dearestjake

[dearestjake]

silhouettes | song eunseok & jung sungchan

series masterlist | part one | part two | part three (this fic!)

pairing: jung sungchan x fem!reader x song eunseok

plot: love was a game of tug of war between your high school best friend and your quasi-campus rival—both of whom have become heavily intertwined with the course of your life thus far. one last letter to eunseok, and a missed call from sungchan. as your heart decides on who you truly love, you fail to realize that maybe one was never meant to be, while the other was yours to miss. to both, you were simply a silhouette, a mere outline of a chapter in their lives.

alternatively, the end.

wc: 33.1k

genre: melodrama, coming of age, slow burn, heavy angst

warnings: R18+ DO NOT READ IF YOU'RE A MINOR OR IF YOU THINK YOU'RE NOT IN THE RIGHT MENTAL HEADSPACE TO READ ABOUT THE FOLLOWING; heavy depictions and mentions of depression, anxiety, and mental illness; heavy discussions of death and s*uicide; heavy depictions of substance abuse (alcohol and smoking); graphic depictions of anxiety attacks; explicit sexual content; heavy discussions of sex; existential dread; hospital imagery; graphic depictions of mild violence; mentions of food and water; mentions of weight

extra notes: THIS IS PART THREE, I REPEAT, PART THREE OF THE AN ODE TO SEOUL SERIES. PART ONE IS NEVER MEANT, AND PART TWO IS MINE TO MISS. THIS WOULD NOT MAKE SENSE UNLESS YOU READ THOSE TWO FIRST. that being said, this was a seven-month journey, and it's finally coming to an end. i wanted to finish this before grad school started as i'd be super busy then. if you've been following me or reading me since never meant, thank you so, SO MUCH !! ugh, it gets tough writing here, but the positive comments keep me going :")) i promise to write more on here, and i acc have an anton wip in the making hehe !! this feels a bit bittersweet, and i'll expand more on the endnotes.

COPYRIGHT 2024 YURAGIKU. DO NOT STEAL, COPY, OR TRANSLATE.

That was the first and last time you would ever visit the hospital in Jongno. Sungchan’s father died two days after your visit at four in the morning. He called at six to tell you what had happened. It took two rings for you to pick up the landline, and you were still in your pajamas when you held the plastic phone between your shoulder and cheek. Through the sheer translucence of the curtains, you could see that the clouds were a murky gray, and rainfall had dotted the unkept glass of your windows, slowly but silently trickling down to your building’s pipe system. 

“My dad died a few minutes ago,” Sungchan said, voice barely audible through the line.

“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?” You asked. 

“Thanks, but no. It’s just the usual. We’re preparing for his funeral now. I just wanted to call you to let you know,” he replied, a long, drawn-out sigh escaping his lips. 

“Please don’t come to the funeral. I don’t want to see you there.” 

You nodded, and Sungchan took the silence as a yes. 

“Will you really take me to a porn cinema?” You asked sheepishly, cord tangled between your fingers. 

��Yes. I’ll show you a really disgusting one.” 

“Alright, I’ll do my own research to see if I can find something,” 

“Sounds good.” 

Sungchan hung up. 

A week had passed with no word from him at all. No missed calls on the answering machine or signs of him in the university hallways by the locker, where he would usually be with his teammates. You kept hoping for a message from him whenever you returned from your classes or your job at the library, but you would come home to not a single voice message from him. You tried to keep your promise to him by thinking of him when you masturbated, but nothing worked. Your fingers prodded to a dry entry, nails scratching the lips instead of lubricating it. You tried to switch to Eunseok, but at the time, even Eunseok’s face didn’t do it for you. 

It was a little ridiculous, really, and it made you feel like a clueless teenager trying to masturbate for the first time. After a few more tries, you gave up and brushed your teeth to go to bed. Then, when you woke up, you wrote a letter to Eunseok. You wondered why your hand had automatically spared all the details about Sungchan in your letter, but one thing you did tell him was the story of his father. 

‘I visited the hospital since I left Ujeong. The patient was my classmate’s father, and we had some cake in his room. When he saw me eating it with my hands, his eyes begged for a piece, so he ate it with some chopsticks. The whole thing, in as much vigor as a terminally ill person eating his last meal could muster. He died two days after I visited. I still think of him eating the slice of cake with me. I think that’s the first and last impression I’ll ever have of someone like him, a stranger I was able to both say hello and goodbye to all at once. Isn’t that weird? The way these small, tiny little fragments of everyday life remain when you die, like trails and traces of who someone once was. Maybe he was a person who really loved cake. I mean, who doesn’t?’ 

Then, you continued: ‘I think of you a lot. Both you and the cats every time I close my eyes. You’re the last thought in my head before I sleep and the first when I wake. I think of Kokuma, and the way he would curl up onto your lap and rub his head on your shin, even when you already gave him a handful of neck scratches! Thinking of you leaves me warmer than my own blanket when I sleep, as if you were there right beside me, breathing the same air. Then, I would think about how great all of that would be if it were true. 

I miss you, quite terribly so. It’s a little difficult to live, but I still manage with the energy I have left. Just as you tend to Kokuma and the other cats at Ujeong every morning, I try to create my own little sanctuary. I catch the newspaper boy before he reaches my doorstep, and by the time he arrives, I would’ve already washed my face, brushed my teeth, and brewed my morning coffee or tea—whichever I feel like having at the moment. I would prepare a light breakfast, then channel all my focus into what I’d be wearing that day, leave my apartment an hour and a half before any of my lectures begin, and spend some time in the library. I speak to myself in mantras, and I try to cheer myself up. Tell me I’ll make today, tomorrow, and the next a good one. I’ve never noticed this, but I’ve been told I often talk to myself. Probably tell myself the next steps to boiling water for my tea in the kettle or which route to take to get to campus. 

If I’m being honest, it’s been hard not seeing you at all, but I’m aware that my life here in Seoul would be a lot worse had it not been for you. It’s in your presence that I get another day out of bed and tell myself to have a good day. I know that I have to do my best no matter what, just as you are doing your best there at Ujeong. 

Today’s a Sunday, and I don’t wait for the boy to deliver my papers. I did my laundry in advance, and now, I’m just in my room, dedicating this sliver of time to you. After I finish this letter, stamp it, and drop it off the postbox, I have nothing else to do until the sun sets. I try not to study in a Sunday. I already do enough on the weekdays studying while on shift at the library, and I even started to study between breaks in my lectures. That leaves me with nothing to do on Sundays when the afternoons are peaceful, serene, and achingly lonely. I try to listen to records and read. Sometimes, I think back on our walks across Seoul on Sundays. When I concentrate hard enough, I can see in full clarity the image of you, the clothes you wore, what scent of detergent was permanently etched onto your clothes, and the soft bristles of your hair flowing in the wind. I remember all these kinds of things on Sunday. 

Tell Kokuma I said ‘Hi,’ although I doubt he’d remember me. I really miss his velvety fur, and I also miss you playing the piano. 

Once you had finished your letter, you walked to the nearest postbox, which was by the intersection between the bus stop leading to your old apartment and Hongdae. Then, you took a few steps down the street to buy some rice balls and a warm cup of corn tea at a nearby eatery. 

You took a quick path to the edge of the Han River, taking a spot on the grass below the bridge to eat your lunch. Your eyes traced the outline of the boys playing catch in a sparse, open field. Autumn had come; the songbirds had stopped singing; the leaves trickled down on the ground in a pile; the crisp cold air had hit your cheek; the skies deepened into a rich shade of light blue. With your fingers, you traced the trail of the morning mist until it dispersed with the heavy clouds that hung below the surface, hiding the sun in its dense, white cover. A ball came rolling your way, and you threw it back to one of the boys, who hit it with their bat across the entire field. One shouted, “Home run,” leading the rest to dash straight to a large oak tree, playing rock, paper, scissors to see who could climb and retrieve the ball. A short, puny child with glasses left a piece of candy by your side and muttered a small “Thank you, ma’am” before catching up with his friends. 

As the afternoon had made its way into the day, coating the skies with shades of orange, you found yourself back inside your room, brows furrowed in concentration at a copy of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. As you tried harder to concentrate, though, you found that any effort to divert all your attention to each word in the novel. The words would all get mixed up, and any imagery that Rushdie had tried to produce turned into fractures in Sungchan’s face—rather, of his face upon his father’s eventual fate. You began to wonder if his father had requested for you to take care of him in his own terminal code, but there was simply no way you could begin to fathom what was on his mind. In the end, you concluded that he had probably thought you were someone else. 

Regardless of the matter, his death occurred on a cold autumn morning, when the rain showers of the season had begun. It was impossible then, with the misty haze of dawn to search for the truth, and in your head, you saw his limp, lifeless body shrivel up even further. What was left of him? A stagnant, old record store in a stagnant, old neighborhood and two sons, one of them being short of strange. What kind of parent could he have been to have a son like that? Your head wondered even more about his life before the death of his wife, raising two sons on his own, and then, eventually, lying lifeless in a hospital bed with one of his balls cut off, and veins filled with medicine that made him less of a human. What was he thinking when he looked at you that day?

Thoughts like these about Sungchan’s father put you in such a tragic mood that you forced yourself out of bed once more, taking the laundry off your balcony before it dried, then setting off to Seochon to kill time walking along the narrow clusters of shops and houses. On a Sunday, the streets were alive, animated and effervescent to the point of reigniting your spirits. The bookstores and eateries were all jampacked as rush hour had settled, with an outpour of commuters stopping by some of the cafes and restaurants to have a quick bite before riding the train and tram back home. It was no different at the Kyobo books towards the end of the high street, where you allowed yourself to purchase a copy of Garcia-Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, then went into the noisiest bar you could think of, reading your new book while the cluster of drunken commuters and middle-aged men became the white noise you needed to focus. At around seven in the evening, you had consumed your third pint of stale draft beer, then ordered some chicken skewers for a light dinner. 

How many Sundays of dread were ahead of you? Fifty? Hundreds? Thousands? How many more lonely Sundays would you endure?

In the following week, you had managed to sprain your left hand upon dropping a pile of books from your shift. You hadn’t noticed how terribly sore it had become until you attempted to carry the rest of the pile, hearing a slight ‘crack’ reverberate across the entire study area. A junior two years your age had rushed to your aid, telling you she was a nursing student at Yonsei, then called for a staff member to bring in a first aid kit and some ice packs from the closest infirmary. Though he was usually useless, your managed ended up bringing a first aid kid and three ice packs immediately upon hearing of your wound. Fortunately, the university hospital was only three bus stops away, and your manager, along with the nursing student, had offered to accompany you all the way to the emergency room to get your hand checked. Judging by the way the busy corridors of the hospital had scuttled away from you, you wondered if people had thought you were robbed or assaulted on the streets. To you, though, the pain was insignificant. It was mostly the fact that you couldn’t seem to flick your wrists back in place, as if the joints were glued in the most obscurely angular position it could think of. 

The doctor tended to your sprain effortlessly, binding and looping the cast all over your left hand in a matter of minutes. He told you to come again in a few days, then sent you back to the library with your manager while the nursing student bade farewell to go to the morgue. Once you had reached the library again, the manager urged you to go home, offering to pay for your absence and the full time of the shift, even if you had sprained your hand in the middle of it. You took the earliest train from Yonsei to your apartment building, and then phoned Mirae at your earliest convenience. You wanted to speak to someone, and Mirae was the only person you could think of, having not spoken to her since the riots and party activities had dwindled. However, it could be that you haven’t shown up in a while, practically ceasing to become a non-active member of the party chapter in Yonsei. 

It took precisely ten minutes for Mirae to arrive, bringing two bottles of wine and a box filled with books tied in string. She excused herself and plopped her body on the sofa, then flaunted her new haircut—a short, chin-length bob that made her iciness apparent. 

“Jesus christ, what happened to you?” She asked, taking your arm by force and turning your cast around. Then, she took a pen and wrote some gibberish in English, with some recognizable words being ‘revolution’ and ‘pussy.’ Then, she grabbed a practice handbook for English, reciting some of the passages with you in perfect, near-native pronunciation. Meanwhile, you sauntered off into the kitchen to boil a pot of tea for the two of you, using some leftover leaves from Sungchan’s visit to complete the process. 

“Nice to meet you! I have a pen.” She repeated aloud, rolling her eyes at each of the asinine sentences that she had to utter. “This is fucking ridiculous. How the hell am I supposed to learn if this is all they teach me?!” 

After a few more practice sentences, she threw the book onto the coffee table and joined you at the kitchen counter, taking her share of tea without minding the boiling temperature. 

“Are you sure I’m not burdening you right now?” You asked. “I mean, you came all the way here, no?” 

“No, you’re not. I was so bored today that I forced myself to study to pass the time. Do you want some wine?” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“Oh, by the way, just letting you know, but I’m migrating to America! I got accepted to John Hopkins University.” 

John Hopkins? And this was the person who called the country the land of the pigs. No matter. You held your tongue and forced a smile, raising your hands in the air like a caricature of yourself. 

“Congrats!” You exclaimed, giving your right hand for her to shake. 

“Thank you.”

“I’m not surprised you got in.” 

“I’m not either,” Mirae agreed in jest. “But, you know, it’s nice to know that I have the brains to get into one of the best medical schools in the world.” 

“Think you’ll become a doctor there?” 

“Yeah, that’s the plan. I’m getting out of here, never looking back. The thing is, though, they just want my English to be a bit better than it already is now.”

Mirae had opened the wine bottle with a corkscrew that she fished out of her handbag, twisting it open with a ‘pop’ that almost broke your kitchen window. While she poured herself a glass, you sipped your tea and watched her practically overfill her share of wine. 

“I can give you some of my furniture, like, I don’t know, this pretty weird painting? Or a fridge? This one here,” you said, pointing at the decade-old American-styled fridge that had occupied your kitchen before you moved in. You were planning on replacing it once you saved up for a better one, anyway, and it would be a decent parting gift to a girl who had everything she wanted at the tip of her finger. 

“Yeah, no thanks! Free things are always great, but when I get there, I’m gonna live large. Bigger house, bigger car, and a massive fridge. I’m done living in that crappy, tiny dorm. So if you need anything from me, then take it all.” 

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure of it.” 

“We should eat out soon. I’ll take you to a lovely restaurant that does French cuisine well—of course, it’s on me.” 

“Do you mean one of your outings to catch rich boys?” You asked. Mirae shook her head. “Nope. It’s sort of a real deal. Just you, me, and my fiance, Eddy, at a fine dining restaurant. It’s to celebrate this new chapter in my life. He’s paying, too, so we should go somewhere super expensive.” 

“Eddy?” You asked. It could be one of her “kind benefactors,” but you begged to differ. With Mirae, it was difficult to tell what was in her head, or how she decided to handle her boyfriends. They changed with each month if they were lucky, but the name Eddy stuck around here and there for as long as the two of you had begun your party activities. 

It was ironic, really. She was an active member of an anti-American party while dating an American general. You didn’t pry into her relationship with Eddy too much, but from what you could understand, she had met Eddy on a ski trip at her parents’ village, when they privately hosted the whole American base in Yongsan. Eddy, unlike the usual batch of military men you’d get in Yongsan, was a well-to-do man who came from a WASP family. Bright, blue eyes, with striking blonde hair, he was tall to boot, with the physique of a weightlifting champion—at least, according to her description. You had never met Eddy personally, nor did you want anything to do with the Americans, but Eddy was the only man who lasted more than a month with Mirae. In fact, it would be nearing a year since the two of them had started seeing each other, and you wondered if he knew about her lecherous and adulterous nature. 

“Yeah, do you remember him?” She asked, now onto her second glass of wine. “He said he wants to meet you, and I think it would make it more comfortable for the two of us if you were around, no?” 

Oh. It would just be like Eunseok, his girlfriend, and you in Jeju all over again.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be going back with Eddy to his house, so please, just come for dinner.” 

“Alright, if you insist.” You replied, not knowing what tone or timbre you should layer your words with. “Are you and Eddy planning to get a house together in the States?”

“Nope. His family’s all the way in Wyoming, and I doubt he’d want to leave his post here in Seoul. He’ll move up the ranks here soon, and he might even be promoted to work in intelligence because of how good his Korean is getting, so I doubt he’d want to go back to America. So that’s all his problem once I leave.”

“I don’t think that makes any sense,” you said. Your share of tea had now finished, and Mirae had finished half the bottle, fighting back a large yawn that tried to escape her lips. 

“I made it very clear to him that I don’t intend on marrying him unless it suits me—which, in this case, it probably would. I told him that if he reconnects with his sweetheart in his hometown and decides to marry her over me, that’s fine. I’m not stopping him at all, and if he wants to wait for me, then so be it. I don’t know what’s so confusing about that.” 

You didn’t say a word to Mirae. You only stood there in silence, slowly lifting yourself off your seat to pour yourself another cup of tea from the kitchen counter. You pondered serving slices of cheese and other small snacks to the table, but your appetite had been drained. As you turned your back to the pot by the kitchen sink, you felt Mirae’s sharp eyes trace your every breath, as if trying to read the thoughts in your head. Sometimes, you felt as though she was capable of it. 

And, she was. 

“You think I’m horrible.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Beats me. This world is already cruel. I don’t make the rules. It’s been this way before I was born. And if you’re worried that I’ve been sleeping with other people behind Eddy’s back, then don’t. I was very honest with him from the start, and he got with me, knowing that I was a terrible person and that he could leave me at any time. We got into this knowing that.” 

Mirae had finished the entire bottle of wine and lit a cigarette, prompting you to open all the windows to your living room. 

“Mirae,” you started, turning yourself back to her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but does life scare you?” 

“Pah, of course it does! I’m human!” She guffawed, almost dropping her cigarette on your carpet. “I mean, yeah, it scares me a lot, but I don’t really let it get to me, or at least, I don’t make it the basis of how I choose to live. I like to think of my own happiness in the now, and follow my desires to my heart’s content. I take what I want and leave out what I don’t. That’s how I live, and if it all turns to shit, then I can just stop, think about it, then reevaluate. Realign. That kind of stuff. I mean, if we’re already acknowledging that the world is cruel, then exploiting your wanton desires is just how you’re supposed to play the game.” 

“I don’t know, it sounds like a selfish way to live.” You said. 

“True, but I’m not just waiting around. I’m hauling ass left, right, and center. I’m working just as hard, if not harder, than anyone on this planet.” 

“I guess so.” 

“I mean, think about it. Why are people less fortunate than others? It’s because those bastards don’t do anything with their lives. They have to have us, the intelligentsia, rile them up with words of equality and revolution while they don’t do a single fucking thing. Then, they have the gall to complain that things are unfair!” 

You were taken aback by the brazenness of Mirae’s tone. Though she was always blunt and honest, she was never this harsh. You looked at Mirae as a shell of her former self, then chose your words carefully. 

“I don’t see it that way, though. I mean, I think everyone is working themselves to the bone. It’s society and all things in place that pose a problem to the current illness of the world, no? Or am I wrong about this?” 

“How does manual labor count as hard work? You’re not using your head at all! What I think of hard work is something more personal, something that gives you a purpose in life?” 

“So, learning English while everyone else lives easily, building bridges, and selling fruits at the stores?” 

“I’ve gotten near fluent in only four months. Then, I’ll tackle German and Spanish all at once. That stuff doesn’t happen if you don’t work hard.” 

How about Sungchan’s father, who had dedicated his whole life to keeping a no-name record store afloat? Was he not working hard at all? With each puff of smoke that Mirae swirled in the air, you thought of Sungchan’s father. He was probably the kind of man who never thought of learning English through practice handbooks or had the time to think about the difference between hard and menial work. He was probably too busy fending for himself to send his children to school—and especially bringing one back home, a troublesome son who had brought himself all the way to Gongdeok. 

“So, as I was saying,” Mirae interjected. “Dinner? Sunday?”

“No, I’m busy on Sunday.” You replied nonchalantly, having nothing planned that day. Mirae’s persistence for dinner was something you didn’t expect from her, seeing as she would do the opposite when you used to be dormmates with her. Whenever you would reject her invitation, she would calmly leave, choosing to bother you tomorrow and the day after despite knowing your answer.

Mirae not backing down meant that you, in one way or another, had to go. 

“Saturday?” 

“Yeah, that works.” 

Mirae had reserved a dinner for three in a high-end French restaurant—one of the handful to exist in all of the country—in one of Apgujeong’s back alleys. You were ten minutes late to the reception, but upon saying Mirae’s name, you were quickly directed to a private room enclosed in rich, velvet curtains. The host uses a golden rope to pull each end of the curtain back slightly, revealing Mirae and Eddy sitting side by side facing a Lazy Susan. She was wearing a fine, black dress made of shiny silk that revealed much of her chest, while Eddy was in his uniform. You wore a white lace-collared dress adorned with ribbons on the waist down to the end of the backline. 

“Wow, you really went all out,” you exclaimed, eyes darting throughout the private room. As you took all the details in, Mirae told you that the color of the walls was a new kind of maroon exclusively released in the haute couture industry and is yet to be revealed to the masses. 

“Eh, sometimes excess can look cheap. I mean, look at those hideous curtains! Who thought coloring the ropes in gold was a good idea?” 

“I don’t know, honey,” Eddy said. “I think the gold adds a nice accent to how dark everything is.” 

You were taken aback by how fluent Eddy was. Though you were aware that he had spent more than four years in Seoul, the presence of a thick accent was quickly masked by the richness of his vocabulary. When he spoke, the words he would choose sang in rhyme like a bard, and you wondered if that was what English sounded like. 

“Eddy’s paying, so you don’t need to worry about the bills tonight,” Mirae said with a curt smile. “I know you like to think about money a lot, but the revolution says women have to spend every single dime and cent in the world. It’s not a prerogative; it’s a right.” 

She winked at a young waiter about four years younger than she might’ve been, leaning forward to protrude the ampleness of her breasts. You crossed your legs tightly, watching the blink of discomfort in Eddy’s face morph into a big, wide grin whenever she would turn back at him and smile. 

“Look at all these people here,” she said, eyes darting across tables. “Poor wives! They stay at home to watch the kids and clean while their husbands are out here having the time of their lives with such beautiful, young women.” 

Eddy said nothing, and raised a toast to celebrate Mirae’s move to the United States. 

Once the waiter had arrived with hors d’euvres, he took orders for the main courses. Eddy had a variation of roast beef, while Mirae chose salmon. You asked Eddy what he’d recommend, and passed on an order of cassoulet. Each course arrived in a way that left free room for small talk, so the three of you had ample time to drink wine, converse, and then focus on the food. Mirae would constantly talk about the process of entering medical school, saying that half the applicants were wannabe altruists, while the other half were dimwits who memorized textbooks with no substance or enrichment to their knowledge base.

“God, with people like that, the medical field is doomed, I tell you. So many machines, yet none of them work like brains.”

Mirae called the waiter again and asked for a few more bottles of wine. Eddy turned towards you and asked you about certain topics that you deemed quite personal to you, such as your family life, your future prospects, and your views on politics—things that you wouldn’t personally discuss with someone you considered a stranger. In the moment, the only thing that made Mirae a friend was the fact that she told him nothing too person, which might have been because the two of you hadn’t properly caught up since the demonstrations ended in June. 

“I know a nice Korean soldier who might be the perfect fit for you,” he said awkwardly. “He’s not too tall, but he’s got a good face and an even better heart. He’s been looking for a wife for a while, and I’ve tried to introduce him to everyone I can think of, but I think his virtues as a Christian thwarts him off from any kind of intimacy before he finds ‘the one.’”

“I’m alright,” you hesitated, slightly pushing yourself away from Eddy. Noticing the rigidity of your stance, he quickly apologized and cleared his throat, offering you some of his wine. 

“Yeah, she’ll be fine,” Mirae interrupted. “She’s got someone in the crack house to wait for.” 

“Excuse me?” Eddy said before you could even open your mouth. “Come one, hun. That’s not a nice thing to say to someone she loves.” 

“Weren’t you in one?” She asked with venom in her timbre.

“Anyway,” Eddy continued, visibly nauseous. “I won’t force it on you, but his name is Hyun Minwoo, and he might benefit having someone educated in his life.” 

“What do I even talk about with a soldier?” You joked. “Well, you’re talking to one right now!” Eddy couldn’t contain the laughter that erupted like flames from his lungs. “Don’t worry about it too much, you’re great, as far as I can tell. You’re calm, caring, and understanding. When you’re a solider, you want three of those things in a partner.” 

“Babe, it’s no use,” Mirae said. “She won’t even say anything about the guy other than the fact that he’s in some sort of psycho hospital.” 

“Is it true?” Eddy asked. You nodded slowly. 

“Yeah, it’s true.” 

“Care to talk about it? Of course, if you want to.” 

You sipped more of the wine in your glass, finishing it in one gulp. 

“Look? You’re never gonna get anything out of her.” Mirae said. She was on her fourth glass of wine. “A lady keeps all her secrets close to her bosom.” 

Eddy shrugged his shoulders, using a steak knife to tear a piece of beef apart. 

“But, you know,” Mirae continued. “If you said yes to meeting Minwoo, we would’ve had an orgy!” 

“Mirae, please stop it.” 

“What?!” Mirae shrieked. Some of the patrons in the restaurant had dropped their utensils, metal clanging on ceramics interrupting the string quartet that played in the end of the restaurant. 

“You know what I’m talking about,” Eddy replied, eyes unyielding from his plate of beef and vegetables. “Minwoo deserves a nice woman, and that’s why I’ve been trying to ask her to see him, even just once.” 

“Oh, of course you say that. You don’t even know her like I do! Go on, then! She’s probably just entertaining her man in the loony bin because he’d kill himself if she leaves! Poor thing, stuck in a so-called relationship like that. And you call that kindness, her choosing to stay because of some high brow moral obligation!” 

Mirae could get nasty when she was drunk, and though she was hurling insults at you, the true aim was at Eddy. It was suffocating to sit there and watch the couple fall apart right before your eyes, but you kept your composure, easing your trembling hands by gripping your fork and knife tighter. 

“Well, staying with a person at their worst is something you usually look for in a partner,” Eddy muttered. 

“Oh please, you’re one to talk. You’re married!” 

“Divorced.” Eddy emphasized. “I had been divorced before I even met you. It was the first thing I told you when we met.” 

Eddy then lifted his eyes from his plate, the blue hues in his pupils reflecting the dim, yellow light of the candles in the chandelier above the room. A certain sorrow glinted in their reflection, and for one second, you were able to see how broken he truly was. 

“If you’re in love with someone, would you wait for them no matter how long it took? They could be right there, but something is stopping them from being with you. Some kind of illness in the brain that makes loving such a difficult, painful thing to do. Would you stay?” 

Eddy was pleading, not questioning. 

“That’s such a stupid question, you know damn—”

“I’m talking to her,” Eddy said, using his fork to point in your direction. It took a moment for you to think of an answer, but no matter how many times you opened your mouth, it shut back in place, zipped and sealed with the dryness of your lips. 

“I-I don’t know,” you finally sighed. “It can get lonely waiting for someone like that. You yearn for a type of warmth that you could only get with a man’s skin.”

“Every woman has her needs, just like every man does,” Mirae interjected. “She’s got a boy she likes, but because he’s in some mountain asylum, she can’t fuck him. She’s tried to be patient, but waiting for someone for that long is too much, so she has to take care of her needs. What’s so wrong with that? You’d certainly think otherwise if she was a man, no? Not that I know anything about her, or if she’s begun seeing anyone else, but what’s wrong if she chooses to give up? It’s just how life is.” 

“But she didn’t, right?” 

You kept your lips sealed with the residue of red wine. You never intended to bring Sungchan into the table, but for now, your main priority was to keep things civil before Mirae erupts. 

“No, I didn’t,” you said with a smile. “I’m still waiting for him, and I probably will wait, even if I do get very lonely.” 

“And what’s wrong if she does end up seeing someone else?” Mirae suddenly spoke, mouth filled with bits of salmon. “I’ve slept with plenty of men, and I’m still with you. Each person has their own needs, and she’s not wrong for having to fulfil her share. And even if she does end up sleeping with someone else, there’s no commitment, just like what I do. See them once or twice for dinner, then never speak to them again. Easy.” 

“I can’t stand you when you’re like this,” Eddy whispered, eyes still stuck to the emptiness of his plate. “Why do you have to bring it up? I’ve never been angry with you when you bring someone else to my house.” 

“Oh, please, it’s just a game! I told you a thousand times that it’s nothing serious!” 

“When will it be enough?” Eddy asked. 

“What?” 

“When will I be enough?” 

The waiter came back to ask for dessert. While Mirae indulged herself with a slice of pear tart, you and Eddy kept silent, somberly shaking your heads while staring at your plates, his empty, while yours half-eaten. 

“Just don’t drag her in your games, Mirae. Please.” 

“I can leave,” you interrupted, ready to leave your seat at any moment.

“Please, stay.” Mirae said, forcing a smile. “It’s better when you’re around.”

Once Mirae’s plate of pear tart was served on the table, Eddy lit a cigarette from his breast pocket, covering the end of the stick as he lit it with a match. The flames were dangerously close to burning his fingers off, but he didn’t flinch at all. He let the orange, gentle flame pass through his nail and on the padding, shaking the burnt matchstick as soon as he was satisfied. 

The more you peered into Eddy’s blue swirling eyes, you thought of Eunseok at Ujeong Inn. There was a shared sense of imposed solitude that both exuded, a neverending blueness that coated their every move. Then, you began to think of what Eunseok was up to right now, while you were here sat at an expensive French restaurant tucked away in the hidden troves of Apgujeong. He could be playing “My Grandfather’s Clock” on the piano in the recreation room, or he could’ve been doing some calligraphy by the garden patio. 

What the hell were you doing here, sitting with Eddy and Mirae, staring at your half-eaten, cold piece of scattered salmon and green puree? Why weren’t you in Ujeong again, spending time tending to the cats with Eunseok? 

“You see, what we both have in common is that we don’t care what anyone thinks about us, right?” Mirae asked, dangling a slice of pear in her dessert fork.” 

“No, not really,” you faintly replied. “I don’t think I have the resilience you do about that stuff, and even if I’m fine with nobody understanding me, I think it matters to me when I care about them. I want them to get me; I want them to understand me more than I do myself.” 

“Same thing, same same.” 

“So you don’t care if I don’t care about you?” Eddy asked. The ash had dropped on the table, and he smoked his cigarette past the filter. 

“God, you’re so stupid. What’s so difficult for you to understand? It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I know it all happens at the right time. If you still don’t understand me, then that’s your perogrative, not mine.” 

“You’re saying you don’t love me, aren’t you?” 

“Well, it’s just that we think different—”

“To hell with this ‘think different’ bullshit!” 

Throughout the entire night, this was the first time Eddy had ever raised his voice—and it wasn’t even directed towards Mirae. The hurt in his voice was marred by regret, regret that he probably felt for himself. 

Mirae called for the waiter and asked Eddy to pay the bill. She then muttered a small apology to you while Eddy excused himself to the bathroom, saying that she’d take Eddy home with her. You insisted that she didn’t have anything to apologize for, thanking her and Eddy for the meal. When Eddy came back to sign the check, nobody said a word to each other until Mirae hailed a cab. Instead of entering the cab, he stood still in silence. 

“Frankly, I don’t want to spend time with you anymore,” Eddy muttered, just enough for Mirae and the cab driver to hear. 

“Whatever.” 

Mirae shut the door, and you were left with Eddy—a tall, bumbling mess of a man who had just prepared himself to dump who he thought was the girl of his dreams. Through the tinted glass windows of the cab, you could already see that Mirae was thinking of someone else to see that night. 

“So, should I call you a cab?” You said, once Mirae’s cab was out of your line of sight. It had turned a corner, headed to a place that you remembered, shining in rhinestones in the shape of a heart on a pink lighter. 

“No,” Eddy replied, shaking his head. “I’d just like to walk, if that’s alright with you. Of course, you don’t have to accompany me. I just think I need to clear my head a bit.” 

“Sure, I’ll come.” 

Apgujeong, in the evening, prowled with drunken commuters, office workers, and businessmen who were looking to try their luck at one of the rooftop brothels that advertised themselves as massage parlors on the billboards. Each sign twinkled with temptation, but Eddy stood firm, eyes staring at nothing in particular. Once the two of you were out of the soap land, Eddy turned left, and you followed him into the entryway of a small greenspace tucked away into the entry of a residential area filled with ghastly, empty houses and brick-lined apartment complexes with all the lights turned off—a darkness in the bubble of light that Apgujeong was known for. 

Eddy folded his arms and closed his eyes, his feet mindlessly leading him to a dying oak tree. Once his leather shoes had scuffed themselves in their bark, he heaved a long sigh from the pit of his lungs, then leaned his back on the surface of the tree stump. Though he was in uniform, the green hues of his camouflaged army shirt seemed to stand out from the navy skies, a bright, white moonlight bathing him naked from the enemy. Every now and then, his blonde, light lashes would flutter, and you could see the deepness of his blue eyes, gently swirling with despair. Then, he started to tremble and quiver in his hands, burying his face in his large, rough palms as he caught himself whispering sweet words of comfort to ease the troubles that seemed to cloud his mind. Watching him, you can see why Mirae chooses to stay with Eddy for a long time. Though you weren’t too familiar with foreigners, you were aware that Mirae could’ve chosen anyone with better looks than Eddy in the barracks, but something about Eddy pierced through your heart. A wallowing, grieving sorrow that ebbed and flowed in subtlety as soon as you glanced into the swirls of his blue eyes. It wasn’t just you; it resonated with anyone who had the pleasure of looking into him for a moment. You watched him crouch down into the tree stump, his leather shoes now filled with specs of gravel. You wondered what you felt when you saw Eddy fighting back the hot tears that started forming in his eyes, brittle beyond repair. 

And then, it suddenly hit you. Years later, when you migrated to America, you followed in Mirae’s footsteps while being on the opposite end of the country. You had settled in a small town in Oregon, using a government stipend to attend the university’s postgraduate geography program. The Oregon Coast in a summer sunset was a breathtaking view, and even more so when an abundant clarity in the form of Eddy’s bottomless eyes washed away in tidal waves like the big waves of the ocean that flowed between surfers and boats that you counted with your eyes in the shoreline, suddenly soaked in a deep shade of blue. Then, you looked at your hands, the sand on your feet, the cars towards the end of the shoreline parked by the shops, and the surfboard abandoned in a layer of overgrown rocks. At that moment, you understood the slow, unmoving force that overwhelmed him, the tremors that overwhelmed him when you watched him kneel onto himself behind a tree stump in Apgujeong. 

It was longing in its purest form. What Eddy had stirred in you was a part of you that you had long forgotten, and when the realization suddenly hit, you were consumed with a chokehold of sorrow stuck in your throat. You had to sit on the sand beds yourself, gripping your fists while gnashing your jaws to wish the tears that had slipped out of your eyes would go back into your tear ducts. 

Eddy should’ve been saved. 

But you knew, all too late, that nobody—not you or Mirae—could’ve done that. Two years after the dinner, you received a short letter from Mirae that briefed you on her life in Baltimore. Eddy had gone back to Wyoming as soon as she had left for America, and then, he was killed in action during a campaign in Afghanistan. She said that it was an assignment that he had no choice in, but a part of you believed he had suddenly requested a change in post. It just didn’t make sense for someone like Eddy, who had been based in Asia since the beginning of his military career, to relocate to the Middle East with no training or specialization. It was, for the most part, a suicide mission. Mirae’s letter had ended in a curt acknowledgment of what Eddy’s death had done to her psyche, and you burned her letter in your stove, swearing to never speak to her again.

You learned a lot about Eddy that night after he had finished crying. You offered to take him to a pool bar for some games and drinks, but he turned it down, stating he had enough of playing pool at the base. 

“It gets too competitive when you’re in the military,” he said with a nostalgic hint. 

For an hour, the two of you simply sat in silence, eyeing the winds blowing the empty swings to and fro. Then, you suggested that if the swings swung left, you got to ask Eddy a question. If it swung right, then he gets to ask you the same question. The rule was that there were no lies between the two of you, and as the deep chill of the night settled in your skin, Eddy began humming the Johnny Cash version to “My Grandfather’s Clock.” 

As he reached the chorus, it just occurred to you that sitting here, alone in the park with Eddy, was just like going on those arbitrary, long walks throughout Seoul with Eunseok. 

Eddy told you of his life back in Wyoming. He was born in the late 50s, grew up with the buzz of the Civil Rights Movement, then decided to drop out of university to enter the military after his father had shot himself in the head in the back garden of their family home. There was no poetry or prose to the way he spoke about it; he was as earnest as possible. 

“I found him when I came back to visit the family. We owned a farm with a few cows, pigs, and some chickens. If you could picture an image of the American countryside, then you could probably see in full clarity what our farm looked like. It was small, simple, and even had those red barns that you’d see in picture books. But what those children’s picture books about America don’t tell you is that life on the farm only becomes miserable as soon as you leave. I didn’t mind running the stables and rolling hay my whole life, but leaving home to go to the big city scared and took my breath all the same. I never even wanted to leave, but my folks said it was a good idea.”

“Do you regret leaving?” 

“Oh, no, of course not,” Eddy said, a genuine, small smile forming on his lips. “I just regret being so cruel to him when I didn’t know what he was going through.” 

Eddy didn’t talk too much about his father, in part because he admitted he didn’t know too much. He never saw his father’s side of the family during Christmas, and his mother refused to speak on what she referred to as the “accident.” Her mother was now a recluse in the family home, now a dead shell of what was once a small, yet decent farm that produced enough grain and livestock to feed a family of seven. 

“What happened to your arm?” He asked, pointing to your cast. 

“It’s just some small thing, really. I was clumsy and dropped a pile of books on it.” 

“It would be believable if it was a stack of In Search of Lost Time.” Eddy chuckled. 

“Do you want me to help you replace the cast?” He asked. You shook your head. 

“It’s alright. The doctor just told me to come back to him every now and then, and he hasn’t said anything about getting a new cast.” 

“So, what do you think?” Eddy suddenly asked. 

“About?” 

“Mirae, should I leave her?” 

You pondered for a while, watching the swings fluctuate in between the swirling gust of wind that erratically pushed each swing in the opposite direction. 

“Well, I think I would’ve left her a while ago,” you started, carefully choosing your words while watching the sorrow in his eyes merge with a glint of genuine curiosity. “Say, for me, if my views don’t necessarily align with someone I want to spend my entire life with, then there’s no happily ever or even a future to think of. Sure, compromise is important, but when your entire life’s philosophy is at odds or at opposite ends, then I don’t think that’s necessarily something worth fighting for. Mirae, to me, always felt like a person who strives to make other people happy, and it even surprised me that the two of you had stuck together for a while. I mean, as a friend or whatever we are, I do find her fascinating, but in the end, I don’t think she’d make a good life partner. I even feel like she doesn’t want to listen to me at times, and it makes me feel like I’m running in circles trying to catch up with her. Do you get what I’m trying to say?” 

“Yeah, I do,” Eddy replied, furrowing his light brows in frustration. 

“I mean, I know the two of you will be in America, but a far as I know, you’d be in between Wyoming and Seoul, while she’d be in Baltimore for a long time—at least, until she finsihes medical school. Would you wait for her?” 

“I mean, I’m not the smartest tool in the shed. I’m a bit old-fashioned when it comes to things like this, and in a sense, I just want to settle down. Maybe get the farm back? Have a few kids in the stable, a wife that holds me and loves me—you know, that sort of thing.” 

“And I don’t think Mirae has anything to do with that kind of life.” 

“But I like to think that people can change, you know?”

“I mean, if she were an ordinary girl, sure. But she isn’t. She’s very stubborn, and that part of her is impossible to crack. She only ceases to increase her stubbornness by the minute. She’d probably swallow shit before yielding to anyone. What can you expect from a woman like her?” 

Eddy held his chin with his palm, cocking his head slightly in a way that allowed some of his blonde hair to frame his face. Then, he looked at you with an unreadable expression, but deep down inside, you could already tell what he was going to say without him opening his mouth. Eddy was determined to wait. That was how much he loved Mirae. 

Before you had gotten up to stretch and make the late-night bus to the station, Eddy had told you a bit about Mirae’s family situation. She had been disowned by her parents after her mother had found out that she tried to solicit some extra funds for her study abroad from her uncle, with promises to have sex with him behind her aunt’s back. Even then, Eddy’s expression remained unfazed—unbothered to an uncomfortable, self-deprecating degree. 

The last time you saw Eddy was when he walked you to the nearest bus stop, his tall, solemn frame crouched over at the end of the receiver on a phone box two blocks away. 

Once you reached home, you kicked off your heels to the side of the door, hung your dress in your closet, and unhooked your bra, brushing your teeth in the bathroom in nothing but your underwear. As you saw the clock strike twelve, you checked the calendar, toothbrush, and hints of mint-swirled saliva dripping to your chin as you realized it was a Sunday. 

Sunday? Sunday! It’s a Sunday again! After four more Sundays, you would be twenty-three. You washed your mouth with a glass of water and laid in bed, body sprawled all over the mattress as the window left ajar reflected the bright, full moon onto the crevices of the room. A brooding, dark feeling washed over you, and after a few moments of tossing and turning, you got up again to sit on your desk, writing a letter to Eunseok until the sun rose. You made yourself some coffee, and put on a record by The Smiths. A light, soft rain fell from the windows into the kitchen sink, and your room had a slight chill. 

The smell of wine had lingered on your dress. A dead fly was sitting on the window sill near the kitchen counter. With a slight wind entering your apartment, the scent of the river reminded you of the sea. A home that you no longer could return to. Muted chatter echoed in and out of your ears as the same, old couple fed pigeons on the pavement bench a few meters away from your building. You couldn’t even begin to imagine why such a couple would spend their morning walking around in such a cold, desolate morning, where the sun hid momentarily after it rose in a shroud of white, murky clouds. 

You penned another long letter to Eunseok. Luckily, there wasn’t any strain on your hand as you wrote it, and you let your eyes wander out into the droplets of rain that formed blobs and amorphous patterns on your windows.

The letter started with telling Eunseok how you got your wrist sprained at work, and then it went on to Mirae’s celebration dinner. You told him about Eddy, and how good his Korean was despite being a foreigner. You told him about the food and the wine, the quality of the meal, and the ambiance of the restaurant, wondering if you should bring up his girlfriend in regard to the dynamic that you, Mirae, and Eddy shared. You felt that it was something you had to write about, but couldn’t find the right words to begin drafting that section of the letter. 

You still remembered the last time you saw Eunseok’s girlfriend—the day she died. It was, to you, the first and last time you had spent time alone with her, and she had walked all the way from her end of the island to yours, standing in front of the school gates waiting for you. Then, the two of you went to the park, where she brought some snacks her mother had received from her relatives in Daegu—a Tupperware filled with maejakgwa cookies. It was the exact same position that you had with Eddy, where she was squatting on a large, old tree, holding the box of cookies in her hands while you took a piece out and savored the tangy and sweet flavors that swirled into your mouth. She had asked you about your plans after high school, and you told her that you were going far, far away. 

The image of Eunseok’s girlfriend is still vivid to this day. Her long, black hair swayed gently in the wind, and the skirt in her uniform formed abstract pleats that moved with her shifting body. She had conjured up a game of her own: question by the swings. If the swing moved left, she got to ask you a question that you had to respond to in full honesty, and if it swung right, you returned the favor. That day, the swings kept swinging left, and so she had asked the bulk of the questions that afternoon. 

It was odd that the thought of Eunseok’s girlfriend never occurred to you when you were alone with Eddy, and it took the next sleepless day when you were sat by the dining table, penning a letter to Eunseok. It came as such a shock to you, and you had always thought that last day with his girlfriend would haunt you for the rest of your life, but throughout the entire conversation with Eddy, her apparition laid dormant, never ceasing to show herself in the corner of the park near Apgujeong. 

There was a stipulation of guilt that started to consume you, as if you had abandoned her memory altogether. But when you decided to take a break from the pen and paper to lie down in your bed again, you tried to frame it in a different way. It had been six years since she had died, and she was still seventeen. Of course, that didn’t mean that her image in your memory had completely faded. The emotions and thoughts that stirred you about her death were still there, deep inside your heart in full clarity, some of the aspects of her even clearer to you than before. You suppose what you wanted to think of is that in four Sundays, you would be twenty-three. Part of what you shared with Eunseok and his girlfriend had already faded when the three of you were sixteen and seventeen, and there was nothing you could do—no crying, no grieving, or mourning—that could ever bring that past back. 

I think of you more than ever, you continued. Somehow, it always rains on Sundays. It’s very hard for me when the weather is like this, and I have nothing to do. I can only seem to read the morning paper and stay in my apartment. I can’t even do my laundry or go to the grocers, and I can’t even take a walk in the park. All I can do is write to you, listen to my records, and read the morning paper again. Now, it’s “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” over and over again while I watch the rain fall on my windowsill. This letter is so long because I don’t have anything to do. I’ll stop now. I’ll make myself a late lunch. 

Goodbye.

Sungchan was nowhere to be found yesterday, today, and at the next day’s lecture. What happened to him? Two weeks had gone by since you had spoken to him on the phone, and you thought about calling him, but decided against it. He told you he would call you when he decided when to take you to the porn cinema. 

One night, you were woken up by your telephone ringing. You were sleeping through what felt like a slow death, in the core of a state of immovable paralysis when you were thrown off by the high-pitched buzz of the telephone, groggily stomping out of bed to feel through the dark living room in a state of confusion, as if your brain had been plunged into a warm, simmering boil in a metal pot, swelling larger and larger until all that was left was a heavy wound that pressed onto your forehead. The digital clock by the coffee table read 6:27, but you weren’t too sure if it was six in the morning or six in the evening, and you couldn’t seem to remember what day it was. You looked out on your window and saw a dust of stars in the milky dark swirls of the sky, taking it in it before your brain had delayed into telling you it was six in the evening. Perhaps keeping your curtains open did have some kind of time-telling purpose, after all. 

“Hey, are you free now?” Sungchan’s voice wrapped in static passed through your ears from the receiver.  

“Maybe? I don’t know, what day is it?” You asked, murmurs wrapped in the blanket of sleep. 

“Friday,” he answered too quickly. 

“Morning, or evening?” 

“Evening, duh! It’s just past six.”

You looked out again, as if pinching yourself awake. Sure enough, the street lamps were still on, with droplets of young people walking on the pavement. It was six in the evening, and that was concrete proof that your clock didn’t need its batteries switched. You tried to remember the events that transpired before you dozed off: right, you were writing a letter to Eunseok, then you went out to eat lunch. You came back home at three in the afternoon with some groceries, and you didn’t have to go to work anymore. 

“Yeah, I’m free. Where are you?” 

“Gongdeok station. Come see me now.” Sungchan said. There was not a single sense of a command in his voice, yet you were gravitated to the idea of seeing him.

After he hung up, you met his tall, sun-tanned frame in front of Gongdeok. Then, the two of you took the bus to Sinchon, where your old apartment had been. When the two of you had sat down, Sungchan called for the waiter to revive his old tab. 

“What were you drinking?” You asked. 

“Whiskey on the rocks,” he replied with a smile. You ordered a gin and tonic, then saw the large backpack that he had hidden on the edge of his seat. 

“I was away for a bit,” he said. 

“Where did you go?” 

“Busan, then all the way up to Seokcho.” 

“On the same trip?” 

“No, don’t be ridiculous, there’s no way I can go North and South at the same time on my own.” He replied, shaking his head. You noticed that there were a few spots of freckles that neatly rested on the bridge of his nose. 

“Anyway, I went to Busan with my girl, then took off to Seokcho alone.” 

While sipping your glass of gin and tonic in one hand, you held the lighter that you had received from Mirae three years ago to light Sungchan’s cigarette. For a moment, your hands lingered close to his mouth, watching the sharpness of his jaw suck the cigarette in, before gently puffing swirls of smoke out of his plump lips. 

“Jesus I’m surprised you had the time, given the funeral and everything,” you said. 

“Funerals are easy. Don a suit, and sit there all prim and proper while the monk rings a bell and says something. Pick some bones out after the cremation, then go to a restaurant and eat expensive food while saying your condolences to each other. Rinse and repeat. It’s a lot easier compared to being an unpaid nurse. All of us were drained, my brother and I, and we had no tears left to cry. I think we got away with it because we were men, but deep down, you can tell that they all thought we were ungrateful bastards for not shedding a single tear when our dad died. That’s just how we are, though, and the more we could sense that they wanted us to cry, the more we dried our tear ducts.”

There were three wooden bracelets in Sungchan’s right arm that jangled whenever he spoke or made a hand gesture, each bead making its own distinct melody that sliced through the cacophony of the bar. 

“After the funeral was over, my brother and I went back to the shop and drank so much to the point where we passed out in the living room, the sun already up. The whole time, we picked out which relative irked us the most, and it really energized us from everything. We went out cold, and didn’t answer the phone at all. We were basically dead to the world, and once we were fully awake, we ordered some food and enjoyed ourselves. We took the rest of the beer in the fridge and drank even more. I think we deserve it. After that, my brother went to his fiance for a while, and I decided to go on a trip to fuck like crazy.” Sungchan said, exhaling another puff of smoke in between intervals of three sentences or so. He kept the slim cigarette in between his lips, closing one eye to not let the smoke enter his lids. 

“Did you end up doing that?” 

“No,” he sighed—more like heaved and hurled. “Like I said, she was a pure Christian at heart. Never even offered to give me a blowjob or ask me to eat her out. The moment we arrived at the hotel, she just stood there and slept.” 

What started as a light chuckle ended up in a sea of laughter that poured out of you. 

“Aw, come on! That’s not funny at all! I locked myself in the bathroom and genuinely cried about it! To think that I went through all that pent-up stress only to get nothing at all from a girl who supposedly loves me! She was practically angry the entire time! That’s how she always is, always angry! Said that all I had to do was pray to get rid of the grief. It’s not like I asked for my dad to die. Christians, I tell you. Not all of them are crazy, but stay away from the evangelicals! Never get involved with them again!” 

“What happened after that?” 

“I said no! I’ve had it! You are not converting me into your celibate lifestyle! I am out! Then, I took the first train going North, winding up in Seokcho.” 

“You just left her there?” 

“It’s fine, she’s from Busan anyway. Had family that she could stay with. Besides, we talked about it extensively. It’s not like I just dumped her and left. God, even if she frustrated me so much, I couldn’t do that. I care a bit too much about how she feels,” 

“So you didn’t even see the sea in Busan or anything?” 

“No, our fight was too huge that I couldn’t spend another night with her in our hotel. The moment we called it quits, I just left.”

“Have you been to Busan?” He asked, whistling to the waiter to refill his glass with another round of whiskey. 

“Once, but nothing beats the Jeju sea.” You remarked with pride. 

“I wish I could’ve gone.” Sungchan lamented. 

“You can come anytime, really. I have family there, so you have a place to stay,”

“That’d be nice,” he smiled. “What also would’ve been nice was if you were there with me the whole time on the trip instead of her. If that were the case, we would’ve toured Busan properly, then did something spontaneous and went up all the way to Seokcho together. That sounds really nice.” 

“Why me?”

“Are you dense? Do you want me to spell it out for you?” Sungchan exclaimed with shock, eyes peering into your pupils. 

“I don’t know, I’m just curious, I guess. I want to know why you were thinking of me.” You replied, unsure if you said something deeply wrong. 

“I like you, a little too much. Why else would I be thinking of you all the time? Why would I think of someone I don’t like?” Sungchan retorted, raising his voice to the point where it resonated across the entire bar. 

“But you were with your girlfriend,” you interjected. “I don’t think it’s fair to her if you thought of me the whole time, no?” 

Sungchan, red with anger, looked like he was about to burst in a second. 

“Ex. And like I said, it was a lot more complicated than that. Watch what you say to me, because I have an entire month’s worth of misery inside me that’s about to blow any second now. I’m an absolute animal when I start screaming and crying, so much so that I can flood this goddamn place with my tears. It doesn’t matter where I am, but when I explode, I explode. I’m not joking.” 

You slowly nodded, watching his every move at a microcosmic level until he had calmed down. Once it felt like you could move again, you finished your glass of gin and tonic in one go, silently calling for the waiter with a raised hand to refill your glass. 

