him love you, only for it to fall to pieces? Would he have rather you kept pushing him away, acting as if you didn’t love him, as if he couldn’t love you? Would that have been easier? Would he always have wondered? Would he have let it ruin the next ten years of his life?  

“We can’t-” you said, wiping tears from your cheeks, blinking hard. “We’re toast.”  

“Well, when you put it like that, sure, it’s easy. Not sure I’m that bothered.”  

And he hated himself for the sarcasm but he couldn’t bring himself to be sincere. Sincere was the tears on his water line, the embarrassing break in his voice.  

“Namjoon.” 

You stood, arms wide, welcoming. Like you hadn’t done for so many years. He went to you, wrapped you up, held you close, for the last time—it would be the last time like this he knew. He hiccupped, breath trapped in his throat. He tried to breathe you in, remember every tiny detail: the exact shade of every strand of hair, the notes of your perfume, the exact weight of your body against his, the slight tug of the hair at the back of his neck; he swore to himself that he would commit this to memory, never forget it. 

You drew back and took his face in your hands, rested your forehead against his nose, kissed him. One last time. If he could have frozen the moment, trapped it in amber, kept you just like this: sweet and soft and warm and his.  

The beep of Namjoon’s door lock sounded, followed by the whir of unlocking. 

“Dad!” Hajoon cried, thumping his bag down, throwing off his shoes.  

He was supposed to be at a sleepover, out for the night. 

“Changho got sick so I had to come home!” 

You sprang apart, both wiping tears, sniffling, trying to look presentable. 

“He got sick?” Namjoon asked, voice thick. 

“Yeah! His dad made me come home.” 

“Oh, that’s too bad, buddy.” 

Namjoon knelt towards his son, picked him up and placed him on his knee. He saw you turn away, collect yourself. Saw you, as Hajoon recounted the glorious story of what happened when a kid ate too many sweets and then went too fast on the roundabout, gesture towards the door, move towards it without a word. He heard the lock let you out, then lock you out. Could do nothing to stop you with his son on his knee.  

[gray-r-regan]

Something nobody talks about but everyone needs to hear:

If you feel as though you need to embellish what happened to you to make it sound worse when explaining it to someone, you are not "attention whoring," "being dramatic," or a compulsive liar (actually, you might be a compulsive liar, but that's related to what I'm talking about, so please feel zero judgment from me and stay tuned).

If people had not already and repeatedly dismissed, negated, downsized and otherwise invalidated your suffering and been unwilling or unable to give you the help you're looking for by communicating the situation, you would never feel driven to make it seem "serious enough" to warrant help.

You started out talking, then you started yelling, now you're screaming, and the world has its ears plugged.

You are escalating your attempts to get the validation, reassurance, the healing that you need, and that is a survival mechanism. That is you being a fighter.

That is the pain in you saying DO YOU NOT SEE THAT I WANT TO LIVE SO BADLY THAT I AM SCREAMING ABOUT IT?

Your addictions and other "negative" behaviors are saying this exact same thing.

They are saying "I will do anything to survive, and right now I have to, because I am not getting the help I need."

The sad truth about this world: sometimes you have to scream to force it to pay attention. You shouldn't have to. Talking should be enough. Saying it once should be enough.

Whatever happened to you was serious. It was terrible. It was wrong. It never should have happened. I may not see you, but believe me, I see you. I do. I know your heart hurts, and you feel like someone scraped out your thoracic cavity with a melon-baller and enjoyed it.

I know your addictions and your numbness came about when you screamed and screamed and screamed and no one came for you and if you are crying, please let yourself cry. You need to cry. You need to beat the shit out of your pillow and scream and get angry at the ones who hurt you and expel that cancer through tears and movement, writing, art, running, kickboxing singing screaming into the void or doing fucking macrame, whatever. Not headbanging. We don't want neck injuries. There are a lot of disabled guitarists out there.

I'm here; I'll wait, please come back, it's going to get better.

The food, the phone, the games, the drugs, the meds, the alcohol -- they're pacifiers. You need something you can't find, something others cannot or will not give you, so you use these because they make it hurt a little less and you are so, so tired of the hurt, and you have to function and stay on your feet, for fuck's sake, you have the kid(s), the dishes, the laundry, school, the dog, the cat, the pet rock to be strong for and take care of, so you needed SOMETHING to keep you from falling apart. I know.

