Just Because I Don’t Say Much...

You finally catch your breath as the elevator climbs, but that only puts you more unrest. Your thoughts wander as your feet cannot.

Too slow, the automated doors, the cab, the traffic.

Too far, the distance, the floor level, her.

Too harsh, the heat of the sun, life, you.

Everything is wrong, everything you blame.

Everything, even you.

Especially you.

You bring out your phone, just to check again what you already know. Time moves, never waiting. Every tick just hammers you, making you feel you are every second late.

The screen glows to the last thing you left it to. Messages. Past the messages of desperate questions you’ve pleaded to be answered, pass the calls you’ve tried and had simply passed. Not those, before all of that.

The reason of this frantic, a single line of text:

“I love you.”

The message that she sent, the last—no, not last, its not the last. Please. It shouldn’t be the last.

It wasn’t a confession. You wish it was, but she’s said those words to you a hundred times before. It wasn’t the meaning that sent you running—it was the weight behind them. The quiet ending sewn between each letter.

The spiral downward she had fallen into after stepping off. The gun she kept loading, round after round, while you told yourself she was arming for a fight. The rope she knotted with steady hands, and you—god, you—stood by, convincing yourself it was for climbing out.

You watched her drown, thinking it was swimming.

It wasn’t for a fight, the barrel was turned inwards.

She wasn’t trying to climb out, she was tying a noose.

And those three words? They weren’t affection. They were goodbye—

Ding.

The elevator doors parted. Not your floor. No, of course not—the world wasn’t done playing games. Just one of the tenants from a few floors down, eyes glued to her phone, too distracted to notice your pulse screaming.

Too slow.

Everything’s too fucking slow.

She steps in. The doors crawl closed like it’s all happening underwater. Desperation coils tight in your chest—seconds count now. Every single one.

You bolt. Out the elevator. You’ll outrun it—you have to outrun it.

You hit the stairs, taking them two, three at a time, lungs burning, mind snarling with one thought:

Faster.

But it’s not enough. You know it—deep down, you feel it grinding in your chest. Maybe it’s not that everything’s moving slow.

Maybe you’re already too late.

Regret claws at you, brutal and suffocating. You knew what she was going through. She tried to hide it, poorly, but you saw the cracks. You heard the silence between her words.

And still—you did nothing.

Because she never asked you to. Because she told you she’d be fine. And you believed her—trusted her to pull through, to fight it off, to survive.

You trusted her too much.

You left her too much.

And now, the weight of that trust feels like a loaded gun, a knotted rope, a goodbye text you can’t un-read.

Your legs keep moving, but your mind’s already screaming the truth:

You should’ve never waited.

Finally, your floor. You tear down the corridor, heart punching against your ribs, hand already reaching for the door.

You try to swing it open—

It catches. Something’s wedged underneath—a piece of clothing.

No time. You ram your shoulder against it.

“Yujin!” You yell, voice cracking with the force of it, praying the sound reaches her first, buys you even a few seconds.

The door grinds open.

The living room hits you like a gut punch.

Clothes everywhere. Trash stacked high. The air’s thick, stale—the whole place looks like a warzone with life as its adversary.

It’s damp. Dim. Depressed.

Not even the thin stream of daylight cutting through the curtains can touch the kind of darkness that’s settled in here.

You freeze—a second, maybe less. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to choke on how goddamn blind you’ve been.

But now’s not the time for that. You can drown in your own guilt later. If there’s a later.

You bolt forward. Not to your room. Not hers. Not the kitchen. You only see one place in your mind—the bathroom.

Maybe you noticed the bedroom doors wide open. Maybe some part of you already pieced it together.