“You see, things haven’t been right with her since we started talking about sex.” 

“How come?” 

“It’s like, every night, we’d come home to each other. She’d kiss me first and feel me all over, get me in the mood, and the moment I asked her if we could do it, she absolutely refused. For about six months or so, she would constantly turn me on and then do nothing! She never touched me, but she would always kiss me in a way that invited something more, sticking her tongue out at the back of my mouth and feeling it all over. Her hands would go all over me, too, carefully avoiding the one place she couldn’t touch. Of course, I understood when she told me she wanted to be faithful to her religion, but why arouse me like that when she would always say she couldn’t do more for Jesus? Don’t get me wrong, she’s sweet, but I feel like she’s a bit of a hypocrite in some ways. She’d say she wanted me, and then stop herself because it was a sin. And then, don’t get me started on her complaints! She would come out with us from time to time, abstaining from a drink, and then scold all of us for saying foul things such as so-called dirty stories! Then, we’d constantly fight about it when we get back, with her telling me I should get better friends or lecture them even harder about obscenity and how bad it is! Don’t you think she’s a little bit too narrow-minded?” 

“I don’t know, I think it’s a matter of taste. I think she should’ve been better off with a Christian man that doesn’t talk about girls touching themselves or frequent porn cinemas.” You joked.  

“What have you been doing?” He asked, changing the topic. 

“Nothing much, really,” you answered, then remembered your promise to Sungchan over the phone. “I tried to touch myself while I was thinking of you.” 

“Did it help?”

“No, I just got dry.” 

“I’m that ugly, huh?” He retorted in annoyance. 

“No, it’s not that at all. I just can’t bring myself to do it somehow,”

“Go on the phone next time, and I’ll help you out.” 

“Weird, but who knows? It might help me,” you said. 

“So, I’ll call you next time you do it, yeah? Just let me know, and I’ll dial it up.” 

“No problem,” you saluted like a soldier, remembering Eddy and what he had shown you at the park. 

“Maybe it’s just me, like I’m not sexy or anything,” Sungchan pouted. You shook your head, trying to find the words to soothe his sensitive state. 

“You are, but I think it’s just a question of attitude. When I think of you, I just think of the ridiculous things you say and it doesn’t help me at all.” You responded. 

“I think I’m pretty good at talking dirty. Like, there’s this one spot on my back that’s super sensitive, when you scratch it with your dainty fingernails, I can’t help but—”

“Enough, enough!” You exclaimed, pressing your index finger on his lips to shush him. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

“You done?” He asked, pointing at your empty glass with the jingling of his bracelets. 

“Why?” 

“It’s time to watch a dirty film! A real filthy one!” 

The two of you left the bar after Sungchan paid the entire tab, then hopped onto a specialty seafood restaurant to eat a bowl of freshly cut sashimi slices. After dinner, Sungchan took your hand and intertwined it with his, dodging from one corner of an alleyway to the other until he was in front of a run-down building with a Western-styled cinema sign lopsided to the left. It was, according to him, the only cinema in the entire city that showed BDSM and hard kink films. 

Once you stepped into the cinema, a recognizable stench wafted in the air, prompting you to bury your face into your hands, pinching your nose to not catch anymore of the rancid odor in the entire room. What you can appreciate, though, was that the timing Sungchan had was somehow always great for all the wrong reasons. When the two of you came in, the film had just started, and he took you to your seats after showing his pre-booked tickets to the usher. It was difficult for you to discern the language that was being showed, so you assumed it was a European one. The story was vaguely understandable despite the language barrier. There was a girl dressed in copious amounts of leather from head-to-toe, wearing a lacey mask that protected her eyes. There were four men, each in submission in different ways: one was hanging lopsided in what you recognized as a beautifully artistic rendition of the shibari style, and another had a ball gag in his mouth while being handcuffed on a bed. Another man was strapped with a belt on a kitchen table mimicking a straitjacket, and the last man was tied onto a leash, crouched down inside a kennel big enough to fit a human being. At first, you were intrigued by the allure of the dominating woman, but after a while, it was the same pattern of whipping, flogging, breaking penises, and gagging that you quickly grew bored of the film. 

“Talk about size! That guy’s massive!” Sungchan exclaimed, eyes fixated on the screen. 

“He probably pumps it with something, I don’t know?” You said, recalling a fact that you had seen in the lifestyle portion of the morning paper, something about erectile dysfunction and how to have more stamina in bed as a man. 

“You can’t pump penises, silly.”

Sungchan’s eyes were glued to the screen, never once looking away for a break. It surprised you that he was capable of watching something so intense and standing his ground without faltering a single bit. He would constantly talk to himself, recording his thoughts out loud: “Shit that’s crazy!” or “My god, how is his back still okay after that?!” 

As the film went on, you enjoyed Sungchan’s presence more than the film. 

“Tell me, do you get wet watching this?” 

“Have never really seen the appeal, if I’m being honest,” you replied. “What about you?” 

“Yeah, I think they make these things for men, mostly. It’s like a natural reaction, almost, and I’m sure the rest of the men in the room also get hard watching stuff like this too. Imagine, thirty or forty dicks just standing upright, isn’t that funny?” 

“Gross.” 

The next film was milder and more typical of what one might expect at the porn cinema. The setup was simpler, and there wasn’t any foreplay save for the thirty-minute massage session that was uncut from the film. Every time there was cunnilingus or fellatio involved, the slurping and sucking noises echoed across the entire cinema, making you feel a sense of touching bizzarity about the state of the world you live in. 

“God, nobody actually sounds like that during sex! She sounds like a dying cat!” You said, attempting to cover your ears after an endless barrage of high-pitched shrieks that were passed off as moans. 

“I don’t know, I think it’s great! It’s funny as hell!”

By the time the scenes in the film switched into penetration, you were startled and stunted, to say the least. You had never paid attention to the way the penis sounded when it entered the vagina—so much so that you were convinced this was embellished in post. You looked to Sungchan whose enthusiasm had quickly died down, quickly snapping his neck back to you to take your hand and lead you out of the cinema. In a sense, this was the first time you felt that the Seoul air was refreshing, not stuffy. 

“Well, that was fun, let’s do it again sometime,” Sungchan said. 

“They’re not really creative. It’s a lot of shock factor, and then, it’s the usual. In and out,” you replied.

“What else can they do? I mean, sex is just that if you think about it?” 

Sungchan did have a point. 

Sungchan found another bar near the cinema, and the two of you ordered more drinks. This time, you ordered some beer, while Sungchan ordered at least five different types of cocktails in different shapes, colors, and sizes. When the two of you exited, Sungchan tried to climb a small tree near the street lamp.

“I have been cursed by my family to be tall. What a horrible thing to go through!” 

“Even I don’t think I can climb these trees at my height. They’re either too short or too thin—not much support. Also, you’re too drunk to even stand properly! What the hell are you gonna do if you fell off?” 

“God, you always ruin everything by being too sensible! What’s wrong with being drunk? I chose to be drunk today, and I will climb a tree! Shit, I’m gonna climb the biggest tree in here and pee on everybody!” 

Before Sungchan could take his jeans off, you quickly rushed him to the nearest park, desperately searching for an outhouse or a toilet that was free. Luckily, a cab driver was parked near a small entryway tucked under the edge of a residential area, and you watched him zip his pants up as he exited a tiled section of the park. While you waited for him to do his business, you asked the cab driver if he had anything you could read besides the morning paper. He tore off a crossword puzzle from the evening paper and handed you a pencil before driving off to pick up a customer. With each word across and downward, your worry over Sungchan grew more prevalent. By the time you were down to three words across the puzzle, you tucked the paper and pencil into your pocket and checked in on him, covering your nose before entering the men’s bathroom.

There he was, slouched over one of the stalls with a horrid pallor. 

“Sorry, I just passed out,” he murmured. Luckily for you and for him, there was no signs of vomiting. 

“You alright?” You asked, taking a few scraps of toilet paper and gently patting off the sweat that formed onto his forehead. Once you were finished, you took your cardigan off and draped it around his shoulders, only to find that his arms were too broad to slip into the sleeves. 

“No,” he replied, shaking his head vehemently. 

“Should I take you home?”

“I’m so tired of that crappy shop! It smells like the past and taxmen! Bring me to yours! I’m sick of being alone!” 

“You planned this all along, didn’t you?”

“Caught red-handed, I must say.” He said, half-lidded with a sly smirk on his lips. 

“I think you should’ve called your girlfriend, or ex, whatever the two of you are now. That’s the only thing that makes sense.” 

“But I wanna be with you,” he whined. 

“You can’t. And if I were to sleep with a man, I’m gonna do it with him. The last thing I want is to have to feel guilty sleeping with other people when I’m pretty sure I think I love someone else.” 

“But I’m so lonely! I really want to be with someone right now! I know I’ve been terrible to you, putting you in a stupid contract just to talk to you and get closer to you, saying whatever pops into my head, forcing you to come with me wherever I go, but you’re the only one I can do all those things with! I’ve never been able to have my own way with anyone! My parents never paid any attention to me, always focusing on my brother! Hell, even someone I called a girlfriend never cared about what I fucking wanted! She gets angry when I try to bargain, and only wants things to go her way! So we always fight, and it’s gets so fucking tiring. I’m fighting my parents, then I fight my brother about the store and what we should do after my dad died, and to top it all off, I fight with the only person who, as you’ve said, is supposed to help me get through this entire shitshow! You’re the only one I have left, and I’m really, really, really tired! I just wanna fall asleep next to someone who will listen to me, tell me how much they like me, how handsome I am, and all that stuff. That’s all I want. And when I wake up, I’ll stop being selfish. I’ll be a good boy, and I’ll never demand anything from you ever again.” 

“I get where you’re coming from, Sungchan, but there’s nothing more I can do,” you sighed.

“Please? I might sit down here on the ground and cry all night. Hell, I might even sleep with the first girl that talks to me.” 

You gently hoisted him up, wrapping his long arms on your shoulders while you used your weight to make him stand on his own. Then, you rerouted yourself to search for the nearest late-night bus that would take you straight to your apartment building. 

“All set to go?” You asked. A big, wide grin emerged and gave you uncomfortable chills. 

“Yep, let’s go to a club! It’s still early!” He exclaimed. At this rate, he was still holding onto you, all tiredness sucked out of him. 

“Wait, I thought you were tired?” You asked, trying to control the urge to roll your eyes. 

“Not anymore!” 

“For fuck’s sake.” 

And, to your lack of surprise, Sungchan was miraculously back in shape. He took you to a disco, arms waving up and down while his hips swung with the latest hits that was playing on the radio. He drank four glasses of rum and coke, and then continued to dance to New Order until you could see his hair glued to his forehead. 

“I haven’t danced like this in ages! It feels so liberating!” He shouted too close to your ears. 

“You practically embody liberation!” You responded with the same vigor. 

“No way,” he shrugged, then stopped dancing just as fast as he had started. “Let’s leave.” 

“It’s only been an hour.” 

“I know, and I’m hungry. Let’s go get pizza.” 

Even if you knew you had entered your side of the city, it was Sungchan’s rather bloodshot eyes that led you into the only pizzeria that was open, which was right next to the grocers that you frequented to buy your vegetables. You didn’t know that they were opened until this hour, but it wasn’t your position to know that much about this place—after all, you weren’t the type to stay out at a time like this. 

“Are you sure you’re okay? I mean, you passed out cold not too long ago?” You asked, watching Sungchan squat on the flour with a slice of pizza and a paper plate in his hands. You held the box for him in case it toppled over, watching him take slice after slice. You stopped at three slices, then took the box down the nearest trash can that you could find when he reached the last slice. 

“It’s because my selfish demands got through you, so now, I’m feeling so much better!” He replied with excitement, lips red with marinara sauce. 

“Are you sure you’re the only one home right now?” 

“Yeah. My brother’s with his fiance. Something about the house giving him insomnia after my dad died.” 

“So both of you don’t want to live in that place anymore, correct?” 

“The only problem is, he doesn’t wanna sell the shop. I do, though. It’s time to close this chapter of the Jung family! No more crappy record shop!” 

You pondered, heels turning against the direction to your house before walking right in front of him. Taking some of the napkins that came with the pizza, you folded two pieces together and wiped the corners of his mouth, watching some of the sauce stain your thumbs.

“You’ve made a selfish demand, so I’d like to make one in return,” you said. 

“As I’ve said, you gave in to my demands. I’ll be a good boy now.” 

“Can we spend the night at Jung Records? You know, before you sell it or close it?” 

Sungchan’s smile dropped a little while he furrowed his brows in deep thought. After what felt like minutes, he gave you a quick nod. 

“Okay, sure. Come on.” 

You didn’t know what time it was, but the nearest train station had closed, making the two of you walk back to the late-night bus stop that you usually used to come home from a late shift at the library. You didn’t know it took you as far as Ichon, but after twenty minutes of strolling around the neighborhood, you reached the dilapidated sign that made you witness your first house fire. A big, lopsided sign said CLOSED INDEFINITELY, and once Sungchan had turned the keys open, the overwhelming smell of vanilla and almonds greeted your nose, as if all the records had been trapped inside to allow their natural smells to take over the entire shop. The once overpacked, tiny record store now had at least a quarter of its collection emptied out, and all the records that were on display were idly sitting in large boxes, stacked together with some of them protruding out of its sleeves.

Jung Records was no more.

“So it’s final, right?” You asked. Sungchan slowly nodded, muttering curses under his breath every time his toes had stubbed the boxes strewn around the shop. 

“Yeah. I made the decision to sell the shop behind my brother’s back. At first, he really got angry with me, but after we had a proper talk about it, we decided to divide the money up and live our own lives for a while. My brother’s saving up for a wedding ceremony, and I have one more year of university left before I have to get a real job. It won’t be much of a hassle if I get a full-time position after I graduate. I already have a place lined up for me with the amount I’ve been saving through my job at the radio, and with the inheritance and the money from selling the shop, I’ve secured a down payment.”

Sungchan took you upstairs into the kitchen table, then sat you down with a cold can of beer before excusing himself to take a shower. When you heard the shower, you quickly got up from the chair and took the beer back in the cooler, heading to the stove to boil some water for tea. Once he had emerged out, with nothing but a towel on his waist, the two of you sat facing each other on the dining table, sipping some tea. Chin resting on his palm, he cocked his head and took a long, hard look at your face. The silence quickly choked you, and your only form of release was the whirring of the old refrigerator situated next to the marbled kitchen counter. 

“You think someone will want to buy this place?” You asked, fingers tightly curled on an odd, frog-shaped mug. 

“Oh, you’d be surprised! Most of them are real estate people who want another massive apartment complex, but I managed to find someone who would transform this into a nice little boutique. Sucks to be dad, though. Grandpa worked so hard to get this place; this building is pretty much all he’s ever known. He has a bad head for business, too, but even then, he was stubborn as hell, taking loans out bit by bit until he had nothing left.”

“He had you, though,” you said. 

“Me?! God, you call me crazy, but you’re the insane one here!” 

Beads of water dropped one after the other onto the wooden table, and Sungchan continued to peer into you, looking for something in the shape of the mug he never took to his lips. 

“You’re pretty.” 

“What?” 

“Yeah, you heard me. You’re pretty. The more I look at you, though, the more I realize you have an interesting face. You’ll do, you’ll do just fine.”

You took the mug down from your lips, feigning hurt as you put a fist to your chest. 

“Hey! I don’t mean that in a bad way! I’m not that good at putting my thoughts into words, and that’s why many people misudnerstsand me. All I’m trying to say is that I like you, I like you a lot. Did I tell you that?” Sungchan asked, then rummaged through the kitchen to search for a pack of cigarettes. 

“Yes, you did,” you nodded, taking a long, gas lighter and pointing the flame to the tip of his cigarette after a few tries. 

“Girls are complicated, but I think I’m getting closer to understanding you all. Bit by bit.” 

Through the corner of your eyes, you saw a glint of obsidian sparkle through a dark, unlit room. The door had been left ajar, and the scent of faded lavender slowly permeated the room.

“Do you have any incense?” You asked. 

“Yeah, I do. Why?” 

“Let’s burn a stick for your father,” you offered.

Sungchan took you to the room and pulled on a string to light up the altar, while you brought the gas lighter with you to light a stick of incense. One for Sungchan, and the other for you. Before sticking the incense in the urn, you clasped your palms together in a deep, silent prayer. 

“I thought of stripping naked in front of my dad’s memorial portrait, to show him how much I’ve grown since he’s last washed me naked when I was a kid. But then, I stopped myself. My brother came in, and when he found me with my pants down, he almost passed out.” 

“I’d do the same too if I saw someone go naked in front of my dead dad or something,” you replied, knowing it was futile to focus on your prayer.

“You’re just too normal, just like my brother,” he muttered in annoyance. 

“Anywho, what did you think of my dad?” 

“I haven’t been with him long enough, but he seemed alright. I was pretty comfortable with him. I was mostly talking to myself in the room, but his presence made it feel like he was listening to everything I said.” 

“What did you say to him?” 

“I talked about economics, mostly.” You hesitated, watching the incense burn in a bright shade of amber. 

“Ew, nobody talks about the economy with a dying person they’ve just met!”

“Nobody tries to strip naked in front of their dead father either!” 

Sungchan chucked, then took a cylindrical, wooden stick to ring the singing bowl.

“Goodnight, dad. I hope you’re not suffering anymore in the afterlife. You’re dead, okay? If you are suffering for whatever reason, go complain to the gods. Tell them that you’ve had enough. I hope you reunite with mom too, and the two of you really do it to make up for the lost time since she died. Give it everything you’ve got, because the Jung men aren’t too shabby.” 

You asked Sungchan if you could use the bath, and he told you he already had it boiling. He offered to join you to save water and time, squeezing himself into the tiny ceramic bathtub. The two of you sat facing each other, his feet sloppily hanging on the curb of the bathtub. Whenever he shifted, you felt his toes touch your face, and you turned in response to give him more space. By this point, his legs and ankles were touching your waist, and you brought your knees up to your chest, allowing the rest of your body to sink into the warmth of the water. 

“I’ve never been in a bathtub with someone else before,” you said. 

“Me neither,” he replied. 

“I can feel your legs touching mine.” 

“What the hell am I supposed to do? It’s a tiny space, and you’re too tall.” He complained, then took his feet back inside the tub to splash your face with water.

 “See, your feet are touching my face! Ew!” 

“Come closer, then, if you don’t want my feet touching your face.” He said, resulting in you backing into a corner, burying your chin on the comforts of your knees. 

“If I do, I’m gonna feel your erection on my back.” 

“You say it like it’s so revolting!” 

“It is! I’m all here, trying to take a bath and relax! The last thing I want is to feel your hard dick on my back! It’s gonna keep poking me!” 

“Deal with my feet, then,” he joked, splashing you with another wave of water while his toes curled onto your eye level. 

“Fuck you!” 

“I wonder what it’s like fucking in the bathtub,” he asked, resting his chin on his knuckles while his legs spread out of both ends of the bathtub. 

“Slippery?” 

“Wanna try it out?”

“No thanks, I’m leaving,” you said, dragging your body out of the bathtub and wrapping yourself with a towel that was too long for you. 

“Cold!” 

Sungchan tossed you a shirt and some of his late mother’s underwear, which you didn’t end up wearing as you felt it was inappropriate, even if they had just come out of an unopened pack. His shirt was enough to cover your entire body, but it was better than nothing. Instead of taking you to his room, Sungchan brought out a mattress and some bedsheets in front of the altar, then came back with a set of pillows and blankets. It was a twin-size, so it barely fit the two of you. Out of instinct, you held onto Sungchan, afraid that you were going to fall off the edge. With your nose against his chest, you felt his large hands slowly move their way down to your hips, fingertips tightly holding onto your skin. You had your arms wrapped around the circumference of his shoulder blades, feeling their sharp protrusions as he pulled you closer to him. You wouldn’t exactly say this was the right timing to engage in any sexual activity, with Sungchan sneezing every time the tips of your hair would tickle his nose. 

“Come on, say something to me,” he whispered.

“Go to sleep.” 

“Come on!” 

“Okay, fine. Hi. Now go to bed,” 

“You’re mean,” he pouted. You could feel his lips shake as he kissed your forehead. 

“What do you want me to say?” You asked in confusion. 

“Something that makes me feel good,” he replied. 

“You’re handsome.” 

“Sungchan. Say my name,”

“You’re really handsome, Sungchan.” You corrected. 

“What do you mean by really handsome?” 

“So handsome that mountains crouch in fear by your presence and oceans wilt into mere ponds. That type of handsome.” 

Sungchan took your cheeks in his hands and lifted your face to meet his sparkling, doe-like eyes. 

“You’re good with words.” 

“Thank you, I try,” you replied with a soft smile. 

“Say something nicer.” 

“I really like you too, Sungchan. A lot more than I’d like to admit.”

“How much is a lot?” 

“A lonely planet on the other side of the galaxy.” 

“Cliche.” 

“Alright, I’ll think of something better: How about a tiger?” 

“I don’t get it,” he said, eyes focused on nothing but yours. 

“You’re in the vast winter of Siberia, all by yourself, with nothing but a big coat. You see this big predator coated in orange, black, and white, sticking out like a sore thumb in the white, empty blizzard. Instead of eating you, the tiger instead asks you to roll in the snow with it. So there you are, rolling in the snow with the tiger, spending a whole day playing around and making snow angels. Then, the tiger snuggles up to you, giving you more warmth than your coat so you can survive the harsh winters. Sounds nice, right?” 

“Really nice.” 

“That’s how much I like you,.” 

“Wow, I’ve never had someone say such nice things about me like that,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “Tell me, if you like me that much, you’ll do anything I tell you to do, right? You won’t get angry with me?”

“Of course not,” you reassured him, gently shaking your head while you felt the warmth of his palms transfer to your cheeks. He wrapped his legs around your waist, and you returned the gesture with a soft nudge from your feet to his. 

“You’ll always take care of me forever?” 

“Of course I will. Everything’s going to be fine.” You replied, gently placing his head on your chest while you stroked his soft, black hair. 

“I’m scared,” Sungchan whimpered. 

You continued to hold him close to your chest, and he slowly succumbed to a deep, peaceful sleep. You felt his chest rise and fall on your stomach, and once you felt that not a single noise could stir him awake, you slowly slipped out of the bed and closed the door, silently taking the cold can of beer you left on the cooler to crack it open as quietly as you can. Despite the long, exhausting day that you had, you couldn’t quite figure out why sleep wasn’t coming to you at all. You rummaged through some of the shelves for something to read, but everything was neatly packed in boxes, and you were too afraid of making noise. 

So, you stood by the marbled kitchen counter, beer in hand, while staring out into the window. This was a record store, after all, and the only thing you could do, if the circumstance allowed it, was to pick up a record from downstairs and play it. Sungchan wasn’t much of a reader, either, so it was no use trying to look for anything to read in the Jung domicile. However, you had to keep yourself busy. There was no simple way that time would pass if you just idly sat by the kitchen doing nothing in particular. 

Then, albeit a little too late, you thought of making a small, heartfelt contribution to Jung Records. Slipping a small 50,000 Won note crumpled into your pockets on the cash register, you slowly approached the barrage of boxes and picked out a record you wanted to bring home. Though their collection wasn’t that impressive, you noted a few interesting deep cuts before finalizing your choice in the form of a Billie Holiday collection, making your way back upstairs to place it next to your neatly folded clothes. You then consumed the rest of your beer while drinking what was left of the tea in Sungchan’s mug, feeling a tinge of warmth but no sleep. You went back into the room to check on him, but he was fast asleep, his exhaustion taking the form of a ring of dark circles that formed underneath his eyes.

Save for a single street lamp by the post office, Ichon was shrouded in a dark, looming mist. Sungchan slept with his back facing the window, the light of the street lamp embracing his bare skin in perfect stillness. While bending over to his chest, you watched it rise and fall, just as his father had been at the hospital. 

Once the skies had emerged from a period of deep darkness, you made yourself a cup of tea and scribbled a note on a receipt you picked up from the trash can.

I bought a record. It’s one of Billie Holiday’s. I also stole your beer, but that comes with the tip. I went home in the morning because I had something to do. See you soon. Then, after pondering on which words to choose, you wrote, I love watching you sleep. Then added, it’s cute, before returning to the kitchen to wash both your mugs. You quietly made your way downstairs, carrying the record between your arms, glanced up at a curtainless window above the dilapidated Jung Records sign, then stepped out, ensuring the door was shut before walking to the nearest bus stop. The only semblance of life that greeted you was a family of crows perched on the wires of a thick utility pole, beaded eyes staring down at your every movement while you walked away from Jung Records. On the way to the bus stop, you knocked on a door to a corner store that said open, then purchased two portions of kimbap before riding the bus, feeling sleep come gently in the lullaby of the bus engine.

You wrote to Eunseok every week, and he wrote back to every single one you posted. His letters weren’t as long as yours, and before you knew it, December had arrived in light snow and a frosty chill in the air. 

It takes me back to the last time you visited. I can’t believe it’s been over a year now! This season is quite bleak, so much so that the hole in my heart from missing you had deepened. 

I talk about you with some of the patients all the time. They said they want to meet you if you ever visit again. Don’t worry about me, because they’re all very nice to me. I really don’t think I would survive living here if it weren’t for them. Did you know, I still cry a lot. I think it’s because I’m lonely.

The doctors say that it’s a good sign, but it hurts. Loneliness hurts so much, and when I close my eyes, this loneliness makes me hear things, hear things that are wrapped inside the slow rumble of the dead leaves being blown away by the winter winds. They talk to me in the language of the breeze: her, my mother, and you. They all talk to me because they’re lonely, just like me. 

At nights like these, I return to the comfort of your letters—of your kind words. The thought of the outside still scares me, but you have a way of describing every little detail in such a benign, thoughtful way. It’s strange, really, that a piece of paper can bring me so much comfort. It puzzles me so much that I wonder why this effect has come in place, but all I can do is read them over and over again. Sometimes, I even talk about the things you tell me to the doctors, and they also started to wait for your letters. 

There was something about your classmate’s father that really resonated with me, and it seemed to keep the doctors anticipating as well. I mean, I don’t say this out of any ill will, but it’s true. In a place like this, your letters have become a kind of entertainment for us. 

I try to make some time out of my already sparse schedule to write to you, but seeing the blank sheet of paper makes me so blue that I can’t even touch the pen next to me. Even this one had to be forced out of my own will. The doctors have been urging me to get back to you, but it’s not you that’s at fault, this I can promise. I have a lot I want to talk about, but it’s really hard for me to think of what to say, and this pains me, because I think of a lot, but I can’t, no matter how hard I try, put them into my own words. 

When I read the part about your classmate, I think to myself that he is in love with you. The doctors agree, too, and say that your classmate is a funny one. I’ve been tending to the cats more that I’ve stopped writing calligraphy, but I still play the piano every day—and I’m serious about this. Each day, it’s a different song that I play, and I even get suggestions from the other patients! 

Well, I guess that’s it from me. Goodbye.

Once the fourth Sunday had arrived, you received a package from Eunseok. It was a small, personal cake with candles and a knitted sweater. Along with it came a card. 

Happy birthday! You’re twenty-three! At least you’re not as miserable as I am at the age, but I thought it would be nice if I could share this wonderful moment with you. I tried knitting this sweater myself with one of the patients, but he ended up doing the other half of it because I was too awful at tying the loose yarn together. If I challenged myself to finish this all on my own, I think I wouldn’t even make it until Chuseok. You can clearly tell which side I did, because it’s the bad one. God, there really isn’t a single thing I’m good at.

Bye. 

You were now twenty-three, and the trees were bare, crestfallen with its naked branches. Nothing in your life had changed, and it was the same routine that you had managed since Eunseok got admitted to Ujeong Inn. You woke up early to make yourself some tea and read the morning paper, then prepared to go to your lectures, resumed your shifts at the library once your wrist had completely healed, and then do your laundry on a Sunday, while writing a long letter to Eunseok. Sometimes, you would meet Sungchan to stroll around the river or go to a porn cinema. Jung Records had officially been sold to a large, foreign property management service, and he moved to a two-bedroom apartment near Guryong with his brother, who said he would move out and leave the apartment to himself after he gets married. He invited you for lunch over the phone on Friday after your lecture with Professor Goo, and you could tell that living outside of the store had uplifted him tenfold. 

By the end of the winter term, you wrote to Eunseok again to see if you could come to Ujeong for your break. The letter you received didn’t have his handwriting, and it was penned under a Dr. Park, explaining that he had been in charge of counselling Eunseok since the spring. He told you that Eunseok was having trouble writing, so he would pen the letters while he recovers. He reassured you that this didn’t mean Eunseok had an issue with you personally, and told you not to worry about it. 

Things like these are more of a spiral, not a straight line, Dr. Park had written towards the end of the letter. 

When you finished your last exam, you packed your things in a hiking backpack, laced your snow boots on, and wrapped yourself in a scarf that Eunseok had given you when you were twenty, before walking up to the train station to make your way to Ujeong Inn. The mountain ranges were just as beautiful as you had imagined, with layers of snow adding a picturesque touch that deserved to be stamped onto a postcard. Instead of staying the full week, you opted to cut your stay short, only spending two nights with Eunseok. He was less talkative than he had been when you last visited, and most of the time you spent with him were indulged in an eerie silence, both of you hardly saying a word to each other. Whenever you asked him if he was okay, he would reassure you that he just wanted to watch you from afar. So, you started talking to Dr. Park, who often spoke of seafood in Jeju and missing the taste of ginger pork chops. Sometimes, Eunseok would listen into the conversations you shared with Dr. Park about books or music, silently nodding along and smiling with each word uttered. Once the evening curfew had struck, Dr. Park excused himself out of the lobby and went back into his lodge, leaving you to return to Eunseok’s room. 

Once the two of you were alone, you held Euseok’s face with your hands, feeling his cold skin feel as brittle as glass on your fingertips. He leaned in to kiss you, slowly, but surely asking your tongue for permission. He drew his body close, pressing his erection on your stomach as his lips left trails of kisses on your neck, shoulders, and breasts. His thumb massaged the tip of your nipples, flicking and sucking on them ever so often. Once his warm tongue had lathered itself all over your breasts, you brought your lips to the tip of his penis, circling your tongue up and down as you slid your hands up and down, feeling his erection grow harder. He came all over your mouth, just before you could put his entire length up to your throat. 

You held him close on his bed, telling him that the ghost of his touch had lingered on and kept you going for the year that you hadn’t been with him, that the only way you can make yourself cum was if you thought about him. 

“Did you sleep with anybody else?” He asked. 

“No, not at all,” you replied, shaking your head. 

“Here’s something you can remember,” he whispered, gently licking your ears while his hands traveled down to your hips, fingers curled inside you. With each moan through gritted teeth, he pushed his fingers up, drawing his lips to your neck and leaving bite marks up to the top of your breasts. While using his free hand to feel your waist, he continued to pump his fingers, inserting one more until you came. With all the strength you can muster, you hoisted yourself up, going on top of him. Instead, he shook his head and held your waist, carrying you back down to his side. In his arms, the only thing you can hear was his hot breathing in intervals of a mantra to calm him down. 

“I’m graduating soon, and when I do, I’m thinking of going abroad. I don’t know what it is, but I’d like to explore a lot more of what the world has to offer. Nothing’s set in stone yet, though, and I was also thinking of passing the civil service exam and getting a job in the Ministry of Finance. I’ll be moving out of where I currently live for a bigger apartment. How about you come live with me?” 

“I’m so happy that you would ask me to do something like that!” 

“Not that I think there’s anything wrong with this place, but you ought not to stay here for a long time. It’s not the kind of place you live in. It gets harder to leave the longer you stay here.” 

The response you received was Eunseok’s arms slinking away from your waist, facing his back against you. He turned his gaze to the window, watching the white clouds and the snow pile over the forest.

“Take your time and think it over.” You said. “Whatever happens, I’d be graduating in the summer at August. If ever you decide you want to come, you can always join me in Seoul.” 

Eunseok turned back to face you, arms on your waist again to draw you close. He looped your leg over his waist, a frustrated groan escaping under his lips as he grew softer and softer with each attempt to get inside of you. 

“I can’t get hard again, what’s wrong with me?” 

“It’s probably a psychological response. There’s not need to hurry,” you reassured him, slowly caressing his back in soft pats.

“But all my problems are psychological,” he replied, annoyance growing in the form of his furrowed brows.  “What if I never recover? What if I can’t have sex for the rest of my life? Will you keep loving me the same? Will my hands be enough for you? Or will you solve your problems by sleeping with other boys?” 

“I think I have enough restraint.” 

Eunseok got out of bed and slipped a shirt on, then took a pair of boxer briefs out of his closet. You did the same, picking your underwear up from the floor and putting it on again, feeling the wetness transfer into the soft pads of cotton. 

“Alright, then I’ll think about it. You should think about it too.” 

“I will.” 

The two of you left the room to enter the emtpy cafeteria, breaking curfew and sneaking past the janitors while doing so. For the first time in a while, Eunseok talked about the old days—about Jeju, the sea, his girlfriend, and your walks together. Every now and then, he would ponder, asking himself if he used the correct word or phrased his sentences right. The skies had been white the entire time you were there, and before you knew it, your three-day stay had come to an end. 

“I think I can come back before August. Things are gonna get busy when my last semester kicks in, but I’m sure I’ll be alright.” You said, zipping your coat up and giving him a terse kiss on the lips. 

“Goodbye.”

You were now twenty-three, and the eighties had come to an end. It was officially 1990, a year that marked a new decade for all who celebrated it. Somehow, even with the unexciting number in age, you felt yourself rise up from a slump, passing another round of your exams with relative ease. You had to give a presentation for a research proposal that was met with approval from the entirety of the economics department, and you had nothing else to do other than write—this time, not to Eunseok. 

By this time, the political movement had ceased to exist. Times were getting better—at least, that was what the morning papers had forecasted. Stock prices were going up, and the introduction of the computer in your library made it easier to write your research dissertation. You filed a letter of resignation to the Democratic Party of Korea, a body you couldn’t recognize anymore, and you slowly slipped out of a life in politics and activism, solely focusing on acing your end-of-term exams. 

Despite this, there were simmering talks on campus about another large protest planned in late spring, which resulted in at least five people in your department getting expelled from the university. This created a tense, unspoken atmosphere around campus, and you felt the ominous, oppressive air puncture your lungs when you attended your morning lectures. One time, you had been in the crossfire of a fistfight, almost getting your face scarred with a broken, blunt glass bottle. In any case, you tried to spend as little time as possible on campus, burning your research document on a floppy disk to resume your work in the local library instead. 

Once you had finished your exams, you focused your energy on house hunting, which came easy with the income you saved up from your shift at the university library. After two weeks, you made arrangements to move into a cozy, semi-detached unit just around Itaewon. The location was right by two bus stops and a train station, and you were surprised to find such a spacious house available in what otherwise would’ve been a busy area. 

Your landlord was an old couple who only had a strict demand to keep the garden up, but other than that, they didn’t make any demands. Eddy and Mirae helped you with the move, and you received all the small kitchen appliances that you needed from Eddy, who asked around the base for any extra furniture or appliances that the residents didn’t need anymore. While the people in the base considered these appliances as scrap metal, you were more than happy about the fact that they were sturdy and in working condition. The two were off to America the following week, and you said your goodbyes before they drove off. 

After a few days of settling into your new place, you penned a long letter to Eunseok again, describing your new neighborhood, the house that you secured, and how, despite missing your old place, it was a nice change to be situated at one of the urban centers of the city. It felt like an appropriate change to make, especially as you turn the page over from your student days to what felt like the end of a marathon. 

Despite living in Itaewon, my house is tucked away in a cul de sac, covered in oak and pine trees while overlooking the river. It warms my heart to be next to the river again, and I even have a family of strays visiting me for breakfast and dinner, so you wouldn’t have to worry about leaving the cats at Ujeong behind. In the morning, I like to make the effort to catch the newspaper boy in the nick of time and head out into the river, putting my tea in a thermos while looking out at the scenery in front of me. The river at this time is calm and still, and sometimes, one of the cats comes with me, curling up on my lap while I read the business section of the morning paper. I’d bring a can of tuna, and with enough bribery, I’m sure they’ll be my friends.

The commute is a lot easier from here because all the train lines and the bus links lead straight to my university, but I don’t think I’d need to go to campus any longer. I’m even thinking of quitting my job at the library on campus to switch over to the local library. I mean, it’s all I know how to do, really. Sort books out. Either way, if that doesn’t work out, I’ll try to work at a bakery or at one of the cosmopolitan restaurants that are quickly opening up around the downtown core. 

I know I sound a little desperate, but the spring symbolizes rebirth, and I can’t help but feel optimistic that we will be living together here, in our little house, very soon. You could resume your studies in Dongguk, too, because I’ll have enough to support us. If you don’t want to live with me for any reason, I can even help you with house hunting. What matters to me is that we have to be close to each other, preferably on a walk. Of course, the season doesn’t have to be spring. It could be whenever you feel like it. 

Let me know what you think, okay?

I’ll be a bit busy with school as I wrap up my final year, and I aim to graduate before next spring. I’ll also need to search for a new job that pays better because I’ve spent quite a lot on securing this place. Though Eddy and Mirae were kind enough to give me everything I needed, I still had to buy some furniture and upholster my couch. I’ll be free in April or May, and I can’t wait to see you again. What dates work best for you? I’ll see if I can borrow Dr. Park’s computer to do some of my dissertation there. I look forward to your response. 

Over the next few days, you strolled around the neighborhood, visiting bars in your locality and eating out at the cosmopolitan restaurants that were opening around the area. There was an abundance of cafes selling croissants and other French pastries, but you quickly grew bored of the taste and decided to buy a cookbook at the Kyobo nearby to cook more meals at home. You found a standing mirror and a bookshelf for half the price at a furniture shop run by a family of four near the area, all while tending to a family of cats who frequented your garden. One of the kittens had taken a liking to you, so you decided to adopt it, naming it after Kokuma in Ujeong. 

While you were feeding Kokuma one morning, the thought of Sungchan began to occupy your head. You hadn’t spoken to him in a while, and you hadn’t even told him about your new place. The last time you talked to him, you brought up the idea of moving, and he even suggested that the two of you should go look for apartments in the same neighborhood. 

You have recently switched from an answering machine to a large cellphone that you can comfortably hold in your hands. Using the bulky keypad, you typed in Sungchan’s phone number. By the third ring, it wasn’t Sungchan’s voice that answered, but his brother's. You asked if Sungchan was around, and he put you on hold, but he never came to the phone. 

“Sungchan said he’s too angry to talk to you.” His brother explained in a flat voice. 

“Can you just pass him the phone? I can explain,” you insisted.

“He said he doesn’t wanna hear anything.” 

“Can I just tell you what’s going on, then? I hate to involve you in this, but could you just listen and tell him what I said?” 

“Hell no! Do it yourself! What kind of a woman are you to ask me to explain your troubles to him. That’s your responsibility! Just do it yourself, and make sure to do it right.” 

You said a word of thanks to his brother and hung up, placing the phone in its charging dock by the window. Sungchan was right to be angry. You hadn’t said a word to him throughout the entire moving process, and not a single thought of him had entered your head then. The only person you thought of was Eunseok and the hopes of having him return to you in the real world, living in a small, cozy house in Itaewon. 

Allowing yourself to think of how Sungchan must’ve felt and putting yourself in his position suddenly made you feel a pang of pain in your chest. If the situation was reversed, and he had not said a single word to you while thinking of another girl and the prospects of living with her, you would’ve been hurt. Though you wouldn’t consider Sungchan a lover, he was, in a way, someone more than that. You were honest with each other, and the thought of hurting Sungchan struck you with an immense, harrowing grief, and you allowed yourself to sink into your seat, thinking of how terrible you were to him.

Once you got back from the local library, you quickly threw your bag to the side and wrote to Sungchan, telling him your honest feelings. You apologized profusely without elaborating on too much and told him you missed him. 

I really want—no, need—to see you. The sooner, the better. I want to take you here, to my new place. Please respond. 

You posted the letter for an express service with hopes of it arriving in three days time. After a week, you didn’t receive a response. 

The thawing of the last specs of snow came with an odd spring that marked a different sort of beginning than you had hoped for. You mindlessly attended lectures and read journal articles and books in your spare time, returning to the local library with a bag full of floppy disks to resume research for your dissertation. There was no telling when you would ever receive a response from Eunseok asking you to see him at Ujeong, and there was also no telling when you would see Sungchan again. Your afternoons were slowly being booked with a research assistant job under Professor Goo despite your discomfort with the growing chaos and tension in school. You were mostly in his office sorting papers and exams, listlessly grading each student’s papers until the sun had set, allowing you to unwind in a cafe that specialized in Italian desserts. Apart from Professor Goo and the rest of the economics department, you saw no one and talked to no one in particular. You spent every waking Sunday writing to Eunseok. You didn’t pressure him for an answer but used Eunseok more as a diary of your day. You told him about your new position in Professor Goo’s office, how you graded papers throughout the day and brought them home with you, the details of your research dissertation, and about Kokuma. You also told him about the cherry blossoms blooming near the Han River, the landlords who would check on you from time to time with imported sweets from America, the opening of a new supermarket that sold everything you needed in one place, a restaurant serving Thai food, and the meals you would cook at home.

Even then, he never wrote back. 

Whenever you grew tired of the same Billie Holiday or Johnny Cash record that you would play in your room, you bookmarked a paragraph or two and spent some time out in the garden, tending to various flowers that you never knew grew in the country. You would rake up the lawn for any stray leaves, use the garden shears and some gloves to pull out the weeds, water the flowers, and pick some of them to flatten in between a pile of books, then pin the dried flowers on the envelopes that you used to send Eunseok your letters. Though you were still an amateur with horticulture, the landlord’s wife often came out at the same time you did, giving you suggestions on how to tend to the garden. She would lend you her tools and teach you how to properly weed out any parasites in the flower beds. She taught you about the type of fertilizers to buy for what kind of soil, and how to cut bushes in any kind of shape. 

Up until the end of April, the only letter you had received other than your utility and phone bill was an invitation to a class reunion in Jeju—which was the last thing you had wanted to receive. Tearing the invitation up and tossing it in the bin, you then hoisted a tote bag filled with floppy disks to continue writing your dissertation. 

In the next week, you finally received a letter from Ujeong penned under Dr. Park’s name. You had returned from the library late in the evening, and a bottomless pit of dread had pooled into your stomach upon opening the letter, which opened with an apology from Dr. Park.

Eunseok has been struggling, it said, without provocation. I know it must be difficult for you to wait so long, so I’ve decided to write one myself. It has been quite difficult for Eunseok as well, so all I ask is for your understanding. Three weeks ago, he couldn’t bring himself to stand up, and I should’ve seen the signs coming the moment he confided in me about losing the ability to write back to you.

In these past few weeks, we tried our best to accomodate to his needs. As our institution values confidentiality, I will not bore you with the details nor am I supposed to do so, but think of me as a friend. I’m not writing as a doctor, I’m writing as a friend, as my government name, Park Subin. 

Now, I can spare you some details that I feel comfortable sharing with you. I don’t know how familiar you are with the world of psychiatry, but Eunseok’s condition is rather serious. He told me that he would hear voices whenever he even thought of penning you a letter, and these voices only became stronger and stronger, disrupting his capacity to live normally at the Inn. These voices would talk to him, tell him what to write in his letters to you, and would revoke his will to choose his own words to write. I didn’t think too much of it at first because, as I’ve mentioned, mental illness is a cycle, and I had thought that this was a cycle. 

It’s not. His condition kept getting worse and worse, and it’s been difficult being his counselor when he can’t even say a single word to me anymore. He would mumble in tongues and become frustrated at himself that he couldn’t speak. Tells me it’s the voices that are stopping him from speaking, telling him that I’m not a person to be trusted. We tried various exercises, and the only thing he could say to me in absolute coherence was that he needed to be “clean” and “pure” before he returned to you in the “real world.” 

To preface this: we are not an institution or an asylum suitable for his needs. Ujeong is a place delegated to psychiatric patients who bear signs of becoming better. Therapy isn’t working for him anymore, and all I could offer was a referral to a mental asylum at Seoul University’s hospital to work out exactly what he is dealing with. We are what comes after a diagnosis, and it appears that Eunseok hadn’t been properly diagnosed with anything prior to coming here, so he will undergo medical evaluations and treatment at the university hospital. 

I cannot say this enough, but Eunseok wasn’t just a patient to me. He was a friend as well. It pains me to see him suffering, but there is a sliver of hope in me that he will be cured. 

He is doing everything he can, and all I ask is for you to keep writing to him. 

The tears in your eyes stained the already ineligible penmanship that Dr. Park had, assuming he rushed to write to you. It was dated a month prior and posted to your old address. Clouds of pink petals had carried over into your garden, resting with the rest of the flowers in full bloom. A permanent blur had stained your eyesight, making the entirety of the garden dreamlike and fictional. Kokuma had leaped out of the house window and into the garden, balancing on wooden fences before coming back to you to curl by your feet. 

You tried to take everything in, but it was too difficult to register. Simply thinking about the next course of action made your ears ring and your head hurt, and you felt that you had no choice in the matter. 

Despite this, you felt that you simply didn’t have the time to think about it now. 

For the entire afternoon, you were out in the garden, staring at blank spaces on crevices and corners, hiding away in shadows. You hadn’t done anything productive that day, but you were drained. The only signifier of time was the setting sun and the afterglow of your shadow growing larger and larger, looming over the flower beds and wilting some of its leaves. Kokuma had gone off, but you went on staring at a certain spot: the large peach tree just across your garden. Rotten peaches had their juices and guts spilling out onto the neatly trimmed grass, their flesh completely exposed to the curbside. Just then, you thought of Eunseok’s beautiful flesh bursting open in the darkness, bursting with a large seed with all of his guts spilled out in a fine splatter. The core of his body wilted and trembled upon being consumed in decay by the ground above. 

Why is it that nobody picks up fruits that they tend the tree to? Why is it that no matter how beautiful a garden and luscious a peach tree is, the delicious fruit is always neglected to fall to the ground? Why can’t the peach be picked up, tended to and cared for, eaten delectably with cream, and then replanted back to the garden?

Why didn’t you tend to Eunseok?

By the time the skies turned dark, you called for Kokuma and returned to the house, closing the curtains shut, but even then, the sweet smell of fallen peaches lingered in the room. It filled the entire space, making you dizzy with its saccharine nectar—too sweet, in fact, that it turned sour in fermentation. 

You hated spring; hated how sweet the flowers were; hated the endless pain it aroused inside of you; hated it with such an intensity that all you did was stay inside.

On May 1, a letter came from Sungchan. He gave you some coordinates that led to a hallway just outside of Professor Goo’s office, and then told you he was waiting for lunch on the third, which was the end of the spring term. 

Look, I didn’t want to do this, but I miss you. Miss you so much that it hurts me to not write to you. You’re so selfish, you know. This is what you do to me, so please, come see me. 

Despite the letter only being a few sentences, you had to read it again and again to decipher what he was trying to say, but to no avail. Your brain felt swollen and filled with water that it made reading words difficult. Your whole body, in the span of a week, had been pulled out of a state of drowning, and it felt like it was your first time reaching the surface. 

Did you force him to write you a letter? Were you selfish? What did you do to him? You were losing it, and so you tucked the letter in your pocket after folding it three times, getting up from the dining table to do the first set of laundry you’d done in weeks. You took a long, warm bath in the middle of the day, swept the entirety of your place, went out to the supermarket to stock your fridge full, and made a meal using the cookbook that had been collecting dust on your kitchen counter. You fed Kokuma, took a shot of rice wine, and ran thirty laps around the cul de sac. When you returned to wash your face, you peered into every detail of your face, wondering how you let yourself become so emaciated. Your jaw was protruding, the fat in your cheeks had sunken in a hollow depth, and your eyes were red, bursting with eagerness to pop out of your sockets. 

You hardly recognized yourself. 

After running another thirty laps around the Han River, you returned to read Dr. Park’s letter again, running through your options on what you ought to do next. A brief moment of Eureka had struck you, and you finally understood why it took so long for you to read Dr. Park’s letter again. You led yourself to believe that Eunseok could only get better and better, and you hadn’t come up with a scenario about his condition regressing. Eunseok had warned you several times that his condition was deteriorating, telling you it was “far worse than you think,” but you didn’t heed it at all. In your last two visits to see Eunseok, you thought that he was getting better and better and that he was one step closer to coming back to you. You assumed that his only doubt lay in his trepidation about coming out of Ujeong Inn, and in an instant, the walls of the faux understanding you had built around your idea of Eunseok shattered and burned to ashes, leaving not a single spec of dust. 

You have known Eunseok for as long as you could remember, and yet you didn’t understand him at all. 

It didn’t matter if you become strong enough to support Eunseok’s weight alongside yours. It was his matter to deal with, and you finally swallowed that one lump of truth. Hi, you thought, attempting to reach out to Eunseok’s girlfriend. I’m not going to end it. I’ll live, alright. It’s been hard, but I’ll live. Live the life you left behind, because what you did was cruel. You left him like that, did you know? Left him in such a terrible state that he can’t even read or write. Tell you what, I won’t do that. Ever. I’ll never, ever turn my back on him. I love him, and I’ll get stronger and stronger. I can’t be stuck at seventeen like you. I will develop, mature, and grow, no matter how long it takes. I can be twenty-five, thirty, or fifty, and I’ll keep on growing stronger. I’m not who I was then, when it was the three of us at Eunseok’s house in Jeju. I’m twenty-three, and I’m old enough and ready to know that what lies ahead will be more painful than anything I’ve ever felt at seventeen.

“God, what the fuck happened to you! You’re all skin and bones!” 

“Do I look that bad?” 

“I bet fucking that married boyfriend of yours made you shrink up like a raisin. How many rounds did you do, huh?” 

Despite the tangible venom in Sungchan’s voice, you smiled and gently shook your head in confidence. “I haven’t slept with anyone since last year,” 

“That can’t be true! That’s like… a whole year!” 

“You heard me.” 

“How did you lose so much weight, then?” 

“I just grew up, I suppose,” you said with a shrug.

Sungchan leaned closer until the tip of his nose touched yours. The weight of his palms on your shoulder made you feel so brittle, as if you were going to shatter in his arms. 

“You’ve changed.” 

“It’s adulthood, makes you skinny or something,” you joked. 

“Come, let’s eat. I’m hungry.” 

You took Sungchan to the staff room and ordered the lunch special, which consisted of a warm chicken ginseng soup. He did the same, allowing his eyes to explore the caverns of a new territory before taking the seat in front of you. 

“Are you mad at me?” He suddenly asked. 

“For what?” 

“For ignoring you just to get even. Do you think I shouldn’t have done that? I mean, you apologized for it.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t say a word to you at all. I’d get extremely upset too if that happened to me.”

Sungchan hummed, nodding his head while scooping a large portion of rice with his chospticks. 

“My brother gave me hell for it. Told me I was being a child for ignoring you.” 

“But it ended up making you feel better, right?” 

“Right.” 

“Then that’s that.” 

“You’re too forgiving. Even more so than I thought. I guess a year without sex had made you a monk.” 

“Clean and dry as fresh laundry,” you said. 

“So when you were with me—both at the bathtub and my bed—you wanted me so bad, didn’t you?” 

“More or less?” 

“But you didn’t do anything?” 

“You’re the only best friend I’ve got, and I don’t wanna lose you,” you lamented, focusing on shredding some of the chicken thighs in the soup into smaller pieces. 

“Before you went rogue, I decided that I’d believe in you. A hundred percent. I was able to sleep like a log after being determined to do that. I knew I’d be safe and sound so long as you’re here. I did sleep well, didn’t I?” 

“Yeah, you did.” 

“But if you were to say, ‘Hey Sungchan, let’s do it,’ then I probably would’ve done it with you. I’m not trying to seduce or tease you or anything. This is me being completely honest,” 

“I know,” you sighed. 

Sungchan showed you his schedule for the next year, and you skimmed through his calendar while combining rice, soup, and chicken in your mouth. Judging by the look of his timetable, you figured that he opted out of the dissertation route, taking smaller classes and electives instead to gather enough credits to graduate by next spring. You told him you were marking papers for two of his classes, and he asked you to go easy on him. He then told you about his current living arrangements, about how empty it felt to stop running errands for the shop. 

