you never forget your first love. for jaehyun, what this means is he always finds himself back on the side of the field, an ostracised, six-year old anomaly chump with a soccer ball rolling waywardly towards his right foot. the first time he kicks the ball, ill-controlled superstrength and all, the older boys from the neighbourhood had regarded him in silence, the way they always do when they find out he’s his mother’s son. then, the impossible: a yell. a whoop, and a roar, as they beckon him over to the field to play. see, there was this way that soccer made him feel like he was someone— like on the field, it didn’t matter the kind of blood that ran through his veins as long as he could play ball. or at least it didn’t, until he’s a pathetic sixteen-year old with the fucking nerve to dream of a shot at national soccer. then, the locker room brawl that viciously and suddenly rips the supercut of his future—of his version of three kids and a white picket fence—to fucking shreds.
all these years, yet it exists as a raw, unhealed wound, serrated skin from a fresh blade.
so forgive him for giving a shit about the sporting rally, the one thing that made him feel some semblance of hope for the first time in a long time. forgive him that he’s distracted, because it’s the only thing that he really thinks about. and forgive him for not giving much of a rat’s ass about the dramaticisms of love and romance. park jaehyun has a legacy to leave.
and perhaps it’s in this way that yun haea is caught in the crossfire. girl with the dreamy allure, jaehyun thinks that in another world, they’d make sense. she’s soft in all the places that he breathes hellfire, the calm to his storm, and yet— there is no version of reality in which park jaehyun could ever hold the space she deserves. somewhere is a couple seated at a candlelit table, girl in tears, man on the phone.
like the way she comes to him now, another man’s jacket hanging off her shoulders, and jaehyun doesn’t even notice. instead, he regards her from the corner of his eye, lets out an unenthusiastic, “hey,” and he’s back on his phone. doesn’t get up from the couch, doesn’t hold her in his arms like he used to. a beat of silence, an unfeeling, “had fun at the party?” in the name of saying something.
ft. park jaehyun & @evernghts's yun haea
