☆ Twenty-Second Star

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My parents had a huge fight again. But this time it was worse than any other fight they had had. This time our relatives were there. They listened to everything. Every secret. Every detail. Now they were involved.

I was in the kitchen, talking to my little cousin, who was just nine for god’s sake, when I - and everyone else in the room - heard my mother screaming obscene words at my father. Showing her true colors in front of the whole family. Unveiling our broken bond. Exhibiting our flaws.

Now everyone knew about the cracks in our facade.

☆

I didn’t touch my phone for days after their fight. I didn’t even go to my classes. Lifelessly, I stayed in my room, occasionally working on my assignments. I had already submitted the poetry one, the short story one and the self-evaluation. I would receive minus points for not submitting the drama one on time. But I didn’t care, really.

At some point in my pool of self-pity, Jackson called me. I didn’t even want to answer, but he wouldn’t stop ringing my phone, so I answered.

He said, “Hey Mia.”

“Wrong person,” I replied flatly.

“M.I.A. Stands for Missing In Action. That’s you, Anjell.”

“I’m not in the mood for your jokes,” I said to him, hoping he would just shut up and leave me alone.

“What are you in the mood for then?” he asked, with an unusual tone in his voice. “Mijoo is going crazy without you. She literally forced me to sit with her in the middle row, and you know I hate sitting in the middle row.”

No, I actually didn’t know that. I knew he always sat at the back in lectures, but I didn’t know he hated the middle row so much. “Jackson, please. I don’t wanna talk right now.”

There was a pause. Then: “Okay, I won’t bother you anymore.” He sighed heavily, as if everything hurt him and not me. “But I hope whatever your boyfriend did to make you so devastated, you guys will figure out.”

“It’s not my boyfriend,” I said.

“Then I’m sure he can fix it.”

“There are things boyfriends can’t fix.”

“Only when he’s incapable or the girlfriend's not letting him.”

I shook my head in annoyance. “No, Jackson, there are things no one can fix.”

“Like?”

“Broken mirrors.”

“Buy a new one.”

“Broken hearts.”

“Pretty sure a capable boyfriend can do something about that.”

“Broken family.”

Silence.

And now he knew what was keeping me in my room.

☆

One evening my father approached me. He had probably noticed how I barely went to uni or saw the daylight or met people. He was working whole days, but at some point a dad would take notice of his daughter's unusual behavior. Especially keeping in mind that her boyfriend lived 200 miles away and that she had heard their huge fight in the kitchen. With their relatives...

“Baby,” he called, sitting down next to me on my bed. “How are you doing?”

I hesitated. Should I tell him the truth or the lie? Reluctantly I chose the former. “Barely holding up.”

“Because of Woohyun or because of me and your mother?”

“Both?” There was a crack in my voice.

My father wrapped his arms around me then, my hair. His scent felt warm and made me feel safe and at ease. Like he was putting a thick blanket over me, protecting me from monsters that were lurking in the shadows and corners. He said, “I’m sorry. But don’t worry about us. Your mother and I, we argue a lot, but we’re not separating.”

I snuggled closer into my father’s chest. Over the past few years he had gained a bit of weight, and now there were little fat rolls around his waist and stomach area whenever he sat down. This newly accumulated layer of fat made him really soft to hug.

“Your mother and I, we’ve been together for decades now. At some point we’ll get sick of each other and fight over stupid things. We take each other for granted, you know.”

“Am I the only reason you guys are still together?” I asked.

“No,” said my father, pulling me closer. “I love your mother. She is the love of my life. She's important to me.”

“Hm.”

He rocked us back and forth, as if to the rhythm of a soothing lullaby. “So I believe the distance between Woohyun and you can be quite beneficial.”

“How?” I really wanted to know.

“Distance makes the heart grow fonder. You can only miss something when it’s not there.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

Because this all sounded very much like a good-bye.

My father laughed then, inhaling the scent of my hair. “No, I’m going nowhere, baby. You’re my family. Wherever I go, I’ll take you both with me.”

“You should say those things to Mom,” I told him. “I’m pretty sure that could solve everything.”

“Hm, maybe.”

