byun euijoo and the power of his cheeks

The people who are loved walk through the world on a path of sunflowers. They are loved by all, regardless of whether they give that love back or not. They are allowed to shed their tears and they are allowed to not feel bad about it. They are allowed comfort. They are allowed sunlight. They are allowed love.

The miserable ones lie on a bed on chrysanthemums. They must ask for their love, beg for it on their knees like animals on death row. They may not let their eyes gather moisture and they may not feel anything other than a faux happiness. They are allowed anger. They are allowed darkness. They are allowed grief.

Such as you.

You are allowed grief.

You are allowed to grieve the person in an empty room you are trapped in with. You will always grieve this person because you can never save them no matter what ends you go to.

The room only contains you and a mirror within its four walls.

Your reflection stared back at you as you ran your eyes across your body, dressed in your undergarments.

They say that rain can wash away everything if you let it, but on days like this, rain only brought with it a melancholic rage as your mind kept feeding you memories of a life once lived. A life you once died in.

(You are mourning that version of you. There is no possibility of saving that version.)

Your gaze stopped at your shoulder, lingering at the healed gash that rested on the skin there.

Your fingers drifted, not quite touching the glass as your gaze fell to the soft skin of your inner arm. A thin, silvery line ran from your wrist to the crook of your elbow, a river of a moment you had drowned in. 

You remembered the cold tile floor, the way the world had gone quiet. The person in the room with you—that version of you—had been so certain that silence was the only answer. 

Perhaps you were mourning her certainty. Perhaps you were mourning her desperation.

Your knees—scarred and rough, the skin there thick as leather. You had spent so much time on them. Begging, praying, cleaning up shards of glass, pressed into the cold earth of a garden. 

You were allowed to grieve the dirt under your fingernails, the splinters in your palms and the way you had learned to make yourself small.

Your feet. The soles were calloused and cracked from walking through so much—glass and gravel and the sharp edges of humanity’s cruelty. You had walked away from a house that was not a home. You had walked toward train stations, bus stops and the open mouths of strangers. You were allowed to grieve every mile that left you more lost.

And then your eyes met someone else’s in the mirror. The person in the empty room with you, with cold, dead eyes. 

The person you could never save.

Your reflection did not blink. You were allowed to grieve her.

So you did.

You grieved the child who had been through horrors no child should ever go through.

Sometimes, late at night, when the moon comes up and shines her false light onto the world and the cicadas chirp their song for the souls of the dead, you let your mind wander to the question of why.

Why would they ever do that to a child?

The question had no answer. It never would. It was a door that opened into another door, and another, and another—a labyrinth of corridors that all led back to the same empty room.

You remembered the first time you had understood that the hands that were supposed to hold you could also hurt you. You had been so small. 

So terribly small. 

The memory would never be a story that began with a beginning and an end with an ending. It was a wound that had never learned to close. It was a bruise that had seeped into the very marrow of your bones, coloring everything that came after in red.

There was the time your father had backhanded you across the kitchen table because you had knocked over a glass of milk. You had been six. The milk had pooled on the linoleum like a small white lake and you had watched it spread, mesmerized, before the pain arrived like a guest who had already let themselves in. Your cheek had burned. Your ear had rung for hours afterward, a tiny bell tolling inside your skull. 

You had learned, that day, that accidents were not allowed. That you were not allowed.

There was the time your mother had grabbed you by the wrist and twisted until you heard a sound like a twig snapping. You had been eight. You had been crying because someone at school had pulled your hair and she had told you to stop being so weak, to stop being such a burden, to stop making everything about yourself. The pain had been bright and sharp, a star going supernova in your joint. You had not cried after that. 

You had learned to swallow your tears like bitter medicine. You had learned that your grief was an inconvenience to others.

There was the time they had locked you in the closet for three hours because you had forgotten to do the dishes. You had been ten. The closet had been dark and small and smelled of mothballs and old shoes. You had pressed your palms against the door and listened to the sound of the television in the other room, the muffled laughter of a sitcom, the clink of glasses. They were living their lives. You were disappearing into the dark. 

You had learned that you were forgettable: a thing to be put away.

There was the time your father had held a lit cigarette to the back of your hand to teach you not to touch the stove. You had been eleven. You had learned not to scream. You had stared at the ceiling and counted the cracks in the plaster until it was over. 

You had learned to leave your body when it became unbearable. You had learned to float above yourself, a pale and distant moon.

There was the time your mother had told you, with perfect calm, that you were the reason her life was so hard. That you had ruined her body, ruined her marriage, ruined her dreams. You had been twelve. You had believed her. You had carried that belief like a stone in your chest for years, decades, until it had become a part of your anatomy, a second heart that beat only guilt and shame. 