The thing is, it might be all well and good and socially acceptable to quiet yourself like this, because people don't like the messiness of other people's emotions, needs, wants, honesty and healing (that's why they abuse autistic people through ABA), but I want them for you, and you want them, even though you're afraid you won't survive facing them (you will).

What's going to kill you eventually is not facing them. And I know you don't really want to die. You just want the pain to stop. You don't want to be staring down a future where unhappiness and numbness, fatigue and anger are the only things that exist. You want happiness, you want moments of ease and joy, but maybe it's been so long you don't remember what that's like, and it seems like asking for a goddamn pony when your parents can't make rent.

I am here holding space for you, holding your hand or your shoulder if you want or need that, hanging out on the other wall if you don't, and I'm telling you the only way out of the well is through it. Upwards. Through all that shit you're afraid of because you already faced it on the way down. I'm down here with you, telling you the reason no one will lower a rope or a ladder is because they can't -- the well you're in doesn't exist for them, just like theirs don't exist in your world (the only reason I can well-hop is because I clawed my way out of mine, and I'm here because I don't want you to also spend thirty-five point five years doing it, or worse, die at the bottom).

You can give me the reasons you can't climb out, and I will listen.

Again, you gotta survive. Gotta work. Parent. Be a spouse. Avoid the wrath of abusive parents who can't handle their own emotions, much less yours.

I hear that.

And I tell you this:

There is no reason good enough to keep living like this. No person more important than you are. You are equal to everyone from your next door neighbor to Thich Nhat Hanh (he'd have told you the same, kind of is, in fact, and you'll see how if you stick with me), so anyone putting themselves and their wants and needs above you is wrong to do it.

And yes, it's gonna suck and it's gonna be painful and scary to feel all of that. Why else do we try anything to avoid it? Nobody ever taught us we can sit and feel it and be compassionate and kind to ourselves as we work it out without acting on it destructively -- but you can.

The sooner you start, the less of it you'll have to get through, and the faster you can learn to take the new things that come at you and handle them before they can be put away and start to fester.

It's like the flu (I have covid, currenly, for the sixth time. Luckily, you can't catch the plague from an apparition. And I'm wearing an apparition mask, just to be safe). You can't just squeeze the flu into an hour and be done with it. Too much suffering all at once would be too much pressure release, too painful, like heat shattering a pot lid.

You have to let it out through vents, and the size of the vent varies based on the amount of time, energy, space and tools you have on hand at the moment.

But "venting," in the traditional sense, just endlessly explaining to people what happened, or writing it out and cutting the pages with your pen, isn't enough, and the former can inflict trauma on the listener (that's why therapists get emotional regulation training, so they can catch what's coming at them and diffuse it, the way I'm showing you now, because you know what I'm sick of seeing? "This is your problem," followed by "pay me $500/hr and I'll fix it." That's some predatory shit, isn't it? And it's everywhere. No. We're not doing that, my well-bound ghost friend).

Nah, we've tried venting. It didn't work. So now we're going to Vent Productively.

The tools are simple, and the tools are cheap.

1. Compartmentalization.

The reason you're not going to lose your job or get in trouble at school or beat up the shitheads who keep making your life miserable when you start the healing process is that, if you don't already, you are going to learn to put parts of your life into separate boxes. You are going to be a different part of yourself in each box.

Spouse You (we wish we could be all of ourselves in front of the person who is supposed to be our partner, but they are also a fractured human, so we can't, and knowing they are also humans with limits is part of being a good partner). Parent You, which should only ever be part of you anyway, so your kids don't stay stressed, worried and scared. School/work you etc., who doesn't share anything they don't strictly need to know, and gathers the bullshit people throw at them to put it into the last box:

The messy stuff goes in this big box here, here's a gold Sharpie, we're labeling it "HEAL," we're doing some kintsugi, you're gonna be even more beautiful.

2. Writing. Phone. Journal. Napkin. Wall. Digital recorder. Stone tablet.

In this box, the key is to VOMIT. Bear with me.