“I finally got used to being alone. My brother finally got a place with his fiance, and I got a neat little apartment just outside of Yonsei, near the Han River. It’s not close to where you used to live, but I can see it from my window. My first night alone, I had to call you, but you didn’t respond. Then, I called my brother and told him I couldn’t do it, that I would buy Jung Records back and live the way I was used to. Nothing seemed real, and I thought that life couldn’t actually be the way I was living—all alone in a new place with nothing familiar. My brother and I were both equally as tense as if everything was about to be turned upside down at any minute.” 

“You’re strong, Sungchan. You and your brother, I’m sure it worked out for the better,” you said, touching his wrists. 

“It’s just that life’s been so cruel to us up until now, but that’s okay. We’re gonna get our lives back after everything that’s been thrown onto us,” Sungchan explained. 

“Of course you are, but tell me, how’s your brother been since then?” 

“Oh, he’s gone mad! It’s like he can get the bad businessman outside of him, and he’s planning to move to the countryside after he gets married! Buy a small property there and open a small, tiny restaurant. He’s been enrolling himself in culinary school, going on dates with his fiance, watching movies, starting hiking, and is just enjoying life.” 

Sungchan moved the conversation to you, and you told him about your cul de sac in Itaewon. Using the back of his calendar, you drew to your best memory what the house and the garden had looked like and then made a small sketch of Kokuma. You told him about the cafes, restaurants, your landlady’s obsession with horticulture, the supermarket, and how difficult it was for you to adjust to changing times. 

“Aren’t you enjoying life?” He asked. 

“Pretty much,” you shrugged.  

“You don’t look like it, though,” he replied. You raised your head from your empty tray to focus on him, eyes pondering in question to what he implied with the statement. 

“It’s spring, and you’re wearing this big ugly thing that your boyfriend made for you,” he elaborated, using his chopsticks to point at your sweater. 

“How did you know?” 

“God, you’re boring. You gave it all away! I was just guessing!” He laughed. “What’s been wrong with you?” 

“I don’t know, I’m just trying to be optimistic these days,” you replied, forcing yourself to look into his eyes earnestly. 

“Life is a box of chocolates,” he said.

“You got that from a book, didn’t you?” 

“Yeah! I’ve been reading a lot more lately, and this book called Forrest Gump was something I just finished. The main character says life is like a box of chocolates because it always surprises you. You never know what’s inside the box, and you can also pick and choose which ones you like and don’t like when you open the box. I always think back on that book and that quote whenever something shitty happens in my life.” 

“That’s your own philosophy!” 

“I could start a school with all I’ve been through, no?” 

As the two of you placed your trays in the disposal area, Professor Goo and another woman you hadn’t recognized entered the staff room’s cafeteria. Sungchan quickly bowed to the lady and began talking to her with enthusiasm, proudly showing her his schedule. From eavesdropping on their conversation, you found out that she was teaching Mandarin. Slowly, their conversation drowned into a tunnel that was shut off into your ears. Ordering a coffee from the counter, you sipped it and gazed out the large glass windows that surrounded the cafeteria. There were a lot of new faces that you hadn’t recognized, and they dressed differently than you do. Out were the days of bulky jackets and loose jeans, and in were women wearing construction pants and spaghetti tops. Apart from fashion, you could tell a freshman from a senior how many books they carried with them. You felt yourself in-between spaces, one right where you were and another in the comfort of Ujeong Inn with Eunseok. You thought about visiting Dongguk just to taste what it would’ve been like for Eunseok to have continued his studies. 

Once Sungchan had wrapped up his conversation with Professor Goo and his companion, the latter told you all meetings and sessions this week were canceled. 

“You deserve a break,” he smiled. “Go and have fun.” 

You left with Sungchan to walk around Yonsei, visiting the charity bookshop, buying each other copies that one suggested to the other, and then bringing that pile together to a cafe that had just opened on the outskirts of the law building. After finishing your coffees and reading a few pages from your pile, Sungchan took you to an arcade, where the two of you played a new game that had been serialized by Nintendo. Then, you wound up by the river, sitting on a bench with Sungchan, who was talking endlessly. Every now and then, your head had caught up to the conversation, but the rest of the afternoon remained foggy. He said he was thirsty at some point, leading you to leave the bench to buy some water. Then, you came back to him, scribbling in his notebook. 

“What are you doing?” You asked, trying to peer over his shoulder. He snapped back and shut his notebook.

“Nothing.” He said, then stretched before packing his things. 

“Well, I have to go. I’m supposed to be meeting my brother in Sangsu.” 

You dropped him off to the train station, then took the bus back to Itaewon. Before you left the station, Sungchan gave you a crumpled piece of paper, instructing you to read it when you get home. You opened it as soon as you sat down on the bus. 

I’m writing this letter to you while you were away buying drinks. I’m not the type of person to write letters, and it’s sure as hell my first time writing a letter about someone sitting right next to me on a park bench, but I’ve grown to realize that you were never much of a talker. You’re always absorbed in books and essays, and the only way to get to you is through words on paper. After all, you hardly listen to anything I say, don’t you?

Did you ever realize how terrible you’ve been to me today? You never noticed my new haircut? I cut it short and styled it in a way that made me appear less disheveled compared to the mullet, and I got to a point where I could curl my bangs to frame my face, but you never even noticed. I spent time trying to pick out the right clothes, and I even used gel to keep my hair in place since it should’ve been the first time you’ve seen me in so long. I wanted to give you a shock, but you didn’t even bat a single eye or notice anything. Isn’t that awful? I bet you can’t even remember what I was wearing today! I’m a man, but men also care about what other people think of them. So, you’re occupied with some deep, dark secret that you never even bothered to tell me. You can spare a second to take a look at me and notice that I’ve changed quite a lot. All you had to say was, “Oh, you changed your hair,” and I would’ve been able to forgive you then and there, but no! 

Do you want the truth? Here it is. I lied about having to see my brother at Sangsu. I was planning to visit your new place, and I even brought a change of clothes in my backpack, along with a toothbrush. God, I’m so stupid! I mean, you never even bothered to invite me to see your new place! You clearly want to be alone, so to hell with it, be alone! 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not as mad as I was when you left me in the dark for a solid three weeks. I’m just sad. You were so nice to me when I was going through it, but now that you’re going through a lot, you’re not giving me any options for me to help you. You’re all locked up in your little world, and whenever I try to knock on the door and come in, you don’t even bother opening it up for me. You just stare into the window, then go back inside. 

Now, I see you coming back with our drinks and some snacks, thinking to myself and hoping you’d trip and fall, but you didn’t. You’re now next to me, cracking open a can of Coke. There was a sense of false hope in me that you would finally notice my new hair, but no. If you had, I would’ve stopped writing, tore the letter in front of you, and said, ‘Hey, fuck it, let’s go to your place and stop by a grocery store. I’ll make you a nice meal.’ But you’re as dense and sensitive as a block of wood. 

Goodbye.

P.S. Don’t talk to me if you ever see me on campus.

You tried to dial Sungchan’s phone number with your cellphone once you reached home, but there was no response. Despite Professor Goo dismissing you of any work, you rang him in the evening after you made dinner, begging for any sort of extra work you could do for him. Your weekends were now free, and you had been filling yourself shift after shift at the campus library in hopes of keeping yourself busy. Once he told you that there was nothing you could do, you hung up and tried to dial Sungchan again, but he never picked up the phone. 

Each night after returning from campus, you tried to write to Sungchan, but couldn’t seem to muster a single sentence that felt right. So, you switched over to Eunseok, feeling the words flow out of you naturally. 

It’s the end of spring, and I’ve just finished what would sort of be my last academic year. I’m just doing research now, and I miss you so much. I hope to see you and talk to you sometime soon. 

I don’t know if you care or not, but you’re the only person I’ve slept with. I’m not seeing anyone anymore, and I fear that if I sleep with someone else, I’ll lose your touch. It might have been nothing to you, but it’s the reason why I live, breathe, and strive to see another day. I think about it all the time, and it’s what keeps me going. 

You stuffed some dried flowers in the envelope, but a cold, hard lump in your throat stopped you from walking to the post box. Of all the letters you penned to Eunseok, this was the shortest one, but maybe all the prose fell on deaf ears. Maybe all you needed was to be curt, honest, and to the point. You put off sending the letter, poured yourself a glass of soju, then fell asleep on the couch.

After a week, you caught a flash of Sungchan in his soccer jersey, holding up a queue in the main cafeteria with his teammates. It was true; his hair had grown longer, and instead of the choppy mullet, he curled and kept his hair in a voluminous, pristine state, framing the sides of his face with loops of hair that rested still on top of his cheekbones. You tapped his shoulders and asked him to talk to you, causing the rest of his teammates to disperse out of the queue and occupy an empty table by the window. You thought the change in his hair made him look more mature. 

“I need to talk to you,” you repeated. Sungchan rolled his eyes and hoisted his sports bag up his shoulder, ready to leave the queue and join his teammates. 

“I have to meet someone,” he replied, clearing his throat. 

“Just five minutes, please. I won’t take up too much of your time.” 

“I don’t wanna talk to you.”

From the corner of your eyes, you could see his teammates leering at you as if to tell you that you weren’t the only girl wanting a share of his time. 

Today, you filled in for Professor Goo to teach an introductory course into capital markets, glancing at Sungchan, who was sat with a group of his friends at the far end of the lecture hall. Once you had looked back down to the podium to signify the end of class, he was gone. 

What should’ve been the month that summer began quickly turned into a cold, lonely season. Everyone around you looked happy, planning trips to the beach and enjoying each other’s company on the first week of sun. They sat outside the benches, talking, sunbathing by the lawn, holding hands, and playing catch in the common area. 

But you were always alone. Eunseok, Sungchan, and Mirae. All of them were gone. Nobody greeted you in the morning apart from Professor Goo or anyone in the economics department when you had an early tenure, and you even grew to miss Peanut. You spent the entirety of May hopeless and desolate as one can be, with any attempts to speak to Sungchan returned with the beep of your cellphone. Every now and then, the people he was with changed. In some of the seminars you filled in for, he was with his teammates. Sometimes, he was with a girl with long, flowing hair curled to perfection while her eyes sparkled with glitter under her cheeks. 

June was worse than May. In the wet season, you had no choice but to physically and mentally recognize the loneliness that consumed you, with the rain stopping you from tending to the garden, running laps by the river, or even going out to do your groceries. You felt your heart swell up and lurch with a pang of pain, but no waiting seemed to stop it from throbbing even further. In those times, you found yourself writing to Eunseok more, sparing the details of your despair and telling him about the beauty of rain. How the droplets made the flowers in the garden bloom and glow with luscious colors that spread into a spectrum, the soft sound of the rain on your window, a film you had seen on new technology that made it easier to watch things at home, a CD you purchased, or a passage in a book that moved you if you had the time to read anything other than tests, textbooks, essays, or journal articles. In these letters, you would tell him that the life you’ve been living was wonderful. 

You posted several of these letters to both Eunseok and Dr. Park, but nobody responded.

Sungchan picked up after countless attempts to reach him over the phone. 

“Stop calling me. I don’t wanna talk to you right now,” he said flatly. 

“I know, but I don’t want it to end like this. You’re one of the few friends that I have left, and it hurts me to not see you at all. When can I talk to you? Just tell me that much, please.” 

“When I feel like it.”

“How are you?” You asked. 

He hung up. 

In the middle of June, a letter from Dr. Park came with the morning paper. 

Thank you for continuing to write despite the complex situation. Eunseok enjoys your letters as much as I do, and I hope you don’t find it intrusive if I read them. 

I apologize for keeping you waiting for a response. To tell you the truth, Eunseok is doing worse. His aunt came all the way from Jeju three days ago, and we all had a long conversation about Eunseok, concluding that he should be moved to the university hospital for a full psychiatric evaluation and—fingers crossed—treatment. He may come back to Ujeong, depending on how well he does. 

Eunseok tells me he wants to stay and has begged me to cure him, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s getting harder and harder for me to stay as his counselor, and nothing I’ve been trained to do has been received positively. I won’t get into the medical nitty-gritty of it all, but anything I’ve tried just makes him more unstable. I’ve tried to change the method of therapy, asking him to do some thought exercises and meditate, but it serves to make him worse. 

Eunseok’s instability makes it extremely difficult to predict his actions. When he is going through these episodes, he would shut himself in his room. Not a single drop of water in his mouth or a single bit of food tasted. He would lock himself, and there’s nothing we can do other than wait for him to come out, not just for his own safety, but for the safety of our staff. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say. 

I’ve finalized my draft of recommendation to send Eunseok to Seoul National Univeristy’s hospital for a re-evaluation of his psyche. It’s the worst-case scenario, but it’s all that’s left solution-wise. 

By the time you receive this, he will be transferred to the university hospital. There are professionals there trained in America and England who should do just fine, and I’ll write the address to the hospital below. FYI, you cannot visit. I’ve tried to ask, but he is undergoing an intense evaluation, and not even a single family member or next of kin could visit him at this time. They told me they’d keep me updated on his progress. I know it sounds hopeless, but please keep hoping. It’s all we can do. 

This might be a selfish request from me, but once again, think of me as a friend, not a medical professional. Please keep writing to Eunseok, and if it helps you, you can write to me as well. 

I hope for nothing but the best. 

That summer was spent writing. Half of you was split between days at the local library wrapping up your dissertation, and the other half was dedicated to writing letters to Eunseok, Dr. Park, and Sungchan. You wrote in Professor Goo’s office, wrote in your free time on campus between lectures and seminars, wrote at the library, and then wrote at home. It was as if writing was the only way you could keep yourself together, the glue that held your decaying, fractured body. 

The summer and the end of spring were some of the loneliest times I’ve spent, you penned to Sungchan. It’s because I couldn’t see you, and I never knew that I would ever experience a summer so painful as this. I know I’m too late, but I mean it. I like your new hairstyle. It suits you so well that you grow more handsome every time I see you in the seminar. I’ve been learning how to cook more meals, and I’d love to make you dinner sometime soon, so please, come. 

You barely spent time at home, and all you knew were the comforts of the economics department’s staff room, ceaselessly grading papers and spending overtime reading student essays when you didn’t have any shifts at the library. You would then run to the local library near your house to write up more sections of your dissertation, then stay until closing each time to write letters. You entertained Kokuma with a new feather toy you purchased at the supermarket, cooked dinner, tended to the garden, and rented more VCR copies from the rental store. 

It was towards the end of July when Sungchan started talking to you again. He had rushed to the economics department, asking the receptionist to see you. It was an odd sight, especially considering the fact that the two of you were technically classmates, and yet you were at the other end of the reception desk, marking papers and assisting PhD candidates and professors with menial tasks. He excitedly waved his arms out upon seeing you through a thin, sheer window that separated you from the reception, and you told him to wait at the chair. After twenty minutes, you emerged to greet him, hands full of a stack of papers from the summer course intake. 

To your surprise, he said nothing. From the fourth floor of the offices down to the parking lot, he didn’t say a word. He stuffed his pockets in and out of his hands, felt for a lighter, and then lit a stick of Dunhills once you were a few blocks away from campus. He blew a gentle cloud of grey smoke on your face, prompting you to squint at the slight sting in your eyes. 

“Do you like my hairstyle?” He asked. 

“It looks great,” 

“How great? 

“Great enough to burn forests and dry up oceans.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, really.” 

He kept his eyes on you for a while, then held his hand out to you, a slight, expecting smile forming on his lips when you took it and laced your fingers with his. He stubbed the cigarette with his sneakers, then leaned closer to your ears. 

“Come, let’s eat.”

“Where do you wanna go?” 

“This fancy place on the top floor of a big department store in Gangnam.”

“Why there?” 

“Just cause.” 

The bus was empty when the two of you boarded it en route to Gangnam. Once you reached the extravagant, golden gates of the department store, you quickly stuffed the papers inside your bag. It shocked you that the store itself smelled of rain, even though it had completely stopped in the morning. Some people carried their wet umbrellas with them, wrapped in plastic, while the janitor tirelessly mopped the tiled floors clean. He took you to the eighth floor and pressed his face on a crude, waxen display of the menu outside while you occupied yourself by skimming through the actual menu that was placed on a shiny, silver stand just outside the entrance of the restaurant. Both of you ended up ordering the same thing: a dongaesu set with miso soup.  

“I think the last time I had lunch at a department store was when I was a kid,” you said, watching bits of fried pork fly out of his mouth. 

“I like doing things like this. I don’t know. It makes me feel like there’s something special going on in my life. It’s probably because my parents only took me to department stores whenever it was their anniversary or my brother’s birthday.”

“My mother took me to department stores all the time,” you complained, stabbing a small piece of cutlet with a fork. 

“Well aren’t you a lucky one! Didn’t realize they had those in such a small island.” 

“It’s not like I enjoyed going…” 

“But you were lucky enough to have your parents care enough to take you.” 

“I’ve been really lonely these past few months, if I’m being honest with you,” you said out of the blue. 

“I know. I’ve read your letters. Let’s eat. Food’s all I can think about right now.” 

Sungchan ended up eating half of your dongaesu, drank all of your miso soup, and slurped his green tea so loud that some of the wait staff had to come to the table to tell him to keep it down. He then excused himself to go to the smoking area after paying the bill, asking if you wanted to come with him—to which you refused politely. Once he was finished, he took you to the department store’s rooftop, then complained about forgetting his umbrella. You offered yours and propped it up in the hole of an empty table where a parasol should’ve been, watching the abandoned state of the small quasi-amusement park while admiring how small the city looked from above. There was not a single soul on the roof once it had started to rain again, and the rides were covered in blue tarp. It was difficult to imagine a place in Seoul that was so devoid of people, but you supposed that every large city had gaps in its urban cacophony. 

Sungchan tossed a coin into a telescope, and the two of you took turns looking around the city, alternating the task of holding the umbrella onto each other. 

“Come now, talk.” He said. It was your turn to look through the telescope, and you had stopped by Seoul National University’s hospital before the lens faded to black. 

“I’m not trying to make any excuses,” you started. “But I was really depressed. My brain was stuck in a blurry haze. Nothing really registered with me, and that haze only cleared up when I thought about not being able to see you anymore. You were the only one who pushed me to survive, and losing you made all the pain and loneliness come to me all at once,” 

“Did you ever think about how lonely I was these past two months?” Sungchan interrupted, causing you to lose your train of thought. 

“No, because I thought you were angry with me and never wanted to see me again.” 

“How can you be so stupid? Of course, I wanted to see you! I even told you how much I liked you! When I like someone, I really like them! It’s not just some fleeting feeling that comes and goes! Didn’t you ever realize that?” 

“Yes, but—” 

“That’s why I was so mad at you! I wanted to kick you in the ass and beat you up, give you all the hell that I could! I mean, we hadn’t seen each other in what felt like forever, and you were so spaced out thinking about this other man that you didn’t even bother looking at me! How could I not get angry at you? Apart from that, I had a growing realization that maybe it’s best if I spent time away from you for a while, you know, to clear my head.” 

“Clear your head from what?” 

“I’d been going back and forth with her to fill the void you’d left me, but I can never shake the feeling that I enjoyed being with you far more than I enjoyed being with her. Don’t you think that’s weird? I mean, we’ve technically broken up, but it makes things all the more difficult when I think I still like her. She’s a good girl despite being ultra-religious and stuck-up, and she’s the first girl I’ve ever felt serious about.” Sungchan lit a cigarette in between his words despite the rooftop being a non-smoking area. “The problem is, though, that I also know what I have with you is far more special than what I can ever get with her. You just feel right, and I believe in you. I like you—hell, I think it’s something more than that. I really don’t wanna let you go. I was getting so confused that I had to force myself to be with her for a bit, asking her what I should do. She told me to stop seeing you, and that if I do see you, I should never speak to her again.”

“So, what happened?” 

“We never spoke to each other again after that.” 

He paused to inhale his cigarette. You took the umbrella from him, and he crouched lower until his eyes met yours. All you could do was stare at him in a state of shock. 

“It hurts me to say this, but I love you. I love you so much, and I know you love somebody else, so stop giving me that look, or else I’ll cry right here. I’m not expecting anything from you, but the least you can do is hold my hand. It’s been really tough lately, you know.” 

“Sungchan,” you started, then stopped. This pattern went on until you cleared your throat, inhaling some of the smoke that escaped Sungchan’s lips. In a flash, you dropped the umbrella, holding him as tightly as you could. The rain had grown stronger in a downpour, but Sungchan’s face was in full clarity. Holding his face in yours, you leaned over to give him a slow, passionate kiss. The smell of his cigarette had quickly damped down with the strength of the rain, and you were surprised that he could stay so warm despite the chilly weather. 

How long had it been since you’d last held someone in your arms?

“I love you too,” you whispered, leaning your forehead against his. 

“Do you mean it?” 

“Of course, I mean it. From the bottom of my heart. I don’t wanna let you go every again, but I’m stuck.” 

“Is it because of him?” 

You hesitated before nodding. 

“Did you sleep with him?” 

“Twice, but nothing more.” 

“Have you seen him since then?” 

“Twice, but we didn’t do anything.” 

“But doesn’t he love you?” 

“No. It’s really complicated, and sometimes I think he loves me, but it’s been going on for such a long time that I don’t know what’s what anymore. He doesn’t know either. All I know is that it’s starting to feel less and less like love and more like a responsibility, a sort of moral obligation. Like I can’t turn my back on him after all that we’ve been through. At least, that’s how I feel now, even if I know he doesn’t love me back.” 

“Let me tell you this,” Sunghcan started, backing away from you. He didn’t pick up the umbrella and stood out in the rain, drenching his body in its properties until he glowed like a saint. He held his arms up to the sky, screaming in the air with the thunderstorms that blew your umbrella to the other end of the rooftop. 

 “I’m a real, breathing man, alive and well, with blood rushing through my veins. I will hold you in my arms and tell you that I love you. I’m ready to drop everything and do anything you ask me to. I can be a bit odd, but I’m a good boy. I’m earnest, I work hard, and I’m handsome. My dick’s pretty big, I can cook very well, and I have a trust fund from my dad, alongside the leftovers I saved up from selling the shop. If I was in a market, everyone would want me, and if you don’t take me now, I’ll end up going somewhere else.” 

“Sungchan, I need time,” you shouted back in desperation, the howling of the wind obscuring your hearing. “I need time to sort things out and make my decision!” 

“But you love me from the bottom of your heart, right?” 

“Yes, and I mean it!” 

In an instant, you were in Sungchan’s arms again, and he hoisted you up to give you another kiss.

“Alright, I believe you. But when you decide to take me, you take only me. Nobody else. And when you hold me and kiss me, you only think of me and nobody else. Is that clear?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“I don’t care what you do to me, but I don’t want you to hurt me. I’ve already been hurt by everything in my life, and I just wanna be happy.” 

Before he could say another word, you leaned in and kissed him. Kissed him until the rain turned into a raging storm. 

“Hold me tight, please.” 

“I think we should dry ourselves off first!” You joked. 

“I don’t care! I’m already soaked anyway!” 

To hell with the umbrella! The wind had probably blown it off the roof anyway! You held him close, hearing his rapid heartbeat as you buried your face in his chest. The rain soaked you until you felt its downpour seep into your skin, burying itself beneath your scalp. You couldn’t tell if you or Sungchan were crying or if it was just the rain. The papers had stained your bag and Sungchan’s shirt with black and red ink, but the two of you didn’t seem to care. After what felt like infinity, you were finally in someone’s arms again, and that was all that mattered.

Instead of going home, you had walked from Gangnam to Sungchan’s place, hands laced with each other while getting soaked in the rain. By the time he had inserted the keys to his new place, the rain had stopped completely, and a faint rainbow loomed over the entire span of the Han River. Taking a shower together, he offered the same shirt you wore at the shop, dressing himself in a loose-fitted baseball jersey and some shorts. Sitting at his coffee table with a towel on your hair, you waited for him to make you coffee, tracing the outline of his back with your fingers. You asked if you could borrow his cell phone, then quickly phoned Professor Goo to inform him that the downpour had affected the mock exam papers. To your surprise, he didn’t seem to mind and told you not to fret too much about it. 

“Tell me more about yourself,” he said, placing two mugs down before stretching his arm over your shoulders. 

“Like?” You asked, patting your hair dry before leaning on his shoulder. 

“What do you hate?” 

“Not much in particular. I don’t think I hate things,” you said after pondering on an adequate answer. 

“I’m sure you do, so come on, spill it out.” 

“Alright, well, to start things off, I hate lonely and sleepless nights. On the milder end, I don’t particularly like raw fish despite growing up near the sea, and I don’t like customer service. When I shop, I just wanna be left alone.” 

“What else?” 

“That’s all I can think of, really.” 

“My ex hated a lot of things. She hated my mullet, she hated when I wore tank tops because it was too much skin, and she hated it when I smoked or drank or said things that she considered impure or obscene. If there’s anything you don’t like about me, just tell me, and I can fix things.”

“I like you the way you are,” you whispered, burrowing your nose in the crook of his neck. “There’s nothing you can improve on.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, really. I like what you wear, I like what you say, even if sometimes it can be a bit disgusting, and I like how you walk and get drunk to climb trees. Everything.” 

“So you’re telling me I’m okay just the way I am?” 

“I can’t suggest how you can change, so yes, you’re fine the way you are,” you smiled, tickling him in the process. 

He took you to his bedroom and stripped your shirt off, feeling your abdomen with his large hands while kissing your neck. You held him close until you could feel his erection, using one hand to gently rub your thumb on his tip while the other tugged at his hair, deepening the kiss until you could feel his tongue intertwine with yours. You felt a static shock whenever he touched you, electrifying you back to life after a period of stagnation. In the form of his touch, you breathed and sighed as if you had been underwater for too long, desperately clinging onto him while he rubbed his fingers on your clit. His hair tickled your nipples when he slowly went lower and lower, shoving a finger inside your entrance while his lips curled over to leave gentle yet harsh kisses all over your thighs. With one tug, his teeth sank into your flesh, leaving a throbbing, red mark that he licked before moving onto your clit. You bucked your hips to feel his tongue, and he pushed three fingers up and down. Your moans and squelches resonated across the white walls of the room. You felt the vibrations of his groan on your lips, pleading for him to enter you. 

Before he flipped you over the bed and went on top of you, he bit into your clit, soothing the initial pain with the wet pleasure of his tongue. When you offered to suck him off, you felt his soft hair shake against your thighs. 

“I told you I’m a good boy,” he whispered. “And good boys only want what’s best for you.” 

“I don’t care about that,” you grunted, impatient at his every touch. “Please, just please.”

“Please?” 

You closed your thighs on his face and flipped him onto the bed, going on top of him to hastily feel his girth. You were wet enough for him to slide down so easily, and you moved your hips slowly, allowing yourself to feel him inside you. Whenever you moved, his hips rode up, gripping your ass tightly until you could feel his nails dig through your skin. You bounced up and down, a wave of euphoria consuming you as his tip hit deeper and deeper inside. Running your fingers up and down his muscular abdomen, you rested your palms on his chest, feeling the signs of life in his pants and heartbeat that resonated with yours. 

He drew you closer, flipping you over to take charge. The beads of sweat that formed on his forehead trickled down to your breasts, and he hammered his hips onto yours, the sound of skin hitting skin drowned out by the haze that consumed you in the shape of his lips smashed into yours, tongues clashing with the rhythm of his thrusts. 

As you felt yourself reach a climax, you wrapped your legs around his waist, leaving scratches all over his back while he leaned closer, his hot breath tickling your neck. Your legs grew weaker and weaker each time you felt him hit your womb, only ceasing to stop all motions completely when you felt an oozing warmth fill you up. 

“How much do you love me?” He asked breathlessly. 

“Enough to create another planet and suck up the entire universe into a black hole,” you replied, feeling his weight drop onto you. 

“Come here.” 

“I’m already here, dumbass.” 

After he had gone to the bathroom to get tissues, the two of you were buried under the covers, legs entangled in a mess. The rain had resumed, with soft splatters hitting his window, creating blobs and patterns that morphed into one. 

“Tell me about him,” he demanded, fingers already itching to rub against you. 

“Who?” 

“Your boyfriend.”

Under the covers, he felt around and smiled when he pulled out his fingers, showing you how wet you were. 

“Like I said, I don’t think I can call him that, but sure, what do you wanna know?” 

“Everything.” 

While he gently caressed your lips and massaged your thighs, you began to think of the past. 

“We grew up together in Jeju. I first met him when he was nine at the beach, when he helped me with a wound. Since then, we’ve been friends. We went to school together, woke each other up, and then walked by the beach after school. That was our routine until he had to move to another part of the island. He started dating a girl from his school there, and the three of us would hang out together in his room. We’d play board games, talk, and repeat everything until it was time for me to go home. He and I would frequent the beach still, but his girlfriend died, and after that, things changed a lot. He was going through a rough time and decided to move to Seoul about a year and a half after I did. We lived right next to each other, and we’d often go on walks around the city.” 

“You slept with him, right?” He asked. Instead of slowly entering each finger, he stuck three up your core, aggressively curling them up while he pressed his thumb on your clit. 

“Yeah, on his twenty-first birthday. After that, though, he disappeared without a word. He only left me a bookshelf, but everything else was gone. I kept his place clean for an entire summer and wrote to him. I wrote many letters and only got a reply in the autumn when he told me he was institutionalized. Since then, I’ve visited him when I could. He’s currently in a mountain villa up Gwanaksan, and I thought we were all right, but in the end, he was just too confused. We wrote to each other regularly for a while, but that stopped about four months ago. I haven’t heard from him since, and I don’t know what he’s up to now. When I tried to call the place, they told me he was gone.”

“So he’s dead?” 

By this point, he had gone back to gentler thrusts, using his free hand to flick your nipples. 

“Pretty much. I wrote to his aunt in Jeju, and all I got was an address to his funeral.” 

“God, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” he said, stopping completely. He drew his hands back to your waist, feeling your wetness on his fingertips. 

“It’s alright,” you whimpered, pressing yourself against him to feel how hard he’s become again. 

“Sungchan, how much do you love me?” You asked, cupping his balls in your hands as you slowly licked his navel, then pressing your lips on the tip of his penis to give it a soft kiss. 

“I bet you’re thinking about him now, aren’t you?” He asked, a pang of hurt in his voice. 

“No, I’m not.” 

“Really?” 

“Really.” 

“Because I would really hate that,” he said. You felt him tremble beneath you, and you used your tongue to lick his entire length. 

“I know, and rest assured, I can’t think about anybody else right now,” you replied, looking up at him while he bundled your hair in his hands.

“Don’t hold back. You can come all over my mouth.” 

You bobbed up and down, feeling the tip of his penis touch your throat. You clamped onto every crevice with your lips, using your hands to alternate between fondling his balls and jerking him off. Once he finished, you sucked the tip and swallowed all that you could, tasting the bitterness of his climax in one gulp.

You said goodbye to Sungchan after eating dinner at his place. While waiting for the bus, you tried to fish out some of the book chapters you had scanned at the office, but you didn’t have it in you to form words in your head and gauge their meaning. All you could do was glare at each page, the letters you’ve been reading your whole life a jumbled mess. What would happen to Eunseok? How would things change from now on? Can you even tell him what has just happened? You felt the world pull you on two ends, then sighed deeply at the thought that there was not a single ounce of regret in your heart. You knew, deep down, that if you had the choice to relive the day, it would end the same way. You would be in Sungchan’s arms in the downpour, you would get wet for him without a single thought of Eunseok in your head, and then you would come while he thrust himself deep inside you. There was no doubt about it. You were sure you loved Sungchan, and you were overjoyed when he finally responded to you. If it was the two of you, then it could happen. After all, Sungchan is real. You felt his skin on yours, and the warmth of his temperature was shared with your cold touch. You were a woman with needs, and there was no use fighting back the intense desire that loomed in the air whenever you spent time with Sungchan. You knew it was impossible to stop yourself when he pushed his fingers up inside of you.

You wanted him just as much as he wanted you, and why would you get in the way of that. You love Sungchan, and he loves you back. 

The more you allowed yourself to think about the outcome, the more you accepted the fact that you had known you loved Sungchan for a while. You had just been trying your best to avoid the truth—the truth you’d have to tell Eunseok, especially with his worsening condition. At any point, it was difficult for you to pen how you felt about Sungchan, and as twisted as it might be, you still loved Eunseok. There was a frozen, unmoving component of your heart that was kept stored just for Eunseok and nobody else. 

As soon as you had opened the door to your apartment, you greeted Kokuma and quickly penned a letter to Dr. Park, confessing everything that had transpired today. The rain had stopped again, and your gaze landed on a cluster of tiny frogs that leaped up and down the wet grass. 

I know you had urged for me to write to you as a friend, not a doctor, so here I am, writing to Park Subin, and not Dr. Park. Before you went onto your confession, you tried your best to summarize your relationship with both parties, sparing any details if possible. 

I have known Eunseok since we were children. I’m sure you’re aware of that. I loved him then, and I love him now. But I think my heart has room for another person. Think of it this way: Eunseok is an idea that I kept alive in my head for god knows how long, and Sungchan is a real, breathing man who I can run to with open arms. The love I feel for Eunseok feels like a distant memory, a nostalgic daydream that feels speculative. Sometimes, I can’t even discern between the actual events that transpired in the past vis-a-vis the imaginations I’d feed myself about an idyllic, still period of my life, and it’s something about the latter that makes Eunseok feel like a myth. However, the love I have for Sungchan lives, breathes, and grows. It has a life of its own, with deep roots that continue to dig into the depths of the earth, and tall branches that reach up and up into the sky. 

Sufficed to say, I’m stuck. I feel confused, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t think I can bring myself to tell Eunseok all of these complex feelings I have for him, but the only thing I can promise you is my honesty. I’m not making any excuses for myself, and I do think I have lived as an honest woman. 

You don’t have to respond to me if you don’t want to, but I would appreciate some advice. 

A week later, at the start of August, you received a phone call from Dr. Park.

“Hi, is this a good time?” He asked. 

“Yes.” You replied, holding the cell phone between your shoulders and your neck. “I’ve just returned from campus. Is there anything urgent? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call at all.”

A long sigh echoed from the other end of the line.

“I’ve posted a letter in response to yours, which should arrive in three days. There’s been a delay because of the weather, but it should be there. In the meantime, I’m calling to tell you that Eunseok passed away.” 

You dropped the cell phone and poured a glass of rice wine, forcing yourself to succumb to a deep, impenetrable sleep.

The details of Eunseok’s death had been neatly written in the lines of loose leaf paper in Dr. Park’s messy penmanship. He assured you that it wasn’t your fault, or anybody’s and that you should never blame yourself for what happened to him. You didn’t write back to him, not out of your own volition, but you simply had no idea what to say in return. 

What good would it do? He was gone.

You returned to Jeju for a funeral with the Song family and a few people in the neighborhood, then returned to Seoul. You broke your lease with the landlord, asking the couple to rent it out in its current state. You phoned Professor Goo to request a study leave, and though you could sense the annoyance in his hoarse voice over the phone, he gave in, stamping and sealing your request for approval to the Dean. To Sungchan, you penned him a short note saying that you were stuck in his locker at the stadium. 

I’m sorry. I need time alone. I’ll tell you everything when I’m ready, but for now, please wait for me. I promise you that I’ll come back. You spent the next week sitting idly in your room, plugging VCR after VCR while tending to Kokuma. After you had finalized what clothes and toiletries to pack in your backpack, you dropped Kokuma off to an adoption center and then took the first overnight train to Busan. After picking up a ferry to Fukuoka, you made your way up the mainland, trekking up to Hokkaido, where you took a small carrier to Vladivostok. 

Time was split between day and night, and you refused to look at a calendar. You could remember the sounds of the languages you’d hear in hostels and eateries, but the names of each village, town, or city you had visited were lost in your head, splintered in fragmented syllables that were impossible to piece out. You can remember the order of where you traveled and the countries that you entered, but the details were murky at best and absent at worst. When you were running low on money, you worked temporary jobs that didn’t require a contract: you cleaned floors, became a nanny, and helped farmers with their yield in rural areas. Though some were kind enough to offer you a place to stay, your main sleeping quarters were in parking lots and parks, where you laid out a sleeping back and used your backpack as a pillow. You washed your clothes using hand soap and would often leave them to dry by hanging them in branches, negligent of the dirt that would accumulate if your clothes fell to the ground due to a gust of wind. When you entered Russia, you were given a warm coat and some snow boots by a small farming family of seven, where you stayed for as long as you liked, drinking vodka out of a bottle every evening to numb yourself back to sleep. 

There was no end in mind, and you simply moved from town to town, entering Mongolia through land and then going into China. The world was so vast, yet everything felt cramped and narrow. 

Inserting several coins in a phone box by the police station, you rang Sungchan to hear his voice. 

“Professor Goo keeps asking me where you are,” he chimed. “You have a dissertation to finish, and you know damn well that you can’t graduate unless you complete it. It’s been a semester already, and you should be lucky that you’re all set, credit-wise. I got my timetable for my final term, and then I’m set to graduate in the spring. Where the hell are you? Hello?” 

The line kept cutting, but you remained silent, wrapping yourself in the worn coat the farmers had given you. 

“Don’t you realize that you’ve not been here, on this Earth, for an entire month now? Where did you go?”

“Sorry, Sungchan, I just don’t think I can return to Seoul yet.”

“Seriously, that’s all you’re gonna tell me?” 

“I can’t really say anything at this point,” you sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Sungchan hung up without a word. 

You lurched back in disgust when you saw your reflection through a car window. You looked horrible. Your eyes were hollowed out, sinking deep into your lids, and your skin was discolored with a blue, purple, and yellow mixture. There were unrecognizable cuts and bruises all over your body, and your spine had protruded out of your back, poking in swollen hues of red. 

You couldn’t tell if you were dreaming, but the sea by the coast of China looked just like home—back in Jeju, with a young Eunseok tending to your wounds. You tried to strike a match and light a fire, but you gave up after the waves kept blowing the pile of wood you had collected. Whenever you heard a wave crash onto the shore, you thought of Eunseok and how he was gone. He was not at Jeju at nine; he was not on the other side of the island at seventeen; he was not in Seoul at twenty; and he is not in this world at twenty-three. 

It was difficult to believe that he was gone when he had been a part of your life for as long as you could remember. Even though you had seen his bones and ashes scooped into an urn with your eyes, a part of you was convinced it was a farce. If he was gone, why could you still picture every detail of Eunseok in total clarity? See his calm, gentle face in the spring breeze, walking ahead of you in Seoul? It seemed as if the more you thought about him, the more vivid your memories with him became. You brought everything back to life, feeling his tiny, nimble fingers flimsily place a plaster on your wound. Felt the sound of his shoes pace forward with the sound of cars passing through your ears, hear his soft murmurs under his breath when he was lost in thought, see the swirls of his brown eyes hypnotize you whenever he would look up from a book he was reading.

But no, he wasn’t there. 

He’s gone.

“Where are you?” 

Sungchan’s voice continued to permeate through the chambers of your head, lost in echoes that reminded you of your time in Seoul. You couldn’t remember the last time you were in Seoul, nor could you even tell what day it was today. All you knew was that the office had celebrated your birthday yesterday, with twenty-nine candles to count and not a single one to blow out. You changed your hair, spoke a different language, and lived a different life from the one you had forced yourself to abandon. Yet, you find yourself attempting to answer this simple question from the moment you wake up to watch the news on television through the end of the day when you kick your heels off the entrance and drink a glass of wine to read some articles about the performance of the stock market before going to sleep.

Time had lapsed in missing gaps that embedded visible, tangible holes in your memory, and no matter how hard you tried to recall everything, the only things you could see were disfigured faces, shapes and blobs, and fragmented pieces of a life that felt so far away. 

You continue to write to Dr. Park, who had moved to Atlanta from his post at Ujeong Inn to practice as a full-time therapist. You even started to write to Professor Goo, whose wife had phoned you the other week to tell you that he had peacefully died in his sleep, dreaming of tests, scores, and a life that could’ve been had he not dedicated his entire life to a field that would soon forget his name.  

Through these letters, you would attempt to fill the holes in your memory, but to no avail. The words and scripts would jumble together, and it was getting harder and harder for you to decode a part of your life that you had lived subconsciously. 

The details of your return to Seoul and immigration to America were difficult to recall, especially with time. Even in the present, when you had woken up from a deep, deep slumber, it was difficult to discern what was real or not. Sometimes, when you closed your eyes, you could see Eunseok poking his head through your hospital door, then sitting by your bed to tell you that everything was going to be okay. 

Death was death. Eunseok was Eunseok, and Eunseok is dead. Has been for a while, but it shouldn’t bother you when he was right there, caressing your cheek while the waves of the ocean off the China Sea whistled like the jittery rattles of your chest. 

You received news that Professor Goo had exempted you from the dissertation, giving you a pass even though you hadn’t finished it or recovered enough to deliver your thesis defense. Your diploma was mailed to the hospital, and you took the first flight back to Jeju, with everything becoming a foggy haze of mist that evaporated into the sky. 

It took a flight to New York to finally phone Sungchan, but every time you heard the phone ring, a wave of tears struck you, and you would put the phone back into the receiver. The airport staff had asked if you needed help operating the phone, and you turned away to kneel and keel over, chest heaving and throbbing in pain as you let all the tears flow into your eyes. 

“Where are you?” 

I’m in America now, you wanted to say but kept silent after every single attempt at phoning him. He usually picked up after a single ring, never failing to miss your calls. Somehow, when you leaned over to the glass reflection of the phone booth, a window to Seoul emerged, where you saw Sungchan sitting on the couch with the plastic end of a cellphone in hand, idly waiting while listlessly watching the window until the phone rang. 

“Where are you?” 

I don’t know, but I have a lot to say to you. A million, even a billion, things I want to say, but I don't know where to start. How do I even start? Where should I begin? I want to see you again, will you come to America and start a life with me?

Again and again, you called for Sungchan’s name, but the details of the airport and the people walking to and fro converged in a singularity, a void that sucked you in until all you could see was Sungchan’s back turned against you, slowly walking away until there was nothing. 

“Where are you?”

Eddy’s funeral. He was killed in action in Afghanistan, shot by the Taliban. You saw footage of him on the news in between mourning services for the victims of 9/11. Frames of his face, along with soldiers who had fought, were plastered in newspapers, but all you could see was Sungchan. You called out for him and reached into the void for his hand, only to know you had a missed call in your receiver.

A voicemail that repeated the words “where are you” stuck in a loop.

FIN.

post mortem: I'M SORRY IF THE ENDING WAS UNSATISFYING BUT I LITERALLY CAN'T PICTURE A HAPPY ENDING FOR THE THREE. by the time i finish writing this, it would have been eight months since i first posted never meant, and i think a week or two? since i posted mine to miss. i've ngl been putting this off and even thought of abandoning this blog altogether, but i figured i needed to finish this series at the very least. i have a really bad habit of starting things and not finishing them, so in a sense, this is a big accomplishment for me, finishing off a fic that i've been putting off for eight months now. i know that a lot of you might find this ending a) open ended and b) unsatisfactory, but that's fine. once this has been posted, i have no control of what you guys think, and i don't really intend to elaborate on my thoughts as to why things had to be this way between the three. this much i hope you can understand. i have a way of thinking, where every story or word that comes out doesn't belong to me anymore, and in a sense, this work is now yours. think about it the way you want to. that's so cheesy lmao anyway this is getting long THANK YOU FOR READING MUAH MUAH KISSES I WILL TRY TO WRITE MORE I PROMISE!

[dearestjake]

never meant | song eunseok

series masterlist | part one (this fic!) | part two | part three

pairing: eunseok x fem!reader

plot: childhood best friends can have its misgivings. for you, it was the fact that you were head over heels for eunseok ever since he treated your wound at the beach. the two of you were nine then, but at nineteen, you realized that he would never love you back. now, at twenty nine, you think of the question, never seemingly forgetting that one, childhood summer that sealed your unrequited fate with him.

alternatively, the one where you've been friends with eunseok for so long that you never seem to be an option to him until you move to the city.

wc: 16.5k

genre: melodrama, coming of age, historical fiction, slow burn, bff to unrequited lovers, pining (A LOT OF IT)

warnings: R18+ EXPLICIT SMUT AT A CERTAIN POINT DO NOT READ IF YOU'RE A MINOR OR IF YOU THINK YOU'RE NOT IN THE RIGHT MENTAL HEADSPACE TO READ ABOUT THE FOLLOWING; heavy mentions of depression, anxiety, and mental illness; heavy mentions of death and s*icide; heavy mentions of substance abuse (alcoholism); graphic depictions of sensitive topics such as car accidents, s*icide attempts, and rehab; explicit sex scenes and nudity (unprotected sex PLS WRAP IT BEFORE YOU TAP IT !!!); explicit and somewhat vivid depictions of breakdowns; mentions of weight; political riots and demonstrations as this story is set during the june democratic struggle of 1987; existential dread and LOADS of it lmao; second lead syndrome; mentions of food and water; bad cliffhanger

extra notes: heavily inspired by norwegian wood (haruki murakami), and american football's lp1. please please PLEASE read the warnings before you read and if anything triggers you STOP !! DON'T READ ANY FURTHER !! this is a very... bleak work, as you can see with the pieces of media that inspired it. you are responsible for the content that you consume, and let me reiterate, if you are unsettled by any of the themes depicted throughout this story, you have the freedom to STOP and move on to another story. this is my first rodeo and i am not too sure how well this story will do, but if you liked it thank you so much <3 i don't know if i'm planning to produce more works but i'll definitely cook and publish when i feel like it <3

COPYRIGHT 2024 YURAGIKU. DO NOT STEAL, COPY, OR TRANSLATE.

There was a time in your life when you stopped counting how many summers flew by. Then, there was once a time when you counted your years through the season. Your new year was akin to the smell of salt that seeped through your skin, carrying its weight from the thrashing, white waves into the soft touches from the breeze that caressed you gently, yet ever so coldly. While some people celebrated their birthdays to mark a new year, an anniversary of sorts, or even the first of January, you always marked your calendar with the end of spring. That, to you, was when the year started.

About twenty-three years had gone by, and you could still perfectly recall when the tradition began. Nine years old, with a little boy flimsily applying plaster on the tip of your feed, the redness of the blood trickling on top of the slim, bony surface of his fingers. His dull, black hair swayed gently with the winds, framing the corners of his ears like a tightly strapped helmet. He wore the same school uniform as you, but you never saw him in the classroom or in the playground. He had a reputation for being a gloomy, anti-social kid—one that the children always avoided. Always slouched, brooding, but never without a smile on his face. You shook his hand and said your name with the street that you lived in, he said his name and evoked the latter. Even when you were as young as nine, you always knew not to ask questions where you didn’t see fit.

“Eunseok, Song Eunseok. I hope we can get along.”

The warmth of his little, pale hands soon became commonplace, bearing its permanent texture to the palms of your own childish hands. It took about three months for him to get used to the feeling of having someone’s hands locked inside his, but the tides turned with the seasons. In the fall, he adjusted how his fingers would interlock with yours, often twisting and turning the angles to see which direction was more comfortable for you. Then, when the winter came, he would take his mittens off in cold blizzards and tell you that your hands were warm enough for him despite the sounds of clattering teeth and staccato in his voice. 

“You can let go, you know,” You joked. He would reply with a violent shake of his head, tucking his neck underneath his wool scarf to the point where the only thing you saw was his bright, doe eyes glistening with the winter sky. 

“If I let go, then that means you’ll be gone!”

“No, I won’t! I’m always here, and I’ll always be here, Eunseok-ah!”

Children have a unique perception of the world in which complex emotions are as simple as addition and subtraction. When you were happy, there was no nuance to it; happiness was measured between no and yes. Consequentially, sadness was also at a binary scale, and you were either not sad at all or extremely sad. When it came to Eunseok, though, it seemed as if you were feeling the emotions of an adult at the age of nine. When he held your hand, it wasn’t just happiness that seemed to overwhelm your childish heart. There was an indescribable note of sadness to it as well—just a light tinge enough for you to see and feel at the tips of your fingers. When he would rub his cheeks against yours, you closed your eyes and saw roses appear at the corner of your eyes, a slight tint of red that was visible and palpable. Every word he spoke was muddled with an echo that pounded between the temples of your head, and at some point, you had to slap his face and pinch his arms, asking him if he was a ghost or an angel—perhaps a devil, even. 

“This is why I need to hold your hand! Because if I don’t, then I’ll really disappear and become a ghost, and you don’t want that, do you?”

“But if you were a ghost, would you come back to haunt me?” 

Eunseok always stiffens at this question. Whether he was nine, twelve, or seventeen, it was the exact same response: retreat, look down, and smile. He never gave you an answer to this day. 

“Ma’am, please fasten your seatbelt. We’re landing soon.”

You gave the flight attendant a curt nod, eyes jolting between the seatbelt sign and the navy, loose straps between your waist. You felt the cool, metal buckle under your skin; nothing was ever the same since you left your hometown. The warmth that you always had the privilege of basking under suddenly led to a cold trail, and you weren’t so sure if you could find your way back. 

“This is your captain speaking. We are now approaching Incheon International Airport. The local time is 12:38 noon, and it’s looking quite sunny.”

There was no need to look out the window and see a country that tasted of regret and bitterness. Heaving a sigh, you tightened the strap of your seatbelt, averting your gaze from the bright, summer sun shining above the clouds of Seoul. If you squinted your eyes a little, you were sure that you could see a trace of Eunseok dancing in the sand, hands twirling in the air as he threw his sneakers into the ocean. Perhaps he was a ghost all along, or perhaps not. All you knew now was that no matter what you did, Eunseok would always haunt you. Following, floating, and flailing between the broken fragments of your memories.  A large crash shook the entire plane as its wheels scraped through the concrete of the runway. In the moment, a mere brief second, images of Eunseok scattered around your head like polaroids strewn onto the floor. Whenever you tried to pick them up, they turned into glass and pricked your finger again and again until all you could see was a deep shade of red. You allowed yourself to blink several times, each second evoking a lomographic sequence of passengers getting up to grab their carry-on luggage in droves. A quaint, quiet assembly of strings and violins began to play on the radio after the captain’s message, a tune you easily recognized. It was the end of “My Grandfather’s Clock,” a classic nursery rhyme that Eunseok used to hum, and now, you were back to the briny shores of a small, coastal town, feeling the light breeze on your face and the seagulls that squawked with valor. The end of summer, 1986, freshly eighteen.

The relationship between memory and age was, contrary to popular belief, inversely proportional to each other. When you were living in the moment, you hardly noticed anything different. The beach was the same as it was since you and Eunseok were nine, and it stayed the same at eighteen. The sea still carried the same blue hue that reflected the sun’s rays and warmth straight into your eyes, and the skies always had the same vibrance, which often made things a bit too hard to see. Coastal cities also had a distinct scent. You weren’t so sure how to describe it, but the closest thing you could imagine was caramel. The briny aroma of the waves; the cotton candy machines across the sandy shorelines and the dock; the sunlight’s sweet colors reminiscent of hard candy; the glow of the moonlight basking in the ebbs and flows of white effervescence. Once Eunseok came into the picture, the entirety of the beach suddenly smelt tooth-rottingly sweeter, for there was always a serene and saccharine sense of comfort in Eunseok’s being. 

Of course, all of this came with the effects of memory. At the moment, you were sure that there was no underlying scent of caramel in the beach—that was most likely an association you had with Eunseok’s obsession with having a small bag of toffee and hard candies in his bag for the two of you to share. He never spoke about the candies, he simply ate a piece, swallowed, then unwrapped its colorful packaging, gently handing it over to you in an angelic relay. The first thing on your mind that day weren’t the candies, the scenery, or the smell of the sea—it was a rather selfish thought that often comes to you when you’re of that age, between the brink of the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood. 

To simply put it, you were in love. In love with a man that was outright impossible to be with. 

