Dear Kim

📃 CHAPTER TWELVE | I LOVE YOU

Three hours had passed since I arrived at Kim Tae Min’s house. Being in Tae Min’s home should have brought me some sort of comfort but instead I felt lonely and suffocated. There was no soul in the huge house but mine.

The house seemed larger and the narrow spaces of corridors grew vast with the darkness of the night. Ice-cold wind crawled through every space it could find and its whispers glided across walls in frightening whooshes. The autumn had always been cold to me but that night, loneliness lurked in its winds that pirouetted the streets of South Korea. Something was wrong.

I made a phone call to Eun Ji and thankfully the teenage bundle of joy was safe. She decided to spend the night at one of her friend’s place. I took in a breath of relief but I was not satisfied. I hated the cold that settled in the veins of my heart.

I called Tae Min. He did not pick his call.

I called Mr Park. His phone number could not be reached at the time.  

Those were the people I was closest to in South Korea and out of the three, only one answered her call. Something was wrong.

I stared at a beautiful wall clock in the sitting room. Another hour had passed and midnight drew near.

I walked around Tae Min’s home. I washed clean dishes, vacuumed clean rugs and folded laundry. I did all my hand could in an attempt to let time pass quickly as she ran across the earth. Still, time seemed slower and the loneliness began to eat me up.

I called Tae Min a few more times but he did not pick up. I gave up in fear of being too clingy.

But how could I not worry?

All I thought of for the past few months was him. I thought of him when he was absent. I thought of him when I played the songs on his favourite playlist. To be more honest, thoughts of him roamed my mind whenever I heard the lyrics of any love song. If I had not seen him for few minutes, I missed him so much it felt like a piece of my heart had been taken away.

While waiting for him on our dates, butterflies fill my stomach and my heart played awful tricks whenever the door of our meeting place opened or closed. If he took my hand in his, my skin felt hot all over and my heart pumped faster than its norm.

For weeks I told myself that all I felt were the effects of the three year fan crush I had on Kim Tae Min. Jess told me that those feelings would fade with time, since I was more than just a fan but they did not. Instead everything I felt for Kim Tae Min grew stronger. I was drawn to him more than the first time I met him in person.

I often questioned the meaning of my feelings. I had never felt that way for anyone before so I refused to tell myself that it was love. At first I called it an infatuation. After a while I told myself it was a crush but with time, I ran out of ideas. Still I bluntly refused to call it love.

With a hot cup of coffee in my hand, I wrapped a blanket over the white linen long sleeves and jean trousers I wore. The enticing aroma of the coffee did nothing to keep me calm. I walked to the large glass paned slide doors in the sitting room and stared at the diamonds that came with the twilight. The lights from the buildings beneath the beautiful sky glowed in the night as well. It was a beautiful night but it did nothing to chase the cold that grazed over my skin. Something was wrong.

A few minutes past midnight, the front door creaked open and I retired to my bedroom. As much as I wanted to see Tae Min, I thought it best to leave him to his thoughts for a while as I had always done. A night with his father had sent chills down my spine. I could not imagine what Tae Min must have gone through after hours with the same man.

A few seconds rolled by and my decision to leave Kim Tae Min to bask in silence came to an abrupt end after I heard glasses shatter in the living room.

I took to my heels and ran to the sitting room. The sight before me made the chills on my spine irrelevant. The scene that played in front of me was more horrid than my imagination.