Chapter Text
Amore sociale - Jeongcheol
Beyond the cold
Of the council houses
Beyond the darkness
Of the half-open clubs
I'll go slowly
To never forgive you
Beyond the tango
Inside the empty warehouses
I'll try not to think about you anymore
I hope you'll understand me when you’ll see me on the floor, maybe with a fucking letter in my hands, maybe with a jar of empty pills between the sofa and the remote control.
"Stupid, stupid Seungcheol." That's probably what you're thinking. But you don't care anyway. Or, at least, that's what you've shown me. Then maybe you'll show yourself to be the damn angel you've always been, come to my funeral and even bring me flowers.
But what sense would that make? None, I'm telling you. Because you never brought me flowers, not even when we were together.
Seven years, seven years have passed. Seven years of waking up with your breath in my ear, hearing your fragile voice in the morning, watching your fucking perfect hair become a mass of messy strands. I don’t know why you waited so long, Jeonghan.
“You never call me Jeonghan ,” you said to me, after you left me. And what was I supposed to call you? Honey? Hannie? No. With your fucking name, which I always liked so much. It echoed in my head every time you introduced yourself to some stranger, or when others called you.
Jeonghan.
And it still echoes in my head, for example when I look in my phone book and see your last name and first name, and no longer “Hannie,” with a shitty yellow heart following it. It may seem stupid, a childish tantrum, but even that alone makes me feel like you’re light years away from me. You probably are. You probably always have been.
But I want to ask you: Why? Why did you do this, Jeonghan? Everything was perfect and you ruined it in a nanosecond. We were supposed to get married. Damn, we were supposed to get married, Jeonghan. I proposed to you a week before we broke up, so why did you say yes? I would have accepted a “no” just to stay with you. I would have done anything just to stay with you.
Because you are the love of my life, but apparently I am not yours. Because I would have given the world to watch you laugh every day, or to hear your lame jokes, or to lose at every game we tried to play together.
It was your intelligence that made me fall in love with you. I don’t know what was going through my head that day, eight years ago, when we met. And yet I remember it all perfectly.
“I’m Jeonghan.”
And you said it with a smile on your face, while you smoked that half-finished cigarette. I was okay with that damn addiction of yours, even though I knew it would hurt you in the long run. I didn't say anything to you, because I felt like I was being intrusive. Who was I to you, anyway? A toy, maybe. A toy you used for seven years and then decided to throw in the garbage with the spent butts of those twenty cigarettes you smoked every single day.
"A pack of Marlboro Reds."
You said to the tobacconist every time you finished one. One a day, or more.
"I'm worried, Hannie."
"Another cigarette can't hurt."
That's what you always said to me. As if you weren't smart enough to understand that your lungs were gone.
I don't care anymore. Do whatever the fuck you want, smoke as many cigarettes as you want, I'm definitely not going to come to your bedside when you can't even breathe anymore.
It sounds mean, and it is. But you hurt me so much that I can't help but express all the anger I'm feeling and will always feel.
And every day I regret that morning I met you. I don't know what came to my mind when I thought you were a fucking angel. I looked at you and told myself that you couldn't be just anyone. You were too beautiful, too smart, too everything.
You were always skinny as a rail because you forgot to eat and even if I reminded you to do it you didn't listen to me.
"Yes, I'll eat later."
You told me. And then you punctually "had dinner" with five cigarettes, one after the other.
Maybe that's also why you left me. Maybe you left me because I was worried about you. But what would I have wanted to do? I loved you. I still love you, despite all the harm you've done to me.
"I can't go on, Cheol."
"Doing what?"
I think I was just stupid for even thinking that you would never leave me. Because I would never have done it.
"This... Us. We're no good."
I looked at you puzzled and I remember that sentence hurt like a punch in the stomach from the love of your life. It probably would have hurt less.
“Us?”
“Yes. Us. This is all wrong, Cheol, I… I need to be alone.”
You weren’t crying, you weren’t shaking, you were just looking down. Because obviously you were such a coward that you couldn’t even look me in the eyes.
“All of this. All this love puts pressure on me. It hurts me, it makes me feel oppressed.”
“Jeonghan, you’re talking bullshit.”
“No, Cheol.”
“You cheated on me. Didn’t you?”
I caught you off guard, obviously. I remember how much your eyes widened, and how pale your perfect fucking face had become.
“You cheated on me, Jeonghan?”
You didn’t answer. Your eyes lowered even further to the floor, as if they wanted to dig deep into it until they found the center of the Earth.
“At least tell me who. Fucking answer.”
You pursed your lips, shoved your bony hands into your pockets.
“Joshua.”
I nodded. After that, I grabbed your wrist. I dragged you to the front door, opened it, pushed you out.
“Cheol.”
You tried to say, but I slammed the door in your face before you could say any other word.
What makes me the most angry is knowing that you're fine now, probably fucking with Joshua or whoever, while I'm here, writing this shit while contemplating the idea of death.
"Life goes on, Cheol. You can't feel that bad."
Jihoon obviously doesn’t even know what love is. He doesn’t know how much it hurts to be replaced. He doesn’t know how painful it is to see the person you wanted by your side forever go away.
I’ve always imagined a future with you. A house, some animals, a garden, some fucking kids.
But now? What do I do now? What do I do without you, Jeonghan?
You became my life. I did everything for you. Waking up in the morning, going to work, buying you your favorite snacks to make sure you ate at least some fucking chocolates.
And now that you’re gone, I have nothing left. I have nothing left.
“Loving me would be easier if tulips lived longer”
You said this to me one day. And I still don’t understand what the fuck you meant. Phrases made up or constructed to get around the fact that you were terrible at loving. Or simply at loving me.
I hope you’re hurting even just a little bit of how I am. I hope the guilt eats away at your stomach like fucking worms.
I love you.