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yuragiku · 2 months ago

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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.

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!

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