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rereading...it still hurts like hell
traitor | lee haechan
title: traitor
pairing: lee haechan x oc/fem reader (no descriptions and no name but written in third person) | mentioned: huang renjun, lee mark, lee jeno, na jaemin
genre: angst, song-fic, friends to lovers to exes | requested and inspired by traitor by olivia rodrigo
warnings: angst, implied past bullying, implied past depression, assumed cheating, gaslighting, break-up, fights
summary: the worst kind of betrayals are the ones that happen unexpectedly and from the ones you love the most. Haechan never gave her a reason to believe he was a traitor. Their relationship never showed signs of cracking. But doing the most for someone you love doesn’t stop them from backstabbing and leaving you behind.
words: 6.450k
a/n: it took me ages but she’s here. there might be some mistakes bc while i was editing tumblr decided to don’t save half of it and i didn’t want to re-read it for the third time. i hope you’ll like it! let me know what you think with comments, reblogs or asks ♡
When somebody cheats, the partner always finds out. No matter how slick they think they’re being, at some point, they know. And the reasons why they don’t confront the other could be different, maybe they’re not sure, maybe they think they would never do something like that, or maybe they think that being hurt is just a tiny little price to pay to keep them.
The latter was the main reason why she kept her doubts to herself and never found the courage to face Haechan.
The signs were all there, they started to pile up one after the other, but when they became too much to handle she had to let go.
“What got you smiling so hard?” She had asked her boyfriend. They were sitting on the couch next to each other, the tv playing a movie they picked previously, but Haechan seemed more concentrated on the phone in his hand than on the movie, or her. No matter all her touches lingering on his body, or her jokes at the actor’s lines.
He shrugged, lifting a hand to caress her hand that was placed on her thighs, “Nothing, babe,” he replied, locking the phone and tugging it deep into the pocket of his pants. “Jaemin sent a stupid meme in the group chat, you know, the usual.”
And she hummed, shrugging it off, not paying attention to the hidden signs. The way he didn’t keep the phone in his hand but hid it away, the way his breath shook for a split moment or how his mind still seemed off somewhere away from there.
At first, it really did seem nothing. Jaemin would always flood up the group chat with stupid messages. And sometimes it happened to her too to get distracted by other things.
There was nothing strange with it.
Just like there was nothing strange with the boys’ nights out. She wasn’t jealous, she trusted Haechan, and only thought it was fair for him and his group of friends to go out and have fun. She did the same with her closest friends so it was something common in their relationship, just some healthy alone time with other important people of their lives.
If only boys’ nights didn’t start happening so often.
“I just don’t get it,” she said, nervously biting her lips as she walked back and forth in her room while Haechan was sitting on her bed, looking at her with an apologetic look – honestly, she couldn’t even get if there were any apologies behind his brown eyes. “Your boys’ nights out are on Saturday, why do they keep happening on Friday, too?”
Haechan sighed for the nth time that afternoon, standing up and walking toward her, trying to make her stop from walking around. “I told you, it’s not a boy out only, the guys also have some other friends and we’re just all hanging out.”
She scoffed, “So they are not even your friends, right?”
“Well,” he sighed, shrugging, “I don’t know, I know them, we got close with time.”
She sighed, turning around, throwing her hands up before pinching the bridge of her nose and sighing deeply and loudly again.
“Okay, what’s wrong, now? Are you going to do this or talk?” He asked, raising the tone of his voice and furrowing in annoyance.
She gasped, turning around again, “What’s wrong? I just… can’t you say no for just one night, Haechan? It’s literally just one fucking Friday for us.”
“I thought you didn’t mind me spending time with my friends.”
“I don’t,” she cursed, “but you are always out with them. And these are friends of your friends while, me,” she said, chuckling bitterly, “last time I checked, I’m your girlfriend.”
Haechan sighed, wetting his lips as he nodded lightly and walked toward her, gently wrapping a hand around her waist, “You’re right,” he said, caressing her cheek, moving her hair back, “I’m sorry, okay? I’ll tell them I have to pass this time.”
She wanted to get mad at his use of ‘have to’ as if he was being forced to do that but decided to let it slide. She didn’t like fighting with Haechan, and lately, those stupid bickerings were happing way too frequently.
