Love Story Episode 6: Days Spent Searching for Answers

After being told we should break up,
I couldn't reach a conclusion right away.

I told him,
"I need some time to think. You said you've been struggling with this for months before reaching your decision, so there's no way I can come to a conclusion on the spot. Right? I need time to think about this too. Let's talk again next week."
That's what I told him.

I couldn't treat this relationship so lightly
that I could just give an answer on the spot after being told that out of the blue.

To be honest,
I don't think it was just lingering attachment.

I also had quite a bit of pride.

Besides,
he was a very clumsy person.
Putting his feelings into words,
or trying to see things from someone else's perspective,
was never his strong suit.

But I
believed that love was something more complex
and more human.

When there are moments that don't go well,
whether you end it there,
or what you learn from it,
changes the depth of the relationship.

I wanted to convey that to him
as one human being to another.
I wanted to tell him, "There's this way of thinking,"

and "There's this way of facing things."
If he knew that,
and still chose a different path,
I felt I could accept it.
Perhaps,

if he realized that,
we might be able to repair things.
It's true that a faint hope like that


was still lingering somewhere.
That's why I

chose to face my emotions
rather than run away from them.

I think it was for my own sake,
and for his sake as well.

The week that followed
was quite grueling, even looking back on it now.

I cried, I thought,
and I cried and thought some more.
In my head, the same scenes were playing over and over again.

Yet, strangely enough,
I still went to work properly.
Of course, there were times when tears would come while commuting.


I think I just wanted to protect my daily routine.



But then, I would suddenly think and think again...

Why didn't it work out?
Where did we miss each other?
Was it really impossible to repair?

And above all,
"What was I putting up with?"

There was definitely a sense of unease.
But it wasn't that I was ignoring it.

I had put my feelings into words,
and I had tried to face them.

The reason the relationship continued despite that was because
"If we talk, we can understand each other,"
and "If we take time, we can grow together."
That's what I believed.

That is precisely why
the fact that he "struggled alone and reached a conclusion alone"
hit me hard later on.

During this week,
I asked myself many times.

Was I looking for a relationship
"where no problems occur"?
Or was I looking for
"someone I could face things with when problems do occur"?
The answer was clear.

And I decided

that instead of ending it like this,
I would properly convey my feelings in my own words once.
Not to run away,
and not to hold him back,

but to move forward with a sense of closure for myself.
And so, we
decided to meet and talk one more time.