Hey…

It's cold.

Not the indifferent breeze of the midnight, nor the lack of warmth of your apartment — sure, they were cold. The tiles were freezing; not the best place to lay in. The lack of yellow light doesn't help either.

It's still cold. A different kind of cold. A new one — seconds new, as all you could do was watch the alcohol soak your shirt. You can't even drink properly.

What a fucking joke.

And as the only audience of the clown, you laugh. You had to.

You laugh as you disregard the mess, lean into the bottle — your only companion — as it pours you another.

You laugh as you raise it to cheer.

You laugh as you drink.

You laugh.

Because you are happy.

That's what you always tell them.

That's what you tell yourself.

And that's why you're here — blissfully laying on the floor as your third bottle rolls hollow.

Another laugh. It wasn't yours — god, you wish it was only yours that mocks you.

It's an echo. Again and again, and now it's here again.

You hear it. It wasn't here, but you hear it.

The same laugh that was once real within these walls. The same laugh she brought when you tried to mimic a bakery's special. The same laugh she wore when she was lost somewhere in the middle of your bantering. The same laugh she had when she was under you, the two of you trading sweet nothings.

The same laugh you heard back at the pub.

Her laugh.

You should've ignored it. Dismissed it as another ghost of hers — enjoyed one free night where you could be distracted from her. Almost every single night you willingly imprisoned yourself in your bedroom. A twisted need for repentance: to be haunted by her, to let it happen, all for a simple question of what if — something you could lament but never answer. Part of you always knew it was only an excuse to play the memories again and again.

So you tried. You genuinely thought you could escape. The night presented itself like it would — for the first time in a while you felt free from being suspended. Banter from your buddies as you made your way to the pub, congratulations so overdone they curdled into teasing. You were smiling. A bit more alcohol and you would've laughed.

All of it was true. So when you heard that laugh —

You really tried. Convinced yourself it was nothing, that she was not there, no longer there. But her name, wailed just ahead of you — there was no decision in it. You were bound to turn. Bound to look for her. And this time it wasn't just a trace.

You see her smile. Far from you, gone from you.

But she is there.

And now you are here.

Floor. Ceiling. The dark in between. Your shirt still damp, the smell of it sweet and stale at once. The bottle somewhere beside you, empty of everything useful.

You close your eyes.

She's still there.

Still the same as back then.

It started with a simple hey.

Just before when you first met her.

Jeemin.

Bang Jeemin.

There was something different that day. Maybe it was how unhurried the morning classes were, or maybe it was the wind blowing slightly different, or maybe it was the fresh pan that greeted you at the cafeteria door — just freed from the oven, warm and simple. Or maybe it was none of those things. Maybe it was simply because it was the day you saw her.

It wasn't the first time you'd heard her name. Wasn't the first time you'd glanced her way, or found yourself in the same room as her without it meaning anything.

But it was the first time she smiled just for you.

"Sorry, Jeemin?" You already knew it was her. You just needed to ask — needed the excuse to sit across from this girl who seems, impossibly, to have saved that smile specifically for you.

Your name, through her voice.

An echo for your greeting — though at that moment you were oblivious, not knowing that sound would stay with you even until now.

That was all the exchange she needed to feel familiar. There was a quip she initiated that is long gone from your memory now; you only remember how stupidly you smiled at it. Here's another thing you remember clearly: the conscious decision to stall on handing over the calculator — the reason you were meeting in the first place. You just had that urge. And you did stall. So did she.

The first thing you brought up was deliberately far from the reason you'd met, conveniently an excuse for it to not be over yet. As if you'd planned it from the start, you brought up lunch.

It might've been you just convincing yourself, but you were operating on a goal — to have a long conversation. It wasn't your forte, especially with someone new. You thought you could hold your own, but it was Jeemin who outdid you. She met you on every topic. Filled every beat.

It was one of the longest lunches you'd ever had, and yet it ended too soon.

And so did everything else.

The pub didn't change. Same noise, same warm amber light, same bodies pressing into each other over raised glasses. Nothing changed.

You did.

The moment you heard it — that laugh cutting clean through the noise like it always had, like it was looking for you specifically — everything went underwater. Not dramatic. Not slow-motion. Just a switch, flipped. One second you were there, present, halfway through something your friend was saying, and the next you were somewhere far below the surface, watching the pub happen without you.

Your lungs forgot the order of things.

You found her before you decided to look. That's the thing about haunts — they don't wait for permission. She was across the floor, shoulders loose, head tilted back, and she was laughing at something someone beside her had said. Unbothered. Whole. The world hadn't ended for her.

You stood there and let that land.

A hand found your shoulder — your friend, pulling you back into the banter, nudging your barely touched mug toward you with a look that didn't ask but also didn't have to. You smiled. You think you smiled. Something moved on your face that was meant to pass for it.