“Yeah, fine,” she replied, leaning closer to rest her forehead against him and inhale deeply his scent. “I don’t like looking like a psycho obsessive girlfriend but I… I just miss you so much, lately, I’ve been barely seeing you.”
“I know, we’ll make it up this weekend,” he smirked before kissing the pain away. “You have to tell me things, though, or I can’t solve them. Promise me you will tell me anything?”
And she did promise, but the one keeping secrets in the relationship wasn’t her, so it was a bit hard to make things work that way. Especially in the long run. At the start Haechan tried to spend more time with her again, being able to balance the friend life and the love life perfectly, but then excuses started to collect, and most of them didn’t even match what the other boys would tell her.
“Maybe he fell asleep,” Renjun said, chewing the inside of his cheeks nervously. “You know, he’s a little stressed out lately.”
She scoffed, “he could’ve told me he couldn’t make it out of the bed. I’ve watched the movie alone after waiting for him outside for like a… like an hour? I didn’t even enjoy it because I had no idea where he was,” she sighed, falling beside him on the couch. “God, I have no idea where he is now.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Jeno tried to reassure her but was too busy looking at a vase on the shelf. He wasn’t even that close with her, he just came along because she called Renjun and he was with him. He had probably seen her three times before.
“Can you please don’t play with the vase, though, it’s my grandma’s gift, I don’t need more preoccupation now.”
Renjun glared at him, signalling him to back off, and got back caressing her back while Jeno lifted his hands and backed away.
“We can go see if he’s at our dorms,” Renjun proposed, “we didn’t sleep there tonight so we don’t know.”
“Yeah, maybe that would help,” she replied, trying to hold back the sniffles.
“We’ll call you as soon as we know something,” he reassured, leaving her alone again. But Haechan wasn’t home and he wasn’t even picking up Renjun’s or Jeno’s calls. It looked like he disappeared.
When two hours passed, she heard a knock on the door and got up immediately, imagining it was him, feeling so many different emotions bubble in her body.
“Hey,” there he was, Haechan standing there, looking at her with a sorry face, chest panting because he had probably rushed there and a bag in his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“Are you okay?” Was the first thing she managed to say. All the anger, the frustration, leaving her body because she was more terrified something had happened to him than the fact he was basically acting like a completely different person.
“Yeah, I… I’ve been practicing all afternoon and I collapsed on the bed as soon as I got home.” Lie. Well, partially a lie. It wasn’t like she had to know all the truth. Knowing he stayed at the dance room later because he was helping out a new friend wasn’t an important part of the story, right? They just danced. It could’ve been even Jeno, it was just irrelevant.
She hummed, making room for him to enter the house. The text Renjun had sent her before telling her he wasn’t home completely slipped her mind. “I was worried, I thought something happened, you didn’t answer the phone.”
“I know, I was too busy to pay attention to it,” he replied. “But I bought McDonald’s,” he cooed, lifting the bag full of food in his hand, “So... can we make it up?”
“Buying me with food?” She asked, giggling.
“Well, it’s your favorite hamburger,” he said, pouting and batting his lashes. “Come on, you know I get carried away sometimes, but I really need to be prepared to pass the audition next month.” Haechan hated studying, but it wasn’t like his parents gave him the chance to pursue his dancer career so he had to make it all fit between a university major he couldn’t care about and the hard practice at night to follow his dream. And lately, he just had a special dance partner that gave him more motivation, leading to staying hours past the usual training hours.
“I know,” she said, kissing him slowly, “but promise me you will try to at least warn me when you’re too tired and can’t make it.”
“I will. Making you worry is the last thing I want to do.”
Up to that point, the cracks in the house they had built were already starting to show, small, barely visible, passing unnoticed. But no one of the two was suspecting anything. Haechan truly didn’t want to cheat on her. And she had nothing to worry about.
But then it happened.
When her name first slipped out of Haechan’s mouth she didn’t pay much attention, she didn’t even pay attention to the way he was stammering while trying to answer her innocent questions, almost as if he was hiding something. But she simply didn’t see it. There was nothing to see. Haechan was loyal, his charismatic and extrovert personality weren’t signs of being a cheater. Bora and he met at the studio and were partners, she surely wasn’t the first woman that danced with him. And she also seemed pretty dull, at least from the few answers Haechan gave her.