The VOMIT acronym comes from a YouTube video by author Campbell Walker, who wrote Your Head Is a Houseboat, a fun and easy-to-understand metaphor for Internal Family Systems, which really means looking at all the different parts of yourself and giving them some much-needed group therapy (and throwing a few of them overboard, where a lot of my immediate family find themselves). Cam is a former addict, current healthy and wildly helpful and creative father of two.

It's for journaling, but journaling is affordable, DIY therapy when done correctly.

Vent:

Get all that shit out of your head. Just write. Don't edit. Go until it feels like there's nothing left. Now go drink some water and do something that calms you down, like deep breathing, meditation, stretching, walking, dancing. Put your attention on your body (you're going to be spending more time here than in your head now, so it's good practice. Trust me, it's better out here than in your head, and this is where you're going to have to learn to stay when your brain isn't needed for problem solving or creativity, if you want to stay sane. After a while of keeping up your VOMIT habit, meditating, facing your life with honesty and a drive to problem solve and a determinationto have fun and perform self-care, the inside will be much cleaner and you'll stop breaking your toes on boxes full of what you felt like you couldn't deal with before).

Now go back and look at it all. Write a letter to yourself addressing everything point by point, but here is the one rule: you cannot write from the perspective of your own worst enemy and most self-destructive voices. You must write from the perspective of the kindest, most empathetic, most unconditionally-loving and forgiving person in the universe. The parent you never had.

The person that, if you do all these things and do them for the rest of your life, you're going to become.

This is the part where you finally get the bandages and antiseptic you've always needed. Where you get what that hollow part of you is screaming for. If you learn to validate and love yourself unconditionally, and talk to yourself like a stern, no-bullshit, kind best friend who wants to see you get everything you need and whatever you want (that would be good for you), you'll never feel like you're alone in the world, looking for things no one can give you. Because they really can't. If you don't feel love, it's because the hate and coldness you internalized at the hands of abusive people and inept parents is in the way.

You're holding it up like a backward shield made of glass, and all it's doing is intensifying the burning of all the hate in the world and setting you on fire.

I promise you don't need it.

Put it down.

When people are kind, you do deserve it.

Most of your thoughts are automatic defense mechanisms, and that's all they are. They're little shadow puppets that pop up to replay The Story of What Happened and Why Everything Including Me is Awful, and the very unfunny thing about that?

They do it because they believe if you see it happen enough times, you'll stop being hurt by it.

But you're hurt every time you see it.

So jettison them. Put them in a lifeboat if your heart is made of powdered sugar (it is. It's still in there. It's still soft under the armor, believe me).

When someone tries to hurt you now, instead of holding up a shield that says I KNOW, hold up a mirror. Because that's what you literally are to other people. This is how "mirror neurons" function. We see who we are, or we think we do, through other people's reactions to us. But here's the thing about that: most people are funhouse mirrors. Most of them distort our image, because:

1. They have no idea what's going on inside our heads, our motivations, hopes, dreams, past experiences that explain our beliefs and actions, intentions, etc., and they almost always misread them BECAUSE they're seeing us through that warped lens, so you may do something to be kind, and get slapped and screamed at. Is this an accurate reflection? Accurate information about who you are, and how you should feel? How others get to treat you? Abso-fucking-lutely not, ghost friend. No.

2. Their prejudices. They're bigots, a lot of them. And even if they don't think they are, now science has proven that, at least if you're autistic (and society can't produce an autistic person who isn't traumatized, and what I'm writing here is one big contributing factor), neurotypicals don't like you, and they don't like you on sight. And do you know why? Mirror neurons. Autistic people tend to look at reality WITHOUT a warped lens. That's why we so often create genius works, invent things, spread valuable information, make breakthroughs, HATE LIES -- we don't delude ourselves for the sake of comfort and societal harmony based on lies. They do not want to see themselves so clearly. Looking at us is like putting on your glasses before you put on makeup and recoiling at what you've been judging yourself for. Are we always the image of snow-white clarity? No. We're fallible too. But we're about 99% less fallible, and we're getting sick of being gaslit.

It's not us they hate. It's themselves.

We can and probably should be kind enough to cushion them a little, when we have the spoons, though it should be their responsibility to examine themselves and build confidence. But trying to be a mirror for them that is comforting, rather than jarring, would make all our lives easier in a lot of ways.