Now, though, whenever you sit down and think about the end of summer, the tooth-rotting scent of caramel was the first thing that comes back to you. The emptiness of the sand carrying footsteps of all the creatures in its humble grounds, the occasional squalor of seagulls circling atop you and Eunseok’s heads, the slight breeze that seeps under your dress shirt and into your skin, the curvature of the horizon beyond the sea—all of these things come first to you without a blur. Sometimes, the images of a bygone summer was tangible enough to touch and trace with all your fingertips. And yet, no matter how visible the scene always was, you open your eyes and come back to the present. There was nobody there then, and there is certainly nobody here now. Eunseok wasn’t there, and so were you. Perhaps it was also one of memory’s effects to promptly fade into empty nothingness, because Eunseok was no longer in clarity. You couldn’t bring his face, his silhouette, or his image back; it took at least a few tries of concentrated thought to accomplish this task. Starting from the smooth slenderness of his fingers, all of which were cool and warm to the touch; the airiness of his jet black hair calmly swaying with the ebbs and flows of the sea; the luster of his doe eyes resembling black pearls; the visible heavy weight of his navy trench coat and his white wool scarf; his habit of looking down at his feet when he spoke to you in whispered sentences. His face was the last thing that you could picture, but it was always the outline of his side profile. All the memories that you could recall with Eunseok was standing next to him, side by side, his body always obscuring the harsh rays of the sunset. When he turns, he tilts his chin in a way that keeps his body forward, chest contracting before he utters a single word. Then, his bright, pearlescent eyes looks deep into yours, perhaps searching for answers in the questions that he would always ask you. 

Nonetheless, capturing Eunseok’s face inside your head took time, but you eventually got to a workable point. As the years went by, though, you find it more and more challenging to recall Eunseok properly. At eighteen, all you needed was his name written somewhere and you could instantly see all the details, lines, and curves of his face. During university, it took about a minute, but you could still see him in absolute clarity. Now, at twenty nine, the ray of sun in the shores somewhat obscure his face, casting a looming shadow that gets larger and larger as time passes. 

One of the things that make it easier for you to keep his image in your memories was recalling what he talked about first—simply because it was always the same opener, the same flow of conversation, and the same conclusion. Eunseok always spoke of a mysterious, porcelain bathtub in the corner of the end of the shoreline near the lighthouse. You weren’t sure if there was anything of the sort along the beaches, but Eunseok always made things sound too believable. To think about it, there were a lot of things that Eunseok spoke of that was most likely a product of signs and places that only existed inside his head. At nine, it was about a three-legged seagull that he leaves trails of breadcrumbs for in case it got hungry. Even during childhood, you knew that seagulls couldn’t have three legs, but no matter how much time had passed, you can’t think of the sea without any of Eunseok’s imaginative creations spun from the sheer loneliness he harbored. 

About the bathtub: if you could recall correctly, it was a circular, Western one with rusted handles, bearing a crack near its missing legs. It was placed underneath one of the boulders leading up to the lighthouse, sitting and waiting for anyone to use it. A family of tiny crabs would sometimes climb inside the darkness of the bathtub, walking idly around the cracks until it dropped back down into the sand. You could clean it, get inside it, and pretend you were bathing, but there was always a brooding, ominous feeling of drowning in quicksand if you stayed for too long. 

“I heard that the Lee family’s dog once hopped inside and went missing,” Eunseok said listlessly. The thing about the way Eunseok spoke is that he puts as little care as possible in his cadence and vocabulary, but there was always a tinge of sorrow and depth to the way he carried his sentences. No matter how absurd of a conversation he strikes, there’s always a sense of raw thought and wisdom within the layers of his words. 

“I thought Mr. Lee’s dog died of old age?” You asked. Eunseok vehemently shook his head, hurt visible in the shadows cast under his eyes. 

“You don’t believe me again…” 

“I do, trust me, I just don’t think that bathtub made that pooch disappear.”

Eunseok stuffed his hands in his pocket, whistling the same nursery rhyme. “If you fell in that bathtub and disappeared, and I didn’t believe you and told the police you drowned or washed away, would that be fair?” 

You gave him a reassuring smile, hands finding comfort in his arm. “I guess it wouldn’t.”

“I would hate to see you go like that, you know? Disappearing under the sand without a trace…”

“Then how would you like to see me go?” You asked. Eunseok ponders, stopped dead in his tracks, and faces you for the first time, doe eyes piercing through your gaze as he squeezed both your hands in his.

“You’ll be okay so long as I’m right here, right next to you. No matter how lost you are, no matter how hopeless it might be underneath the sands in that bathtub, you’ll be okay so long as I’m here. And as long as we’re together like this, then you won’t have to fall or get caught up in that bathtub,”

“But how do you know that?” You asked. “You always said things can happen at any given moment, did you?” 

“Yeah, but I can feel it.” Eunseok replied, a small, dim glimmer in his gaze. “When I’m with you, hand in hand, just like this, I’m not scared of anything at all. Not scared of the bathtub, of the sea, or even anything sinister lurking behind our shadows. I just know I won’t disappear,”

“So long as we always stick together like this all the time, then you’ll be okay,” You repeated like a mantra. 

He took his hands and brushed your cheeks, a hint of desperation in his eyes and his cold touch. The marmalade tinge of the sunset swirled and danced with the bright brown hues of his irises, peering into you for a long, long time. Then, he lowered his frame and stuck his left cheek next to yours, as if passing his cold warmth to you. 

Eunseok took your hands in his and squeezed them, casting a sad smile on his lips. “I’m really happy, but I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Why?” You asked, trembling as the pang of pain in your chest ached. Longing, feeling, and yearning for him to stay close to you forever. Eunseok stopped again, chest contracting in a deep inhale. This time, he kept his eyes focused on you, leaving his mouth agape as if all the thoughts swarming in his head could not be communicated through speech. 

“I just don’t feel like it’s right,” Eunseok explained. “Because no matter what happens, say, even if we get married or have children, then we will stop watching over each other. When we work, we don’t have time to spend every single second of our lives together unless someone glues us or something. Then, even if we did have all the time and freedom in the world to always be right next to each other, you’ll just get sick of me. Sick of having to take care of me when I’m thirty, forty, all the way into eighty. That wouldn’t solve anything.” 

“But you won’t have to worry about anything,” You replied, doing your best to hide the raspy desperation that articulated your breath. “All things have an end, and when they do, we don’t think about what has happened, but how we move forward from it all. You can’t always speak for certain that I’ll get sick of you, because I won’t. Stop expecting the worst and let loose for a while, won’t you?” 

Eunseok lets go of your hand, eyes still locked into yours. “How can you say something like that?”

His voice faltered, and you knew that you said something wrong. Nonetheless, there was no takes backs, especially with Eunseok. 

“You think I haven’t been told the same thing over and over again? You think I haven’t heard the same piece of advice from everyone I know? Let loose for while… Well, if I did, then I would disappear! I’d fall to pieces, pieces so small that you can’t even see with a microscope. If you can’t understand this, then why did you say you can be with me, watch over me, and take care of me?”

Your mouth was in a thin, flat line. All the words you’d ever known stuck in the trenches of your throat. This was the first time that Eunseok took something back and apologized. His eyes looked towards the waves of the sea, now calming as the sun had completely set. You kicked over a piece of seashell stuck under the sole of your leather oxfords, remembering a much, simpler time of nine. Eunseok kept his hands in his pockets, mouth completely shut. He no longer whispered “The Grandfather Clock” underneath his breath. 

“Do you love me?” Eunseok asked.

“I do.” You replied reassuringly. Eunseok’s head was still facing the night time horizon. 

“Then can you promise me one thing?”

“You can promise me anything. I don’t care if it’s an endless list of promises and favors or just one. I’m always here for you,” To this, Eunseok let out an airy, melancholic chuckle.

“One’s just fine, really.” You nodded, watching him walk on in silence. 

“If it’s too much to ask, then you don’t have to, because the last thing I want is for you to promise me something and not end up doing it. “You know I’d never do that to you, right?” Eunseok smiled again, stopping right in front of you to place your hand in his pocket. 

“Of course I do, but I just want to make sure. It’s a simple one, really—one that doesn’t need too much effort or thought, and something you can do whenever and wherever. I just want you to remember me. You don’t have to give me an offering or create an altar—you don’t even need to take photos or me or write about me. You just need to remember that I existed. Standing next to you, just like this.”

You gave him a bright, beaming smile, and he returned it basked underneath the moonlight. The end of summer palpable through the ripples of the waves, the moonlight swaying in a calm tempo. Eunseok walked on and kept his mouth in a small, flat line. 

“Promise me you’ll never forget me?” 

“Promise.” 

Despite having little to work with as the years went by, Eunseok’s sorrow was formidably infinite, to say the least. It took a while, but now, you began to realize that perhaps Eunseok himself knew that your memories of him will slowly fade, and the more you start to forget about him, the more you begin to understand him.

After that summer, you moved back to the city. You had just turned nineteen, and you were nearing the end of your first semester at university. You were still new to Seoul, and you were completely new to living alone. Luckily, your parents had arranged for a private, off-campus student facility with single rooms at an affordable price. It came with a yearly meal plan and a free communal kitchen to use, thus giving you the option to learn how to cook or stay comfortable with free meals. Regarding rent, your parents offered to pay for some of your expenses. After all, being the first child to enter university was a momentous achievement for your entire family, and your mother had always wanted you to succeed and gain a degree. This was a decision that the two of you had vehemently discussed under your father’s nose, and despite a lot of tension, your father had finally agreed to send you off to the city. 

For the most part, you didn’t care where you lived. All you needed was a body of water around you. It didn’t matter if it was a sea, a river, a lake, or a pond—so long as it wasn’t confined like a pool or a dam, you were content with it. A few minutes from your apartment complex was a large bridge hovering over the Han River, and you spent your nights there whenever you couldn’t sleep. On those nights, you thought of Eunseok and the times you’ve spent with him on the beach. How frail he looked, and how sorrowful he was whenever he would stare out into the sea, pearlescent eyes glimmering with the flicker of the moonlight. 

The time you’ve spent apart from Jeju also made a stark reality dawn upon you; a bitterly painful truth that struck your chest in a perpetual state of anguish. Whenever Eunseok was staring out into the ocean, it was never for you. It was for her. 

You see, Eunseok had been dating the same girl since he was fourteen, when his family moved from your side of the town to a more refined area filled with better schools and bigger houses. He quickly got along with her since they were newcomers in the neighborhood and had attended the same cram school together. She was from an affluent family who attended a private, all-girls school near the biggest church on the island. It was the type of school that exclusively housed the children of those who had vacation homes, mostly city folk who ventured into the coastal areas to escape their busy lives. You didn’t talk to her too much, only doing so whenever you met Eunseok. She was practically living in Eunseok’s room at that point, and she would bring boys from her sister school so you could go on double dates with them. The boys that she picked were always handsome, but they were a bit too stiff. You were also, admittedly, still in love with Eunseok, so it was difficult to go on dates with other boys right in front of him. Additionally, young love shaped how you viewed other boys, making them inferior to Eunseok. No matter how beautiful or charismatic they may have been, they were always second to none. Some of them made you laugh with their jokes, but it got too tiring to do so amidst the pain of seeing Eunseok's smile grow wider than the ones he’d flash at you by the beach. 

In your last year of high school, Eunseok and his then-girlfriend stopped trying to set you up with boys. While the three of you would often hang around in Eunseok’s room, he would still keep the same routine of walking along the beach with you. When you asked why he didn’t bring his girlfriend, he simply shrugged, kept his lips pressed thin, and told you he didn’t know. Back then, you thought she was just too uptight, but it took some time for you to realize that there was more to her relationship with the sea. 

“Something about her father being a sailor during the Korean War,” Eunseok explained, picking his words carefully. There was a deep, concentrated look etched on his face, one that frightened the seagulls into silent immobility. That day, the only creatures on the beach were the two of you—no seagulls, no people, and no crabs. It was just you and Eunseok, treading along the run-down, wooden pier. 

“But he’s still alive, no?” You asked. Eunseok averted his gaze and continued looking out into the sea, a low hum reverberating through the ripples of the shores. 

“He is, but war changes everyone—not just the person who’s seen it, but whoever he comes home to will have the misfortune of seeing the worst parts of the war with him.” 

Maybe Eunseok had gotten along with her so well because his father was also a sailor. The difference between them was that Eunseok’s father never came back to shore. His body was found washed up on the shores of South Vietnam, mangled and ripped in half by rebel soldiers. This all happened when Eunseok was only seven, when the Navy came to his house to deliver his dog tag and a place of burial. His mother had committed suicide the following year, without leaving a note or a rite for Eunseok. The only relative who was willing to take him in was a distant senior relative twice removed. When she died, Eunseok’s aunt decided to take him in and moved him away from the smaller district that the two of you grew up in. While the two of you still made an effort to see each other despite the distance, the task had been getting more challenging once Eunseok began dating his late girlfriend. Though you didn’t mind her presence, half of the reason the two of you didn’t get along was due to having absolutely nothing in common. Whenever you would visit Eunseok and see her in his room, the conversations the two of you had were quick and curt, only ending and beginning depending on whether Eunseok had participated in the talk or not. A part of you also knew that she was aware of your feelings for Eunseok, but you admired how civil she was in receiving you. She was always inviting and spoke softly, remaining respectful while establishing boundaries between your friendship with Eunseok and her relationship with him. 

For a while, it was an odd combination of the three of you, always meeting and talking in Eunseok’s room. There was never an imbalance that worked against the other, and the three of you soon became a cohesive unit that failed to work alone. Whenever you decided not to go to Eunseok’s house, his girlfriend also called off her plans, insisting that things felt different when you weren’t there. Additionally, you stopped strolling through the beach with Eunseok, and he, too, understood why.  

This continued for almost three years, up until you turned eighteen. At this point, you stopped going to the town Eunseok and his girlfriend lived in, opting instead to gear all your focus on your university entrance exams. It was better for you, and you began to believe that it was better for Eunseok, too.

“Why are you leaving?” Eunseok’s voice was indiscernible through the phone.

“I’m tired of this small town, you know?” You replied, trying your best to mask hurt with nonchalance. “My parents really want me to go to a good university, and all of them are in the city. There’s nothing for me to do or look forward to in Jeju, and I just feel like it’s the next best thing.”

Shortly after you told him you had shortlisted three schools in Seoul, he asked to meet you at the beach before you were set to take the college entrance examinations. Because there was a whirling storm that night, you and Eunseok took refuge in one of the cave-like boulders by the end of the pier, hunched down in a position that strained your neck. Eunseok didn’t seem to mind the droplets of rainwater that dampened his coat; he was simply staring at nothing in particular.

“She killed herself,” 

“Oh?”

You didn’t know what to say. Eunseok got up from the boulders and started walking home in the rain. You followed his trail, but the blazing winds made it difficult to see his silhouette. You had a sense that he was wearing thin, but just like how he disappeared off into the storm, you had embarked on a journey to the city.

You found the details of his girlfriend’s suicide through your mother, who was reading the morning papers while eating grilled fish and a bowl of rice. There was an odd calm in the way her lazy eyes skimmed through each line in the newspaper, consistently taking the exact same portion of fish and rice in her mouth. If it were you, you would’ve lost your appetite then and there, putting the paper down to sit and think about why she decided to do what she did, and why do so in such a gruesome way. 

The first time you met Eunseok after her funeral was at a cafe near the cemetery, where the two of you had arranged to meet to gloss over minor details regarding his girlfriend’s death. One of the things that came out of it was a mutual agreement to never speak of it again, locked in a pinky promise without a key in sight. It was a simple, three-minute conversation about his well-being and what he was planning to do with her belongings. After that, you never spoke to him again, moving to the city to begin your first year of university. 

“I just think it’s best for you to leave,” He whispered, leaving his cup of coffee untouched. Mouth agape, you cleared your throat and took slow sips of your beverage, keeping your eyes on the motions of the liquid that traveled from the bitterness in your tongue to the fiery pits of acid in your stomach. Perhaps it was due to the uncomfortable nature of the conversation, but you left the cafe without a single bite of food, feeding your sandwich to the pigeons and seagulls that hawked over your shoulders. 

A year without any contact with Eunseok was difficult, but with a new life in the city, you had more than enough opportunities to forget about Jeju and move on from it all, starting anew in the cramped confines of your dorm. The first roommate you had, a woman you nicknamed “Peanut” because of her dented head, had an odd lisp that made every word she spoke sound like she was biting her tongue. Living with Peanut was relatively easy in the sense that she did all the chores around the house. Something about being immunocompromised and having an irrational fear of dirt and germs played in your favor, but a staunch germaphobe always had more downsides than benefits. For one, whenever you would come home from a night out, she always made sure to spray you down with isopropyl alcohol, then told you to stay in your room for at least an hour until she felt that the air was clear enough for her to breathe. 

“It’s the asthma,” Peanut explained. “Pollution is not good for my lungs, and that includes second-hand smoking.” 

Peanut also had a habit of vacuuming the entirety of the dorm on a three-hour basis—after breakfast, before lunch, and after dinner. Every morning, at around six-thirty, you had the displeasure of relying on the whirring of the vacuum cleaner as your alarm, coupled with the loud stomps from her languid steps that boomed across all the room walls. Whenever she got too close to your door, you had a handy tub of caramel candies to throw at the door, repeating the same violent act until she could hear the ruckus over her cleaning the carpet on high-power mode. 

How she mopped the floors and waxed them daily also left you with no choice but to spend extra on indoor slippers. She would polish the floorboards and mop them twice until she could see her reflection on each wooden component, only abandoning her task when she had to go to class or track and field practice. You didn’t know how she obtained a sports scholarship while being a germaphobe, but you supposed that was why she left her track shoes wrapped between six steamed towels and four plastic bags after using them. 

On the contrary, your other roommate, Mirae, was never home. She didn’t have to deal with Peanut’s antics, and on the off chance that you did catch a glimpse of Mirae, she would give you a lighter she stole from one of the love hotels near campus, asking you to hold on to it in case she loses it at the club. 

“How are you gonna smoke if you don’t bring your own lighter?” You asked. Mirae had a magnetic way of hypnotizing anyone with her laughter—sweet, inviting, and a dash of small-town comfort. Unlike you, she was from the North near Ansan, hailing from a small mountain village where the snow existed. Her parents both work at an old ski resort, which is how she could go to many retreats despite having no income of her own. 

“That’s how you get them, you know?” She cheekily replied, waving her pack of cigarettes until the tip of the box touched your nose. “You ask for a lighter from a cute boy in the smoking room, and then voila! The rest is history!”

Mirae always invited you to go out at night with her, telling you that boys were easy. “You just need to doll yourself up a little, get nice clothes, and get out there! You already have a nice smile, so just use that more! You can even borrow some of my dresses to get someone from your classes!”

One thing you liked about Mirae that Peanut never had was compromise. Every single time you turned down her offer, she would shrug in nonchalance, eagle eyes determined to get you next time. A part of you knew that she also found a futile companion in you, but that didn’t deter her from giving up. In some ways, that was just how you and Mirae got along. Instead of saying “hello” or asking about the weather, Mirae recognized your presence and opened conversations with you through an invitation that you would have expected to turn down. 

Then, in your eighteenth summer, Eunseok suddenly stopped by Seoul, the notification being a phone call directed to you from the dormitory’s lobby. 

“Is this the right address?” He joked. You nodded as if he was right in front of you. 

“Is it?”

“Just making sure,” You could hear him laugh at the other end of the line. 

“You’re calling from the city, aren’t you?” 

“How can you tell?” He asked. The flat timbre of his voice rendered the question a mere rhetoric. You heaved a sigh, twirling the spiraling phone cord around your fingers while balancing the plastic receiver between your shoulders. Mirae had just climbed down the stairs, twinkling eyes latched onto your hunched frame. 

Who is it? She mouthed.

An old friend from home. You replied. Instead of leaving to do whatever Mirae did around sunset, she jogged over to the lobby’s desk, leaning her frame right next to the telephone. 

“I can tell because the line’s clearer,” You explained, holding your hand up to Mirae. She nodded and played with the stack of business cards by the empty reception desk. “Your voice sounds less distant, and there are no static breaks when you don’t talk.” 

Somewhere in the silence, you felt Eunseok slowly nod his head in the rhythm of your cadence, eyes tilting down as he pondered a response. 

“I’m only here for a few days, but if you’re free, could you come meet me? I’m just at a hotel near Ehwa Woman’s University. It should be close.”

Your heart dropped, and you told him you’ll see him as soon as you cut the line. Ehwa was the university his girlfriend had discussed when the three of you would frequent Eunseok’s room. She wasn’t the type of person who dreamed, and it was odd hearing her talk about the future. In a sense, Mirae was the same. She would never speak of her past and only bring it up when necessary, never dwelling on it too much. She often diverted the conversation towards how you were feeling at the moment and if you wanted to go with her to a nightclub or a bar. When you asked Mirae about her dreams or aspirations, she would shrug her shoulders, look at the ceiling of her bunk bed, and come back down with a vague answer. 

“If I dream and it doesn’t happen, that’s just gonna make me feel like shit, so I just let things happen the way they’re meant to.” She would often say without malice. 

Mirae first talked to you about the past after you ended your call with Eunseok. With a person like Mirae, there was never a sense of evil in how she conducted herself, but the disjuncture of her usual attitude gave you an immense, concentrated level of discomfort. 

“He must be special,” 

“Why?” 

Mirae shrugged again, this time with a growing grin on her face. “You never say yes to an invitation.” She patted you on the shoulder and headed to the exit, her miniskirt swaying with her fluid hips. You gave her a small wave before running to the nearest train station. When you came back from your outing with Eunseok, Mirae was gone. The only remnant of her was embodied in a crude, hot pink lighter with the name Hotel Hearts Club traced with glowing rhinestone stickers.

When Eunseok visited you for the first time in the city, you failed to recognize him at first glance. He had lost so much weight since, making his already loose-fitting jeans billow around his legs. His plump cheeks were now slender, accentuating his high cheekbones even further. They almost protruded through his skin, sticking out like two hills in a hollow ground. He wasn’t too bony, nor did he look particularly unhealthy. He just looked a little older, removed from the youthfulness that once made your heart flutter. 

His looks weren’t the only thing that changed about him since. Eunseok was always soft-spoken, words carried through a wispy, low timbre easily blown away by the breeze. You couldn’t tell if it was the distance that changed him, or if what the small details you missed when you were a teenager and in love, but there was a newfound clarity in his voice—something akin to sand turning into glass. Whereas a younger Eunseok by the beaches back in Jeju spoke in a way that jumbled all his words together, the Eunseok that was waiting by the entry gates to Ehwa Women’s University had a mysterious allure underneath the low hums of his voice. When you closed your eyes to shield them from the sun, listening to Eunseok talk the way he did now managed to take you off the ground and transport you into a much more tranquil reality, somewhat akin to the light yet bold colors of a tropical bird’s feather. 

He had suggested that the two of you go for a walk around the city, which happened to be a few stations away from Sinchon. He spoke of a picturesque riverbank lined with Zelkova and cherry blossom trees, right by the ruins of a run-down castle. Though you had always been alone with Eunseok, it was the first time you would walk with him in an unfamiliar place, now as young adults rather than the uniform-clad visage of the past. Despite being the one from the city, Eunseok seemed to lead the way, walking as soon as the crossroads turned green. Instead of looking back at you and matching his pace, he was always two to three steps in front, with you trailing behind, trying your best to keep up with his stride. If it were the way it was in Jeju, you would run to him, hit him in the shoulders for going too fast, then pull his arm until he slowed down, walking side by side with you. Now, you simply allowed the distance to widen, eyes tracing the nape of his neck. 

At certain points of the walk, he would look back at you, saying something forgettable like complimenting the weather or pointing out the lack of road development back home. One ear in, and one ear out. Eunseok didn’t seem to care about your passive, one-word responses. He just took your word as is and continued looking to the front of the walkway once he was done with what he said. Then, whenever he felt like talking, he would quickly look back again.

Eunseok turned left at an intersection that diverted from the usual path to the river. Deep down, you felt that telling him would disrupt his trance. The only time he ever stopped walking was when a clear, visible obstacle was obscuring his way—something like a large tree or a poorly parked car in the middle of the road. He climbed a large, concrete hill in a quiet, residential area lined with older houses made of wood, his shoulders being the only thing your eyes could capture. From there, he continued following the road until he walked into the entrance of a street market. By the time the two of you reached the other side of the Han River, the sun had already set, casting a marmalade glow in the crevices of the river’s calm waters. 

“Do you know where we are?” Eunseok asked. You shook your head, throat dehydrated from an eternity of walking. 

“I think we’re near the cemetery,” You replied. “If you look to your right, there’s a giant temple sticking out above that hiking trail.” 

“Why are we here?”

“I don’t know, I was just following you.? 

Dinner was eaten at one of the stalls near the market. You had two bottles of beer for yourself and a pack of dumplings, while Eunseok had a pot of stew with rice on the side. Upon sitting down on the high chairs of the stall, giving your order out to the waiter, eating, and then getting the bill, no words adorned the air. Even if the people next to you were chewing loudly or having drunken, slurred conversations that echoed across the entire caverns of the market, the silence between the two of you bore a burden on your shoulders. 

“You walked like you knew the city so well,” You joked, once you had finished your dumplings and aligned your chopsticks together. Eunseok chuckled lightly, looking up from his bowl of rice with the plumpness of his cheeks returning through the wad of food inside them. 

“Maybe you thought of where to go and transferred it to me through telepathy or something. I mean, it’s not like I’ve never been to Seoul before too, so I probably had a subconscious image of what things looked like.”

“That’s true,” 

“Sorry to drag you around the entire day, even if I was the one who came here to visit you,” He said, putting his bowl of rice down and turning the portable stove to his stew off. He picked up the ashtray on the table and began feeling its edges. 

“No, it’s alright,” You replied, suppressing a sigh from escaping your lips. “I’m glad we were able to talk. It’s been a while since I last saw you, and it’s nice to know that you’re alright.” 

“I know I don’t have any right to ask you this, but… Do you think I can come by again? To Seoul, I mean. 

“What do you mean?” Eunseok placed the ashtray a bit further away from the portable stove, and you pushed it towards your side of the table. You placed a cigarette between your lips and lit it, careful not to blow any smoke in Eunseok’s direction. 

“I don’t know… I guess I just wanted to make sure you were alright with me asking that question. I’m not saying something about the question itself felt wrong, but I just felt a little too demanding asking so much from you when I didn’t even bother keeping in contact for a year.” 

The walk back to the train station was quiet. You told him you were free every Sunday, promising to ring him if your schedule changed. After taking the train to Ehwa, you dropped him off at his hotel, said goodbye, and decided to take the campus trail back to your dorm. 

In the fall, Eunseok visited Seoul again. This time, he extended his stay to three months, lodged in a communal, private dormitory near your campus. The place was fully furnished, and he didn’t need to worry about food when you offered to share some of your meal plans with him. Now that you were living alone, you had enough space in the lounge for a small couch and a cheap, second-hand television with wonky antennas. It wasn’t much, but it added some life to the otherwise blank, white walls of the apartment. Eunseok began visiting on the second or third week of his stay in Seoul, often staying up past the last train to his dorm. Whenever you had classes, he would tag along, waiting for you inside the library occupied with books from foreign authors that you’d never heard of before. Camus, Heidegger, Hesse, Sartre, and Schopenhauer—all names you couldn’t recall on a whim. 

While Mirae hadn’t been seen on campus since leaving a pink, rhinestone lighter with you, Peanut was always noticeable around campus. She was the only one who wore three layers of everything in the summer, and her bright yellow “safety helmet” could be spotted a mile away, no matter how far away one was. She also wore two surgical masks whenever she would attend classes, even if the flu wasn’t in season. 

Recalling stories of Mirae and Peanut with Eunseok always made him laugh. You weren’t trying to amuse him, and each time you told a little anecdote of your time in the girls’ dorms, you ended up laughing yourself. Seeing Eunseok laugh was also becoming a rare sight these days, so you did everything you could to keep his lips curled up in a smile. 

The Zelkova trees that lined the pathway alongside the Han River to your apartment beamed with the fallen foliage of brown and yellow leaves. It was the start of October, and the skies were clear from the gust of east-moving winds that blew all the clouds away. People who left buildings would walk to the side of the main doors and zip their jackets up, wrapping their scarves around their necks as they kicked the pile of leaves that accumulated near every single trash can. Despite the growing cold, everyone looked warm and happy during the last long days of the year. People still went jogging along the same pathway that you and Eunseok started to frequent. When it was still early in the evening, you could catch a glimpse of the bright fields, watching children play soccer as the sun would set. 

It took only fifteen minutes of walking until you reached the entrance to your apartment building. By that point, Eunseok would fidget with the handle of the library bag he’s had since middle school. The print of his school had completely faded, but the outline of the crest and the motto was still visible under bright, fluorescent lights. 

“How’s it like living alone in the city?” He asked. “Was it better when you shared a room with other people?”

“I’m not too sure, but being alone has been good for me, I think…”

Eunseok always took his shoes off first, then placed his bag on top of the doormat. He stopped at the corner of your living room and watched the glow of the bright, neon lights through your window. 

“Do you think I could do it?”

“What?”

“Live alone in the city,”

“I think it’s a different kind of solitude, and you need the right mindset to do it effectively.” You started, washing your hands in the kitchen sink. “I thought it’d be easier for me, but it’s pretty difficult to do everything independently. Cooking isn’t a problem because I have free meal plans with the rent, but I can’t do cleaning consistently unless I put my mind to it and tell myself I can do it.”

Eunseok nodded along, eyes still peering at your window. He seemed to be looking at the reflection of your living room in the fogged glass, staring into your eyes pensively from where he was standing. It was the first time you’d seen the extent of Eunseok’s black, pearlescent pupils, shining under the radiance of your dim, yellow overhead lamp. 

“Are you thinking of leaving Jeju?” You asked, crossing your arms while leaning against the door to your bedroom. 

“Sorta,” He replied. “I was just wondering what it would be like to live in the city, and—” 

Then, he sighed, catching his breath as he turned away from the window. “Actually, never mind. It’s nothing.”

That was the end of the conversation. Eunseok mustered a small goodbye, caressed your arm, and then picked up his bag as if he had left it on top of the doormat, knowing he was leaving soon. He called you the following weekend to tell you he was due to return to Jeju to finish his semester off. He never told you when he was returning to Seoul, but you assumed it would take a few months to a year for him to come and see you again. 

Now, you couldn’t begin to think about going back to Jeju. You were sure that the flower wreath on the road between your town and Eunseok’s had disappeared by now, but it took a different set of courage to return and confront reality. Between Eunseok’s girlfriend's death and your preparation to study for the college entrance exams, you began to understand what true isolation felt like. Eunseok had completely shut himself inside his house, opting to take night classes instead. You didn’t consider applying to a single university in Jeju, ticking all your options up north in Seoul, Chuncheon, and Gangneung. Your days were spent immersed in textbooks, equations, and nothing more. Passing and leaving Jeju was the only thing on your mind. Now more than ever, it seemed urgent to you then that you would be swallowed by the same, dark void that consumed Eunseok if you stayed in Jeju. You wanted to start anew, not knowing a single soul. 

As time went by, you managed to come to terms with the death of Eunseok’s girlfriend. There was only one thing for you to do the moment you arrived in Seoul: let loose; don’t get too close to people; forget. Forget about the cream-colored walls of Eunseok’s room and his stout, round coffee table where the three of you often had snacks and chatted until the night; about the image of her bent, contorted body sprawled across the main road, stomach, and legs flattened by the weight of a giant cargo truck; about the last walk you had with Eunseok before moving to Seoul. 

At first, it seemed to work, but there was always a lump that formed in your throat that was difficult to swallow. With each month, the lump shrunk in size, making your airflow clearer. It was less and less suffocating to wrap your head around the idea that death wasn’t the opposite of life, but was just a part of life—a continual cycle that repeated itself infinitely. Such a thought might seem a little cliche, but at the time, the cycle was the lump in your throat. Death existed—in Eunseok’s room and in the wheels of the cargo truck—just like a pollutant. It’s there, and it’s irritable, but we continue living and breathing it in. Until then, you had understood death as an otherworldy divinity separated from the earthly comfort of life. The way it worked was on another realm of reality, only crossing ours once it was time to go. This was a simpler way of understanding it, a clean binary that separated life and death in solid lines. If life is here, then death is all the way there. You were here, not there.  

Eunseok’s girlfriend destroyed the binary, crossing the realm of your current reality. From that point onward, it was difficult for you to separate life and death as two different worlds. Death wasn’t separated from life. They were the same thing. 

When death took the life of Eunseok’s girlfriend at seventeen, it took you as well. You lived through your first year of university in the city with a large lump against your throat, struggling to keep your promises of letting loose and forgetting it all. Even when two years had passed since, with you at the age of eighteen now, death was something that you cannot loosen your shoulders for no matter what. It was a serious matter, a paradox that drew infinite circles in your head. Now that you think about it, everything revolves around death. It was finality in itself, but it was also a new beginning. 

Eunseok came back to Seoul sooner than expected after cutting his supposed three-month stay to a mere two weeks. You didn’t know how long he was staying this time, but you knew he went back to the same hostel near your campus. He called you on a Saturday morning, asking if you wanted to meet him. You said yes, said hi to him at the library, and went on your usual path. After stopping somewhere for coffee, the two of you continued your trek along the river, ate dinner at a different store in the same market, and then said goodbye. As usual, Eunseok only talked in vague, disjointed phrases, and he didn’t seem to mind you failing to keep the conversation going. The two of you talked about whatever came to mind—what the two of you ate for breakfast, your daily routines, your school lives. Fragments of two different images that cannot be pieced together. Nothing about the past was mentioned, and the two of you kept walking. Fortunately, unlike Jeju, Seoul was too big, and the two of you could have never walked around the city in a day or two. 

The more Eunseok’s visits to Seoul became frequent, the more the two of you kept walking together by the riverbank almost every weekend. He was always two steps forward, with you following close behind. It reminded you of your adolescence in Jeju, when you always walked side by side with Eunseok along the shoreline. You didn’t know if it was fate or a subconscious routine, but walking always felt natural no matter where you were with Eunseok. Whether it was in Seoul or Jeju, along the sea or next to a river, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered to you then and at the moment was having Eunseok by your side. 

When you asked him why he had so much free time on his hands, he told you that he was a part-time student at a private university in Jeju. He was studying foreign literature and English, which was why he always carried the same, rustic tote bag that he had since the two of you were pre-teens. Sometimes, when the two of you would eat dinner late due to your classes, he would come by your house to cook. It didn’t seem to bother him that the two of you were always together, and he seemed more at peace with your apartment than you ever were. He used your pre-purchased utensils and cookware as if it were his, hands and legs memorizing each space of the kitchen while he traversed around and made meals that tasted better than the meal plans you would get from the building. 

“If the people back home knew how you were living, I’m sure they’d freak out,” Eunseok laughed while tossing some green spring onions and rice on a wok. There was some truth to what he said, being your closest friend since the two of you were nine. Back in Jeju, you were an electric teenage girl who kept up with gossip magazines, painted your nails, and went to the shopping district with girls whom you hadn’t talked to since leaving Jeju. 

“Do you wanna know why I chose this area of Seoul?” You asked. Eunseok shrugged his shoulders, taking a little ramekin of soy sauce to splash around the rice. 

“Is it because nobody from home would bother coming here?” 

“Precisely,” You said with a firm nod. “I’m pretty sure everyone at my state school was expecting all of us to stay together and go to Jeju National or Halla Technical. You know?” 

Little by little, you and Eunseok had rebuilt your relationship back to the way it was—before he moved out of town. Whenever Eunseok would come to Seoul, it was a natural response for him to head straight to your university’s library, waiting for you to finish your classes so the two of you could walk along the riverside together. The empty distance between you and Eunseok had closed back to how it was when you were nine, and despite wanting to forget the past, it was not painful to reconcile with a friend you were in love with. You and Eunseok kept walking around Seoul in the same, meandering way: climbing hills and residential areas, crossing railways, taking sharp turns around parks—walking with no discernible direction in mind. Even under the rain, the two of you continued to walk, only stopping under a random roof or a plastic cover when the winds were too harsh. 

By now, Eunseok had managed to visit you every semester. During the spring, he only stayed for a week, but he wasn’t worried at all. Through his inheritance money, he bought a room right next to yours, moving all the stuff he left in Jeju in the following months through boxed deliveries. He had enough credits to transfer from Jeju all the way to Dongguk, which was a little further from Sinchon. By the start of the summer, he had fully settled into Seoul, living right next to you as the nectar of spring faded into the refreshing fizz of summer. You helped him move the last few of his items, mainly boxes of books he had collected from the library in his town. 

Ironically, it was a little harder to see Eunseok now that the two of you were living in the same city. When he was still in Jeju, there was still a sense of liminality that made seeing him all the more worthwhile. The thought of never seeing Eunseok again added some desperation to your walks with him. Now that he lived right next to you, the convenience of it all made his visits less frequent. His courses in Dongguk required him to show up in class, and he began to live a more fast-paced life compared to the stagnancy you saw during his visits to Seoul. Despite this, he still chose to meet you at your library, often commuting back and forth between his campus and yours to keep up the ritual of walking by the river. 

Now that you no longer lived with Peanut, it took more to make Eunseok laugh. Talking about your time as children didn’t seem to be an option, as the two of you promised never to speak about the past. Coffee every morning at your dining table was conducted in silence; when he sipped, you placed your mug down and vice versa. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Eunseok asked. It was a windy afternoon, and he had just arrived in your university’s library, a few books in his worn-out tote bag. Despite having a library of his own to look at, he always frequented yours, and you weren’t convinced that it was due to a superior collection of sorts. Dongguk was a university known for its elite literature program, while Yonsei always had a political stink to it. There was simply no way Eunseok would ever enjoy reading books, journals, and magazines about current events and the Cold War when he never batted an eye on anything that was on the news. 

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Was there anyone you liked? It could be someone from back home or here in Seoul,” 

The one thing that stopped you from telling Eunseok how you felt all these years was seeing him in a happy relationship with his girlfriend. When she died, the complex vines that curled around your heart deepened, protruding thorns that pierced your chest. It was, admittedly so, incredibly difficult for you to navigate your feelings for Eunseok with precision, but all you knew then was to keep your mouth shut and try to live in peace, even if it all was just a facade. 

“No, not really, but if you count the people I’ve slept around with, then I guess there are several.” 

“What if you don’t count that in? Nothing casual at all, just liking someone’s company or wanting to pursue more with them,” 

You decided to keep your answer terse. 

“Then no.” 

“Have you ever loved someone before?” 

“Never.” 

He didn’t ask you anything after that.

Winter began with pellets of snow landing on your lashes underneath the white sky. Eunseok started holding your hand again, keeping it stuffed inside the thick lining of his navy trench coat pockets. The white swirls of his breath were felt through shivers down your neck, and when a huge gust of wind or a blizzard blew past the two of you, he would take the length of your shoulder and wrap his entire arms around them, slender fingers holding your head next to his faintly beating chest. Even though it made your heart flutter, you knew that none of what he was doing to you meant anything. It was just the same as it was when the two of you were children, innocently holding hands and running together on the shoreline. When you thought of your relationship with Eunseok in that way, it made it easier for you to keep walking, hands comfortably intertwined with Eunseok’s inside the warmth of his pockets. Whenever there was a thin, clear sheet of ice on the pavement, Eunseok would often take you by the waist, carrying you down to the side of the road without any icy layer on top of it. Apart from the crunching of the snow, the soles of you and Eunseok’s boots barely made a single sound save for a long trail of footsteps that began at the foot of the embankment. Whenever you hear the crunching of snow underneath your boots, you can’t look at Eunseok’s face. You felt sorry for him because you weren’t the one he needed to hold. The warmth you exuded when he held you in his arms wasn’t what he needed at all. He needed all of those from someone else, and you couldn’t help but feel a sense of guilt at every touch. 

Eunseok increasingly spoke less as the winter season continued. He started going to school less and stayed in your apartment until sunrise, keeping his mouth shut in deathly silence. With the growing opaqueness of the blue skies, the glimmer and clarity in Eunseok’s eyes slowly disappeared. He would draw himself closer, the tip of your noses almost touching his, just to look into your eyes for no reason, searching for something that could never be found. Sometimes, he would try to hold your cheeks in his palms, touching his forehead to yours as he peered into the swirls of your irises. But instead of saying anything, he would take a step back, walking to your doormat and his tote bag to go back inside his apartment. This always made you feel a strange, insatiable sense of loneliness about Eunseok. 

Soon enough, you turned twenty. Each day, the sun would rise and set, and each morning, you had coffee with a dead girl’s man. There was a part of you that wanted to call things off, forget about Eunseok, and tell him to never see you again, but things have gotten increasingly complicated since he moved to Seoul. You didn’t know what you were doing and what you were going to do with Eunseok, save for keeping up a subconscious routine revived from times of childhood. During your classes, you would sit through three hours of mathematics, the numbers and letters fusing into blank spaces. You made no effort to make friends during lectures and seminars, and you hardly knew anyone else apart from Eunseok. Most of the people in your course thought you were a secret genius who spent your free time researching real numbers or reading about the economy, but there was simply nothing in your heart. You didn’t have any ambition for anything, and you didn’t want to be anything at all. 

On one occasion, you tried to talk about this feeling with Eunseok, thinking he would understand where you were coming from, but you could never find the right words to describe how you felt, as if spending too much of your time with Eunseok made you less verbose than you already were. 

You didn’t read as much as Eunseok did. You didn’t see the point in novels when most things that are written well turned into visual films—stuff that you can see, hear, and feel with all your senses. For that reason, you crossed out every single program that required you to read, putting extra eyes on fiction. Over the years, though, you started to pick up a few books from the library, ones that your economics professors would suggest. Starting with Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, you pivoted to Gunnar Myrdal, Knut Wicksell, and Nicholas Kaldor. To you, the economy's inner workings were never removed from reality, which was why you didn’t see many people in your classes reading economists who wrote books. They learned from John Milton Keynes without questioning the failures of his policy approaches, swallowed Milton Friedman’s rhetoric like an all-encompassing bible, and truly believed in Friederich von Hayek’s pastiche of freedom. 

Oddly enough, your reunion with Mirae happened through meeting her at an underground Marxist lecture on Ernest Mandel. She had transferred from Yonsei to the prestigious Seoul National in their medical program, securing an easy future of guaranteed tenure for herself. Mirae lived in southern Seoul now, and to your surprise, she was a closet Marxist who genuinely cared about the cause. 

“Long time no see, didn’t think you’d be the type to show up to a meeting like this,” Mirae whispered. 

“It’s honestly because I enjoyed Mandel’s essays.” 

“Despite learning orthodox?” 

“Yeah,” you replied. “It’s a different way to look at what people usually take as the default system. Everybody’s too afraid to poke holes in what works well because we haven’t reached a point where we could come up with a better alternative, and any other choice we have is basically a death sentence.” 

In January, you called Mirae a friend instead of a former roommate. However, the more you got to know who Mirae was as a person, the stranger she seemed to be. To be fair, you had met a lot of weird people in your program—from staunch Chicago School fans all the way to Maoists—but you never met someone as strange as Mirae. She had a habit of buying books that she completely disagreed with, reading them, expressing her disappointment in vigor, and then doing the same thing all over again. 

“I like things that challenge me,” She would say. “What’s the point in reading the same shit over and over again, circling and discussing around the same concepts without actually taking in what the other side has to say. I’m not saying I’m a Marxist, but I’m not saying I believe in capitalism the way it looks right now. I’m just saying that if you want to come up with solutions on how to save the world from all evil, then you have to know what you consider evil front to back, memorizing its every move, even the good that’s often difficult to see in them.” 

Nobody back in the dorms knew Mirae was smart or well-read—not that it mattered. Even though she breezed straight into Yonsei before transferring to a much better university, people often saw her as a rich girl who played around. She seemed to be aware of how other girls saw her and continued to live carefree, often humoring the rumors by bringing a different man home every weekend. Much to everyone’s disbelief, Mirae never did anything to them. You and Peanut could vouch for this because she didn’t need to burst inside Mirae’s room to “disinfect” it. 

“If I can’t hear any noise from her room, then that means there are no bodily fluids lying around for me to worry about,” Peanut said with relief, keeping her surgical mask on her mouth whenever she would come in contact with one of Mirae’s men. 

The thing is, Mirae wasn’t from a wealthy family. Despite working for a ski resort in the mountains, the unstable nature of being on the border with North Korea made it outright impossible for her family to make a decent living. So far, she was the first out of her siblings to attend university in Seoul, and she planned to go back to Ansan when she was done, choosing to become a doctor at a hospital near the ski resort. She never had any pocket money with her, and all of the expensive clothes she would have in her closet came from gifts her suitors gave her. The girls treated her with disdain, and the men saw her as an object—and yet, whenever she would ask someone a favor, they would do it with no questions asked. 

Mirae was born pretty but also with a magnetic quality that immediately drew people in. She knew how to stand out from the rest, even transforming her adversaries into reluctant fans who started to dress and talk like her. She would inspire envy and lust everywhere she went a modern Medusa who knew how to hide her snakes. At first, you thought Mirae’s initial liking towards you back at the dorms was due to your rejecting every single invite she would hurl at you. Then, once you kept seeing her at the secret Marxist lectures, it became clear that Mirae liked you for the sole reason of being someone who treated her like a person. There was no ill will, jealousy, or unbridled lust whenever you looked at her—and sure, you may have found her pretty, but Mirae, to you, was always someone who used to be your roommate. That doesn’t negate your intrigue towards her character, which you found more noteworthy than her looks. 

There were times when Mirae confused you, just because she can be extremely kind and borderline cruel in the flash of a second. She was charitable for the wrong reasons and fought for equal labor rights while pushing for fashionable trends that exploited cheap, child labor elsewhere. She was a walking contradiction, both lofty and downright cruel all at once, but if you had to compliment her on one thing, it was her blatant, banal honesty. She was a terrible liar, and she never tried to hide things that embarrassed her. She would tell stories rawly and authentically, without twisting the truth or exaggerating certain aspects of her life. Without her, you would’ve been miserable for a year stuck with Peanut, and in a sense, you have nothing but gratitude towards her, but you promised never to open your heart to her. In that sense, your relationship with Mirae starkly differed from what you had with Eunseok. The first time you saw Peanut hold a large bag of cocaine with tweezers and a full gas mask over her head, you promised yourself that Mirae was someone you couldn’t ever trust. 

In the same winter, you got a part-time job at the campus library. It didn’t pay well, but it helped keep you busy when Eunseok was at his university. Most of the job was sitting at the reception desk and checking people’s library cards, as well as monitoring lost books that had never been returned. It was a win-win, though, because you got to read books, gain access to the backlog of academic journals and essays you might need for your courses, and have a secret spot full of velvet couches behind the staff room all to yourself. That Christmas, you showed Eunseok your hideout in the library, gifting him a copy of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. You placed it inside a small, compact paper bag with festive paper and a cute, red ribbon laced on one of the handles. He gave you a Johnny Cash record and a beige scarf that was a little too long for your frame. 

“I’m sorry, did I get you too many things?” He asked, blushing. “The scarf’s a little bit too big too… God I’m such a terrible person…” 

“It’s okay! The scarf warms me up better when it’s long, trust me,” You replied, twirling around while the scarf wrapped around you like ribbons. Eunseok didn’t go back to Jeju for the holidays, and you stayed in Seoul as usual, only giving your parents a long phone call while doing shifts at the library. There was no real reason for you to go home anymore; Eunseok was in Seoul with you. 

Due to your respective winter breaks, the two of you often spent a lot of time in each other’s apartments. You would go to Eunseok’s kitchen and watch him cook meals for the two of  you, and he would go to yours for your daily morning coffee, bringing a new book every month while you gloss over each headline of the morning paper. While everyone was out for the New Year, Eunseok stayed in your living room, eating tteokguk while watching the countdown on television.

The start of the year was uneventful, to say the least. Several snowstorm alerts caused the entire campus to close down, so you and Eunseok spent more time together. Once spring had arrived, both of you passed your respective courses with enough credits to begin the next year, completing a full cycle of the seasons together in Seoul. Around that time, Eunseok turned twenty-one in the middle of an exam. The weather was perfect, and the cherry blossom trees surrounding the Han River rained a flurry of pink petals dancing with the cool, spring breeze. There was always an odd feeling when you left your teens, but after passing twenty, you assumed that there was nothing to look forward to anymore. “Big thirty” didn’t sound as exciting or appealing as “big twenty,” and Eunseok turning twenty-one didn’t have the same charm that it did compared to the phone call he gave you after turning twenty. Nonetheless, you asked one of your co-workers to take over your shift for that day, going home after a lecture to bake him a cake. Unlike Eunseok, who was incredibly meticulous about cooking and baking, you were sure that you wouldn’t want to come home to a burnt, inedible pile of slop if it were your birthday. As such, you got several boxes of cake mix, stacking them once they were finished with a fine, merengue finish. You also got two bottles of wine and a piece of chocolate that you stuck in the middle of the cake, writing “Happy Birthday Eunseok” with small pieces of candies. 

When Eunseok came home, he knocked on your door instead of entering his apartment. He carried the same tote bag as usual, plopping it by your doormat and removing his shoes on the side. He complained about waiting for about an hour or so at the Yonsei library, and you turned off the lights to light twenty-one candles that couldn’t fit on top of the cake. After singing a crude version of “Happy Birthday,” Eunseok blew the candles without making a wish, opening the two bottles of wine on your dining table. You drank, ate cake, watched the news, and enjoyed a quick, simple dinner that Eunseok made in your kitchen. 

After clearing the dinner table, Eunseok was lying down on top of the couch, patting his belly from the feast while fidgeting with the television’s remote control. He was unusually talkative that night, drinking two more glasses of wine in the span of you finishing one glass. He would go on about the childhood that the two of you shared back in Jeju, his highly dysfunctional family, and his school life after moving away from your side of the island. Of course, you already knew all of this, but there was a different charge to the way he spoke of the past. Each story he would tell lasted twenty to thirty minutes, with Eunseok never missing the smallest details. You were amazed at Eunseok’s memory, but it became rather difficult to keep track of what he was talking about as time went on. There was a weird logic to the episodes of his life, one where the beginning, the end, and the transitions were all contained in the same cyclicality. He would talk about his dead mother, and then all of a sudden, he talked about what he ate for lunch during fourth grade, connecting the shape of the noodle back to the same color of his mother’s noose. At first, you were nodding to his stories, fueling his reminiscence of a bygone era. It soon became impossible to follow what he was saying, and you stopped trying. 

“Where are you going?” He asked. You took the Johnny Cash record that you left on your coffee table and showed the album cover to him. 

“I’m playing a record. I don’t know, I wanna listen to something.” 

The cycle started with Johnny Cash’s Songs of Our Soil and ended with Steely Dan’s Gaucho. Sunset had turned the night sky into a deep, navy blue, a bright, full moon illuminating the large window to your apartment. You turned off the lights, went out to the balcony for a smoke, and watched Eunseok struggle to pour his seventh glass of wine. When you came back, he continued talking about himself. The second smoke break gave you a clear idea of what the true logic behind his scattered stories. 

Eunseok avoided certain things, leaving large, gaping holes in his stories. One of them was obviously his late girlfriend, but there was more to his inconsistencies than her. It amazed you that he could go on and on about the most inane things that happened in his life while consciously determined to avoid certain subjects that felt missing in his tangents. The clock stuck at twelve, and he still talked. He had been talking for almost six hours, ever since he started drinking wine at half past six. 

“I think it’s time for me to go to bed,” You interjected, finding the perfect point to interrupt his story. “I have an early shift at the library tomorrow, and I need to work since my parents aren’t paying my gas and electricity bills anymore.” 

Eunseok’s eyes were dull and lifeless, as if there was nothing that could wake him up from his trance. His mouth trembled as he fell silent, dropping his over-stretched smile down to a straight, thin line. After that, he opened his mouth again, picking up where he left off. At that point, you were done trying and went out for another smoke break with the second bottle of wine. Maybe he just needed to talk it all out, so you stayed out on the balcony for a while, smoking cigarette after cigarette until your ashtray was too full. You tried to tune out Eunseok’s voice but to no avail. The glass windows were too thin to contain his voice in your living room. It was perhaps on your twenty-first cigarette that he stopped talking. The moment you opened the door to your balcony, Eunseok was lying down on the couch, failing to finish his last sentence. The entire room felt the burden of his words hanging in the air without a concluding statement, torn off from his windpipes and into the empty air of your living room. You can tell he was trying to find the words to continue his story, but to no avail. A certain something that he needed to continue had been forcibly removed from him, and you felt like you were the culprit. Your request to go to bed had finally reached him, he took his time to understand it, and broke whatever it was that kept him energized to talk for six hours straight. 

