When Last Night Didn't End

Episode 1: 마음이 없는 집이에요

Let's just say he looked like the lilacs on the vase. Wilting.

"Have you finished emptying the bedroom?" I asked. Rin's shoulders flinched. Must have been my tone. Whatever.

He jerked his chin towards the box he had set down. The patterned rug had never looked so silly against our bare feet. All flowers and colors. It reminded me of what had become of the home it was supposed to be decorating in the worst way possible—by showing me what I wished it to be.

"I will, if you get your ass out of there and help, for once," Rin brushed the hair out of his face with a slow swipe. It was early into the winter but beads of sweat rolled down from the side of his face. Did I crank the heating too much? Well, that's his problem. I couldn't stand the cold.

Then, I noticed the pointed jab from his statement. I whipped to him with a scoff. "Me, not helping?" I laid a hand on my chest. "Can't I rest just for a second, Rin? I've been hammering away at the living room all morning, taking down the mess you made in the first place."

Rin opened his mouth to say something but decided against it with a small shake of his head. "Let's not do this, Hye-jin," his tone softened as he slouched against the couch's backrest. "Not on our last day."

There it was. One of us was finally brave enough to say it.

I closed my eyes despite the growing dread in my chest of being alone with someone who I no longer had connections with, at least according to the law. "What would you have us do, then?" I said, weaker and more pathetic than I intended. As much as I hated it, Rin had always been the one to see this side of me. Most of the time, he's the one who was able to coax it out.

"Seeing as you haven't touched the console, I'm assuming you're still not ready to let it go?" Rin flicked his gaze towards the flatscreen television sitting a few paces from the couch. The wall behind the television had never been so...white.

A light snort escaped my lips. "It's more like I can't decide if I should take it or worry about the other half you put into it," I replied.

Rin glanced at the console again, his dark pupils moving in rapid, discordant inflections. Thinking. He's been doing a lot of that since last year. But like all the months and years I've been with him, I never really had any luck in deciphering whatever was going on in his thick skull.

"One last game?" Rin turned to me with a small smile. He never smiled at me since that night in my hometown. "For old time's sake?"

My first instinct, the first word that should have flown out of my mouth, was No. Instead, I clenched my jaw, keeping the view of the wilting lilacs off of my periphery, and met Rin's eyes for the longest time in a while. "What are you planning?" I asked.

Rin rolled his shoulders. The plain army green shirt he wore didn't really suit him, but it's not like he'd stop wearing something he'd gotten himself for the holidays despite all my complaints. Then again, he'd just snap at me, saying I complain too much. Damn right, I do. That's the only way I could be heard in this house.

"Nothing. Jeez, Hye-jin. I'm not a criminal," he threw his hands up and chuckled. "One last game, then I'd rescind all of my rights on the console. Deal?"

I arched an eyebrow. Rin never made deals that weren't advantageous to him in some way. The sales person in him, talking. That's what this was.

Still, as we both know, this was the last time we would be spending time alone in a room together. After all this, we're going to live our own lives, where we'd have no choice but to survive, to make it on our own.

Because marriage was like meat. Both didn't mean anything, but somehow society convinced us we couldn't live without them. It wasn't the end and neither was what we've recently faced.