You had carried it in that deep scar that ran across your back, your mother had always been amazing with a kitchen knife and a bit of scarless skin—a carver of muscle when she wanted to be. 

There was the time they had both stood over you, a united front of fury and told you that you were worthless. That you would never amount to anything. That no one would ever love you because you were fundamentally unlovable. You had been thirteen. You had looked up at them from the floor where you had fallen and you had seen monsters and a hunger that could never be satisfied. 

You had learned that love was a transaction. That love was a leash. That love was a weapon.

All these years later, you did not talk to them anymore. 

You had severed the cord, cut the thread and burned the bridge. You had moved to a city where no one knew your name or your history. You had built a life from the rubble of that childhood, brick by brick, with hands that still trembled. You had told yourself you were over it. You had told yourself that the past was the past, that water was under the bridge, that time heals all wounds.

Time is a liar. 

Because every scar on your body that they had made still lingered—portals, thin places where the past could leak through. And when you spiraled, as you were doing now, the scars began to bleed. 

Rotten honey—golden, viscous ooze that smelled of decay and nostalgia and all the love you had never received.

You could feel it now from the map of bruises that had long since faded but never truly disappeared. It dripped down your arms, your legs, your torso, pooling at your feet. It was warm and sticky and it clung to you like a second skin, like the embrace you had always wanted and never gotten.

The rotten honey filled the room. It was the sweetness of the lies they had told you. It was the amber of your own preserved trauma. It was the slow, suffocating truth that you would never be free of them. That they lived inside you now, in the architecture of your bones, in the wiring of your nervous system, in the way you flinched at sudden movements and apologized for existing.

You looked at your reflection through the haze of golden rot.

The child you had been was still in there somewhere, pressed against the glass of the mirror, her small hands flat against the surface. 

She was waiting for you to save her.

Your reflection stared back at you, patient and understanding. 

The fetus shaped adult—ripped from the womb still covered in candy and the innocence of a childhood never lived—within you knew already. 

You were not capable of anything but grief.

As all the miserable ones are. 

_____________________

For someone who didn't quite understand what love meant yet fully (for he was still young), Byun Euijoo knew that his definition of love would certainly have your name.

He loved you.

God, he loved you so much that sometimes it frightened him, the sheer size of it, the way it pressed against his ribs like an additional set of lungs.

Euijoo had known, from the beginning, that you came with shadows. 

He had known about the childhood that had left you scarred in ways both visible and invisible. He had known about your parents who had taught you that you were meant to be broken. And he had known, too, that you had expected him to leave.

In the early days, you had waited for it.

He had seen it in the way you held yourself at a distance, the way you apologized for taking up space, the way your eyes would flick to the door whenever the conversation grew too soft. You had been braced for the moment he would realize his mistake, the moment he would see the rot beneath the skin and walk away. You had been so certain that he would.

Euijoo had stayed.

He had stayed through the nights you woke up screaming. He had stayed through the days you could not get out of bed. He had stayed through the silences that stretched like winter fields, the tears that came without warning, the times you pushed him away because it was easier than waiting for him to go. 

He had stayed and he had learned the geography of your pain the way a cartographer learns a new land—with reverence for every contour and crevice.

Euijoo loved you.

He loved your scars. He loved the way you laughed when you forgot to be sad. He loved the way you held his hand in crowded places, as if tethering yourself to him. 

He loved the way you looked at him sometimes, like you were still surprised he was there. He loved you in the morning when your hair was a mess and your breath was stale and you were slightly grumpy (though he could erase that with a silly joke and a smile that made his cheeks seem inflated). 

He loved you in the evening, when the light made you golden and you seemed like a divine dream he would never have again. He loved you in the dark when the world fell away and it was just the two of you breathing together.

Tonight, he came home later than usual.

The city had kept him, as cities do, with their traffic and errands and the slow crawl of evening. He had texted you to say he was on his way but you had not replied. He had not thought much of it at first—you were sometimes bad at answering, lost in your own head. 

But as he turned the key in the lock and stepped into the apartment, he felt something wrong in the air—a kind of stillness he was not used to. Sure you were silent most of the time but even on your worst days you'd say a little “Hi love” before going back to whatever you were doing. 

He set down his bag, calling your name softly, once, then twice. He furrowed his brows when he heard no answer..

He heard it then—a small sniffle from the bedroom, a breath caught and released. 

Euijoo’s heart clenched.

The bedroom door was ajar and through the gap he could see you. You were standing in front of the mirror, dressed only in your undergarments. Your shoulders were shaking. Your hands were pressed against your thighs, fingers curled into your palms. You were staring at yourself with an expression he knew too well—the look of someone drowning in the past.

Euijoo knew what you were doing. He knew of the ghosts that came calling in the moonlight, the past that always reminded you that time once flowed and it did not stay stagnant. He had held you through it before, and he would hold you through it again.and again and again, for as long as you would let him.