“Sorry Eunseok, but I really need to go to bed, and…” 

His mouth was agape, lips pursed in a grim attempt at saying another word. Nothing came out, though, and he turned his eyes towards yours, completely opaque and faded. Then, a single tear had stained his cheek, running down his chin and splattering across the fabric of your couch. What followed afterward was an avalanche of tears as he got up and bent forward, digging his nails into his knuckles as his stomach lay flat on his thighs. He lurched and cried at the same time, and you couldn’t tell if he was on the verge of vomiting, or if he just had some tears go into his nose. You had never seen anyone cry as intensely as Eunseok did that night, and you immediately dropped your pack of cigarettes, rushing to his side and wrapping the entire circumference of your arms on his wide shoulders. You took him into your arms, cradled him like a child, and felt the tremors of his body. He buried his face under your neck, dampening your shirt with his tears and hot breath. Soon, his fingers began to rustle around your back, searching for something that wasn’t there. 

Using what strength you still had, you carried Eunseok back to the couch, letting him rest on your lap as you played with his soft, black hair. He took you by the waist and held on to you with a desperation that frightened you—one that made his loneliness and sorrow clear as day. As you waited for him to stop crying in that position, he continued to hold you as if you were the last thing he had on Earth. You stroked his hair and the small of his back, keeping his head steady on your chest while he tangled his legs with yours. You waited and waited for him to stop crying, but he never did. 

That night, you slept with Eunseok. Even then, you knew it was the wrong thing to do, but you felt like you were out of options. The way he held you was bordering on an intense, carnal hunger. He touched your waist and traced the small of your back, up and down until he grabbed onto the end of your hips, tension bleeding through the tear-filled woe in his eyes. He made it clear that he wanted you to relieve him of all the things that he’s bottled up, and you complied with his request. In the dimness of your living room, with only the bright, full moon and the city’s neon lights through your window acting as a source of light, you took his shirt off with gentle fragility, touching him in a way that you would handle a delicate, antique porcelain vase. He tugged at your shirt and sucked the nape of your neck, leaving trails of love bites up to the top of your left breast. One by one, he unbuttoned your shirt, tearing your bra off and tossing it on the floor. 

The cool chills of early spring seeped through the cracks of your windows, prompting Eunseok to press himself against you, letting the warmth of his body fuse with yours on a cellular level. You felt like he would break under your fingertips if you made a single mistake, while he bit, sucked, and kissed you wherever the moonlight hit your skin. There were no words uttered between the two of you, and you kissed him, lips slowly softening the tenseness of his while tasting the faint nectar of caramel around his tongue. He held your breasts in his hand as you went on top of him, slowly straddling your crotch on top of his erection. He squeezed each of your breasts with his long, slender fingers. At times, you would yelp in pain, and he would respond with a soft kiss on your temple, using his thumbs to trace the outline of your nipples. He used his free hand to feel the flaps of your vulva, trailing up and down between your clit and your opening before thrusting himself inside you. He went as far as he could, moving slowly while exploring the caverns of your insides. His airy breath tickled your ear, making you roll your hips to calm his anxious thrusts. Instead of scratching his back, you used the pads of your fingers to graze over his shoulder blades, keeping him as close to you as possible while he kissed your nipples, his pearly, glowing eyes never abandoning your face. Your arms tightened around him as you reached your climax, and he held onto you while letting all that was left of him out inside you. His cries were the saddest thing you’ve ever heard, and he pulled himself out, crying relentlessly until he fell asleep in your arms. You took a duvet from your room and draped it carefully over his body, slipping out of his grasp to smoke, watching the clouds obscure the moonlight as the smell of rain overwhelmed your nose. 

Morning came in a sea of thick, grey clouds leaving gentle splatters all over your window. Eunseok was sleeping on the couch, curled up in a ball with his back in front of you. It was difficult to tell if he had actually slept or not, his body stiff like rigor mortis. You tried to shake him, talk him into waking up to go back to his bed next door, but he didn’t move an inch, the sharp hills of his shoulder blades losing all their color. In the end, you lost all hope and got up, made yourself some coffee, skimmed through the daily paper, and jumped back and forth between your room and the lounge. You started to clean up the empty wine glasses, picked up all the record jackets that were strewn across the floor, and used one of the dirty glasses to drink some water from the sink. Then, you tossed some clothes on from your laundry basket. You neck like Eunseok. 

Before you left, you left him a note and a key to your apartment. 

I’ve gone off to the library for work. I’ll be getting back late, but I’d like to talk to you soon. If you need anything, please call the library desk and I’ll see if I can come home early. Happy Birthday, Eunseok. 

Leaving a small, soft kiss on Eunseok’s bare shoulder, you quietly slipped your shoes on and went out the door, careful not to tread on his tote bag by the doormat.

A week had passed, and you hadn’t heard from Eunseok since. His front door was left ajar when you came home, as if he was in a hurry. He wasn’t in his apartment, and upon inspecting his room, all of his clothes and belongings were gone. The windrows and blinds were completely shut, and when you asked your landlord if he had any clue where Eunseok could’ve gone, he said no. 

You went back to your room and, for the first time, took your typewriter out to write a long letter to Eunseok. Envisioning Mirae’s honesty, you gave him a full account of your feelings; all the confusion bottled up within you since you were fourteen. Even at twenty, there were still so many things you didn’t understand, and you knew that it would take a very long time for you to dissect and fully comprehend the way you felt for him. By that time, you didn’t know where you were gonne be—Jeju, Seoul, abroad—making it extremely impossible for you to make any promises in your letter. The only thing that became clear to you was that in your entire lifetime of knowing Eunseok, you knew next to nothing about him at all. But, if he could give you more time to understand him, you will give it your best and come to a point where both of you made sense of it all. Whatever the outcome, you wanted to see him again, having a proper, honest, and thorough talk that could hopefully clear any confusion or misunderstanding between the two of you. When Eunseok’s girlfriend, died the two of you had lost the one person that unlocked your authentic self. In the same way Eunseok didn’t have his girlfriend anymore, you had lost the best friend that you once had. Both of you needed each other more than you could ever know, which was why, in your efforts to return to a simpler time of idle talks by the beach after school, you instead warped your relationship with Eunseok to a complex, irreognizable degree. 

In hindsight, you probably should have done everything you can to stop yourself from sleeping with him, and yet, you still believe that it was all you could’ve done in the situation. The warmth from both of your bodies was irresistably addicting, and the naked closeness you felt with him at that moment was something you had never experienced before. In all your life, you had never felt truly at one with anyone until Eunseok. Which was why you needed him to answer you in any way possible. 

He never answered your letter. 

Since then, everything inside you flipped a certain switch. The hollowness you felt when you hadn’t talked to Eunseok for a year came back tenfold, widening the growing cavities inside your chest. You felt like a slab of European cheese, with its mold and holes growing wider with time. Everything felt like a blur, and you stopped periodically skipping your classes. You submitted all your assignments on time, attended every seminar and spoke at every discussion, and religiously attended the underground Marxist meetings with Mirae. It wasn’t necessarily a sudden passion for your program or a newfound ambition to gain success in your field, but rather, it was the opposite. You found everything boring, and as soon as any lecture, seminar, or work shift ended, you headed straight back home. You didn’t eat lunch anymore, and went back to your meal plans for dinner. You only smoked when you were with Mirae. 

Speaking of Mirae, you attended your first strike with her in April 1987. Tear gas had filled the streets, and you were crouched under a pew, a palatable numbness consuming you as you heard police sirens outside of the Church. You found yourself feeling catharsis in acts of rebellion for the simple reason of caring about nothing. In fact, you wanted this demonstration to be successful, one that hopefully gave you something to look forward to. It would be better to live in a rapidly-changing world than having everything stay the same. 

All of Yonsei was blocked and all of your lectures were suspended. Since you no longer had work at the university library, you began covertly helping the New Korean Democratic Party, using your typewriter to make leaflets, pamphlets, and anything that you could distribute among the masses. Once the local student leader of your campus found out you were in the economics department, he quickly promoted you to head accountant, making you bookkeep all the funds and finances of the party’s branch in Seoul. You were completely new to things that required a lot of words, but you were somewhat satisfied so long as you had something to occupy your thoughts. The pay was better than your previous job, and you worked five to six hour shifts during the weekdays, spending the rest of your weekend in the library once it had opened again. During the night, when you didn’t have any bookkeeping duties, you snuck into a cathedral near the main office, sitting on the pew to pray to whatever god could answer on Eunseok’s behalf. 

In June, the demonstrations were in full swing, and you found yourself at the center of a massive crowd in front of the Seoul Plaza Hotel. Amidst the several injuries you sustained from helping Mirae punch police officers, you drafted another letter to Eunseok in your head, addressing it to his house back in Jeju when you finally had the time to sit down and write it all out. You talked less about yourself and what you were involved with since his disappearance, only telling him how painful it’s been to wait for his response. Then, you went back to your duties at the office, accounting expenses while listening to passionate, eager students talk about democracy. For what felt like an entire month, you were exhausting your entire body in student-let demonstrations, not flinching nor retaliating when you felt a policeman’s baton hit your head. You let your body get accustomed to starving for days whenever police would barricade your hiding spots. You were surprised that you weren’t arrested yet, but life in prison seemed more and more ideal once you realzied how busy you would be as an incarcerated woman. 

One time, secret police had raided your house and apprehended you, seizing all your belongings until you answered all of their questions. How long have you been a member of the New Korean Democratic Party? Do you have sympathies with the communists? Where are you from? What’s your full name? Which university did you go to, and are you in any political society during your time there? Why do you have a Johnny Cash record in your room? What does that mean? What kind of books do you read? What did you study in school? You made up some answers just to get off your back, but the streamline of questions didn’t seem to end. Luckily, you weren’t taken in for further investigation, continuing your lonesome routine of having coffee with the daily paper. In these moments, all you could think about was Eunseok; the curves of his shoulder blades; the shimmer of his skin under the glow of the moonlight; the feeling of his soft hair underneath your fingertips; the sound of his breath against your neck. The more you thought about that night, the hungrier you became, lust taking over your body at an uncontrollable level. You didn’t go to work or attend any rallies after you finished reading the daily paper, staying in your room to remember how his fingers felt like as he explored every little line and crevice of your sex. 

July finally came with Eunseok’s response. A very short letter that took a mere ten minutes to read. 

Hi, sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner. I know how understanding you are, and I just wanted to let you know that it took me a very, very long time to pick up a pen and write a response to you. I have read and re-read both your letters more than ten times now, but it never seemed to prepare me to write at all. Each time I picked the pen up, a wave of pain so overwhelmingly intense washes over me, and I have to start again. 

I’ve decided to take a year off from Dongguk, which is funny since I moved to Seoul thinking escaping Jeju would solve my problems. Yet here I am, back inside my room. I registered it as a leave, but I don’t think I’ll ever come back. The thing is, I never thought about attending university to begin with. I thought it would just be a waste of my time, and no matter how many times I’ve tried, I can’t seem to form the words or pick the right set of sentences to relay this information to you. I was too scared to tell you, somehow. 

Please don’t beat yourself up over this. No matter how different the means may have been, the end was set in stone. I don’t know how to put this in a way that would spare you the least pain possible, and I’m sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear, but I don’t want you to blame yourself for what happened to me. This is something I’ve been needing to work on for a while, all by myself. I guess I’ve been too afraid to recognize my faults, but I’ve harmed you in the process, which means I have to sort this issue out now before hurting you even more. 

After I left Seoul, I came back to Jeju at the behest of my aunt, and she sent me to a doctor for the entire summer. He tells me that there’s a really good facility near Gwanaksan. It’s not really a hospital, but more like a retreat, if you will. Rehabilitation? Something like that. I’ll tell you more about it once I get the chance to write to you again. What I really need, quite frankly, is to untether myself from the world, something more than just moving to Seoul from Jeju. 

You were always there for me ever since I was a child, and I’m extremely grateful for always having you by my side in my life, throughout everything that I’ve been through. Please believe that, even if it seems like a difficult task. I hurt myself. I’ve always done so, and I probably will again. 

For now, I can’t see you. I’m not ready to see you. When I feel like I’m ready, I’ll write to you again. Maybe then, we can truly get to know each other, make up for all the time we’ve lost since we were children. That’s what we need to focus on. 

Goodbye.

post mortem: congratulations !! you made it all the way to the end !! jumpscare but there will be a PART 2 !! THIS TIME WITH SUNGCHAN AS THE LEAD !! ohohoho stay tuned hehehhe

[dearestjake]

mine to miss | jung sungchan, song eunseok

series masterlist | part one | part two (this fic!) | part three

pairing: jung sungchan x fem!reader x song eunseok

plot: you were done with love. you said goodbye to your best friend at his behest, and now, you were a lost soul in a bustling city. your mantra was to divert, avoid, and ignore—and it would've worked well until the end of the year had a spunky, friendly, and absolutely loud-mouthed soccer player barged into your lone seat at a restaurant.

"psst, i need you to pretend you're my date. i don't have any money right now, but i'll pay for all your lunches here from next week onward."

alternatively, the one where the campus hotshot tries his best to make you forget about your best friend back home.

wc: 44.1k

genre: melodrama, coming of age, slow burn, e2l kinda

warnings: R18+ DO NOT READ IF YOU'RE A MINOR OR IF YOU THINK YOU'RE NOT IN THE RIGHT MENTAL HEADSPACE TO READ ABOUT THE FOLLOWING; heavy depictions and mentions of depression, anxiety, and mental illness; heavy discussions of death and s*uicide; heavy depictions of substance abuse (alcohol and party drugs); graphic depictions of anxiety attacks; heavy depictions of rehab and therapy; EXPLICIT SMUT (UNPROTECTED SEX WRAP IT BEFORE YOU TAP IT, public sex, nipple play, oral m receiving), heavy discussions of sex; existential dread; hospital imagery; graphic depictions of mild violence; mentions of food and water; a lot of tension really; political discussions of 80s korea

extra notes: THIS IS PART TWO OF never meant. I REPEAT. PART TWO! PLEASE READ THAT ONE FIRST. heavily inspired by norwegian wood (haruki murakami), and american football's lp2. as always, NEVER SKIP THE WARNINGS PLEASE !! YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT YOU CONSUME AND CAN BACK OUT AT ANY TIME !! she cooked but i don't know if she delivered. anywho, thank you so much for reading mine to miss, and as always, i don't know when my next story will come out but she'll come out when she has to !! most likely a PART THREE because this has gotten a lot longer than i would've linked :////

COPYRIGHT 2024 YURAGIKU. DO NOT STEAL, COPY, OR TRANSLATE.

During the summer holidays, the riot police were everywhere, seizing all buildings and quickly arresting students and professors in quick succession. This was nothing new. Places for the intelligentsia to prosper always had its fair share of dissidents, and they were the most difficult to dismantle in terms of rebellion groups owing to the amount of funding universities get from the government. Even if Yonsei had been known to be a liberal school, there was always the other half of the staunch conservative faculty who may or may not have served in the electoral college. Around the start of September, the dawn of a new semester, this normalcy had died down. There were no more police everywhere you went in Seoul; you didn’t need to go to the office to bookkeep for the New Korean Democratic Party, and work at the campus library became your main priority. To your surprise, everything in the library was untouched. Each book was still confined in its respective shelf, the reception desk was unscathed and pristine, albeit dusty from a lack of use, and nothing on campus was burned. 

Of course, violence didn’t equate to a passionate, successful demonstration, but you were a little confused at the cleanliness of the university past the June struggles. Books were usually a target during riots, often burned in a bonfire by dissidents who disagreed with authoritarianism. Still, when you walked around the politics section of the library, you found everything in place, as if nobody had entered the library at all since the demonstrations began. 

Upon announcing the June 29 declaration, things returned to normal in a snap of a finger. The same people who were the most vocal during the protests sat at the very front of the lecture hall, seen as martyrs or assholes, depending on who you ask. As if nothing had ever happened, they took their notes in silence, never bringing up the core reason for resistance to a professor who openly admitted his support for the Korean Army’s coup in 1961. The sheer hypocrisy of it all left you awestruck, to say the least. It’s not to say you were avidly passionate when participating in the riots, but consistency was the least you expected from the forerunners of the student demonstrations. Even if things had arguably ended and all their demands were met, a military officer was still elected. Shouldn’t they be mad? What was the entire point of calling for a democratic constitutional amendment and fair elections when a complicit military officer, who was a part of the elite that wanted all of South Korea under a dictatorship, won the elections supposedly “fair and square”? When you dared to ask some of the protest leaders, whom you also worked with at the New Korean Democratic Party office and frequently saw in secret Marxist lectures, why they were doing anything about the election of Roh Tae-woo, they shrugged. 

“There’s no foul play as far as we know,” One of them said. “We can’t really scream about paper tigers.” 

What a joke! At that point, they should’ve just told you they were afraid to lose participation marks! To think that they were the same idiots who passionately beat police officers up, closed down the campus, and led a sit-in hunger strike for a week! 

For a while, you faithfully attended lectures, staying quiet when the professor would ask for your name in attendance. Participation marks meant nothing to you anymore, and to a certain extent, university education started to make less sense. You concluded that people only really went to university when their parents could afford it or when it benefitted them. Nobody went to school to pursue knowledge anymore, and it wasn’t like you had the passion or the drive to pioneer a new school of thought. There was nothing you wanted to accomplish in society that required you to drop out of university, so you had no choice but to attend lectures every day, take notes, read when you could, and spend your free time in the library before and after your shift there. Nonchalance made you an extremely diligent student. 

You kept Eunseok’s room clean in his absence. When you had the chance, you asked the landlord to remove his name from the mailbox and the apartment door, telling him that Eunseok was never coming back. You returned from your shifts at the library and your lectures to clear Eunseok’s belongings bit by bit, repackaging them in neat, large boxes that you dragged to your apartment. You began reading through his books despite having a distaste for fiction, spending each morning with a different novel in hand alongside your regular routine of coffee. With the help of the janitor, you moved Eunseok’s prized bookshelf to your apartment, arranging your furniture like Eunseok did when he was still living next to you. Even if you missed him dearly, the only way to keep him in your heart is through the homage of his book collection. You didn’t know why he left it in Seoul when he would most likely need it for his treatment at the mountainous sanitorium, but you digress. Things unfolded the way they did, and now, you were alone again. 

Directly after your shift, the sun began to set, adding a warm vibrance to the fallen Zelkova leaves trailing along the pavement. You decided to eat dinner outside instead of opting for your usual meal plans after Mirae had told you about an excellent Western place that served delicious seafood pasta and salad for a cheap deal. The restaurant was a little challenging because it was strewn across many intersections and alleyways, but the quiet, faint location made you sure you could relax once you got inside. 

Once the waitress took your order, a group of four students came in, taking one of the bigger tables with velvet armchairs on the edge of the restaurant. Two men and two women in their young twenties, all stylish and had an air of money to them. By the time you finished your appetizer, the group was still arguing over what they wanted, only for one to call the waitress to relay the same lunch deal for everybody. 

Your pasta had arrived, and in between picking up a copy of Heidegger’s Being and Time while slowly twirling pasta on your fork, you noticed that one of the men kept glancing in your direction. Apart from the curvature of his doe, deer-like eyes, he had a sloppily cut mullet that suited his face—the kind that looked good no matter what he wore or how he presented himself. Despite the weather, he wore a white fleece Addidas pullover and baggy jeans. You had no idea who he was, so you went on with your lunch, twirling the pasta on your fork in the same rhythm and timing as your progress on Heidegger. Before you knew it, you placed your book down, twirled another small serving of pasta on your fork, and had the mysterious man sitting in front of you, neck leaning closer and closer until you could see the hazel shine of his big doe eyes. 

“Hey! It’s been a while,” He said with an exaggerated jubilee. You took your copy of Heidegger, playing with the book’s binding while examining his features up close. Even then, you couldn’t remember seeing him at all. If you had met him on the off chance, you would surely recognize him. He was the kind of man you’d notice from afar, especially with his choppy mullet. 

“Are you expecting someone?” He asked, his voice suddenly changing to a low whisper. Uncertain, you shook your head, remaining still while his breath tickled your ear. 

“No, I don’t think anyone’s coming today.” Heaving a sigh of relief, he slumped himself on the chair before you, reverberating a grating thud that made his companions stare. He moved closer again, eyes directly in front of your food, then looked up to give you a smile that was too bright to handle. 

“Looks good,” 

“Your table got the same thing,”

“Oh,” He panicked. “Right… about that.” 

“I don’t think I’ve met you anywhere around campus, and I’m not even sure if we go to the same university,” You blurted. The man in front of you heaved a dejected sigh, extending his long arms around the circumference of his chair. There was a genuine tinge of hurt in his breath, and you put your fork down, taking your copy of Heidegger and stuffing it in your bag. This was the type of conversation that demanded your full, unbridled attention. 

“We were in the same calculus class in first year, then basically took the same courses in the second, and now, we share advanced macroeconomics and econometrics,” 

“Econometrics with Professor Goo just ended, though.” You replied, peering deeper and deeper into his twinkling eyes. He tried his best to do a middle part with his extremely short bangs, making you finally remember who he was. A drastic change in hairstyle had prevented you from recognizing him, 

“Were you in Choi’s seminar? The one that always brought a huge hockey stick to class?” Sungchan vehemently nodded, a bright smile etched on his face.

“I play soccer in the summer, and it bothered me to have hair on my face, so I just got some scissors and cut the front.”

“Looks nice on you,” You said, picking your fork up to twist a few bits of pasta and shrimp together. 

“They don’t think so,” He scoffed. “I thought it looked okay initially, but all the girls don’t dig it. They told me I looked better when I had a clean cut without anything trailing past my neck, saying I looked like the mentally ill son of a war veteran! Could you believe that? The audacity of it all, my god! Why do all girls think a clean cut with a middle part makes you look refined? Because I, for one, know that all those assholes with the same haircut belong straight to the sewer.”

As far as you can remember, you meant it when you said he looked good. It wasn’t just the hair or his bright, doe eyes. He exuded the organic inertia, a force of life, as he sat in front of you. He was like a large deer with strong antlers running around the forest, galloping in the serenity of lush greeneries. His entire being moved with bursting energies of joy, laughter, annoyance, and despair—as if he were the embodiment of explosive emotion. You hadn’t seen such vibrance and color in ages and must admit that you enjoyed seeing him like that. 

“Aren’t your friends waiting for you?” To this, a flip switched inside him, snapping him back to reality. His eyes widened, taking in all the light the sun had given him that afternoon, redirecting all of it back to you in pure, blunt force. 

“That’s why I came here!” He exclaimed, his eyes turning up into shiny crescents. “You see one of those girls there?” He pointed at a girl who wore her hair in a short bob, her white cotton dress barely covering her thighs. You nodded, watching her tall nose go up and down as you predicted the flow of their conversation in your head. 

“My friend, Jaemin, is trying to set me up with her, but I’m not really feeling it. She’s a little too uptight and bitter for my taste, and she would never stop talking about her ex. Like, I get that it scarred her, but why is she here right now, trying to get with me, if she knows she needs time to sort things out on her own?” 

You averted your gaze from the girl, then stuffed your hands in your pockets. You instantly saw a flash of Eunseok in the girl, sensing the same brooding loneliness and desperation he had when he held you. You called the waiter and grabbed another cup of coffee, refraining from adding milk or sugar. The man stared at you in disgust, making a snarky remark about how much of a tryhard you were. 

“Look at me, I’m so cool! I drink black coffee and I read German philosophy!” 

You pressed your mouth in a neat, thin line, opening the book and picking up where you left off. You left a few bites of pasta on your plate, and the man in front of you dragged your tray and your fork, using his long, slender fingers to push the book down until you could see his eyes, which were staring at you with a frightening intensity. 

“Anyway, I need you to act like my date for a bit. I told her I was already seeing a girl, and luckily, you were here before me!” 

“I don’t even know your name.” You said dryly. You were ready to take your bag and leave a tip for the waiter. 

“Sungchan, Jung Sungchan, the most unholy relic you’ve ever seen,” He grabbed his chair and stood up, shocking you a little with how tall he was. You rarely come across people that were his height, and in a sense, you liked that he was tall enough to obscure you from his group of friends. You wanted to dine here alone, after all. 

“What if I turn your offer down?” 

“Then I’ll cry right here, right now.” 

“Cry about it.”

“You sure?” 

“What’s that got to do with me?” 

The determination in Sungchan’s eyes stayed undeterred. Before he could cause a scene, you paid your bill to the waitress, went outside the restaurant, and dragged him along, making a quick, sharp turn on one of the alleyways across the road. You took a deep breath, sharply inhaling and exhaling through your lungs. Sungchan’s innate enthusiasm flickered slightly, but he still looked like he was about to burst with energy. 

“I’m not really in the right headspace to fuck around right now, so please try your luck with someone else.” 

“I can’t.” He blurted. “I already told them your name. Besides, it won’t be too difficult. All you have to do is be with me all the time. That would get Jaemin to stop worrying, and I would basically have an impromptu restraining order on its own,” 

“Restraining order?” 

Sungchan nodded, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, a restraining order. If people saw me with you all the time, started spreading rumors, and have that circulate around campus, then I’m sure I could get a few admirers off my back,” 

By now, Sungchan’s food should’ve arrived at his table, but he didn’t move. He simply stayed put, eagerly waiting for your answer. You didn’t give him any. 

“Come on!” He complained. “I’ll buy you lunch every day. I have no money now, but I should be able to get it soon since I have to coach a children’s match next week,” 

Judging from his stature, it was natural to infer that he played sports. In first year, he had a hockey stick with him at all times, his blades sticking out of his bag like a walking hazard. 

“How did you even get my name?” 

“I looked at our class roster and thought, ah! She’s someone I’ve known since first year!”

“That’s it?” Sungchan nodded, hands still in his pockets. 

The midday sun strewn with his sweat made his mullet stick right onto his temple, giving him the same look as Peanut’s yellow “safety helmet.” The question now was whether he would dye his hair blonde, but you found the dark, jet-black on him a good look. 

“Yeah, and you’re not so bad yourself, you know? I think we could make a cute campus couple,” He joked. 

“The free lunches sound like a good deal, but I’ll pass. Go find another one,” 

“Are you always alone like that?” Sungchan asked. The intenseness in his gaze had softened, and his hands were out of his pockets. You nodded, and before you could leave the alleyway, he blocked the road with his tall stature, head standing right in front of the sun like a golden halo. 

“Nobody likes to be alone, but I’m just tired of it all.”

“Woe is me; you can definitely publish that in your autobiography or something,” You muttered a small ‘thanks.’ Then, you tried to leave again. This time, he walked around to your side, neck leaning down to meet your eyes, keeping a close distance between you. 

“Tell me, do you always wear such tacky clothes?” 

“Yes, I do.” You snapped back patiently. 

“Yes, I do, I love the way you talk. It’s like there’s no bullshit to it. No flare, no theatrics—not even any poetry! It’s so… smooth? Something like a calm river instead of a thrashing sea. Has anyone ever told you that?” 

You shook your head again, trying to hide how taken aback you were by his sudden monologue. He gave you a wide, ear-to-ear grin, taking his pinky out and putting it right in front of your lips. 

“I need to take you out for dinner, that’s non-negotiable. But think the offer through. I know you like being in your own little, solitary bubble surrounded by pretentious books, but if you change your mind, let me know.” 

He ran back inside with his friends after who you assumed was Jaemin came out of the restaurant, nagging him about his food getting cold. He ignored his friend for a little while, keeping his eyes on you as you clutched your bag, ready to take the summer trek along the river to head back to your apartment. He seemed to be mulling over something, then he quickly took your hands in his, squeezed them, and went back inside the restaurant. He had his eyes on you, trailing your silhouette as you disappeared through the back alleyway near the restaurant, using a shortcut to get to the main bridge of the Han River.

In the following week, Sungchan didn’t keep his promise. There was no sign of him in the restaurant, and you thought of waiting for him over the same pasta and salad set, but the place started to fill up, prompting you to leave and go somewhere else. Sungchan was also not there when you attended your afternoon econometrics class. Upon asking your professor where he was, he shrugged and said he didn’t get any word of Sungchan’s absence. 

“He’s the type of kid who always skips, you shouldn’t waste your time with someone like him.”

Walking to the receptionist, you booked an appointment with student affairs, searching their records for a “Jung Sungchan.” Sure enough, his name was listed in three classes you shared this semester: econometrics, quantitative analysis in public policy, and advanced macroeconomics. Then, you found the address to his house and a telephone number. He entered the university in 1984, living in the suburbs of Western Seoul with her family. 

When you dialed the phone, a woman answered. “Jung Records, how may I help you today?” Jung Records? You balanced the receiver between your cheeks and shoulders, twirling the cord around your fingers. 

“Sorry, is Sungchan around?”

“No, he’s not.”

“Do you know where he might be? He’s missed today’s class, and I wanted to see if I could give him my notes.” You lied, hearing some rustling on the other end of the line. 

“He’s most likely at the hospital.”

You thanked and hung up, wondering what he could do at the hospital. Was he injured? Is it from soccer? Was he sick? Many scenarios swirled in your head, and the mysterious calm on the other end of the line worsened your unease. How could he say such a thing so nonchalantly, as if he was just going out to get groceries? Was he the type to always get sick? The questions didn’t seem to end until you reached the door to your apartment. Your body sank onto the couch, and you continued your debate with Heidegger. 

The following week, you faithfully attended the econometrics lecture, sitting at the front of the lecture hall. You still saw no signs of Jung Sungchan, and after scanning the entire room, you took some letter paper from your bag and began drafting a letter to Eunseok. You wrote about the protests, your activities with the New Korean Democratic Party, and the people you had met during your political tenure. 

After filling three sheets, you folded them inside an envelope and addressed them to Eunseok’s house in Jeju. By then, the lecturer had arrived, dabbing his face gracefully with a handkerchief as he began to take attendance. He was a tall, lanky man who walked with so much authority that the class stopped whatever they were doing when he came inside the room. Despite his strict and well-prepared nature, he could do nothing to make a subject such as econometrics fun. Without preamble, he starts the lecture where the class left off last week, explaining the concept of multivariate regression. When the door opened, he had written some formulas and statistical variants on the chalkboard for twenty minutes, revealing a disheveled Sungchan. He was wearing a blue Adidas tracksuit and some loose-fitting joggers. After making a quick bow and smiling at the professor, he sat beside you. Then, he took out his notebook and a small notepad, tearing one of the pages to hastily write something. 

Sorry about yesterday, are you angry?

You shook your head and kept your eyes on the tall, lanky professor filling the chalkboard with more equations, filling your notebook with the same formulas. Sungchan kept his eyes on you while you copied everything down, watching your swift fingers seamlessly jot down everything the professor wrote at lightning speed. 

“Mind sharing the notes with me later?” He asked. You nodded, keeping your eyes on your notebook. 

There were about thirty minutes left of the lecture when you saw two students enter the door, both carrying the same political smell that most of your colleagues at the New Korean Democratic Party had. One of them, a stout, round fellow with prominent cheeks and dopey eyes, took a quick glance at you before going in front of the professor and asking for the room to be accessible for a political debate. 

“I know you assholes are used to the school running a muck for your liberal agenda, but I don’t care. This is my class, and if you’re not fine with that, go leave and find another classroom to bother.”

After clearing his throat, the professor turned to your direction to ask if you had a part in this. You kept your eyes between your notebook and the chalkboard, shrugging off any suspicion the professor may have for you.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Sungchan whispered once the class had ended. You gave the stout one quick wave before they stormed the classroom, passing handbills to bystanders on campus election fraud. While you were technically a part of the crowd, you had to admit that the movement had been getting uninspired since the June 29 declaration. Free and fair elections were back as you knew it, and despite local politics, you realized student government didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if the union benefitted you in any way, and most of your insurance was paid for by the government, not by any union efforts to safeguard dental or dermatology. Besides, you couldn’t care less about having perfect teeth or smooth skin. It wasn’t the end of your world if you had to pay a couple extra just to have pearly whites and glass-like, porcelain skin. 

“Do you think they’ll kill us after the revolution?” Sungchan asked when the two of you were outside of the lecture hall. 

“I’m technically part of the problem,” You replied, dodging through a crowd of people to swiftly get to the exit. Sungchan followed suit, using his long arms to push past people who were getting in your way. 

“So you’re a communist who likes German philosophy because you wanna be oh-so-cool, that’s funny. I like it.” 

“I’m gonna go eat lunch,” 

“There’s a place I wanna take you. It’s not that far from here,”

Sungchan took you to the bus to Dongdaemun and showed you to a Russian restaurant with specialty pierogies in a neatly sheltered spot just behind the market. The minute the two of you sat down, they served you some borscht and the lunch of the day in large plates. You had never had Russian food before, but the distance was worth the meal. 

“This is great,”

“And cheap, too. I came here before the Russians when it was still some sketchy, run-down marketplace. This used to be a dumpling place run by some old guy when I was still going to school, and we all had to sneak out since they were so strict about these things.” 

When Sungchan wasn’t busy finishing his borscht, he would rub his sleepy, heavy lids, which looked much more languid than last time. When he wasn’t playing with his chopsticks or hounding the Russian waiter for more soup, he would incessantly rub the corners of his eyes, careful not to put any borscht residue on them. 

“Tired?” You asked.

“Sorta. I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately, but it’s okay, don’t worry about me.” He replied. “Sorry about the other day. Something important came up, and I couldn’t ditch it. I thought about calling you at the restaurant, but I couldn’t remember your name and didn’t know your home number. Did you wait too long?” 

You shook your head amidst a cup of warm tea. “No worries, I’m a woman with a lot of time.”

“A lot?” 

“Yes, way more than I need, to be honest. I wish I could give you some to help you sleep.” 

Sungchan rested his cheek on his palms, a vast, crescent-eyed grin forming. “Aren’t you a sweetheart?” 

“I don’t think so. Like I said, I just have too much time to kill.” 

You thought about telling him you called his house but decided against it. There was always a time and a place for anything, and if he wanted to tell you about it, he would at a particular time in a specific place. While Sungchan was a chatty person, there was a meticulous way that he picked and chose what type of conversation he wanted to have, almost as if directing the flow of his words solely to avoid something he didn’t like to talk about. You felt the hospital was sensitive to it, so you dropped it altogether. 

He took you to his old school, a short walk from Dongdaemun. Passing through the bus stop and the train station, you thought about Eunseok and your endless walks with him. It had all started back home on the beaches of Jeju, and it arguably ended here in the city. If Eunseok had never visited you in Seoul, your life would have been different. Then, you changed your mind. No, even if he never visited Seoul to see you, your life wouldn’t change. He was meant to come to see you; if not, he was bound to visit you some other time. There was no logic to it; it was just a feeling. 

You and Sungchan sat on a park bench together, looking through the tall gates of his old school. Vines of old-growth moss clung to the walls, and pigeons huddled under the rooftop, resting their wings. While the building looked nice, something was brooding and ominous about it. 

“I really didn’t wanna go to this school,” Sungchan started. He shook his head until his eyes had hit the ground. “I wanted to go to a normal State school with normal people where I could just be myself and have fun like a normal teenager, but my parents thought it would look good on me to go to this stuck-up, fancy place. They’re the ones who sent me in here, and I suppose that’s just what happens when you do well in primary school. The teacher tells your parents that you have more potential, and they start considering it too, even if they didn’t have the budget to send me here. I went here for like, six years, and I absolutely hated it. All I could think of then was to leave, and you know, I’ve gotten awards for never being late or having missed a day of school. That’s how much I hated this place. Do you get what I’m saying?” 

“No, not really.” 

“It’s because I hated this damn place so much, that I wasn’t going to let it beat me. Because if I let them get to me even just once, I’d be finished. I was scared I’d just keep slipping down and down. Even if I was sick, I’d crawl to school, teetering at my last breath with a temperature of 39 degrees. When the teachers would ask me if I was sick, I would always shake my head and go to class. When I left, they gave me awards for perfect attendance and punctuality, plus a tennis racket for being one of the best tennis players in the school. That’s why I’m never playing tennis at university ever again. I didn’t wanna owe this school anything.” 

“Why did you hate your school so much?” 

“Did you enjoy going to your school?” 

“Not really, but I didn’t hate it. I went to a normal State school, but I didn’t really think about it at all. 

“Well, this school,” Sungchan explained, using the tip of his index finger to rub his eyes. “Had nothing but upper-class boys, almost four hundred boys from a prestigious background. Rich boys. They all had to be rich and stay rich to survive. Expensive tuition, donations, and extravagant school trips. If we went to Busan, they’d book the most expensive hotel and serve us the best seafood on lacquerware, then take us to a fancy hotel in Seoul to teach us some table manners. This wasn’t an ordinary school at all. And out of a hundred boys in my class, I was the only one from a middle-class background. I looked at the class register to see where everyone else lived, and they were all from a rich area like Gangnam. One boy from Incheon was an heir to a farm that I became friends with, and he was really nice. But can you imagine him feeling embarrassed about living in Incheon? I mean, this was the type of kid that got driven around in a Benz by a chauffeur! And still, he had this inferiority complex. Can you believe it?” 

You shook your head in disbelief. 

“I was the only one in the whole school who came from a suburb like Ichon. My parents were the only record shop owners in there, and when my classmates would say I was lucky to have all the records I wanted to listen to at the tip of my fingers, I would laugh at them! Of course, they expected something big like an HMV, but no! Records have been dying since the Walkman was created, and they would’ve never expected a small, poor, little Jung Records. From the entrance to the cash register, there is nothing but old records from pop stars you’ve never even heard of! The only people who still shop there are the widowed ahjummas who don’t know how to use a Walkman or a Boombox! No Beatles, no New Order, not even Wham! Do you think I’m lucky?” 

When you closed your eyes, you could see the type of place Sungchan was talking about. A cozy, run-down record store in the middle of an alleyway in suburban Seoul, welcoming regulars in the neighborhood who were too old to adapt to a newer, digital age.

“What I will tell you, though, is that it’s not bad business. Everyone in the neighborhood has known who we are for some time now, and we always deliver. Also, we make more than enough to support a family of four. No debts, two sons in university, but that’s it. There are no extras, and they should’ve never sent me to a school like that. It was a recipe for disaster. I had to hear them complain about the uptick in tuition every year when they thought I was asleep, and whenever the school would ask for a donation, they scrambled everything they could to provide even just a tiny amount. I never made friends, nor did I hang out with anybody after school because I was always so scared of running out of money in case they wanted to go someplace expensive to eat. It’s such a miserable way to live. Anyway, is your family rich?” 

You shook your head. “My parents are white-collar working-class people who’ve been working as auditors for a cargo company in Jeju. We’re not rich or poor, and I know it hasn’t been easy on them to send me all the way to Seoul, but it’s just me, so that’s not really a big deal. I work part-time to take the load off them, and our house back in Jeju is just a regular two-story home with a little garden for our dog and a Toyota Corolla parked in the garage.”

“Where do you work, and what do you do?”

“I work at the library in Yonsei. There’s not much to do other than sorting books out and hounding the people that have books overdue.” 

Sungchan’s mouth was agape, doe-eyes glimmering in the sunset as he shifted closer to your frame. “You’re joking, right? I mean, you just seem like someone who’s had an easy life, you know?” 

“It’s not like we ever suffered financially, but it’s not like I had tons of money growing up, either. I’m just like everyone else.” 

“Well, everyone else in my school was rich,” Sungchan replied, squeezing his knees with his palms.

“Now that you’re out of that environment, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of chances to see the normal people you craved so much, you know?” 

“I hope so… I mean, university’s going great so far! It’s full of normal people!” He smiled with the slightest curl of his lip and smoothed his mullet with the palms of his hand. 

“Do you have a job?” You asked.

“Yeah, I work at the campus radio. I make little playlists and recommendations for people who ask, with descriptions of what makes each song special or something like that. We also play songs on the radio depending on what people request, whether they want something romantic, sad, or happy, because those are the three moods that only exist when it comes to music. It’s so easy! Takes zero time and no effort at all. I can come up with an entire playlist and burn it on a cassette tape in a day. All you have to do is master a couple of secrets about the trade, and all kinds of work, regardless of the type, comes your way.” 

“And what are these secrets?” 

“Say, you take the entire mood of heartbreak, for example. Sure, there are many songs about heartbreak, but you need to know what type of heartbreak the person requesting a playlist or recommendations is going through. It doesn’t have to be anything big at all, just some tiny nuance like that. People also love graphic sentimentality, so make sure you’re curating songs and artists that really speak to them, and the money comes decent.” 

“Yeah, but don’t nuances get a bit too tedious? And doesn’t it require enough knowledge of musicians, artists, etc.?” 

“True,” Sungchan replied, tilting his head so that his choppy bangs flowed back and forth between his forehead. “But if you look for them, you usually find them, say, in like a gossip magazine or a music almanac. And if you don’t, there’s really no harm in making stuff up. I never get caught.” 

He said he wanted to hear more about you, so you told him the usual stories you would tell in the first year about Peanut and Mirae. You would tell him precisely about Peanut’s’ neat freak tendencies, her yellow “safety helmet” that she wore alongside several layers of surgical masks, safety goggles, shin pads, and UV-repellant clothing. Peanut especially made Sungchan laugh, wishing he had a chance to look at the dorm back then.

“Now, it’s just me alone with my coffee and my daily paper next to the Han River, either going to lectures, going to work at the library and sitting on my secret spot during breaks, sometimes going to the party office to do some bookkeeping for them sometimes, or sometimes organizing and attending riots.” 

“Does every girl just casually mention that one day she’ll either be a martyr or get arrested by the government for treason?” 

You laughed, crossed your legs, and stared at the clear, open blue sky. “Yeah, I think so. We all love to talk, as quiet as we may be.” 

“Even something as top secret as government insurgency?” 

“Maybe? But what we do at the party, at least as far as I know, has nothing to do with government insurgency. Things have been relatively calm since the June 29 declaration, and although people are somewhat angry at the results, there’s nothing we can do when there’s no foul play in the presidential elections. He won fair and square.”

“I don’t really know much about this sort of stuff when I should, I mean, I don’t know. I couldn’t care less about politics, to be honest,” 

“Well, I guess those ahjummas stopping by the record store don’t talk about it enough,” 

“Not at all!” He replied, laughing. “Anyway, how’s Sunday looking this week? Are you free?” 

“Yeah, I should be. The library’s closed, so I shouldn’t have work, either.” 

“Why don’t you come visit me? At Jung Records? The shop will be closed, but I have to hang around there all day to watch a few things. I also might be getting an important phone call, but that’s beside the point. How does lunch sound? I can cook for you,” 

“I think I’d like that,” You said with a smile. 

Sungchan tore a page from his notepad and wrote the address and the nearest train station and bus stop to his record shop. 

“Really, once you walk straight from the station to the residential area, you can’t miss it. There’s a big sign that says Jung Records. Come at around noon. I should have something ready for us by then.” 

After thanking him, you put the page in your jacket pocket. “I should be getting back to campus now; my shift starts in an hour.”

Sungchan said he had somewhere to be as well and took the train from Dongdaemun.

When Sunday morning came, you woke at eight, made coffee, read the daily paper, did your laundry, and hung the clothes on your balcony. You picked out a lovely, long black maxi dress with thin straps that gracefully went over your shoulders. It was a beautiful day, with the sun shining brightly over everything it touched, adding a spiritual iridescence to things so banal. Ladybugs fluttered everywhere, sitting atop your stretched-out duvet hanging on the balcony. With no wind, the river looked flat from where you were. Despite being a student, the area you lived in housed more families and entry-level graduates, so Sunday wasn’t dead quiet. In fact, it was quite the opposite. While most shops were closed, children were still running around the riverbank, playing hopscotch or tag while their parents watched on picnic mats. Another group of kids just across the pavement were throwing rocks at empty cans. A flower shop was open right next to the train station, so you went in and bought some daffodils. You knew it wasn’t in season, especially with the dawn of autumn, but you’ve always liked daffodils. 

Three old women sat across you on the train, looking at you and your flowers. One of them gave you a smile, and you smiled back. You sat in the train’s last car, watching the ancient houses stack on top of mountains like piles of dominoes. The train was a little slow and flimsy today, but the speed was enough for you to see the laundry deck out of each resident’s window. One of the windows had a small garden with ten juicy, ripe tomatoes beside a big calico cat stretched out in the sun. In the window of another house, a little girl in ribbons was blowing soap bubbles with her mother. You heard a distant Lee Sunhee ballad through the radio from somewhere, and you could catch a view of old men doing stretches at the park below the train tracks. After snaking its way through a large tunnel, a few more passengers got on. Despite that, the three old women stayed still, talking intently about something while huddled together in their seats. 

You got off near Ichon station and asked a staff member if he knew the quickest route to the residential area, as written in Sungchan’s notes. When offered to walk with you, you politely declined, simply asking for directions so you have a good idea of where you were. Any street signs, turns, or landmarks were all you needed to ground yourself in this part of town. 

As you began your journey, the shops you passed by didn’t look too well; they were housed in old buildings with gloomy interiors and faded writing on some of the signs. Judging from the age and style of the buildings, you believe that this area was spared during the bombing raids in World War II and the Korean War, as whole blocks and districts were still intact. Some buildings had been rebuilt, with giant apartments erected in an old neighborhood. Besides, most houses had been enlarged or repaired in certain places, giving off a shabby or tacky look. The entire atmosphere of the place gave you the impression that the original residents had given up on the taxing toll of city life and moved to the suburbs, leaving nothing but cheap, run-down apartment blocks, empty lots, and a few stubborn families who clung to their long-time family businesses. 

A few minutes of walking uphill brought you to a corner shop, where you turned left into a small, albeit dead, market on the right side in the middle of the road, which hung a large sign for Jung Records. While it wasn’t a big shop by all means, it wasn’t the tiny, mom-and-pop locality Sungchan had described. It was just a typical neighborhood record shop, the same ones you used to pass by on your commute to school. A wave of nostalgia hit you as you stood in front of the place, and you grazed your hands on the big, metal shutter that covered the entrance to the shop. You were technically ten or so minutes early, but you didn’t know how you’d kill your time in a neighborhood that seemingly didn’t have a coffee shop, so you pressed the buzzer and kept the bouquet of daffodils snug in your arms. Only a few seconds had passed, and you looked up to see Sungchan leaning over, long arms waving at you. 

“Come in,” he yelled. “Just lift the shutter with the other button there.” He pointed at a button next to the buzzer marked with an ‘x’ over masking tape. 

“Is it okay if I come in? I’m kind of early?” You shouted back.

“No problem. Come in and make yourself comfortable. I’m busy in the kitchen right now.” He left the balcony in a hurry. 

The whirring of the shutter made you drop the daffodils on your arms as soon as it lifted itself up. It flimsily stopped midway through opening itself entirely, so you used the chance to duck inside the shop, then pressed the button with the masking tape again to see if it could close it back. To your surprise, it did, and you swiftly picked your daffodils from the ground and covered your nose with a handkerchief as you traversed through the store. The shop was pitch black inside, and you managed to find your way around by feeling through shelves and piles of records, tripping over square-shaped vinyl jackets on your way to the staircase. You kicked your Mary Janes off and climbed the stairs to the dining table. The only light source entering the living area was a small opening in a matted curtain, making the interior dark and gloomy. 

“Over here,” Sungchan called. To the corner on the right of the room was the kitchen, with all the windows opened. The entire building was old, but something new about the kitchen made it stand out from the rest of the shop and the rooms in the house. You didn’t know if it was because Sungchan regularly polished the counter, or if it was due to the shiny luster in the sink taps, but the kitchen was the only place that felt like it belonged in the current era, while the rest of the building was a bygone relic. Sungchan was preparing food, busy pacing around with bubbling pots and the smell of grilled fish. 

“There’s beer in the fridge if you want,” he said, taking a quick glance in your direction. 

“Make yourself comfortable. I should be done in a few,” You nodded and took a can of beer from the mini-fridge. The beer was so cold that it might have been in the fridge for an entire year. There was a small white ashtray on the table, the daily paper, and a couple of condiments. There was also the same notepad that Sungchan used when he gave you the directions to his place with a pen, a hastily written phone number, and what appeared to be a shopping list written on the side. 

“Wait, I lied. I should be done in about ten,” He said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his tank top. “Can you wait, or are you so hungry that you could devour a three-course meal in one go?” 

“I can wait,” You replied. 

“Good.” He said with a smile. “Get hungrier, then. I’m making a lot.” 

You slowly sipped your beer and focused on Sungchan as he continued cooking, his broad shoulders and muscular back on you. He worked with quick, nimble movements, handling four cooking utensils simultaneously. He tasted a boiled dish in one pot, and the next second, he was rhythmically cutting vegetables on the cutting board; then, he was crouched over on the fridge, and before you knew it, his back was on the sink washing a pot that he had just finished using. You watched in awe as he was immersed in his craft, never missing a beat or his sense of balance as he gave the illusion of having eight limbs. 

“Do you need help with anything?” You asked, standing up from your seat with an empty can of beer in your hands. 

“Oh, no! No, no, NO! Sit back down,” Sungchan demanded, abruptly turning the stove off and shoving you back into your seat. Then, he returned to his cooking, turned the stove on, and tossed some spring onions in a large frying pan. He wore a slim, loose-fitting pair of joggers that hung snugly on his hips and a tight tank top that went just above his abdomen. The light pouring in from the kitchen window gave his figure an almost Promethean outline, making it extensively clear that he frequented the gym or was extremely meticulous about his health. 

“You really didn’t have to put an entire feast together, you know?” 

“What, you’re calling this a feast?” Sungchan joked. “I was too lazy to do any shopping today, if I’m being completely honest with you. I’m just throwing around what I have in the fridge. Besides, it’s a family tradition of ours to treat our guests well. I don’t know what it is, but it’s kind of like we’re born to entertain. It’s like a sickness because it’s not like we’re especially nice, or we love people or anything, but if someone comes over, we have to treat them like the king of the castle.”

“Does that explain the beers in the fridge?” You asked. Sungchan vehemently nodded.

“My stupid father hardly ever drinks because it’s bad for him, but he stocks up on a lot of alcohol to serve guests! So please, drink as much as you want. It would make him happy knowing his stock is going to be of good use.”

“Thank you,” 

You took the daffodils on the table and handed them over to Sungchan, who immediately grabbed a tall, slim glass from one of the cupboards and placed the flowers in it. 

“I’m not much of a flower person, but these are so pretty,” He marveled, doe-eyes gazing over each petal with gentle care. “What are they called again?” 

“Daffodils,”

“Is it the same as narcissus or something?” He asked. You shrugged your shoulders. 

“I’m not the best at the language of flowers, but I think daffodils belong to the same family or is a part of a family of flowers called narcissus,”

“That makes sense then. I once played piano for a classic Korean production in my old school about daffodils.”

He hummed the melody to Narcissus while plating the food. 

Much to your chagrin, Sungchan’s cooking was far better than what you’d expected. A diverse, fantastic assortment of grilled, marinated, fried, boiled, roasted, and cured dishes using mackerel, radishes, seaweed, mushrooms, pork bone, and sesame seeds, all cooked in the intense flavors of the Southern Jeju style.  

“Wow, this is really good,” You said with your mouth full. 

“You didn’t expect my cooking to be good, didn’t you? Based on how I look or something,” 

“Not really, no,”

“You’re from Jeju, right? So you like this kind of flavor profile, don’t you?”

“Did you seriously change your cooking just for me?” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course not! We always eat like this!” 

“Are any of your relatives from Jeju?” 

“No, we’re all born and raised in Seoul, as far as I know. There’s not a single person from the South. We’re all from around the area.” 

“I don’t get it,” You continued, heaping more food from your chopsticks into your mouth. “How can you make this super authentic Jeju dish? Were you taught, or did you go to any classes?” 

“It’s kind of a long story,” He replied, taking apart a piece of grilled mackerel. He used the other end of his chopsticks to start deboning a small piece on your plate, feeding it to you once he was finished. 

