Rolling in the Deep

Spotlights.

A million of them.

Fat bass sounds pounding inside Kyuhyun’s alcohol-filled mind. He was half numb and everything looked and felt surreal to him. But this wasn’t another dream.

There's a fire starting in my heart

Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark

Sungmin poured him another shot and he takes it down in one go. His friends all cheered as the music pumped pure adrenalin.

In the club he was safe — he has always been— safe from all the troubles of real life, his not so good relationship with his family, his battle coping with his sister’s passing and the nightmares that haunted him with no end.

He took a beer chaser to wash down the taste of whiskey. A beach blonde that he met across the bar was hanging on his neck like a tight fitting pendant as they carelessly frenched with the taste of bitter alcohol. At the corner of his eye, he spots a familiar shadow, towering over a crowd of nameless strangers swaying to the heady music. He wakes up from his mindless liplock and brushes the blonde off of him.

In a pace too fast for his cloud filled senses, he was off to the other side of the room—parting the sea of pretty faces, bodies clad in skintight clothes, pheromones mixing in the party ocean. He couldn’t be sure at this state of stupor but he was hopeful. A tall and toned brunette with locks that cascaded in soft waves at her mid-back: that was what he saw. It must be her.

Finally I can see you crystal clear

Go ahead and sell me out and I'll lay your ship bare

Kyuhyun has had his fill of women, or so one would think. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, models, college girls, whores, and the occasional foreigners who didn’t speak a word of Korean; he has never been particular. Women were like clothes he would wear only once then take off as soon as the night ended. But then there was her―a vision of things he wished he could’ve changed―a strong force pulling him across the dance floor, to a place where he would no longer play silly games with nameless girls every night. He wanted her. He needed her. And that was all he knew.

The elusive shadow disappeared from his sight. His head turned to seven different directions but she was nowhere to be found. Giving up, he started on his way back to the corner of the club that he owned―but something―someone stopped him.

“Cho Kyuhyun, why won’t you answer my calls? I called you a hundred times but you never picked up! Are you seeing someone else? You are cheating on me aren’t you?” Jessica almost shouted it all in one breath, competing with the loud dance music. Her strawberry blonde tresses gathered up high on her head with a pink bow, seeming to pull her eyebrows back up into her hairline.

Well at least she figured that out herself. Impressive for someone whose only talent was putting on eyeliner, he thought sarcastically. Kyuhyun yanked his arm free from her clutch, not even honoring her with a glance; he proceeded walking as if the small girl wearing the hot pink tube dress was air. Their own friends were pulling them in opposite directions; an escape he needed. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a familiar face. He froze planted on that spot on the floor. All his blood rushed to his head as the face registered in his mind in just a split second. It was her.

See how I'll leave with every piece of you

Don't underestimate the things that I will do

There's a fire starting in my heart

Reaching a fever pitch and its bringing me out the dark

He sprinted the few meters towards her, still devoid of any thought that made sense. He stopped at an arm’s reach and stood there wordlessly for what seemed like an eternity. He moved to open his mouth but not even air came out. She was painfully beautiful. She looked back pokerfaced. Her short but regal number accentuated her elegant height, blending in and standing out from the crowd at the same time. He gathered his senses and fumbled for words as her expression went from blank to a dark knot.

“Sooyoung can I… can we… talk for a second?” Without waiting for an answer he pulled her away from the crowd, away from the deafening music. He jogged as she dragged along, almost running away from everyone who seemed oblivious that they were gone anyway. He stopped under a streetlight which dimly illuminated the pitch black alley they were on. He bent over, catching his breath. An arm propping him on the lamp post while the other was left behind clutching the girl he once knew. He pulled himself together, turned around to face her. He looked at her deeply for a moment, admiring her perfect face: her charcoal eyes and high cheekbones, her shapely lips that were pursed and rouged in a deep brick red.

They say that for every guy, there will always be one girl that he will revere and place in an untouchable pedestal on his mind. And no matter how many girls come and go in his life, no matter how much in love he is with whoever at the moment, that special girl in a pedestal will still hold her place; An untainted image of a dream. Young love.

For Kyuhyun, that girl is Choi Sooyoung.

The scars of your love remind me of us

They keep me thinking that we almost had it all

The scars of your love they leave me breathless

I can't help feeling...

They met way back in high school. Sooyoung was two years Kyuhyun’s junior. He was a popular kid―pays off to be the son of the school director. Even if he regularly cut classes, he had no problems in passing school. She on the other hand was the school beauty and brains. Voted most likely to run for Miss Korea, people had high hopes for her. Boys lined up and worshipped the land that she walked on but she never showed any interest to anyone, no one―but him.

