Chapter seven: Just another day

           Taeyeon had changed a bit, or at least I’ve noticed she had. Going out late, staying out late. Coming back and smelling of alcohol and cigarette smoke as usual. Well I guess you can’t say she’s changed, she’s gone back to her normal ways. I don’t know why I was so surprised, I figured she’d continue to live her life the way she had always lived it. Why would I have changed that? I’m nobody but her roommate whom she kisses occasionally. I felt like a cheap used toy. But I couldn’t help but care. I was already knee deep in this and there was no way out.

She had just came home. Taking off her jacket and kicking her shoes to the side. I tried not to focus on her, but Taeyeon always had something to say.

“Watcha doing?”

 “I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”

I shut the book sighing and placed it beside me. Haruki Murakami always had a way to make a heart shudder, leaving his words to ebb at your equilibrium. I sat against the headboard of my bed. “Reading.” I said, “I hate reading,” I mumbled out.

“Why’s that?” Taeyeon who was now opening her laptop on her bed questioned, pushing her glasses upward without looking at me.

“Because…” I looked down at the book cover “It always makes me sad.”

“Then don’t read sad books.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, before letting myself sigh and look elsewhere “That’s impossible.” I say “It’s all I can seem to read.” She stays quiet for a moment before shutting her computer “Why do you always have to make things so complicated?” I shrug at her question.

“Why do you always have to be so mysterious?” I retort, and she blinks at me before taking off her glasses to rub her eyes. “I’m not mysterious.” She says, “I’m not. I guess people just don’t get me.”

I scoff, “Okay, if you say so.” A pang of guilt hits me suddenly, because it hurts to actually care this much. To lash out in the most childish ways, I couldn’t help it.

“What? You have something to say?” She asks me, throwing her legs over the side of her bed and letting them dangle off like a kid. Sometimes I was convinced she really was a kid, not just by her soft looks but her attitude as well.

“It’s just…” And suddenly I couldn’t find the words to say.

“What?” She repeats, “Say it, say it, say it.” I was about ready to throw my pillow at her stupid face. She had this annoying way of getting under my skin.

“Ugh.” I growled grabbing my book, violently flipping it open again while stuffing my nose inside. “Never mind.” I huffed out.

Taeyeon laughed as she stood up yawning. “You’re so easy to piss off, you know that?”

“It’s because you’re so annoying!” I say throwing my book back down on the bed. “You’re so freaking annoying.”

“Am I?” She asks putting on a jacket, “Then why do you even talk to me?” She turned away, and I looked at the wall right passed her.

I said nothing after that.

It was like a silent movie watching her move about in the room with me having nothing to say. She was so pretty to watch and she looked so sad when she wasn’t talking or smiling.

Eventually my eyes lingered on her, as she laid back down and took heavy breaths. Like she was in deep thought, about nothing I could ever really figure out. She was so complicated.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like how?” I asked.

“Like how you’re looking at me…”

Taeyeon gave me a smug smile. Turning her head to look at me.

“I’m not looking at you anyway.” I said looking away. Okay maybe I was staring at her, hopelessly gazing at her face. I couldn’t help it.

She chuckles softly taking her glasses off and placing them on the nightstand. “It’s okay, I was just kidding.” She pauses, “You can look at me anyway you want to.”

I inwardly sighed. It just wasn’t right to feel this way. Not because she was a girl and I was a girl, which was totally normal at least in my eyes. But because the type of love that was beginning to build up inside of me was vicious. It was angry and it was spreading throughout my body and soon enough I’d just become a mess. A hopeless mess. With nothing to gain but heartache.

“Well I wasn’t so…” I was doing some homework, but unknowingly I was just drawing circles and hearts over the questions. My mind was elsewhere today.

“Sure.” Taeyeon smiled at me, “What are you up to?” She peeked over at my books. As I shifted on my bed shutting them.

“Nothing much. Homework.” She crinkled her nose in the cutest way.

“Gross.” She sighed out, “Man I’m such a zombie today.” Picking her back off her bed she stretched, only to right back into it even more comfortable than before.

“Why’s that?” I asked her while stretching out my legs.

“I don’t know.” She said, “I’m kind of just…” she trailed off quietly.

“Just?” I egged her on, I was so fixated on knowing what she was feeling and what she was thinking about. That it sort of made me desperate.

She huffed out heavily, “…lingering.” I knew exactly how she felt.

“Oh.” I blinked my eyes trying to get rid of the drowsiness that was looming over me ever since I started this calculus worksheet.

“How’s your day been?” She rolls over on her stomach and whispers.

My day? It hadn’t been much at all. I stared at the bottom right corner of my computer and the time read 10:59pm. Then it had struck me that all I’d done today was daydream and look—not even do—but look at my homework.

“I went out.” I lied.

She raised her eyebrows in an obnoxious way and already I was preparing myself for what was coming. “You? Tiffany Hwang? Going out? In the sun? In the world? Breathing in fresh air? You?”

“No, actually, I stayed inside all day.” I told the truth.

“Oh.” Her face went blank and she continued to lay on her stomach. “Well that’s okay you know, you don’t have to go out all the time. It’s perfectly normal to be hermit.”

“Really?” I had asked her, the sleepiness fading away as Taeyeon kept the conversation alive.