Euijoo stepped into the room. He did not speak at first. He simply walked up behind you, his footsteps soft on the wooden floor and wrapped his arms around you from behind. His chest pressed against your back. His chin came to rest on your shoulder. His arms crossed over your stomach, holding you gently.

In the mirror, your reflection was now framed by his. Two bodies, one embrace. Euijoo met your eyes in the glass.

"My love.” He said, his voice a balm for wounds that would never heal. “I'm home.” 

The sound of his voice, the warmth of his arms, the safety of his presence—it was too much. It was the thing that finally cracked the dam you had been desperately trying to hold together.

A sob tore from your throat, so animal-like that it reminded you humans are animals—stupid stupid emotions. It was unfortunately not the kind of crying you did in polite company, the kind where tears slid silently down your cheeks and you apologized for the inconvenience. 

No, this was the kind of crying that came from somewhere ancient, somewhere that had been holding its breath for years and could no longer pretend.

You turned in his arms, your body folding into his as your legs gave out beneath you. You sank to the floor together, a tangle of limbs and grief. You buried your face in his chest as the sobs wracked through you like earthquakes.

Your fingers clutched at his shirt, twisting the fabric, holding onto him as if he were the only solid thing in a world that had turned to water.

"I'm sorry.” You gasped between sobs, the words tumbling out of you like broken glass. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

You could not stop saying it, the apologies spilling from your lips like the only language you had ever known. 

You apologized for crying. You apologized for being weak. You apologized for needing him. You apologized for existing, for taking up space, for being a burden, for all the ways you had failed to be the person you thought you should be.

Emotions had always been useless. 

That was what you had been taught. They were like fragile flowers, delicate and perishable, things that wilted under the slightest pressure. They were weaknesses to be eradicated, luxuries you could not afford. You had learned to bury them so deep that sometimes you forgot they existed at all. 

They always found their way back to the surface though, pushing through the soil of your carefully constructed composure and when they did, they came with the force of a flood.

And every time, you apologized for it.

Euijoo did not let go. 

He neither pulled away nor told you to stop crying nor that everything was fine, that everything could be fixed with words. 

He simply sank down with you and held you. One hand cradled the back of your head, fingers threading through your hair with a tenderness that made you cry harder. The other arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you as close as physics would allow. Euijoo would absorb the pain through the sheer proximity of everything if he could.

Your lover held you the way one would hold a crying child with the certainty that this was where he was supposed to be. That your tears were not an inconvenience, that your grief was not a burden, that you were allowed to fall apart in his arms, because he would be there to catch the pieces.

His own heart was breaking. 

He could feel it, a splintering in his chest, a crack running through the center of him. Your pain had been so heavy and you had been carrying it alone for so long. He felt the injustice of it all—the cruelty of a world that had hurt you, the cruelty of people who should have protected you, the cruelty of a child who had learned to apologize for her own suffering.

Euijoo pressed a kiss to the top of your head, his lips lingering there, warm and soft.

"I’ve got you." He murmured against your hair. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. You don't have to apologize to me."

His voice was steady, even as his heart ached. He held you tighter, rocking you gently, a rhythm as old as humanity itself.

"Let it out, my love. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

The storm passed as storms always do. The sobs quieted into hiccups, then into shaky breaths, then into a trembling silence. 

Your body was heavy against his, drained of all the tension that had held you upright and you felt like a shipwreck washing ashore, grateful for the sand beneath you.

Euijoo's hand never stopped moving. It traced soothing circles on your back, reminding you that you were here, in this room in his arms and not back in that closet or that kitchen floor or in any of the places that still haunted you.

"Are you okay?" Euijoo asked softly, his voice a low rumble against your ear. "Well, no. That's a stupid question. Let me rephrase." He pulled back to look at your face, his eyes scanning you with gentle concern. "Would you like to lay down for a while?"

You nodded, too exhausted for words. Your throat was raw, your eyes swollen. Your entire body ached with the effort of having felt so much.

Euijoo helped you up, guiding you to the bed. He reached for the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it aside. His skin was warm and bare and when he climbed onto the bed and held out his arms to you, you went to him without hesitation.

You buried your face in his chest, feeling the thrum of his heartbeat beneath your cheek. His arms wrapped around you, pulling you close and he pressed another kiss to the top of your head. His skin smelled like something that had come to mean safety in your mind.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of breathing. Yours, still ragged. His, deep and even, a metronome for your recovery.

His hand began to move.

Slowly, Euijoo traced the line of your spine, following the curve of your back until his fingers found the first scar. His thumb brushed over it, featherlight and he lifted your hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the raised tissue.

"I love your hands.” Euiioo said, his voice soft and sincere. "I love the way they hold mine. I love the way they gesture when you're excited about something. I love the way they cup my face when you kiss me."

