Live with your ex-boyfriend!
Copyright 2022 몬트 All rights reserved
The puffy, swollen eyes I saw the moment I looked in the mirror confirmed the truth of yesterday's events. Truthfully, I couldn't quite remember what I'd said or done with Kim Taehyung last night. One thing was certain: from today on, we were truly nothing. After a quick shower, I headed out to the living room, only to find traces of yesterday. A few cans of beer were still lying untidy on the table.
Still sleeping…I dared to assume Kim Taehyung was quite drunk, having drank more than half of the cans of beer scattered across the living room. His door was firmly shut, and I began to clean up the room.
“Let’s ventilate the room a bit-.”
I let out a little hum, having completely adapted to the new place in just one day, as if it were my own home. I couldn't even clean my own house, so I was dumbfounded that I was cleaning here. I threw away beer cans, wiped down the table, and vacuumed. Only when I felt the living room was clean did I finally settle down on the sofa.Ha, it's been a while since I cleaned, so it's hard.
“I need to get rid of some of the puffiness in my eyes…”
Fortunately, my body's swelling tends to go down quickly, so it subsided significantly while I was cleaning. Still, I couldn't help but feel the puffiness around my eyes, so I placed both hands on them and pressed them down. After a few minutes of focusing on reducing the swelling, I put my hands down and sighed deeply. Yesterday, I'd been overcome by emotion and done everything, but today, I felt unsure.
“F*ck… What do I think of Kim Taehyung……”
I couldn't help but swear. Closing my eyes and resting my hand on my forehead, I began to think a lot. A lot of things started to swirl around in my head, starting with whether I could be friends with Kim Taehyung. Maybe I even had some regrets about yesterday. It was a suffocating time, a time when things I didn't want to think about suddenly surface because it was so quiet.
Kim Taehyung and I met in college and dated for quite a while, about three years. We first met when we were both twenty-three, me a senior in college and him a sophomore after completing his military service. The reason we were able to keep in touch was because we had overlapping classes and often ran into each other by chance. Classes would overlap, so we'd do assignments together, or maybe we'd have meals together. I ran into Kim Taehyung quite often. Because we overlapped so often, the thought that coincidence could become fate, and fate could become destiny, kept creeping up on me, making my heart flutter every day. I guess I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
“Honey, I like you a lot. Let’s date.”
"huh…!"
I was blushing and embarrassed by Kim Taehyung's unexpected confession that day, and I think his ears were especially red when he confessed. It was only in an instant that Kim Taehyung and I became the representative CC when we started dating. People would say things like, "You're definitely going to get married. You're both so desperate that you'll never break up." It was always like that. Well, back then, both Kim Taehyung and I thought we would be like that. Hearing those words wasn't bad. In fact, I wish it were good.
The rift between us began when I successfully landed a job just a few months after graduation. As I mentioned earlier, Kim Taehyung had to complete his military service and had to attend college for two more years than me, so it was perhaps only natural that I would land a job first. Of course, our relationship didn't deteriorate suddenly. When I landed a job, Kim Taehyung was the one who was most excited about it.
“Hey, congratulations on getting a job.”
“Thank you! A job… That’s so great-.”
“If you like it, I like it too.”
That didn't last long, and the distance between me and Kim Taehyung began to widen. As the youngest at work, I was busy with work and errands for my superiors, and Kim Taehyung, who was about to graduate from college, was busy preparing for a job. We were each busy with our own lives. They say a busy life is a good thing, but from the perspective of someone in a relationship, it was a little different. It's almost like a mathematical formula that when your life gets busy, you have less time to think about others.Unless we were special friends, Kim Taehyung and I were still too young to balance work and dating.
As we each focused on our own lives, the time we spent in contact, meeting, and even talking gradually decreased. Even when we finally made time to meet, one day it was Kim Taehyung.
“My boss keeps giving me chores.”
“Hey, I’m sorry, but I got a call for an interview, so I’ll take a quick phone call.”
“Oh, yeah!”
One day, something came up and I had to break my promise.
“Are you preparing well for employment these days?”
"Well, kind of. How's it going for you to go to work?"
“I’m fine too. But there’s going to be a personnel transfer soon.”
“What kind of contact is this?”
“Taehyung, something suddenly came up at work, so I have to go… I’m sorry…”
“No, go quickly. Call me when you’re done.”
We only saw each other about once every two weeks, and even then, it was extremely rare when nothing was going on for either of us. But it wasn't like time stood still. We were incredibly busy, yet time kept ticking by, and the time we had to see each other's faces and hear each other's voices became shorter and shorter. As time went on, my relationship with Kim Taehyung became a relationship that would end the moment one of us let go.
Perhaps it was due to our busy schedules, but we had accumulated a lot of feelings for each other, knowingly or unknowingly. The person who should have been there for us during difficult times couldn't contact us, and even when we did meet, he'd be gone for an interview or work, leaving us feeling incredibly frustrated. We thought we could understand each other, yet at the same time, we couldn't understand each other's inability to invest that much time in ourselves. It was truly paradoxical.
“Kim Taehyung, let’s stop.”
“……”
"Honestly, we're only hurting each other because we're busy. We're constantly being left behind, abandoned, left behind...! We just keep repeating this. You and I, aren't we the type of people who would end things if one of us were to call it quits first?"
“Okay, let’s stop.”
“……”
“Because it will be difficult to continue this precarious relationship any longer.”
It was calm. I didn't know breaking up with Kim Taehyung would be this easy. Back in college and early in my career, I felt like I couldn't live without him, but the words "let's break up" came out easier than I thought. Kim Taehyung, like me, seemed weary of this relationship, and he nodded immediately. Without a word, we both turned and walked away.
Why was it that, even though the breakup was so easy, tears fell down my face as I walked back?
“Ugh, huff… bad, ugh, kid…”
Maybe I didn't want to end things with Kim Taehyung that day, but rather, I wanted to confirm his feelings. Maybe I desperately hoped he'd stop me, even just once, when I told him to stop.
If only I could hold onto Kim Taehyung. No one in my life loved me as much as he did, and no one I loved as much as he did. But what kept holding me back from returning to him was guilt. I wish I'd spent just a little more time with him than I did at work, that I'd contacted him even once, no matter how tired I was. That guilt kept me from reaching out to him.
We had been in love for three years, but it was so easily broken off. Since that day we broke up, neither I nor Kim Taehyung have contacted each other, even when drunk. Even the coincidences I'd believed were fate during my college days were gone. Time without Kim Taehyung passed by so quickly. It felt like so little time had passed, but when I looked back, a year had already flown by.
*
[EPILOGUE]
Q. What would you do if you could go back to before you broke up?
“I can promise that I will love Kim Taehyung like crazy.”
"I'll love you more, like you more, and love you more than I did then. I'll love you more than Kim Yeo-ju, no matter what."
The reason for their breakup that everyone was curious about has finally been revealed... Their breakup is so realistic that it's even sadderㅠㅠ Please leave a comment, and thank you for watching today too💗