FOREVER IS A LIE [ JUNG HOSEOK/HOBI FF ] S1 EPISODE 4

EPISODE 4

The bike stopped in front of a duplex . The man got down and unlocked the main door and stopped. The door had his name on it: JUNG HOSEOK

The nameplate was a thick golden structure with a black border. She chose the font on it, much like everything else in the duplex. In fact, it was supposed to have another name her’s—above his. Supposed to have . . . Before the past could shackle him again, he walked inside.

Sensors in the house detected his movement and the rooms flooded with light as he made his way from the hall downstairs to the bedroom upstairs. The lights went out every time he exited a room. He had always wondered if he could do the same with his life. If, with every step forward, darkness could conceal his past like it had never been there. But life was different. It highlighted the past using the most powerful light source: memory. And in the dark alleys of one’s memory, every bit of the past was pronounced. Especially the parts you desperately wanted to suppress.

The interior of the duplex was designed exactly the way she had told him once: glass ceilings, ground-level furniture, sensor lighting and plenty of potted plants. However, there was one object that he had intentionally avoided: mirrors. She had told him there would be a lot of mirrors in their duplex. She had always wanted to relish their reflection when they were together. And now he couldn’t look into a mirror for the same reason. Loneliness mocked at him when he saw his reflection. He didn’t remember the last time he had looked into one. Even at salons, he would sit with his eyes closed and get up immediately after he was done. Reflections scared him, unsettled him and probed at a certain truth of his life, which he was yet to come to terms with.

As he started climbing the stairs to his bedroom, he stopped to glance at the adjacent wall. There were several framed photographs of her. He had deliberately kept her pictures to remind himself that perhaps he had neverdeserved the togetherness she had brought with her. Before the pictures could suck him inside a time machine potent enough to destroy whatever was left of him, he dashed upstairs.

Once in his room, he stripped himself *****. This was a routine after every sexual encounter. He would head back to his duplex and take a long shower. It was his redemption for the living paradox he had become in the last five years. As he stood under the shower and turned the knob on, tiny blue lights lit up the cubicle and water cascaded down his broad shoulders. This too was her idea. They were supposed to shower together under these very lights whenever they fought. It was her way of calling truce. Now there were neither any fights,nor any calls for truce. Not in this lifetime at least, he thought with a sinkingfeeling in his stomach. Standing still, with his head bowed down, he could feel his thighs ache because of the hundred extra squats he had done earlier that day. He had worked hard for the pain and the more intense it was, the more easily he could divert his mind. Sex too was a pain initiator. Every time he fucked the brains out of a girl, helped her climb unprecedented sexual highs, he felt like spitting on himself. It was a self-inflicted punishment, of telling himself that he had deserved what had happened to him all these years. He knew that if he did not inject pain into himself, he would just be like the living dead. And hadn’t she made him promise that he wouldn’t waste himself if she died?

Did she always know that she would die? And even she didn’t, he did.