“Yeah.” She nodded, “I’m like that too. I like to be alone, but not feel lonely.”

She was a wonder. “Oh, yeah, I know what you mean.” So many wonders, stuffed inside a tiny human being the world called Taeyeon. And everyone was just dying to figure her out.

“Hey Tiffany…”

I liked to think I was first in line though, getting more time than others simply because I had a special place somewhere inside of her—preferably her heart.

“Hmm?”

“Come cuddle with me.”

It didn’t take me but about seven seconds to shut the books, put my homework up and crawl into her bed right beside her, and for two seconds for her to put her arms around me.

 It was what old people called time-well-spent. I think.

“Thanks.”

I probably should have thanked her right back, for holding me and talking to me till 6 in the morning. But I had a feeling it meant to her just as much as it meant to me. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

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I was trying to figure myself out this time. What was it I really wanted and what was it I really needed. I guess you could say that we really didn’t need anybody, that love was just an illusion written almost everywhere in every language and someone had gone and taken it seriously. Thus spreading the phenomena they called love.

Someone must’ve gotten lost in translation, and it made me wonder if that’s all we ever were—lost in translation, and that’s why we couldn’t ever really figure each other out. I mean, c’mon. We’re all human.

How much different can we be?

I didn’t know.

Taeyeon seemed to linger even after she was gone.

Her sunglasses, her contact holder—that old dinky laptop with stickers of her favorite rock-band plastered all over it… her unique scent. Some form of loneliness, alcohol and coconut.  Maybe a little of everything.

Well anyway, she lingered. And it left me feeling anxious. How far was this feeling going to go and would it ever stop?

I highly doubted it.

“He was totally into me, I swear!” I had met this girl named Yuri on the way to biology class last week. Today we decided to hang out at my dorm after raiding a drug store with junk food. Oddly, I saw so much of myself in her, it left a bitter after-thought floating around somewhere in my brain. She was so superficial and in a way, self-conscious. Girls like her were a big deal, and everyone would try to distant themselves from them. It made me wonder if that’s how Taeyeon saw me.

As a superficial, babbling, self-conscious idiot. Not that Yuri was an idiot, she was pretty smart. Smarter than I was, at least.

I sighed.

“Wow, nice dorm.” Yuri exclaimed while taking off her shoes by the door.

“Thanks.” I smiled.

“How long have you been going to school here?” She asked, plopping on my bed, making herself comfortable.

“Not long.” I said.

“Oh, nice.” She nodded her head, looking around, her eyes lingered on Taeyeon’s messy side of the room. “I’ve been here since I was a little girl.” She turned to softly smile at me before continuing. “My mom had way more job opportunities here than in Korea. My grandparents were against it, they didn’t want her to live in Korea all by herself with a new born.” She looked at me, “My dad left her when she had spilled the beans about me being her stomach.” She began to clarify, “Well anyway, you know how hard it is for a woman to find decent work. Even if they work a thousand times harder than any man, so well when she got this amazing offer she took it in a heartbeat.” She giggled, “My mom was never one to settle for anything less than what she deserved, and then some.”  

“Wow.” I said exclaimed, “She sounds like an amazing woman.”

“Yeah well, she passed away not too long ago.” She looked down at her feet.

“Oh I’m sorry.” I genuinely felt heartbroken. It seemed as though Yuri adored her mother, by the way she spoke about her, and the look in her eyes.

“It’s okay.” She smiled, “heaven just couldn’t wait for her.” She paused, “Do you believe in heaven, Tiffany?”

I thought for a moment before giving her my honest answer, “I don’t know.”

“I see.” She replied.

“I mean, sometimes I do. But I have my doubts.”

“Yeah me too.” She laughed, “But my mom was a believer, and although I suppose I’m more of a rational person. I need to see it to believe it—she believed. So I guess god just needed her back in his kingdom.”

I nodded.

“You have a roommate?” She looked over at Taeyeon’s side again.

“Yeah.” I sighed, “I do. She’s not usually home. I have no idea where she goes now come to think of it.”

“Well you’re lucky you have a roommate.” Yuri smiled, running her fingers through her hair. “It gets lonely here in Japan.”

I looked at her and blinked, “Yeah.” I said. “It does.”

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“Hey.” Taeyeon came home, free of take-out or something to indicate where she had gone off to this time. But it wasn’t a big deal.

“Hey.” It had been bugging me for days, and Yuri only had sped up the process with our talks.

“How was your day?” She asked me, genuinely asked me. It had my stomach curling, just a simple question was everything to me. She cared. And I thought that was so wonderful.

“It was fine.” I smiled at her, “How was yours?”

She sighed and tilted her head, “It was… anti-climactic.” Laughing she had me going dizzy. I loved it when she laughed.

“Oh, that .”

“Yeah.” She said, “But not really, it’s whatever.” She shrugged, “Do… you mind?” She asked as she sat next to me in my bed.

“No.” I shook my head, “Is there something wrong?” I asked her as she scooted closer to me.

“Nope.” She uttered, “Just tired.” She shut her eyes and rested her head on my shoulder, she inhaled. “I missed you.”

I pursed my lips. Feeling raddled. “I missed you too, Taeyeon.”  

What a day.

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