How many days?

I asked myself. How many days are left for the wait? How many hours am I going to countdown? How much sweat must I have on myself? How many mornings do I have to wake up with an empty window next to mine? I stared at dreary soul on the mirror. I looked at the crumpled page of the latest month's calendar. I glanced at the gradual moving clock. I counted the hours, the seconds and the days left of waiting. Hoseok is taking too long. He is taking too long to grant the promise that he made to me. He is taking too long that my hair grown to my armpits and my eyes have gotten a little blur in them. I went on reading and thinking excessively. I was stuck in the hallway that divides my room and my mother's created sanctuary.

Days passed again and I caught myself staring at the blooming flowers outside the classroom's window. In the midst of the disorganized and loud group of fellow students, I remained sitting as everyone stood and move on their own. My senses immobilized by that moment and I realized that a month has ended again. It's has been thirty days and twenty nine nights since the last time that I saw him smile and laugh wholeheartedly and prettily. To constantly miss him was a misery and not to have him beside was a torture. The name of the person's name behind my ennui and sadness was Jung Hoseok.

Although spring has officially came upon the earth, my heart remained cold as winter, plain as snow and distant like the sky without stars, sun, moon and clouds. Loneliness continued to consume my isolated soul and as day passes by I realized that I had forgotten how to smile when Jimin murmured of it. I attempted to bury all of my thoughts and emotions towards him through a lot of methods. I tried to seal all of it by studying harder, joining the gardening club with Jungkook and spending more hours into books during weekends. As I cope with the drastic and painful changes with his absence, I didn't know that I am losing a crucial part of me.

The day after the opening of the classes, Minah and I met. However, the warm atmosphere that we usually both emit disappeared. There is no smile or a chuckle. We both kept sitting on the stairs for almost an hour in the late afternoon while watching the sunset and having the sun rays passing through the glass panes to our faces. She didn't want to talk about it. She does not want to hear anything that will remind her of Hanna and the incident after the ceremony. Her avoidance of the recent past was not caused by resentment; it was from the sentiment filled with embarrassment and self-reproach.

"How are you doing Alice?" Minah asked with her voice filled with remorse and unevenness.

"I'm doing fine. I was able to help out a lot in my father's bakery." I energetically answered with a full smile. Minah nodded and she leaned on the wall next to her. A sigh came and she twitched her two eyes for seconds.

"Good to know that you're helping your family." she nonchalantly responded.

"How about you? Did you have fun with your vacation?" my voice reverberated on the walls and on the ceilings. A smirk came to me as I quietly admitted that I spoke a semi loud. Minah got surprised at my repulsive manner but she quickly brushed it away.

"I was fine during vacation. Nothing special really happened though." she shrugged and our eyes met. I anticipated for a smile, but her expression remained linear. It was a disappointment not towards her, but towards on how things have become now.

Aside from whom she was conversing with, Minah didn't made mention of anyone though she also heard that Yoongi is soon on leaving the town. Forlorn kept us together on that day. It used to be the invisible gas of cheerfulness and energy, but now all of it has been converted into solemnity and a peculiar serenity. Minah and I were sat down with our skirts and shirts receiving dust from every student's shoes that made past in this stairs. As each minute came and cannot be rewind, the noises around us, either near or far diminished. The sounds of their rushing footsteps eventually stop and eventually the sky was at the verge of evening's darkness.

Minah rose before me with her shoulder bag swinging on her right shoulder. I felt relieve as she turned towards me before properly departing. She smiled and waved right hand. She took three steps forward and she was about to pat my arm but she hesitated. Her short, but jet black and straight hair fluttered in the cool wind and a drop of sweat magically fell from her forehead. She has been always pretty in my eyes, but on that day she looked reticent yet mesmerizing.

"Don't go to sleep when I'm gone. Go home now, Hoseok will not come to fetch you." she amusingly uttered.

"Are you not going to ask why you couldn't find him around today?" I was half pleased when she remembered him.

