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genre: romance, slice of life | infinite member(s): hoya | length: one shot, 7334 words

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description:

In which a girl falls in love with a guy behind a fence.

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When I was still a child, not too big for my father's lap, my tiny body the perfect size to snuggle close to his chest, the top of my head barely reaching his chin, I would often listen to the stories he told me after a Sunday's dinner of mixed rice, my favorite food. We would leave the dining table, sit on the couch, and he would wrap his protective arm around me before asking, "Myungeun, do you want to hear a story?"

And I would say, "Yes, please."

And then he would smile warmly at me, the wrinkles by his eyes almost extending to his temples, and he would begin telling me about this one girl with the beautiful smile who falls in love with a scarred boy behind a fence. My father would always start off by describing the scenery, the world in which his stories take place, and he would slowly introduce the characters one by one, then build up tension, and when the story reached its peak, he would genuinely slow down and wrap up with a happy ending. It always took him approximately thirty minutes to describe the beginning, and closure. And at the end of the story's sentence, after the full stop, I would always demand more, asking him to tell me what happens after those last words are spoken, but he would only say, "If I do that, there won't be a happy ending anymore."

As I grew older, my body too big for his lap, my general attitude towards his stories turning rigid and growing stiff, I eventually noticed this certain pattern in my father's stories. There would always be a girl and a boy falling in love with each other, and there would always be some kind of circumstance that prevent them from having their own happy ending, and that circumstance would always be won over in the course of the events, and the girl and the boy would always live happily ever after, sealing their love with a kiss. It was always the same pattern. And there was another thing that I noticed in my father's stories. Although they all had a similar happy ending, they somehow left a sad aftertaste behind. There was always some kind of sadness between the lines, a feeling of indescribable sorrow, some kind of suffering, and I always wondered whether it was because my mom passed away not long after I was born, and my father just became a really lonely man, or because those stories weren't happy to begin with, and they were just altered to fit a little girl's hopes and expectations.

On a Tuesday afternoon, in the midst of summer, the sun beam landed on the pavement with soft gentleness, the colors of the sky reflecting themselves on the concrete. I stood at the bus stop with two friends, waiting for the bus to arrive, slightly annoyed that we hadn't managed to get the earlier one. Behind us was a middle school separated from the bus stop by a fence. A few high school students were playing soccer on the playground, their boyish screams and loud voices coming together as background noise. I looked over to the only two seats available at the bus stop, which were occupied by an elderly couple. We stood right beside them, our gazes fixed on the concrete in front of us, eyes desperately searching for a sign from the bus.

In exactly that moment, while staring at the street, I remembered one of my father's stories about the girl with the beautiful smile and the boy behind the fence. I couldn't explain why, but it was the only story that I remembered with utmost clarity, from the superficial description to the underlying meanings. My father had told me the story not more than three times, his voice and the emotions in it were always stable, and yet I was capable of recalling the story almost too accurately, to the smallest details, to the tiniest dust, as if I had lived in this world, as if the girl in the story were me. It was the kind of sensation that couldn't be formed into words. It was just there.

As I tried to not think of that story, not to remember the details or the characters and the strange feeling of being the main girl, I saw a flying ball coming towards us from the corners of my eyes. It hit the fence with a loud noise, making my friends and me and the elderly couple under the bus shelter jump in slight surprise. We all turned around to the playground. The five high school boys standing there looked back at us with round eyes. Then one of them walked towards the ball, inching closer to the fence, and bowed politely to us before saying, “Sorry for surprising you.”

That guy had kind of small eyes, ones that were slightly slanted upwards, but the shape of his face made him look youthful. There was something around him that suggested a friendly and polite attitude. He seemed like the kind of person who would be liked by elder people, someone adults couldn't help but treat nicely. Next to him stood a guy who stuck out because of his height. He was probably one meter and eighty centimeters tall, maybe even taller than that. His legs were quite long, and his face was nicely proportioned, his lips beautifully shaped. For some reason, he looked like someone who could play soccer well. Not that I really knew, though.