Your breath hitched but you did not pull away.

He moved to the next scar. The silvery line on your arm, the one you had gotten from a piece of broken glass when you were fourteen. He kissed it, his lips lingering.

"I love your arms.” He murmured. "I love the way they wrap around me when we sleep. I love that they are strong enough to hold me, even when you feel like you are falling apart."

Tears pricked at your eyes again. These were different—they did not burn.

He found the scar on your ribs, the one that had come from the days when you had learned to take up less space, to need less than you deserved. He kissed it and his hand splayed across your stomach, warm and protective.

"I love your body.” He said, his voice cracking just slightly. “I love that it carried you through everything you survived. I love that it lets me hold you. I love that it is here, with me.”

He shifted, finding a bruise on your thigh. He kissed it too.

"I love your legs.” He said, a hint of a smile in his voice. "I love the way they carry you through the world. I love the way they tangle with mine under the covers."

He kissed your scarred knees, one after the other.

"I love your knees.” He said, and you let out a broken laugh at the absurdity of it. "I love that they let you kneel in the garden when you're planting things. I love that they let you curl up on the couch when you're reading. I love that they have never given up on you, even when you wanted to give up on yourself."

Euijoo paused, his lips hovering over the scar on your chest, the one that was not visible to the eye but was there all the same. The one that had been carved by the absence of love where love should have been.

Euijoo kissed the place directly over your heart.

"I love your heart.” He whispered, his voice breaking at last. "It is the bravest, most beautiful heart I have ever known."

He pulled back to look at you, his eyes glistening, his cheeks wet with tears he had not let himself shed until now.

"And I love you.” Euijoo said. "All of you.” You knew he meant every scar and every broken piece you deemed unlovable. “I love you, and I will spend the rest of my life proving it to you if that's what it takes."

He pressed his forehead to yours, his breath warm against your lips.

"You are not too much, my love. You are just enough. You have always been just enough."

You let him wrap you in his arms, pull you against the warm expanse of his chest and tuck your head beneath his chin. You let him hold you as the night pressed against the windows and the city hummed its distant lullaby. 

You did not apologize for taking up space.

His hand found yours in the dark, fingers lacing together like they had been made to fit. His breathing slowed, becoming the rhythm that your own breath began to follow. The tension bled out of your body like water through open hands.

Outside, the moon traced silver lines across the floor. Inside, there was only the sound of two hearts beating in tandem, a duet that needed no words.

When god made this world, they sculpted it into two whorls.

The Loved and The Miserable. 

Here is what they do not tell you, lest you get intoxicated on the poetry of life. 

The two whorls are conjoined twins from the same heavenly womb, that cannot be separated without high risk. If one went, so did the other. 

The Loved cannot exist without The Miserable and The Miserable cannot withstand the weight of the world without The Loved. 

And yes the transitions do occur, winter into spring, spring into happiness, happiness into an acceptance of love. What good is love anyways if it doesn't make your heart swell like a yellow balloon?

You had spent so long lying on chrysanthemums, begging for love that felt like alms, believing that you were made for grief and not for grace.

To be loved is not to walk on sunflowers, untouched and untouchable.

To be loved is to be seen in the dark and still be chosen. To be loved is to fall apart and be caught. To be loved is to have someone trace the map of your pain and call it home.

To be loved is neither a destination nor a reward for being whole.

To be loved is to be held, broken and bleeding, and told that you are enough.

To be loved is this.

Your breathing evened out. Your hand went slack in his. 

Byun Euijoo, who still had so much to learn about love, pressed one last kiss to your hair and held you a little tighter, as if to say: I will keep learning. I will keep loving. 

I will keep staying.

Outside, the moon kept watch. Inside, you dreamed of chrysanthemums blooming into sunflowers. A world where the two whorls danced around each other in the wind.

Love is simple, really. God would not have fashioned something so complex for the noble mind.

Love is to look up at the heavens, to behold the silent majesty of the stars scattered across the night and to choose them even over divinity. 

For what is heaven if not the promise of perfect communion? 

And what is love if not that promise made tangible in this life? 

fin.

A/N: Honestly, i debated for a long time whether or not to post this fic because it's just such a big part of my soul and im not one to really talk about my past (yes im a coward) but i think if there's even a 1% chance that somebody out there will read this and think 'yeah this provided me comfort' then im glad to have posted this.

I'd like to give a shoutout for all my people who have been through any similar experience, not just from your family members but from a partner, a friend or literally anybody. I need you to know that whatever you went through was absolutely not your fault and never will be your fault. You deserve to live your life full of stars and colours and happiness and nobody can take that away from you. I love you all so much and when you think your scars are starting to look a little ugly, I want you to remember that they represent your strength, which I am so so proud of :))

divider by @kodaswrld

The people who are loved walk through the world on a path of sunflowers. They are loved by all, regardless of whether they give that love back or not. They are allowed to shed their tears and they are allowed to not feel bad about it. They are allowed comfort. They are allowed sunlight. They are allowed love.

