Chapter Text
The chilling breeze passes by as the sunrise lights slowly cast more of its glow through the small spaces between the leaves of the trees around the cemetery, painting the quiet earth in a fragile, golden warmth that feels almost like a mockery of the cold stone below.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Sana says over the two tombstones as she sat in front of them. Tears never stop as she lets them drop on the old pavement of the cemetery, the salt water darkening the stone—a quiet, rhythmic baptism for a grief that refuses to wash away.
“What the heck Sana?” Chaeyoung’s voice laced with confusion and disappointment as she looks down on the small figure of Sana kneeled down both of her knees with her palms on the cold pavement, and her head hang down. She’s not crying, but she barely could control herself from crying. The air between them feels thin, vibrating with the pressure of words Sana refuses to scream.
“Just fucking cry! Minatozaki Sana! Your parents are inside the ER and Tzuyu is already in the fucking plane! Just so fucking cry!” Chaeyoung yells as she kneels down to Sana and shooks the hell out of Sana, her hands desperate to jar some life back into the hollow shell of her friend.
“Why can’t you just cry, hmm? What’s stopping you from showing your emotions-“
Chaeyoung got cut off as Sana spoke up with a visible cold and low tone. “If I do, will they come back to me?” The words are a jagged blade, cutting through the hospital corridor's sterile air. It’s the sound of someone who has already bargained with the universe and lost.
Chaeyoung closes her eyes as the other hand formed into fist, trying to calm herself because her tears are continuously falling off from her eyes. Looking back to the closed glass absorb door, on where Sana’s parents are, trapped behind a barrier she can't break. Then averts her gaze back to Sana.
“Shouldn’t Tzuyu know about this? She grew up with them also, Sana. You know how important they are to her,” This time, Chaeyoung’s voice softens as she notices Sana’s shoulders are trembling—a fragile, rhythmic shaking that betrays the absolute wreckage happening inside her.
The sun doesn't care that she’s breaking. It just keeps climbing, forcing its way through the branches and hitting the grass in long, mocking streaks of gold. Sana just sits there, small and hunched over, looking at the names etched in stone until they blur.
“I begged Chaeyoung not to tell Tzuyu what happened after she left that day,” she says, her voice thin and cracking. She sniffs, trying to catch her breath, but the tears just keep coming, hot and messy, dripping onto the grit of the pavement. “I don’t want her to stay just because I lost you. I don’t want stopping her from chasing the dream that she’s been wanting to.”
She looks at her hands, shaking in her lap. It’s a heavy, suffocating kind of love—the kind that makes you lie to the person you want most just so they don't have to carry your wreckage.
“If there’s only thing I want for her, is her to be happy and be free from the pain. I loved her so much, didn’t I?”
She lets out a short, bitter chuckle that turns into a hitch in her chest. It’s the sound of someone realizing they've successfully pushed away their only source of comfort. She reaches up, aggressively wiping the wetness from her cheeks with the back of her hand, trying to scrub away the evidence of how much this actually costed her.
The ocean is loud, a constant, heavy crashing that fills the gaps in their silence. Mina follows a few steps behind, watching Sana’s back. Sana’s head hangs low, her shoulders slumped as if just looking straight ahead would be too much work. Her naked feet sink into the cold, damp sand with every step, leaving shallow prints that the tide will eventually scrub away.
The moon is hanging way out there, spilling a white glow over everything, while the post lights from the boardwalk hum in the distance. When Mina looks at the water, the moon’s reflection is perfect—shimmering and still. It takes her back to that night at the pool when she first met Sana. Even then, Sana looked exactly like this: carrying a weight so heavy it felt like she was drowning in thin air.
Since they got to the beach, Sana hasn’t said a word. Mina keeps playing back the question Sana asked her last night—if she should go or not. It’s obvious now that’s why she was falling apart earlier. It was the first time Mina had actually seen her cry, though she’d always been waiting for it. She could feel Sana’s hurt radiating off her even when she was smiling.
They finally stop a few feet from where the tide pulls back, the sand dark and wet. Sana sits with her legs stretched out, and Mina ends up with her head in Sana’s lap after a yawn gave her away. Sana insisted she lie down, her fingers starting a slow, rhythmic stroke through Mina’s hair while her other hand braced her weight against the sand.
The breeze is sharp and salt-heavy. Sana finally breaks the silence, her voice barely louder than the waves. “Why aren’t you asking anything? About why I was crying earlier?”
Mina shifts, looking up from Sana’s lap. “Because I know you’ll tell me once you’re ready.” She pauses, holding Sana’s gaze. “Take your time.”
