We met in university. It wasn’t anything special at the time, and neither of us could have predicted what we would mean to one another as our lives progressed. For awhile, I’m not sure she even knew how much she meant to me in those early days of our relationship. Our friendship. Our something. It didn’t always have a label, but it was always there, always loud in my mind, always tangible. We were tethered together, our hearts were. Sometimes apart but always able to tug on the rope and bring each other close again. I craved her when she was far and suffocated myself with her when she was close. 

     Overall, university wasn’t spectacular. I don't even remember the things I would spend nights studying in a panic. When I think back to my time in school, I realize that I hardly remember much about the experience at all. She’s the only part of it that really sticks out. The only part of university that crawled under my skin and embedded itself into my mind is her. I only got to know her, know her face, because somehow she was in all of my classes. Always sitting on the opposite side of the room from myself, so I couldn’t reach her, I could only silently admire. The way she tucked her hair from her face and rested her cheek on her hand. The way she doodled in the dull classes, and furiously took notes in the hard ones. The way she laughed silently when she found something funny, or the way she mumbled under her breath in frustration when people would interrupt the professor. I remembered it all, and I continued to remember details about her long after we graduated. I never stopped studying. Studying her.

     She wasn’t my only crush or fling during the time we were getting our education but the reasons everyone else was just a fleeting memory was because I always wished they could be more like her. Of course, almost everything I knew about her at that point was only a figment of my own longing imagination. What movies made her cry? What food did she make for herself when she was sad? Did she sleep at night, or did she ever lay awake and look up at the ceiling? Were her hands just as soft as they looked? I would learn these details as we grew together. I would miss these parts of her when we grew apart.

     I only got to learn her name in our third year, when she stood at the front of the class for a presentation and introduced herself. Every night and every morning after that, until I finally spoke to her, my thoughts always arrived at Jung Wheein. Irrationally, I had fallen for a girl I didn’t even know during the first few years at that university. Somehow I had gotten her to fall for me too, after all that we had to go through together to get there. I didn’t know that would also involve her falling through my fingers.