The miserable ones lie on a bed on chrysanthemums. They must ask for their love, beg for it on their knees like animals on death row. They may not let their eyes gather moisture and they may not feel anything other than a faux happiness. They are allowed anger. They are allowed darkness. They are allowed grief.

Such as you.

You are allowed grief.

You are allowed to grieve the person in an empty room you are trapped in with. You will always grieve this person because you can never save them no matter what ends you go to.

The room only contains you and a mirror within its four walls.

Your reflection stared back at you as you ran your eyes across your body, dressed in your undergarments.

They say that rain can wash away everything if you let it, but on days like this, rain only brought with it a melancholic rage as your mind kept feeding you memories of a life once lived. A life you once died in.

(You are mourning that version of you. There is no possibility of saving that version.)

Your gaze stopped at your shoulder, lingering at the healed gash that rested on the skin there.

Your fingers drifted, not quite touching the glass as your gaze fell to the soft skin of your inner arm. A thin, silvery line ran from your wrist to the crook of your elbow, a river of a moment you had drowned in. 

You remembered the cold tile floor, the way the world had gone quiet. The person in the room with you—that version of you—had been so certain that silence was the only answer. 

Perhaps you were mourning her certainty. Perhaps you were mourning her desperation.

Your knees—scarred and rough, the skin there thick as leather. You had spent so much time on them. Begging, praying, cleaning up shards of glass, pressed into the cold earth of a garden. 

You were allowed to grieve the dirt under your fingernails, the splinters in your palms and the way you had learned to make yourself small.

Your feet. The soles were calloused and cracked from walking through so much—glass and gravel and the sharp edges of humanity’s cruelty. You had walked away from a house that was not a home. You had walked toward train stations, bus stops and the open mouths of strangers. You were allowed to grieve every mile that left you more lost.

And then your eyes met someone else’s in the mirror. The person in the empty room with you, with cold, dead eyes. 

The person you could never save.

Your reflection did not blink. You were allowed to grieve her.

So you did.

You grieved the child who had been through horrors no child should ever go through.

Sometimes, late at night, when the moon comes up and shines her false light onto the world and the cicadas chirp their song for the souls of the dead, you let your mind wander to the question of why.

Why would they ever do that to a child?

The question had no answer. It never would. It was a door that opened into another door, and another, and another—a labyrinth of corridors that all led back to the same empty room.

You remembered the first time you had understood that the hands that were supposed to hold you could also hurt you. You had been so small. 

So terribly small. 

The memory would never be a story that began with a beginning and an end with an ending. It was a wound that had never learned to close. It was a bruise that had seeped into the very marrow of your bones, coloring everything that came after in red.

There was the time your father had backhanded you across the kitchen table because you had knocked over a glass of milk. You had been six. The milk had pooled on the linoleum like a small white lake and you had watched it spread, mesmerized, before the pain arrived like a guest who had already let themselves in. Your cheek had burned. Your ear had rung for hours afterward, a tiny bell tolling inside your skull. 

You had learned, that day, that accidents were not allowed. That you were not allowed.

There was the time your mother had grabbed you by the wrist and twisted until you heard a sound like a twig snapping. You had been eight. You had been crying because someone at school had pulled your hair and she had told you to stop being so weak, to stop being such a burden, to stop making everything about yourself. The pain had been bright and sharp, a star going supernova in your joint. You had not cried after that. 

You had learned to swallow your tears like bitter medicine. You had learned that your grief was an inconvenience to others.

There was the time they had locked you in the closet for three hours because you had forgotten to do the dishes. You had been ten. The closet had been dark and small and smelled of mothballs and old shoes. You had pressed your palms against the door and listened to the sound of the television in the other room, the muffled laughter of a sitcom, the clink of glasses. They were living their lives. You were disappearing into the dark. 

You had learned that you were forgettable: a thing to be put away.

There was the time your father had held a lit cigarette to the back of your hand to teach you not to touch the stove. You had been eleven. You had learned not to scream. You had stared at the ceiling and counted the cracks in the plaster until it was over. 

You had learned to leave your body when it became unbearable. You had learned to float above yourself, a pale and distant moon.

There was the time your mother had told you, with perfect calm, that you were the reason her life was so hard. That you had ruined her body, ruined her marriage, ruined her dreams. You had been twelve. You had believed her. You had carried that belief like a stone in your chest for years, decades, until it had become a part of your anatomy, a second heart that beat only guilt and shame. 

You had carried it in that deep scar that ran across your back, your mother had always been amazing with a kitchen knife and a bit of scarless skin—a carver of muscle when she wanted to be. 