"No, he's unlike you. He's always happy and hopeful that it's very noticeable when he's absent." the amusement in her was dissolved like an ice cube dropped in a steaming hot water. Minah finally turned herself from me and she began walking away. I keenly watched her back and shadow moving out of the hallway. Eventually I left too and I was supposed to see Yoongi in the gymnasium but I had a change of mind and I headed home afterwards. Before I went on the sanctuary that my mothers slowly and steady establish in our home for over ten years, I sent him a message of an apology. He eventually replied and wrote that it was alright and he became worried too because if I showed up earlier, it would give him a hard time to approach me since the entire basketball club was made of boys. The first sentence of his response was casual to me until I came to read Hoseok's name there. Yoongi was wondering of what could have happened to the one good friend we had. He asked me if I knew something since we were neighbors, however I denied my awareness of the current situation for it was part of the promise that I and Hoseok made when I visited him. Yoongi seemed to be convinced and he lastly replied with an assurance that he believes in me.

In the evening, in order to console the extraordinary sorrow that I had to befriend all the time, I went on reading a book until I had fallen asleep. The next early morning, I woke up at the sound of my father's pounding dough downstairs with the material rubbing on my cheek. The unpleasant but an attractive smell clogged my nostrils at the first early hour of opening my eyes. My fingers wandered at the utmost familiar shelf that I had encountered in my childhood and as soon as I found an odd texture of conjoined papers, I pulled it out, switched on the light, sat down on the wooden floor and began reading with an emptied mind recovering from a repetitive dream.

I did not bothered to check the book's title neither whom wrote it. But, there were few words that left me in scrutiny for a while. The words were ice, voyage, inventions and people bearing the same name. I stopped nearby several chapters' end as I heard my mother's voice calling me for breakfast. I hurried downstairs as I was still in my pajamas and as I was finished with my meal, I returned to my room to get changed into my school uniform. Today, I decided to wear the pair of shoes that Hoseok worked hard just to bought it for me. Although he tried his best not to make it obvious, I knew that he did. For as soon as I saw blisters and scratches on my hands and forearms, I realized that he had a strong desire for something. I know that he worked with all of his could when I wasn't looking and I know that he did not solely filled a part-time job at my father's bakery. Even when there was no single evidence to prove it, I know that he also went working at the convenience store and at the fish market without his mother discovering. Though I was thankful, I felt pathetic that he drove himself into restlessness just to give me a present that I was waiting for a long time. First, it was the Polaroid camera and then the pair of sneakers that I have liking since we were at our last term at middle school.

It was too much that whenever I was hesitant to use any of these two items, I always ended up having them attached on me. Every time I remembers how Hoseok should be resting at weekends and holiday but instead worked to death, I couldn't just keep both of the shoes or the camera under my bed. The first thought would always occupy me like this; that I should return these to him and tell him that he mustn't do ridiculous things again next time. The second thought was like this then; that I should appreciate his efforts and sacrifices that I must let him see that I am treasuring the things that he had given me. I would always be confused, hesitant and left in between, but in the end I would still be putting it on or pressing the capture button with a half-heavy and a half-joyful heart.

That early morning too as I headed out of home on my way to school to attend the pre-classes club meeting, a truck suddenly stopped in front of Jung's residence. Three men, two women including Mrs. Jung went out from the back door and hastily headed inside the house. I was suppose to greet Mrs. Jung as our gazes met but she was in great hurry. Though she had completely turned her back away, I bowed my head and proceeded into leaving. It was a solemn and a cool hour in the town when you could get walk along with other students and working people. Hanna and I met on the way and while we were moving, we shared the old stories from the past years.

Hanna and I was able to talk once again about her affection towards Hoseok and how it all began. She said she had fallen head over heels on him because he was the kindest among our former classmates and also it was because he was cool. She pertained on how his eyes were fascinating and how his smile melted her heart a thousand times. The way she expressed her feelings was more than a fact and a story for me. I feel the same way she does. I am second with her to those utmost emotions that she described. To learn that I have been forbidding the same heart like hers, it had caused me sorrow. I shouldn't before it's too late. I mustn’t before I came into breaking two or three hearts. The time we parted in the hallway that leads to the stairs, my hands clenched into fists as I contain my agitation and remorse.

I came to the room where the club regularly holds the meeting. When I opened the door, Jungkook and the others was already there and waiting for the members to be completed. I was the second to the last to fill the attendance and as the last member arrived, the meeting for the next project began. As the discussion between the students occurs, Jungkook and I were handed the task to tend the soil that are going to be used for planting cabbages. No one of us volunteered to be at it and since I was seen as a responsible student, I was picked to do it. Although I disliked getting my hands and fingernails from getting mucky, I accepted the task respectfully and I even asked for the schedule of tending the soil.