And this is why, even if you aren't autistic, you need to realize nothing is personal and everything someone tries to show you or tell you about yourself needs to stick to the motorcycle helmet visor of your mind, and not go straight into your throat like a fat bee to be choked on and cause anaphylaxis. We're going too fast to stop and look for the fugging EpiPen, and also, they're prohibitively expensive, and the United States Government and healthcare systems are shit, so prophylaxis it is, baby.

Later, you can examine it, decide whether you'd like to change yourself to align with what you've been told, or throw it away as garbage coming from someone with a shitty attitude, rudeness, prejuduce, insecurity, jealousy, or bad intentions.

Don't automatically believe ANYTHING. Not what you're told, not what you read, not even what you see. Dwell on it later. Examine it. Fact-check it ruthlessly. Be selective about what you decide to keep, and never get so attached that you can't chuck that overboard at a later date when it's no longer useful. It's not only okay to say, "I don't know for sure, and maybe I never will," it's the most mature, wisest, and only sane possible response to most things.

A long digression, coming back to the next letter of VOMIT:

Obligations

Write down everything you're responsible for, expected to do, want to do, etc. I'm including this because the pain you've been dragging around has made it hard to keep up, hasn't it. Now you're stressed and overwhelmed. It's okay, I've got you.

First step after writing it all down is to realize you are not actually starting from being BEHIND IT ALL. That's a mental illusion. You are simply here, now, looking at it all in a pile, not judging yourself for how you got here (because we know how, the human struggle is how). So drop your shoulders and breathe.

It's going to feel so good to make a plan for all of this, even knowing that, as a human, that plan is going to change and be challenged and you probably won't get it all done, but as long as you're alive you can keep steadily flowing around the obstacles until, like water, you wear them down to pebbles. Either they're going to get smaller, or you're going to get stronger -- that's what resistence and persistence create.

Yeah, this does seem like a lot of work, but you know what? Long-term stress and depression make you forget that you have basically been knocked down, and you are dragging the world's heaviest backpack along the road of your life, and to be able to walk and feel light again, you have to unpack it and stand back up.

It's like cleaning a house: if you're sick, like me, the grime and dust bunnies are going to pile up, and for a while, to rest your body, you have to be okay with allowing that. You have to let go of the guilt that comes with it, because resting is the sensible priority (when you can do it). If you keep going, you're not going to get better, and then everything just gets worse. It's a sign of maturity to know when to take a knee on purpose, and...

...when to get back up and tackle the mess. And once the mess is tackled, we don't want to have to do that again, so we make a plan to do regular maintenance. On everything in life. A little time on everything means we won't have to neglect as much because we're trying to play catch-up all the time on other things.

Yes, this is what that means: We must picture Sisyphus happy. He spends all his time rolling a boulder up a hill just for it to roll back down.

You maintain everything just for it to continuously degrade.

But we do it because we are alive, and we want to stay alive, even when we think we don't, like we saw earlier: "I want to die" is always either a loud cry for help to someone else, or a silent cry for help to ourselves (and only we can finally answer it).

So we're helping ourselves to live, to make friends with the boulder, to make up creative games that make the pushing fun, to use our gold Sharpie and give him a face and call him Bouldy and say fuck you, Gods, I'm THRIVING, AND ONLY A LITTLE BIT OUT OF SPITE.

We imagine him happy. We emulate him. We get creative, because only creativity can save us from this world we created. It's paradoxical but true. There's only one door both ways.

Now, let's use the Eisenhower Matrix. Make a big plus sign on paper, or get four markers, pens, etc, in different colors, or make four numbered headings in a doc.

We're going to prioritize your obligations to ease your mental load, and make them easier to tackle.

And no, life isn't a productivity and efficiency maximization simulator. These are not shackles. You could, feasibly, put on a billowy peasant dress and go live in a meadow if you're at peace with the ramifications of that (I wish I could, I tipped too far past the nonbinary because I had to have a total hysto for medical reasons, separate from transition, and I just wouldn't feel, you know, cute... plus people and animals depend on me to not go lie under an eternal blanket of gaillardia beneath an ancient burr oak, like an open-air temple of silence).

