☆ Twenty-First Star 

_________________________________

Woohyun moved to Seoul and it was the worst good-bye ever. We didn’t even see each other face to face. He just called me one morning, at around 5 something, and apologized over and over again, telling me he was so sorry for not seeing me one last time, for leaving just like that, without a proper good-bye, and I got really angry at him for being so sudden and spontaneous, and he said he was sorry and that he loved me. He also said he hated how he didn’t say that to me in my face and he would say it again when we saw each other. And then he hung up.

And my last memory of Woohyun before I got to see him again in mid-September was the image of his peaceful sleeping face.

☆

In my course, I was barely keeping up. There were four assignments I had due to next week and one essay that I had to submit in the following month. The first one was a 2000 worded short story, the second a drama piece, the third a poetry collection and the fourth assignment was a self-evaluation assessing my own writing. For the essay I still had to think of a question that interested me. And I only had three weeks left.

Mijoo seemed to be slowly approaching her mental break down. I told her she would be fine, that we both would manage this semester somehow, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Besides our course, she also band practice. Mijoo was the pianist in a girl band, and she had invited me to see her gig. Though, looking at both our messy timetables, it was hardly possible for us to go.

“I’m going crazy here,” said Mijoo, staring at her laptop’s screen. We were inside the campus library, trying to finish our poetry assignment. We figured working together would encourage us to be productive and stay motivated. However, Mijoo had only been complaining so far. And the guys a few desks away were way too loud, laughing at funny videos on their phones, being a distraction to the people in the library trying to work.

“You just need to write 500 more words,” I told her. “I still have 1200 to go.” I watched as Mijoo gathered her hair into a high pony tail. “Besides, you’re in a band. And you told you write the songs. I’m pretty sure you have enough inspiration to write a few more poems.”

She groaned, not really listening to me. “Can I just borrow one of yours?”

I ignored her, and looked at my phone instead. Woohyun hadn’t texted me back yet. I had sent him a funny picture of Mijoo and me when he asked what I was doing. I kind of thought he would text something funny back, considering how I could see he had seen my message. But maybe he was busy.

“Anjell, I swear to god, when you don’t tell those guys to shut the up, I’m going there and show my s.”

“How would that help?” I asked, giggling at the image of Mijoo going up to the boys and boldly lifting up her shirt.

“I’m sure they haven’t once seen a female body before. They’re gonna be speechless.”

“Don’t do that,” I said. At the same time, my phone vibrated. I quickly picked it up, only to be disappointed by a spam text.

“Has your boyfriend not replied to our cool photo yet?”

“No.”

“Dump him.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not. I get straight As. When I want to.”

“Don’t even say that as a joke.”

Mijoo, realizing I really didn’t like the way she talked about Woohyun, kept shut. She was sulking. Her lips were pouted, and she wasn’t looking at me.

Resigned, I explained, “Woohyun is busy.”

Why do I even have to justify him?

“For my significant other,” said Mijoo then, “I would never be too busy.”

☆

I stopped talking to Mijoo for a while. For some reason, she was really getting on my nerves. She didn’t even know Woohyun, and she was supposed to be my friend. But she kept on antagonizing him, as if he were not, like, one of the most important people in my life. If I dared to say Mijoo was considering me as one of her closest friends, maybe her best friend, then she was completely wrong.

Woohyun was my best friend.

He also happened to be my lover.

In the whirlwind of my emotions, I told Sunggyu about it. He only said I couldn’t expect Mijoo to understand what was between Woohyun and me. For her, he was only a random guy who was dating her friend. She wasn’t there when we happened. When everyone else saw what we felt for each other. When obstacles stopped us in our tracks and our paces got muddled. I also wanted to tell Sunggyu that I felt a bit empty whenever it took Woohyun days to reply or when he had seen my message but only texted back hours later. I also wanted to say how much I couldn’t concentrate on my assignments because I missed him, and how every poem I wrote was about longing and farewells, ones that metaphorically described how I felt about our good-bye, and ones that shared how I had actually wanted our good-bye to play out.

Mijoo apologized to me. And when she did, I felt like the worst person ever for being bitter at something so stupid. I figured Sunggyu had told her about my holding grudge against her for her remarks regarding Woohyun. She suggested for us to meet at the campus library again, to finish our poetry assignment. I thought it was a good idea. I just didn’t know we would have company.

She brought a friend along. Or more like a classmate. In lectures, he sat at the very back and passed obnoxious comments along whenever there was silence. For reasons unknown to me, my classmates would find them very funny. Even the teacher. I just thought they were stupid.

