NIKKA'S PRESENT
This is how you lose her.
So he goes on loving her for a very long time. He knows that she knows it’s enough to keep him falling for the same trick. It’s getting old now but so is he.
Junmyeon met her when she was young enough to appreciate pigtails in her hair. She did not make friends very easily; he did. When his friend ran past her in the hall, knocking her off her feet and sending her to the ground with a ‘thud’; he catches her eyes before she flees like she had never been there in the first place. Her name is Soojung, she tells him finally after weeks of following her around.
One month later and she was looking at him like he was her whole world.
This is how you lose her.
So they were going to be together forever, Soojung tells him then grew up too quickly.
When a girl becomes a woman, it is a strange thing with many changes. The teenage years were bad; there were spontaneous tantrums, a lot of crying and insecurities pour out of open pores. At seventeen, Soojung decided that she found the ‘love of her life’ - it wasn’t him.
Choi Minho is like an athlete who never made it onto a team and instead put his good looks to use by becoming a walking Greek statue. It was infuriating enough that he was good at every sport known to mankind; Junmyeon never cared that he beat him at basketball, soccer, swimming, tennis, high jumps, long jumps and so the list goes on. Junmyeon only started to give a shit when one day, after a long day of dance practice and dragging his screwed up foot along the pavements, he watches Soojung watching the golden boy from across the field with her giggling friends; swooning and day dreaming. At first it did not occur to him what ‘that’ look meant, after all he never looked into the mirror when looking at her so how would he know that Soojung had fallen in love?
Kim Junmyeon was so very sure of himself, you see. He underestimated his affection and overestimated hers. He was a smug little boy who did nothing but wanted everything the same nevertheless. Valentines is almost a routine - enter the change room and look into the locker, smile when reading the handwritten note then pull out the box to taste her chocolates. So when Junmyeon didn’t receive any that year he tried to crush the panic bubbling up to the surface with patience; he can wait for her until the end of the day. At lunch time, he sat at their table with enough enthusiasm to set himself up for disappointment. Because he doesn’t think he will ever forget the sight of Soojung; beaming as she strode over with her hair stuck in her glossy lips but turning the other direction at the last moment, lighting up at Choi Minho with a bit of chocolate on the corner of his lips.
Her heart started pounding and his, breaking.
This is how you lose her.
So her first heartbreak is quickly becoming his tenth.
How does a girl so pretty only grow prettier? Do the gods have no mercy whatsoever? It was in the looks that men gave her - every stare, every lick of the lips, every coy smile that she matched with her own. The pain was a growing one, Junmyeon wondered if this was what it was like to be so lost out of one’s mind. Because it was becoming a poisonous obsession, this feeling he has for her. “But, angel, where are you going without me?” “How dare you leave me behind?” It’s the things he never said; those angry accusations that she read between the lines. Because she knows him so well, doesn’t she?
They’ve gotten this far because she can read him like tea leaves, tracing his devotions with her fingers and calling them all true.
Eventually her allure doesn’t hold true on a boy who knows nothing about beauty or appreciating it. Junmyeon stood waiting with his back to the walls; their histories bleeding through the cracks of the aging halls where they came together. Because he knows her so well, doesn’t he?
“Come here,” He opened up his arms like the darkness ready to envelop the light and she didn’t know any better then - she ran into it, wrapping her milky flesh around his neck and sobbing into his dull chest.
“Don’t you worry,” Junmyeon reminded her of her promise, how he fully intends on collecting, “You and I are going to be together forever.”
This is how you lose her.
So for a while she came back to him.
Soojung dictated everything and he liked it that way. He was to graduate soon, she didn’t speak of it if she could avoid it but Junmyeon relished in the attention she showered him. It was like they were young again and he found himself dismissing the lovers that wasn’t him, so did she. Her blush returned to him that spring; his bad jokes were good enough for her again. She lead him to class with both arms around his waist, her front pressed up against his behind and he went to bed every night; opening and closing the floodgates of forbidden thoughts he’s had ever since he was thirteen.
This will last.
This is how you lose her.
So she kissed him for the first time out of jealousy and nothing else.
You see Soojung was not a selfish creature as he. She did not long to possess, to hold and to trap like he did. But she needed everything to fall in line with her calculated plan. As a little girl, she spent hours telling and re-telling him her future. It was not going to change; she would not bend to fate but would defy it.
“And I’ll never be alone because you’ll be with me,” the angel had spoken and will have it her way.