ONWARDS

Category 1: Urgent

There is a deadline, either set by someone else, or by a consequence you want to avoid if this task isn't done by this time/date. Think bills. Homework. Job-related tasks. Feeding the kids/pets/yourself. Taxes. One caveat for this box: if it can be delegated to someone else, it doesn't go here. We'll put it into Category 3 later.

Caregory 2: Important

It matters to you, but if it sits a while, nothing bad will happen. Basically, it's a must, but the deadline is unclear.

Category 3: Important, but Not Quite Urgent

Somebody else can do it, or it won't ruin anything if it just never gets done, or gets scheduled over and over. Your backburner.

Category 4: "Not important/Don't Do."

I tell you now, friend, this common title is a misnomer. This is where All Good Employees, Students, Partners and Parents bury their dreams and subsequently their physical and mental health. Write a book. Play a game. Take a walk. Learn how to cultivate tea leaves. Play the trombone. Learn Spanish. Make a Gorillaz-inspired cartoon band (someday). Don't do this. Those things belong in boxes one and two. You must ruthlessly cut things from those boxes to make room for your dreams, rest, exercise -- these are the things that MAKE EVERYTHING ELSE POSSIBLE. This is the empty cup saying. You cannot pour from it. Your friends come over and there's no fucking tea because you scrubbed the shower grout instead of playing guitar or painting. I know the shower grout needed to be done, but here's where Bouldy and being his creative BFF comes in: get some no-rinse Tilex. Devote five to ten minutes per day to the grout. Put it in your bullet journal, which you absolutely need, and it doesn't have to be ~aesthetic~ and perfect if you don't want it to be, it can just be where you put everything your brain is supposed to work on, not store. Also a good excuse to reward yourself for tasks and good mental habits with stickers, pens, washi tape and stencils. Cishet guys, I'm talking to you, too. It's for your eyes only, if you want anime stickers or little holographic fairies you fucking buy those things. The little beige box society put you in is boring as fuck and sad and we all know it and you are not defined by anything you do not choose to define yourself by from here on out, insofar as your comfort and safety allow. Okay? PINK AND LAVENDER ARE FUCKING BEAUTIFUL, END OF. I LOVE YOU.

Moving on, we take everything in those boxes, and we look at our day, week, month and year and we schedule them realistically. Do not overliad your days. You will want to. You will fail. You will give up. Be the tortoise, not the hare.

Make sure things like the shower grout are scheduled to repeat and be done a little at a time.

Look at each task with a critical and creative eye. Does it even NEED to be done? Do you still care about it? Does it align with your values (you should define your values, by the way, because either they will define you or you will be defined by external forces)? Does it move you towards who and what you want to be? Can you get rid of some things so you have more space and time? Marie Kondo is right: what you own dictates how you live. Minimalism is freedom (if you can afford it...).

Now!

Mindset!

I've been trying not to link to this video, because I don't want to put even more info on you (if you're overwhelmed, save the post, screenshot it, make yourself a phone alarm to come back and take notes if anything here is helpful, you're in charge, it's your well, I'm just visiting) but now I think I should, because he explains the last three letters best.

One caveat: where he says, "How is this the best thing that's ever happened to me," a therapist in the comments suggests, "How can I grow from this?" so you're not just hitting yourself with toxic positivity and downplaying what hurts you.

Vomit Journaling System

Okay. So those are the practical, concrete steps no one tells you how to take on your mental health journey. But I'm telling you, because I know that it isn't a waste of time and energy to show people how to weave ropes and build ladders.

That's how evolution works. That is literally all we're here for -- if you find a way to live a little better, you hand it to someone else, and they pass it down, and that's called evolution.

I don't believe in God, or any supernatural power, or anything, in fact. I believe in nothing, so that I can see everything, without my mirror distorted (we see through a veil, darkly, religion says, plagiarizing ancient Eastern wisdom traditions, referring to mirror neurons in desperate need of Windex and a microfiber cloth, smudged by the bugs of other people's bullshit, things we believe without investigating, prejudices, delusions, all negative thoughts without exception, things we wish were true so hard we almost believe them, and anything else that isn't purely rational seeing without judging, without thinking, without believing or trying to manipulate).

The universe is a beautiful pinball machine full of atoms crashing into one another just to watch the motherfucking board light up.

