just freewriting at night, i miss all of you :')

Loud Rain

Daehyun/Youngjae, Daehyun POV

I know that it’s been a while since we’ve met, Youngjae. Did you miss me? I like to think you did, but I’m a little afraid to ask. Your eyes tell me so, like a raindrop lost in the after smell of a downpour. Maybe you fell from the clouds when I said goodbye, running through the crevices of the pavements and between the feet of strangers. Past the leather shoes to the worn-out sandals, did you hide and wait for me, avoiding the tap-taps of soles while the people contrarily ran from the pitter-patter?

That is how we live---mute, loss for words, like the language of our lungs were weaved in a different score from the rest of the people. It’s hard to speak freely when you gravitate towards people of your own kind, so in love with veins down the knuckles and boyish smiles. The way you hide your gaze and glance away reminds me of how a student frets when a teacher asks a question. Always afraid someone will take a closer look, that your irises are words in a nursery book that spells out every little secret you hide in your heart.

You’re used to it. So am I. Probably, you once loved a boy with a bright smile and a gap between his two front teeth, your happiness the way he accidentally brushes his fingers with you. Maybe you were thirteen at that time, wondering why long hair and dainty skirts didn’t turn your eyes like the other boorish boys. You tried to fit in by picking a crush. You chose the girl who would expect it the least, because you felt bad that she was just a dust-jacket, an artificial cover to your story that couldn’t be told. People would read the blurb and believe they know everything there is to be learnt about you, slotting you back into the shelf---so inconspicuous you are among the other boys.

And then you turned thirty-two, and someone picked that book off the shelf. Dare I say, I was the first? I’m not sure, but is it silly that I hope so? They say the lasts matter the most, but I still hope for a cheap romantic cliche I never got to enjoy in my teens. Of wanting to hold hands with a girl but never finding the spark, of disinterest in people but yearning still to indulge in the happiness of two.

Why is it that people are so enamoured with love? Why do we buy into a soulmate, of happy ever after with a special someone? No matter how much we are told again and again that this idea is just a myth, though our days of infatuation to monotone emphasise the contrary, we still seek for love. I thought about it while I sat at the bus-stop, breathing in the exhaust of another city while the grey of the clouds made me think of your nervousness. 

It gives us purpose, I suppose. In the grind that gets ever so routine and automatic, the heart forgets how to breathe while the lungs forget how to beat. So, we hope for something that can gives us meaning, that explains why we live---why we came about in the first place when all there is to us is this tiring grind that leads to nothingness.

Putting it so logically, you must believe I’ve dismantled this prison of foolish idealism. That I’ve somehow reached an epiphany to overcome all there is, so little and pitiful we are as people. I think I would have found peace a year ago, when I hadn’t met you, but it’s difficult now. A prison of foolish idealism, or is it your ribcage that I sit in, tightening your chest when we brush hands?

No matter how the rationale splays out and I understand why I feel the way I do, the reasons don’t translate into the language I’ve learnt being by your side. My fingers burn like snow when I take your hand and pull you through the crowd, on weekends that I appreciate because the people, the people that I find so meaningless sometimes have a purpose---to nudge you closer and give me excuses to hold your hand. We talk about nothing yet they are somethings I hurry to keep in my diary, not wanting to lose these little memories to age.

Tuesday, we bought melon bread and I didn’t like mine, so you ate it for me. Friday, we sat at a bench in the park and you wore my jacket, so the scent stayed. Sunday, I wonder what you keep within the minutes we are away from each other.

Push and pull, we are two teenagers in love despite us being laughable in our thirties. I want to kiss you so much sometimes that I touch my lips and count my breaths to dispel the thoughts. I can’t show I like you so much, else it’s embarrassing. But I do, I do, I do love you so much, why do I have to hide like this? This frustrating game of pretense because I fear and I know you fear, so I can’t be too hasty else you retreat in nervousness and how the feelings overwhelm you--or do they, do you feel the same? Your two-steps-back becomes a scar because I hold out my heart in my hands, offering myself to you, but you turn away like my entire being is worthless. But am I misunderstanding, and the reason why you step back is because you’re just as afraid?

Is it me that you loathe, or are you hesitant because you’ve learnt to keep closed? Am I haughty to assume, or does the pink on your cheeks spell a tune that only I should keep? To be beside you is stifling, to be away from you is suffocating, this mess of everything is like a fever that I funnily want to keep.

Youngjae, did you miss me? I’m scared to call first, but what if you are too? With all my inadequacies, being thirty three with perpetual eye circles and an inexperience that doubles into a clumsy eagerness, a fervid want that could be due to my immaturity, I swing back and forth. I want to be with you, that doesn’t change, but I sometimes think that my confidence that you feel the same is born out of a dire want. If you say it many times you begin to believe anything.

Standing here at your doorstep as the rain flutters into a sombre, light afternoon, I can’t help but regret leaving the daisies home. To not seem desperate, to not seem too anxious, to not seem too reliant, when I exactly am---if I could bare my heart to you with no fears, how nice would that be?

I want to ask, did you miss me? But the rain is too loud and we’ve been hundreds of thousands of kilometres apart for two weeks.

“When do you think it will stop?”

“I don’t know. Soon, I hope,” I say, thinking about the centimetres close we are. I’d touch perhaps your knuckle, your cuticle, your small thumb if I simply edged closer.

“I hope so too.”

“Why? Is there some place you’d like to be?”

“Not really.” Your voice is soft, like the words are right there on your lips. “What about you? Is there some place you’d like to be?”

“No. Why do you hope for the rain to stop, then? Or is it just a passing remark?” I say. My coat hangs rather heavily on my shoulders, but I brought this one because it keeps you warm best.

You take a moment to answer. “It’s hard to speak when the rain is so loud.”

“Oh. You have something in particular you want to say?” I come closer. Our hands brush. You don’t move away.

“It’s a question,” you whisper, looking down at your feet. Your skin is peeling along your jaw and your lips are swollen on the bottom, a consequence of your bad habit of biting your lips. The make-up can’t cover either.

The rain isn’t close to cacophonous enough that I can’t hear you, and even so, you can always raise your voice. It’s a question that you don’t have courage to say loudly, I realise.

Pitter patter, pitter patter, till I can’t tell my nervous heartbeat from the dreaded downpour. Is it my nervous heartbeat or the loud rain that threatens to drown out my questions? I’m not sure. 

Did you miss me, Youngjae? 

If only the rain wasn’t so loud, so I could give you my answer.