xlii. Her, Him, & Them II

Sungyeol was saying words Hyunjoo didn’t understand to the woman behind the counter: the owner of the Dairy Shop. It didn’t seem like an all too heated conversation. They could have been talking about the boring topic of weather or something as riveting as how in the world the store made their milk cartons look so cute. A cow with a pink bow sported the small boxes in a way that made Hyunjoo wonder why she didn’t want one as a child instead of the supernatural species that is the unicorn.

Though, she had to admit, the flashy, supernaturally impossible stuff always managed to catch and hold her gaze —which was certifiably difficult to accomplish when dealing with the sheer amount of spunk she once kept locked inside of her body at the not-so-bright age of four.

Cows, unicorns, but not werewolves aside, her attention was drawn away from the darling merchandise as Sungyeol suddenly turned and left the establishment, a small twinkling from the bell above the entrance accompanying his departure. She waved to the woman at the counter, forgetting the italian word for “stay well” and thus relying solely on her smile to convey the message, before frantically chasing after him. 

She didn’t see him at first after exiting the building, his figure hunched over on a park bench some ways away, that same bell twinkling above her. She didn’t know what to do at first, upon seeing him. She didn’t know was was right, when thinking on what to do first. 

And, for a single second, as he sat there, dealing with things bigger than animated cows and sparkly unicorns, she entertained the idea of just leaving him there. Of leaving him to his thoughts. Of leaving his own matters to himself. Of staying out of what wasn’t her business. 

Only for a second.

Because in the next second, she walked up to him, her uncertainty as to what to say first to him displayed through her wide steps and her slow stride. When she finally arrived at the spot right in front of him, her eyes boring holes into that place at the top of his head where all of his fluffy, hazel brown hair seemingly sprung out of, she decided on the most obvious question of, “What’d she say?” 

And she stared at that spot on his head, as though it were a looking glass into his thoughts, an unnamed feeling of panic swelling at the pit of her stomach.

She was met with a pair of unreadable eyes as he looked up at long last — the same shade of brown as his hair under the glare of the morning sun. She was worried about a lot of things. The least of which was what the sharp-looking woman behind the counter had enumerated to Sungyeol — no matter how selfish this made her. Still, she had asked. 

Thus, he gave her an answer. 

And considering his less than all-together state on that worn down bench, she was surprised by what he said then.

“I remember where I used to live now.”

He pulled a piece of paper, crumbled in the middle, from his pocket. A street name was scrawled in blue ink on it, along with a small sketch of what looked like a cat. Before she could question him further about what a cat had to do with his search for his family, his grand plan for reuniting with his pack of the past, he beat her to the punch — and what a punch it was. 

“The cat statue in front of the house is still there, even though my family isn’t.”

The sudden urge to hug him sprouted up in her out of nowhere, seemingly from nothing. Maybe it was from that spot at the top of his head, where black roots had begun to show. Maybe it was some kind of innate, motherly instinct to comfort another person. Maybe that instinct is instinctually human. Or maybe she just wanted to let him know that she was there, because while he was in the midst of digesting the horrid mix of both good and bad news, it didn’t feel like he was looking at her at all. 

It didn’t feel like he was looking at anything, really. 

Whatever the reason, however long the list of “maybes,” she wrapped her arms around his sitting figure and pulled him to her. He didn’t budge an inch on his own, letting her do as she wanted. As he wanted. As they both wanted, one way or another. 

And she declared, “Let’s go see it.” He looked up at her for the second time, his eyes begging the question she then proceeded to answer, “Because I don’t know if you’re aware, but,” and she said with a smile, “I’m actually a cat statue enthusiast.”

He wrapped his arms around her torso, grateful for her beyond words at that very moment. 

He had come too far to dash his own hopes so soon. She had followed him too far down to simply watch him do it. So they went, hand in hand, down the boulevard — two cat statue enthusiasts. 

Hyunjoo decided she would tell him about the first boy she “loved.” The first boy she “liked” — though the definition of such a word was one she still struggled with. She told him simply, in simple words. Why? She simply found herself thinking of him again, right now: the lanky boy she had been in the same class as as early as pre-school. 

He, the boy himself, had taken to her rather quickly. He liked playing games, jaegers, making models, and he owned the latest console whose name she can’t even remember anymore. Thus, to her, he was the coolest guy in class.

Not the sporty one. Not the smart one. Not the popular one. 

The one that sat in the back throwing out rock, paper, scissors whenever he and others arrived at an impasse as to what they should do next. The one who laughed so distinctively like a cackling hyena she couldn’t help but laugh along. The one that smiled at her like he knew everything there was to know about everything — it was undeniable that he was good at pretending he did. 