But WE try to make meaning out of it all, we try to make it all make sense, creating languages and systems and myths, legends, religions, governments, societies, gender norms (gross), books (yay), movies, you name it. All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone, said Blaise Pascal.

All the other animals are already Zen Masters, except, you know, primates, which are our closest relatives and which also fight over shit for no reason.

The pinball machine is what Albert Camus, our friend who taught us about Bouldy, was saying about the Absurd: the universe just is. It's a pure, creative impulse, wibbling and wobbling the way Alan Watts described, in particles and waves, making patterns, dancing, playing, not trying to do anything or get anywhere, just being here, now, and creating, which is the underlying impulse of all of us, since we are those waves and particles, pretending to be humans and animals and ravens and writing desks for a little while, before the clay dries out and we pick up another form, to pretend to be something else, everything another little finger puppet on the hands of what is.

It is not judging you. It does not care who you are, what you do or don't do. It doesn't care whether you're happy or sad (though, in a way, it prefers you to be happy, because that is more beneficial to survival, because creation and survival are the same thing. You can't sin (sin is seeing through that distorted mirror, prayer is calling it what it is, answered prayers are the mental clarity that comes from VOMIT journaling, how's that for absurd, Albert?). You can't be damned, broken, ruined, changed. You're not the finger puppet. We're all the puppeteer. The pinball machine. Playing a game that sometimes feels shitty because feeling good doesn't exist without contrast. Nothing does. And that gets boring for eternity, so we do things. Then we look over the face of the waters and call them good or bad, and that's where all the trouble starts, because it still all just is.

If someone, such as myself, saw you here, now, at the bottom of your well, and knew you sometimes think the most horrible thoughts, that you've done terrible things, that you have acne, a little or a lot of unwanted weight, stretch marks, freckles you hate, a receeding hairline, no skills, no hobbies, no education, no desire to work or live, maybe you're the soldier from Metallica's 'One' and you stepped on a landmine and now you're a torso without senses so you can't do anything ever again --

And still saw you as perfect, as completely acceptable, as just a being who still has the potential to decide what to do next, if I just wanted to watch you and experience you vicariously because I love everything, all experience, good and bad, pleasant and painful, because it's all life, wouldn't you feel free, and unconditionally loved?

That's what the ancient Eastern wisdom traditions were trying to teach. "God," is just a word for a universe that has open arms for everything in it, accepts itself completely, wants the best but doesn't force anything. Unconditional love is that. Wordless witnessing of everything. Mom, dad, look what I can do!

I cobbled all this together to save myself, from resources like Campbell Walker, Thich Nhat Hanh, Alan Watts, Buddhist philosophy, so many books, like Goodbye, Things (Fumio Sasake), The Courage to be Disliked (Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga), Brene Brown, and decades of suicidal depression and daily panic attacks.

Every ladder out of the well is made of the shoulders of generous giants.

Recently, I was consumed by anger so white and constant I felt burned alive all the time. I had been filling up the HEAL box with all the hot coals the world could hand me, my entire life, and not stopping to put them out. Anger has always been a struggle for me. I'm auDHD, I'm trans, nonbinary, bi, ace, I had abusive-negligent parents, I was indoctrinated with religion, I was parentified, I married a seemingly normal person who later threatened to skin me in my sleep and threatened to murder our child, I joined the military thinking I could support my family, most of whom displayed clear Dependent Personality Disorder, and still get away from them, plus (ha ha no) help other people, got so physically and psychologically fucked-up that I'll never walk normally or run again (I loved running, I'm mourning the loss years later), my spine is deteriorating, I got 100% disability through the VA for how severe my PTSD is, and there's a nazi in office... again.

So yeah. I've been consumed by rage.

My entire life.

Obviously my parents just wanted me to shut the fuck up and pay their bills and listen to their problems, so I learned anger = scary and bad.

It doesn't, and I wish I had listened to it back then. I wish I had let my shadow side, the one I picture as the towering gantry of a flower-laden, moss-covered gashadokuro, metaphorically stomp all those people into dust and carry me to a place where I could have started the life I wanted without wasting so many years of it on people who didn't give a fuck about me anyway.

I wish I had seen how deeply that goddamn giant skeleton loves me (thanks, Kate Nash).

