Il Mare fanfic. Because he should have known better than to think it everything will be okay.
As Lines so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly Paralel,
Though infinite can never meet.
Andrew Marvell, "The Definition of Love"
I. Overlapping Time
Sometimes…he remembers dying.
He remembers screams and turning too late, the air rushing out of his body (a whump sound, like letting gas out of a balloon) as the car collides into his side, sending him backwards and airborne. It felt like flying, and he could almost pretend that he was a child again, being tossed up and caught by his father (until he was five years old and too old to play such games) if it were not for the pain seizing his chest (is this how his father felt, dying?).
He remembers hitting the ground, his head slamming against the cement (in a grotesque parody of a bouncing ball like when he played basketball in empty lots with Ji-hyun), his vision swimming as a sticky warmth trickles from his damp hair. He remembers a pain like nothing else he's ever felt (nor ever would again). He remembers reaching out to her with the last of his strength and her confusion and mild curiosity as she stares back at him (because she doesn't know him, because it's a different Eun-joo that knows him).
He remembers crying, for her and himself and moments they never had and frantic voices as if from a distance as his eyes droop from drowsiness. He remembers his body succumbing to the lure of sleep and thinking this, this is dying.
But it never happened and he never died because he read her letter. Sung-hyun, don't go there, she wrote, and he didn't. He didn't die, he didn't.
Still…he wakes from these dreams trembling, drenched in sweat (not blood, not blood).
II. Playing Catch-up
He should have died that day.
It's a month, three weeks, and two days after March 25, 1998 (the day he should have died, he jokes to himself) and he can stop pretending that he is meant to live because he isn't. Was it part of the steel ship that nearly crushed him on March 30th or was it bullet in his lung from the blotched bank robbery that he stumbled upon on April 12th that convinced him? He honestly doesn't remember anymore. His life has narrowed down to Eun-joo and the mailbox and Il Mare.
Her words turned from playful (hey, you're really accident-prone, aren't you?) to worried (you should be more careful) to frantic and controlling (check your mailbox every day and don't leave the house otherwise). This isn't how things are supposed to be, he screams in his mind, you aren't supposed to live a half life like this that revolves around trying to save me. We can't live like this, when I am hoping I won't die and you are hoping that you don't miss the newspaper that tells of my death.
Stop trying to save me, he finally writes to her. I was meant to die. She doesn't respond. He knows he will never hear from her again.
The fact that I didn't show up two years from now…must mean that we weren't meant to be. He told her once when she wrote to him, disappointed that he didn't show up at Cheju Island.
Now, he wishes it wasn't true.