It was denial

You raised the mug anyway. Drank.

And the alcohol did what alcohol does — took you somewhere else entirely.

"How much did you drink?"

Ironic, that that was her first thought — considering she'd been buzzed since you'd plopped her into the Uber. Barely keeping her eyes open, groggy, and yet she still had to scold you for drinking too much. Which was a quarter of what she'd had. She lifted her hand in a weak attempt at a reprimanding tap on your arm. Maybe a slap, if she could manage it.

"I'm not as drunk as you."

"I'm not drunk."

"You also didn't throw up."

"I didn't—" she barely finished the denial before she was dozing off again. Only this time she shifted, made the effort of pulling herself off the backseat just to lean into you instead. You had hoped that was the end of it.

Then, a whisper.

"You don't have to drive me home." Just enough consciousness left in her to keep her voice small. An attempt at hiding it, at least.

"I'm not."

"Oh."

Silence. Then a grip on your arm — subtle at first, slowly tightening.

"Why?" There was more hesitation in that single word than in anything she'd said all night.

"Because I'm drunk too, remember? What I'm doing though is making sure you get home."

Her grip relaxed.

It was true — you'd had more than expected, already bracing for the hangover, for the gaps in memory, for the morning being unkind. Your senses were nowhere near their best.

But sitting there with Jeemin leaning warm against your side, you were certain that how adorable she was tonight was something you would remember for the rest of your life.

"Why?"

She couldn't even hear you. Eyes closed, head still against your shoulder.

"Because," slower this time, indulging her — indulging yourself — "I'm drunk—"

She stirred. "No."

"No?"

"Not that." A small furrow between her brows, like the question had been bothering her long before tonight.

"Not what?"

A pause. The Uber moved through a light. Then —

"Why are you doing this? Why are you this nice to me?"

"Do I need a reason to be nice to you?"

"Yes!" More awake now, but just barely, her voice still soft at the edges the way sleep makes everything soft.

"Why?"

She was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again it was slower, more careful, like she was choosing each word from a dwindling supply.

"Because I want to. I want to think that it isn't just empty kindness. I want it to be something more."

"Jeemin, I—"

"Did you know I saved every text you sent me?" She said it the way you admit something you've been holding too long — quickly, before you can think better of it. "The first thing I check every morning is you."

You didn't say anything. You weren't sure there was anything to say to that.

"Alcohol really is doing a lot tonight."

She made a sound — half laugh, half something that wasn't. "Exactly. I hate you."

"You hate me?"

"You're nice." She shifted against you, not pulling away, just resettling, like she couldn't quite get comfortable with what she was saying. "You're kind. You're sweet. But every time it ends up with you being playful — just—" a small frustrated exhale, "just give me a sign. A clear one."

The streetlights moved across the window. You watched them.

"How about this."

"It's not like you're listening to me anyway."

You turned to look at her then. She had her eyes half open, watching the passing lights with the particular focus of someone trying very hard not to fall asleep.

"I wonder the same thing, you know," you said. "You're drop dead pretty. You're charismatic. You're smart — compensated for it, exceedingly so."

That got her attention. She tilted her head up just enough to look at you properly. "I am?"

"Yes." You held her gaze. "And I'm helplessly falling for you."

Something shifted in her expression. "Then—"

"It's too good to be true."

"That is true!" She pushed weakly at your arm.

"You're drunk, Jeemin."

"Only tonight!" she said, with more conviction than anything else she'd managed all night.

"If you remember this tomorrow, then…"

You waited.

"Then…"

Her eyes had closed again. Her grip on your arm had gone slack, breathing evening out, the rest of the sentence dissolving somewhere she couldn't follow it back from.

You didn't wake her.

Looking back, you should've seen it coming — maybe she did, and continued anyway. But you were blindsided by your own pattern. Took for granted the little time you both had.

You only see it now. Right after everything is done.

The glass is still in your hand. The room is still dark. The ceiling hasn't moved and neither have you, sprawled across tiles that have long stopped feeling cold — or maybe you've just stopped noticing. Hard to tell anymore what's numb and what's simply become familiar.

You set the glass down. Carefully, the way you do things when you're too drunk to trust yourself.

She didn't remember a single thing by that morning. But you do. Vivid, even now. A haunted loop that won't stop running.

She didn't need to remember — eventually another confession found its way between the two of you. Countless days spent together after that, holding her, loving her. It could've been perfect. It should've been.

But it was you who faulted.

All those hours, you should've been counting. In your head now, a hundred different ways it could've gone — give up a part of yourself, lean into her more, hold her a little tighter, stand a little closer, stay a little longer. That's why it stings. So blatantly obvious. None of it done.

Sure, it wasn't you who stabbed what existed between the two of you. But you let it bleed, thinking it would endure.