Sana tries to smile, but it’s hollow—it doesn't even move her cheeks. She looks back out at the waves. “I talked to the people that were once my source of life today, Mina.” She takes a breath that sounds like it hurts. “Just like you said, I went to see them.”
Mina’s mouth forms a quiet ‘O.’ She realizes now what Sana was really asking her last night. Up close, Sana’s eyes are just… exhausted. There’s no other word for it.
“One of them is my first love,” Sana says. “She was my first in almost everything.
Except, she wasn't even my first kiss.” She looks down at Mina with a tiny, playful glint.
Mina scoffs, rolling her eyes.
“Yah, for your information, you were literally killing yourself that night.” She crosses her arms, and for a second, a real giggle escapes Sana.
“Well, thanks to you, I got my first kiss stolen.”
Mina rolls her eyes again, turning onto her side so her back is to Sana, though she stays on her lap. The laughter dies down as quickly as it came.
“What happened to the two of you then?” Mina asks quietly.
Sana’s face drops. The light goes out of her eyes. “She left three years ago. To pursue her dreams.”
“Did you ever hate her?”
“I tried,” Sana whispers. “But I loved her too much. I mean, who hates someone for wanting to follow their dreams? And I’m happy that she really achieved her dreams…”
Mina hums, a low sound of understanding.
“I’ve known her since the second I started breathing,” Sana says, her voice trailing off into the sound of the crashing waves. “Around her, I wasn't just... this. I was loud, I was...” Her tone lowered. “She was the only person who could look at me and see exactly who I was without me saying a single word. She’s like that crescent moon up there—she doesn't even have to try, she just exists and effortlessly makes my whole life better.”
Her fingers still in Mina’s hair, trembling just a little.
“But when she got on that plane, she didn’t just leave. She took the version of me that was happy with her. It’s like she left and took all the color out of the world, leaving me in this gray silence for three years. I didn't just lose my best friend; I lost the only person who made me feel like I was worth staying for.”
Sana looks down at Mina, her eyes shimmering with a sudden, sharp fear.
“And now? Now I’m terrified, Mina. I’m scared that if I let myself move on, or if I let someone else in, I’m betraying the only 'home' I ever had. But I’m even more scared that if she ever comes back and looks at me, she won’t recognize the person I’ve become without her."
She pauses, the sound of the ocean filling the heavy gap between them.
"At least... those were the things I thought before meeting her again last month.”
Mina stays quiet for a beat, letting the sound of the tide anchor them. With a deliberate, careful slowness, she shifts, peeling herself away from the comfort of Sana’s lap to sit upright. She moves like she’s afraid any sudden motion might shatter the fragile honesty hanging between them.
Now level with her, Mina turns her body toward Sana, their knees nearly touching in the sand. She doesn't say anything at first; she just looks at Sana, really looks at her, with a gaze so soft it feels like a physical warmth.
“Sana,” Mina begins, her voice a low, soothing hum. She reaches out, not to grab, but just to let her fingertips rest light as a feather on Sana’s trembling hand. “You aren’t a museum for the people who left. You don’t have to keep yourself frozen in time just so she can find you exactly where she left you. You’re allowed to grow. You’re allowed to be the person who survived.”
She leans in just a fraction, her eyes searching Sana’s with a terrifyingly beautiful sincerity. “The version of you that’s sitting here with me? She isn’t empty. She’s the bravest person I know. And if she can’t see that... then that old version is the one who’s lost, not the current version of you.”
Sana’s breath hitches, a jagged, raw sound.
The silence between them becomes a living thing, stretched tight and humming. Sana looks at Mina, and for the first time, the ‘crescent moon’ feels a million miles away, while the girl in front of her feels like the only thing keeping the world from spinning off its axis. It’s a quiet, breathless moment where the friendship they’ve built feels like it’s standing on the edge of a cliff.
Sana doesn’t look away. She can’t. The salt air, the distant crickets, the crashing waves—it all fades into the background until it’s just the two of them.
The silence of the beach is suddenly deafening. Without a thought, Sana leans in, eyes closing as she tries to put every unspoken feeling, every ounce of her choosing to stay hereand not in the past, into a single movement. She gently places her lips to Mina’s.
Mina’s eyes widen, her body freezing instantly. The warmth that was there seconds ago turns into a rigid, painful stillness. She didn’t pull away, but her eyes fill with a sharp, localized ache as their lips stay pressed together.
When Sana finally pulls away, the air between them is jagged. She looks at Mina, not really thinking of what she should expect , but all she sees is a reflection of the pain she never saw from her, not the ones she saw when Mina cries.
“Sana…” Mina is breathless, her voice barely a whisper as she stares at her. “I’m not your bandage.”