“My parents never really had the time to cook, and we always had the business to think about, so it was either take out or eat at a restaurant. When we didn’t have money to eat out, we bought ready-made lunches at the convenience store or nearby butchers. Even when I was little, I couldn’t stand the lack of fresh food, and it wasn’t like my mom cared about changing things up. We just kept eating the same, ready-made lunch boxes, and I grew so tired of it that I taught myself how to cook. I went to the big Kyobo in Gwanghwamun and bought the thickest cookbook I could find, mastering it from cover to cover whenever I had the time. The author also turned out to be from Jeju, which explains why much of what I cook is in the Jeju style.”

“Wait, so you’re telling me you taught yourself how to cook? Just you and a book?” 

Sungchan nodded, pride brimming widely in his grin. He took another bite out of the grilled mackerel in front of him, took a large heap of rice, and swallowed the rest with some seaweed soup. 

“It was only until I turned twenty that I had the money to go and eat at a real Jeju-styled restaurant. My dream is to go to Jeju one day and try the real thing there, but I think the restaurant I went to here in Seoul was close enough and helped me understand most of the nuances and flavorings that I needed to master my dishes.” 

“Wow…” You exclaimed, taking a piece of shrimp into your mouth. “I could never have taught myself how to cook. I mean, how do you do it? Especially when you weren’t able to see how it’s done right before your eyes?” 

“It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows,” Sungchan explained, sighing while chewing on a slice of fried eggplant. “Especially when I grew up in a household where nobody gave a single crap about food. I would beg my dad for a better knife or a decent pot, and he’d tell me to spend my money on something else! I mean, the audacity! You can’t possibly debone a fish properly with cheapass knives, and how can you expect me to sous vide meat without an immersion circulator or some vacuum sealers? Every time I’d make these requests, they’d just look at me like I was crazy for trying to sous vide beef at home. It was hopeless trying to tell them that all the money was worth having good food in the house, so I took it upon myself to save as much as I could and buy the equipment with my own money. Little old fifteen-year-old me spending my entire allowance on nicer pots, higher quality knives, strainers, whatever you can think of. Can you imagine? Other boys are buying cleats and nice jerseys of their favorite baseball players while I’m here, spending every buck I can on cooking utensils! Isn’t that nice?” 

You nodded with every word, swallowing a mouthful of bright red soup drenched in gochugaru with tofu and spring onions. 

“I know this sounds a bit disgraceful, but I’m happy my mom died,” Sungchan continued, putting his chopsticks down momentarily to wipe his mouth with his arms. A bright, orange stain smeared his forearm, leaving an outline of his lips where it touched his skin. 

“Why is that?” You asked. Sungchan’s doe eyes widened, staring into your pupils as if communicating his thoughts to you directly. 

“Because now that it’s just me, my brother, and my dad, I get to take control of the family budget. I bought what I wanted, and that meant completing my set of cooking tools. My dad doesn’t know a single thing,” 

“When did your mom die?” 

“When I was seventeen or so, somewhere around my last year of high school. Some nasty tumor did it for her, but it’d probably be distasteful to joke about which one she had on the table. She was bedridden for about four months, was taken home because she seemed better, and then spent the last six months of her life with chemicals injected in her. I already knew that a part of her had died the moment the diagnosis came in, but by the end of it, she wasn’t even a human being anymore. Hardly spoke, looked like a shriveled-up raisin, had no hair, and didn’t even know who me or my brother were. I think that type of death is the worst kind, where both the patient and the entire family go through a different kind of hell. It wasn’t just awful watching my own mother become a vegetable, but it took every Won in our pockets. I mean, every session was 200,000 down the drain, and it wasn’t like the nurses were there for free either, you know what I mean?” 

Sungchan stopped for a moment, mouth agape and hanging in thought. With his chin resting atop his bone-like knuckles, his doe-eyes formed crescents, bright brown turning into a spectrum of hazel under the rays of the seeping sun. 

“How did we get here?” He laughed. 

“I think it started with the budget and how you’re happy your mom died,” 

“Finish your food and think about my little sob story, will you?” Sungchan said, his smile quickly fading into a solemn, thin line. 

After that, Sungchan barely touched his food, prompting you to put your chopsticks down as well. You thought you would ask him to take some of the food home, as it was too good to waste. 

“Cooking makes me less hungry,” Sungchan started, taking a slim, pristine cigarette stick between his lips and lighting it with a match. His eyes wandered until it hit the bouquet of daffodils resting neatly in a tall, slim glass. 

“They look nice like that,” He said. 

“I guess I rescued them from being stepped on at the riverbank,” You replied. 

He chuckled airily, smoking half of his cigarette and dumping the rest in a small, wooden ashtray. Rubbing his eyes, he grabbed the bright red box of Marlboros and fiddled with its corners. 

“Do you smoke?” He asked. You shook your head, gathering the empty bowls and plates before Sungchan stopped you to dump them into the sink himself. 

“I stopped in the summer,” You replied. 

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I just hated running out of ‘em in the middle of the night.”

“You make it really obvious whether you like things or not,” Sungchan said. 

“I think that’s why people never really liked me,”

“You show it, that’s why,” He continued, resting his head on the curves of your neck. “You show that you don’t care about people, and that type of attitude makes them angry, especially the ones that think they’re important.”

“But that’s what also makes talking to you so enjoyable,” You felt him grin as his lips touched your neck. You dragged him up and pushed the small of his back towards the sink, helping him dry some of the dishes as he began washing them with an abundance of bubbly dish soap. Standing next to him, you did your best to wipe everything in a spick-and-span state, stacking each plate and utensil carefully on the drying rack. 

“Are your parents out today?” You asked. Sungchan nodded, eyes focused on a stained plate. 

“Well, my mom’s six feet under,”

“You told me that,”

“My brother’s on a date with his fiance, probably on a drive somewhere off the coast nearby. They both love going to the beach, even if the weather is horrid up here.” He then kept his lips pressed in a thin line, gripping the sponge until it oozed with more white bubbles. You did the same and focused on scrubbing the plates with a tea-stained cloth. 

“Then, there’s my dad,” He whispered after some time had gone by. You nodded, eyes still on the plates that were now neatly lined up against each other on the rack. 

“He’s off to Thailand, has been since last spring.”

“Thailand?” You asked in shock, as if to ask him what and why his father was in Thailand out of all places. 

“Didn’t really say much about him, but he’s an eccentric one. A friend of his was in Vietnam during the war and deserted to Thailand, running off with a woman. He now has a farm there, and my dad just got on a plane and told us he was settling there. My brother and I tried to stop him—we told him he couldn’t speak the language, didn’t know a single thing about the customs, and how he wasn’t used to a place like that after being in Seoul his entire life. He didn’t seem to care and wouldn’t listen to a single word we said. I guess losing mom made him go a little bit insane.”

There wasn’t much you could say except stare at Sungchan, mouth agape in bewilderment. 

“Do you wanna know what he said after mom died? He said he would’ve much rather lost us instead of her. I mean, how was I supposed to respond to that? You don’t say such a thing to your kids, you know? For sure, he lost the love of his life, his life partner. I get that it’s a super painful thing to go through, something that makes you sad for the rest of your life, but you don’t tell your own sons that they should have died in her place. That’s just terrible, don’t you think?” 

“Yeah,” 

“Honestly, I don’t think that wound would ever close inside me, even if my dad took it back,” He said while shaking his head. “In some ways, everyone in my family’s odd. We’ve got something strange in us, even if it’s just a little bit.”

“I think I’d react in the same way if my dad said something like that to me,” You replied. 

“But despite the harshness of it all, I still think it’s a wonderful thing for two people to be in love like that, no? I mean, for a man to love his wife so much that he tells his sons they should’ve died in her place, then runs off to Thailand as he dumps the two of us right here in Korea.” 

You wiped the last plate without replying, while Sungchan swiftly put everything back in their respective cabinets. 

“So, have you heard anything from him at all?” You asked. 

“On a postcard sent to us back in the fall. The only thing he tells us is the difference in whether or how the fruits tasted better there. I mean, seriously? Give me a break! One dumb photo of him riding an elephant! He’s lost his goddamn mind! He didn’t even tell us the specifics of how he met the guy—the deserter who owns a farm there or whatever. He didn’t even tell us about sending us there once he’s settled, and he’s ignored our letters to him since.” 

“What would you do if your dad told you to come to Thailand?” 

“I think I’d go and tour a bit of it, I mean, by the sounds of it and the guidebooks I’ve been looking at, it sounds like a nice place to be. My brother, on the other hand, would absolutely refuse. He can’t stand dirty places.” 

“Is Thailand dirty?” 

“I don’t know? Maybe? He thinks it is. Like, the roads are full of elephant shit or something, swarming with flies while the toilet is an entire forest. He saw a documentary of the sort and made that conclusion. He can’t stand flies, either, and all he wants to do is drive through nice beaches in expensive cars.”

“No way…”

“I mean, to hell with him! What’s wrong with Thailand? I’d go for sure!” 

“So who’s running Jung Records while he’s gone?” 

“My brother technically, but he hates it. We have a neighboring aunt who helps around here and there, and I help, too, when I have time. A record shop isn’t exactly the hardest thing to manage, so it’s fine. And if it’s too much, we can always sell the place.” 

“Do you like your dad?” Sungchan stopped for a second, then vehemently shook his head. 

“So how can you go with him to Thailand if you don’t like him?” 

“I believe in him, that much I can do.”

The two of you then went up to the balcony of the building, where he rested his palms on your cheek, caressing it before giving you a chaste, slow kiss. A fire had broken out in one of the buildings nearby, causing smoke to go up as he rushed out to see what was going on. Soon enough, sirens began to wail in the empty, suburban air of Seoul, and he nonchalantly made coffee for you while talking about Thailand. You couldn’t recall its proper location, but you knew it was near Vietnam. 

“The Lee family’s building burned down,” He said. “They traded silverware and porcelain if I could recall correctly, but they went out of business some time ago.” 

You leaned over the railings, head resting on his slow, beating chest. A large apartment unit blocked the view, but you could see flashes of red trucks flowing into the streets, about three or four that were parked nearby, dousing the flames with large pipes. 

“Maybe you should evacuate,” You said to Sungchan. “The wind’s blowing in the other direction, but it could always change its course. You can always stay at my place, and I’ll help you pack whatever you need.” 

“Fuck that,” Sungchan spat happily. “I’m staying here. Ride or die. Even if this place burns down, I’ll be right here. I don’t mind death.” 

He looked straight into your eyes, and you couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. The only thing that you felt was the warmth that his arms exuded as he continued to hold you, long, slender fingers caressing the surface of your skin. 

“Alright, I’ll stay here with you, then,” 

“You’re gonna die with me?” He asked, eyes shining brighter than the radiant sun.

“What? No way! I’ll run if it starts to get here, you can go die alone.” 

“Ouch, that’s cold, you bitch!” 

“I’m not gonna die with you just because you made me lunch. If you added dinner on the itinerary, though, then I might consider it.” 

“Anyway, let’s stay here for a while. We can talk about you now if you’re interesting enough.” 

Sungchan brought two pillows from his bedroom, several bottles of beer, and some snacks from the kitchen. He says they were leftover cookies from the week before, but the dough tasted fresh enough that you inferred he made them in the morning. The two of you drank together and watched the thick, black smoke rise from the building. He asked you more questions about yourself that you couldn’t seem to answer, and you slumped onto his shoulder while he gently played with your loose hair. 

“When my mother died, I didn’t really feel sad or anything,” He started, hands now looping through your scalp, as if searching for something valuable. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. I didn’t feel a thing.” 

“Does that make me cold like you?” He asked jokingly. You shook your head, burrowing your face onto the comforts of his chest. 

“I’m sure you had your reasons.” 

“I do, I really do. Things were always complicated in this household, but I always thought that I’d be sad if they died, I mean, they’re my parents, you know? But that didn’t happen. I hardly felt anything when my mom died, and now, I hardly even think of them at all. Sometimes, I dream about it; I see her glaring at me and lecturing me about how ungrateful I am for being happy that she died. But the thing is, I’m not happy at all, I’m just not sad about it. And to tell you the honest truth, I didn’t even cry at all. I cried when my dog died, though, when I was like, five or something.”

The only thing on your mind at the time was how much smoke there was despite the abundance of fire trucks that squeezed into the small boulevard. You couldn’t see any flames spewing out of the area, and it didn’t seem to be spreading anywhere. There was only a column of black smoke that continued to rise into the sky. What could’ve caused it, and why was it burning for such a long time?

“I think if they—my parents—had loved me a bit more, then I would’ve been sadder, you know?” 

“Do you think they didn’t love you enough?” Sungchan tilted his head, leaning over until his forehead touched yours. Then, he gave you a subtle nod. 

“I don’t know, it’s somewhere in between being loved and not being loved, I guess. I mean, I was always so hungry for love, and I always thought about what it felt like to truly be loved, to be fed so much of it that I’d be filled with it inside and out. They never gave that to me. Never. Not once did they pamper me or beg me for something, they’d just push me aside and yell at me, complaining about how much I’d spend on cooking tools. That’s all I’ve ever heard from them. So, I made up my mind. I told myself that I was gonna find someone who would unconditionally love me forever. I was still very young at the time, probably in elementary or so, but I made up my mind and have been searching since,”

“And did you end up finding it?” 

Sungchan watched the rising smoke for a while, pensive in his own thoughts. “I don’t know, I’ve been waiting for so long that I’m looking for the perfect person. That makes it a tough ass search for me.” 

“Waiting for the one?” 

“No, even I know that doesn’t exist. I’m looking for a girl I can be selfish with, like, a girl who will drop everything in a heartbeat just because I said I wanted some cake or something. Then I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window, while she is still there, completely content with the fact that I made her do something for me. That’s what I’m looking for.” 

“I don’t think that has anything to do with love,” You said in utter shock. 

“It does!” He replied, insisting in his odd fantasy as he continued to twirl your hair between his fingers. “You just don’t know it because you’re not a man.” 

“So finding a girl who willingly buys you cake and watches you throw it away is love to a man?” 

“Something like that. And when I throw it out, I want her to apologize to me, telling me that she’s sorry because she should’ve known that I would lose the appetite for cake, and had the intelligence and foresight to refuse my initial request knowing that I would get sick of cake, then go out again to buy me something else, asking me what I would like next.”

“Then?” 

“Then I’d give her all the love she deserves for what she’s done for me.”

“You’re insane.” 

“Well, that’s what love is to me. Not that I think anyone can understand, though.” Sungchan replied, giving his head a little shake. Now, he was lying next to you, eyes twinkling as he held your head into his chest, caressing the small of your back with a soft, gentle touch. 

“I’ve never met a guy who thinks like you,” 

“I get that a lot,” He said, resting his chin on the crown of your head. “But I guess it’s just how I think. Like, I’m honestly just telling you what I believe in. I’ve never really cared or realized that how I think is different from other people. I’m not trying to be different, but whenever I say something that I mean, people just think I’m doing it for attention. When that happens, I just feel so hurt.”

“And you’re letting yourself die in a fire?” 

“No, that’s different from this whole thing! I’m just curious,” 

“About what it feels like to die in a fire?” 

“No, I just really wanted to see what you’d say or something,” He said, resting his forehead against yours again while letting the tip of his nose brush against yours. “But if I’m being completely honest with you, I’m not afraid to die. Like, I’d just be consumed with all the black smoke and lose consciousness in a snap. Just like that. The thought of it doesn’t scare me at all, because it’s not as harsh as the way my mom died. It’s not a long, slow process of pain and suffering. A fire’s quick.” 

Sungchan put a stick of Marlboro between his lips and lit it with another match, watching the black smoke from his lips swirl into the sky. 

“That type of death scares me. The type that slowly eats away at you, taking everything you’ve known and loved until it pulverizes it into a dark abyss. I couldn’t stand something like that.” 

Another hour went by, and the fire was completely put out. The firefighters kept it from spreading out into the neighborhood, and all but one fire truck remained in the streets, whirring its orange siren around the streets, its bright, neon light spinning. Sungchan seemed drained of all the energy left of him, and he barely spoke. 

“Are you tired?” You asked. He shook his head.

“I think I’m just spaced out.” 

He looked deep into your eyes, head slowly tilting until his lips met yours. You felt his tongue slowly swirl into yours, the same sense of hunger and desperation felt between the caverns of your mouth electrifying you to the touch. The slightest rush kept him rigid, but he succumbed to deep relaxation and closed his eyes, hands searching across your back until one rested on your shoulder blades while the other, with a firm grip, felt the curves of your ass. The setting summer sun rested on his cheek, emitting a radiant, otherworldly glow in his trembling lashes. He pulled away as if something told him to stop, and then he held your hands, mouth twitching with difficulty, as if what the two of you did had an element of danger to it. 

“Is there someone you’re seeing right now?” He asked. You nodded. 

“But you’re always free on Sundays, no?” 

“It’s… complicated.” You replied, eyes cast down to your feet. 

And then, the summer had set into early autumn, its breeze casting a cold, lonesome touch to your bare shoulders. You told Sungchan you had to go back home to complete some assignments, asking him to come with you for some tea. He said he needed to stay home in case the phone rang. 

“I’d been here the whole time, waiting for the phone to ring all alone. Sometimes, when I’m like that, it feels like my flesh is rotting by the minute, little by little until I melt into this giant puddle of nothingness. That’s how it feels to be inside all the time, waiting for something that will never come,” 

“I’ll be with you next time,” You said. “As long as you make me lunch again.”

“I’ll start another fire in the neighborhood if it means you’re staying for dessert.” 

Sungchan didn’t come to the econometrics lecture the next day. Instead of eating lunch at the cafeteria or the restaurant, you went straight home from your shift at the library, opting for a light, frozen meal of pasta while you continued reading the daily paper with a cold cup of tea. Then, you stood out of your balcony and watched the glimmering moonlight reflected on the river, flowing with a harshness that you see during high tide. You saw a group of high school girls commuting on bicycles, each with a large sports back nervously balanced on their little baskets as they pedaled as fast as they could. One of them had a stack of CDs from a band you weren’t aware of. A couple was walking near the embankment filled with Zelkova trees, hand in hand as the girl adjusted her scarf to protect her from the cool breeze. Near the bench, there was a group of old men feeding pigeons with stale bread as they talked about inaudible qualms about recent politics. It was, in essence, the usual evening scene by the river, but you sat on your balcony with a newfound attention to detail, seeing the gleam of happiness in everyone’s eyes. Whether they were truly happy or just looked the part was something you couldn’t tell, but they did look happy on this quiet, pleasant autumn evening, and due to that, you felt a sense of loneliness that was new to you, as if you were the only outsider to this picturesque evening. 

Come to think of it, the last scene you could remember being in was with Eunseok and his late girlfriend, playing board games in his room with a wafting feeling of true friendship. His girlfriend had died that night, and ever since, a cold, rigid border was placed between you and the rest of the world. This girl, who you weren’t even that close to, what was her existence to you? There was no adequate answer to such a question. All you knew with absolute certainty was that Eunseok’s girlfriend’s death had robbed you of a crucial part of your adolescence. But what that death meant to you and how it impacted you went far beyond your understanding. 

You sat by your balcony for a long time, watching the people passing through your apartment, hoping, with the same loneliness, that Sungchan would be one of the people passing by. He never appeared, and when the next day came, you woke up early, read the papers, and went to campus early for your accounting lecture.

The next day, you ate a light lunch near the campus library, then used the telephone by the reception to call Sungchan to see if he was alone waiting for another call. You let the machine ring about fifteen times, but no one answered. You tried again in ten-minute intervals with the same outcome. Then, you took the bus back to your apartment, finding a letter written by Eunseok in your mailbox. 

Thank you for your letter, Eunseok wrote. My family forwarded it to me, and it made me really happy. I’ve been making progress, and I’ve gotten to a point where I can write one back to you. 

You quickly took off your jacket and sat at the foot of your bed. You left the windows open when you left, hearing the caws of crows sitting idly by the telephone poles near your building. The cool, autumn breeze swayed your sheer curtains, and you held the four pages from him under the moonlight, studying every word that was addressed to you. The colors around you suddenly gleamed with a spiritual vibrance, painting the dull stillness in your life with life the more you read into his letter. You closed your eyes and spent some time collecting your thoughts before picking up the next paragraph. 

It’s been about four months since I’ve been here, he continued. I thought about you a lot, and the more I did, the more I began to feel that I was unfair to you. I think I should’ve been a better person, seeing the way I treated you was cruel. 

This may not be a normal way of looking at things, though, since boys my age never see things as cruel or unjust. Young boys like me are quite indifferent about these things, and rather than being cruel, they care more about what satisfies them. I think these types of questions are often asked by women like you, but I can’t help but feel that it applies to me now as well. Because questions about satisfaction have become rather difficult for me to navigate now, I find myself asking questions about cruelty, like whether or not things have been a bit too cruel for me or if the world itself is unjustly cruel, to begin with. In any case, I think I was cruel to you, and because of that, I led you on and hurt you. 

In doing so, I’d also led myself on and hurt myself just as deeply as I did to you. I don’t say this as a way to make myself feel better, but because it’s true. If I left a large wound inside you, just know that I’ve also left a wound in me as well. So please, don’t hate me. I’m a flawed person, much more flawed than you’ll ever realize. Which is why I don’t want you to hate me. Because if you were to do that, I would really fall apart. I can’t do you what you can do, letting things pass and waiting idly. I often envied how strong you are, which is probably why I led you on like that. 

I might be looking into things a little too much. The therapy they do here is not anything too over-analytical, but several months of it makes you question things with a certain precision that you can’t find outside in the real world. I can’t tell if this type of analysis is making me see things a lot easier or making it harder for me, but regardless, I feel that I’m getting closer and closer to full recovery than I was before, and people here are telling me that it’s true. This is the first time in a while that I was able to simply sit down and write a letter without biting my fingernails about each word I think about. The one I wrote you about four months ago, before I underwent treatment, was something I had to force out of me (was it a bad read? I don’t know, I don’t remember much of it). This time, though, I’m calm. Very calm. The mountains have been doing wonders for me. It’s clean, it’s quiet from the hustle and the bustle of the city outside, and I’m completely cut off from everything, on a daily schedule of group therapy, personal therapy, and then doing some outdoor activities like hiking and calligraphy to take my mind off things. I think I needed a lot of those to fully function again, and I’ve missed you dearly—missed talking to you, and missed conveying all my thoughts to you, my only person left. I used to dread the feeling of going through my thoughts just to pick out a few things to say, but now, the thought of feeling so much again over one person overwhelms me with so much joy. So now, I’m writing to you. It’s about nine in the evening, and I’ve just had my dinner and my bath. Everything is quiet, and there are no lights outside. I usually see stars out my window, but the clouds make it hard to see. 

People here are different. They talk of stars and constellations because they have nothing else to do, and they also talk about different kinds of birds, flowers, and insects that are in the mountains. When I talk to them, I grow aware of how ignorant I’ve been about the world around me, which is humbling, to say the least. 

There are about forty people in this building, alongside twenty more for in-house staff and doctors. It’s such a vast, wide, open place, so this isn’t big at all. It’s so vast that the place might’ve been empty, filled with nature and quiet living—almost so that you feel that this is how people should’ve truly lived, not in the cramped life of the city or even our small town back in Jeju. I mean, of course, it’s not, but I suppose I get to live this way due to certain conditions. 

In my free time, I do calligraphy with the other patients. I don’t really like moving my body as much as I used to when I was a teenager, and despite the beauty of the mountains, I find that I’m still a bit unwell to hike. Sometimes, the characters start to seem a bit jumbled up in my head whenever I try to paint a word or two, but I don’t know if it’s the medication or if it’s just the state that my mind is in when I’m concentrating on a specific word. Today, I tried “acceptance,” which ended up in a blotted mess. I told my doctor about this, and he told me that this blurriness I’m feeling sometimes is not something to be afraid of. It’s not a deformity or an issue I have to fix, but rather, it was something I had to get used to, that we have to accept these blurry visions that we see. Just like each person carries their own quirks and traits, people have their own little ways of feeling things, even if you think you have to correct them. You can’t force these things or else they go funny. Of course, he didn’t go into much detail and simplified a lot of the details, but I think what he was trying to say reached me. This blurriness might be permanent, and we all come here for some clarity in certain ways. As long as we’re here, we can live our lives without having to spread such blurriness to other people because we know that we are blurry in our existence. That’s what separates us from those that are outside: most people are unaware of things going blurry, while in this small, little mountain villa, it’s a necessity to have that blurriness in us. We are open about it all, and we live in peace and quiet so as to not inflict or spread this pain on each other. 

Calligraphy aside, I also join in growing small crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, and spring onions to make the dishes the chefs serve us. We grow everything ourselves, and the people that are here know a lot about farming. They even read books on cultivation, and we have experts come by to give us talks from morning to night about how to properly harvest and take care of our crops. I’ve grown to love this little part of my life, and it’s been a great happiness of mine to watch what I planted grow into something more, getting bigger and bigger each day. Have you ever grown tomatoes? They sprout flowers and then turn into this small, green bulb just before becoming juicy and bright red. 

The one problem about this place is that it’s so picturesque that you don’t want to leave, or rather, you’re afraid to leave. I feel like I’d lose the peace and calm that I’ve had here if I ever left, and even if I think I’ve recovered, I know that I’ll lose all that once I come out of it all. My doctor has been urging me to talk to other people—normal people in the normal world where you live. When he tells me that, the only person I see is you. I don’t really want to see my aunt or whatever family I have left. They never felt like that to me anyway, and hearing about them puts me in a bad mood. I have many things I want to say to you that cannot be put aside any longer, and I hope that you won’t feel burdened by what I have to say. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone, and I can sense how you feel about me. You make me very happy, and I hope that my happiness about your feelings for me has been conveyed in this letter. It’s what I need in my life. You’re what I need in my life. Please forgive me if I’ve written something that upsets you in this letter. As I’ve mentioned, I’m more flawed than you think I am. 

Sometimes, I wonder. I wonder if I never moved out of our neighborhood, wonder if I never met my girlfriend, if we stayed in the same school and lived our lives together, commuting day to day from our houses to school and back. What would’ve happened? Of course, hindsight is never accurate, but I’m trying my hardest to not be cruel to you anymore. It’s all I can do, and I hope I conveyed at least some of my feelings through this letter. 

This place has free visiting hours, unlike a normal hospital. As long as you make an appointment through the phone, you’re welcome at any time. You can even stay with me in my room. Please come and see me whenever you can. I really miss you. 

Attached to this letter is a map of the place. I’m really sorry if this letter got a bit too long. 

You read Eunseok’s letter through and through, reading it again until the sun rose. After that, you went out onto your balcony, watching the sun rise as you sipped a cup of coffee, ignoring the daily paper to read Eunseok’s letter again. You put the pages of his letter back in an envelope and neatly laid it on top of the dining table. Your name and your address, along with your apartment number, had been written out in perfectly messy handwriting, too messy, in fact, for a man who had been practicing calligraphy for about four months. You sat at your dining table, looking through every crevice of the envelope under the dim glow of the rising sun. The return address on the back was Ujeong Inn. An odd but appropriate name for a sanatorium, especially considering that ujeong means friendship.  Leaving the letter on top of your dining table with a half-empty cup of coffee, you slipped on a loose shirt and went out. You were afraid that if you continued staying within the vicinity of the letter, you would lock yourself in your apartment and read it until you’d memorized its entire contents. You walked across the embankment of the Han River without a single destination in mind, just as you would when Eunseok was still in Seoul. You took many sharp turns, keeping the river within your sight, picturing every word that was written out in his letter while pondering each sentence in your head. When the sun fully rose up, you ran back to your apartment and made a call to Ujeong Inn. The high-pitched, nasally voice of a male receptionist answered and asked what you were calling about. You asked for Eunseok and if you could visit today or tomorrow, leaving your name and your address so the receptionist could call back later. The same man called the phone after thirty minutes. Eunseok was available, he said. You thanked the receptionist and hung up, shoving a few clothes and a copy of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory in your backpack. Then, you opened the envelope again, reading Eunseok’s letter with a glass of wine, waiting for sleep to seep in. You stayed up until three in the morning, washed your face, and waited again while reading Eunseok’s letter until it was five, leaving your apartment to catch the first train to Gwanaksan.

You took the 5511 bus to get to Gwanaksan before noon, following the instructions that Eunseok put in the envelope after getting off at the Engineering building at Seoul University. Initially, you believed that Eunseok’s facility would be housed under Seoul University’s psychiatric department, but upon realizing it was an independent inn that acted under another medical center that specialized in psychiatric care, you were somewhat relieved. Most university hospitals operate under strict, often rigid conditions, and from hearing about Eunseok’s activities and the freedom he experienced at Ujeong Inn, it was a relief on your end to know that he was in good hands. The trip took a little over an hour, and before you knew it, the ridges and cracks of a great mountain range rose over your tiny little frame, an overwhelming sense of the power of nature striking you stuporous against its vast superiority. The autumn winds, which were calm in the city, seemed to roar and wail with the rustling of dense trees, home to a flora and fauna that was extinct in the asphalt and tar of the city. You began your twenty-minute hike up the inn after stopping by a small bookshop across the road, leaving with a pamphlet that showed specific landmarks around the mountain’s main trail, which was a straightforward, linear path that went uphill to the peak of the mountain range. Along the way, lush, large oak trees lined up the dirt path and the bridges that led to the inn, coupled with a plethora of loons and petrels that added a dash of color to the bright, blue sky. Most of the sun’s light was filtered through the foliage of greeneries, reflecting its pigmented tint in the shadows that cast downward onto the surface of your sneakers. No wonder it was such a quiet place, because the inn itself was basically deep inside the mountains!

A large, mounting metal gate covered the inside of the inn, along with thick oak tree stumps that acted as pillars to the entrance. The fact that the inn was situated in the middle of the forest made it seem like the whole world had been buried under it, lost to the civilization and rush of the busy streets in Seoul. Troughs and hills of mountain ranges continued to stack onto each other, giving you an image of an endless visage of scenic nature that you could never find elsewhere. On the left side of the gate, sparse fields of rice that were turning into a light shade of yellow spread out in all directions, cutting through a pristine, clear river that played with the rays of the sunlight. There were no houses around the area; the only thing you could see was a large sign that read UJEONG INN PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING. 

At the crook of the gate was an empty post made of wood, its once bright yellow paint stripping off to show the bare, splintered ends underneath. The presence of a freshly crushed cigarette in an ashtray, a steaming tea cup, and a silent radio on the desk gave you clues about the guard’s whereabouts, and you gave yourself ten minutes to wait for anyone to come back. Soon enough, a guard dressed in a knockoff security vest slipped into his post and asked for your last name and the patient you were seeing. When you replied with Eunseok, he used the pager strapped onto his breast pocket, lifting the gate with a single button that whirred and disturbed the natural silence of the forest in quick succession. 

Once you were inside, you were greeted with a small car park that had a minibus, a large Range Rover, and two dusty Toyota Corollas near the front door. The car park looked like it could hold around twenty cars at maximum, but for today, it seemed like there were only three vehicles there. 

The actual inn itself resembled an old, Korean-styled house made with rustic, pointed clay laid out in a geometric, square pattern. It had a well-maintained Zen garden with shiny pebbles as floors lining a small footpath with stone lanterns. Your guess about the place was that it was once a country house for Japanese or Korean aristocrats during the occupation period, considering the vast, four-story height that it boasted. There was something simple and sleek about its design, but there was also a slight tackiness in the bright red and green paints that adorned its walls. 

Upon reaching a large, stone gate, you were greeted by a woman in a nurse’s scrub. “Are you here for Eunseok?” 

You nodded, and she smiled while guiding you inside the building to sit on a small, beige sofa. As she left to use the plastic answering machine on the reception desk, you took the straps of your backpack off your shoulders, slumping it right next to you as you surveyed the place. There was an eerie cleanliness to it, an uncanny luster that reflected your face in all the furniture and the items strewn around the lobby. The paintings were minimal in color, sometimes having none at all, showcasing simple shapes on a white background. The floor was polished to perfection, almost as if a shiny, waxy sheen had been above your soles to ensure that you wouldn’t leave any dirt as you walked along, absorbing all the dirt and mud that you accumulated to hide it from the cleanliness of the entire building. 

“He’ll be here soon,” The nurse reassured you with another gleaming smile. You nodded, taking note of the deathly quiet that surrounded you after you finished speaking. There were no sounds of any kind, only a white, static silence that murmured underneath your ear canals. In this building, the people, animals, insects, and every microorganism were all sound asleep, even in what should’ve been a busy afternoon. 

Before long, you heard a pair of weak, rubber soles gliding through the slippery floors, and Eunseok was in front of you in a loose shirt that was buttoned halfway. He sat next to you on the beige sofa, its weight only slightly shifting from the impact. At first, you thought he was a hallucination that you conjured up from the fatigue of traveling all the way up into the mountains, but it was the real Eunseok. 

“Tired?” He whispered. You shook your head and gave him a gentle smile, head still shaking slightly from the apparition that was Eunseok. You wanted to reach out to him, feel his fingers against yours to truly confirm that he was real, but you decided against it. You still didn’t know if he was in a state to hold your hand, let alone be here right next to you to talk to you, but an unwavering calm aura that wafted around him gave you the reassurance that you were at least allowed to converse with him once more. 

“How have you been, Eunseok?” 

“Good,” He replied with a little, ghostly smile. “I’m sorry, but I’m not supposed to be here right now. I’m supposed to be back in one of the recreational rooms to do some calligraphy. I just slipped out for a minute, and I have to go back right away, so I’m sorry if I look like a mess right now.”

“Not at all,” You said, doing your best to reassure him with a gentler, softer tone. “I think I like your clean cut.” 

Eunseok’s hair was perfectly trimmed to ensure none of his strands reached the collar of his shift, bangs pristinely sliced just above the edge of his eyebrows. It suited his face very well, framing his angular features and accentuating the roundness of his eyes. He looked as if he had always worn his hair that way, a handsome rendition of an aristocratic schoolboy during the height of the occupation period. 

“I had one of the nurses cut it for me, but do you really think it looks nice?” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“My aunt said it’s too… childish.” He ruffled his hair and let some of the strands topple over each other, creating a mop of disheveled, black hair that was tousled meekly. 

“I wanted to see you just as you came here, not that I had anything urgent to say, but I just wanted to see your face and get used to having you around. If not, then I might have some trouble getting to know you again, even if we’ve practically known each other since birth. I’m just so bad with people, and I think the desolate nature of the mountains made it worse for me. I can hardly recall my aunt’s face now, and I don’t even know what my parents look like anymore,” 

“Well, do you think the treatment’s doing you any good?” 

“I think so, yeah,” He replied, fiddling with his hair again. “But I have to go.” 

You saw him off to the recreational room, and before he slid the door open, he took your hands in his, studying each crevice and line in your palm with his slender fingers. 

“I really wanna thank you for coming all the way here to see me. This makes me very happy, but I don’t want you to feel like I forced you to come here. The last thing I wanna be is a burden, and this is a special place far removed from what you’re used to. If you feel uncomfortable or lost in here, please tell me and be honest about it. I won’t be hurt by it at all. In this place, we can be completely honest with each other.” 

“Of course, I’ll be honest,” You said with certainty. 

Eunseok’s hands trembled as he gently took your shoulder, pushing the small of your back in his direction until your head was leaning on his chest. When you circled your arms around his back, he took his chin and softly placed it on the crown of your head, staying like that for a time and absorbing your body’s temperature into his cold touch. Holding him made you feel warm in your chest, and he suddenly stood up without saying a word, disappearing into the recreation room as quietly as he had come down to the reception desk. 

With Eunseok gone, you went back to the reception and took a nap on the sofa. You didn’t intend to, but you fell into a deep sleep that you hadn’t been able to experience in a long time, filled with a sense of Eunseok’s presence. In an instant, you were transported back into the small comforts of his apartment, in the bathroom where his toothbrush and toiletries were, with the library of books that were on his shelf, and in his sparsely decorated bedroom, lying next to him in his bed. Sleeping soundly in his apartment, you felt the fatigue from your body disappear bit by bit, dreaming of an albatross flying in the distance, in the dim glow of the summer sunset in Jeju. 

When you woke up, the clock on top of the reception desk points at six in the evening.

The lights had changed into a dim, yellow glow, the wind had died into a silent stillness sans the ruffling of tree leaves, and the shape of the clouds was distorted into lines and streaks that symmetrically bordered the moonlight. You wiped off the sweat on your forehead with the hem of your shirt, quickly changing into a long-sleeved sweater in the absence of people. You went into the kitchen by following the signs, getting a paper cup, and filling it to the brim with water while watching the night sky fade into a dark abyss in the absence of light in the forest. There was no sign of anyone around, and no sound penetrated the thick walls of silence that surrounded the entire building. It felt as though you were isolated in a void. 

“Hey, sorry for being gone for a while,” Eunseok’s voice was barely a whisper, and it startled you to the point where you dropped your cup. He tried to pick it up, but you swiftly bent down in a panic, using a crumpled pile of paper towels to soak up the remaining water that spilled out of your cup. Your copy of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory slipped out of your backpack’s front pocket, and he picked it up to hand it back to you. 

“How could you bring such a book in a place like this?” He joked. He was right, of course; all you could do was shrug. 

“I don’t know, it reminded me of the sort of books you would read back when you were in Dongguk.” 

To this, he chuckled—the first you’ve heard in a long time. Almost so that it shocked you to the spine, giving you an electrifying tingle every time you heard a tingle or a shift of pitch in his voice. He took your hand and dragged you to a large dining hall on the main floor, passing you a tray filled with lush, green salads, boiled vegetables, rice, and seaweed soup. 

“I’m sorry, did you want something else?” He asked. “There’s some pasta, and you can always go eat outside if you wanna go for a smoke,” 

“I’m alright, Eunseok, I quit in June.” You replied with a small, soft smile. His eyes widened with an unreadable expression. Then, he pressed his lips in a firm, thin line, averting his gaze back to his tray of food. 

Twenty other people entered the dining hall, while a handful began to pack their trays and left. Apart from the variety of ages, you pictured Sungchan’s private all-boys school in the dining hall, filled with men in hospital gowns instead of uniforms and speaking in a much lower volume than a large room of electric adolescent boys. There were no loud voices or whispers, nor was there anyone laughing out loud or crying. There was no yelling, and the only type of conversation that was present in the room was hushed and serene, with people either nodding to each other or softly humming with interest. You couldn’t tell what anyone was saying, but the way they spoke reminded you of the secret conversations you would see among girls in your time at the dormitory in your first year, confiding deep, dark secrets in the form of low whispers. You wondered if Eunseok spoke like this with the people he did calligraphy with, and you felt a twinge of loneliness mixed with jealousy at the proximity that the people here had with Eunseok. 

Two doctors sat behind your table with Eunseok, one a sheepish, nervous balding man with glasses in a white, neatly-pressed lab coat and the other a much younger-looking man with slightly greying hair, donned in bright blue scrubs and a surgical mask resting on his chin. The two were immersed in a battle of nodding at each other, with the occasional ah and oh really thrown back and forth. You listened to the way they spoke, and the more you allowed yourself to be a part of their conversation, the more it became apparent to you that the bald man was a doctor and the younger man was on his last leg of residency. 

Nobody in the dining hall paid any special attention to you, nor did they realize you existed at all, almost as if your being there was a natural part of their daily lives in the mountains. It was either that, or the sheer vastness of the nature around them that made people seem almost insignificant—small and irrelevant. 

Just then, the balding man in a white lab coat was now behind you, tapping you on your shoulder. 

“How long are you here for?” He asked. 

“Only two nights,” You replied firmly. “I’ll be leaving via the first bus in the morning on Sunday.”

“Well, if you ever come back, then do so in the winter. It’s really nice here in the autumn, but the snow caps on the mountian ranges adds an even nicer touch to the scenery.”

“I’ll probably be out of here by then,” Eunseok interjected with a forceful, yet gentle smile. 

“But still, the winter makes the place really nice.” He repeated. You weren’t too sure if he was a doctor anymore. 

Once the bald man left with the younger man in scrubs, you turned your attention back to Eunseok, who finished what was on his tray. His slender fingers trembled as he fidgeted with an empty bowl, unease written all over his face. 

“What do you talk about up here?” You asked. Eunseok hummed, pondering your question as if it was a bizarre one to ask. 

“What do you mean? We just talk about normal things like our daily routine, the books we’ve read, tomorrow’s plans, stuff like that. Don’t tell me you think people here talk about crazy things while jumping up and down with an imaginary marching band!” 

“No, no, that’s not what I mean,” You replied hastily, but Eunseok didn’t seem to stare at you the way he did whenever you felt you said something gravely wrong. Instead, he folded his arms and smiled at you, leaning his back on the plastic railings of the chair. 

“If you’re thinking about the noise level, then it’s just what it is. People talk quiet here, and there’s no need for you to talk so loud or draw any attention to yourself.” 

“I guess not,”

You took Eunseok’s tray and stacked his empty plates with yours, clearing the table as he dabbed his mouth with a folded handkerchief. When you put the trays back to a small window into the chef’s kitchen, you found yourself surprised by how much you’ve missed the low hums of people or the white noise that buzzed in one ear and out throughout your daily life. You wanted to hear boisterous laughter and people screaming for no reason, saying ridiculous things that only made sense after a few bottles of beer. Sure, it was the kind of environment you lived in since moving out of Jeju for university, but sitting with Eunseok in an eerily quiet dining hall made you uneasy and anxious. You couldn’t relax, and the more people began to leave the dining hall, the more you likened the experience to that of an empty art exhibit, where the people eating were caricatures of what an alien species thought human life was like. 

Instead of going back to the guest room in the left wing of the inn, Eunseok insisted that you stay in his room while he finished his bath, which was located in the opposite side of the guest rooms. He had his own shower in his room, but he insisted that you use his. 

“The thing is, most of the patients here are men, and I’m not too sure about using the staff bathroom since I don’t know where it is.” He explained, before making the trek to the other side of the room with his toiletries. 

After he was gone, you decided to play the first record that was on his shelf, unaware that it was his own copy of the Johnny Cash album that he gave you for Christmas—the very same one that he cried to on his birthday. To think that it had only been six months since you celebrated Eunseok’s birthday and slept with him was a puzzling realization. It felt more remote than it was. 

Maybe it was because you thought about it too much, distorting your sense of time and rearranging the timeline of memories in your head. 

The moonlight’s low beam was fluorescent enough for Eunseok’s room, leading you to turn his lamp off, legs streteched below his study desk as you immersed yourself into Johnny Cash’s voice. Shadows danced around the white walls of Eunseok’s room, playing with the items that were on his table and turning them into random blotted patterns across the room like a Rorscharch test. Taking a shiny metal flask from your backpack, you allowed the taste of warm wine to sit on your tongue, swirling it around and letting the warmth spread throughout your body. After a few sips, you slipped the flask back into your backpack, body slightly swaying with the shadows that continued to dance in Eunseok’s room. 

“It’s so dark here,” Eunseok suddenly murmured. Instead of standing up to greet him, your arms and legs felt heavier than usual, sticking like glue to the edge of his wooden seat. His light, wispy chuckles echoed back and forth between your eardrums in a trance-like reverie, making it harder for you to believe that Eunseok’s presence was indeed, real. 

“I wanted to turn the lights off because I haven’t seen such a bright, full moon in a long time,” You explained, feeling the apples of your cheeks for more warmth. 

Eunseok brought a large, white candle from the kitchen, striking a match to light the wick. Its bright, orange glow swayed with the shadows that it illuminated, further distorting the lamp and books strewn around Eunseok’s room. As the two of you sat facing each other and the candle amidst the disquiet silence of the mountain, it slowly began to feel like the candle transported you and Eunseok to the edge of the world, far, far away from anything that could disturb you. Eunseok shifted closer until his arms touched yours, causing you to flinch. 

“You smell like wine,” He laughed, resting his head on the crook of your shoulder. 

“I still have some in my flask if you’re allowed to drink in here,” You replied with a blase hint of surprise.

“We’re obviously not allowed to drink in here, but it’s fine. If the nurses and doctors can smoke, then we can also break the rules, no?” 

“Right,” 

“I even have drinking parties sometimes with the guy next door,” Eunseok murmured shyly, concealing a hint of mischief in his tone. 

You took the flask out of your backpack again and handed it to Eunseok, who slowly took the cap off and placed the opening of the flask between his lips. When the record ended, he took the flask in front of your eyes and shook it, signaling its emptiness. You took the flask back into your backpack, and Eunseok began humming the tune of a nursery rhyme that was all too familiar to you. 

“I still think Johnny Cash’s version is the best one,” you remembered him saying at fourteen, messing up the English lyrics to “My Grandfather’s Clock” so badly that it came out in a jumbled mess. A year later, when he turned fifteen, his voice was a little too deep to reach the higher parts of the song. Since then, he opted to hum it every now and then, leaving a distant performance of intimate warmth blended with a sorrowful loneliness that could only be heard in the timbers of his voice. 

He hummed the song again, closing his eyes as he buried his face closer to your neck. Eyes on the candle, feeling the wine circulate across your veins, listening to Eunseok’s peaceful humming, you felt all the tension inside you slip away. When he finished the song, a sheer silence engulfed the two of you in the stillness of the moonlight. 

“I don’t know why, but for a nursery rhyme, the song always makes me feel so sad,” said Eunseok. “I think it’s because I can see a giant, tall, old clock, just me and the thing in a vast, empty room with nobody else.” 

Eunseok, as per the letter he sent you, did look a lot healthier than before. Instead of the ghastly pallor that you were used to, his skin was kissed with the sun’s golden glow, his body firm and rigid with oozing vigor from all the exercise and farming he does in the inn. His eyes still contained the same, deep pools that always put you in a reverie, and his plump, luscious lips still trembled with hesitance, but there was an overall change in him that evolved him into a mature man. The sharp, thin edge of his jaw had disappeared into a more inviting, soothing calm. You couldn’t put a finger on how you felt about this newfound view of Eunseok, but it moved you to think that someone could change so much in just under half a year. You felt even more drawn to him than ever before, and never again would he have the brooding mystique of his former self, one that set him apart from the rest of the pack wherever he went. 

Eunseok had asked you about how you spent the last six months, demanding every detail of your life since she was institutionalized. You discussed your political activities in detail with Mirae, and how the riots have subsided since the June 29 declaration. While Mirae was a recurring topic of conversation between the two of you, you never told Eunseok about Mirae’s involvement with the New Korean Democratic Party or the underground Marxist lectures. To him, Mirae was simply an eccentric roommate notorious for sleeping around with as many guys as she could. Explaining this new side of Mirae to Eunseok proved difficult, especially with the complicated nature of her unique philosophy and what she believed in. Despite it all, the way you wanted to describe Mirae seemed to reach Eunseok, and you hid any mention of Sungchan from him. 

“Wow, I didn’t know Mirae was a staunch Marxist,” Eunseok cooed. “Do you still like her after all that?” 

“I don’t know,” You replied. “I don’t think I do, and Mirae is beyond liking or not liking. She doesn’t try to be liked or unliked, and I guess her honesty drew me in, but I wouldn’t say I like her.” 

“Honest while sleeping with all those men? You’re weird for that,” Eunseok said, stifling a loud chuckle. “How many boys has she slept with?” 

“God, I don’t know. I haven’t been getting updates from her lately, but last I’ve heard, she’s nearing one hundred.” 

“And you call that honest? Is she being honest with those other men?” 

“Yeah, for her, it’s sort of like the increasing number makes the crime less meaningful in some ways. Like, if she told a guy from the get-go that she was sleeping with other people, then to her, that nullifies whatever personal attachment that she might’ve had with the man she was sleeping with.” 

“I think she’s a lot more flawed than me,” Eunseok murmured after thinking about your description of Mirae. 

“I think so, too,” You replied with a nod. “But she’s the type of person way too logical for her own good. If you brought her here, I don’t think she’d last a day. She’d crack the code, tell the doctors she knew what they were doing, then leave after lecturing them on how she already understood her flaws and how to fix them. People don’t like her, but people definitely respect her in some way or another.” 

“I guess I’m the opposite of her, then,” Eunseok said. “I still don’t understand what they’re trying to do to me here, which makes me think that I don’t understand anything about myself.”

“It’s not because you’re not logical or clever.” You explained, grazing your fingers on his tanned arms. “I think you’re quite normal, and even I have things that I don’t understand about myself. I think everyone does to a certain extent, and that’s what makes us normal.” 

Eunseok rested his head on your lap, the same pearly eyes staring straight into yours. His thumb grazed the edge of your lips, but instead of leaning forward, he remained still, head firmly pressed on your thighs. 

“You’re the first person I’ve ever slept with,” He whispered, watching you with clear eyes. You kept your lips pressed firmly, rigid in your seated position. Sweaty palms seeped through the carpeted floor, becoming one with its acrylic fibers. 

“I was ready to sleep with her, I really was.” Eunseok started, fiddling with the ends of your hair, making your body slowly lean closer to him. “We wanted each other, that much was real. We tried everything we could—lube, moisturizer, oils—but it never worked. I don’t know if she was afraid of losing her virginity, but I wasn’t. Even then, I couldn’t get hard, and she couldn’t get wet.” 

You were now lying next to Eunseok on his bedroom floor, a flash of his room back in Jeju fusing with visions of his apartment in Seoul scattering through the white walls around you. 

“It always hurt me because she was always dry, and of course, because I couldn’t get hard, there was simply no way I could get inside her. We tried masturbating; she would jack me off, and I would use my fingers to play with her, but even that started to hurt, so we stopped.”

You nodded in silence. Eunseok cast his gaze at the moon, which started to look bigger and bigger between the shiny luster of his pearlescent eyes. 

“I never wanted to tell you this, but I came here to be honest. That night on my birthday, I was rock hard when you walked into my apartment. I’d been getting hard every time I saw you. I just wanted to hold you in my arms, take off our clothes, touch you all over, and fuck you then and there. I’ve never felt that way before, and I guess it confused me because I loved her so much.” 

“And not me, right?” You said, trying to hide the bitterness and pain in your throat. “You want to know why you were so turned on by me even though you didn’t love me like that, right?” 

“I’m sorry,” Eunseok repeated. “I know we’ve been friends for a long time, but she and I had a special bond, almost as if we were conjoined to the hip at birth. It was like we couldn't let each other go when I moved out of town and into her neighborhood. We were always together, and we understood each other perfectly. When we kissed, I knew we were connected somehow, maybe through an invisible string or a spiritual destiny. She ran to me and cried like a baby when she had her first period, and she was the first person I talked to when I had my first wet dream. After she died, I didn’t know how else I could’ve been able to relate to other people—including you, and I’ve known you longer than I’ve ever known her. I didn’t know how to love another person the way I loved her.” 

Eunseok remained silent for a while, then suddenly burst into tears, trembling in spasmodic tremors. He buried his face under your chest, gripping your waist tight as his hot breath tickled your abdomen, sporting the same suffocating violence that he had brought with him on the night of his birthday. You caressed his back, smoothing the loose wrinkles of his shirt as he clung to you like a baby. For what felt like a few hours, you held Eunseok in your arms, soothing his back every now and then whenever he would wail or hurl, his cries piercing your heart in palpable agony. His candle was now extinguished, and the moonlight was covered with thick, dark clouds condensed in the deepest shade of navy. The night was chilly with silence, slicing through the air with a whir of disquiet that spoke louder than Eunseok’s cries. The mountains were so quiet that they seemed to drown out any noise that stirred its way, the winds flowing from the curtains swaying all sense of sound back to its earthen ridges, to be absorbed in the soil as nature hurls back in a stupefied haze. Eunseok slowly climbed up, tugging at your shirt before planting a soft kiss beneath your ear amidst sniffles. 

“Sorry,” his voice barely a whisper. “Sometimes, I get so confused that I don’t know what’s happening.” 

“I’ve been getting that a lot recently, too,” You replied, returning the gesture by grazing your lips on his cheek. You felt his lips curve into a small smile, and then he placed his palms on your temple, attempting to massage whatever fear and anxieties you had. He gently twisted his hands into yours, intertwining his fingers in the webbed crevices of your palms. Then, he softly tugged at your arm, leading you to his bed, where his entire body lay languid, clinging to your side.

