Nayoung dreams of things – the past, the present, and the future. Or, her own manmade delusions, the by-product of living the lonely 26 years old mundane office worker life. It’s the kind of loneliness that burrows itself deep under her skin, seeps in between the crevices in her heart, smothers her memory with longing – but for what or whom?

The past; Nayoung dreams of the days where she spent her summer in the library. Her winter in the quiet living room of her family’s apartment complex. Her autumn waiting for the winter. Her spring waiting for something different. What, exactly?

The future, the unknown; Nayoung dreams of someone she couldn’t name. Sometimes the face is blurred and grainy and easily passable. Sometimes it’s vivid enough to haunt her for the rest of the day, curiosity leading her to every dead end possible. Who, exactly?

The woman is the kind of visual memory that’s easy to evoke. All she needs to do is shut her eyes, then the image will project itself behind the dark inner part of her eyelids. Sometimes blurred and grainy. Other times, it’s an objective optical replica of the ghost in question. Who or what are you, exactly?

They live in a universe that sounds fictional enough to be one: between you and your soulmate, there’s a link. Fortunately, invisible to the eyes. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of link where one can feel what the other is feeling – so when one is feeling particularly cranky, the other has to bulk up an extra amount of patience. Nayoung isn’t special enough to be an exception, and sometimes she can feel it, the tug, but it’s rare enough for her to not mind it much.

On some days, even though work piles up to her nose, she could feel warmth from deep inside. She isn’t happy. Maybe her soulmate is. They’re happy and somehow Nayoung is graced with a bite-sized sample of their happiness.

On another, even though she’s spending the evening with Suhyun in a decked out café too small to fit more than six patrons, she could feel someone dragging her heart down. It makes her uneasy because she’s suddenly blue and she couldn’t explain why.

One emotion that tugs at her is love. She pegged it as love. She herself isn’t sure.

Kim Nayoung, age twenty-six, a total newbie to Love and Affection, simply because she didn’t get the chance to get acquainted to either. So, whenever she’s experiencing that kind of tug from her soulmate, Nayoung would lean back, rests her head on the couch, and relishes in the feelings of loving and being loved.

(At the same time… it feels like she’s a stranger in an even stranger land. Lost. She doesn’t belong there.)
 

Kim Nayoung, age twenty-six, is alive and well and slightly inebriated because she befriended the wrong person. Lee Suhyun is the kind of toxic friend she’d wish could just dump into some remote island near Madagascar with a pack of provisions for a week. So she could suffer a slow death.

“And, like, I told her, ay, I’m being serious, yew gotta stop being so y, ay, and she thought, I was,” Suhyun slams a hand to the poor, poor table, and she hiccups, “she thought - that Haein thought – I was doing some kinda sicko impression of pirate. Ay, it was January, no October.”

Suhyun spits droplets of her own spit whenever she’s drunk and angry. Nayoung wipes her defiled knuckles with the complimentary tissue on the table. “Interesting.”

“, what kinda friend are yew??! Yew gotta call her a, a too!” Suhyun takes another large gulp at her glass. Nayoung wonders how she could handle the burn in . “I – love that so much, okay!?”

“Okay.”

“Has anyone, anyone, everrr told you that you’re the, the worst kinda friend?”

Nayoung flips the side of the tissue because she needs to wipe her other hand now. “I drive you home on rainy days and I never asked you to pay me bucks. But perhaps I will now.”

“I literally just sold my friend’s number to pay for a bag yesterday.”

“You’re suddenly sober to talk about money.”

Suhyun suddenly flushes red again, slapping the table animatedly. “Moneeyyyy! Capitalisssmmm!!”

“Work hard. Maybe you can reach my position and buy the apartment beside me. It’s empty as of this morning, and the doorknob is collecting dusts.”

“You asshat, you live in Gangnam. Iiiit will, cost me,” Suhyun pauses, looking like she’s pondering the zeroes in her head, “um, I dunno. How long is an eternity?”

Nayoung, tired of seeing Suhyun embarrassing herself, sweeps her gaze around the pub. It’s rather empty. As usual. She brings her glass up to her lips, fingers nestling the rim. “Long enough for you to forget Haein.”

“I dun wanna forget about her…”

“This love thing is dumbing you down. I don’t befriend es.”

“You’re… just, just too heartless, dudette…”

Nayoung takes a swig, winces, then softly puts her glass back. It’s still half-empty. “Talk to me about it.”

“One dayyy, you’ll be in love. A man. A woman. Who, whoever this unlucky bum being the receiving end of your mush-mush crush is. And you’ll know – o, o woe is meee! Love feels so waunderful. And ty as ! Like, what could be lovelier yet, ummmm, deadlier, than love?”