For example, he once laughed out of nowhere, and the teacher asked him, “What’s so funny? Why are you laughing?”

And his answer: “Nothing. I’m just childish.”

Some would consider this a witty remark, but I found it silly. Not even the good kind of silly.

“I thought it would be helpful to have a third party,” explained Mijoo when I gave her a meaningful look. “In case we procrastinate again.”

“My name is Jackson,” introduced the guy unnecessarily. It wasn’t like anyone wouldn’t not know his name. “You are Anjell, right?”

“Yeah, nice to meet you,” I said, without much expression.

He turned his laptop screen around. “Can you read this one poem of mine?” He scrolled down to the last page of his assignment. “I’ve heard from Mijoo you give really good feedbacks.”

“Do I?” I looked at my friend.

“I’ll read one of yours, too.”

“Fair enough.”

There wasn’t much I could do anyways. Reading someone else’s poem could even help me in my own assignment. It could inspire me, maybe. Although I had no high expectations for the Jackson guy.

I gave him my laptop, and started reading his poem. There was no title. But a picture that he had inserted into the document. It was a sketch of a fountain pen.

She drew maps on his arms

With the black ink of her expensive fountain pen,

Planning insane trips and adventures

To places that existed on his arm.

With the black ink of her expensive fountain pen,

He wrote postcards and sent them

To places that existed on his arm,

Their grinding skin like paper and pen.

He interrupted me. “Wait,” said the Jackson guy, moving his laptop towards himself, and typing something. Then he turned it back around so that I had a full view of his poem. He had added a title. London & Paris.

I continued:

He wrote postcards and sent them,

Memorizing every single word,

Their grinding skin like paper and pen,

as she drew a tower and a bridge on them.

“It’s a pantoum, right?” I asked, after I had finished the poem.

“Yeah. How do you like it? Be honest.”

I titled my head slightly, still staring at the screen. Mijoo in my peripheral view is intently listening to our conversation. “I like it. It has quite a surreal ring to it. And I like the image of having maps inked on your skin.” I looked at Jackson. “Why London and Paris though?”

He smiled, displaying his set of teeth. “I’ve always wanted to live in London or Paris.”

“Paris sounds awesome,” remarked Mijoo. “I would kill to be in Paris right now.”

“Choose London instead. I can speak English, not French. I can be your guide,” said Jackson.

“Sure, and what would be her role?” asked Mijoo, pointing at me.

Jackson assessed me. Then, as if he had found the right answer, said: “She’ll be my muse.”

☆

I later asked Mijoo why she had really brought Jackson to our meeting because I slowly started getting the wrong idea in my head. For some reason, it seemed to me that Mijoo was trying to set me up with him. Despite knowing I was with Woohyun.

But she explained, “Hell, no! I want him myself. He’s hot. You can’t have him. I’ve called dibs on him already.”

So that was at least settled.

In the late afternoon Woohyun called me.

“What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing much,” I said, plopping down on my bed. “Just relaxing. Had an exhausting day.”

“Why, what happened?”

“Mijoo brought a guy to our library date.”

Woohyun hummed in response, showing me he was listening.

“And at first I thought she was trying to set me up with him, but turns out she is setting herself up.”

“Is he better looking than me?” asked Woohyun with a laugh.

“He’s alright. But too loud for my liking,” I said truthfully. “What have you been doing? Tell me about your day.”

There was a short pause. “Just dealing with paper stuff for uni.”

“Have you transferred already?”

“Yeah, but they are still demanding me to fill out papers.”

“Must be boring.”

“It is.”

“Are you enjoying your course, though? It’s still Science Education, right?”

Another short pause. “Uh, yeah. And yes. Still Science, baby.”

“How about your classmates? Are you still keeping in touch with Mir and co.?” I asked. “Or am I the only Daegu resident that you care about?”

“Oh, Mir came to visit me recently. And do you remember Kibum? I saw him working at a bar on my wㅡ”

I interrupted him. “Wait, he visited you?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong?”

Yeah, what is wrong with me?

“Nothing. Just surprised,” I lied. “How about your new classmates?”

“They’re okay. Not as funny as Mir.” He laughed a little. “What about you? Who are you hanging around with? Besides Mijoo and the alright guy.”

“I met Sunggyu recently.”

“Oh, cool. How’s he doing?”

His reacting felt quite unsatisfying to me. “Good. Found out that Myungsoo and Bomi are dating now.”

I omitted the fact about Soyou becoming a model.

