Sometimes, Mina hated how good of a liar she was, or how bad her habit seemed it be.
"Are you okay?" A class member of hers, Park Jimin asked her. He was kind, and sometimes they exchanged notes.
"Yeah! Just tired. Hey, do you know where Namjoon is today?" He never showed up in class.
"He texted me and asked me to give him my notes after today so he could copy them." Jimin said with a shrug, like Namjoon missing from class was the most natural thing in the world. Mina frowned. He hadn't just texted her and asked her for notes?
"Okay... thanks." She turned back in her seat, not caring for conversation anymore. She didn't care for much besides figuring out why he had suddenly dropped of the face of the earth. It only made a sickening feeling drop in her stomach.
Where are you?
Is what she texted him.
Minji had a family emergency.
Is what he responded.
She sighed and set her phone down for the rest of class, trying not to think about how he wouldn't text her anything else, or ask her how she was, twice, or apologize for forgetting to call. She copied down everything twice and slipped it into her notebook when class was over.
If she spent enough time thinking about him, she'd go crazy, so the only other thing she could think to do was return to her room and study for awhile, hoping that books and essays and all would keep her mind constantly going enough for her to forget, for just a little while, about the reality of her situation.
And it worked for awhile, it really did, and she lost herself until she finished all her assignments, and then she had nothing left. And she tried to read a book, but she found herself pages later having no information retained. Then she tried to blast her music to make it impossible for her to think, and the people in the dorm beside her complained.
Then she gave up, and fell crashing into the white sheets of her bed. Suddenly the four walls of her room were so suffocating she couldn't breathe, and she had nothing left to do than leave.
There was something about the beach during the nighttime that made her feel completely understood. There was something about the dark sand, and the rolling clouds, and the lullaby of the waves when no one could see you. The fallen sun was kind to her.
She didn't mind the sand in her sweater, found between it's threads when she sat down after a subway ride and a long walk. She traced her name in the sand.
The more she sat, and she thought, she missed her childhood. She missed the simplicity, and the times she'd jump the creek on her bike, or sneak out her window after dark to sit on the roof. Everything was nicer then. She had never really enjoyed it as much as she should've, but back then she had no idea just how easy it was. She had always been too caught up in how people didn't understand her.
And now it was like everything was calling to her. Jupiter asked her to look up, and the waves wanted to reach her toes, and the young girl that she once was tapped her on the shoulder. And she felt so overwhelmed that she buried her face in the sleeves of her sweater but nothing could silence the intensity of it all. If things would just stop calling, maybe she could think for a moment about the fact that life was not like it was as a child, and she was losing grasp on everything, and maybe things were finally slipping away from her. Maybe this was it; the thrill was gone, the moment was disintegrating, and the high had crashed.
It took her just a few more moments to realize that amongst other things, someone was actually calling her.
"Hello?"
"Where are you?"
His music box voice made her almost stutter, but she just looked back at the sand in her hands and mumbled.
"The beach."
"The spot we go to?"
God, she hated that. It was like everywhere she went had a name, and his face written all over it, like she had shared some moment everywhere with him. It made her want to flee, to find a new city, with new buses and railroads and beaches, and paint everything with a name that didn't cause her pain anymore.
"Yes."
He would be there in twenty minutes. Time seemed like a loose, broken concept that fell to pieces like the sand in her palms at that point, because before she knew it, she felt him beside her. She gave him one look.
"How are you?"
"Okay." She felt a thousand things, and they all strayed rather far from okay. She couldn't help it.
"How are you?"
"Okay." Because she'd rather drop dead than try to explain anything. Because if she did, and he didn't get it, she'd feel ten times worse. But if she did, and he did get it, she'd only be reminded that he was the only one who ever would.
He sat down in the sand, his jeans rolled up at the ankles and a look on his face that made her uneasy. And for the first time, maybe ever, she wasn't sure why he was there.
"We need to talk." He said, looking at the water, but not much could be seen. The sun had set long ago, and everything was dimly lit by the moon and the city lights, and she could see the silhouettes of crashing waves, and the curve of his nose, and the faint contours of a frown.
"I get that impression. You missed class."
He mumbled something like a 'yeah' and put his head down. Mina got a terribly queasy feeling in her stomach, like something was wrong, or something was happening, and she hated the sand more than ever before because it was just one more way for her to sink.
And he did the strangest thing, and it was then that she really knew. Because the most they touched was in dire times of need, like mental breakdowns or nervous habits, and maybe occasionally leaning on the other when one falls asleep on the bus. But now, he felt the need to grab her hand, and light her on fire. And she had dreamed, for awhile, of being able to touch him, but it happening now, with such an ominous feel, was not what she had hoped for.
How convenient there was no light, but she was sure she gave herself away by her shaky breath and the antsy, unsettling way of her movements.
"I need to... step back from the friendship."
Mina didn't say anything. She had nothing to say, not to him anyway. Maybe to his fiancé. What did it matter anymore?