None. Love is practically toxic for some. “I’ve felt love before, excuse you. I’m not Gundam.” Nayoung sighs, rubs her temple, and decides to gaze to the glass pane, eyes following a stray dog running under the heavy downpour outside.

“Ehhh. Your pet goldfishes don’t count, aight,”

“No, no! They died last week, anyway. All died because I had to work overtime. I bought them and that’s how they repaid me, by dying. I’d like to die too. It’s been my dream since ten years ago. A pack of goldfishes beaten me to it and I’m bitter.”

She can feel Suhyun’s questioning stare stripping her . “You, uhngg, you alrightie, Naongie?”

“Not right now. Earlier today, I went down to the second floor because I needed to ring someone. A guy spilled his coffee on my shirt. We bumped in the hallway and he apologized, but he looked like he wanted to laugh. I had him fired.”

“Fired as innnn… kicked out?”

“Yes. On the spot.” At the memory, Nayoung leans back into her chair, feeling the cushion against her back, and pushes up the bridge of her specs. “He was a fulltime staff. It’s all past tense now.”

“Oh, wow, Little Missy Director, you’re an ,”

“Nice knowing you, Suhyun. Drive home by yourself.”

“Awww, nawwww!”

To salvage her fate for the night, Suhyun steers the topic away to her mundane everyday life. Something about flirting, something about gossips, something about unfortunate ordeals like getting pooped by pigeon from high up above (it’s a sign; Phase One of Divine Punishment). Nayoung pretends to listen, chin on her palm, while her mind takes off. To somewhere.

Love. While not the life-partner kind of attraction, she has experienced it before. She realized so once the person of interest packed up and left their halfway-mansion of a house in Pyeongchang, never to return. So far.

Hongbin had always been the favorite child up until he chose the woman he loved over the constricting (but luxurious!) life of being a Kim. He went with the wind, left behind a Hongbin-shaped hole in the house, a hundred and eighty centimeters tall of vanity black. Nayoung is ten centimeters short of filling the spot, though she was forcibly passed the torch. Young Director Kim Nayoung - recently promoted to the position, sole heir of the Kim Corps. It doesn’t have quite a nice ring to it because the spot isn’t supposed to be hers.

Sometimes she dreams of Hongbin too, the frequency diminishing by time, since it’s been ten years since they last seen each other. Nayoung unconsciously pictures him from the pictures she has left of him, since he doesn’t look the type to age much. Maybe, fifty years from now, should they meet again, he’ll still have this boyish grin and deep dimples that tie them together. Blood brother and sister. Then, she’ll wake up thinking: just how much of an imbecile one can be? Throwing away everything for the “love of their life”?

Despicable!

“…and, like, I’m hellllla sure dat boi is their kid—“

“Suhyun,”

“Whuh?”

“How far would you go for someone you love?”

Nayoung tries to word it lightheartedly, though aware that there’s nothing lighthearted about her. Suhyun looks like she’s taking the question seriously, even under the thick cloud of alcohol that’s clouding her thoughts. “For… Haein?”

“Yes. Object of affection. Whatever.”

To the tune of Nayoung’s fingers idly tapping the table, Suhyun hums. “Well… it depends… you can’t measure the matter of heart. It’s not, umm, apples, you know? You can’t count it in Kilos. But you wouldn’t know.”

“Would you leave everything behind for someone you love?”

Suhyun’s eyes are slightly bit sad. Weird, for a at everything Feelings like her to notice. “I, I would… if the other would do the same, ya know. Sooo… I guess not to Haein. But I would, if Haein would do it for me.”

So love is a matter of equivalent exchange. Now she has less reasons to give up on humanity.

But for Hongbin to do so, is this woman just as stupid and self-sacrificing? (She files the adjective, ‘self-sacrificing’, under the negatives. It’s a trait that’ll bridge one to the ‘one way trip to being a human-garbage’.)

Who is this woman, exactly? Nayoung would like to spend her dimes on some brains. And presents them to her, gift-wrapped.

“Umm, earth to Naongie?”

Suhyun snaps her away from her thought. Nayoung lifts her head from her palm and corrects her sitting position.

“I mean… ummm, you talkin’ about love must be some kinda, uhh, eighth wonder of the world, because uhh, you don’t… talk about looove. Heartless s don’t talk about love…”

Nayoung merely hums because Suhyun has a point, casts her gaze on her hands instead, on the table, fingers taut.

“So um, just wonderingggg… you OK in the head or you suddenly grew a heart…?”

