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jiwoo hasn’t slept in days.
not really.
she lies in bed every night, eyes open, staring at the ceiling like it might finally explain how love turned into this—how wanting someone could keep a body awake long after the heart is exhausted. the city is quiet at this hour. too quiet. every sound feels louder when you’re alone with your thoughts, and jiwoo’s thoughts are all yubin-shaped.
she checks her phone. again. and again.
no messages. no missed calls. just the glow of the screen, showing a picture of her and yubin as her lockscreen.
yubin used to fall asleep on calls with her, voice soft, breath slow, murmuring half-formed thoughts jiwoo pretended not to memorize. now jiwoo is awake by herself, replaying those memories like they might change if she listens closely enough. she gets up. decides to make food that she won’t eat anyway, and sits by the window.
outside, life keeps moving. somewhere, yubin is sleeping—peacefully, probably. that thought hurts more than it should. jiwoo wonders when she became the only one losing sleep over a love that already ended.
she whispers yubin’s name into the dark.
silence.
jiwoo tells herself she’s not waiting anymore. that she’s just… remembering. missing. loving quietly, from a distance. but every night proves her wrong. she’s still here. still awake. still undone.
yubin had said it gently, the last time they talked. i can’t keep being the reason you hurt yourself.
jiwoo hadn’t known how to explain that the pain wasn’t yubin—it was the absence. the not knowing. the way nights stretch longer when the person you love isn’t reaching back.
now the hours crawl by.
jiwoo sits with her knees pulled to her chest, heart heavy, eyes burning but dry. crying would at least feel like release, but even that won’t come. just this constant ache. this restless wanting.
she imagines yubin laughing with someone else. imagines her moving on, unburdened. imagines herself stuck in this same room, this same night, over and over again. the worst part isn’t that yubin left.
it’s that jiwoo still loves her just as deeply—
just as desperately—
with no place for it to go.
The sun will rise soon. Another sleepless night logged into her bones. jiwoo already knows she’ll pretend she’s fine when morning comes.
but tonight—
alone, awake, desvelada with love—
jiwoo finally admits the truth:
some people don’t haunt your dreams.
they haunt the hours when you never sleep at all.
the clock clicks over to 3:17 a.m.
jiwoo tells herself she won’t do it.
she’s told herself that all night. every night. don’t call. don’t reach. don’t drag her back into this. yubin chose peace. jiwoo should let her have it.
but the silence is too loud.
jiwoo stares at her phone until the screen dims, then lights it again with a shaky thumb. yubins name is still there. she never deleted it. never could. it’d hurt her if she ever deleted it.
just one ring, jiwoo thinks. if she doesn’t answer, i’ll just hang up. i won’t leave a message. i’ll let it go.
the phone rings.
once…
twice….
jiwoo’s heart is in her throat now. she almost decides to end the call—
until it connects.
“hello?”
yubin’s voice is soft. sleep-heavy. real. jiwoo breaks.
she presses her hand over her mouth, but it doesn’t stop the sound that escapes her—this small, wrecked breath that gives her away instantly.
“jiwoo?” yubin says, more awake now. “are you.. okay?”
that’s it. that’s the question that breaks her.
“i.. havent been able to sleep,” jiwoo whispers. her voice is rough, like she’s been screaming all night instead of holding it in. “i’ve been awake for days. i tried not to call, like i really did, but i-”
her words tangle. she swallows hard.
“i don’t know how to be.. alone at night, it feels.. empty.”
there’s a pause. jiwoo can hear sheets shifting, like yubin sat up.
“you shouldn’t have called,” yubin says gently.
“i know yubin.” jiwoo laughs weakly. “i know and i’m sorry. i just—everything is quiet and all I can think about is you. just you. i keep waiting for morning like it’s going to fix me.”
“jiwoo…”
“i miss you yubin,” she blurts. “i miss you so much it hurts to breathe sometimes. i’m not asking you to come back. i swear. i just needed to hear your voice. i needed to know you were real.”
yubin closes her eyes on the other end of the line. she presses the phone to her chest for a second before lifting it again.
