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๋ ࣭ ⭑
“I love you.” Sae Byeok finally confessed, her words barely a whisper, overflowing with guilt and shame as if she were confessing a crime. The words hung in the air after they escaped her lips, begging to be taken back the moment they were out in the open — not because they weren't true, but because they shouldn't be. She was foolish to have let them out in the first place. She was foolish to even think such a way about this girl.
“I love you too,” The girl across from her—God, she didn't even know her name—said as if the words came to her as easy as breathing. Then she smiled, and foolishly, so foolishly, Sae Byeok felt happy. For the first time in weeks, maybe months, she felt happy. And for once, she matched player 240’s grin, despite her vain efforts to pull her lips back into a straight line.
Sae Byeok couldn't be sure what they were together. She had never had a lover, or wanted one, and she wasn't sure she had ever loved someone before, aside from her brother and possibly her mother. Maybe, probably, she just didn't know what love was. Nobody had ever explained it to her, like it was something she was just expected to understand. But she loved this girl, and she knew it, even though she still couldn't put a finger on what exactly it meant, or why she loved this girl she met only this morning. Sae Byeok had never believed in love at first sight, but she was never right about anything after all.
“You're beautiful.” The girl she hardly knew said, as if it was easy to say. Sae Byeok had been called beautiful before, by men on the street in the way they twisted it on their tongue and used it like a hook that intended to pull her into them, or by Deok Su in the sharp, sugar coated way he used to try and get what he wanted — but this wasn't like that. Player 240 said the word like it was something to be treasured, and safe kept. Like it was a word that was crafted for her, and her only.
“Okay.” Sae Byeok said, her voice barely a breath, because she couldn't say it back, even though it would be true. This girl was beautiful. It was as if she was made of angel dust, and grown from roses. But she had already gotten herself in too deep, and she couldn't even pull herself to look up and bless her eyes with the sight of the girl who she didn't even know the name of. But still, she thought it, and surely that was enough, because what did they have to lose? The words hung on her tongue, and for once, instead of swallowing them down and pulling further in on herself, her mind screamed 'why not?' She had already said too much after all. And so, she opened her mouth and let them spill out, like watercolors across a canvas.
“You're beautiful too.” And she meant it, with every ounce of her heart, her heart that she didn't know could hold so much feeling. Her heart that only held this much feeling for this girl across from her who she didn't know the name of.
She couldn't have known that tomorrow the girl would die at her hands.