It started like a fairytale. He was her first love. He sent her letters and chocolates with hearts. He thought it was fun; she thought it was sweet. After a grand arrangement involving thirty-five freshmen giving her a single white rose each, he finally barged into her homeroom with the thirty-sixth rose and a crowd cheering wildly as Sooyoung said yes.

Everything was going peachy until the day that he found out that she was pregnant with his child. Kyuhyun, then only 19, was not ready for the responsibilities that being a father entails. And so he succumbed to his parents’ will. He was graduating that year and his parents couldn’t risk shaming the name of their family and their beloved academy. There was no other way. They talked her into having an abortion without letting her own family know of the situation. Sooyoung, with no guts to face her parent’s wrath was left with no other choice. The child was aborted. Kyuhyun’s graduation went without anyone catching wind of what happened, while Sooyoung continued her life, refusing any kind of financial compensation from the Cho famly. She never saw Kyuhyun again after his graduation until a few years later―when she was already with Changmin. He went to a bigger university, changed numbers and became the notorious playboy that he was. While she remained in his mind as a future he bailed out from―the would have been mother of his child, hadn’t he chickened out from the responsibility. It was too late when he realized how much she meant to him.

Baby, I have no story to be told

But I've heard one on you, now I'm gonna make your head burn

Think of me in the depths of your despair

Make a home down there as mine sure won't be shared

He was sure she hated him for killing a life she once thought of as a blessing. And he was damn right. Years later, the game has changed. He searched for her while she avoided him like a plague. No matter how hard he tried, he always ended up the same: broken, rejected, wasted in the same club, to wake up in the morning in the arms of girls whose names he’d never remember.

In the same club where he endlessly drowned his thoughts of her, night after night, he saw her again. She was more beautiful that he remembered. Doll faced, high heels and a ring on her finger. He on the other hand was gaunt and wasted. His eyes were dark and sunken low. He reeked of booze and despair but he was sure that she was no invention of the alcohol. Just to make sure that what he was seeing was real, he pulled her close, deep into his embrace. She smelled just like the roses he used to send her back then, mixed with a hint of wine and the musky scent of the club. He took a deep breath, taking in her bittersweet scent

She pushed him, breaking away from his hug.

“Sooyoung­―,” he pleaded but she cut his words.

“Before you say anything, I’m getting married to Changmin next month. I’m not expecting you to come but he wanted to send an invite. I was gonna ask BoA unnie to pass it on to you when I give hers, but since you’re already here…” she reached inside her bag and handed him a four by six envelope made of linen paper. As if it were on fire, he threw it on the ground quicker than he could’ve made out the initials S and C, flourishing together in longhand.

“I’d take that as a no.” she swept her hair off her face and pursed her lips.

“Don’t marry him, Soo.”

The light from the lamp post flickered slowly, rendering the remaining illumination of the street dimmer by the second.

She lets out a sigh of disbelief, rolls her eyes sweeps back her dark locks once again, left hand on her waist. “Come again? Have you lost your mind? Cho Kyuhyun it’s been more than seven years. Maybe I deserve to have a life apart from being miserable because of you. I have more than compensated whatever mistakes I have done in the past….Do we really have to go through this again?”

Kyuhyun fell silent.

Seven years.

Her child—their child—would have been about that age had it lived. The thought unnerved him. It wasn’t her fault. It was his. He was just too young. Too afraid.

“Sorry Soo, I was very young then.”

“And so was I! I was only seventeen then, Kyuhyun. I didn’t know anything about life. I don’t know what I was doing and I trusted you. And you… you just disappeared when I needed you most. And now you are telling me to call off my wedding? What right have you?”

“I love you!”

“And you think that fixes everything? You are drunk Cho Kyuhyun. And you are an asshole. Just look at yourself― you haven’t changed at all since the last time I saw you. You are still the same jerk who gets piss drunk at the same old club after seven long years, living off of your parents’ money. You’re still the same impulsive, insensitive jackass who thinks he can just barge into my life pretending to know what’s best for me, when you don’t even seem to know what’s best for yourself. And you think you can just bounce back into my life by saying that you love me? Get real.”

Throw your soul through every open door

Count your blessings to find what you look for

Turn my sorrow into treasured gold

You pay me back in kind and reap just what you sow

She turned her back to him, his eyes fixed on the ground.

No one saw his shoulders collapse and knees fold into defeat that night. No one saw his tears rain down that lonely spot under the lamp post. But if anyone bore witness to it, they would have seen how his heart fell apart for the thousandth time and feel the cut from its broken pieces.

Time stretched under the dim lamp post. All he could see was the spot she left and the endless darkness. All he could hear were her footsteps permanently walking out of his life.

We could have had it all

Rolling in the deep

You had my heart inside of your hand

But you played it with the beat