“I - “ she’s about to retort before she feels it, the link, and it’s not even a tug, a violent pull and it doesn’t stop there. It feels like someone stabs her in the heart (she has one!) and twists the blade slowly, agonizingly. Metaphorical, of course. She isn’t in some sort of physical pain.

But the grimace must’ve shown, because Suhyun’s voice sounds alarmed. “… Nayoung?”

“It’s… the link.”

What’s her other half going through…?

The feelings are so strong it feels like she’s experiencing it herself.

It feels like…

“You’ve never met your soulmate… right?”

Nayoung nods, blinks, and she looks outside. The rain tormenting the street is still as heavy as it was half an hour ago.

“No.” The stray dog is hiding under the canopy of a restaurant across this pub. “I think.”

“Well… you will. Sooner or later. I’m gonna… ya know? Feel bad for your other half. I mean, I personally dun want to spend my life with a woman who googles How to Introduce Yourself In Front of Strangers. I dun wanna marry an E.T.”

“It was just one time!”

“It happened. Past tense.” Suhyun barks out a laugh and shoves a finger to her face, wagging it and asking for a punch.

Nayoung tries to shake off the link with their 11 PM banters. The feelings are still there, even when she’s asleep. That night too, she dreams of a woman, the image almost too clear. She’s still nameless by the time she wakes up.

That’s also when she realizes that through the link, what she has been feeling isn’t just some kind of heartbreaking sadness. It’s regret. It’s the ty feelings of being robbed of something important. It’s grief. Her other half is grieving and she couldn’t do anything about it.
 

She storms out of her office, feet burning, as she power-walks to Suhyun’s desk and pulls her to the side. Suhyun’s surprised by the yanking on her sleeve.

“Accompany me for a bit.”

“Eh?? To where?”

Nayoung lights up the screen of her phone and it shows an opened message from her father, texted with the proper capitalization. I received a news that Hongbin died. Passed away after a car crash yesterday. I didn’t really hear the details. I’ve cancelled your schedule in the board meeting. Represent me and attend his funeral.

“So, uh, like, your brother… died?”

Nayoung glares at Suhyun through the lenses of her rimless glasses. The glare isn’t directed towards Suhyun in particular; it’s for the storm that’s currently happening right now. “Yes. Or I think he might be joking, but I checked the calendar and we’re 18 days past April Fools.”

“O-oh. Well. Um. I dunno, I… I’m sorry.” Suhyun really looks sorry, eyes on her feet. “I dunno. It’s just – the way your dad sorta just nonchalantly told you that your brother… died… is,”

“I know. And you’re coming with me.” Nayoung slides back her phone to her bag and breezes towards the lift, knocking away a few staffs (Suhyun apologized for her because Kim Nayoung doesn’t apologize), expecting Suhyun to walk after her. Suhyun does, but in much slower pace, like she’s hesitating.

“Why?”

“Think of it as a break for you.” Is what she said, but what she really needs is simply an emotional crutch. To help her cope. Because it’s been ten years, a reunion long overdue, and somehow right now, they’re in different planes of existence.

The lift opens up for them and they step in. Nayoung punches the first floor a bit too hastily.

“Funeral trips aren’t considered a ‘break’, but okaaay.”

She knows Suhyun knows. She appreciates Suhyun’s aversion to poking her nose around what’s not her business. Maybe that’s why they’re somehow friends.

Throughout the ride, Nayoung drives with the link making her uneasy. At every turn of the road, the tug gets stronger. Then dissipates. Then comes back full force. There’s a mess of feelings the size of Russia threatening to burst her heart and its small capacity. Shut the hell up, Soulmate! Stop being so emotional! And hopes her message gets through.

The mess cools down a little for, like, five minutes, before Nayoung finds her face scrunching at another wave of mess.

Suhyun understands at and at some point, gives her a reassuring pat on her thigh. She also keeps shut, preferring to gaze outside the window and counts on the blurring green of the passed trees.

“It’s okay to cry,” Suhyun speaks when they’re close, or at least that’s what the GPS is telling.

“The thing is, I can’t.”

She spies a frown on Suhyun through the rearview mirror. “You have to… he’s your brother.”

“You can’t fabricate feelings.”

“Not when it’s there.”

Maybe, it’s there. It’s just that Nayoung has been dying to keep it at bay. She doesn’t have the time nor the energy to spare to cry for someone who made her life a living hell, blood brother or not.

(She also tries to keep the temporal part of her brains in check – do not replay happy memories, do not – so that she won’t remember how much of a hero to her Hongbin used to be, so she won’t feel any.)
 