That's what your anger and your rage are for. Don't let them be twisted into useless hate for others, which will make you sick, or into hate for yourself, which is the goddamn sock puppets who parrot your abusers words at you again, asking to be made to walk the plank.

Your anger is proportionate to the love and respect that will always be in there, speaking up for you and for others when shit isn't right. It's okay to feel it. It's okay to burn it off in ways that don't cause harm to you or anyone else. Grab the pillow. Buy a punching bag (check Facebook marketplace). Use your journaling techniques.

But don't ignore it. That's where your depression stems from:

Imagine loving someone or something so fiercely, more than anything, or at least every bit as much as... and watching them lie down and be trampled. Watch them give up what they love. Watch them scramble through addiction to escape the one and only present moment they will never exist in -- the only one where they can find the things they've been searching for -- in the past, the future, and substances, never finding it because they are too afraid that being present with you and the razor-sharp but nonjudgmental mirror you will show them of themselves, because in their learned helplessness they still believe there is nothing they can do, and because the voices of abusers will point out flaws that don't exist. Will say fat is something you are, not something you have. That it's disgusting. You're lazy. You're stupid. You're selfish. Whispering lies, like a snake in the ear, driving them away from you to the things you know are bad for them, that they know are bad for them, mostly to, you know, the knowledge of good and evil... the tendency to judge everything, to say it's good or bad, to split it all right in two (thanks, Maynard), and not just breathe and allow it all to be what it is, including themselves. Clear, and without thought. In the body. Present. Loved unconditionally.

Here.

Now.

If you'd like to feel love again, this is how I'm doing it.

Here.

At the bottom of this well.

With you.

[oceans-beloved]

Meme dump yayyy🥳✨️

(off to make more now muhahaha >:3)

[lia404]

"Ai, living has no answer."

"When we're in pain, we search for an answer to feel better. A concise, absolute answer. But if you really want an answer… it's that there is no answer. There are no absolute in this world. Even if we think there is, in the end, it'll only make us feel better for a moment.

If there are no absolute, then what's left?

Bonds. Bonds between individuals. Bonds between one another. That's all there is.

That also changes with time. A huge trigger can cause a huge change. Bonds may be severed. But new bonds can also be formed. So living is a series of bonds.

That's what life is.

I have to do that forever?

Yes.

That's a lot of work.

Yeah.

I'd need to be so strong.

That's why people become stronger. That occasionally leads to conflicts. But even if that happens, we have to keep fighting. Keep searching for bonds, even if there's no answer.

You can't rush living."

So I saw on MyFigureCollection that October 13 was maybe possibly Yusaku's birthday, although I couldn't find any reliable source for this. I'd have loved to do something nice and light-hearted for the occasion, but I'm still feeling too strongly about it all. So here you are instead: Happy (maybe) Birthday, Yusaku! Please have some trauma to go with your trauma. Here's to another year of fending off expectations and looking for your own life and its non-answers with eyes wide open and always filled with hope.

[pettyprocrastination]

DEEPLY PERSONAL POST INCOMING

Having my first (pseudo) relationship with a dom/sub dynamic has helped me realize a lot about myself in kink but also in life and what I deserve in relationships

[silverselfshippingchaos]

I miss S.hepard. The third game always makes my heart hurt lmao

[fionnaskyborn]

wish i could stop losing stuff irretrievably. some hardware error emptied out my recycle bin a couple days earlier. just to shit on a day i'd spent being genuinely happy about the art i create. i guess. i'm tired of compromises, sick of lying that "it wasn't that important anyway", and throwing up at "oh well, can't be helped".

and yet. and yet. despite every pain, both major and minor, the love is there. the love is still there. guess i've just somehow miraculously hit that point (or gone past it a long time ago) where every grievance beyond a certain amount hurts an unspeakable amount more than it should. and it stacks. probably went overboard a while back. don't know when.

still, i adore my project. still got someone in whose arms i feel safe. hope i'll get out someday. hope i'll get a win.

[invinciblerodent]

(oh, i should not be trying to playfully weigh in on a "who's your LEAST favorite companion?" post, it starts off lighthearted and then it makes me go on my Fenris-rant again)

[randomingoftherandomness]

.

[zevrans-remade]

.

[knoxiating]

.

[mememan93]

killing and biting and killing and biting