i asked her for how long, she looked at me and said so long

once you see it you are brave,

now i’m stuck in bed after i smiled again and again

this is not the original thought i had in my head

there’s fire in her touch, danger in her grin

oh my love is rough, she loves to smack me, call me hong

story writen by Ai using the lyrics

The Grin That Made Me Brave

The sun was setting over the pier, painting the sky in bruised shades of orange and purple, when I finally asked her. We’d been together for a year—a year of dizzying highs, confusing silences, and a slow, steady erosion of the person I used to be. Her name was Selene, and she was a force of nature, a hurricane in a sundress.

“Selene,” I started, my voice sounding too small against the crash of the waves. “For how long? How long are we going to do… this?”

She turned from watching the seagulls, her expression unreadable. I asked her for how long, she looked at me and said so long. It wasn’t an answer about time. It was a farewell. A dismissal. A cold, flat finality in two words.

My heart, which had been a fragile, frantic bird in my chest for months, simply stopped. She dropped my heart and walked away. No fight. No explanation. Just a turn of her heel on the weathered wood, and she was walking, calmly, towards the boardwalk lights that were just starting to flicker on.

A numbness spread from my core. I looked at her as my tears begin to fall. They were hot, stupid tears of shock, of a pain so expected it still managed to be a surprise. She was almost at the end of the pier, a silhouette against the carnival glow.

Then she stopped. And she looked back.

She looks back with a smile, a smile only she can do. It wasn’t a smile of sadness, or regret, or pity. It was a thing of pure, undiluted triumph. So evil as can be, a grin from ear to ear. It was the smile of someone who had won a game I hadn’t even known we were playing. It was cruel, it was beautiful, and it was utterly hers.

And in that moment, as the salt from my tears met the salt in the air, something broke inside me. Not my heart—that was already gone. It was my fear. The constant, gnawing fear of her leaving, of her disapproval, of her next mood. It shattered under the weight of that horrific, clarifying smile. Marks the moment i lost my fear. I was afraid no more. I was just broken, and in the breaking, I saw everything with a terrible, cold clarity.

Once you see it you are brave, I thought later, nursing a cheap beer in a dark bar. You’re brave because you’ve seen the worst possible outcome, and you’re still breathing. The monster has a face, and it’s grinning. But that bravery is a shaky thing. But still drop bricks when she looks your way. Because a week later, when she texted a simple “Hey,” my stomach plummeted with the old, familiar dread. The bricks of anxiety tumbled, heavy and sickening.

I went back, of course. I told myself it was for closure. It was a lie. She was my addiction, and her smile was the needle. Careful what you say around a dangerous chubby hey, I’d warn myself, using the old, affectionate nickname that now tasted like ash. Every word was a potential landmine.

One evening, in her apartment that always smelled of vanilla and something metallic, she got philosophical. She was painting her nails a venomous green. “How do you feel?” she asked, not looking up. “About us. About all this.”

I looked at her, at the perfect curve of her neck, at the hands that could be so gentle and so harsh. And I remembered the smile on the pier. So I gave it back to her. Not a smile of love, but a mirror of her own cool, detached amusement. I looked at her and just smiled.

The reaction was instantaneous. The bottle of nail polish clattered to the table. My face was met with a hand. The slap wasn’t the hard, dramatic kind from movies. It was a sharp, stinging crack, meant to humiliate more than injure. Shock, hotter than the pain, bloomed on my cheek.

Apparently she doesn’t like it when i do it back. The rules of her game were hers alone. My defiance, my attempt to mirror her power, was the ultimate transgression.

The cycle tightened. The apologies (hers, sometimes tearful, always manipulative), the tentative reunions, the slow build of tension, and the inevitable explosion. Now i’m stuck in bed after i smiled again and again. I’d lie there, in the dark, touching a tender spot on my ribs or the inside of my cheek where my teeth had cut it, replaying the steps. I’d smile at a joke she didn’t find funny. I’d smile to hide my hurt. Any smile she didn’t sanction was a provocation.

Oh my love is rough, she loves to smack me, call me hong. “Hong” was her new name for me when I was in trouble—short for “wrong,” drawn out into a sneer. A verbal slap to go with the physical ones. And that’s when she laughs, oh so evil, losing control. The laughter was the worst part. It was unhinged, gleeful, a release of something dark and chaotic within her that my perceived infractions unlocked.

One night, it was worse. A shove that wasn’t playful. A stumble. The edge of her glass coffee table. Now i’m on the floor, my friend smiling, crying, lost again. I was on the floor, and she was standing over me, that same pier-smile on her face, but her eyes were wet with what looked like tears of mirth or rage or both. I was lost. Utterly. And yet, as I lay there, the cold floor against my burning face, I knew the terrible truth. Yet i return once again, a sucker for punishment till the end.

In the barren stretches between storms, I’d try to write, to make sense of it. I’d start with a memory of the good—the early days, the lazy Sundays. But my pen would betray me.

This is not the original thought i had in my head, but this is what came out instead. The words twisted into something darker, truer. Twisted love, reckless play, breaking me down but i still stay. That was the real poem. The one my soul was writing in bruises and adrenaline.

I began to study her, like a doomed naturalist observing a predator. There’s fire in her touch, danger in her grin. A touch could be a caress or a brand. Her grin was a warning sign and a siren’s call. Each blow reminds me i’m caught within. Every slap, every shove, was a perverse proof of connection. I was in this. I mattered enough to be a target.

And the sickest seed of all took root: But love is madness, i can’t let go, through every bruise my feelings grow. The pain became fertilizer for this twisted, stubborn vine of attachment. The worse she was, the more I felt I was seeing the real, unfiltered her, and the more I felt bound to endure it, to heal her, to be the one who finally understood. My love became a pathology, fed by my own suffering.

The final time, it was a symphony of chaos. A shouted argument about nothing—a dish left in the sink. My weary, defiant smile. Her hand, faster than thought. The sting. And then, her laugh, not contained this time, but wild, filling the apartment. Oh my love is rough, she loves to smack me, call me hong and that’s when she laughs, dragging me along. She was laughing as I backed away, laughing at the tears of frustration in my eyes, dragging me through the emotional mud of her chaos.

I saw it all then, with that cold, pier-end clarity. The evil smile, wicked game. There was no winning. Only participation. And I knew my own pathetic, undeniable truth. I stood there, on the threshold of her door, my bag in my hand, the free night air behind me.

She stopped laughing, her eyes challenging, gleaming with the certainty of my weakness.

And I knew, with a despair that felt like my final, true emotion, that if she crooked her finger tomorrow, if she texted that dangerous “hey,”

I’ll return once again, a sucker for punishment till the end.

The door clicked shut behind me. The hallway was silent. I was out. I was free. And the most terrifying part was knowing that my freedom was the most fragile thing in the world, waiting to be shattered by a single, grinning text. The game wasn't over. It was just awaiting my next, inevitable turn.