My dad suddenly leaned back, pulling me down with him. My head was resting on his chest now, and he still had his arms around me. I hugged him back, listening to his heartbeat, closing my eyes, and almost fell asleep, hadn’t he spoken up.

“Have I ever told you the story about your grandmother’s death?”

“No,” I mumbled, eyes half-open, “but it doesn’t sound very promising.”

“It is. It’s the kind of story that leaves you with hope.”

“Then I’m all ears. But not all eyes.”

His chest rumbled with deep laughter. “Okay, so you were four, I believe. Yes, it must have been four because I was twenty-seven back then. And your grandmother was forty-eight. That was her age when she died of kidney failure. I think your mother was twenty-six then. She was really beautiful during that time. Not that she isn’t now. She’s always beautiful.

“So I received a call one day from your uncle, and he told me that your grandmother died. He was crying on the phone, and I, being the older brother, tried not to break down in front of him. I tried not to become weak and just spoke words of comfort to him. In reality, I just wanted to hang up and cry.

“When I did, when I did hang up, that is, I didn’t cry. I felt a lump clogging my throat, but I couldn’t cry or scream or do things that could possibly release the pain. Your mother was crying, though. She heard and she was crying, holding you in her arms, holding little you in her arms, even though you had no idea what was going on. You couldn’t understand.

“Your mother knew I must have beeen really sad and devastated so she told you to comfort your dad. And you came over and sat on my lap and asked why I was crying. I wasn’t crying, though. Not yet. But when you said that, I started doing so. Even though you didn’t do anything. But looking at you, at my child, the person I lived for…”

I was already half-dreaming then, fighting to stay awake, but also thinking of my father crying when he was twenty-seven years old. The last thing he said to me sounded like a line from a lullaby, and I didn't remember what he had said until a few days later.

“It gave me strength. You were my strength, Anjell.”

☆

What really surprised me over the past few days after my conversation with my dad was the fact that Woohyun hadn’t contacted me during the whole time I hadn’t bothered to touch my phone. There were a lot of missed calls from Jackson and Mijoo. One text from Sunggyu telling me I should contact the latter. But none from Woohyun.

It was weird. Because I usually contacted him almost everyday and he would naturally notice when I hadn’t done so for a whole week. 

But he didn’t.

On Day 12 of not talking to each other - I have to admit, I purposely didn’t send him a text message to find out how long it would take him to reach out to me - he called. I mentally embraced myself before I picked up, for his apology and his reasons for not calling earlier. Only, I would have never expected what happened instead.

It went like this:

Me: “Hello?”

Him: “Hey.”

Me: “…”

Him: “Are you free next weekend?”

Me: “Yeah, I guess so. There’s nothing much here to do.”

Him: “I’ll come back.”

Me: “…”

Him: “I said I’ll come back, Anjell. I think this distance is straining our relationship. And I want to see you. So I’m coming back.”

Me: “Like, for good?”

Him: “No, only for the weekend.”

But that was good enough.

And he really did come that following weekend. He packed some of his things, took the train and appeared at my door in the afternoon of that Friday. His eyes looked tired, almost lifeless, as if they had lost their light in the past few months of seeing the metropolitan city. I could spot dark circles under them. Sleep deprived. That was how Woohyun looked like when he stood in front of me.

I asked, “Are you staying at my place?”

And I knew that wasn’t the proper tone and the proper thing to say to the boy I loved and had missed so much, but I was still slightly bitter about the whole Not-Contacting thing.

“If that’s okay,” he said, looking into my eyes.

I nodded, stepping to the side to let him in. My parents weren’t home. But I had told them that Woohyun was coming back, so they shouldn’t be too surprised seeing him here.

“Your room is on the left, right?” he asked as we both climbed the stairs.

“Did you already forget?”

He shook his head. “No, just wanted to make sure.”

We entered my room, and he set his travel bag at the door. Taking a few steps inside, Woohyun looked around, as if to check whether things had changed. I observed him for a while. His back seemed more narrow and his arms were skinnier. I remembered him being a bit thicker than that. His hair had gotten longer as well. Usually at this length he would have gone to the hairdresser or let his mother cut it.

Woohyun plopped down on my bed, and said, “Come, sit. Let’s talk.”

I sat.

“Good girl,” he remarked, smiling a little. I couldn’t really reciprocate it.