Before the meeting was adjourned, I caught glances filled with complain from Jungkook. He do not want to do it since he had to lift few equipments and bring extra clothes for digging and putting fertilizer. I was about to tell the club president to change my partner, but he prevented me and said that he will be going to be alright. Then, as we got dispatched I headed to my locker, grabbed my P.E. uniform and get changed. Jungkook and I carried the tools together in a dusty sack as we walked towards the school garden. It was an hour before the class starts. While he starts to remove the weeds out of the soil, I read the chart that was given to us. There in a page of a paper, we must take visits every morning and thrice after the classes. We are also asked to help into preparing the seeds and mixing the fertilizer.

"That's handful." Jungkook mumbled as I picked up the first piece of a weed.

"I think we're going to be alright." I nonchalantly said.

"Of course, we had to." eventually his peevish behavior was replaced with tiny enthusiasm.

"Let's do this Jungkook. Let's plant cabbages and make a lot of cabbage stew!" I shouted with a smile that made me feel like fool and confident. I saw him smirking and shaking his head, but he was no longer upset like before. Right then, we were able to progress and clean the fourth of the field. We had to pause the club work because the classes are about to start. He and I both hurried on our way back as we return to the class. While I was washing hands, the bell had rang aloud. I headed to the classroom in a hurry. I was supposed to make it in time until I caught glimpse of this person. Chill and surprise struck me from head to toe, I was frozen.

There, I stood in my uniform that was crumpled for I didn't fold it properly before tossing it in the locker. My eyes are clouded with an early exhaustion and the hair that I haven't combed yet fluttered in the spring wind. I fell on my knees as I rise and I rubbed the corner of those to convince myself that it wasn't just another hopeless dream. It was him, it was Jung Hoseok. He has returned with the sweetest smile and soul. The look in his eyes was sparkling and the shape of his lips was wider and prettier. Again, he succeeded in keeping in the resentment towards himself. In my crumpled uniform and sweating forehead, I saw the ethereal him that made me question if I am intact with reality or not.

Jung Hoseok glowed in the pleasant light as if he was the sun in the sky. He whom is undeniably beautiful and breathtaking slowly turned to the direction where I was, however he didn't saw me. At that moment, my senses tasted distortion. I was then dragged into a different realm at the next moment that I breathed and opened my eyes. The man with ice blue irises and daisy yellow hair was staring at the rainbow horizon upon us. He was barefooted, dressed in velvet pajamas and was paler than ever. Instead of baleful presence surrounding him, I felt sadness. I couldn't determine what kind of heaviness he was harboring to the place, but it is definitely sadness caused of solitude. It was quite familiar to me that at the moment our assorted gazes, I predicted the first word that he is about to utter.

"Painful." his crimson lips said.

"Why is it painful?" I asked him. In the countless times we met that some are forgotten and some are remembered, I grew casual towards him. I was even glad that I was able to see him in a day. I do not know why but joy lingered on me. It was a mountainous plain covered in green grasses and other shades of yellow and brown. The sky was occupied by clouds, it was going to rain.

"You have been exchanging too much for him." the man answered with an exasperated frown. I went towards him and caressed his back as if we we're friends. I knew his name not so long ago, but I was restricted to recite it unnecessarily. He told me that I could only say his name when I had decided to sacrifice every piece of me as the right time comes. To think that someone is going to be happier after it, I do not think that I'll be miserable at all. Since all I need is to see him smile and live life to its fullest. I do not know when will such instances happen, but I do not feel afraid at all. I was neither excited nor prepared about it, but sometimes I feel hesitant.

"It's alright. You mustn't worry at all. I don't think I'll end up regretting it too. So, please bear it. This is all that you and I can do." the man smiles forcefully. For the first time, I saw emotions in him. He was nowhere a doll or an instrument there. He was a genuine, but not a person either a human. He was an existence in-between. The answer of who he was landed on me during a terrible dream. He was living as a mortal but he was nowhere an immortal too. He was neither a ghost nor a spirit, he was not a half-human too. I know what and who he is, but he was indescribable.

From that realm, I came back standing in the midst of a half-occupied hallway by my fellow students. Jung Hoseok did returned and he was put in the class where Jimin and Yoongi are. My mind clicked the thought of hurrying back to the classroom and so I did. I remained being unnoticed by him though I was seen by Jimin whom was standing by the doorway. I was suppose to pay a greeting but Jungkook moved faster and I had to follow him.