The funeral is nothing special, especially for someone bearing the name Kim (a particular Kim, not the countless others in South Korea. The Kim who’s used to high class superficiality). Not many attends, most of them men, probably co-workers. She has heard that Hongbin worked as a regular, underpaid white collar worker after he skedaddled. Far from his dream job of being an electro engineer.

The sky roofing district Yeondeongpu is rather murky. It might rain for in less than thirty minutes, tops. She needs to hurry – since from the look of it, they’ve buried the coffin. Suhyun nudges her to walk along closer to the grave and holds her hand. Nayoung silently appreciates the gesture.

Some of the attendants look at them weirdly, perhaps questioning someone as gorgeous as Suhyun to be there, attending a sad man’s funeral. Nayoung pushes up her glasses out of reflex with her other hand. She never likes attention. Prying eyes. It makes her sweat.

In the innermost circle of the mourners is a pair of mother and daughter, Nayoung guesses. She creeps closer.

(The link pulls her.)

Suhyun pulls her head to her side halfway. “She’s his wife. I asked.”

“I see.” Nayoung mutters, suddenly feeling dying. (The link throbs.) She walks closer. A distance the length of an arm divides them – the woman’s eyes face is obscured from her view, and so is the daughter’s, as Nayoung has the only the view of her rather slumped back. She notices the kid sniffling, and she looks to be the age of a preschooler. Poor kid.

“Excuse me,” Suhyun asks the woman’s attention first. (The link trembles.)

“Yes?” She doesn’t quite look at Suhyun, just at her general direction. Her eyes are mostly down there. “How may I help you?”

Suhyun offers the pair their condolences, making sure to tack Nayoung’s name. Nayoung is thankful because she’s no smooth-talked and she might stumble with her words. To masterfully craft words into sentences not too flowery but still nonetheless pretty is Suhyun’s skill, honed through years of… flirting?

Nayoung walks a little more forward to meet his brother, a few feet under her feet. Hey, the first word she utters after ten long years of getting ditched by the only person she trusted, how does it feel like down there? Say hi to the earthworms for me.

Funny. Between the two, she thought she would be the first to go, simple because her brother used to be so loved and she read once that love, makes one happier, prolongs the person’s mortal life.

At the same time – it feels so unfair. For someone as… wonderful as her brother to kick the bucket in a freaking car crash. It’s unfair to him, unfair to the small family he left behind. Unfair to her, too, because she dreamed of meeting Hongbin, both very much alive, just to punch him in the face and shove him his life as Kim back.

Nayoung lowers her head, shakes her head, anything to distract her. She’s starting to get feelings. Best not to taint her glasses with saline tears so she won’t have to drive home with blurry glasses.

Someone taps her on the shoulder and Nayoung turns around expecting Suhyun. When it turns out it’s Hongbin’s very much alive wife, she lets out an audible gasp. “I— I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you,”

“N, no, no no, it’s okay,” She doesn’t really look at the woman. When she looks up, the woman doesn’t really look at her. Just to her general direction, “a-anyway, yes?”

She peers over the woman’s shoulder and catches Suhyun chatting with a man not far from her age, from his looks. Save meee!

The least she really wants to do is to talk with a grieving woman!

“The lady told me that you’re Hongbin’s sister.” Her eyes are on the simple gravestone, with Hongbin’s name engraved and not much else. “He talked a lot about you. Said that one day, he wished to see you again.”

When is ‘one day’? Nayoung stays quiet, unsure. She’s never one with words.  Averting her eyes, preferring to carefully imprint the pattern on the leather shoes she’s wearing instead, she feels herself lowkey trembling.

She isn’t used to conversations with strangers. Especially strangers riddled with grieves.

“She talked about how cute and wonderful you are… but I see that he lied. This ‘baby sister’ has grown into a fine woman.” The wife chuckles. That must’ve taken her 1/5^th of the energy left in her.

“He.. that’s…”

“Nayoung… right?”

“Yes.”

From her peripheral vision, she notices the child hiding in her mother’s shadow. Nayoung turns her head a little to get a better look – round cheeks, baby fats, dimples. In a way, she resembles Hongbin, but a gazillion times cuter. Nayoung couldn’t count the zeroes. The kid’s eyes are red and puffy, the tip of her small nose pink, and she speaks in the language of sniffles as she pulls on her mother’s hand and mutters something too far for Nayoung’s prying ear to reach.

The mother pulls her in and leans the kid’s head to her side. “Mina, this is daddy’s little sister. Call her Auntie Nayoung.”

