twenty nine | life is still going on

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unexpectedly, life did go on. as it sort of had been before, in its rollercoaster of a way. i remember thinking after an event like that my whole concept of living would've been altered and things around me would change. but aside from letting xiuying in more, and no longer questioning the oddities of my boyfriend, things remained more or less the same.

it was another week until hyuck was able to come back to school. his relapse had scared his parents and me, and for a day or two there i was wondering if i had wasted what little time i'd had with him arguing. it didn't seem like he'd ever leave that bed that was starting to smell strange and the room had this air of listlessness. sometimes i'd visit him and he'd be asleep the entire time.

"there you are!" the class all cheered when he sauntered in with his usual coolness, slinging his bag down at his seat and greeting everyone who'd gotten up to see him. even our teacher had smiled a little at the time, i remember, because i'd been watching her instead of him. the fact that it'd have been a bit strange for me to see him in school was still a burning, festering fact.

he had done a complete one-eighty and looked as well as he'd ever been. glowing, one might have said. it made me wonder if he was just that good at lying that his body played along.

but what had changed for the better was the irritation i used to feel for what i now understand were pointless things. people like maerin still trying to curry his favour, or anhi still trying to attain mine. the boys that would play with him at lunch sometimes or the groups he'd laugh with when i wasn't included. i used to cry about those things — long for them to be different. but now i didn't care. he was leaving all of us and only i knew. i was the only one that mattered to him.

after school the first day he was back he invited me and xiuying to go to the rock pool. of course we agreed, and thankfully our parents were pleased my sister and i were spending some quality time together, too surprised to wonder why. she never said a word to them, even to this day.

the tall grass that tickled my legs in the summer was now gone, replaced with sludgy earth and weeds that still clung on to life in the late autumn. november was forgiving this year, and the festive season still felt like miles away. i didn't want to think about christmas those days, because of what another month might've changed.

"wow," ying had grinned, prancing off ahead to see the water which was colder now than earlier in the year. the scene had changed drastically from the romantic hiding spot with cicadas chirping and moonlight dancing over our wet bodies to a muted grey space. it was still charming though, thanks to the emptiness and the sky above casting clouds as reflections over the pool.

"you okay?" hyuck had asked me, offering his arm for me to take as i waded out of the mud and onto the sand. "you've been quiet today."

"hm, have i? i'm fine. just tired."

he accepted that blatant evasion of the truth, because we both knew, against what i had promised and we had hoped for, that i would never be the same. this clipped version of me was all i could offer to protect what was left of my heart. the only piece i still held onto that he hadn't kept with the rest in his hands.

"here, jump in with ying."

"why just me?"

"cause i want to film it," he grinned, extracting his camera from his bag and turning it on. i'd huffed, still not enthralled with this footage concept but i had come to accept why he did all this for me. these tapes would be left behind for me and maybe a couple for xiuying when he was gone and i was grieving. most of them were of me, which i hated at the time, but i did figure out why a little later.

you see, now that i'm twenty-three and have finished maturing and finding myself, i often look back at these tapes, even those that are damaged, and i see a version of myself i've left behind. initially, i thought hyuck was an idiot because it wasn't him that'd be watching them, so why would i need to be the star? but he was a clever boy. and he must've taken my low self esteem into account when he pulled that stupid camera out. he filmed me at my prettiest, at my ugliest, when i was growing and forming and blooming.

it was only a few months, really. not even a year. but in those three seasons we had together i had done the most developing i'd ever do in my entire life. the child i was at the start of the summer was not the young man i'd become in the spring towards my eighteenth birthday. and he knew. he saw it with his own eyes, held my body in all those stages, and loved those things about me when i could barely stand to look in a mirror.

and so he snapped that video and froze it in time, giving it to me in hopes that when i was ready, i'd see it the way he did.

i sit up quickly from my bed, about to cry, i think. the bedside digital clock says it's quarter to three in the morning, but i'm sure it had only been seven a moment ago.

but here i am again. sweating from the trauma of thinking and cold without a piece of my heart that announced its absence here and there.

behind me my boyfriend shifts, stretching his arms over his head and humming softly once awake. "nightmares?"

"i...i don't think i even fell asleep."

"try, baby. you have work tomorrow."

"i can't. i think i'm having a breakdown."

he sighs, reaching over to me and pulling me down beside him, into his arms. he doesn't feel like donghyuck did. he's all muscle, since he works out a lot, and he eats lots with me. hugging him feels like being encompassed in a warm pocket, whereas hyuck was all bones and angles.

i have to stop making these comparisons or i really will lose my mind. because living in the past is killing me slowly, which is too tragic a way to go when i've seen it with my own eyes.

reverting back to these memories makes my oncoming panic simmer down. and so i will continue the end of this little reminiscence for you, so that you know what i know. that way it's not just me who knows the story, and it doesn't have to die with me either.

during this particular moment in the rock pool xiuying had told us to be ourselves and that she'd get used to it. she gave me hope that more people like her really existed, and somewhere out there i could stop holding myself back for everyone else's sake and just hold a guy's hand without breaking out in a sweat. it's true now, by the way. i've even been on dates in public without so much as a ruffled elderly person.

ying was excited about us. she played with us in the water without hesitation, never staring at donghyuck's ribs, or showing discomfort when we got too close. it was the first time ever, i think, that my sister and i really understood each other.

"does your camera take photos too?" she asked when she stood on the beach, pulling it out of the bag again.

"yeah, it does. want me to change the mode?" hyuck offered.

"i got it." she faced it at donghyuck and me first, practicing with a few snaps of the lens. she was beaming, her smile stretching from ear to ear. "hahah, this is gold!"

"i don't trust her," i'd grumbled to hyuck who simply pinched my hip and made me hiss at him.

"what if i...?" ying thought aloud before standing between the two of us and facing the camera at us. we couldn't possibly see what the photo looked like and donghyuck huffed a small chuckle.

"that's not how it works—" snap.

the lens shuttered and then the photo was taken. xiuying squealed excitedly and had a look, myself and donghyuck taking a peek as well over her shoulder.

so, i always knew ying had more luck than me. she was the type of girl to pick up a lottery ticket off the floor and it being the winning one. but having that same luck with photography nearly bugged me because, even without needing to see how it would turn out, she had taken one of my favourite pictures of all time.

donghyuck looking at her from her side, mid-sentence, her in the middle staring at the camera with a smile and her arms reaching off frame, and me to her other side, watching them both like they were idiots. it's hung on my mirror in my room, so i can see it every day.

moments like that make me remember that it was all real and i didn't make it up. sometimes i wonder how much of this story i've romanticised in my own head, but the camera doesn't lie. we really did fall in love one summer and live our lives to the fullest extent in a matter of five or six months. it's emblazoned on the tapes and photos littering my room.

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