Chapter 1 Part 3 How nice would it be if I could just forget everything. Watching a romance movie that ended in tragedy, I silently shed tears.
A scene from the movie played across the monitor. On a beach washed in snow, a bed was placed. A red-haired woman and a man rose from the bed.
I was already watching this movie for the second time, so I knew the whole story, yet tears still came.
The story of the movie went like this. A man and a woman meet and fall in love, only to learn later that they had once been lovers in the past, and that after breaking up, they had merely erased their memories of each other.
When I first watched it, I had wondered what kind of story this was, but watching it again, it was an insanely sad story.
Originally, I had watched this movie only because my girlfriend liked it.
To be exact, my ex-girlfriend.
"Ugh..." My eyes stung. The tears that had pooled there fell in droplets.
My vision blurred, so I could not see the movie. Honestly, I was not crying because the movie was sad. I was sad about my own situation.
Me, Giha, nineteen years old. Already dumped five times. I had finally thought I was about to have my first relationship worth commemorating, but...I got dumped again.
"This can't be happening." A sob kept pushing its way up from inside my throat.
No matter how much I denied it, what had already happened had happened, and there was no way my ex-girlfriend would come back.
A movie was a movie, and reality was reality. In romance movies, they might recover their memories in the end and meet again, but there was no possibility that my ex-girlfriend and I would reconcile.
I closed the laptop and collapsed onto the bed. Now the tears were flowing sideways.
Into my collapsed field of vision came an infuriating face. It was the moment when sorrow changed into anger.
Right across from where I was lying, an absurdly handsome face was looking at me. He was even lying on his side the same way I was.
On the bookshelf across from the bed, a magazine completely outside my reading tastes had been laid down and wedged in place. Looking at the male model printed all over the wide cover, I quietly ground my teeth.
Why did that magazine have to catch my eye right now? That bastard really had a talent for showing up with the worst timing.
"What the hell is this? Throw it away." Unable to hold back, I kicked the bed and got up, picking up the magazine. I put strength into my arms to throw it out immediately, but it was too thick and did not crumple well. In the end, after only making a miserable rustling sound by myself, I flopped back down weakly.
The male model on the cover, now only slightly creased, was still looking at me with an easy smile on his face.
Grinding my teeth, I glared at the magazine.
The male model on the magazine cover was someone I knew all too well. And far too well at that.
Yeo Saebyeok, nineteen years old. A damn bastard who had girls swarming after him just from walking around. A guy who was absolutely no help to my life.
On top of that, the culprit who had trashed my first love so miserably.
"You bastard."
I couldn't leave this magazine in my room as it was. I shoved the magazine with my archenemy's face on the cover into an empty box.
From now on, I was going to throw away everything related to Yeo Saebyeok.
Especially anything with Yeo Saebyeok's face on it, and anything Yeo Saebyeok gave me. All of it.
First, I pulled out the album that had been stuck beside the magazine.
Yeo Saebyeok appeared from the very first page. This time, instead of the chiseled features he had now, it was a round, reddish baby face.
On the first page of the album was a photo of two newborns lying side by side on bassinets in the newborn room.
That's how it was. He and I, Yeo Saebyeok and I, were born on the same day, at the same obstetrics clinic. At the very same hour, too.
Literally, the moment I opened my eyes, Yeo Saebyeok was right there beside me.
That alone was enough to make him a thoroughly tiresome ill-fated connection.
"What a fucking unlucky bastard."
I took out the baby photo and put it into the box holding the magazine, then flipped through the album pages. On the second page, there was Yeo Saebyeok again. This time it was a photo taken in kindergarten.
"Why are there so many photos of him in somebody else's album?"
As if kindergarten alone weren't enough, half the photo corners had Yeo Saebyeok in them. It wasn't just the ones taken at kindergarten. It was the same in other everyday photos too. It wasn't like these were spirit photos or anything.
Elementary school wasn't much different either. In the sports day photo we took together, we even looked close. Why was I smiling so brightly like that? And why did we have our arms around each other? We weren't even that close.
It was the same in middle school too. Most notably, there was a photo of us in the same school uniform awkwardly holding hands. That was taken when we got into a fistfight for the first time.
Because of our moms' order not to let go of each other's hands until one side apologized, we were standing there with utterly miserable faces, holding hands in the photo. I remembered that after an hour of the two of us silently holding hands, my older sister made us laugh and snapped the picture.
Yeo Saebyeok was in my high school entrance ceremony photos too. In the photo taken at the tennis tournament, he was hugging me instead of me holding the trophy in my arms. What the hell? Why was he hugging me in that picture? I must have been out of my mind from the adrenaline.
There really wasn't a single cycle of my life that he wasn't in.
Before I knew it, more than half my album had been emptied out white. Even after taking one out, and another, and another, more photos with Yeo Saebyeok in them kept coming.
From the newborn room, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school. It was true in the most literal sense that my entire life had been stuck together with Yeo Saebyeok. To a sickening degree. Enough to make me tired of it.
"Ha..." My head fucking hurt.
By the time I threw away even the photo on the album's last page, the photos had piled up thickly in the box.
Damn Yeo Saebyeok.
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