That was until they met on a Friday night at a restaurant all together to hang out. Bora was tall, fit, an amazing dancer that moved to Seoul to follow her dream, friend with Mark, and dance partner of Haechan and Jeno. A little bit too funny for her liking, too smart, too pretty, just… too much.
And she was also too close to Haechan. Her hands touching his, her soft smiles curling her lips at any word he said, her irritating chuckles at the unfunniest of his jokes.
That was why Haechan avoided her questions, because she wouldn’t have liked the answers.
‘She’s not even that pretty.’
‘She doesn’t even get my jokes.’
‘Yeah, she needs more practice.’
“Are you okay?” Haechan had asked close to her ear, turning around so he could only look at her.
“Mh, me?” She asked, shaking her head and zoning in again.
“Yeah, you,” he chuckled, “you barely spoke all night,” he said, caressing her hand on the table. And that touch, that usually brought her so much comfort, felt weird, almost foreign.
“I just… I don’t really know what to say,” she smiled fakely, “I know nothing about dance.” She was a history student, the things that got her excited were far different from pirouetting, popping, or whatever they did.
“We didn’t only talk about that, come on,” he said.
“No, sure, I…” she stopped, shaking her head.
Calm down, you are going insane. It’s fine. It’s all in your head.
“You?”
“I need more alcohol; can you order it for me?” She asked, changing the topic, making him furrow but then shrug.
“Yeah, sure.”
It wasn’t the time and place for a jealous scene, she thought to herself. There was no need to be jealous. Bora just happened to be an amazing dancer and an amazing person and that was it, and so were Haechan’s male friends, she was just like them.
But the anger and jealousy didn’t calm during the rest of the night out, she couldn’t help but stare at her, and the way she was always facing Haechan, smiling at him, a wicked smile that hid thousands of things she didn’t even want to know, or the way her hand tried to brush against his any chance she got. They were acting as if she wasn’t even there. They were acting as if she wasn’t his girlfriend.
“Can we go home?” She asked, finally speaking, probably for the first time in an hour when Bora snuggled her face against his shoulder for god knows whatever reason, probably due to a comment Mark made toward her, she wasn’t really listening, just paying attention to their body language.
They all stopped laughing, looking at her with a confused expression, Haechan included, that swiftly brushed her off and finally paid attention to her, his girlfriend.
“It’s barely ten?” He pointed out, staring at the watch on his wrist.
“I know, I’m tired.”
“Already?” He asked, lowering his tone and moving toward her to shield her conversation from their friends.
“Yes, I… can we just go? Do you hate spending time with me so much?”
“What?” He gasped. “Why would you say that?”
“Why would I say that? You didn’t look at me the whole night,” she snapped, voice getting higher and nostrils flaring.
“Oh, please, now that’s not true.”
“You know it is,” she remarked, raising her voice, making him turn around and smile awkwardly at his friends.
“Okay, let’s not do this right here, right now, okay?”
“Oh, sure, would never want our friends to know that we fight too,” she snorted bitterly.
He sighed, “I just think there’s no need to fight, you’re seeing things.”
“I am what?”
“Can we seriously don’t do this now?”
“Can we go home? I simply asked you this.”
Haechan huffed again, but fighting in front of their friends was the last thing he wanted to do, and also he hoped that she would calm down on the way home, but that didn’t happen. The silence of the car ride back to her place got interrupted as soon as they stepped inside. The main door slammed behind them.
“Who is she?”
“Who- what do you mean who is she?”
“For you, who is she for you?” She screamed, throwing her bag on the couch.
“Oh, god really? Are you seriously doing this? This is your problem?”
“Yes, because… because she was always on you and you – you looked at her, you looked at her with those eyes, with that look you never look at me like that anymore.”
Haechan groaned, offended. “What are you insinuating?”
“It doesn’t look like insinuation to me.”
“No? You think I’m cheating on you?”
She sniffled, turning around, not able to stand his gaze. His eyes were looking at her as if she was out of her mind, blaming her for being too emotional, for being the one that was ruining everything for not trusting him.
“You’re crazy.”
She turned around again at those words, staring at him in disbelief as she felt her heart clench in her chest. She wanted to say something but everything seemed useless. Why was he acting like that?