"Minji thinks we're too close, and she is the girl I'm marrying, and we're moving in together soon, and it may be best if things cooled down between us so nobody got the wrong idea. And it's Minji, anyway, that needs to be my priority-"
Mina shivered at that. Because it was undeniable, he was too good of a man, and he had this great capacity to love, and it only made it harder on her. She had not thought of a single other thing since he arrived, not of Jupiter or the water or the stupid ghost of her past self pulling at her sleeve. And she did not feel chaos anymore, because he was calm, and he held her hand, and was warm and soft, and how could she think of anything else?
She wanted to be angry at him, or hate him, cause maybe if she was hating him she wasn't loving him. But he was too nice, to Minji, to her, to the situation he handled.
"And I know you'll understand-"
"Then why are you holding my hand?"
Had she over estimated her intelligence? Is that why she felt like such a fool? She liked to think she was humble, but even now she expected too much from herself. And the world. She knew the world was unkind, yet she still expected it's mercy. She still expected to get what she wanted, and to feel what she wanted, and to have the freedom of.
And if she felt bad before, she could not imagine the way she would feel the second he left behind the beach and her. When she pulled her hand away in an act of frustration, she only felt the tugging grow worse. Because it haunted her, that people never got it, and the world was so complex, her brain never seemed to rest. And everyone thought of her to be too much, or didn't care to listen, and the weight on her chest in the moment was so suffocating she thought she'd explode. And was there ever going to be anyone who got it, besides the one who sat beside her now?
Who would know, to dodge her lying habits with the right questions that reached her heart, and the places she loved to visit, and the feelings she put to color in her words? Who would know her like him? Who cared to?
That was the problem. He cared too much. He cared for her too much, and in that, she invested so deeply. Would she survive, without his endless rambles that made perfect sense, or the smell of his shirts, or his dimpled smile that made her feel acknowledged before words were even spoken? No, she knew too much. She had too much knowledge of him, she knew too many details and secrets and habits. And if he floated from her, forgetting the feeling of her grasp, where would that information go? What would she do without, besides sit on the knowledge and know it was useless, that she was useless?
Was it selfish of her to feel like she had earned it? Was it selfish to believe that after loving him, and listening to him, and caring for him so deeply, she deserved to be in the exact place she was not?
Did Minji know him like she did? Did she know what made him laugh, and what made him cry? Did she know how to intellectually simulate him, or how he liked his coffee? Did she know the softness of his handwriting or the different ways he smiled?
Mina wished she was still holding his hand, because maybe then, she wouldn't feel like her heart was going to stop. But everything was too much, and Namjoon knew she was upset, but how could he comfort her without crossing a boundary? How could he please everybody?
There was nothing she could do. Because this wasn't her relationship, or her life. That was the problem. He was not hers.
And he knew if he stayed any longer he would feel the need to hold her like he wanted to, or tell her he was still there for her, or anything to get that look off her face, but it would all defeat the purpose.
As he mumbled apologies and stood up, she could barely take it anymore. Because she needed something or someone, and he was trying to leave and all she wanted to say was
'Namjoon don't go, please don't go, please do not go.'
But her throat was tight and words which she had long been a master of were too hard, and too exhausting, and maybe he didn't care to listen anymore. If she had it her way, she'd beg on her knees for him to not pick Minji over her, to not 'adjust his priorities', to not make that decision.
'Please,' She thought. 'If you ask me this time I'll be honest. If you ask me this time I'll tell you the truth, I'll tell you anything you need to hear. Please just ask me, and I won't lie, I'll never lie again.'
But he had long tried to say goodbye, or to tell her to get home safely, or get any response from her, but for the first time in their friendship he was not saying the right things. And nothing was right anymore, because now she was alone on the beach, in the sand in which she sunk in, and what was there left to hold on to?
Perhaps it was then she faced the consequences of her actions, of chasing distant dreams and playing games with fate, thinking she was smart enough to get away with it or the thrill would make it worth it.
'I'll never lie again.'
And she wondered if drowning was better than drowning in her thoughts, and maybe that's why the waves crashed against the shore and taunted her with their growing proximity.
If she were to truly never lie to anyone again, she must start with herself.
And so she admitted it. She admitted it all, to herself, in that moment on the sandy beach that was barely lit by the moon and a boy who was on his way to the bus by now, probably thinking about a different girl and a different life.
And so she begun.
She was a terrible liar, and she was like that because it helped disguise the fact she was terribly misunderstood. She loved the thrill of doing ridiculously irrational, somewhat stupid things because the high it gave her gave her a reason to live, when at the end of the day in her own skin, what reason was there at all?
People said she talked in tongues, and maybe she read too much as a child, and she played off their confusion as a joke and a silly quirk, but she had spent much too many nights crying about the frustration of her rampant, unrelatable thoughts.
Inevitably, she had too much hope in things, and it was hard to let go of that.
And she used to be selfish, because she learned she was the only person that would ever understand her, and then she met him, and now she was too giving of herself.
And at the end of the day, the weight on her chest came from an unmistakable feeling that flooded her veins and made her thoughts even more wild.
She was in love with a boy that belonged to someone else, and there was nothing she could do.