Myungsoo was still quite young when his mother died. He knew what loneliness was, but he didn’t know how to deal with it. When things were still fresh in his memories his adviser would always tell him to go to the third floor, where the counselor’s office was located. Even if he didn’t want to, even if he’d much rather prefer to stay at home altogether, he did what he was told. He didn’t want to break another routine, after all.

The school’s counselor was around his mother’s age, making things more difficult for him. Whenever he would stare at her he’d end up wondering about her children, and what she would cook for them when dinner comes around. He wondered if she wears the same perfume her mother did, and he wondered if her embrace was just as warm as the one he grew accustomed to. He would stare at her, only to realize he had this slight feeling of disdain towards her children.

“How are you today, Myungsoo?” she asked in that sweet voice of hers, which reminded him of cotton candy.

He gave out a shrug.

There was this long silence between them, and finally she asked, “Do you not feel lonely?”

That was when it hit Myungsoo. Did he really feel lonely? He felt numb, and things in front of him during those days were nothing but blank sheets of paper, waiting to be dully filled out. He was young back then, but he seemed to have lost his purpose. It felt like it got buried together with his mother.

“No, Ma’am,” he choked out. The hands on his lap began to form tight balls of fists.

“Then what are you feeling right now?”

Myungsoo looked at her for a split second before averting his gaze to his counselor’s nameplate. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

If anything, his heart was about to burst then and there. The moment he replied, however, the swelling cooled down, and that was what he actually felt: absolutely nothing. After a while of stillness the counselor took out a notebook from her drawer and handed it over to Myungsoo.

“Once you feel something,” she said, her lilting voice never failing to put Myungsoo into a trance. “Write it down over there. You can either show it to me or not, but I do hope we can talk about more things in the future.”

A pause.

“I am here to help you, Myungsoo.”

His lips began to tremble, and tears welled up from the corners of his eyes. “Ma’am?”

“What is it, honey?”

“Can you hug me?”

Without saying anything the counselor got up from her seat, approached Myungsoo, and wrapped her slender hands around his quivering shoulders. She rubbed his back, like the way his mother would, and this sent him crying all the more.

<:>

That very same evening Myungsoo attempted to write down what he truly felt. He didn’t like it, so he rubbed the characters out with his pen. He rubbed it too hard the paper began to tear up, and he started to cry. His father wasn’t around at that time, so he had no one to talk to. Their house was just as empty as his heart.

He rose up from his swivel chair, grabbed his phone and dialed his mother’s number.

Hello, this is Mrs. Kim. I can’t answer the phone at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep.

Beep.

Myungsoo breathed in deeply, and exhaled. With much effort he choked out, “Mom.”

And then he hung up.

The young Myungsoo broke down, all alone in their cold, cold house. Still coughing and sobbing, he took his hoodie and stepped out into the night, a baseball bat in hand.

The next day the local police in their neighborhood received a report: someone shattered the windows in the Kim residence. A baseball bat with glass shards clinging into it was found behind the yard’s bushes.

All evidence pointed to Myungsoo, but nobody even asked him why he did that in the first place. They felt sorry for him because his beloved mother just died. What the people—including his father—didn’t know was he needed love, and not sympathy.

His father thought having a new mother would be a good idea. Things, for Myungsoo, started to go downhill from there.

They couldn’t find out if he was lonely, and neither could he.

<:>

Sunggyu was five years old when his foster mother gave birth to Suzy. It was around autumn, on a Monday afternoon. They just got home from the school he was attending when Mrs. Bae’s water broke. Beads of sweat started to form on her forehead, and with trembling hands Sunggyu reached for their telephone and dialed Mr. Bae’s office number—one of the few strings of digits he knew by heart. Soon an ambulance which the husband contacted arrived, and the next thing Sunggyu knew, he was in the hospital’s daycare center while Mr. Bae was trudging around the waiting room, fingers crossed and heart pounding.

He had no idea how long they stayed there, but it was already evening when they got out of the hospital. The next day, right after school, Sunggyu was finally allowed to look at her new baby sister. Mrs. Bae was on the bed, an IV drip hanging above her. The young boy approached her, but his eyes instantly got drawn to the pink cot. A smile graced his lips as he stared at her tiny hands. Her fingers were curled up.

“She’s so small,” he whispered, out of fear he might wake the baby up.

“You were like this back then, too, Sunggyu,” Mrs. Bae said, smiling.

“I don’t remember.”

“Because you were too young,” she pointed out.

He looked at the baby again. “Then she won’t remember today, too?”

“No.”

He grinned. “I’ll remember it for her, then.”

Sunggyu loved it when he looked after Suzy. He loved it even more when Sang Moon followed, because he finally had a brother he could play sports with. As they grew up Sunggyu was able to discipline his siblings and to make them laugh. He taught them things, and they made him discover new perspectives, as well.

When Sunggyu turned twenty, however, he discovered something about him. He realized he was already looking at Suzy differently. He still loved her, but there was something more, brewing up deep inside him. Sunggyu knew he saw her as a woman, and he felt disgusted with himself. Lee Sunye, who was battling cancer at that time, confessed to Sunggyu that she liked him. She said one of her wishes in life was to be with a person she truly fancies.

“Is it okay if I burden you?” she asked.

“It would be an honor,” he answered, and he meant it.

Sunye wasn’t difficult to love. She had her own ways on doing things, and her positive outlook in life only made Sunggyu admire her more. He basically did what a good boyfriend should do. He protected her, sang sweet songs to her and he even introduced himself to her parents. Soon, he spent more and more time with Sunye, and he thought he could run away from his thoughts. He thought he could run away from Suzy.

“You are not in love with me,” he said to Suzy one autumn evening, when she yelled at Sunye before storming out of the living room. All he could see at that time were her downcast eyes, and her quivering lips. Then, he figured out he wasn’t the only one struggling. He knew this for a long time, but the thought had finally sunk into his system.

Suzy confessed what she felt towards him scared her. With that said, Sunggyu drew the line between the two of them.

In all honesty, he was just as scared as her.

<:>

Seven rings, followed by a soft beep.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Myungsoo greeted.

“Good morning, Summer.”

He fidgeted with a pen he picked up from his drawer. “Today’s Saturday.”

She chuckled, and replied, “Don’t worry, I’ll be there.”

Myungsoo suppressed a grin. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

Beep.

They didn’t see each other.

"A time to search and a time to give up as lost; A time to keep and a time to throw away."
- Ecclesiastes 3:6