“You – you didn’t talk to me all night,” she whispered, voice clapped and eyes starting to get watery.
“You’ve been acting like a bitch all night,” he snapped, “and now I know why. How can I talk to you when you put a wall between us?”
“What did you call me?”
He rolled his eyes, “You know what I meant. It’s not my fault I didn’t talk to you.”
She fought back tears and lift her head to push them back, finding it hard to bring her attention to him again. “I told you I knew nothing about what you were talking about and you didn’t even make an effort to try to change the topic of the conversation.”
“Sure, of course now it’s my fault," he chuckled, walking back and forth, “You’re a jealous crazy girlfriend and it’s my fault,” he screamed at her.
“Fuck you! I never made scenes when we went out together, there’s a reason if it’s weird.”
“Is there? Or maybe you are just insecure?” He said, voice not loud anymore but full of bitterness, a defiant smirk on his face.
“Insecure?” She asked, voice trembling and body too.
“Yeah, she did nothing but be nice and here you are. Maybe you wish you were like a her, not a pain in the ass like you are.”
She tried to say something but those were the last words she was expecting to come out of his mouth. Why was he defending her so much? Why was he going all the way against his girlfriend for a girl he barely knew?
“I didn’t say a single bad word about her, I’m talking to you, my boyfriend, about us. This is about us.”
“I don’t know what to tell you then,” Haechan shrugged, drifting his gaze from her wet eyes.
She chuckled incredulously, “Maybe sorry would be appreciated?”
“I’ve got nothing to apologize for. You’ve been bitching all night, you made me come home so soon for this and now I have to apologize?”
“I just wanted to spend some time with you! If you didn’t start asking me dumb questions we wouldn’t be fighting but maybe right now we were in bed like a fucking normal couple!”
“Well, then maybe we are not a normal couple.”
“No, since I see my modern history professor more than I see you.”
“You know what? I won’t talk to you if you keep blaming it on me,” Haechan said, grabbing his jacket again and walking toward the door. “Call me if you seek some sanity again.” And then the door slammed behind him, leaving her petrified in the middle of her living room with tears streaming down her face, shaking hands and lips and a heart that was breaking more and more. And it was getting too heavy to carry around.
Two headstrong and proud partners don’t go anywhere. It’s impossible to meet each other in the middle ground if that simply doesn’t exist.
None of them was going to back up.
She had done that too many times, crawling, and scratching her knees to fix something he had broken.
And Haechan knew he was wrong, but the guilt was eating him alive, and so was his pride.
And just like that, one week passed, with silence, avoided gazes, switched seats in the two classes they had together, lunches at a different table, and no texts or calls on their phones.
“I’m sorry.”
Then it came. It arrived unexpectedly, probably for the first time in the five years they were dating.
Haechan apologized. Standing right behind her at the table of that library that was now her only safe place, with his big green hoodie, snapback covering his guilty brown eyes, and the dirty Converse tapping nervously against the floor.
And she wanted to fight back, to put him through half of the pain he put her through but she couldn’t. The possibility of losing him scared her more than now, opening her arms again, would’ve hurt her dignity. If she still had some of it left in her.
So she stared at him, trying to read his face, that familiar face that now seemed so stranger to her. She wanted to convince herself that it was all in her head. She needed to convince herself of that. But finding some truth, some honesty behind his eyes, and the way his fingers were playing with his backpack, was difficult.
“I’m sorry if you felt left out, I thought you cared about dancing after all these years with me,” he added, finding the courage to look at her.
She wanted to say that she didn’t feel left out, they left her out but now wasn’t the time and place for another fight. Surely that was what he meant, Haechan simply wasn’t good with words. So she hummed, trying to stop her lips from shaking and find the right words to say, something that made sense in the mess they were becoming, or probably already were.
“So… you promise she’s just a friend?” She asked. That was the only thing she needed to be reassured about. The only thought that ran across her mind for the past week. The only fear that made her cry at night while covered in his sweater she tried to cling to the few things she always had of him, feeling that just a blow of wind was going to take him away from her.
Haechan hummed, “She’s just a friend, you’re just being paranoid,” he said and then walked closer to her, sitting on the empty chair at her side. “Can we please make it up? I haven’t gotten a hug in a week.”
