—I said goodbye.

Well. I loved you, so I let you go, and since I let you go, I thought I’d forgotten you. After that, I lived as if I were forcibly pouring days into a parched heart. Chewing and swallowing food, sleeping, laughing. I lived only because I was alive.

Inside my head felt like a well that had dried up long ago. In the middle of this clumsy city, within my parched brain, thoughts spun around and snapped at will, and memories were just broken in places like rotten film. Like eyelashes drying after swallowing detergent, I deceived myself over and over, saying I was used to breakups by now. Even if I thought of you, it wasn't like I'd cry now; I just left my broken brain behind while drinking alcohol or whatever it was.

One day, I reunited with you, my ex.

—Into the flowerpot of withered memories, you poured water as if it were nothing. Then, the lingering attachments I had discarded finally came back to life like rotten roots. The head that claimed to have forgotten looked at you with the unfocused eyes of a fish and still remembered you, and the mouth that said it was fine kept lying.

Like a fool.