It did not.

You close your eyes.

The apartment is quiet in the way that only feels loud to you. Louder than that pub ever could.

And yet there was no noise in that pub.

Only her.

Hence why, when you heard her voice somewhere behind you — suddenly, impossibly close, asking the bartender for her usual — you were reminded that alcohol never really solves anything. Never did in your bedroom, alone. Certainly not here, where you'd somehow convinced yourself you could keep drinking with your ex just a few tables away.

Every part of you wanted to turn. Face her. Even just a glance, closer than before. That's exactly why you didn't. A decent thing, maybe the only one left in you — to not show her the face of the man who once hurt her.

Your legs made the decision before you did.

You didn't run. You were conscious enough to not draw attention. And here you are — back pressed flat against the bathroom wall, the cold tile bleeding through your shirt, staring at yourself in a mirror that isn't doing you any favors.

You look exactly like what you are.

The man in the mirror doesn't look away. Neither do you. Some kind of standoff with yourself, pathetic and necessary, breathing through your mouth because your nose has forgotten how.

You were doing fine.

You were almost fine.

The knock comes soft. Three of them, unhurried.

"Occupied?"

A simple ask. The word anyone would say.

And yet.

You don't move. Don't breathe. It's her voice — you'd know it anywhere, through anything, apparently even through a bathroom door in a pub you should've left an hour ago. But it's just a question. The question anyone would ask. She could be asking a stranger. She probably is.

"Hey…"

Softer this time. Something in it that sits differently, less like a stranger filling silence and more like — but you're not thinking clearly. You're panicking. Your brain is underwater again and it's not a reliable narrator right now.

"...Are you okay in there?"

There it is. The question she'd ask anyone. Except the way she let the silence breathe before it — that small hesitation, that hey before the ask — a stranger wouldn't do that. A stranger wouldn't wait like that.

You don't catch it.

You're too busy holding yourself back, saving her from you.

let her go. just as before you had no right, so you did what you could do best, let her leave.

She doesn't knock again.

This time.

it was her who walked away from the door.

Ironic.

That's how it ended. A countable steps to walk away — cordial, clean, the ending that makes you wonder if you could've tried a little harder. But wondering is easier than admitting. It was compliance, maybe. Or exhaustion. Either way, those are just excuses dressed up as reasons.

It started with the internship.

You were ahead of your peers — secured early, at a company you actually respected, which made it harder to push back when they pushed. Overtimes. Workloads that bled into each other. And on top of all of it, the mentorship, which was an honor until it was just another weight. Suddenly the hours you could've spent with her were spent sleeping at your desk instead.

It was gradual.

A rescheduled dinner. Then another. She didn't make it a thing—just sent a text, it's fine, eat something, don't work too late. You did work too late. You always did back then.

Instead that just made her try harder. Showing up at the office lobby with food in a paper bag, at the start she always gave a headsup, but you could never check her messages, leading to a pleasant surprise as she waited for you outside. She did it so casually like she hadn't rerouted her evening for you.

You told yourself she didn't mind.

She said she didn't mind.

There were nights she’d just stay. Settled into the couch of your apartment with her laptop, doing her own work, not asking for anything. Just present. You'd glance over sometimes from across the room and she'd already be looking, and she'd make a face — something ridiculous, something only for you — and you'd turn back to your screen almost smiling.

The text got sparse but she never made it an issue. You’d catch up to her chats already exhausted, apologize in tandem, and she calls you out before you could type it out.

I know, just tell me one good thing about today.

Just one.

That was all she ever asked for. You'd find something, always, even on the worst nights. She had a way of making that feel possible.

Weekends, when you had them, she'd let you sleep. Wouldn't call before noon. Would show up after with coffee and no agenda, curling into whatever space you left her, content to just exist beside you while you recovered. She never made you feel guilty for needing that.

You noticed all of it.

You just never said so.

You think of it as debt, eventually time will lighten up, things will settle and you'd give back everything she'd quietly been carrying for you. You made the promise to yourself so many times it started to feel like you'd already kept it.

The overtime eventually eased. The workload thinned. The mornings stopped starting in the dark.

And somehow, without the excuse, you just —

Didn't.

Old habits without the justification. Leisure time that should've been hers, spent on nothing in particular. Plans made and softened into maybe next week. The same patience she'd extended to you during the hard months, still extended, still warm — except now its hollow with excuse as its mask.

You told yourself she was fine.

She said she was fine.

Then one night your phone lit up while you were resting. You'd been idle for hours, third bottle already popped. It buzzed. Then again. You let it pass — stubborn things kept going.

You picked it up.

Her name on the screen. But not the usual — not the small endearments, not the casual asks. These were long. Too many. The kind of messages that don't get sent in one sitting, that get drafted and deleted and drafted again before finally, finally getting sent all at once. You could feel the weight of them before you'd even finished the first.