She found a friend, a best friend, in that one. Practically every picture she had from her awkward and uncomfortable puberty phase featured that one. Every moment of every day held that one. 

He was precious to her in both his actions and his presence. 

So, when he suddenly proposed a game of rock, paper, scissors with the statement of, “Best two out of three grants the other a wish,” during their fifteenth year of existence, at the peak of their uncomfortable awkwardness, and she lost, and he said, “Be my girlfriend,” she said, “Okay.”

An impassive, lacking response in hindsight. A flushed face and curling toes at the age of fifteen. 

He took almost every one of her firsts like a thief in the night; the whites of his eyes surrounded by irremovable dark circles. He held her hand first. He hugged her first. He kissed her first. He confessed, “I love you,” first. 

Because he was running out of time, he rushed things along. He confessed, easily and simply, before then confessing for the second time, “I’m moving away. Really far. So far you’d get tongue-tied trying to count the miles from here to there.”

It was young “love.” 

“I’m not leaving you here,” he’d say.

“I’m taking you in my guitar case,” he’d say. 

“Start packing, I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said, before he left. 

She broke up with him through a letter. Because it was easier and simpler that way. Because she didn’t know how else to articulate how she felt about him. Because she didn’t really know the words to say at all but she felt the need to say something; anything, really. Because she might have ended up stowing away in his guitar case if she didn’t. Because he was precious to her, and she didn’t want to break him — even though that’s exactly what she had set out to do. 

She stared on at Sungyeol when she finished, stopping there. Waiting for his reaction. Hoping he’d understand. Wishing she’d take her own hint despite the butterflies that fluttered at the pit of her stomach for this entire, mind-blowing day. In the end, he only said, denouncing that one as a person of the far past with his syntax, “What was his name?”

“Eric Nam,” she answered, gripping down hard onto his hand.

His reply was drowned out as the sound of ringing bells filled her ears.

Just like he remembered, there it was. A rectangular section of faded red with green painted shutters. They threw out a few jokes about it. Santa Claus references and “Where are my presents?” sentiments caused them to laugh. It felt like Christmas all over again. Except, this time, they were together. 

When Sungyeol pointed out this fact, Hyunjoo went silent. 

She wasn’t sure what to say, so she merely smiled at him. 

And as that cat statue sat beside where they stood at the top of the steps, stared down by a newly painted white door, Sungyeol knocked three times. 

The owners answered relatively much faster than either of them had expected. Of course, there was the slight hope that someone who had the same nose, eyes, or height as Sungyeol would be standing there as the door to Santa’s workshop opened up. Of course, there was a short woman there instead, with two eyebrows raising upwards and a mouth parted in confusion. 

“Buon pomeriggio,” he greeted, causing Hyunjoo to follow suit, mimicking his phonetic tones. The result was an offbeat, slightly stammering voice coupled with a foolish smile. 

Luckily for both of them, the lady seemed to be a fan of fools. 

After a few more words from Sungyeol, she allowed them inside, nonstop Italian flowing from her lips. Sungyeol was nodding his head in understanding and chiming in every now and then, as though he understood completely. Hyunjoo couldn’t tell if he was simply good at feigning couthly behavior, if he was simply ignorant and a good enough actor to hide it, or if he really did understand her. Considering the fact that his first language was Italian, he’d have to have been the former. 

Considering everything else, he was surely the latter. 

They didn’t learn much about the house’s previous tenants from the woman living there now. She droned on about holes she had to fix in the walls and scribbles on the door frames here and there — holes Sungyeol remembered making and marks Sungyeol remembered drawing. She commented on how lovely the cat statue in front was. It was her opinion that stopped her husband, out at work, from getting rid of it when they first moved in around eleven years ago. 

The statue was of Sungyeol’s grandfather’s cat, a wise tabby, he remembered upon seeing it face to snout. 

The entire lineage of his family lived in that house and now, as the woman said in an uncouthly manner, “There’s no getting ahold of those people. They had their number disconnected as soon as we moved in, disappearing like rats into some unseen hole.”

It was then that Sungyeol told Hyunjoo they had to leave. The woman’s last name was Furlan. She herself came from a rather spectacular lineage, something else Sungyeol remembered upon hearing her odd Venetian accent himself. Her lineage in particular, however, was that of a hunter. 

“I didn’t tell her why I was looking for them. I only said I had questions about the family that lived there before. She probably mistook us for a pair of fledgling hunters.” Sungyeol had said as he led Hyunjoo out of the house, his arm wrapping around her, pulling her under the armor that was his body. 

