I drew away, wiping my tears with the back of my hand. Then, I realized what I just did and heat rushed into my face. I scrambled away, tucking my hands behind me. "Sorry, that was—"

"Hye-jin," Kora said. Just my name, but the way he said it contained everything unsaid between us. His eyes widened just a bit before looking away. "I mean, Seline."

My leg bumped against the edge of his bed, my eyes never leaving the rumpled sheets by his feet. " 'Hye-jin' is fine," I replied, tucking my hair behind my ear. "I'm still me."

A chuckle made me look up to his face once more. Even after barely surviving being poisoned to death, he was still smiling. Now that I thought about it, I've never seen him smile that openly in the final years leading up to our last night. What changed?

"Yeah, you're very much you," Rin pushed his hair off his forehead and it didn't obey for long. The smile on his lips never wavered. He was still the same Rin, albeit a little redder in the head and scrawnier than what I remember. I missed it, that smile.

I sank into the small spot by his feet. "What does that mean?" I scoffed, but my own smile pulled at the corners of my lips. It's been a while since we were able to sit together in the same place and not attempt to tear each other's hair off.

I jerked my chin towards him before he could provide an explanation. It'd probably be a lame one anyway. "How are you feeling?"

He stared at me, his face never betraying whatever he's feeling inside. When had I stopped being able to read him like an open book? How come he could still do the same to me? "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"You can't be throwing my own question back at me," I frowned.

He shrugged. "I just did," he said before heaving a sigh. "I keep seeing you in my memory before I blacked out. You found me, didn't you?"

I opened my mouth but shut it promptly. What else was I going to say? That it was his brain playing tricks on him? That I couldn't care less if he died? Both weren't true, and I haven't always been an excellent liar.

"That's why I asked," he continued when I wasn't spouting a single word as a reply and was instead looking down on my hands—the very ones who had been covered in blood a few hours ago. His blood. "I know we're not anything to each other anymore but...it must have been tough."

I didn't know if I was supposed to be hurt by what he's saying or if I should be relieved he was still around to be saying it. "It was," I admitted. No use trying to act tough now. Besides, a huge number of people already saw me whining in the waiting room yesterday. It wouldn't take long before some word reached his ears. Better it comes from me first. "And we're not 'not anything' to each other, Rin. I..."

My nails pinched my palm as I pushed the memories of his limp body and unresponsiveness out of my mind. It's fine. He's fine. We're okay. "I know we aren't on the best terms right now, and I haven't been mature enough to handle it in the best way possible, but you're still my friend," I raised my head from my hands to find his gaze to have never wavered from my head. Rather, my face. "Didn't I promise you that? I'd put our friendship first above everything else, even our failed marriage."

And there it was. One of us was finally brave enough to say it, to admit the fact we have been blind to see since the beginning. I didn't need that dark chapter in my life because I would still have Rin even without that. Before we were lovers, we were friends. And that had been enough.

That was enough.

I'd survive as long as I have Rin by my side.

"I'm sorry, Hye-jin," his tone was so weak and fragile I thought he was in pain once more. When I looked at him again, a strange mist made his eyes brighter than they're supposed to be.

My heart clenched and I stood up and moved to the small table beside the bed. "You should focus on healing," I said, my voice higher than normal. "You need your strength back and I—"

I attempted to grab the washbasin when a hand clamped around my wrist. I turned to its owner and Rin had this fixed expression on his face telling me he's serious. My resolve to keep my hands busy with whatever I got my hands on melted as I felt a gentle tug on my arm. Slowly, he made me sit back on the bed, closer to him this time.

"Will you listen to me just this once, Hye-jin?" he asked like I wasn't known to do that at all. Maybe that had been true all along. We wouldn't be having this conversation if it was. "I just...I owe you so much explanation that I don't know where to start."

His shoulders rose and fell as he breathed. Deep. "First off, I'm sorry about last night," he said, alluding to the day we were saying goodbye to each other by clearing the apartment out. The day we came into this world. For us, even if it had been months and months, it was still last night.