Her name was Chorong; she was nothing like Soojung. Junmyeon did not feel anything but admiration for her hard work as the co-school captain. He could not say the same about her; the way she flicked her hair off her shoulder like it was so subtle, the pink she painted her lips with when he was to attend meetings, how she giggled too hard over jokes that were not intended for her.
He did not suspect Soojung to have caught wind of any of this. After all she should know by then that his loyalty will never stray, even if hers did once or twice before. She showed up to classes without warnings and oh how stupid he was - how flattered, how it stroked his pride to have Jung Soojung, a junior so desired by men all across the campus, visit him during lunch breaks and force fed him. But couldn’t they all see it? She belonged to him, no other needed to bother anymore.
He was always so distracted when she was around; so easily lost in those lips he wanted to take with his own. Little did he know his wish was about to be granted but with a price.
Junmyeon had to commend Chorong for her persistency. How she worked so hard, just like for everything else, to shove and push Soojung out of the picture - he supposed the younger girl did not fit in her frame of picture perfect. The meetings become more frequent, afterschool activities increased at an impossible rate and unnecessary school festivals are scheduled. Less time with Soojung, less time with Soojung, less time with Soojung.
Soojung won’t have it that way; she was fussy and pestering and he loved her for all of it. She waited at their spot; arms folded across her chest - she was still such a little girl.
“Isn’t it past your curfew?” He grinned and anticipated the quip after her displeased quip.
It never came. Chorong had impeccable timing like she had for the past few months. “Oh Suho, can you come look at th - oh hey, Soojung.”
“Oppa, let’s go.”
Soojung never called him ‘oppa’ unless she needed something and she needed him.
“Sorry, Soojung but I really need Suho to take a look at this schedule before tomorrow.“
Her nails dug into his sleeves and it was anything but painful; it felt like victory. “I’ll just be a minute then I’ll walk you home -“
“No”
He suspected that Soojung was looking straight at Chorong while he was looking at her when pulled his face down to hers, her lips a breath away from his own. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”
And so she kissed him - so greedy with her tongue against his own, sucking all the air away from his lung and drinking all his love for him.
He heard her moan, whimper, begged but it was never enough.
This is how you lose her.
So he needed more than she was ever willing to give.
Junmyeon took her to the dance. He was the perfect gentleman - impeccable suit to match the hair and the tie. He brought her a corsage, she squealed in delight and so did her mother before taking their pictures. Hadn’t he been good enough?
He grew restless, all this waiting hurts. He gave her all that he could with the last dance, swaying to that slow song he didn’t listen to and held her in a perfectly innocent way. It was in between the drink getting spiked and the boring speeches that Junmyeon yanked her away from the dance floor and into the hall. Soojung never asked once where they were going or what he was doing, but she knew him so well, didn’t she?
The corridor was empty, the music was loud enough to swallow up all the noises that needed to be. Junmyeon pushed her up against the wall, their bodies flushed together. His hands skimmed over her bare skin, loving how it flushed under his touch - all because of him.
“Tell me to kiss you.”
She did not look spiteful but she did not smile, he would never understand what meant. “Kiss me”
“Do you love me?”
“Not in the way you love me, Suho.”
He kissed her anyway.
This is how you lose her.
So the prom queen finds her king and it was not him.
Junmyeon had to graduate eventually; it didn’t have to mean that he was leaving her behind. Maybe Soojung took it that way, that’s why she left him first.
This boy, barely a man with nothing to give but his boyish charm and this sickening adoration for everything she does. How they were so alike, Kim Jongin and Kim Junmyeon, but how differently they love the same girl.
Soojung didn’t introduce them, left no notice of this whole new world she had found herself belonging in. He stopped being the-savior-of-all-things-Suho to someone-I-once-knew-and-loved-Suho.
See, he tried to get on with his life. He did the whole find-himself-a-nice-girl routine but he goes home, empty handed with an emptier heart at the thought of the girl he is meant to have but can’t.
All because she denies him.
This is how you lose her.
So she returns five years later.
The call was abrupt. He absentmindedly wondered if Soojung knew today was his engagement party but of course, she did. He knows her so well, doesn’t he?
Junmyeon almost expected polite greetings and indifferent inquiries but none of that for Soojung. He wants a lot of things from her, you see, he’d always been so selfish when it came to this little girl with long brown hair and charcoal eyes. But not that - she knows him so well, doesn’t she?
“Do you love me?”
So this is how you lose him. “Not in the way you love me, Soojung.”