“Wow, that’s a surprise.” At the other end of the line, I heard Woohyun shifting in his position. Then: “Hey Anjell, I need to help my mom with dinner right now. I’ll talk to you later?”

“Okay.”

A pause. 

“Anjell?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t cheat on me.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Don’t break my heart either.”

I wanted to cry and scream that he was breaking my heart, that this was horrible, and that I couldn’t keep up anymore. But instead: “I don’t intend to.”

“Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

He sighed, and my heart cracked a little at that. “I promise to you I’m coming back next month. Mir surprised me that day. If I had known he would come, I would have prepared something for you and forced him to bring it back.”

“I don’t need gifts. I just need you.”

“Wow, my cheesiness is rubbing off on you,” said Woohyun, laughing.

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”

“Just,” he began, “hold on for a while longer.”

☆

Mijoo and I went to Jackson’s place to start our self-evaluation. He lived with his mother in a fancy apartment, and told us his dad worked in Hong Kong. I didn’t know he was actually Chinese because his Korean was perfect and he didn’t seem to be struggling with our culture and customs. However, he explained, “We moved here when I was four. I’m basically Korean.”

We were in his room, making an effort to not start procrastinating or search for Jackson’s childhood pictures, but Mijoo had the least amount of discipline and the greatest deal of stubbornness, driving us wild with her demands to see baby Jackson.

As a good friend, I had to play along.

“Why do girls always want to see baby pictures?” he asked me, clutching onto his photo album.

“Do you always bring so many girls into your room that it’s becoming a study?”

“No, but the girls I dated were like that. Even my female friends.”

“You’re y,” said Mijoo suddenly. “I want to know when puberty hit you. And how hard it had to do that.”

Jackson looked at her, eyes wide, with a sudden spark, loosening his grip around the photo album. “Why, thank you. That’s a really nice thing to say.”

She grabbed the chance and took the book from him. “You’re welcome.”

We spent half an hour just looking through Jackson’s baby pictures, laughing, forgetting our assignment. He was a cute little kid. You would always see him in his mother’s arms, or holding an older lady’s hand. I asked about her and he told me it was his grandmother.

There were hardly any pictures of his dad.

Later, he went to the bathroom, and I turned to Mijoo, who was comfortably lying on his bed, reading a love letter Jackson has received back in middle school. I  observed her for a little while, then said, “Do you think his parents are divorced?”

She answered, without looking at me. “No. His father is working in Hong Kong.”

“It might have been a lie.”

“Or it might not have been a lie,” said Mijoo, now rolling onto her stomach. She giggled. “Listen to this: ‘The first time I saw you on your way to the vending machines, I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe anymore. You gave me goosebumps.” Mijoo made a dramatic pause. “‘I thought to myself, “BEEP BEEPㅡI’m censoring the name hereㅡyou need to pull yourself together.” But you were too beautiful, too amazing to forget.’”

“Don’t read his personal stuff.”

“It’s funny though. He was a popular kid.”

I rested my head on the bed. “Remind me not to ever invite you to my place.”

“Why, do you keep a diary?”

“No, but corpses.”

Mijoo laughed, throwing her long hair over my face. She smelled really nice. “I think I just found my partner in crime. Quite literally.”

“Who do you wanna kill?” I asked.

“Jackson is the first,” she said, “for being so oblivious to my flirt attempts. Then comes the creep from the convenience store I frequent. Next should be my parents for having such a clever and awesome kid and preventing me from having such a clever and awesome kid. Then we shall kill our teacher so we don’t have to write this goddamn assignment anymore.”

“You’re becoming creepy.”

“Why, thank you. That’s a really nice thing to say.”

I laughed, getting all her hair into my mouth. 

When Jackson joined us again, we eventually started our self-evaluation. Two hours later, he drove each of us home. He dropped off Mijoo first. Then it was just the two of us. In silence. With a little bit of Jackson rapping and secretly singing to all songs in the radio.

“DOES MIJOO LIKE ME?” he screamed suddenly, matching the words to the pitch level of the song. Basically, he was singing it.

“Did you hear us?”

He turned off the radio. “Yeah. I was that ert that stood behind the door and listened to your conversation.” Shaking his head, he added, “You guys are creepy.”

“What do you think of her?” I asked.

"I thought sheㅡ”

“Actually,” I interrupted, “I don’t wanna know. I would have to be the one dealing with this. Knowing the answer and all.”

He turned the radio on again, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “What do you think of her?

“She’s my partner in crime.”

“Oh, cool.”

“When, of course, she’s not insulting my boyfriend and being a bad friend.”

“Of course,” repeated Jackson, snickering.

☆