And she couldn’t do anything but smile, her lips mimicking the way his own turned up and his arms opened to welcome her in.
She fell into his trap again, not catching the lies, or the way he was shaking and not because he had anxiety to finally confront her but because he had started slipping.
Because during that week he didn’t miss her that much. Because he had been receiving countless hugs. Because he had spent his afternoons in somebody else’s company. Because they almost kissed and that made him realize he needed to redeem himself.
And from then on, lies became more and more. All the ‘I love yous’ didn’t feel so genuine anymore, and the hugs were weird, short, and cold. The hours together were boring and he wasn’t looking forward to them in anticipation.
And maybe there, he realized why he was stuck there. She became a habit. An old one, hard to let go of. They had nothing in common, not anymore at least.
She felt safe because she was there at his worst. She was there by his side when nobody else wanted to be associated with him. When he was a loser. When people took it out on him and the only arms he could run to were hers. When his brain was tricking him into thinking that life wasn’t worth it anymore. When he couldn’t find a reason to wake up every day, she became the reason.
But that was five years ago.
Now Haechan wasn’t that person anymore. He didn’t need shielding. He didn’t need to be protected, and comforted. He didn’t need any more savings. He needed to mirror himself in somebody that was like him with the same passions and needs. Somebody that lived for the things that kept him alive, and she, she wasn’t his reason anymore.
And since she wasn’t his reason anymore, she started to be pushed into the back of his brain more and more.
The clock hands ticking weren’t a reminder big enough that he should’ve been at the cinema in twelve minutes and he needed to stop dancing with her and rush home to get changed. And only when his phone started buzzing uncontrollably he realized he was late.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t make it.’ Another apology, or an excuse, followed by an empty promise. ‘I’ll make it up.’
And she swallowed her pride and told him not to worry. His future was important, and he couldn’t waste time. She would’ve supported him and been his number one fan once he finally made it as a professional dancer in his dream company. Because she was when nobody else believed in him and his dream. She would’ve always been her number one fan if only he wanted to.
But then it happened again, and again. And being so far away from him was harder than expected.
The morning texts weren’t enough. The classes together weren’t the type of time she wanted to spend with him. And the lunches at their table had shifted since Bora also started to sit with them.
And she wasn’t dumb. She kept quiet but she knew. She kept quiet to keep him, to hold onto an image of Haechan that now, she was more than sure, wasn’t there anymore. She kept quiet because not only it was painful but also humiliating.
And humiliation was what was leading her angry steps under the rain. It was past ten, and the cinema board was fading behind her as she hurried to his dance gym.
One hour past their date. One hour late and no text, no call. Nothing but silence. A silence that was becoming agonizing and too loud, full of his lies and her delusional thoughts.
And she couldn’t care that the rain was socking her clothes, sticking her hair to her skin and ruining her shoes, she needed to get this over. But hope is the last one to die, and a part of her wanted her doubts to be fake, she truly wanted to be the weird one that was seeing things. She wanted to believe it was just another honest mistake, that he was tired and had forgotten, that if she entered the room Haechan would’ve been alone or with their friends and not with her.
But it wasn’t like this. He was there with her, laughing carelessly, way too close to each other.
And right there at the moment, she knew that she wasn’t even crossing his mind anymore.
That flame of hope wasn’t big enough anymore to make her get on her knees and beg. She couldn’t close her eyes and pretend she didn’t know, she didn’t see. She needed to let go. There was nothing to gain from that, their relationship had crumbled apart, the pieces of their story were dripping on the ground like the raindrops were slipping down her coat.
“It’s not what –” Haechan immediately tried to defend himself when he saw her but she stopped him, lifting her finger in the air.
“Can we get a moment alone?” If this needed to end like this, if she had to be the one putting an end to them, she wanted it to at least be private. Because she had no idea what she meant to him anymore, but Haechan still meant something to her, what they had, everything they had been through meant something to her. So damn much that the pain she was feeling right there can’t be explained with words.
When they were alone, under the porch outside of the gym they stood there in silence for a while.
They both knew what was coming.
There was no need to paint the grey walls between them blue. It was raining outside just like it was raining in the home they had built in the past years.