You didn't finish reading.

You were already up. Already pulling on whatever was closest, moving before the thought had fully formed, because something in you knew — had known, maybe, for longer than you'd let yourself admit. You said something stupid into the phone, the kind of thing panic produces, clumsy and insufficient.

She wasn't angry.

That was worse.

You could feel the disappointment through the screen, heavy and quiet, as if the phone bore its weight, you did not want to hold it.

It will never work through phones, it never did.

So you didn't ask through the phone — you asked for her. Pleaded, really. Keep the door open. Wait for you. Just wait.

She was reluctant. Evasive in the way people are when they've already prepared themselves for a certain ending and don't want to be talked out of it.

But she waited.

You trusted her to. Even then, you trusted her.

She opened the door.

That was the first thing — she'd actually waited, actually opened it, and somehow that made everything harder. You'd half hoped for a reason to turn back, something to push against. Instead she just stepped aside and let you in.

Her place was quiet. Dim. Yet she welcomed you like always.

You started talking. Your thoughts still touched by the alcohol.

You're not sure what you said. Something true, probably. Something that came out wrong, probably. She listened to all of it without interrupting, which she always did, which you were only now understanding was its own form of exhaustion — always making room, always waiting for you to finish.

When you stopped she was quiet for a moment.

"I know," she said.

Just that, at first.

"I know you do." She wasn't looking past you, wasn't avoiding you. She was looking directly at you, which was somehow the hardest part. "That's not — that was never the question."

"Then what—"

"I'm tired." Simple. Not cruel. The way you say something you've been carrying so long it's lost its edge. "Not of you. I want you to understand that. Not of you."

You waited.

"But I've been — I kept thinking it would balance out. That I just had to hold on a little longer and it would even out between us." A small exhale. "It didn't."

"I can fix that. I'm telling you I can—"

"I believe you," she said.

And she meant it. You could tell she meant it, which was the part that knocked the air out of you. She wasn't saying I don't trust you. She wasn't saying you're lying. She believed you completely and was still standing where she was standing.

"I just don't have anything left to give while you do."

The room held that for a moment.

"Jeemin—"

"I love you." Quiet. Certain. The most devastating thing anyone has ever said to you, because of what came after it. "I really do. But if I stay I'm going to keep giving what I don't have, and I'm going to resent you for it, and I don't want that. I don't want to do that to you. I don't want to do that to us."

"So that's it."

She didn't answer right away. Her arms dropped to her sides.

"I don't want it to be," she said. "But I think it has to be."

You didn't fight it.

Maybe that was your answer too — that when she said it you didn't fight it. You just stood there and let it happen, the same way you'd let everything else happen, and some part of you already knew that would be the thing you'd never forgive yourself for.

She walked you to the door.

Cordial. Quiet. The kind of goodbye that doesn't slam, doesn't shatter — just closes, softly, with a click you'll spend months trying to unhear.

Through a door.

That's how it ended.

And here you are — floor, ceiling, the dark that doesn't commit to darkness. The glass somewhere beside you, empty. The bottle too. You've stopped counting.

You don't move.

There's no use. You've tried the bedroom — she's there too, in the indentation of the pillow you stopped flipping over, in the charger she left that you still haven't moved, in the specific way the blanket smells when the window's been open too long. You've tried the kitchen — she's in the mug at the back of the cabinet, the one she claimed the third time she was here and never unclaimed.

You've tried sleep.

She's there too.

This is what you didn't understand about haunting — you always imagined it as something that comes for you. Something that finds you in the dark and makes itself known. You thought you could outrun it, or outwait it, or drink enough that it loses your address for a night.

But she's not coming for you.

She's already here. She never left. She's in the walls of this apartment, in the cold of these tiles, in the hollow roll of an empty bottle. She's in every room you've tried to exist in without her. She's in the laugh you heard across a pub that drove you into a bathroom to fall apart.

She's in everything you didn't do.

You stare at the ceiling.

You buried it. You tried. You covered the wound and waited for it to mean something and it didn't, it doesn't, and you are so tired of being surprised by that.

The cold has stopped being cold. Or you've stopped being able to tell. Hard to say which is worse — feeling it or going numb to it. Both feel like losing something.

Your phone screen lights up the dark.

You don't remember reaching for it. But here it is, warm in your hand, the brightness too much for a room this dark. You should put it down. You know what you're going to do and you know it won't help and you're going to do it anyway — because that's what haunted people do, forever bound to their ghost.

You open the messages.

Scroll —

Her name stops you.

Bang Jeemin.

New message. Sent just now, while you were here on this floor, while the bottles were empty and the ceiling was the only thing looking back at you.

You don't know what it means. You won't know until you open it. Your thumb hovers.

You open it.

"hey."