“I’d like to hear more about your life here. What you do, who you meet, everything. Of course, if you’re not tired.” You asked. 

Eunseok smiled and began talking about his daily routine in the inn, speaking in short phrases that were crystal clear. Wake up at six. Feed the cats before breakfast. Go to the cafeteria and eat. Clean out the hallways. Water and tend to the crops grown in the garden. Trim the garden’s bushes. Pick some ready vegetables. Before his lunch, he would have an hour and a half with his doctor. In the afternoon, he spent most of his time reading or doing calligraphy as a group activity. Sometimes, he would dabble in cooking classes. 

“I started playing the piano again,” he said. “There’s a music teacher that comes from Seoul University every week, and sometimes, we all take turns as teachers or students depending on our expertise. I don't have any, but I teach literature to some patients when I can. Some of the patients who specialize in a language like French or English step in to teach for an hour or so, and I’ve picked up some techniques on how to knit, so if you could bring the scarf that I gave you last Christmas, I can adjust it so it won’t be too big for you.” 

“That sounds fun!” You exclaimed in a whisper. 

“What do you think you’d teach if you were here?” He asked. You pondered at the thought, realizing that economics wasn’t necessarily the most therapeutic topic to teach at a place like Ujeong Inn. Ujeong was home to those who wanted to be tethered from the real world, and something like economics was too tied to real events that broke the facade of a peaceful commune—a society of its own that didn’t need to worry about money or value. 

“Honestly, I don’t know. I think I have nothing to offer,” you finally replied. 

“I’ve been putting a lot more effort into studying here than I ever did when I was a student at university. I work really hard to understand new concepts and even complete whatever homework I get on time. It’s nice, and I’ve grown to enjoy it.” 

“So, what do you do after dinner?” 

“Read books, talk with some of the patients, go to their rooms, and play board games. I also go to the music room and play piano, and at night, I like to sit down and work on my autobiography,”

“Autobiography?” 

“No, I’m just kidding. We sleep at ten sharp. It’s a pretty healthy lifestyle, no?” He laughed. You stared at the small, analog clock on top of Eunseok’s desk. It was a few minutes before nine-thirty. 

“Isn’t your bedtime coming soon?” 

“We can stay up late today. I haven’t seen you in so long, you know? I wanna talk more, so please, talk.” 

“Sometimes, when I’m all alone, I think about the old days,” you explained. “When it was the three of us in your room. Do you remember when I had your girlfriend struggling to ride the back of my bike to visit you at the hospital near the sea? I know we pretty much live right next to it, but that one was right next to the shores.” 

“Yes! It was for my appendicitis surgery!” Eunseok recalled with a smile. “I saw you struggle to pedal through my window, and you brought me cake, but it was all smushed up! It was practically inedible, but I tried to smash it up even more like baby food and swallowed it all up! God, that seemed like such a long time ago,” 

“I think you were trying to write a novel then. Your desk was filled with loose-leaf paper, pretty much scattered across the room!” 

“I like to think that there’s a time in a boy’s life where all he does is write and think,” Eunseok nervously uttered. “What made you think of that all of a sudden?” 

“I guess I just miss the smell of the sea a lot. This year, it rained a lot more in the autumn, and for some reason, I can just smell the salt of the sea every time it rains. Before I knew it, I would spend my mornings thinking about that specific hospital visit. Did she ever visit you afterward?” 

“Absolutely not! We had a huge fight after the two of you visited, and that was it. She never showed her face in the hospital again. Terrible! Something about hating hospitals did it to her.” Eunseok laughed. “She was always a kid about it. Nobody likes hospitals, but you swallow that feeling if it means making the one that’s actually stuck there feel better. I don’t know, she just didn’t get it.” 

“But she wasn’t so bad when she was with me.”

“It’s because you were there,” he said, a growing edge to his timbre. “I know it may seem like the two of you weren’t that close, but she was very fond of you. When it was just me, she struggled to keep her weak side hidden. Something to do with your presence made her hide that side of her very well. With me, her mood switches with a simple snap of a finger. She let her guard down in front of me a lot, and she could go from talking about the weather to throwing a long, screaming tantrum. It happens all the time, and has been happening since we met. She did try her best to change, though.” 

Eunseok readjusted his position, lifting his head from the crown of your head to face you. His arms went loose around your waist, and his palms were no longer firmly pressed on your back. 

“She tried hard, but it was no good for her at all. It’s like the more she tried, the angrier and moodier she’d get. She was already a beautiful person, but she never found the confidence to realize that. It was always ‘I need to change, and I need to change fast,’ always thinking about how to better herself every single second. How awful!” 

“I don’t think I’m the best judge of that, but now that I think of it, she did always show her best side when I was around. Whenever I’d come visit your room, she was always smiling, doing her very best to join and play the board games you’d pick out. She wasn’t a sore loser at all, either, and took punishments with grace.” 

Eunseok’s smile grew brighter, eyes crinkling between his lids and his cheeks. “She’d be thrilled to hear that, you know? Even if she never made it obvious, you were her only friend—apart from me, of course.” 

“And both of you were my only friends,” you replied. “I don’t think I can call anyone that now.” 

“That’s why things felt so right when the three of us were together. I was with you, and I could see her best. Whenever you’re around, I can stop worrying about her and relax, see her have fun like a teenage girl. Our board game sessions were my favorite moments in life. I don’t know about you, though.” 

“If I’m being honest, I was restless. I could never tell what she was thinking, and I was always worried if she didn’t want me there or anything. Something about being a third wheel and making things more awkward, I guess.” 

“Well, to me and her, it was the perfect circle. So perfect, in fact, that we knew it was never going to last forever.” 

He sat up, back resting against the bedframe. There was a shadow cast over his eyes from his bangs, which hung loosely on top of his brows. The moonlight illuminated his cheeks in a way that showed its hidden sorrows, dyeing him in blue hues as he put his thumbs together, circling them back and forth. He started, then stopped, his breath falling short whenever he opened his mouth. Then, he looked at you with a sad smile, eyes filled with an ocean of sorrow wallowing within the single tear that rolled down his cheek. 

“Sorry, can we talk about something cheerful now?”

Having moved out of your dorm in first year, nothing you could talk about was cheerful anymore. Peanut was most certainly out of your life, and Mirae had gone from an odd roommate with a penchant for sleeping around into a tour de force of complex, contradicting ideals. The best you could do now was talk about the people you would observe through the balcony that you and Eunseok used to share by the Han River: the group of old men who would feed pigeons and talk about their life, the joggers who brought dogs without leashes to run across the embankment with them, the vibrant high schoolers in bicycles who did tricks with tennis rackets strapped on their backs, and the plethora of oddballs you’d see at night, drunkenly singing hymns from a bygone era. To you, they were nothing but a routine, but the little tidbits of life you encountered made Eunseok smile. To think that he once shared such realities that were now foreign and new to him baffled you. After that, Eunseok attempted to impersonate some of the patients he encountered at the inn. Then, a giant yawn preceded his collapse into a deep, peaceful slumber.

The room continued to glow white from the moonlight, illuminating its rich, heavenly light on Eunseok’s face. Whenever you closed your eyes, you could still hear the faint echo of Eunseok’s low hum, the tune to “My Grandfather’s Clock” faintly leaving your eyes, lingering with a slight reverberation until it completely disappeared into the empty silence of the dark night. That night, when sleep finally carried you in Eunseok’s arms, you dreamed of the sea. It wasn’t the same one in Jeju, with its calm, gentle waves, the smell of brine and wet sand wafting through your nose, and dark skies that swirled into a misty pastiche of white, ocean waves. The breeze that the waves carried was cold to the touch, wrapping its layers of chills around you in a shrill, almost lifeless temperature that made you taste what death would’ve felt like. No matter how much the winds howled and the waves crashed, though, the sea itself remained calm. Why was that? Your ears could hear the roars of crashing waves immolating into a cacophony of distant cries, and yet the sea was flat like a river, calmly carrying its waters back to shore. You tried to throw a stone, and it only skipped three times before sinking into the deep end, bouncing back to the sand where your feet were. 

When you opened your eyes, you felt as if you were still within the world of your dreams, Eunseok’s room drowning in the calm waves of the sea. The dark skies trembled with the wavering shadows cast by the bright moonlight, and on reflex, you stirred up and got out of bed, searching for the stone that you had just thrown into the ocean. What you saw instead was an image of Eunseok, who was also awake, sitting out the windowsill. He had drawn his knees up to his chin, shoulders relaxed in a hunched state. Judging from the glow of the moon and the color of the skies, you assumed it was about dawn, perhaps four in the morning. A violent thirst clutched your throat, but you remained still and watched Eunseok by the window. He wore the same, blue pajamas that he wore before the two of you went to bed, and his hair was held in place by a small, glowing hairpin, reflecting the glow of the moonlight with his forehead. 

Eunseok stayed frozen in place, his pearlescent eyes directly staring at the moonlight. In his hunched state, he looked like a vulnerable prey hiding from a formidable monster in the sea. The outline of his nose and lips were accentuated with the shadowplay of the moon, forming a fragile, yet crystal clear imagination of his dreamy features, almost pulsating with the gentle beat of his heart. His lips pursed open, as if he were murmuring his deepest secrets to the night. The hungry thirst you felt was drying up your throat, but in the stillness of the night, every single noise you made was bound to reach his ears. A single sigh was all it took for him to quickly spin his head towards you, feet gliding back to the bed as his large, pearly eyes were fixated on you. You stared back at him, but there was a ghastly transparency in his eyes revealing a portal to another world, and the more you peered into him, the more you began to realize that the portal led you into an empty husk of nothingness. Your figure was no longer reflected in his pupils; he was light years away from you. 

When you reached out to touch him, he trembled, quickly running away and disappearing into the shadows. Then, he was on top of you, all seven buttons on his blue pajama top unbuttoned, revealing a lanky, tanned chest bathing in the soft light of the moon. His body had the heartbreaking shine of newborn flesh, the shadowplay revealing all the details of his skin in perfect clarity; the curves of his nipples; the hollow lines of his collar bones; the depth and pulsating muscles of his arms; the soft indent of his navel; his protruding hip bones; shapes which keep morphing with the light and shadows that danced on the surface of his body. He was simply nothing like the body that you held when he cried with agony that night, all imperfections no longer marring his flesh. He was beautiful, of course, but there was a fragile rigidity that clamped him shut, making the act of holding him alone awkward. Even if all you were doing with him that night was joining your body with his, there was an inkling of thought that consumed you. For no matter how much you had him inside you, Eunseok could have never shared his imperfections with you. The only thing you could’ve done was hold him tightly, feel what he truly felt inside you, letting all of his sorrow and heartbreak out into your caverns. 

Eunseok’s body before you was different; reborn through the many phases of the moon. All sense of boyishness had been stripped away since his girlfriend’s death, replaced by the metamorphosis of a mature man. There was nothing sexual about it, and you could only stare in astonishment at the perfection of each detail that he showed you—a spectacle of raw authenticity. He stripped his pajama pants down, exposing his naked truth. Then, he disappeared once more, this time out the door, leaving it swinging ajar. 

You stayed sitting upright on the bed for what felt like a very long time, until it occurred to you that you had to leave. You took your jeans on the floor and hastily buckled them to your hips, silently rushing to the kitchen in the main hall for a glass of water. You took the time to stretch your amrs and legs, letting the tension of your dream go while you thought of the vivid richness of what you saw. You went back to bed and found Eunseok sleeping soundly, careful not to stir anything. Sleep never came until dawn gave you a taste of the first orange luster of sunlight, letting all the shadows from the moon disappear all at once.

“Good morning,” You felt a cold hand touch your cheek. 

“Good morning.” You replied. Eunseok had to hold your hand and support your weight all the way down to the dining hall. Your eyes never met his, and you tried your best to feel the touch of his skin, comparing it with what you saw that night. 

“How did you sleep?” He asked.

“Alright, I guess,” you said. He tilted his head in concern, hesitating before rushing to the start the kettle. Next to him was a large box filled with teabags and instant coffee pouches. “Your eyes are red, though, did you not get any sleep at all?” 

“I woke up in the middle of the night,

“Oh no, is it because of me? Did I snore?” Eunseok asked with concern. 

“No, not really, I just had a weird dream about you. Something about us on the beach back in Jeju, this time as adults.” You lied with a smile. At first, you thought that Eunseok had caught on, acting embarrassed about revealing his body to you, and then, you realized that the transparency you saw was gone, your silhouette hazily etched into his irises. 

“What was it about?” 

“I don’t know, just us walking down the beach as usual when we were children,” 

“Did anything happen after that?

You shook your head, letting the discomfort of the dining hall’s plastic chair ground you to the earth. Eunseok brought a tray of toasted bread, butter, and a salad, and you couldn’t bring yourself to touch your food. 

“We should go back to Jeju together sometime, when we’re both not like this,” Eunseok said hastily, as if he was in a rush. 

“I think we should,” you replied, not knowing what to say. There was a slight hesitance upon Eunseok bringing Jeju and the past up a lot more than he did before, but you supposed Ujeong was a place where he had to confront all of that—even if it hurt him in the process. 

“I know it isn’t much, but would you like to go to a picnic with me? There are no seas out here or anything, but it might make us remember a time when everything was alright, you know, when we were both just kids growing up in Jeju,” He asked almost pleadingly. 

“I’d love that,” you replied with a smile. 

“I have to tell the superiors that I want to cancel my schedule for you, though, is that alright?”

“Of course, take as much time as you need,”

After breakfast, Eunseok took you to a room on the other side of the building. It was a spacious enclave with scratching posts on every corner, scattered around with many cat toys that had vibrant colors of feathers on them. Two men who looked a little bit older than Eunseok were already present, feeding the cats and playing with them. One of them was rolling on the floor while a large, tabby cat had tangled its claws in his hair. Eunseok muttered a small good morning to the pair, and they returned the greeting with glee. The windows were large, encompassing the entire room as the curtains were drawn to reveal the back garden, which was well-manicured with a varying flora of flowers. Spotting Eunseok, a slim, black cat began to strut towards him, rubbing its head on his ankles. He crouched down and gently patted the cat’s head, watching it roll over to reveal its pale underbelly with low purrs. 

“Do you do this every morning?” You asked Eunseok. 

“Yep, the facility says petting cats or any animal is good for you, so they try to make it the first thing we think of when we wake up,” he explained, scratching the cat on the bottom of its chin.  “I don’t know why, but the entire inn has a fondness for cats. I was indifferent to them before I came here, but I see why they’re so loveable now. They’re not like dogs who demand love, they just come to you when they know they can get love.”

After quickly telling the cat to go away, he went to one of four litter boxes and scooped up its droppings, shoveling them into a large, plastic bin nearby. He then replaced the litter box with new, clean cat litter, his task quickly disrupted by a beige white berman with deep, blue eyes. When you tried to pick it up to assist Eunseok in his task, the cat retaliated by scratching your hands. 

“Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you, even if he looks like he would. Kokuma is one of the friendlier cats here.” He picked Kokuma from you, its demeanor immediately changing upon being held from Eunseok. Rather than the slanted, deep blue hues of wariness that Kokuma gave you, the black, shiny luster in his pupils grew to encompass its entire eyes, softening into large pools of twinkling yearning. Eunseok’s smile at you while he stroked Kokuma’s chin was so radiant and blinding, carrying an infectious weight to it that made you grin from ear to ear. You were still wondering about your dream and whether that was the real Eunseok or not, but you still weren’t certain if the Eunseok that was in front of you, filled with the vibrance of life, was the same one that coldly showed his raw nakedness that night. 

“I’ve started to like mornings a lot more, you know?”

“Yeah? I remember you used to hate them back home, and I had to go all the way up into your room to wake up and go to school together. Then, when you moved out, I would sometimes cycle to yours just to wake you and your girlfriend up!” You said, picturing a perfect scene of your younger, uniform-clad self, clutching a backpack and kicking your bike down Eunseok’s garden to barge into his room, incessantly banging on his door until he got up to open it. 

“Yeah, I remember that,” he replied with a smile. “Mornings used to be so bleak, like a reminder that you’re alive for another day. Now, it’s a reminder of anything fresh and new, and I start to get sad around the afternoon, when the sun starts to go down.”

“I think it’s just a reminder of us getting older, no?” You interjected. 

“I guess, but I don’t think I mind. Getting older is also something fresh and new in its own way,” Eunseok continued playing with Kokuma until it went away to drink some water out of its bowl. He whistled to the tune of “My Grandfather’s Clock,” attracting two cats his way with his low lullaby. Whenever you tried to pet one, it retaliated and demanded nothing but Eunseok’s touch. 

I envy you, you sly, sly cat, you thought, watching the gleaming grin plastered on Eunseok’s lips as he toyed with two cats at the same time. 

“Do you wanna come eat lunch with me?” He suddenly asked, eyes perking up to you while trying to distract the cats who began meowing for his attention. 

“No thanks, I have to work on some schoolwork. I’ll join you when we go out, though,”

You slipped out of the room and went to Eunseok’s bathroom, washing your face and trimming your nails with the inn’s nail clippers. You expected his bathroom to be simple, but the hospitality of the inn added an impeccable array of expensive soaps, facial creams, and moisturizers by his sink—almost to a point where you wondered if he was truly alone in his room or not. While most of the patients were male, there were a few female patients who were often situated by the music room, either playing piano or guitar as they sang songs that were at least a decade old. Albeit a taboo, you also thought of a nurse coming in past ten in the evening. All speculations disappeared the moment you rinsed your face with another splash of cold water. Eunseok wasn’t the type to sleep around, especially now that he was tangibly confused between his feelings for his girlfriend and you. Closing your eyes, you thought of her, and how relaxed she was whenever with Eunseok. It was a new form of trust that transcended everything you knew about emotions—something that was likened to the fusion of two entities into a cellular level. She never needed to worry whenever she was with Eunseok, because he always got straight through her, reading her mind and understanding her on a molecular level. 

Tell me, did you ever get jealous? Of me? Of anyone that Eunseok was with? Did you ever speculate if he was with others when the two of you were not by each other’s side?

No way! You can hear her respond in your head with a vigorous shake of the head. That boy can hardly go on without having to worry about me all the time. Do you think he has the capacity to create space in his mind for other people! No! No way! 

You must be lucky, then! Because he still worries about you even when you’re dead! 

When you blinked, you saw her outline through the mirror, still wearing the school uniform that she shared with Eunseok. She still looked the same as she did then, with an innocent youthfulness that paled in comparison to what you and Eunseok went through in the throes of young adulthood. Almost as if flaunting the permanence of her age, you can imagine her laughing with good, yet prideful intentions at the thought of Eunseok seeing other women in the facility. 

You know, you’re stupid to think of such things! Don’t you believe in him wholeheartedly the way I do?

I don’t know, really. I want to, but it’s a little difficult right now. 

Entering the kitchen, the image of Eunseok’s dead girlfriend nodding and waving goodbye transferred into the ripples of the coffee you made. As you swirled your mug, she would swirl, too, swimming in a black pool, sloshing away until you pressed the mug onto your lips. You took your macroeconomics textbook open, quickly tossing your sweater aside in favor of a white tank top in the sunny kitchen. It was a little odd trying to memorize graphs on a kitchen table that wasn’t yours. 

Eunseok came back from his calligraphy lessons ar noon, taking a quick shower and changing his clothes. He joined you in the dining hall for lunch, then walked you to the front of the gate. The absent guard was now in his little post, listening to a static-ridden radio while reading a book. He waved at the two of you as you walked past the gate, and you returned the gesture with a friendly sentiment. Eunseok went to the logbook and wrote the details of his outing while entertaining the guard with casual small talk. 

“It’s gonna rain later in the evening, so make sure to come back by then. The valley gets very wet and muddy during those times.” He said, mouth stained with the residue of nicotine gum. “Take care,”

“He seems nice,” you said, looking behind you as Eunseok placed his hand on the small of your back. 

“I think he’s a little bit like me,” he replied, tapping his head.

The guard was right about the weather—almost so that the sky’s piercing blue hues served to hurt your eyes. The only trail of white clouds that was left was a limp cluster that looked like torn-up cotton balls stuck to a technicolor backdrop on a child’s art project. Instead of taking the dirt path down the hill and into Seoul University’s engineering building, Eunseok took you up on a hike, traversing through large oak trees leading to a steep, narrow hill. He climbed with a confident stride, legs maneuvering the area with perfect, crisp memory. With hardly a single word uttered between the two of you, Eunseok concentrated on his hike, his bomber jacket hoisted up his left shoulder. 

You watched his frame solemnly move from side to side, his jacket miraculously staying in place despite the nature of the hike. Sometimes, he would look back at you and smile, ensuring that your eyes would meet. 

The trail ended after another ten minutes of upward walking until the two of you reached a flatline. Near the edge of the path, there was a small bench situated at another town’s entrance, and you rested there, wiping your sweat with the hem of your shirt while dousing yourself with water. Then, the two of you got back to walking, this time on a dirt pavement that lined an empty neighborhood of old, Occupation-era houses designed for cheap, communal living away from the main hub of the city. The dead, yellow grass reached your waist and covered a quarter of the houses’ height, alongside dry grubs of pigeon feces that lined the tarnished clay finish of the roofs.

“There was a farmland around here, as you can see with the barren fields. They used to grow rice here, but all of that’s been cleared out since. It’s not really that easy to grow anything out here when the winters get too harsh, and the soil’s been degrading because the weather hasn’t been too nice to it. Everyone migrated towards the city, abandoning this place into an empty wasteland of sorts,”

“Some of the houses here still look like they can be used, no?” You asked. Eunseok peered at one of the bigger houses next to a barren, empty field marred with nothing but dry soil, then snapped his head back to you, as if remembering a crucial detail. 

“There are rumors that the Unification Church used it as one of their communes, but I think they’ve moved down South since. It’s either they couldn’t handle the weather, or they got sick of the mountains. After all, most of the people in that cult are city folk.”

A little beyond the moat and the barren fields was a clear, pristine view of Seoul’s city skyline reflected in the deep depths of the Han river. From the corner of your eyes down to the scope of your peripheral vision, you began to mentally trace the vastness of the city with your pupils, black dots going back and forth as each building merged together with the blurry haze of the autumn sun. Eunseok continued to follow the fence that lined the abandoned houses, unfazed at the city in front of him. With downcast eyes, he continued to trot along, light steps posing symmetry with the rustic, worn-down fences beside him. 

“This reminds me of the old days, just without the sea,” Eunseok whispered. He tilted his head, glassy, beady eyes meeting yours. Somehow, his eyes blinded you more than the beaming sun.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, we did try to revive this ritual when you moved from Jeju to Seoul. We were practically walking back and forth between the entire city!” You cheered, jogging to his side to match his steadfast pace. 

“Even that feels like ancient history to me now.”

At that time, you couldn’t muster a response. You wanted to stop dead at your tracks and pull him into a hug in the middle of the dead roads, holding him with all the delicateness you had in your heart. You wanted to tell him that ancient history is always relevant in the present, and that the past doesn’t have to continue to define your trajectory with him. 

Eunseok-ah, we can go on those walks again—hell, even walk through all of Seoul once more, but it will be different once you’re out. We’ll be walking and revisiting history like a sacred, respected tourist spot, full of all the things we’ve learned and understood about each other. 

Then, Eunseok walked further again, and you felt that he was too far away from your fingertips. No matter how hard you chased after him, he was always two steps forward, only looking back to flash you a fragile, broken smile.

The dirt path came to a halt, and what was beyond the two of you was a lush forest filled with the coos of distant autumn birds and a flora of old growth trees expanding into the edge of the mountain range. There was nothing beyond the point that Eunseok began walking, and yet it was endless all at once. The city you were so familiar with slowly turned into a green haze, and once you looked back past a point where the green, prickly grass began to reach your waist, the beige finish of the dirt path disappeared completely. Eunseok continued treading onward, then stopped to slowly sit down on one of the barren, empty hills that expanded into an infinite illusion of greeneries.

“Sorry about last night again, I don’t know what got to me. All of a sudden, I was this giant ball of nervousness, and I couldn’t control the tears anymore. It was a bit selfish of me to unleash that after you’ve come all the way from Seoul.” He began, eyes focusing on the piece of grass he twisted between his fingers. You took the empty space next to him, maintaining a loose, spatial distance between him. Whenever Eunseok was like this, he was always difficult to get close to. 

“It’s all good.” You reassured, flashing him a warm smile.  “We both have a lot of things and feelings we want to straighten up and get out into the open. So if you need anyone to spill everything on, then spill it all on me. After that, we can understand each other better.” 

“What will happen after that? After we’ve understood each other?” 

“It’s not a question of what then, it’s just a little selfish thing of mine. People have certain fixations, like how Peanut is focused on being a neat freak, and Mirae has her own rigid, albeit complex philosophy that she wants to follow. Mine just happens to be trying to understand you as best as I could, and as best as you’ll let me.” 

“So it’s like a hobby?” He asked, widening his eyes at the prospect. 

“No, not really. I think most people would call that friendship or love, but if you want to think about it as a hobby, then that’s fine by me.” 

“Why do you always end up liking weird people like me?” 

“I don’t see you like that, to be honest.” After a few seconds of silence, you pursed your lips in a long, slow sigh. 

“But I am weird. I wake up in the middle of the night so scared, even when I don’t have any nightmares. I don’t know why, but it’s this feeling of never getting better again. I’ll always stay in this weird, blurry haze, never having a clear head, and grow old like this, wasting away in the inn and the mountains. When I think of that, I get these horrible chills that make me stay up all night.” Eunseok replied, the fragility in his voice grating your ears like grass. You cautiously shifted closer to him, leaning your head on his shoulder as your wrapped your tiny arms over his broad, wide shoulders. He remained frozen, eyes staring into a blank fixture of green hills as he unconsciously unwinded the twisted grass from his fingers. 

“Sometimes, I feel like she’s calling to me in the darkness, haunting me because death parted us. I can hear her voice calling for me, calling me out to join her because she can’t stand being alone. I don’t know what to do,”

“What have you been doing?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, please.”

“I won’t.”

“Sometimes, I go to the bathroom and stare at myself. Then, I stare at my penis, thinking of you. And I cry, cry so hard that some of the tears drop while I stroke myself to feel any sense of warmth around me. Is that sick?” 

“No, I don’t think it’s sick at all. I just wish I was there for you,” you replied. 

“Be here for me now, then. Right here.” 

Eyes looking deep into his for answers, you began shifting your weight to his side, slowly laying his head on the soft grass. He laid flat on the ground, hands shivering as his fingers explored the small of your back, searching for something that can never be found. You dipped your head towards his temple, forehead grazing his as the tips of your nose touched. Your eyes found his, silent permission awaiting his imminent approval. Once he gave you a quick nod, you closed your eyes and kissed him, the edge of his mouth feeling light as a feather. The apprehension in your bodies quickly started to fade away, and a lonesome desperation consumed Eunseok. In an instant, he grabbed your body close to his, letting all of him fuse with you in a microcosmic level. A sweeping breath from his lungs tingled in your ears, reassuring you that this was what he wanted. This was what he needed. And yet, the hunger in his tongue delving deep inside the caverns of your mouth made you apprehensive. He responded to every single inch of your body with a bottomless hunger that was difficult to keep up with. Hands threading your hair, tangling within your locks, he pulled you in deeper—and in an instant, it was almost as if he dyed you with all the dark colors that plagued him since you last saw him in Seoul. 

“You don’t need to hold back,” you whispered, trying to hide the nervousness that overwhelmed you. As if knowing this, a deep stare engulfed you within the prison of his psyche, enveloping you into his austere smolder. 

He slid further down into the hem of your dress, tugging at it and pushing it upward to expose your bare skin to the gentle, autumn breeze. He was warm yet cold at the same time, fingers grasping your waist and never letting go. His rough tongue never left an inch in your stomach, appetite increasing as he found his hands under the cups of your bra. In a quick motion, you raised your torso up and helped him unclasp it, slender fingers desperately squeezing each line and curvature of your breasts. His free hand made its way to feel the cotton of your panties, sneaking past the binding elastic to feel the soft moisture of your slit. 

“Tell me something,” He whispered. 

“What?” You replied with bated, agonizing breath. 

“Will you wait for me until I get better?” 

“Of course I will,”

“Will you do me a favor and stop saying of course to everything I say?” 

“Sorry, I’ll stop.”

He continued to play with your clit, thumb pressing lightly on its surface while his fingers found its way into your entrance. His lips found its way to your perked up nipples, grazing his tongue around its shape to memorize its outline in perfect clarity. You grabbed his hair, shaky fingers desperately trying to unzip his jeans. 

“You’re still wet,” He smiled. 

“You’re warm,” You replied, gaining the courage to meet his eyes as you pressed your palm on his crotch. 

In one, swift motion, you gently slid his trousers down to his knees, with Eunseok awkwardly kicking them to the side. As his fingers entered your walls, searching around them as you clenched yourself tightly to his electrifying touch, your hands played with the hem of his boxers, casually slipping your fingers in and out until a heaving, longing snarl escaped his hungry lungs. 

“Do you want me to touch you?” You asked. A flimsy nod was enough for you to take his girth within your fingers, thumb placed at his tip as you slowly moved up and down, feeling him grow underneath your grasp. He sucked his breath in with your every touch, occasionally losing focus and pulling his fingers out of you. 

Gently, you stood up and laid Eunseok on the grass bed, licking his abdomen until your tongue found its way to the tip of his penis. With two hands, you continued to clasp your fingers around his member, one tightly held at his shaft and the other firmly gripping his length. You took him all in, breathing in his intoxicating scent as you let him reach the entrance of your throat. 

“Stop,” he murmured. “I want to make you feel good,”

“You don’t have to,” You whispered with a smile, your breath tingling beneath his girth. 

“We can make each other feel good, Eunseok.” 

Intertwining your fingers with his, you led his stiff length to your core, slowly bucking your hips in response to every jolt and jitter from his member. He held your hands tightly, throbbing and crying with lustful pain as you continued to move your hips to a pace that didn’t overwhelm him. Soft cries of desire and loneliness filled the barren, empty fields of green, and the uncomfortable prickle of grass disappeared, replaced with the needy warmth of Eunseok’s body inside yours. He sucked in a breath, hips rocking forward in a desperate attempt to follow the motions of your hips. Your chest heaved, and your breath began to run out, but you continued to ignore the beads of sweat that trickled from your chin down to his exposed abdomen, wet palms gripping his in the damp grass surrounding the two of you. He whispered his girlfriend’s name underneath his breath, eyes covered with locks of deep, jet-black hair. Despite this, you continued to move your hips, adjusting to every single twitch that you felt inside you. 

“Eunseok-ah,” 

The immense pleasure building up between your legs loosened into static bliss, feeling Eunseok beneath you, attempting to unlatch himself from your feverish grasp. Now, he was on top of you, firm hands gripping your body tight while your fingernails scratched into his bare back. Just when you thought the wild tensions in your legs began to fade away, the sensation was suddenly replaced with a wave of euphoria. Being filled with Eunseok’s warmth gave you a mixed temperature that blended his cold loneliness with his aching, yearning heat. The rise and fall of his chest and the faint heartbeat that reverberated with it fused with yours; this was the closest you had ever been to Eunseok. 

“I never told you about how my dad died, didn’t I?” Eunseok said, breath hazy and interrupted with quick pants. 

“I think you did. It was during the war, right?” You replied, removing his limpness outside of you as you watched some of his cum trickle down your thighs. 

“Yeah, but I never really went into detail about what happened after that.” 

Eunseok cleaned up after himself with his shirt, zipping his jacket all the way up to his neck to defeat the cold. He offered the piece of cloth to you, and you did the same. 

“After my mom found out my dad’s body got washed up in Vietnam, she was never the same. Of course, I was a kid, so I didn’t really know what was going on, but I was old enough to understand what it meant when she would lock herself in her room every night, crying and praying all the time. We always fought and bickered before that, but since then, she has never fought with me. She was always so quiet, serving me my meals and picking me up from school.”

To your recollection, Eunseok’s mother was someone inviting and chatty, always updated with gossip looming around the parent’s association. Unlike the other housewives who were often lonely at home, Eunseok’s mother was a radiant beam that shonen even brighter once her husband came home. 

“It was the day I had to go home with you, because my mom didn’t show up. The moment I went home, I could smell something vile in the air, kind of like rotting meat. It made me sick to my stomach, but I went inside the house anyway, calling for my mom, who, by this point I was already used to not answering me. I called and called, I even stopped calling her mom and called her by her full name, but she never replied. With my little hands and feet, I tried to open the door, and when I finally saw it, I didn’t know what to think. My own mother, was suspended in tacky bedsheets that she tied together to the main light in her room. By then, she was so frail and thin that the bedsheets didn’t snap or break the lights. After that, I lived through everything like a blur. Maybe that way, the image of her being strangled to death wouldn’t be in my head forever. I then lived with some relative who I never knew existed, and she was alright. She was a little too old to take care of me, but she made my meals on time and even sent her neighbor to pick me up from school. That was when we started walking to the beach a lot, because no matter how much I told myself that this will be my new normal, it never clicked. I was always going to come home to my dead mother, and that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Going to the beach instead of going straight home was the only way I was able to add a new routine to my life, something that will make me forget about it all.” 

Eunseok stopped at his tracks, taking a few seconds to breathe before moving forward again. 

“The way she killed herself reminded me of how my girlfriend died. They couldn’t stand the grief of losing someone in their life. With my mom, it was my dad’s death that did it. The same could be said about her, even if there was no evidence or indicators that made me understand why she did what she did. I’m not saying she had a perfect upbringing; she was far from it. That’s probably why we got along so well when I moved into her neighborhood after that relative died, and my aunt took me in. From the first day of school, she latched onto me, saying we had the same eyes. Then, I found out her dad died in the war, just like mine, and we seemed to have an automatic, almost spiritual understanding of each other. The more I was with her, the more she reminded me of my mother before my dad died. She liked to read a lot, stayed inside most of the time, and talked. Talked so much that sometimes, it made me forget that my mom had died at all. Her words had a way of filling my brain with things to think about, things to distract myself with. She was the kind of person who told stories that came to life, and I don’t know why I tortured myself the way I did, but whenever I came across a writer who spoke life into their characters, I’d cry. I cried a lot.” 

Whenever Eunseok paused, his fingers would twirl into the tall grass, often picking at them to make long ribbons that decorated his hands. Whenever he was finished or if the grass began to snap with the pressure he put on them, he would discard them immediately. 

“I never found her when she died, but I can still remember it vividly. I came home from the beach with you, and all of a sudden, two police cars were parked outside of my aunt’s house. They came to ask me a few questions, and then told me that they found her dead on the island’s only highway, sprawled out on the road and flattened by large tires. They took me to the coroner and had me examine her body to identify her, and it took me a while, but I think I was there the entire night, looking at her mangled corpse. I tried talking to her, to see if, by some miracle, she was alive and would respond to me. But the more I conversed with her, the more I felt that I was just talking to myself, so I left and went home. She had the school uniform that we wore, and her dirty bag was sealed in a plastic bag with scribbles and labels that I couldn’t read. I demanded to look through her stuff, but the police had told me they found nothing. No suicide note, no plans to die, nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was just her schoolbooks and a board game that she wanted to play. For the longest time, I believed the incident was an accident. I just thought she took a wrong turn and happened to exit the highway, since it was en route from the school to our neighborhood. Of course, that’s an illusion I fed myself with. How the hell could she turn to a blocked-off highway with large, concrete walls around it to make sure nobody dumb enough would climb it and end up being run over like her? The police later came to me that week and told me they found a grappling hook! A grappling hook! Disposed at the edge of the highway! Why the hell would she have a grappling hook!” 

With this, Eunseok slowly shook his head. 

“I haven’t seen you since then. I just couldn’t talk to anyone at all until the funeral, when I forced myself to meet you.”

The two of you were back at the entrance to the dirtpath, the marmalade glow of the setting sun dyeing the entire, empty neighborhood in warm hues. 

“I’m telling you, I’m a lot more flawed than you think I am. This sickness that I have is a lot worse than you think. It’s not just my girlfriend, but it’s everyone around me. It’s like I kill everyone that I end up getting too close to. And that’s why I want you to move forward, without me. Please don’t wait for me anymore. Sleep with other men and live life. Don’t let thoughts of me hold you back. Otherwise, you might end up dead, too, and that’s the one thing I don’t want to do. I don’t want to interfere with your life like that. I care about you too much to ever want to tarnish you like that. All I want is for you to remember me and come see me when you can. That’s it.” 

“But that’s not all I want, though,” You replied. 

“You’re wasting your life away by being involved with me,” 

“How do you know that? I’ve known you since I was nine, and I’m still here, alive and well, right next to you,” 

“But I might never recover. Are you still gonna be there then?” He asked. You couldn’t tell if he was desperate or curious anymore. 

“You’re letting yourself get scared by all these things: the dark, the dead, the sickness. You have to let go and forget them to recover, and I’m sure you will.” 

“That’s if I can,” Eunseok replied, shaking his head. 

“Once you’re discharged, do you wanna live with me?” You suddenly asked. “Then I can protect you from everything. I’ll be there for you when things get too hard, and I will always be right next to you so you can hold me whenever you’re feeling lonely. It’s no sea or anything, but it’ll be just like Jeju. We’ll walk up and down the Han River until we reach the end of it.” 

“That would be wonderful,” 

Eunseok pressed his languid weight against yours, lacing his fingers underneath your palms.

The last thing Eunseok said to you was a faint “goodbye,” and then, your time at Ujeong Inn ended just as swiftly as it had begun. It rained when you had to leave, and Eunseok didn’t see you out the door. He was right about the inn and its facilities, for it took a while for you to adjust to the “real world.” Unlocking the door to your apartment and entering what was supposed to be your home suddenly felt unfamiliar. Sometimes, apparitions of Eunseok would start to appear at the kitchen table that the two of you shared when he still lived next to you, listening to his meager record collection while making dinner on a Friday night. Now, you lay in bed in a daze, watching a stream of abstract colors wash and waver around your eyes. It took a few blinks for them to disappear into your empty, white ceiling, and before you could sleep, the ungodly hour struck at three in the morning with fifteen-minute intervals of blaring sirens outside your open window. The ghost of Eunseok’s presence was felt strongly in the empty spaces of your bed, as if any minute now, he would come crawling next to you, resting his head on your chest while sharing each other’s warmth. You could feel his tender, jolting skin next to yours, the ebbs and flows of his shaky breath coming up and down with each contraction of his chest. In the darkness of the night, you returned to the inn and the visions of your dreams there, smelling the fresh, lush greeneries a distance away. You thought of his naked, frail body, picturing him playing with the cats at the inn or drawing beautiful renditions of calligraphy with his slender fingers gently gripping the tip of the brush. Your fingers slowly made their way to your entrance, pushing more fingers until you could fill yourself up with a loose pastiche of his girth until you came. That managed to help you sleep a little, but before you knew it, your alarm clock rang in your ears, signaling your true return to the real world. 

The next time you saw Sungchan was a week later, after you had eaten lunch at the cafeteria on your way to your macroeconomics lecture. Sungchan was with a group of other boys, presumably soccer players, as all of them had been wearing cleats. When he saw you, he approached you alone. 

“So, what’s going on with our deal?” He asked.

“You mean your so-called restraining order?” 

“Ditch macro and come eat lunch with me.” 

“I already ate.” 

“So? Don’t care. Order a coffee or something. Just come with me.”

The two of you ended up at a nearby cafe, where he ordered a giant plate of pork cutlet while you had a serving of coffee. He still wore a sweaty, soccer jersey with shorts and knee-high socks tucked underneath a pair of tightly-laced cleats. He seemed to enjoy the cutlet and took three or four bites at once while quickly drinking a glass of water. 

“Things haven’t been good at the record store, sales have been rough and I practically had to be home waiting for calls. Something about negotiating the building being sold off and my dad from Thailand calling at weird times to talk about it,” 

“Any fires lately?” You asked. 

“That was fun! We should do it again,” Sungchan had another glass of water, took a breath, and stared into your eyes for a while. 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Sungchan said, snapping his fingers around your eyes. “You look like you’re not here,” 

“I’m alright, I’ve just been tired from a trip.” You replied. 

“Where did you go?” 

“Gwanaksan. Just over there.”

“Why?” 

“For a hike?” 

“Did you meet other boys there?” 

“What’s that to you?” 

“I don’t know, I can’t stop thinking about when we kissed.” 

“That’s nice.” 

“Not even a proper reaction? God, you talk so weird.” 

“Do I?”

“Yeah, anyway,” Sungchan snapped, taking the menu in his hands while holding his free arm up high to call a waiter. “I was thinking, right, that if I could switch things in my life around to make it more ideal, then I would’ve absolutely been happier if my first kiss had been with you. Then, I would wonder later in my life about you, asking about that one first kiss, not knowing where the hell you went off to. Wouldn’t that be nice?” 

“I guess?” You replied. In a few minutes, a large pint of beer was slammed onto the table. Sungchan gave a quick wink to the waiter before gulping half of the glass down, careless of the white foam that lingered around his lips. 

“Why are you so spaced out?” 

“I don’t know. Probably the mountains and nature doing things to me, but I just feel like nothing’s real anymore.” You replied after another round of silence. 

“People are strange when you’re a stranger,” 

“The Doors? Really?” 

“What? It’s my job to know many songs, and you just happened to perfectly describe this one request I’m working on for the radio: something about loneliness and isolation in the city.” 

“Right,” 

“You really need to come to Thailand with me,” Sungchan said. You’ve always known him as the type to take charge of the conversation and mold it into whatever he wished, but you found it difficult to keep up with him. 

“I don’t think that’s a bad idea at all,” You replied, chuckling lightly as your eyes scanned the drinks menu. Though it was still midday, you realized that a drink or two could ease your apprehensions about the inn and Eunseok. 

“Come on! Ditch everything, I’m sure it’d be a nice, wonderful change to go somewhere where you don’t know a single soul.”

After calling the waiter for a cool mojito, you turned your attention back to Sungchan. 

“Sometimes, I feel like doing that. I just wanna escape life, get whisked somewhere far, far, away. Live like those super-rich men who have a ton of babies everywhere they go, and I’d live happily with them, watching them roll on the floor and coo with their little big eyes.”

“Babies…?” 

“I guess you don’t want a lot of babies yet,” Sungchan groaned, eyes tracing the plate of fries that was freshly placed in front of him. He took a handful and stuffed his face until his cheeks puffed out, leaving you in a laughing fit. 

“I don’t know, motherhood doesn’t sound too bad, but not right now.” 

“It’s alright. You don’t want to have them, so there’s no point.” Sungchan took another handful of fries and loudly crunched on them. “What’s the point of going to Thailand anyway? All they have there is elephant shit. Elephant shit everywhere. A shit here, and a shit there. Hey, do you want some of my skewers? Take my skewers.” 

Sungchan was especially enigmatic today. You couldn’t put your fingers around why, but it slowly helped you pull yourself out of the lingering memories you had with Eunseok. Now, you were here, with Sungchan blabbering on about whatever came into his mind. You had a cool glass of mint mojito next to you, and the more you drank its chilled contents, the more your throat responded positively. Perhaps you were just parched, or perhaps it was something more. Regardless, you were coming back in the now, chin resting on your knuckles as you watched the plate of fries and skewers quickly disappear, its contents successfully transported inside Sungchan's mouth. 

“Sunday was too nice to me, almost like a dream I never wanted to wake up from. Watching someone’s house get on fire, drinking beer—I don’t know how long it’s been since I felt something so relaxing. People are always forcing me to do things, like, the minute they see me, they ask me, ‘Hey Sungchan! Do this!’ or ‘Sungchan! Can you sub for a left-back today?’ The least anyone can do is not force things on me like that.” 

“I don’t think I know you enough to force you to do stuff for me,” You replied. Once the plate of fries was empty, Sungchan popped a few ice cubes in his mouth, crushing it beneath his teeth as he whistled at the waiter for another heaping of chicken skewers and two bottles of strong rye whiskey. 

“You mean, if you knew me better, you’d force me to do things like everyone else?” He asked, eyes staring straight into yours. This was the third or fourth round of drinks, and the waiter seemed visibly annoyed at the growing pile of empty glasses next to Sungchan. He rested his chin on his large palm, fingers tapping his cheek to the rhythm of Echo and the Bunnymen playing in the background. Once you finished your glass, you kept still, quiet as ever. Closing your eyes, you immersed yourself in the soft strums of “Lips Like Sugar.” The restaurant began to pile up with more customers, but it was only your table that had begun drinking alcohol. 

“I mean, isn’t that how life is? People build relationships by forcing stuff onto each other.” You explained, after ordering another glass of mojito. 

“But you wouldn’t do that. You’re not the type.”

“How are you so sure of that?”

“I can just tell. I’ve become an expert in these things, seeing if people will force things on you or not, and you’re nothing like that, which is why I feel so relaxed when I’m with you.”

“What kind of things do people force on you?”

“Do you wanna get to know me better?” 

“I just asked,”

“What kind of answer is that?” Sungchan exclaimed, angrily popping another ice cube in his mouth. 

“Okay, yes, Sungchan. I do wanna get to know you better.”

“Really?” 

His crunching halted, a few drops of melted ice trickling down his chin, dampening his palms in the process. 

“Yes.” 

“Even if what I might say ends up getting you in prison?” 

“Seriously?” 

“Are you free on Sunday again?” He asked. 

“Didn’t I tell you I was always free on Sundays?”

“Okay, come hang out with me on Sunday, then.” 

“Sure,”

“I’ll come to your apartment, then we can go somewhere from there. I’m not sure what time, though, but I’ll be there when I’ll be there, ringing your doorbell.”

“Yeah, sure. That’s no problem.” 

“Do you have any idea what I wanna do right now?” He asked in quick succession, a fresh batch of chicken skewers sliding onto his side of the table. With a clean swipe, he took a piece and used his teeth to remove all the meat from the burnt, wooden stick. 

“No, my head’s blank right now, if I’m being honest with you.” 

“Okay, so first, I wanna lie down in a bigass bed, wide and comfy with fluffy blankets. I wanna get so drunk and cozy, not having to think about elephants and their shit at all, and I want you to be there, right next to me.”

“And then?” 

“I think you know the rest,” 

“Oh boy…”

You couldn’t count the amount of drinks the two of you had, but you were sure that Sungchan was not in the right headspace. He was staggering from his seat, eyes squinting at the bill as he complained that the text was too small for him to read. Regardless, he slapped several five thousand Won notes on the leather casing that held the thinly-veiled receipt. 

“It’s okay, think of it as a treat. I was the one who asked you to skip class for me anyway, unless you’re true to your party’s goals and have a credit card, refusing to let a man pay for you.” 

“No, I’m not like that. It’s fine, really.” 

Lifting Sungchan out of the restaurant was already a hassle in itself, but his staggers worsened as soon as the two of you began to walk outside. You couldn’t tell if he was tipsy or if he was already drunk, but he almost missed one step, and you did your best to carry his weight on your shoulders, making sure that you didn’t fall back into the hard, concrete wall with him. The layers of violet in the sky were now embedded in a deep, dark glow, emanating the low dim of the crescent moon that flickered with the neon lights around the alleyways. The two of you wandered around for a while, ending up in a small parkette with a few swings and benches. 

“Do you think if there were any tall trees in here, I could climb it?” He asked. 

“Yeah, I mean, you’re athletic and all, I’m sure a tree would be nothing to you.” 

You looked around the parkette to ensure that your eyes didn’t fool you, and you hummed in vague concern upon realizing that there weren’t any trees at all in the parkette. The only thing that remotely resembled such a tree was the neatly trimmed bushes that lined the entrance of the parkette, exaggerating in size with the shadowplay of the night. Sure, some of them had outlines of twigs and branches sticking out of them, but in the end, there was nothing that Sungchan could climb—especially given his stature. 

“Well, too bad. All the trees here are too damn short for me.” 

He got up and grabbed your hand, fingers clasped tightly on your wrists as he led you into the main shopping district. The more you were engulfed in the bustle of the city, watching each mannequin outside of a store feel more alive and in tune with the world than you were at the moment, the more concrete everything around you began to feel. The streets felt real, even more real than before when you had just moved to Seoul. It was a stark reminder that you were no longer there, but here, in the city, with a woozy Sungchan flailing his arms as he walked with an invisible tune in his head. 

“I’m glad I ran into you.” You whispered under your breath.  “I think I’m back in the real world now,”

“That is true,” Sungchan replied, stopping in his tracks while peering straight into your eyes. “You finally look like you’re here. See? That contract of ours is doing you wonders. I get to have a restraining order so I don’t get any creepy stalkers anymore, and hanging out with me does you good by pulling you all the way back to the ground from whatever sky you’re at.”

“Sometimes, I hate that you’re right,”

The large clock looming at the center of the intersection in the shopping district pointed at six in the evening, and Sungchan said he had to go home to make dinner and prepare for a match tomorrow. You told him that you would also call it a night, allowing him to walk you to the bus stop. 

“Do you know what I want to do now?” He asked, taking the seat next to you in the waiting area. 

“What?” 

“I want to go to Somalia. Get captured by pirates, you and me. They’d tie us together in tight ropes and make sure we can’t escape.” 

“Why the hell would you want us to get captured by pirates?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe fucking you in captivity is a hot fantasy I’ve let myself think about a bit too much,” he said. 

“Pervert.” 

“Then, the pirates, even though we can’t understand their language at all, would tell us we had an hour to go before they would either shoot us or, by some miracle, have some coastal guards from the US find us and save us.”

“Then?” 

“And then we would use that hour, rolling around while trying to take our clothes off, me trying to put it in with our hands and legs tied together,”

“That’s what you wanna do now? Really?”

“Yeah,”

“Good lord, Sungchan,” you said, shaking your head. By this point, Sungchan was sober enough to get up and walk back to the station. As the door to the bus opened, he reminded you of your meeting tomorrow, staying seated in the waiting area until your bus took a turn to the other lane.

It was seven in the morning when Sungchan visited your apartment. You had just woken up and had time to fetch the daily paper at your door, but you didn’t have the chance to wash your face or properly start your day with a cup of coffee. Before you could go back to the kitchen table or take a glance at today’s headline, someone loudly pounded at your door. Tucking the paper underneath your arm, you peeked through the door viewer to find Sungchan peering straight into its small, circular lens. His form wavered and swirled each time you blinked, the glass reflection of his eyes seemingly spinning in graceful pirouettes. 

“Hurry up and let me in, or else I’ll get hit on by all your neighbors! Including the ahjummas who were totally staring at how nice my face looks!” 

Once you opened the door, you were greeted by Sungchan’s beaming smile. Beads of sweat lined his furrowed brows as he used the hem of his shirt to wipe down the mist that gleamed under the rays of the summer sun. 

“Was I too early?” He asked. 

“No, not really. You came here right after the guy delivered my morning paper, come in, and I’ll make you some tea.” 

Sungchan kicked his shoes off, lining them neatly next to your sneakers before entering your apartment. 

“Nice place for yourself, is that the bed where you finger yourself? Or do you do it on the couch over there?” 

At this point, you were used to his crudeness, but the level of crass he can muster always leaves you with a second of stalled thought—almost as if time had stopped whenever something dirty came out of his mouth. 

“Come on, Sungchan. It’s like, seven in the morning. Don’t you have anything better to say?” You replied

“No, not really.” 

Before the kettle on your stove could hiss and breathe steam, you rushed to turn the switch off, hastily opening the window and fanning the smoke out into the open. Sungchan sat on one of the chairs of your dining table set, eyeing the stacks of newspapers you’ve saved somewhat morosely. 

“Tea’s ready, what kind do you want?” You asked. 

“The same one you’re having,”

“Okay,” 

You added an extra portion of milk into his tea with a cube of sugar. Normally, you’d prepare a pot of orange pekoe or rose hip, unbothered by the periodical cool of the tea whenever you would leave it to brew for too long to head to the university. Rather than out of practice or habit, it was more so a neglectful absence that didn’t require atonement. To you, it was just a pot of tea. If you were so eager to have it nice and warm, you could just pour a cup full into a saucepan and add a little bit of milk or fruit jam, stirring it and drinking it with a spoon instead of transferring it back into the pot. There was no routine to it at all. Tea was tea. 