Our last night that didn't end. And stretched on forever.

"I should have listened to you and not clicked that button," he said. "You're right in every regard. It's my fault we're stuck here."

I opened my mouth to answer, to tell him I didn't mean a single thing I uttered that day in the joint meeting with Dragnasand, but he stopped me with a stern look—one he had never given me. That was...until now. "And for our divorce," he said. "I'll apologize for that too."

"And perhaps, you'll finally get to hear my side of the story," Rin continued. "After that, I'll let you be the judge, if I did something vile and unspeakable, if what I have done was truly wrong."

He inhaled sharply once more. My eyes fell to his hand resting on the bed. My fingers were mere inches from it. Mere inches. "When I told you to quit your job and become an independent developer, I told you I'd get promoted soon, right?" he said.

I remembered that conversation. I had just been complaining about my job, at how it wasn't really what I wanted to do. And he told me to quit. So I did. Because I believed he would still be there to support me whatever the fuck I did. Just that gave me the strength to walk away.

"In truth, the promotion was something I set as a goal, just so I would have enough reason to work hard, harder than any of my colleagues," he pursed his lips and smoothed his sheets. "We needed the money, with Kaasan and Kaito at home. If you still had your job, then maybe we wouldn't have struggled so much. But when I saw how unhappy you were, I couldn't bear it."

I so badly wanted to reach out and take his hand there, to tell him to take it easy and not blame himself so much. I was at fault as well, having made it seem like I couldn't stomach it further and the only solution was to quit, to run away. But it wasn't. It never was. I didn't interrupt him, though. I still didn't know if I could. Who knew when's the next time Rin would spread all of him in front of me like this?

"Then it comes to the matter of my own problems at work," he continued. "I let my ambition blind me to the point where I would take on work not even meant for me to fan my own fire. Soon, my colleagues saw me as someone who they could push around, because then, I would have no choice but to play on their good graces until the next performance evaluation period."

He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall behind the bed's headboard. "Included in that list is my boss, Karla Ashley," he said. "I made the mistake of mentioning my intention to her and she has used that against me all these years."

The pain, regret, and frustration dancing in his eyes and making his lips curl with hate couldn't have been fake. "That's why I always came home late a few months after you started staying home," he said. "Ashley would make me do her job for her, increasing my workload to the point where I had to stay beyond office hours just so I could make it to the next day. She also started sending me to run personal errands, arrange her meetings and huddles, and inform her of her schedule."

"Like a secretary," I blurted before I could stop myself.

Instead of getting annoyed, he just bobbed his head. "Pretty much," he said. "In all my years of waiting for that promotion, I never got it. And I didn't tell you any of that because I was ashamed."

I knitted my eyebrows. Why would he be ashamed? He was doing something honorable by trying to do his best in a job that's sucking his soul in order to provide for his family. "I know that look, Hye-jin," Rin said, jarring me back to reality. His fingers clawed against the blanket thrown over his legs, crumpling it. "It's shameful for me to resort to being treated like a slave and a pushover because I wasn't competent enough to let my work speak for itself. And for that, I'm sorry."

He met my eyes once more. Never had I seen so much guilt pouring out from them. "I'm sorry I always come home late, for leaving my mom, my brother, and the house in your care," he said. "I'm sorry for leaving you alone, for making you feel like you've lost yourself and your life by taking care of mine. I'm sorry for not listening to you and for not seeing how much I've hurt you until you've had to scream."

A tear slipped from my eyes despite how hard I tried to blink it back into oblivion. "And before you stop listening to me again, let me just make it clear," he forged ahead. "I never cheated on you, Hye-jin. Not with my hideous boss. I hated her with every fiber of my being. I would never trade you for her."

I sniffled. "Then, what happened that night?" I blubbered. "What about the necklace?"