He was trembling as he did so. 

There was no doubt in her mind that he expected the worst. 

He had little hope when it came to whether his parents where alive or dead. 

To bolster him further, she told him, “You should try the hospital tomorrow. You know, the one you were admitted to when Sunggyu found you? Maybe they know something.”

He agreed to her proposition, although he wasn’t all too fond of the memories it would bring back. He didn’t give her an inch of personal space on the ferry ride back to Giuseppe’s. 

She honestly didn’t care at that point whether he was ignorant or not. He needed her. She wasn’t necessary to his task, but he needed her. And she let him need her, because it feels good to be needed, doesn’t it?

She knew what to do, when to do it. More importantly, she knew how to do it. She could smile in that perfect way, say those perfect words, and make everything okay. 

Song Hyunjoo was perfection by Lee Sungyeol’s standards. 

As he sat across from her on the balcony of Giuseppe’s home, two black iron chairs facing each other, his legs hugging hers to keep her warm, his eyes watching her eyelashes flutter open and closed slowly, her hair doing that thing he loved, sticking to her dewy face, framing her dewy eyes, prancing across her smiling lips, she was perfection. 

And she was real. And she was really his.

Just this morning, she had arrived here in Italy.

Just this night, Giuseppe walked in on them, hands full. A wine bottle in one, two glasses in the other, and a blanket draped between each. He made a joke about not having assorted cheeses to serve on silver platters to the beautiful woman now gracing his home, to which Sungyeol laughed — and then proceeded to translate to a confused Hyunjoo. 

She flashed that smile again in response, “And here I thought I would have the chance to experience Italy’s finest wines and cheeses. Tis nothing but a shame that is not the case.”

As Giuseppe handed Sungyeol the wine bottle, he served the role of interpreter. The older man was pleasantly pleased with her response, though honestly a few words did get lost in translation, and said teasingly, “She’s a cruel one, she is.” He went to hand her a glass, only to be rejected in his chivalry. 

“She’s not old enough,” Sungyeol explained in English, and Giuseppe didn’t need it to be said again to understand what the displeased look on her face and the less-than-enthusiastic look on Sungyeol’s meant. 

She hummed a short tune Sungyeol didn’t know, giving away nothing as she said, “I’m practically legal.” 

Today marked the 19th of June, after all. 

Sungyeol accepted her vague hint of the date of her 18th birthday, jokingly picking on their one year difference with, “Now I feel old.” 

Giuseppe, whilst pouring him a drink, asked what he meant. He recounted it, and Giuseppe responded to it. And he wondered briefly if, when he grew older, wiser perhaps, if he would have little pieces of wisdom, little life lessons, some moral or another, to tell to those younger than him. And he wondered, briefly, what it would be. 

“Age is a matter of the mind, is what he says.” Sungyeol related to Hyunjoo, Giuseppe’s large, yellow-stained smile showing his approval of his rephrased proverb. 

“Well then,” she leaned forward, her legs creating static between his own, “how does your mind feel?”

“Stupid.” He dreamily mumbled, mimicking her action, “Crazy stupid.” 

He was floating high on cloud nine. He was addicted to her constant doses of “perfection.” He was surely smiling like an idiot, his vision blurring as he felt his cheeks rising higher and higher. All the way up to his brain, pushing all of his rational, dubious, and hypothetical thoughts out of the way. Feeling release not today, but two days later.

Today, however, Giuseppe landed a firm pat on his shoulder, crows’ feet crinkling at the corners of his eyes, Sungyeol’s infectious smile causing second-hand, high-flying happiness in the old man. He said something before he left, leaving them there with a bottle of wine, a blanket covering their intertwined legs, and a heavy silence between the space left uncovered. 

Hyunjoo’s mystified look asked the most obvious question.

Sungyeol answered with the most obvious of intentions, “He says, I know how to take a hint.” 

Without bothering to take a sip of the beverage in his hand, he dragged her closer to him by her legs, locking their lips within the span of a mere second. Just for a bit, because while he had learned to take advantage of what he had while he had it within this short span of twenty-four hours, the span of a mere second was enough to make him selfish. Dangerously so. Much more than he already was. 

Just for a bit, he kissed her beneath the stars in Italy. 

Because today was the first day of many, wasn’t it? 

“You’ll come with me, right?” He asked upon breaking their connection, asking for much more than just tomorrow. 

“Of course.” She replied upon reconnecting it, responding without knowing just what tomorrow would bring.

She ignored the ringing that buzzed in her ears until the sun came up the next morning, and tomorrow finally began.