The afternoon sun shone into my room with such recklessness, and yet it seemed as if the shadows of my furniture were perfectly imprinted in the floor. There was also Woohyun’s shadow and there was mine. And both of them weren’t touching.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me why I hadn’t contacted you?” he asked.

“I’m waiting for you to explain it to me,” I said.

“Okay.” Woohyun turned around, and I looked at him. His eyes were suddenly pleading. They were tired, and they were begging for sleep and rest, but they were also pleading with me.

Pleading for my forgiveness? Something I would readily give to him?

Or my understanding? 

That was the thing about Woohyun and me. We started off with being childhood friends, stargazers, and I’m pretty sure he had always been the one giving in to me, getting the short end of the stick, complying with my wishes and preferences. And then he confessed, and he messed me up pretty badly, and then we dated, and he became my boyfriend and I became his girlfriend, and I hated labels so much, but he was my boyfriend, and all of a sudden I had become the one looking past mistakes, accepting his flaws and shortcomings, constantly understanding his circumstances.

“I love you, Anjell,” he began. “I love you, and I’m scared. Right now, this - everything - is really scary for me. Feeling this, loving someone so much. Maybe for you it’s not new because you loved Howon before, but for me… It’s my first time really, really loving someone and only that someone. And it scares me.” His eyes started filling up with tears. I didn’t know what to do. “I love you, but… I just don’t know. I love you, but I’m not here, and being apart from you is the worst.”

I gently grabbed his hand, and asked, “Are you worried about the distance?”

“I’m worried about a lot of things,” he said. “I’m worried you will find someone else and abandon me. I’m worried I will stop loving you despite loving you so much right now. I’m worried we won’t be able to work it out anymoreㅡ”

“We will.”

“ㅡand that one day we’re gonna be the kind of couple that purposely hurts each other.”

“Why would we do that?”

He shrugged. “Any reason, really. Couples can be so stupid.”

“But we are not stupid,” I pointed out. “We won’t be the kind of couple that breaks each others’ hearts because of petty things.”

“You don’t know!” he snapped.

“I do!” I spat back. “Because I trust you not to hurt me. Even if you occasionally do.”

Woohyun looked away and sighed. “I love you, and I just don’t know anymore.”

“Stop saying ‘I love you’ so much. You make it lose its meaning,” I murmured, letting go of his hand. Then: “Do you want to break up?”

“Of course not. What would be the point in all of it if it’s just gonna end up hurting us?”

“Good, then listen,” I said, “I don’t know why you didn’t contact me for more than a week, and I honestly don’t care anymore. You don’t have to explain. It’s okay. I don’t mind. Let’s just forget this whole thing, and start from ‘I love you’.”

“You just said I should stop staying that.”

“I just said let’s forget everything that happened and start from scratch,” I explained.  When I held his hand again, it occurred to me how perfectly mine fit into his. “So, I love you, Nam Woohyun.”

I really did.

“I love you, too, Ahn Anjell.”

He really did, too.

☆

We spent the evening in the garden, sitting on chairs that we had found in the little summer house. My parents gave us the okay to stay together for the weekend. Since the fight they had become quite soft handling me. Whether that was a warning sign of divorce or not remained questionable. 

Woohyun and I took turns looking through the telescope glasses. The stars weren’t really visible tonight, but that was okay. The almost empty sky set a peaceful mood around us, and that was all we needed. For everything to stop and remain. For things to never change.

“You know what’s missing?” he asked in the silence we conquered.

“What?”

“Popcorn.”

I smiled. “Next time.”

“And I’m sorry for the breakdown I had earlier. It was pretty lame.”

“We both know you’re the sensitive one in our relationship,” I joked, looking at him. “So it’s okay.”

Now he was smiling. “And I’m glad you gave us the chance to find out.”

During that time I knew I wanted Woohyun more than anything in the world, more than the universe or the stars, and that he wanted me just as much. But at that time I was also too naive and blind to see the warning signs around him, even though they were right in front of my eyes. In a messed up way Woohyun had slowly eased me into the end of our relationship way before the last page of the book.

But despite everything I am so, so glad I had given him and me the chance. To let us figure out what could have been even if it couldn't be anymore.

☆