There was the time they had both stood over you, a united front of fury and told you that you were worthless. That you would never amount to anything. That no one would ever love you because you were fundamentally unlovable. You had been thirteen. You had looked up at them from the floor where you had fallen and you had seen monsters and a hunger that could never be satisfied. 

You had learned that love was a transaction. That love was a leash. That love was a weapon.

All these years later, you did not talk to them anymore. 

You had severed the cord, cut the thread and burned the bridge. You had moved to a city where no one knew your name or your history. You had built a life from the rubble of that childhood, brick by brick, with hands that still trembled. You had told yourself you were over it. You had told yourself that the past was the past, that water was under the bridge, that time heals all wounds.

Time is a liar. 

Because every scar on your body that they had made still lingered—portals, thin places where the past could leak through. And when you spiraled, as you were doing now, the scars began to bleed. 

Rotten honey—golden, viscous ooze that smelled of decay and nostalgia and all the love you had never received.

You could feel it now from the map of bruises that had long since faded but never truly disappeared. It dripped down your arms, your legs, your torso, pooling at your feet. It was warm and sticky and it clung to you like a second skin, like the embrace you had always wanted and never gotten.

The rotten honey filled the room. It was the sweetness of the lies they had told you. It was the amber of your own preserved trauma. It was the slow, suffocating truth that you would never be free of them. That they lived inside you now, in the architecture of your bones, in the wiring of your nervous system, in the way you flinched at sudden movements and apologized for existing.

You looked at your reflection through the haze of golden rot.

The child you had been was still in there somewhere, pressed against the glass of the mirror, her small hands flat against the surface. 

She was waiting for you to save her.

Your reflection stared back at you, patient and understanding. 

The fetus shaped adult—ripped from the womb still covered in candy and the innocence of a childhood never lived—within you knew already. 

You were not capable of anything but grief.

As all the miserable ones are. 

_____________________

For someone who didn't quite understand what love meant yet fully (for he was still young), Byun Euijoo knew that his definition of love would certainly have your name.

He loved you.

God, he loved you so much that sometimes it frightened him, the sheer size of it, the way it pressed against his ribs like an additional set of lungs.

Euijoo had known, from the beginning, that you came with shadows. 

He had known about the childhood that had left you scarred in ways both visible and invisible. He had known about your parents who had taught you that you were meant to be broken. And he had known, too, that you had expected him to leave.

In the early days, you had waited for it.

He had seen it in the way you held yourself at a distance, the way you apologized for taking up space, the way your eyes would flick to the door whenever the conversation grew too soft. You had been braced for the moment he would realize his mistake, the moment he would see the rot beneath the skin and walk away. You had been so certain that he would.

Euijoo had stayed.

He had stayed through the nights you woke up screaming. He had stayed through the days you could not get out of bed. He had stayed through the silences that stretched like winter fields, the tears that came without warning, the times you pushed him away because it was easier than waiting for him to go. 

He had stayed and he had learned the geography of your pain the way a cartographer learns a new land—with reverence for every contour and crevice.

Euijoo loved you.

He loved your scars. He loved the way you laughed when you forgot to be sad. He loved the way you held his hand in crowded places, as if tethering yourself to him. 

He loved the way you looked at him sometimes, like you were still surprised he was there. He loved you in the morning when your hair was a mess and your breath was stale and you were slightly grumpy (though he could erase that with a silly joke and a smile that made his cheeks seem inflated). 

He loved you in the evening, when the light made you golden and you seemed like a divine dream he would never have again. He loved you in the dark when the world fell away and it was just the two of you breathing together.

Tonight, he came home later than usual.

The city had kept him, as cities do, with their traffic and errands and the slow crawl of evening. He had texted you to say he was on his way but you had not replied. He had not thought much of it at first—you were sometimes bad at answering, lost in your own head. 

But as he turned the key in the lock and stepped into the apartment, he felt something wrong in the air—a kind of stillness he was not used to. Sure you were silent most of the time but even on your worst days you'd say a little “Hi love” before going back to whatever you were doing. 

He set down his bag, calling your name softly, once, then twice. He furrowed his brows when he heard no answer..

He heard it then—a small sniffle from the bedroom, a breath caught and released. 

Euijoo’s heart clenched.

The bedroom door was ajar and through the gap he could see you. You were standing in front of the mirror, dressed only in your undergarments. Your shoulders were shaking. Your hands were pressed against your thighs, fingers curled into your palms. You were staring at yourself with an expression he knew too well—the look of someone drowning in the past.

Euijoo knew what you were doing. He knew of the ghosts that came calling in the moonlight, the past that always reminded you that time once flowed and it did not stay stagnant. He had held you through it before, and he would hold you through it again.and again and again, for as long as you would let him.