Behind them were the other three of the group. The one at the far right had eyes as big as the moon from the earth's distance. They stood in total contrast to the ones of that guy who had apologized to us earlier for the sudden flying ball. His hair was long, almost reaching his shoulders at the back, and his face gave off that youthful and fresh feeling. His looks were definitely beyond just pretty.

The one in the middle looked rather scary at first glance until he actually smiled. When he smiled at me, since I was staring at him with obvious eyes, he genuinely looked happy, without any deceitfulness, to do so. It seemed like he placed a lot of value on being true to his emotions. And his gaze made it difficult for people to look away.

When I finally glanced at the last person standing there on the far left, a really strange thought suddenly occurred to me. For reasons beyond my grasp or understanding, this guy with these really strong eyebrows reminded me of the scarred boy behind the fence, of the story's male protagonist whom my father had invented years ago. My father used to describe the guy behind the fence as a small boy who has round eyes, thin lips and blond locks. And I was certain that, before I met these people, I had imagined the male protagonist quite differently, maybe the way my father had initially described him. But now that I was setting my eyes on this guy with these strong eyebrows, it was like all the images I'd had of the boy behind the fence were replaced by this one instead. It was like I just completely forgot about the mental pictures prior to this afternoon, and randomly decided that this guy was exactly the way I had imagined the boy behind the fence in my father's story.

The tall one walked closer towards the fence separating us, and asked, “You guys come from that all-girls high school?”

“Yeah, we do,” answered one of my friends.

My other friend, who had a voice as soft as clouds during summer, asked, “What about you?”

“We come from that all-boys high school a few blocks away.”

He pointed at something behind him, supposedly towards the direction of where the school he was talking about was located, then noticed his three friends still standing at the back, so he motioned for them to step closer. I glanced back at the guy who reminded me of the boy behind the fence, and took a closer look at his face. Compared to his friends, he was the only one who didn't seem to have any emotions. The guy with the small eyes looked friendly and polite, the tall one maybe strong and athletic and outgoing. The one with eyes as big as the moon seemed fresh and youthful, and the one with that strong gaze gave off an honest feeling. Only he seemed indifferent and emotionless. As if he didn't have a soul to begin with, as if his heart were empty. He, out of all of them, was the hardest to judge.

“Are you all waiting for the bus?” the guy with the small eyes wanted to know.

“Yeah, and it should have arrived ten minutes ago,” answered my friend.

The elderly couple under the bus shelter suddenly joined our conversation when the woman said, “This bus cannot come late.”

And she was right. The usual route of our bus never included the big streets of our neighborhood where traffic jam was of frequency. In other words, it was impossible for our bus driver to arrive late.

“It's really strange,” commented her husband. “For years, we've been taking the same bus, and it was never once behind schedule.”

“Maybe the bus driver extended his break,” suggested my witty friend.

“No, no, no. I know him well enough. He wouldn't do that. He is a man of honesty.”

“Anyways,” began the tall guy, directing the topic back to his questions, “why are you guys so late to leave school? Shouldn't you all already be home?”

“We recently started taking after school classes.”

“How hardworking.”

“And you guys always play soccer here, when no one is around?” asked my witty friend, who had really nice and long hair.

“No, only on Tuesdays.”

“How hardworking.”

The bus finally arrived after another five minutes had passed by. We got on, not before biding goodbye to the guys, and sat at the very back. For the last time, I glanced at the guy with the strong eyebrows, wondering whether he even had a voice or a name, whether he possessed anything that could remotely make him human or alive, whether he could be angry or sad or happy at all, and considered to stop thinking about him for that matter. At the front of the bus, the elderly couple and the bus driver were discussing the reason for the delay, but I wasn't really listening. I just kept on remembering that guy's face and how he strangely and too accurately fit the image of the boy behind the fence.

The next Tuesday, we stood at the bus stop, shortly smiled at the elderly couple under the shelter, and almost immediately started talking to the high school boys, who were yet again playing soccer on the middle school's playground.

The tall guy said, “Let's introduce each other properly.”

And that was what we did. Through his simple suggestion, I found out that the small-eyed guy was Sunggyu, the eldest in the group. The tall one was Sungyeol who, in fact, wasn't that good at playing soccer after all. Dongwoo was the guy with the strong gaze, and when everyone was looking at the one who reminded me of the boy behind the fence, Sungyeol said, “This is Howon. But you might as well just call him Hoya.”

