#vs. brian

she’s only just turned eighteen, but every moment that she is, nayoung can’t help but feel she was born twenty years too late.  it comes in phases; when brian smiles at her when she’s just four and she wants to climb onto his back, when he smiles at her at sixteen and she feels her heart flutter and beat.  nayoung is a girl who has cultivated love for eighteen years, all of her life really.  she’s just a stupid, silly girl with silly dreams who never learns.

brian is a man with twenty years more that he holds over her head when she says she loves him on the day she becomes a woman.  her heart splinters, breaks; she is a stupid girl with stupid dreams who never learns.  but what she does learn is heartache.  it’s something that nayoung expected and dreaded for the past few years she’s been in love, but that doesn’t make it hurt less.

it hurts more when he leaves.  it hurts more, because nayoung knows that it’s her fault that he packs up his things to move and live alone.  her mother can’t comfort her when nayoung keeps her door locked, her father can’t do anything when he asks her to come and say goodbye and she won’t, her uncle can’t run his hands through her hair and tell her it’ll be okay because it won’t.  they say that first love is the hardest, but it’s the only love that nayoung has known for her entire life.

and this is just another night she spends in her bed, missing the sounds of video games from the room next to her that’s now just as empty as her heart.  her parents don’t ask her to leave her bed anymore, her uncle leaves her books and movies while she sleeps to keep her company for days alone.  tonight is a long night; she glances at the clock and it’s already lit up two a.m.

nayoung sighs, and then her phone rings.  at first, she doesn’t pay attention to it; the vibration of the ringer more a nuisance to her sadness than anything else.  but when it doesn’t stop, she sighs, sitting up with a frustrated snap and snatching up the mobile in quick hands.  her heart stops.

it’s brian.

“ ... hello?”  her voice sounds thick, even to herself, from not being used in days.  heartache has brought her to this point; eighteen years is long to lament and she hates herself that she still feels hope when she sees his name light up her phone. it’s resigned, even to her, but nayoung still tries.  she still wants. “ what do you want, it’s two in the morning -”