“i’m real,” she says. “but i can’t be your lifeline jiwoo.”
jiwoo nods even though yubin can’t see it. tears finally start to spill now, hot and relentless.
“i know,” she whispers. “i hate that I made you that. i hate that loving you turned into this… thing. i didn’t mean to trap you in my hurting. i’m sorry.”
“i know you didn’t,” yubin says. her voice cracks just a little. “that’s why this is just.. so hard.”
they sit in silence together, breathing through the distance. it feels intimate. it feels dangerous.
“you should try to sleep,” yubin says eventually. “even a little.”
jiwoo wipes her face with her sleeve. “will you please.. stay on the line? just until i calm down?”
yubin hesitates.
jiwoo feels it like a blade.
“i can stay for a minute,” yubin says carefully. “but then i have to go. okay?”
“okay,” jiwoo whispers. “thank you.”
they don’t talk. they just exist—two people awake in the same night, connected by something that still hasn’t learned how to die.
after a while, jiwoo’s speaks up again, “i’m sorry,” jiwoo says quietly. “for calling. for bleeding on you when you worked so hard to heal.”
yubin swallows. “i hope one day the nights get easier for you.”
“me too.”
yubin exhales. “goodnight, jiwoo.”
“goodnight yubin.”
the line goes dead.
jiwoo lowers the phone and stares at the ceiling again. her chest still aches, but there’s something else there now too—a hollow understanding.
calling didn’t save her.
but it proved something she can’t ignore anymore:
she can’t keep surviving on borrowed pieces of yubin.
as dawn creeps in through the window, jiwoo finally closes her eyes—not in peace, but in surrender.
and for the first time, she lets herself believe that healing might start
the moment she stops dialing the number she knows by heart.
—
yubin doesn’t move after the call ends.
the phone screen goes dark in her hand, but she keeps staring at it like jiwoo might still be there if she looks long enough. the room feels too quiet again, like the silence suddenly rushed back the second she hung up.
she did the right thing.
that’s what she tells herself.
she sits on the edge of the bed, feet cold against the floor, heart racing like she just ran somewhere she didn’t want to go. jiwoo’s voice keeps echoing in her ears—raw, exhausted, breaking in ways yubin used to know how to soothe.
‘i don’t know how to be alone at night.’
yubin wanted to say, come over. i’ll make it better. i’ll stay until morning like we used to so bad. but the words just sat on her tongue, heavy and dangerous.
instead, she chose distance.
her body shakes once. then again.
yubin curls forward, elbows on her knees, phone clutched too tight. the tears come fast now, blurring her vision before she can stop them. a sound escapes—soft, broken, nothing like the composed, calm voice she used on the call.
“i miss you, jiwoo.” she whispers into the empty room.
it feels unfair—how she can love someone this much and still walk away. how choosing herself doesn’t feel like relief, just a different kind of ache.
she lies back on the bed and just stares at the ceiling, the same way jiwoo probably is right now. the thought wrecks her.
yubin turns onto her side and hugs a pillow to her chest, pretending that it’s jiwoos arm. she hates herself for it, but she lets herself do it anyway.
“you’re not my responsibility anymore,” she says aloud, like if she hears it enough times it’ll stick to her and eventually understand.
her phone buzzes once. yubin flinches.
nothing. just a notification from an app she forgot to turn off.
still, her hands tremble.
she imagines jiwoo finally sleeping. hopes she isn’t awake hurting because yubin chose not to save her this time.
yubin wipes her face with her sleeve, she survived that call. she didn’t go back. that has to mean something. as the crying slows, the exhaustion settles in—deep, bone-heavy. before she falls asleep, yubin opens her notes app and types something she’ll never send:
i love you enough to let you go. i just wish loving myself didn’t feel like losing you all over again.
she closes the phone. turns onto her side.
and in the dark, with tears drying on her cheeks, yubin finally lets herself grieve. not the relationship, not the fights, the arguments -
but the version of love where staying didn’t hurt this much.