Euijoo stepped into the room. He did not speak at first. He simply walked up behind you, his footsteps soft on the wooden floor and wrapped his arms around you from behind. His chest pressed against your back. His chin came to rest on your shoulder. His arms crossed over your stomach, holding you gently.

In the mirror, your reflection was now framed by his. Two bodies, one embrace. Euijoo met your eyes in the glass.

"My love.” He said, his voice a balm for wounds that would never heal. “I'm home.” 

The sound of his voice, the warmth of his arms, the safety of his presence—it was too much. It was the thing that finally cracked the dam you had been desperately trying to hold together.

A sob tore from your throat, so animal-like that it reminded you humans are animals—stupid stupid emotions. It was unfortunately not the kind of crying you did in polite company, the kind where tears slid silently down your cheeks and you apologized for the inconvenience. 

No, this was the kind of crying that came from somewhere ancient, somewhere that had been holding its breath for years and could no longer pretend.

You turned in his arms, your body folding into his as your legs gave out beneath you. You sank to the floor together, a tangle of limbs and grief. You buried your face in his chest as the sobs wracked through you like earthquakes.

Your fingers clutched at his shirt, twisting the fabric, holding onto him as if he were the only solid thing in a world that had turned to water.

"I'm sorry.” You gasped between sobs, the words tumbling out of you like broken glass. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

You could not stop saying it, the apologies spilling from your lips like the only language you had ever known. 

You apologized for crying. You apologized for being weak. You apologized for needing him. You apologized for existing, for taking up space, for being a burden, for all the ways you had failed to be the person you thought you should be.

Emotions had always been useless. 

That was what you had been taught. They were like fragile flowers, delicate and perishable, things that wilted under the slightest pressure. They were weaknesses to be eradicated, luxuries you could not afford. You had learned to bury them so deep that sometimes you forgot they existed at all. 

They always found their way back to the surface though, pushing through the soil of your carefully constructed composure and when they did, they came with the force of a flood.

And every time, you apologized for it.

Euijoo did not let go. 

He neither pulled away nor told you to stop crying nor that everything was fine, that everything could be fixed with words. 

He simply sank down with you and held you. One hand cradled the back of your head, fingers threading through your hair with a tenderness that made you cry harder. The other arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you as close as physics would allow. Euijoo would absorb the pain through the sheer proximity of everything if he could.

Your lover held you the way one would hold a crying child with the certainty that this was where he was supposed to be. That your tears were not an inconvenience, that your grief was not a burden, that you were allowed to fall apart in his arms, because he would be there to catch the pieces.

His own heart was breaking. 

He could feel it, a splintering in his chest, a crack running through the center of him. Your pain had been so heavy and you had been carrying it alone for so long. He felt the injustice of it all—the cruelty of a world that had hurt you, the cruelty of people who should have protected you, the cruelty of a child who had learned to apologize for her own suffering.

Euijoo pressed a kiss to the top of your head, his lips lingering there, warm and soft.

"I’ve got you." He murmured against your hair. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. You don't have to apologize to me."

His voice was steady, even as his heart ached. He held you tighter, rocking you gently, a rhythm as old as humanity itself.

"Let it out, my love. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

The storm passed as storms always do. The sobs quieted into hiccups, then into shaky breaths, then into a trembling silence. 

Your body was heavy against his, drained of all the tension that had held you upright and you felt like a shipwreck washing ashore, grateful for the sand beneath you.

Euijoo's hand never stopped moving. It traced soothing circles on your back, reminding you that you were here, in this room in his arms and not back in that closet or that kitchen floor or in any of the places that still haunted you.

"Are you okay?" Euijoo asked softly, his voice a low rumble against your ear. "Well, no. That's a stupid question. Let me rephrase." He pulled back to look at your face, his eyes scanning you with gentle concern. "Would you like to lay down for a while?"

You nodded, too exhausted for words. Your throat was raw, your eyes swollen. Your entire body ached with the effort of having felt so much.

Euijoo helped you up, guiding you to the bed. He reached for the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it aside. His skin was warm and bare and when he climbed onto the bed and held out his arms to you, you went to him without hesitation.

You buried your face in his chest, feeling the thrum of his heartbeat beneath your cheek. His arms wrapped around you, pulling you close and he pressed another kiss to the top of your head. His skin smelled like something that had come to mean safety in your mind.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of breathing. Yours, still ragged. His, deep and even, a metronome for your recovery.

His hand began to move.

Slowly, Euijoo traced the line of your spine, following the curve of your back until his fingers found the first scar. His thumb brushed over it, featherlight and he lifted your hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the raised tissue.

"I love your hands.” Euiioo said, his voice soft and sincere. "I love the way they hold mine. I love the way they gesture when you're excited about something. I love the way they cup my face when you kiss me."