My witty friend noticed something odd, and asked, “Where is the other guy? The pretty one? Wasn't there five of you last time?”

“Sungjong didn't come out today,” answered Sunggyu with a light shrug.

Dongwoo placed the soccer ball in front of his feet, and said, “By the way, I've heard that there was a car accident last Tuesday.”

“Which was the reason why your bus arrived so late,” added Sungyeol.

Immediately, I remembered how, when I had come back home that afternoon, my father attacked me with his over-worrying questions, asking me whether I was fine, and telling me how glad he was that I hadn't been sitting in that bus during the accident, although, to get the facts right, our bus wasn't even involved in that mess, and it had happened before we even had the chance to get on. According to eye witnesses, a small truck hit a car near the intersection, but the car driver was only scarcely injured. It wasn't that big of an accident, to be honest, though it did affect the traffic around it.

“Yeah, my parents were so worried. They thought I was sitting in that bus,” said my witty friend.

I stopped paying much attention to the ongoing conversation since I couldn't really contribute to the topic anyways, and I was secretly glancing at Howon, who was surprisingly looking back. We held that gaze for a couple of more seconds, my eyes full of curiosity and his empty, before the bus arrived, and I had to get on, leaving him behind, leaving myself still wondering about the sound of his voice.

One of my friends caught a cold in the middle of summer, and my other friend skipped the after school classes in order to go on a date with Sungjong. I didn't exactly know what had happened between the two of them in a week's time, but it seemed as if my friend had asked Sungyeol for Sungjong's number while I was busy glancing at Howon last Tuesday, and they somehow ended up texting a lot, resulting in their hearts growing to give each other a special place.

That afternoon, it was raining. The rain drops fell on the fabric panel of my umbrella with a pitter-patter sound, as I ran all the way up to the bus stop, hoping to get the bus in time. I had just finished my after school classes when the teacher suddenly wanted to talk to me about the essay I had written. He said how beautifully I was able to portray the characters, and how my English had improved so much since the beginning of the classes. He talked a lot and praised me much, something people usually take pleasure in hearing, but all his kindness resulted in me not being able to catch the earlier bus, and so I had to wait for the next one.

I found out that the bus, instead of having a delay again, really had already left some while ago when the two seats under the bus shelter were unoccupied. The presence or, in this case, the absence of the elderly couple always indicated whether I had missed my chance to go home earlier or not. It was unfortunately more of the former.

I twirled my umbrella around, and glanced at the playground behind the fence, knowing too well that Howon and his friends weren't there to play soccer, for you couldn't even hear their loud and boyish voices disturbing an afternoon's silence. It was raining, after all. Who would go out to play soccer during rain? Who would leave their house just to get soaked? Though, for some reason, some people do exactly that, and Howon was one of them.

He stood a few meters in front of the goal, the hood of his thin rain jacket over his head, his hair protected from the pouring rain, and he passed the ball between his feet with ease, as if he had mastered the magic of passing a ball between your feet since the beginning of everything. His gaze was fixed on the ground, eyes quite serious. Then he looked up, measuring the distance between him and the goal, before he noticed me staring at him, and he stared back.

So there we were, under the rain, looking at each other with almost no mutual understanding, and I wondered just how I would get close to the guy I was curious about and how his voice really sounded like and why he reminded me so much of the boy behind the fence and whether it was even possible to have imagined being close with someone before actually meeting them, but all of that didn't really matter at that moment because Howon himself picked up the ball and approached me.

He said, “You missed the bus, huh.” And I just decided that this was the way I had imagined how the voice of the boy behind the fence would sound like. With the same intonation, the same pronunciation and the same intensity of emotions.

“I did,” I answered, maybe not feeling too regretful after all.

“When will the next one arrive?”

“In about half an hour.”

“Then I shall entertain you for the time being.”

I gave him a strange look. “How?”

“I can do juggling.”

“How many times?”

“20 or more?”

“Show me.”

