The club lights flickered like dying stars bass thumping, laughter echoing, perfume and cologne mixing in the air like toxic fog.

He was here again. Same booth. Different girls and yet same drinks. Junggoo laughed, a hand resting lazily on the leather couch, a girl draped over his arm. But his smile didn’t reach his eyes.It never really did anymore.

Not since you stopped texting.Not since you stopped picking up.Not since that silence between you two turned into a habit.

It had been a month.The worst part?.He was the one who started it.You were always there patient, bright-eyed, loving.He was the one who began to drift, back into the haze of noise and neon lights.Back into the arms of girls who weren’t you.

He told himself you’d be there.You always were until you weren’t and then goo saw you on a random evening, by accident or fate, Junggoo stepped outside the club,suit tugged low, cigarette unlit between his lips and there you were.

On the other side of the street,walking beside some guy.He held your umbrella while you were holding balloons.

The guy handed them to you, and your smile bloomed. Soft. Genuine. That same smile that used to belong to Junggoo’s world,you laughed.

You looked happy.Not the fake kind. Not the polite smile you forced during the last weeks you and he still spoke.This one was real and it broke him.

He watched from the shadows.The balloon strings between your fingers, the way your cheeks puffed when you giggled, your eyes soft under the glow of the streetlights.

And suddenly, the club behind him felt like a bad dream,empty,cold and too loud.Junggoo clenched his jaw. The cigarette snapped between his fingers.

Why did it feel like the world just ended?

He had girls, money, attention but not you.Not anymore and for the first time, he understood.You weren’t just a chapter.You were the book and he let the pages burn.