And that was why it was so hard to say something. One guilty of not loving anymore, and the other victim of loving too much. A terrible match that shared too much of each other. A terrible mess that knew the other’s deepest secrets and highest moments. Half a decade passed in front of their eyes as they tried to come up with a way that didn’t hurt like hell to take all that time they shared and throw it in a bin.
“It’s over,” she whispered, looking at the ground because she was sure his eyes were lighting up, happy he could finally run to Bora without their story holding him back. “We are over,” she repeated, lifting her gaze, almost more to tell it to herself, to be sure she was doing this for real. To remind herself that all her doubts and fears and his twisted games were real.
“I don’t understand, why?” Haechan asked, mixed emotions running in his mind. Why wasn’t he feeling relieved? Why was this weird? What if he still cared?
She snorted before pressing her lips together to suppress any other sound to come out, the cold was starting to make her shiver but the way he was acting was tiring her more than the long day she had, than the cold and the broken heart. He was faking it, even now, even at their breaking point, he was pretending. Putting on a mask to play the role of someone that wasn’t him, the role of someone that wasn’t the person she used to love.
“There’s nothing to understand, just like there’s nothing to save,” she answered. What was the point in wasting her breath screaming at him and explaining to him what he did and what he was fully aware he was doing? She had spent months walking through his tangle of lies and shocked faces, falling into traps that now were crystal clear, no more leaves covering the big holes she rolled down into.
And when no other word came out of his mouth, she took a step back, the rain hitting her again. When his hands didn’t move to stop her, when his feet didn’t try to cancel the distance between them, when his eyes looked into hers and there was nothing in them she used to know. She realized that she had been fooled much more than she imagined. He didn’t want to fix this, he had no reason to want to fix what broke between them because he didn’t want what was between them anymore. He was past the state of mixed feelings, past not knowing where he belonged. He knew it damn well. And the place where he belonged wasn’t her anymore. It was waiting inside in a white room, probably praying for their downfall so she could finally have him.
And right there the tears mixed with the rain, he couldn’t tell them apart, he couldn’t even swear she was crying, not that it mattered anymore. All this vulnerability, all the things they shared, were gone. So she turned around, hugging her body to shield herself from the cold, her feet almost tripping on each other every two steps as her fogged vision tried to carry herself home. Heart breaking even more when she couldn’t hear footsteps behind her. Haechan wasn’t following her. Haechan wasn’t even waiting outside to at least make sure she wasn’t getting hit by a car driving by. Haechan wasn’t under the porch, he was inside again, with her.
She wasn’t his reason anymore. But Haechan still was hers. And she had no idea how she was going to cope with that.
Break-up pain is weird. It’s weird when you’re young and you know you have all your life ahead. You know it’s not the end of the world, and yet it feels like it. It feels like all you knew, suddenly doesn’t make sense anymore. It hurts even more when you break up with someone you spent so much life with. When you grew up with them and imagined having them by your side all your life. And it’s even harder to deal with it when you got backstabbed by that person. It’s harder when you dried all their tears, pulled them out of their darkest hours and then suddenly you meant nothing to them.
Nothing.
She felt like an appearance in Haechan’s life when after just two weeks he proudly showed Bora around.
Two weeks were all it took him to get over her and the five years spent together.
She felt like a forgotten bus ticket in the pocket of a coat hanging in the closet for the whole summer. A piece of paper that gets found, looked at with a confused expression and then gets thrown away.
But to her Haechan wasn’t an old, faded, ticket. Haechan had been such a big part of her life and she couldn’t understand how he could move on from her so quickly. She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t hurting even a bit.
So this pain was worst. Because it made her feel dumb, it humiliated her, it shamed her for all the things she let him do. All the red flags she chose not to see. All the lies she chose not to listen to.
And it made her wonder if she was so uninteresting. If they truly had nothing in common anymore. How it was possible to be so easy to be forgotten after everything? And doubts start to form even more, going back in time and questioning when it all went downhill. When everything started being fake.
But she couldn’t find an answer.
She couldn’t even find her Haechan anymore.
Surely that wasn’t the one she had fallen in love with.
Walking around campus holding Bora’s hand, moving her hair behind her ears, buying her food, dropping her to her classes with the risk of arriving late to his. He even let Bora sit at her place at their table. Slapping it straight into her face how he didn’t care about her. Bringing her around, replacing her so blatantly just to shut her down.
