If she has to describe it as anything, she’d have to think a little longer. It was something special, content exchanged through fingertips, the normal, mundane routines. Special things cannot be labeled lightly in her mind. No, they must go as poetic proses, easy to remember, easy to let go, easy to come back to.

Younha thinks their breakup is like an excommunication. It was definitely coming, she’d felt the queasy sensation in her bones for a long time until it wasn’t so much queasy anymore, just natural. Natural like spring fall summer winter, the feelings coming and going like cars on a highway.

She untangled their hands. Her fingers were always short, so it was hard to pry his from them. “I think we’re two whole different people now,” she remembers saying. “This isn’t working anymore.”

There was a pause. Silence. She’s not quite sure if it was uncomfortable or settling. He glanced at his toes and cleared his throat after what seemed like forever.

“I guess there’s four of us.” Smiled a little at his own joke. He always was easily satisfied with himself. She bit her lip and chewed.

The sky is grey and misty, that almost fog color paling and flushing out the color of the city. Her scarf is loosening, hair coming undone from its ponytail. She brushes both back into their respective positions and tries to focus on her book, the words spinning in her eyes.

They come one by one. Forest. Afternoon. Sun. She looks up and out the window. The clouds blind her, the smell of books eclipse the wet scent of the concrete. It would be a nice day to take a walk, she thinks. Before the days get shorter and colder. She could call Sunye. Maybe not. Not all people are like her, spending ample time with nothing to do.

Looks back down. She realizes she has no idea what the book is about or why she picked it up. Brushes her hair out of her face before it can fall into her eyes again.

There were bright patches in the ocean that she calls Younha and Kyuhyun. Few and fuzzy in between, but if she knits her eyebrows and thinks a little harder, she thinks she can remember. His smile. The deepness of his laughter. His arms, intruding as she tried to boil the noodles in the pot, ending up overcooked. Soggy was her specialty.

He wanted to be a singer. She did too. God, was that so long ago? She tries to go back further, tries to find reasons. Who was she? she asks the Younha of the past. She remembers music in a different way, like air, like breathing, like flying with him, hand in hand. The Beethoven that filters into her ears from the television seems bland in comparison.

It hits her suddenly that she’s been detached, severed at the waist, from her former self. 

Sometimes she watches people and feels old, like the years of her life are passing before she can count the previous one. She’ll go to the old playground two blocks away from her apartment and sit on the rusty swings, trying to reconnect. It’s futile, she guesses. Bad habit.

Her legs pump her a little higher. The wind brushes against her face, sunshine casting a creamy yellow on her back. The chains rattle and creak a little. She imagines them disengaging from the structure, sending her flying onto the concrete.

She settles herself back onto the ground. The wind returns to its stubborn, still state.

“You’re so tiny,” Kyuhyun used to tell her. She remembers this phrase most clearly. It is the only one she can remember with his voice, tongue rolling off the syllables, perfectly articulate. 

“No one told you to be a giant,” she snorted back. Often times, she’d accompany it with a kick in the shin. See, short people do have an advantage.

“Aren’t we weird?” he’d add then. “Complete opposites.” His breath would tickle her ear as they read their books, practiced their piano, slept in their bed, walked down the street. Hand in hand. Always.

Opposites attract in some twisted way, she never got the chance to say.

She wonders if people look at her at times and know. Do you understand? she mentally asks high schoolers as they run past her in the mornings before they’re late for school. Don’t be like me, she’ll try to convey to children through her eyes. 

The pragmatic side of her tells her she’s being ridiculous. Stories cannot be implied. To understand, they must be explicit, as in actually telling someone what happened. This is the side she ends up believing most of the time, justified and easy.

But then there are those who look at her with funny glances when she’ll be riding the subway or walking home from work. She wonders if they, complete strangers, truly understand what’s happened to her with just a look. 

She plays the piano just in case, desperate rusty fingers against dusty keys.

His fingers clutched the last box. Veins were straining against the weight, blue through pale skin. She tried to help him with it, but he pulled away from her. “I got it,” he smiled placidly. Maybe even a little sad. You should be, too, she reminded herself, but somehow she wasn't.

He coughed. She watched him walk out the door, slipping his feet in the last pair of unpacked shoes. The shoes he would be leaving in. He said something, something like I guess I’ll see you around. 

Yeah, I guess so.

Goodbye, Younha.

Her name tasted funny in his voice, like it didn’t belong to her anymore.

Her mother used to tell her to keep the good memories in her pocket for a rainy day. It didn’t make sense to her as a girl. “How am I supposed to fit them all in?” she whined, sticking her small hands into tiny seven-year-old pockets. 

“Pick and choose,” her mother replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. So she tried, she really did, even though it made no sense to her. But somehow, the bad ones ended up in there as well.

She stops to think about it. Him. Them. Was it all bad? 

He smiled down at her. She had to crane her neck to meet his eyes, the yellow hospital lights creating a halo around his mop of hair. It was a weird scene, she barely reached his chin, mentally kicking herself in the head for not wearing something with a heel. 

She has to think a little harder to remember what he said. “Congratulations,” she thinks were his first words. He seemed amused, but she didn’t know why. 

“I’m not the one who had the baby here,” she corrected him, this familiar stranger with a grin. She could feel it, crooked on her face. He shook his head in disbelief.

She didn’t quite get what he was trying to say, but he was smiling and giving her one of those funny glances, and she remembers laughing, unconstrained and uncontrollable until her lungs hurt, while he tried explaining with his strange logic.

Sunye told her his name was Kyuhyun. Nice to meet you, Kyuhyun.

Nice to meet you too, Younha.

She counts the years this time, leaving nothing out. Twenty-five. Her legs take her higher, swinging absentmindedly. Twenty-five is kind of young. Losing a dream, falling in love, losing what mattered, being lost. Twenty-five is kind of young for all that, she decides.

The wind unwinds her scarf. Tousles her hair. This time she does not stop to fix them. 

Instead, she soars.