Halfway through the day, Minah and I met by the school's rooftop. It was only the two of us as she requested and it wasn't known to our friends. She told me that Hoseok really did returned, but the reason behind his missed weeks of attendance was not stated. She asked me if I was aware of it and I denied my knowledge about the reason. I was able to get by and she believing me. After we ate our lunches, I went back to the school garden with Jungkook to continue pulling out the weeds and raking up the soil. It wasn't an easy or an enjoyable task at all but by imagining that one day green vegetables and other crops will grow well in that land, I worked energetically. Some fellow members of the gardening club came to help too and we dismissed few minutes before the third ringing of the bell.

I saw Hoseok again through the indoor glass panes of their classroom. Instill smiling and interacting all happily with his classmates. He was sat behind Jimin and Yoongi was at his left. He is now no longer seeking I and is doing well without me. In matter of seconds, I felt a pinch on my chest as I passed by but I brushed it off immediately as I sat down on my place. Throughout the afternoon classes, I had a warm feeling within me. I was glad to see Hoseok back at school and being jolly as ever. But, I couldn't help but to worry about his condition. I wonder if he had fully recovered or he just forced himself to get up so that he wouldn't have to stay longer in the hospital. I would like to see him sooner, but to think that I might only disturb his celebration I had to step back and quietly watch him. It doesn't matter how I feel, what should be most looked at is him only. Even though he no longer smiles for me and even I am no longer remembered.

I pushed myself to listen and to concentrate although I was disturbed by another flood of different thoughts that rushed on my mind. During History classes, as the teacher makes us read a page of the text book, I thought of what happened this morning. I wonder why there was a truck in front of the Jung residence and why was Mrs. Jung seemed to be in hassle. An idea came to me and it instantly poked my anxious heart. The idea was I am certain that they are moving. But why? I thought they are comfortable in the home next to us.

While the teacher was writing lessons on the board, I kept seeing Mrs. Jung exhausted smile in my head. I kept recalling on how simple yet pretty she looks like when I visited Hoseok in the hospital. Behind that merry smile of her was repression. No matter how much she hid it underneath her laughter; I can still see a portion of it. And that was the huge resemblance of her beloved son to her. They would always pretend even though it gets worse and unbearable. They would never let anyone be able to peek through them. But no way had they mastered building walls around them, because such emotions will always seep out. It doesn't matter how thin and translucent those will be felt, there will always be a small hole to peak through.

As the History classes wraps up, everybody in the classroom and headed out to get changed into P.E. uniforms. I was one of the majority that used the comfort room to replace my clothes. Today, the physical activities will be held on the field and we are assigned to take the same lessons with the class where the boys belong to. Elation went on me that I couldn't prevent myself from smiling as I looked forward on finally seeing Hoseok. Jungkook noticed the excitement in me and it made me curious. He asked me if I was going to see someone on the other class and I simply nodded. He didn't pried further and said that it must have been a very great thing for me.

Jungkook and I walked alongside with each other as we make our way to the field where that person loves running on whenever summer is getting closer. In a unusual moment and way, I recalled few memories that I had there. Some were terrible, some were good and some were the ones that I think I could never forget even when I grow older and frail. The scent of sweat, frustration and dreams lingered on my senses. Those prayers that have been heard and prayers that are still waiting to be granted. The tears that have been shed and screams that reverberated throughout the vastness of the field. The emotions that are never shown and confessions that remained buried on the dusty ground.

As I arrived there carrying piles of face towels and a cart of water bottles along with Jungkook and the classmates that stayed strangers to me because I couldn't muster any amount of courage to socialize, I first saw and automatically found Hoseok. He was laughing on the benches; he was having lots of fun with his old and new classmates. With the way they approach and look at each other along with Jimin and Yoongi, I know that he had made new friends. He was unlikely of me. While he is bubbly, bright and light, I was on the opposite shore. I think fate was utterly playful that we met and grew together. I think fate is utterly mischievous we got closer and shares a deeper and unspeakable connection.

I had to proceed swiftly so that the people behind us would get inside the wide field with red, white and green paints on the ground. Though I wanted to pay even just a greeting to the boys, I was prevented by the situation. I had to assist on distributing the towels and the water bottles with Jungkook. Though both of us weren't part of the class representative, the P.E. teacher