Mina – the kid’s name, a fitting name for something so cute – glares at her. Nayoung flinches at the preschooler’s glare.

The mother mirthlessly chuckles. “Sorry. Mina bares her fangs towards strangers, but she gets really mushy fast if you take the time to know her.”

Well, this is probably our first and last meeting. “O, okay.”

“Hongbin…” At the name, Nayoung tenses back. “You really do resemble him.”

“I-I see… we are, siblings, after all…”

“If only,” she starts, and Nayoung hears the way she gulps at the jarring pause, “you two had the chance to meet.”

Same – I want to land a punch or two at his face too.

“If only,” The word withers away and when the wife finds her voice, Nayoung hears wrecked out sobs instead, “life isn’t this punishing.”

It’s not really his fault. I thought about running away too. You would too, if you were in his place.

“Hongbin…”

(The link takes a firm grip of her heart,)

Nayoung turns and sees the woman burying her face in a hand as the other holds tighter. She sees the kid’s brows knitting as she holds down another wail. She sees a small family, broken, and she realizes the factor that’s making her tremble, the thing pushing the wave of tears. And the dam breaks.

It’s the first time in years she’s crying for anyone that isn’t herself and knows that it’s the link’s fault. What she’s experiencing right now is the feeling of being torn from the inside, so there’s no way to fight back without tearing the hole even wider, to reach for the little churner of the suffering inside.

And her smothered memories, ones she tried to repress, untangles themselves into limbless monsters devouring her self-control. Of Hongbin ruffling her hair. Of Hongbin telling her stories of his godawesome school life with his cool friends (she didn’t have any friends back then – so it felt like listening to a storytelling, but realer).

But mostly of the pain she shares with her other half. Mostly for the small family left behind to mourn for years to come. For the little girl that’s going to be a living reminder for herself and for her widowed mother.

“Thank you for coming,” Nayoung hears the wife says, notices movement of the wife’s elbows, erratic movements of wiping her tears, “Hongbin really wanted to see you. You must’ve been busy – Hongbin told me that you will be succeeding your family’s business.”

“It’s – it’s nothing. I… I have to see him too.”

The sky is looking murkier, Nayoung notices. It’s just 3 PM – will the sky cry for Hongbin too?

Just how lucky is this bastard, skipping his punishment in this world by dying?

Leaving her wife and kid behind? Probably without much fortune? Yeondeongpu is known for the poorer part in Seoul.

Essentially, it’s like he’s giving her a middle finger from high above. Hey, look at my wife and kid – don’t they look miserable to you? Try to do something about it, . Winky-face.

“I…” She turns, (the link pushes her to do,) to the wife, looks at her edged side-profile. “Once again, my condolences for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

Nayoung shifts her weight to her other leg, nervous, taking extra care at choosing her words. “I-If there’s anything I can do…”

“Ah, no, no, I mean. We’ll cope.”

It’s 3 PM. The board meeting should be over, but she has another meeting to attend at 5. She might make it if she takes her leave now.

“I… I’ll be going. But.” Nayoung rummages her bag for her business card and a pen she keeps around just in case. Hurriedly, she scribbles her personal phone number – one she rarely uses. Is the number still usable? “Here’s my number. If… if you need it, like, j-just in case. I might be able to help. I mean…” I mean, you probably don’t have much anyone left.

“I see.” The woman looks up to her, takes the card in hand, and flashes her a small, wry smile. For the first time, they look at each other in the eyes. “Thank you. Also—my apologies, I have yet to introduce myself. It’s… Kim Sejeong.”

(The link takes a handful of her heart—and crushes it.)

In the end, Nayoung hauls Suhyun with her to her car and Suhyun tells her stories of Hongbin, ones she heard from his was-workmates. Nayoung only half-listens to them.

Her mind is away, somewhere else. Areas uncharted for her.

She must’ve felt it too—she looked equally surprised when they meet each other’s eyes. Her—Kim Sejeong’s—ghost of a smile taxies back into her mind, the way it wavered for a second once they locked gaze.

How wonderful it is to meet your other half in the funeral of your brother! The person in question being your brother’s widowed wife!

But none talk about it. Perhaps for another day.

But one thing for sure is… Kim Sejeong is beautiful. A sad beauty. But Nayoung knows her stuff around beautiful things; and she’s sure Kim Sejeong is no Plain Jane even though she was painted pale with dread and jaundice, at the time. Imagine how pretty she must’ve looked when she’s happy...

She couldn’t tell Suhyun this.

That she, the alien, the E.T, falls in love at first sight, at last sight, for she’s blinded since then. For when she closes her eyes, there’s only Kim Sejeong in sight.