The disappointment shouldn't feel half as painful as it does, you know? She should be used to being the one left behind, I mean it's happened so many times she doesn't understand why her whole face is bloated from crying and how she can barely stop her nose from running but here she is. In his house, very much whole, very much aware of what she is supposed to do next because this is a script that Young Do never gets too tired to reenact.
She packs her little leather duffle bag with everything that doesn't belong to her, his shirt, his t-shirt, his sweater and she stands in the bathroom long enough to decide why not take his cologne while she's at it.
He's taken so much from her, the least she can do is take a few souvenirs, something to show for all the time and energy she spent loving a man who didn't know how to be loved.
"Trust me, if I want to kiss you, you'll know."
"Ki-kiss? I don't even like you-."
"You keep telling yourself that."
Eun Sang is twenty-three when they break up for the seventh time. Her long black hair travels down her back like a dark waterfall, and all she can think about is how much he liked that she had long hair. How it felt to have his big hands in it and how he'd attempt to braid it on days that she was too lazy to do anything to it.
She wants to cut it. She should.
"You know what's the worst thing is?"
Bo Na has heard so many versions of this story she's surprised when she doesn't start guessing where the story will end- because Bo Na is brutally honest if she's anything at all but she doesn't say anything.
"I failed the whole semester because I was helping him work on his thesis! I basically threw my future and scholarship away for some guy who can pay to get a reincarnation of Einstein as his tutor!"
She's on her second bottle, and she's never really been good at holding her liquor, but since the meeting, Young Do she has learned a thing or two about anger and alcohol.
"Like, my whole future! My mom is going to kill me." She says that with the most desperation she can master, but she knows no one will be more disappointed in her than herself.
She doesn't cry with Bo Na there. She's hard steel and dirty mouthed and harsh-tongued and none of the mess that she was before going back to her roommate.
"I loved him."
"You'll love others."
"No, it's him or no one."
"They'll be others."
"Eun Sang!" Her head feels like it's going to burst into two when she hears Bo Na call her name. The room is too dark for it to be anywhere near morning.
"What? What?!" Eun Sang slurs because she's still very much drunk and very much aware that this was not the time to be waking her up.
"He's here."
"Who?"
"Young Do."
"What does he want?"
"To take you home."
Her head is protesting all the way she's in the car his hand on hers like it belongs there like he hasn't just let her seen all seven hells repeatedly like there was nothing to talk about but her head is protesting, and she can't muster the energy to tell him to fuck off.
That would require dignity, and everyone knew that she had none.
"You're a tough cookie, I like that."
She scoffed because he was an idiot who refused to leave her alone.
"You'll soften up, and before you know it, you'll be falling apart in my arms."
The house is still some variations of warm like they just popped out for some quick grocery shopping, it still smells like her tears, and his words still echo on the walls, and all she wants to do is sleep.
"I'm sorry." He says it like he says everything, empty with none of the sincerity of someone who had drilled a hole over and over into her.
But he wasn't fully to blame, she always let him.
She finds out at age twenty-three, seven hard years of loving him that his love wasn't even a quarter of her half.
But he liked her hair long and dark, and his hands in them were one of the best feelings she could think of.
But he was sorry each time, and that had to count for something.
But he loved her once with all the intensity of the sun, and that had to mean something.
It had to.