Your breath hitched but you did not pull away.

He moved to the next scar. The silvery line on your arm, the one you had gotten from a piece of broken glass when you were fourteen. He kissed it, his lips lingering.

"I love your arms.” He murmured. "I love the way they wrap around me when we sleep. I love that they are strong enough to hold me, even when you feel like you are falling apart."

Tears pricked at your eyes again. These were different—they did not burn.

He found the scar on your ribs, the one that had come from the days when you had learned to take up less space, to need less than you deserved. He kissed it and his hand splayed across your stomach, warm and protective.

"I love your body.” He said, his voice cracking just slightly. “I love that it carried you through everything you survived. I love that it lets me hold you. I love that it is here, with me.”

He shifted, finding a bruise on your thigh. He kissed it too.

"I love your legs.” He said, a hint of a smile in his voice. "I love the way they carry you through the world. I love the way they tangle with mine under the covers."

He kissed your scarred knees, one after the other.

"I love your knees.” He said, and you let out a broken laugh at the absurdity of it. "I love that they let you kneel in the garden when you're planting things. I love that they let you curl up on the couch when you're reading. I love that they have never given up on you, even when you wanted to give up on yourself."

Euijoo paused, his lips hovering over the scar on your chest, the one that was not visible to the eye but was there all the same. The one that had been carved by the absence of love where love should have been.

Euijoo kissed the place directly over your heart.

"I love your heart.” He whispered, his voice breaking at last. "It is the bravest, most beautiful heart I have ever known."

He pulled back to look at you, his eyes glistening, his cheeks wet with tears he had not let himself shed until now.

"And I love you.” Euijoo said. "All of you.” You knew he meant every scar and every broken piece you deemed unlovable. “I love you, and I will spend the rest of my life proving it to you if that's what it takes."

He pressed his forehead to yours, his breath warm against your lips.

"You are not too much, my love. You are just enough. You have always been just enough."

You let him wrap you in his arms, pull you against the warm expanse of his chest and tuck your head beneath his chin. You let him hold you as the night pressed against the windows and the city hummed its distant lullaby. 

You did not apologize for taking up space.

His hand found yours in the dark, fingers lacing together like they had been made to fit. His breathing slowed, becoming the rhythm that your own breath began to follow. The tension bled out of your body like water through open hands.

Outside, the moon traced silver lines across the floor. Inside, there was only the sound of two hearts beating in tandem, a duet that needed no words.

When god made this world, they sculpted it into two whorls.

The Loved and The Miserable. 

Here is what they do not tell you, lest you get intoxicated on the poetry of life. 

The two whorls are conjoined twins from the same heavenly womb, that cannot be separated without high risk. If one went, so did the other. 

The Loved cannot exist without The Miserable and The Miserable cannot withstand the weight of the world without The Loved. 

And yes the transitions do occur, winter into spring, spring into happiness, happiness into an acceptance of love. What good is love anyways if it doesn't make your heart swell like a yellow balloon?

You had spent so long lying on chrysanthemums, begging for love that felt like alms, believing that you were made for grief and not for grace.

To be loved is not to walk on sunflowers, untouched and untouchable.

To be loved is to be seen in the dark and still be chosen. To be loved is to fall apart and be caught. To be loved is to have someone trace the map of your pain and call it home.

To be loved is neither a destination nor a reward for being whole.

To be loved is to be held, broken and bleeding, and told that you are enough.

To be loved is this.

Your breathing evened out. Your hand went slack in his. 

Byun Euijoo, who still had so much to learn about love, pressed one last kiss to your hair and held you a little tighter, as if to say: I will keep learning. I will keep loving. 

I will keep staying.

Outside, the moon kept watch. Inside, you dreamed of chrysanthemums blooming into sunflowers. A world where the two whorls danced around each other in the wind.

Love is simple, really. God would not have fashioned something so complex for the noble mind.

Love is to look up at the heavens, to behold the silent majesty of the stars scattered across the night and to choose them even over divinity. 

For what is heaven if not the promise of perfect communion? 

And what is love if not that promise made tangible in this life? 

fin.

A/N: Honestly, i debated for a long time whether or not to post this fic because it's just such a big part of my soul and im not one to really talk about my past (yes im a coward) but i think if there's even a 1% chance that somebody out there will read this and think 'yeah this provided me comfort' then im glad to have posted this.

I'd like to give a shoutout for all my people who have been through any similar experience, not just from your family members but from a partner, a friend or literally anybody. I need you to know that whatever you went through was absolutely not your fault and never will be your fault. You deserve to live your life full of stars and colours and happiness and nobody can take that away from you. I love you all so much and when you think your scars are starting to look a little ugly, I want you to remember that they represent your strength, which I am so so proud of :))

divider by @kodaswrld