However, the man in front of you, crass as he may be, was your guest. Even if it were at his request to have whatever you were having, it would probably be wise for you to brew him a fresh cup. After all, he was a guest, not a customer. It’s not for him to know how you like to have your tea—cold and bitter. 

“So tell me, what do girls living alone like you do?” He asked, ceaselessly blowing on the tip of the mug as he waited impatiently to devour the drink. 

“I don’t know, that’s a very creepy question to ask, you know?” You replied between sips of hot tea, placing your mug down on a coaster as you crossed your legs, dangling them on the side of the chair. “Also, don’t you have a girlfriend to ask this to?” 

“Just like you, we’re a bit complicated right now.” He said, eyes looking at the slow, rising steam wafting back and forth from his mug. “Besides, she’d yell at me if I asked her these things.”

“That’s perfectly normal.” 

“I know, but I’m just curious, and you seem to answer all my questions, no matter how bizarre.”

“That’s because you won’t shut up unless I do,” You retorted. Sungchan took the mug back into his hands and towards his pursed lips, giving the rim a light peck before drinking half of the cup and jingling it around to swish the leaves that rested at the bottom of his mug. 

“So tell me, what is it that you do here all alone?” He asked again. His doe-like, brown eyes protruded through you as if you were transparent—practically invisible. Rubbing the goosebumps off your arms, you cleared your throat and took the mug between your lips, gently blowing at it before taking a sip. Once you let it down, his bright, brown eyes glistened into a greenish hazel you as the sun hit his frame through the sheer slip between the curtains. You pushed your seat back and continued to hold your mug, this time anchoring your elbow to the table to increase the distance between him. 

“Well, I get up, read the daily papers, drink tea or coffee, depending on what I have, then take the train to school. When I go home, I take a shower, brush my teeth, study, and then go to bed.”

“What about your sex life?” 

“That hasn’t been active lately,”

“Isn’t it easier for you to just bring men here?” 

“Yeah, but I don’t feel like it,” 

“Am I not hot enough?” 

“No, you’re a hunk, trust me.”

“So then, why don’t you invite me here more often?” 

“Because, dumbass, I think of you as a friend. Why would I want to invite you over and—”

“You have someone else waiting to be invited back here,” Sungchan retorted. You could feel your chest tighten at every second that passed in silence. 

“Well, yeah, I guess,” You replied, exhaling each word as you turned your gaze to the fuzz of your worn-out slippers. “You’re surprisingly proper when it comes to these things,” 

“That’s what I like about you. But still, you couldn’t even invite me over for a quick fuck? Something to let some steam off? I wanna be here even just once, helping each other relieve our stress or something. I’m asking you because we’re friends. Who else can I ask for something like that? I can’t just walk up to anyone and say, ‘Hey, do you live alone? Can you invite me over so we can fuck for a second?’ It’s because I see you as a friend that I’m asking,”

You let out a sigh. 

“If you’re that desperate, you can come over again next week, and we can sort something out. What do you like?” 

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t want you to get the wrong impression or anything,” You said, watching him stand up through the corner of your eyes. “You already have painted yourself as a sex-crazed freak,”

Sungchan began pacing the room, letting his loud steps echo throughout your walls and back into your ears, equally matching the quickening thumps of your heart that rendered you deaf. He then turned his heels with a screech, and you watched his toes' heavy, languid steps draw closer to the tip of your slippers. He took a finger and lifted your chin to meet his gaze, a swirling depth of hazel underneath the glimmer of the sun. Before you could lean, he took his finger back and stuffed it in his pocket, hunching back into his seat with a ‘thump.’ 

“Whatever, anyway, I’m just curious. I was in an all-boys school my whole life so I really don’t know anything about women, even if people have spread rumors about me being this playboy. I want to really know what women think, not just through gossip and stories from other boys.”

You tried to suppress a groan, but allowed him to continue with his ridiculous train of thought. 

“The thing is, the girl I’m seeing right now doesn’t really like it when I ask her these things. She gets angry, calls me a nympho or a crazy person, and she wouldn’t even let me eat her out. Something about being a hardcore Christian makes her want to wait and see these things as impure,” 

“Right,”

“Have you been eaten out before?” 

“Yeah,”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, but can we please talk about something else? It’s such a beautiful Sunday morning, where I was meant to sip coffee in the sunrise while reading my morning paper. I don’t want it to be ruined by talking about fucking and getting my pussy eaten out. Let’s try to talk about something else, like your girlfriend or something. Is she in the same university as us?” You asked. The cup clasped onto your hands was empty, and you didn’t have the appetite to offer pastries that you’d left in your bread box two days ago. 

“Okay, pause. She’s not my girlfriend. It’s a little more complicated than that. She goes to the women’s university nearby, and we met after I played at her school for a soccer match. We started to talk more after exams, but she refused to put a label on it,”

At some point in the conversation, you began to allow the rest of the world around you to blur in a dream-like haze, wafting back and forth like the steam that has now fully evaporated out of you and Sungchan’s mug. You let your head hang lightly by the headrest of your chair, feeling the wooden spine trudge deeper and deeper into your neck. In these thoughts, you tried to picture Eunseok’s face, but it was rather difficult when Sungchan’s voice would continue to permeate in and out of your ears. What did Sungchan’s girlfriend look like? Would she be a better fit for Eunseok than you were? Why should any of that matter? You didn’t even know the girl.

“Hey,”

“What?” 

Just as your eyes began to adjust to the slow, menial details of Sungchan’s face, the cup on the coaster tipped over to reveal scatters of tea leaves strewn across your dining table, coated in thick, dark hues of deep, foreboding maroon. You hastily searched for a napkin or a tea towel, and Sungchan tossed a pack of tissues crumpled out of his pocket. 

“Just once on a Sunday.” He repeated, and you lost his train of thought at that very moment. 

“No,” You answered, but a part of you failed to recall his initial request. 

“At least think of me when you finger yourself, please?”

Ah, there it is again.

“Fine. I’ll give it a try and write you a detailed report, is that enough?” You said, throwing the empty pack of tissues to the bin by the kitchen counter. 

The two of you took the commuter train to Jongno. When you transferred to Daegok, Sungchan offered to purchase a small, tuna-filled kimbap from one of the stands in the station to make up for the breakfast you hadn’t eaten. The tea you had with him was over-brewed and tasted of the autumn falls blasting in your mouth. The trains on the weekends usually consisted of students in large groups of more than five and families who wanted to take the line straight to the park. There was an odd assortment of bookish girls in long skirts and boys slinging tennis rackets on their backs, rushing to leave the train to the nearest exit. Underneath the fluorescent lights of the carriage, Sungchan’s tank top was so sheer that you could see the outline of his chest and abdomen without any sense of imagination. Occasionally, he would pull the hem of his top-down, tightening its fit to enhance the way his sweat and skin clung onto the transparency of his white top. Some people in the car began staring at him, making you uneasy. This continued until the two of you had to get off at Bulgwang to switch platforms. 

“Do you wanna know what I’d like to do now?” Sungchan whispered while you quickened your pace. 

“Not here, Sungchan, we’re in the fucking train for god’s sake,” You hissed. “What if someone will hear you?” 

“Too bad, this fantasy’s a wild one,” Sungchan replied, clearly disappointed. 

“Why are we going to Jongno?” You asked, attempting to change the topic. 

“Just come,”

Jongno was sparse on a Sunday, full of empty houses that toppled over each other with equally vacant garage slots imprinted in thick, black tire marks. Sungchan slid through the downward slope of the residential villages resembling ancient homes with sleek, angular woodwork, keeping one of his hands in his pocket while interlocking his fingers in yours with the other. 

Without warning, he asked you. “Can you explain the concept of speculative attacks and why that causes a currency crisis?” 

“I can, but you should know the answer to that if you paid attention in lecture,” You replied. 

“Okay, here’s another way to frame it. How could that stuff be useful in our day-to-day life?”

“Unless you’re working in public policy or economics, then no, you don’t really need to know that stuff in detail.” You said after a brief pause to collect your thoughts. “It doesn’t necessarily serve a concrete purpose, but having that extra information in mind is useful for you to grasp things in a more logical, systematic manner.  Say, a currency crisis. It’s a thing that impacts our daily lives. If the government is running a budget deficit, then that means they’re gonna hike up taxes or cut spending. What this means for us is our lives might be harder because we have more taxes to pay, or facilities that we need might not be built. Things like that can give us more pieces to fit in this large puzzle we call life.” 

He continued to hold your hand down the slope, only letting go to carry you up once the two of you reached a point where all the greeneries and mountain ranges looked as squishable as a colony of ants within the palm of your hand. Your breath hitched for an instant, taking in the soft breeze gently caressing your cheeks while staring down into a part of the city that suddenly made you feel so small. Cars and trucks parked down the pathway felt like toys you could animate to life with one push of your finger; families hand-in-hand could be plucked out like dolls; the sky and clouds swirled with the swirl of your finger; the green of the mountains was so vibrant you felt yourself inching closer and closer to the metal railing’s edge. 

“Wow, aren’t you amazing.” He said, keeping his firm, long arms on your waist. “I never really thought about it that way. I’ve always seen what I’ve learned in school as totally useless, a pain in the ass, if you will, so I always ignored them. Now, thanks to you, I have to rethink my whole life. See if I was thinking about things the wrong way,”

“You ignored them?”

“Yeah, like I just thought they didn’t exist. I know money exists because it’s something tangible, but I couldn’t care less about sine curves or differential calculus. Those are just things to me, things I write on paper that I just throw out when I’m done with them.” 

“Then how did you get into university with a mindset like that?” 

“Don’t be dumb, you don’t need to know everything to pass exams! You just need luck and intuition. Most of the time, it’s just picking one option out of the three. One of them usually looks off, so it’s picking between the two that you think is right—and I’m usually right about the answers.” He exclaimed, leaving light kisses on your neck. 

“Unlike you, I don’t think I have too good of an intuition, so I have to be systematic, kind of like how ants work together to carry food back to their colony. It’s a step-by-step relay of going from point A to point B, until I reach the end.” You laughed under your breath, taking the chance to turn and free yourself from him. You leaned on the metal railings, feeling the cool touch of the metal replace the warmth that his arms had left. 

“Is that any better?” He asked curiously. 

“I don’t know, I think it’s easier to understand some concepts that way,”

“Like what? I need examples here,”

“Languages?”

“What good does learning a new language do?” He asked. Sungchan always had a habit of curling his lips inward when he was in deep thought, accentuating the apples of his cheeks and making his sharp features rounder. 

“Depends on the person trying to learn it. It serves some people a purpose to understand French because they’re either going to France or any French-speaking country for work, and others might be here in Korea their whole lives. The main thing, though, is training your brain to dissect things piece-by-piece, making it easier to absorb. It’s not necessarily about the purpose it serves, but often the skills you gain.” 

“You know, you’re really good at explaining things to people,” Sungchan finally said, seemingly impressed with you. He took your hand in his again and took you even lower down the slope. 

“Am I?” You asked. 

“Yeah. I’ve asked everyone in class what the hell a currency crisis has to do with everyday life and why we need it, and not one of them gave me a good, clear answer. Not even the professors are supposed to be experts in this stuff! They go on this winding path of just explaining difficult concepts and never getting to the root of my question, or they just laugh it off and tell me that I should know because I decided to enroll myself in this program. If I had met you a lot earlier, then I would’ve been interested in so many things! Damn, what a life I’ve missed.”

All you could do was hum in response. 

“Did you ever read Das Kapital?” He suddenly asked. 

“Only parts that were assigned, but I never got around to finishing it,”

“Did you understand what Marx was trying to say?” 

“A little bit. I feel like you have to have more knowledge on economics to read a book like that, far beyond what has been hamfisted up our asses by the professors,”

That was a lie. Your first encounter with Marx was with Eunseok and his girlfriend in high school. Being the contrarian she was, she always enjoyed provocative books that got her in trouble. Naturally, after being suspended for three days for carrying a copy of Marx and Engel’s The Communist Manifesto, proclaiming her unyielding devotion to Juche in front of the whole class, the next step for her was to bring a copy of Das Kapital, tactfully ripping some of the paragraphs and stuffing them inside her History notebook upon submission to the teacher. You had only read a few pages of Das Kapital then, but to this day, you could never understand what this book had to do with communism. It was a benign, sometimes aggressive critique of what is now blooming into a consolidated economic system written at a time when there were many avenues that the world could’ve taken. Marx shouldn’t be faulted for what the future thought of his words. 

“Do you think, say, a first-year student who has never been educated in economics would be able to understand Das Kapital just by reading it?” Sungchan asked. 

“No, that’s just a Sisyphean task. Outright impossible.” You responded without preamble. 

“You know, when I joined the soccer team, I expected to simply play soccer. But no, that wasn’t the case. Most of the people on the team were either socialists or those from a more working-class background, people who had been invested in the student demonstrations about inequality and political fraud. And so, whenever we finished practice or ended a friendly match, they would always talk about Marx in the locker room, saying that his view on labor was important for the future of sports. I tried to get a copy and read a few bits of Das Kapital at home, but I couldn’t get it at all. So, when I went back and told them I didn’t get it by the next week after practice, they treated me like an idiot, saying that I had nothing going on in my head. ‘Oh, Sungchan, you’re in the economics program but couldn’t even understand Marx! Hah! That’s funny! That’s what the orthodox system does to you!’ They called me a fraud for playing a working-class sport as a private school kid, all because I had told them I didn’t understand a piece of text. That’s horrible!” 

“Yeah, that is horrible,” You repeated. 

“The thing is, though, their discussions were terrible, too. Empty nothingness by using big words to sound smart, when in reality, they probably misinterpreted what Marx wanted to say, too. Whenever I asked them to explain things to me, they never bothered to. Instead, they’d just get angry, as if expecting me to know all these things by default. Can you believe it?” 

“Yeah, I can, that’s the type of crowd that the underground lectures and student movements often attract,” You replied. 

“Our former captain, who’s now graduated, called me a dumbass with nothing but brawn for my brain, asking me how I live my life the way I do now? That did it. I know I’m not the smartest, and even though I went to a private school, I was also from a working-class background. I am well aware that it’s the working class that keeps the world running and that the working class gets exploited by the bourgeoisie. I don’t think Marx envisioned a revolution where people just throw big, fancy words at each other that others can’t understand? That’s a shitty social revolution if you ask me. How the hell are you able to move people with difficult words that they can’t understand? I believe that if a certain group of people are being exploited, then we have to do all we can to stop it, that’s why I keep asking questions, to know more and to understand how the world works so we can try to make it a better place. Do you think I’m stupid, or what?” 

“No, you’re very much right.”

“A-ha! Those guys are total frauds! All they have in mind is using these big words to impress girls that they run into after our matches. When they graduate, they won’t give a single crap about the class struggle or whatever socialist mumbo jumbo they were preaching! They’d just don a suit and find work in large companies! They’d marry pretty, upper-class wives who have never read a single word of Marx in their life, get kids, drive fast, fancy cars, and give them Western names that are so ridiculous that it makes you want to laugh. Smash the education complex? Fight against election fraud? What bullshit! The newer recruits were just as bad. They didn’t know a single thing about Marx. They just sat there silently in the locker room and pointed fingers at me whenever I asked a question. Then, they told me, ‘Hyung, just agree with whatever they say, it’s easier that way.’ Makes my blood boil.”

You laughed, watching the sparkle in his eyes fester with vigor. “So, what happened after that?” 

“Most of the upperclassmen had graduated by the time I got the position of vice-captain. Since then, I told the new recruits to never talk about things like Marx in the locker room and to treat each other with respect. ‘Ask Hyung if you need anything, and I won’t haze or bully you about it.’ I told them that. Things have been better since, but the captain still wants to keep the so-called revolution going. Something about keeping the original root of the sport and the integrity of the game aligned with the class struggle. Shut the fuck up. God, if ever any of those assholes ran into you, they’d probably beat you up or shoot you because you understood Marx far better than they did.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, believe me. I know what I’m talking about. I’m working class. Revolution or not, the working class will always be the ones scraping by. I mean, look at those communist revolutions happening in Africa! I don’t know too much, but tell me why they’re still poor even after some big guy comes in and says he can change the country! It’s because he uses stupid, big words that nobody can understand! Then, they’d hike up taxes for so-called ‘government expenses,’ when in reality, they’re just inflating their pockets with more money and gold. Tell me, have you ever seen the taxman?” 

“No, never,”

“Well, I have. Too many times. They come in barging into your door with their stupid papers, acting like big game. ‘Oh, how is take out a business expense? Show me all your receipts right now!’ And we can’t even say anything back, or else my dad will go to jail! We even have to give them nice teas and snacks! No matter how cruel they are, though, I will tell you one thing: My dad is an honest man. He has never cheated on his taxes, and he keeps records just as well as he’s maintained the shop since it was handed over to him. If you tell that to the taxman, though, he won’t believe you. He’ll just dig and dig and dig. ‘What’s this ledger?’ ‘Isn’t income looking a little low in this quarter?’ And I wanted to scream to them, scream so loud: Hey asshole! Income isn’t looking too good because we’re not making any money with this stupid business! Go dig into our shop when we make some real cash!”

“The worst part is that they won’t change even after a revolution,” You signed.

“Exactly. Fuck the revolution. It’s just a bunch of bullshit. The only thing I’ll ever believe in is love.”

“I got somewhere to be,” Sungchan said. 

“This early?” 

“Yeah, I have to go to the hospital. My dad’s there, so it’s my turn to look after him,” 

“Wait, I thought he was in Thailand?”

“I lied.” Sungchan said flatly. “I mean, he’s been screaming about it, but he’s not even in a condition to leave Seoul.”

“How bad is he?” You asked. 

“I don’t know, give it a few months? Maybe two?” He replied. The two of you walked on in deathly silence. It was a matter of time until the two of you reached the bottom of the slope, head first into the large, glass doors of Seoul National University Hospital. 

“He’s got the same one my mother had,  just with a different genitalia because he’s a man. God, I don’t know if you can sexually transmit cancer, but can you believe it? Four years after cervical cancer, my dad suddenly gets testicular.”

Once the two of you entered the corridors, the stench of antiseptic wafted in the air. The hospital was busy and crowded for a Sunday, with several lines in the reception and elevators consisting of weekend visitors and patients walking about in wheelchairs or IV drips. The sweet scent of flowers slightly permeated the air, with an inkling of urine and old mattresses. Nurses walked past the two of you, pushing large trays of food, the soles of their shoes rubbing into the floor as they quickened their pace. 

Sungchan’s father was in a room shared with four other patients. His bed was right by the large, open window. Upon inspection, it was difficult to tell if he was breathing and even harder to tell if he was human. Though he was stretched out, the rest was shriveled up like a raisin, cheeks hollow to the touch and eyes covered in folded lids that were always closed. 

Today, he was lying on his side, skinny, bony arms limp and flat on the white bed covers. There were several tubes and needles attached to him, and it was difficult to see him as the kind of man who was once as tall and mighty as his son. The constant drip of the plastic bags only gave you the impression that he could only shrivel up more than he already endured.

For a brief second, you saw his eyes fling open as if aware of Sungchan’s presence and only keeping them open as a greeting that was established between father and son. It didn’t take a doctor or a medical practitioner of any sort to know that he was going to die soon. At least, in part, all it took for you was, in brevity, seeing the rims of his eyes glow a shade of pinkish red, drifting back and forth with the blur of cataracts in his pupils that refused to show him the colors and lines of the world he once saw. There was absolutely no sign of life or direction in his second-long gaze, and even if you were to inflate him like an air balloon with life, it felt to you like there was a punctured hole somewhere in him that oozed out life no matter how hard you tried to pump it in him. It was a short stretch from here to the end—a waiting game of slow decay and demolition. Despite this, though, his thin, white goatee continued to grow like stray bristles on a brush, and you wondered why he grew an impressive one when all other signs of life escaped his body and mind. 

Sungchan greeted each patient by popping his head through the curtains. One lady of about sixty with all her curtains open nodded and smiled in return, dry, flaky lips sealed with a lack of moisture. She tried to suppress a cough a few times, then returned to her bed to shift her weightless form to face the door. 

The view from the window was bleak in comparison to the one the two of you experienced in the middle of the residential area’s slopes. The only thing you could see from Sungchan’s father’s window was a large, electricity pole that covered the sky. 

“How are you feeling, dad?” Sungchan asked, leaning closer until his lips were right next to his father’s ear. His father shook his head and muttered a groan, as any word he formed in his head remain stuck in his throat, choking him dry. 

“Headache?” Sungchan asked, touching his own head. His father nodded in return, trying to open his mouth but to no avail. 

“Well, no wonder,” he muttered. “You’ve just got your balls removed, and they’ve injected you with so much medicine that your head will pound. Of course, your head will hurt. Too bad, but please, try to be brave. Oh, and this is my friend,” 

“Nice to meet you,” You said. Sungchan’s father tried to open his mouth, then proceeded to close it shut again. 

Sungchan pulled a seat from his father’s foldable table and gestured for you to sit. You hesitated a little until he grabbed your arm and pulled you into one of the plastic chairs next to his father’s bed. Sungchan then gave his father a few sips of water, asking him if he would like any food. His father shook his head, and when Sungchan stubbornly insisted that he needed to eat, his father opened his eyes briefly, moving his pupils to point at the food left at the head of his bed. 

Sungchan hoisted a large duffel bag under the table, taking out a change of clothes and underwear, straightening them out, and putting them inside a drawer by his father’s bedside lamp. Once he reached the bottom of the bag, he fished out two packs of dried seaweed, a couple of fruit jellies, and two slices of cream-filled sponge cakes. 

“Fucking hell, really? Cake?! Feeding a man pumped with chemo cake?! I told that asshole exactly what I wanted him to buy! Porridge with vegetables, not cake!” Sungchan exclaimed, angrily shoving some of the food back into the bag. 

“That’s… a weird mixup.”

“Weird indeed. God, he’s insufferable.” Sungchan said. “Dad, want some cake?” 

His father didn’t respond. 

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” Sungchan repeated louder, resulting in a firm no that his father was able to mouth. 

“How about you?” Sungchan turned to ask you. 

“I’m also alright,” You answered. 

After sitting with Sungchan and his father for a while, Sungchan took you to the smoking area outside of the hospital and slipped a cigarette between his lips, crossing his arms tightly as he held the filter with his fingers. Some of the patients in hospital gowns were also outside, smoking while counting the cars that passed by the entrance’s driveway. 

“That old woman in the wheelchair keeps looking at me. The one over there, with the glasses and a pink nightgown,” Sungchan whispered, eyes twinkling. 

“I don’t know, what more do you want me to say? ‘Oh, Sungchan, you’re so handsome that all the ajhummas in the hospital want you!’ Do you want me to say that?” 

“Maybe seeing a handsome guy such as myself keeps them with things to think about. You know, get them all excited. I be they haven’t felt like that in a long time.” 

“Seriously?” You sighed. Sungchan stared at the smoke that swirled from his cigarette. 

“You know,” Sungchan started, fishing his hands in his pocket and slipping another cigarette from the pack into his mouth. “He’s not so bad. He can say terrible things, but deep down, he really loved my mom with such intensity, even though he’s a little timid and cannot run a business properly. People don’t really like him because he can be blunt at times, but he’s definitely a lot better than the frauds out there who go around thinking they’re tough shit for knowing big words or being in a gang. I’m just as stubborn as he is, so we tend to fight a lot, but he’s not a bad guy.”

Sungchan took your hand as if it were fragile, carefully placing it on his lap. He used his thumbs to rub your palm in repeated circles, eyes looking into yours for over a minute. 

“Sorry to bring you here out of all places, but can you stay with me for a bit longer?” He asked, a soft tinge in his voice begging for you to stay. 

“I can stay with you for as long as you want. I mean, I did say I’m free on Sundays.” You replied with a smile. 

“What do you usually do? You know, apart from reading the daily paper and sipping coffee at five in the goddamn morning.” 

“Laundry?” You replied. 

“What about your boyfriend?”

“Same as you. I don’t really know if I could call him that, and it’s really complicated right now. I don’t really know how to explain it,”

“That’s alright, but do you mind me asking what I think is going on?” Sungchan asked. 

“Sure, I bet it’s miles more interesting than the truth,”

“He’s married, isn’t he?” Sungchan said, unwavering confidence in his voice that convinced you otherwise that his grand fantasies could maybe become a reality. “Forty or something, rich, and was once handsome. Drives foreign cars like a Benz or a BMW and wears shoes made of pure leather, with suits hand-tailored for him from the most expensive department stores here in Seoul. He’s hungry for lust, and he’s into super kinky things. The two of you meet after your shift at the library on weekdays and do all sorts of things to each other's bodies: he ties you up in crazy positions, puts a gag on you, has different kinds of whips, and you sit there enjoying all of that. His wife and kids have Sundays to themselves to eat big dinners and spend time together. That’s why he can’t see you then. Is that correct?” 

“Interesting,” 

“He loves taking pictures of you, too, and has a really expensive camera that he uses to take all sorts of pictures of you in many positions, including when he puts all sorts of weird things inside of you. It’s like every single time you meet him, he gets kinkier. He’s always planning what type of toys and liquids he’d use on you, and he makes you come at least three times in crazy positions that break your legs and twist your body. He then talks about how because he’s older, he’s more experienced, and that you’ll never ever find the same satisfaction in younger boys anymore because he’s satisfied you so much. Makes you feel good.” 

“I think you frequent the porn cinemas too much,” You flatly replied, dreading the next few words that would come out of his mouth with a twisted, mild curiosity. 

“I do, actually. I was kind of worried that I come off that way, but if you want, we can go to a screening sometime soon,”

“Alright, when you’re free,” You said. 

“You’re not joking?” Sungchan asked with an ecstatic shock in his voice that you had never heard from him before, as if you were the first person who had acknowledged his presence in his whole life. 

“Nope. Show me what sort of things you watch.”

“Alright, there’s a BDSM one with pee and shit everywhere. Some pirated German one they found. I’ve never seen it yet, but I do like watching the ones that are a bit more deranged. It’s interesting.” 

“Sounds fun,”

“My favorite ones are the gang bang scenes, because you think to yourself ‘How the hell do they get seven people to fuck each other like that? Swallowing cum and pee at the same time?’ It’s like going to a cafeteria and having people all drink water super loud at the same time!”

When the two of you returned to the hospital room, Sungchan filled the air with his chatty voice, only to be met with a dead wall of silence. The only thing he could get out from his father was a firm nod, a shake, or a grunt—and, if he was lucky, a string of groans. Two hours had passed, and an old, healthy man, presumably the old woman's husband with her curtains all opened, came inside the room to change her gown and peel some fruits for her. Despite the signs of age, he was a tall, athletic-looking man—somewhat stocky but firm in muscle. His face was inviting and kind, and his smile emphasized the lines on his cheeks, brightening him back ten years or so. He shared a lot of small talk with Sungchan, and by the time the two had started talking, a nurse arrived with a tray of needles and medicine, speaking to Sungchan while the old man excused himself out the door. Your eyes wandered around the room towards the window, tracing the trajectory of the electricity pole’s power lines. Every now and then, crows would perch on the lines, elongating their necks in surveillance of the whole neighborhood. Sungchan talked to his father and wiped the sweat around his body, helping him spit phlegm into a trash can occasionally while chatting with the old man, who came back and exchanged pleasantries with you. 

The doctors usually did their rounds at the hour, so you stepped outside with Sungchan in the corridor. When one of them came out, Sungchan’s eyes widened, and he rushed to his side, greeting him with a firm bow and asking him how his father was doing. 

“He seems fine after the surgery, obviously drained from energy, but we’ll still need a few days to assess him and evaluate the results of the operation. If he’s alright by then, he can probably go home, and if not, we’ll discuss further with your brother,” The doctor said. 

“Are you not gonna take his other ball?”

“If you put it that way, then it depends. We can’t know until we’ve seen the results,”

A patient’s condition and prognosis were challenging to tell with doctors. Though you didn’t know too much, it was always the impression that you got from them. Armed with a clipboard that tells you more about yourself than you will ever know in your entire lifespan, yet shrouded in ciphers, you must decode through medical language and terms you would’ve never encountered. There was simply no easy way to tell if you were doing well or not when the doctor couldn’t even give a concrete answer. It was always the good news followed by the bad or the bad followed by a string of intricate phrases and words that you couldn’t care much about as soon as you left the hospital. 

With Sungchan’s father, though, everything was transparent. It was almost as if you could see his fate through the reflection of the glasses that kept inching closer and closer to the doctor’s nose. No matter how much he pushed it up, it always slid down the bridge and onto the tip of his nose, where it dangled until he had to push it up again. He should probably throw those out and switch to contacts. 

After the doctor finished his rounds, a nurse entered the room, pushing a trolley with trays stacked on each other. Sungchan took one and carefully balanced it on his long arms, placing it down after reclining his father’s seat upright. He gently took the hot bowl of congee onto the makeshift table, then used a butter knife to slice up some fruits and debone the boiled fish that came with his father’s meal. With each spoonful he gave to his father, the life that had been drained out of him slowly came back. After four or so spoonfuls, he had enough to slowly raise his hand and stop the spoon from entering his mouth. 

No more, he mouthed. 

“God, you're hopeless, aren’t you? If you don’t eat more, you’re gonna die! You need to have your intestines functioning at least, so you can shit properly and not get constipated,” Sungchan complained, but to no avail. His father fervently shook his head, and Sungchan gave up, proceeding to turn his attention back to you with a tired frown. 

“Come, let’s go down to the cafeteria,” he requested. 

You promptly nodded and followed him down the elevator, letting your nose adjust to the stench of antiseptic that wafted across the entire building. Once the two of you reached the cafeteria on the ground floor, he offered to buy you some sandwiches and rice balls, but you declined. You couldn’t bring yourself to have an appetite when the entire cafeteria was packed with doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors. All the conversations that wafted and stayed in the air all talked about sickness, never health. It passed through you like a tunnel, where one after the other, another form or fragment of injury seemed to fill your head with the worst fate that terminal illness could offer. Every so often, the PA system would slice through the cafeteria with screeching static for a patient or a staff member. 

When Sungchan returned with two portions of rice, cabbage stew, and ban chan, you tried your best to chew half of it, leaving the rest for him to finish. He didn’t look up throughout his lunch, nodding with glee as he hounded his meal to the last mouthful. 

“You barely touched your food,” he asked. This was the first time he’s looked up since he came back with the meals. 

“I don’t know, I’m just not hungry,” you replied. 

“I get it. Hospitals don’t really equate to hunger, especially when you’re not used to the place. I mean, god, the smells! That antiseptic or whatever they use sure keeps you full. Being in an environment with so much stress, anxiety, disappointment, pain, and fatigue—that’s what does it to your stomach, grabbing your appetite and beating it to a pulp until it’s dead. The thing is, though, it’s not a problem once you get used to it. And you can’t really take care of someone when you’re hungry. I know this. I was on an empty stomach when my grandpa was at the hospital for cancer, and then I ate a little when my grandma was here. By the time it got to my mom, I got the routine in my head and ate before going to the hospital. Now, it’s my dad. By this point, I’m too used to coming here, and I can eat here just fine. You never know when you’re gonna have to basically live here, so it’s important to eat when you can.”

“That makes sense,” you nodded. 

“Whenever our relatives come to visit, they leave their food just like you. Then they tell me that I’m strong because I can eat despite being upset. What a load of crap! I’m the only one taking care of him! All they have to do is come every now and then and drop their faux sympathies! I’m the one who wipes his ass and makes sure his balls don’t hurt! I helped change his IV drips and fed him! If sympathy were all it took to clean his shit up, then he would be better by now! Instead, they see me eating here and say all that crap about me being strong. What the hell do they think they are? I mean, they’re old enough to know how this world works, so why are they so dumb? It’s so easy to talk big unless you’re not in the position of wiping some old guy’s ass up. Like, do they not think this hurts me just as much, if not more? Do they not think about it hurting so much that I just want to cry? How do they think I feel when I watch a horde of doctors cut my dad’s balls up, doing it again and again? To top it all off, you see your savings depleted. I was lucky enough to make it to my third year, but what then? He’ll surely die before I graduate, and that’s one more year! At this rate, I don’t even think my brother can afford to get married!” 

“How many times do you come here?” You asked, taking a soup spoon to stir some of the cold stew in your tray. 

“Depends. Usually four times a week, and they do promise all-around care from the nurses, but there’s too much for them to do around here. It’s an understaffed hospital. Some of our relatives come here to help. My brother’s got the shop, and I have to finish university. Even then, he comes here three times a week, and we sneak in past visiting hours when we can. It’s a full commitment, I tell you,” 

“How do you have time to spend with me when you’re so busy?” 

“I enjoy spending time with you,” Sungchan said with a smile. 

“Get out of here. Take a walk or something, I don’t know, just leave. I’ll take care of your father,” you demanded. At this point, you were already stood up. You had both trays in your hands with all the rubbish piled up on Sungchan’s empty bowls. He remained seated, eyes widening enough to encase all the fluorescent lights’ reflections into his brown, swirling irises. 

“What, why?” 

“You need to leave the hospital. It’s not helping you relax,” you explained, sighing. “You need something that can clear your mind up, even just by a little bit,” 

As he prepared his body to stand up from his chair, he sank again, allowing his back to merge with the flimsy plastic touching his bare neck. After a minute, he stood up again and nodded. 

“Do you know what to do, though? It’s a lot of work,”

“I think so. I’ve been watching you do it, and I think I got it. Check the IV drip, give him water, wipe his sweat off, and adjust his oxygen mask occasionally when he coughs, making sure they collect the phlegm. If he gets hungry, I feed him some jellies or the rest of his lunch on the bedside table. If I don’t know what to do, I’ll just ask the nurse,”

“Perfect,” Sungchan replied, grinning from ear to ear. “There’s just one thing, though: he can say weird shit because of all the medication, some jibberish that no one can understand. If he says anything that hurts you, try to ignore it. It’s not him, it’s the medication.” 

“Got it,” you saluted. 

Once the two of you were back in the room, Sungchan told his father that he had someone from the soccer team to phone and that you would be watching him while he sorted things out with the team. His father didn’t move or open his mouth. You figured it didn’t concern him if it had nothing to do with him. He remained lying on his back, eyes shut while his head was cocked up to the white ceiling. Had he not periodically opened his eyes to blink once in a while, you could’ve sworn he had flatlined. 

Whenever he did muster the courage to open his eyes, they were stained with swirls of red, making him look hungover. His nostrils noticeably flared up and down whenever he breathed, and his eyebrows would twitch whenever he had to open his eyes. Besides that, he had little to no movement, and he never tried to respond to Sungchan. 

After Sungchan had left the room, you didn’t know what to say to his father, let alone how to start a conversation with someone who didn’t give you a response. So, you kept quiet for a while, watching him slowly succumb to sleep. You took one of the chairs by the window and leaned closer to look at the way his nose twitched, hoping that he wouldn’t die while you were here. How would it feel to have a strange woman your son had brought to die by your side?

It was easier to sympathize with the dead than a vegetable. 

He was, alas, not dying. He was simply sleeping peacefully, with gargled breath and a twitching nose. You brought your ears closer to his face, hearing his faint, weak breathing. Heaving a sigh of relief, you got up and greeted the husband of the old woman next door. The only thing that came out of his mouth was any good word about Sungchan, assuming you were his girlfriend. 

“Sungchan’s a really good guy,” he said. “He takes care of his father, and he’s so kind and sensitive. To top it all off, he has a face of an actor. I’m sure he treats you right, and always be by his side. He’s going through a tough time right now, and I’m sure you won’t find anyone like him.”

“I try my best to treat him right,” you replied casually. 

“I have kids at home. One’s eighteen, just out of high school, and the other, twenty-two, probably around you and Sungchan’s age. Neither of them want to visit! They said the hospital smells, and the minute they’re out of school, they never think twice about visiting. They just play around, go on dates, go on with their lives. They only come around to ask me for some pocket money.” 

About an hour had passed, and the man got up to wave goodbye. You didn’t know if he would come back, but you could see that both Sungchan’s father and the old woman were deep in sleep. The gentle, marmalade rays of the sunlight poured into the room, and the warmth that wafted in the air made you feel like you were slowly drifting into a benign, mindless nap. The faded pink of the Dahlias by the old woman’s bedside drawer signaled the end of the summer, and the remnants of boiled fish swirled around the room. You could hear the low chatter of the nurses just outside in the hallway, sneakers squeaking and squealing with the wagons they had to push back and forth throughout their shift. Every so often, one of the nurses would poke her head into the room, quietly sliding the door to glance around. Then, they would flash you a small smile. You wished there was a magazine or a newspaper that you could pick up and read to kill time, but there was nothing of the sort nearby, and you didn’t want to bother any of the nurses when you weren’t even a patient at the hospital. 

Oddly, the hospital reminded you of Eunseok. Perhaps it was because of Ujeong Inn, but you could picture him wearing nothing underneath the blanket in one of the beds. You thought of the softness of his jet-black hair and the lean, bony muscles that felt fragile between your fingertips. Then, you wondered why he was here, of all places. The more you thought of him, the less apparent his existence seemed—almost like a wavering, hazy fantasy you conjured up in a daze. And the more you thought of him, the more uncertain you became of the night you spent with him at Ujeong Inn. If you told yourself that it did happen, then it did, and if you thought of it as a daydream, then it was just that, a daydream. Some of the details felt too real for it to be anything you could think of, but too ethereal to have been based in actuality. 

Eunseok and the moonlight; an trick of the eye that trickled to the hairs of your skin. 

Sungchan’s father suddenly stirred up, raspy breaths accompanying a dry heave. You quickly snapped out of your daydream and helped him spit his phlegm out into a handkerchief, disposing of it before coming back to wipe his sweat with a fresh towel. 

“Would you like some water?” You asked. He responded with a weak, but firm nod. You poured some of the water from a plastic bottle into his glass, and controlled his sips a little at a time. 

It was difficult for you to discern if he wanted more or if he wanted you to stop. It seems that larger movements physically hurt him. 

“More?” You asked. He shook his head. 

“Are you hungry? What about some fruits?” 

He shook his head again. You wiped his mouth with the same towel and adjusted the bed flatly before taking the trays and cutlery onto the visitor’s table. 

“Was the food good?” You asked. He fervently shook his head, then deepening the wrinkles of his eyebrows. 

“I know, I know,” you tried to sympathize with him. Sungchan’s father indecisively opened and closed his eyes as he lay completely flat on the bed, turning his head to face you. Did he know who you were? Had Sungchan talked about you to him on his last visits? He seemed quite relaxed to be laying next to a stranger, and he was definitely quieter with you than he ever was with Sungchan. Perhaps he thinks you’re Sungchan? Or someone else? 

“It’s a nice day out,” you started, resting your chin on your palm as you crossed your legs. “Winter’s coming soon, but the temperature hasn’t dropped significantly. It’s still warm enough for me to do my laundry outside, and you’re better off here than out in the city. The pollution’s getting worse because of more factories built up in the East, and the crowds! My god, they’re exhausting to deal with. I’d rather stay home and iron my clothes. I used to be bad at it, almost burning my shirts, but I’ve gotten better. Now, I can make things look perfect, and none of my clothes have any wrinkles on them at all! Spotless and brand new! Today was a perfect day for laundry and ironing, but that’s okay, I can wake up early tomorrow morning and take care of it all. Sundays are always free, and I always have nothing to do.” 

“When I sort out my laundry tomorrow, I go to class with Sungchan. We take a lot of classes together, but econometrics is the one we’re taking tomorrow. It’s nothing really interesting, and I don’t particularly enjoy it. It’s just statistics adapted to fit economics, and most of the stuff we do, like regression analysis, has already been done and mastered in some of the more math-intensive courses.” 

“What I enjoy in most of my courses is reading essays by economists who think beyond the scope of what we think the economy encompasses. I find that economics works better with the math all removed, even if most scholars say it’s the math that adds a solid foundation to it. Sure, I do agree to a certain extent, but you can’t quantify real-life behaviors. I mean, how are we supposed to calculate every one's utility when every person has a different level of satisfaction? People also don’t seem to take into account the difference in culture. I mean, yeah, the American model of capitalism and consumerism relies on so-called notions of freedom of choice, but Korean society consists of savers. We have been taught to save for a very long time, and that’s one thing we can’t erase. It’s rude to spend, and because of that, we can’t just adopt capitalism as a structure. We need to be aware of what makes us different from the rest, and then think about adapting to a new type of accumulation that stimulates overall growth without throwing away the lessons that we’ve been taught by our ancestors. That has nothing to do with econometrics, but that’s pretty much the kind of stuff Sungchan and I study at university,” 

Sungchan’s father had said nothing, keeping his dim eyes on you the entire time you were talking. Of course, it was difficult to tell if he actually understood anything you said to him. 

“Alright, I’ll go now,” 

Sungchan’s father responded in a way that made you remember that he was once a human capable of speech. 

“No, please stay,” he whispered through the lumps of phlegm on his throat. After conversing with yourself, you nodded and returned to your seat, feeling parched and starved. You didn’t eat anything for breakfast and ate half your lunch. Now, you regretted not being able to finish your portion, but you realized quickly that feeling sorry for yourself wouldn’t help you at all. You stood up again and reassured the man that you were staying put, unzipping the large duffel bag by the foot of his bed for something to eat. Rummaging through the pockets and corners of the bag, you only fished out some cough drops and an unopened pack of instant congee. Then, your eyes flicked back onto the slices of cake that were just beside you on the table. 

“Do you mind if I eat this piece of cake? I’m getting a bit hungry,” you asked. Sungchan’s father didn’t answer. You took a slice of chocolate cake and pulled a small, heaping piece with your fingers, careful not to leave any icing between your nails. 

“Delicious, but decadent. Too much cream, and it’s a little too sweet! I think they got this from the French bakery that just opened near the station,” you remarked. You scraped off more of the icing and siphoned off a second heaping—this time, a larger mouthful than the first. The only thing you could hear in the room was your teeth gnawing at the soft sponge. After this mouthful, you decided to take a break, taking another fresh towel from the bag to wipe your fingers. You boiled some water in a kettle by the end of the corridor and made tea for the two of you. 

“Do you want something to drink?” You asked, coming back with two mugs filled with corn tea. 

“Cake,” he whispered. 

“Alright, a small slice like that will do. What side do you want? The end bits with more cream, or the middle with more sponge?” 

“Sponge,” he replied with a nod. You adjusted the bed again to how Sungchan had left it when he felt his father. Then, you used a pair of disposable chopsticks from the duffel bag to cut the cake in quarters, flying it into the patient’s mouth like an airplane. After a stern, unreadable expression, Sungchan’s father’s mouth moved from cheek to cheek, finally swallowing the piece after a while. 

“Is that good?” He nodded. 

“Things are better when food tastes good, no? Tasting good food and feeling good about it is kind of proof that you’re alive,” 

He had an entire slice of cake. After he was finished, you filled his glass with water and controlled his sips. He motioned for the bathroom as soon as he was done with his glass, so you took a cup from the foot of his bed and held it under his penis. When he signaled to you that he was done, you emptied its contents in the toilet and washed the cup clean. By the time you came back, you could only throw the tea out where his urine went. 

“How are you feeling now?” You asked. 

“Head… hurts.” He replied. 

“I mean, you did have an operation. I’ve never had one in my entire life, so I don’t know what it’s like.”

“Gongdeok ticket to Sungchan,” he suddenly whispered, saying more than you believed he was capable of. 

“Gongdeok,” he repeated. “Sungchan,”

“Gongdeok?”

“Please,” he said. “Sungchan” 

You couldn’t connect or decipher what he said, so you kept quiet. He, too, was silent for a while. Occasionally, he would muster the exact words again: Gongdeok, ticket, Sungchan. He opened his eyes, peering at you as if demanding your full attention. You knew he was trying to tell you something, but you couldn’t begin to imagine what was so important for you to know. 

All you knew then was that any sign of lifelessness was suddenly animated in his deep, pressing gaze. He now had the strength to raise his arm at you and gripped your wrist tight. This must have had an incredible effect on him, so you returned the favor by slipping your hand in his. With what little remaining strength he could muster, he squeezed your hand and mouthed the word please, now even quieter than a whisper or a secret. 

“No worries, I’ll go take care of Sungchan and Gongdeok,” you responded haphazardly. Then, he suddenly fell flat, chest heaving up and down as a faint snore drifted into your ears. You put two of your fingers next to his lymph nodes to check if he was alive, then, once you felt a pulse, headed out to the hallway for a quick walk. The moment you slid the door of the room shut and allowed the change in environment to settle within you, you realized that you’d grown a liking for this old, shriveled man on the verge of death. 

The old man came back a few moments later, greeting you in the hallway to ask if everything was alright. The only thing you could give him was a frail nod, then excusing yourself to meet Sungchan outside. 

Before you could descend the stairs, you saw him extend a wave toward you at the bottom of the staircase, quickly jogging up to catch up with you. 

“I was just in the parking lot, counting the cars until I fell asleep.” He started. “I did what you told me to do. I just sat there and let my head get empty.”

“How are you feeling now?” You asked. 

“Much better. I’m still tired, but I feel lighter than I ever felt before. I think I’m more tired than I realize.” 

Sungchan’s father was now fast asleep, and there was nothing for the two of you to do, so you went back down to the cafeteria to buy coffee, then stepped out again to smoke. You filled Sungchan in with what happened after he left—that his father slept soundly, then woke up to eat his lunch and a whole slice of cake, then peed. 

“No way, no fucking way.” Sungchan said, startled. “You got him to finish his dinner tray and have him eat half a piece of cake! That’s amazing!” 

“We were all out here going nuts over him starving himself and refusing any food he gave us, but you got him to finish his food!”

“I think he just saw me enjoy the cake and wanted some too,” 

“Either that or you have this thing in you that just relaxes people,”

“Doubt it, I think a lot of people say I’m unsettling,” you laughed. 

“So?” Sungchan asked, shifting the bottle of canned coffee between his hands. “What did you think about my dad?” 

“He’s nice. I mean, I couldn’t have a proper conversation with him, but he seems nice.” 

“He was quiet, wasn’t he?” 

“Very.”

“God, he was much worse a week ago. He went wild in there! Throwing his food around and shit. Telling us that he hoped we’d die. Cancer does that to people. It’s probably the fact that chemo literally kills your cells, but it was the same with my mom. At the last part of her illness, when she was on the brink of death, she yelled at me and said I wasn’t his son. Deep down, I know it wasn’t her, but it affected me so much that I couldn’t bring myself to see her for a while. To think your own mother would say something distasteful, right?” 

“I get it,” you replied, then suddenly remembered the string of words that Sungchan’s father had uttered. 

“A ticket to Gongdeok? What the hell is he trying to say?” 

“Then he said ‘Please’ and ‘Sungchan.’ He either meant, ‘Please take care of Sungchan,’ or he wanted you to go to Gongdeok and buy a ticket. It was such a mess that I couldn’t understand any of it, but who knows? Does Gongdeok ring any bells?” 

Sungchan pondered on the collection of words for while. 

“The only thing I can think of was running away from home, then going to Gongdeok to take the airport link to Gimpo. Back then, when I was ten or so, I was stupid enough to think I could just buy a plane ticket at the desk. I’d heard about a nice aunt who lived in America, so I went to the airport, went to a desk, and asked for a ticket to America, but she refused! Said she would call my house, and I refused to give her an address! Soon enough, though, my dad came to pick me up from Gimpo and then bought me lunch at the airport. He talked to me about all sorts of things, like the war and how he was exempt from conscription because of his astigmatism but still served military service when he was young. Come to think of it, that was the only time I’ve ever had a long conversation with him. God, I wonder what he was like in military service. Lord knows if I’d be like him when I serve.”

“Aren’t you supposed to serve now?” You asked.

“Who knows? I haven’t been called on yet. I think it has something to do with my mom dying, and now my dad being ill. My brother was unlucky, though, he finished his service right as my mom got diagnosed, so he came home from all of that chaos only to find more at home. Anyway, on the train, he told me all sorts of stories. Stuff about the Japanese in Korea, the Americans coming to Seoul, and then, Vietnam! I didn’t even know where that was as a kid, but all his stories always ended with him saying something like, ‘Sungchan, the world’s the same everywhere we go.’ A bit of a depressing conclusion to say to a ten-year-old, but his stories really impressed me.” 

“I see,”

“See what?”

“Why your dad said that,” you muttered under your breath. 

“Did you ever run away from home?” Sungchan asked, cocking his head to the side. 

“No,”

“Why not?” 

“Never thought about it,”

“God, you’re weird!” He exclaimed, as if impressed by your every answer. “Every kid has that point in their life, no?”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“So, what did you say to my dad after that?” 

“I just said I’d take care of you and Gongdeok.”

“Really? You told him you’d take care of me?”

Sungchan looked you straight in the eyes with a grave expression. 

“Yeah, I did, but I really didn’t know what he was saying, and—”

“Don’t worry, I get what you’re trying to say,” he laughed. 

After Sungchan had finished his cigarette, the two of you returned to the room. His father was still fast asleep, and you could still hear his faint snores falling up and down into your ears, as if you had pressed them near his mouth. As the skies turned violet, the lights in the hospital flicked to a dim shade of yellow, reflecting the colors of dead leaves. The flock of birds once perched on the utility pole had all fluttered away. You and Sungchan sat by the window next to his father’s bed, trying your best to exchange words in low conversation. He took the empty mug where you dumped out your cold tea and attempted to read the fortune written in the black specs that adorned the white ceramic, and told you that you would go past a hundred, get your heart broken in a divorce, then die. At the same time, everyone watched you get a heart attack in the grocery store. 

Sungchan’s father woke up at dusk, and Sungchan took his chair, moving it next to his father’s bedside drawer. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, gave him some water straight out of the bottle, and asked him about any pains in his body. A nurse had come by a few moments later to take his temperature, record any of his vitals, and check the IV drips for any faults. You returned to the cafeteria and watched the news on the television. 

After an hour, you returned and told Sungchan you were leaving. To his father, you told him that you had to go back home to study. He turned his head towards you and twitched the corners of his mouth. 

“Thank you so much for today,” Sungchan said when he walked you to the exit. 

“I mean, I didn’t really do anything at all, to be honest, but I’ll come by next week. I’d like to see your father again,” you said. 

“Really?” 

“Being alone in that apartment can get to me from time to time, and who knows? Your brother might bring cake again,”

Sungchan folded his arms and tapped his feet. 

“Well, I’d like to go out with you again,” he said, a valiant smirk etched on his face. 

“What about the porn cinema you promised?”

“We can do that first and then go out to eat while talking about the usual disgusting things that we talk about,”

“You’re the one who brings it up!”

“Sounds like a plan, no? Get super drunk in the afternoon and then pass out in bed,”

“What other fantasies do you have in mind?” 

“We’ll see,” you replied defeatedly. “But I’ll pick you up next week. I’ll try to beat the daily papers, and we can come here together.” 

With that, you bade Sungchan farewell.

post mortem: THIS IS PART TWO OF NEVER MEANT. I REPEAT. PART TWO! GO READ THAT ONE IF YOU HAVEN'T YET. PART THREE COMING SOON

[dearestjake]

[dearestjake]

[dearestjake]

SUNGHOON - [RAW FIG]

[dearestjake]

240912 riize_official instagram update

Memories of Epilogue #RIIZE #라이즈 #WONBIN #원빈 #RISEandREALIZE #RIIZING_Epilogue

[dearestjake]

[240807] Getty images update with Enhypen

[dearestjake]

manhandle me, put me in a headlock

[dearestjake]

⃝✾ᥟ. sunghoon boyfriend material

[dearestjake]

STOP . ✋

[dearestjake]

g-gomen oomf chan

[dearestjake]

g-gomen oomf chan

[dearestjake]

No joke, this is how I dress lmao

Your Riize Bias, Your Outfit | Wonbin edition

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If your bias is Wonbin i'm sure you've thought about this specific items on his wardrobe!

** I found like a lot of leopard print jackets, if you are interested you can ask me for links ^^

*all rights reserved to me, i did all the editing and writing* *sorry if there are spelling mistakes, English is not my native language*

© ycton 2024

[dearestjake]

240904

[dearestjake]

240904

[dearestjake]

Enhypen Vogue korea