He Gave Up (1/1)

Sitting at the dining table, I had the chocolate bar in front of me, placing it on the table next to my glass of cold water. It was way past midnight and I was alone downstairs as my parents had already went to sleep. The chocolate bar was still cold and hard, considering I had long brought it out from the fridge. Cold and hard, just like Yong Junhyung. “You are someone I longed for, Lee Hani, but you are also someone I don’t think I’ll ever get to be with.” It had only been a week, but I felt like he said that to me ages ago. I went to school the next Monday pretending that he didn’t say that. Why? Because it killed me to even look at him, knowing that he had gave up on me. “You told me, more than once, Junhyung, that you like me, but you are not going to do anything about it? Why?”“I won’t go after anything that I know I won’t get.”“How do you know you won’t get me, as you put it?”“I know. I’ve told you, I figured you out, Hani.” I swallowed down the cold water, trying to put out the burning pain in my heart. “You are as calm as you are lively, Hani. You are animatedly warm to the people you love, and your expressions and actions translate exactly what you are feeling at the moment. You hate being late, you hate waiting, and you hate breaking promises. You are transparent, you think too much, you are too clumsy for your own good, and a bit dense at times, and people are drawn to you because of that.”“I didn’t know you study human behaviour.”“I don’t. I just have the knacks of reading people.” And he read me well. “What else do you know about me?”“You are the only child, you are full of love and kind of a spoil little brat, but the ones that people hate to love. Your father works as a sales manager and your mother is a housewife after she quitted her job as a kindergarten teacher a couple of years ago. You had a cat, Oreo was his name, and he died when you were twelve.”“He didn’t come home for more than three days, and he was sick, so we thought he was leaving because he didn’t want us to be sad.”“Yeah. You found his body right behind your favourite tree at the playground, and you buried him there.”“He was a good cat. And now you are scaring me. How did you know all this?” I remembered how he looked at me right at that moment. Junhyung looked at me like I was the most interesting creature he had ever encountered. “I know more.”“You know more?”“Yes. You want to hear?”“Junhyung, spill.”“Your first serious relationship lasted for a year, with Onew, the school brain, when you were in the second grade of middle school. You claimed that he was your first love, but I bet you had your share of crushes before him--”“Woah, wait! This is getting way too creepy!”“Relax. We are schoolmates then and now, so this kind of information is not really a hidden secret locked in a buried treasure chest.”“True, but... Oh well, go on.”“So, after that, you are single until high school, but there were rumours linking you with some clever students in our school. You must have attracted to good brains, Hani. Let’s see, there was Lee Seung Gi, the walking encyclopaedia, and then there was Xander, the foreign student who can speak seven languages, and then there was--”“Who? Who else? You make me sound like a player!”“And then there was, I mean, there is, Lee Joon. The kid that excels at everything he did.” His eyes, I remembered that they looked full of sorrow and regret. I closed my eyes, and his face immediately flashed before me. I felt my breath stuck in my throat, I felt like tearing up remembering his hopeless state. “Put this story of my life into a conclusion, Junhyung.”“To sum it up, this is the reason why I said you are not meant for me. You strive for that kind of guys, Hani. The good guys, the nice guys. Not the kind of guy like me.”“You’ll never know, Junhyung. I mean, it’s not like I could control my heart.”“So what makes you think I could?” He was wrong. He had hold of my heart more than I thought he could. “So, you gave me up before you even try? That doesn’t sound like you at all. You are Yong Junhyung, Beast’s Yong Junhyung.”“I’ve told you, I won’t go after anything, or in your case, anyone that I know I won’t get.”“You didn’t give yourself enough chance!”“Because the chances of me getting a break of heart is considerably higher compared to the chances of me getting your heart, Hani.”“Junhyung...”“Don’t give me that look. I don’t want your pity.”“Pity?” He said he could read me perfectly. I wasn’t showing pity, Junhyung! “I wish you all the happiness, Hani. Lee Joon is a good guy, I approve of him. And this will be the last time we are talking about this.”“That’s it? You don’t want anything to do with me anymore?”“We are going to be classmates and partners, like we meant to be.”“Unbelievable. You are unbelievable, Junhyung!” And just like that, he turned his back from me. I had no choice but to let him go, too. I shoved the chocolate bar back in the fridge, like I shoved Yong Junhyung to the very back of my heart. “I’m over you, Yong.”