His shoulders slumped. "So you did see that," he muttered under his breath. Then, in a louder voice, he said, "That necklace was charged into my account because Ashley made me buy it. Her husband is tight about their money and justly so. She wasn't the best at saving."

"I did tell you she makes me run personal errands, right?" he rubbed a hand against his face. "Buying that necklace was one of those. I had to stash it at home because I can't leave it at the office with how much it was."

I could only nod. Everything checked out and his side of the story was definitely a perspective I didn't see because I was too focused on my own world, of my own worries. "And when I wasn't able to go home the night Kaito was throwing up and..." he stopped, looking at me for some confirmation to say what I knew was coming next. He pushed on at my smallest of nods. "Your mother dying, I was at Ashley's house."

Even after all these months (or maybe years, following our time in Solarlume?), revisiting the darkness of that night left an insurmountable weight on my gut and a twinge in my heart. "She pestered me to eat dinner with her while we talked about work," he said. "I couldn't eat a bite because my instincts told me that I needed to be home. Then, you kept calling, so I thought there really was something going on."

"Some lapse of judgment on my part, but I left my phone in her house as I ran," he gulped, his throat bobbing. "But I felt so bad that night. I don't know if it's from exhaustion or just sheer shame, but all I knew was I couldn't bear to face you that night. Not when I went to another woman's house who just won't leave me alone. So I hung out in a pub."

And I could guess what happened after that. As I scrambled around the house trying to pack as quickly as I could, he was out there in the cold, getting his ass drunk. On my way back to my parents' house, he had just gotten back and went looking for me. When he couldn't find me or reach me, he called the police.

"You probably don't think much about me after all that," he went on. "But you deserve to know. You deserve so much more than what I could give you then. And for that, I'm sorry."

I heaved a breath against my blocked airways. My eyes, which had never stopped leaking since yesterday, were heavy and probably bloodshot and puffy. "I have to apologize too," I said, sniffing. "For not considering your side, for making it seem like you couldn't be vulnerable to me, and for being unbearable at times. I'm sorry for putting the pressure of earning enough for both of us and more, for blaming you for everything that went wrong in my life, in yours, and in ours."

There's something I learned after all these blunders. The need to blame something or someone was natural in each of us whenever things didn't go according to plan. Rin was right when he told me I squeeze life in the throat to give me what I wanted, and when I didn't get it, I would start flinging the blame everywhere I could. At him. At me. In my environment. At my own choices.

But sometimes, there simply wasn't anyone to blame. Rin and I, we both made the choices we did because of our beliefs, our values, and our immaturity. And now that we're older and hopefully a little wiser, we might be able to choose better. Because that's just how life was. It's nothing but a series of choices.

"I'm sorry for letting go, Rin," I said. "Even when I said I wouldn't. Even when I knew how you would feel if I left without a word like everyone else."

I froze when I felt a warm hand cup my face. A thumb ran across my cheek, diverting the steady stream of tears running down on it. Rin smiled at me. Just the sheer softness of it made my heart wrench and my stomach tighten. "Rather, I should be the one thanking you," his voice had dropped into a small whisper, like no one was supposed to hear this but us. Just us. "Thank you for holding on as long as you did, for choosing to be with me even when I couldn't do the same."

The brightness in his eyes dwindled into the quiet flame I've come to know and cherish. "Thank you for loving me, Joon Hye-jin."

With that, what's left of my control over my tears slipped into the void, opening the floodgates of my eyes. An arm wrapped around my shoulder, pulling me into an embrace—one I never knew I was missing until I felt the comfort it brought again. Rin's sniffles and soft sobs matched mine as we clung into each other, mourning the lives we have thrown away and the future we wouldn't be sharing with one another anymore.

Just like that, what we owe towards each other that night was being paid back today, a hundred eternities too late. Just like that, we became what we needed most that moment our worlds crashed and burned—an embrace and the assurance that tomorrow would come and it'd be better.

And for that, I was grateful. More than, in fact.