celestial strings | h.js

two.

"It's okay," you muttered to Jisung as you nodded in agreement before grabbing his hand. "It's going to be fine."

You gasped when Jisung suddenly cried out, his voice raspy. You thought something inside him spiked; perhaps the glass shard lodged inside him moved because you were uncontrollably shifting about. However, you knew he put two and two together when he snatched his hand from you and began protecting it as if his life depended on it. He realized that you were planning to cut the soulmate string.

He looked frightened. He looked more terrified than when he would die in the hands of a man he had never met before. The redness and the veins popping at his neck and arm showed how much he strived to protest your solution.

It wasn't only about the fact that you two would stop being soulmates anymore. That part wasn't even in the premises of his fear. It should never have been about his place as your soulmate. It was about you ceasing to exist from his memory once the string is snapped. It was about him losing the constant of watching you grow in his mind. He was going to lose the past, the current, and the future of you.

You would cease to exist in his world. Everything would be back as before, but it would be different. He wouldn't know why, but it simply cannot be the same.

"Mmm!" he rasped out with grit, uncontrollably gasping for a release of pain when he felt the piercing through his chest. His eyes rolled up as he pursed his lips tight to hold the feeling. "No!"

You closed your eyes to be blind to his struggle. It made it easier to ignore his desperate wishes. Your hands clumsily navigated to his chest, pulling apart his intertwined hands. Apologizes left the aggression of your gentle hands. This lover's quarrel was making you short of breath. You couldn't bring yourself to pronounce any words. There were only actions, and it was speaking more volumes than ever.

"Stop! No! Stop, ple-please!" His words were short, quick, jagged, and ran through between coughs and inhales, but his intentions were clear. He cannot let go. He knew love was about letting go, but he could not see the sense in this. He cannot accept this.

Jisung didn't want to forget you. Jisung would rather die as your soulmate than live not having known you. At least that way, he left belonging to somebody, and the somebody wasn't just anybody but you, the person he fell so deeply in love with.

He just got you back. There were so many things he still wanted to do. He wanted to do everything and nothing with you; to sit around in his room and look out at the sky, to chat quietly at night, and giggle when his dad comes around to tell you both to shut up. He hasn't done enough yet; he hasn't kissed you, touched you, and definitely hasn't loved you to the amount he was satisfied with yet. It could not be over before it even began.

His arms gave away with weakness after struggling for longer than his body initially allowed him to, betraying him. He ached—everything about him hurt. Everything about him was collasping into a forced undoing. His body, his skin, his body, his mind, his heart, you. He could not struggle anymore. Any last strength in him went to ugly cries, the tears choking out through pathetic sobs as he held onto your hand as a last, meek attempt to get you to change your mind.

Jisung's cries were so loud and gut-wrenching that your hands trembled while trying to find your soulmate string. Part of you wished he fought more, but you did not dare to blame him when he stopped. You put him through all this wreckage. He deserved the breather if he wanted one, while you deserved to drown in guilt as he relentlessly wept beneath you.

But the string took a lot of work to find. It was hard to find when you didn't want to find it. You clawed at your pinky finger and then at his, and you couldn't find it. Before your heart could be at peace with the idea of losing everything, it would not show itself to you, forcing you to use the resources you have—your own strings.