Probably that also was the biggest pain. Not only she had lost him but she had also lost her friends. Bora took her place in his life, in his friends’ circle, probably soon even at her chair at his parents’ house.
She had nothing of the old life anymore. The only ones that checked on her were Renjun and Mark, and the only one that still proposed to go out was Renjun. But she still sat alone at an empty table now and picked the farthest seat from him in the few classes they had together, and avoided all the places they used to go together.
And things weren’t going better for her. If in front of him she faked it, and smiled, and held her head high, in the privacy of her room she would fall apart. She couldn’t point out when the betrayal started, when his words turned into lies that then turned into daggers that made her bleed. And those years felt wasted. Five years she wasn’t going to ever get back. That made her realize that she also couldn’t let him take away more years of her life. He had hurt her, badly, terribly, but she couldn’t give him that power anymore. She needed to let go for real, forget about him, move on, just as fast as he did.
But she wasn’t Haechan.
“You’re avoiding me.”
Their last conversation came three months later, when all of a sudden she heard his voice again and, lifting her gaze from her phone, she saw him.
“I know we’re over but… you were talking with Renjun and then ran away when I reached you two.”
She blinked twice, shaking her head to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, or in that case, having a nightmare. But he was real, white t-shirt, blue jeans, honey brown hair moving in the light summer breeze and stranger eyes looking into hers.
“Do you hate me?” He asked again, so nonchalantly she wanted to throw the glass in his face.
How could he come here like that? With his head low, tail between his legs, and playing the victim.
“Are you serious?” She simply asked, too stunned to believe he wasn’t joking.
“Yeah, I don’t get what I did for you to cut me off like that.”
“You betrayed me,” she said, rising her voice, shaking visibly, feeling her lungs burn. Wasn’t it enough? All the pain he put her through. Why did he need to sink the knife deeper? “I know that you’ll never feel sorry for the way I hurt. Because you don’t care, you, you just don’t care. You never cared about me, not the way I cared for you.”
She sighed, shaking her head, taking a deep breath because she didn’t want to shed more tears for him, “And I can’t even blame you, I have to blame me for being so, so stupid, and in love. God,” she exhaled, looking back at him. “I wish you had thought this through before I fell in love with you.”
“I never cheated on you,” he defended, emotionless voice with just a hint of insecurity, a small tremble, at the unexpected way she was talking to him.
“I don’t care,” she said. “In two weeks you were over me. In two weeks you erased a five years relationship. You were terrified of love, it took you one year to ease into me and try to be in a relationship with me, there’s no way you fell in love so soon. You fell in love with her when we were still together. You… you probably did even worse.”
“No, I would’ve never done that to you.”
She hummed, hiding a bitter chuckle, “It doesn’t matter…” she whispered. “Nothing matters anymore. Not when I gave you my all, my youth, my support. Not when I was the only one by your side and you pushed me to the sidelines so easily. A kiss is not more painful than this.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, voice breaking in his throat as he started to slowly realize that maybe she was right. He did hurt her anyway. Holding himself back from kissing Bora when they were together wasn’t better than the thoughts that crossed his mind or the way he let her go so easily. He had cursed himself many nights for not even being able to talk it through, to end it on a better page, to let her down slowly.
She chuckled, “No, you’re not. I don’t want you to be, I wish you to feel at least half of the pain you put me through. I hope to pop inside your mind when you least expect it, when you sleep with her in our bed, when you let her wear your sweatshirts, when she cooks your favorite breakfast or prepares tea exactly how you like it. Does she know it? Did you tell her about how much you love it with those biscuits that are almost impossible to find? How it has to be green tea and not teabag but only loose leaf?”
Haechan drifted his gaze. She didn’t know. She had no idea what he truly liked. Or how annoying he could be. She didn’t know half of the things she knew about him. And he wondered if she would ever get to know him that much.
“I will never take you back, Haechan, not even as a friend,” she said, fixing her clothes and staring straight into his eyes. No matter how much pain it still gave her, or how painful the idea of living a life without him was. If he forgot about her so soon, she could do the same. She was going to do the same. She deserved better and she was going to find it. And that wasn’t Haechan, not anymore.
So she stood up, grabbed her bag, and looked at him one last time, “I guess you didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor.”
ENOUGH FOR YOU (sequel): here