He nodded, placed the ball in front of his feet, and lifted it with a single movement. Then he kicked the ball up, and caught it with his other foot. He was wearing shorts that stopped above his knees, so you were able to see the muscles in his calves contracting whenever he kicked the ball. The curve dented into his skin with sharpness, almost too distinctly. Howon next threw the ball up in the air with his right foot, but this time with much more strength, and ended up maneuvering it towards the fence, hitting it with a dull sound. A few rain drops fell off the railings. The ball bounced back to the middle of the playground. My lips trembled a little, they were pressed together, and then I couldn't help it anymore, and started laughing.

“Ah, wait... This...” A light chuckle escaped him, and he moved his tongue around his mouth with slight embarrassment across his face. He wiped his right eyebrow with his index finger, then looked at me, and laughed. “I'm usually better at that.”

I stared at his laughing face for a long while, trying to figure out why he looked so beautiful and real when he laughed. He stood there, almost bending forward in order to hold his stomach, and he did that with so much joy that I felt my own heart squeezing, as if it were wrapped around by a thick cord which someone were tightening slightly. I realized just how real the person in front of me was, how he wasn't just the boy behind the fence, an invented character, or an idea, and how close I was to him right now, only the fence separating us. Howon was real, and not just some paper boy.

“You forgot to bring your umbrella?” I asked him after a while as we both stood in front of the fence, letting the rain be our companion.

He shook his head. “Ours is broken.”

“Well, a rain jacket can suffice, too.”

“It's convenient.”

“But why did you leave the house, anyways?” I asked him. “You did know it was going to rain, didn't you?”

“Yeah, but rain shouldn't stop me from playing soccer and doing what I love to do. Besides, I love the sound of rain drops falling on the concrete, and I live right around the corner.”

“I see.”

“How many minutes left until your bus arrives?”

“Maybe ten.” But I silently wished ten minutes meant an eternity.

He then said, “Give me your number,” and added a shy smile to that. He averted his eyes away from mine, and looked back a few moments later with slight hesitation.

“Okay,” I responded. I took my phone out of my bag, simultaneously balancing the umbrella in my other hand. There were three missed calls from my father. For now, I ignored them. I opened the contacts folder, and expectantly looked at Howon. He dictated me his number while I typed it in. Then I asked, “Your full name is?”

“Lee Howon. But just call me Hoya.” He gave me a boyish grin. “I feel closer to people who call me Hoya.”

He has a nickname, I thought to myself. And ideas don't have nicknames. Ideas are just there, abstract, unable to grasp with hands. Ideas are concepts and images, but they are not real. You can't touch them, you can't smell or taste them. You can't hear them. They are not visible to the eyes. An idea is just the abstract form of the real thing. But Hoya was real. He wasn't just an idea.

On the forth Tuesday, Hoya jogged towards us with skipping steps, leaving his friends in the middle of the soccer game, and he smiled at me. We had been texting a lot for the past days. It was apparent in the way he smiled, or in the way I smiled back, that something was going on between us. Just like how my friend and Sungjong had made their hearts grow in order to give the other person a special place, he and I made room for each other in our hearts, and we slowly started reaching the same page in the book.

With a nod of his head, he motioned for me to follow him, so I did. We both walked along the fence, but we didn't talk. We would just occasionally look at each other and smile. He would sometimes let his eyes curve into half moons, and then he would laugh at nothing in particular. He would glance at me when I wasn't looking his way, and he would chuckle when I caught him in doing so. He couldn't be more real than that.

We reached the door of the fence, and when he opened it, he also immediately wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into a tight hug. It was the first time we had any physical contact, and it was the first time my heart notably beat faster. His arms were around my neck, and mine were around his waist. Our hearts were next to each other, beating to the same rhythm. I couldn't really see it, but I knew he was smiling.

He said, “This feels so real right now.”

And I just hugged him tighter, realizing how true his words were.

We started dating a few weeks after that, and it happened quite naturally. I liked him, and he liked me, and we had already made room for each other in our hearts, and when a girl and a guy fall for each other, they are most likely going to share a romantic relationship. In the most natural course, we fell for the right person.

We dated for five months, and we dated during that time with all of our hearts. We shared our first kiss in the second week, and we held hands without any hesitation or doubts. We texted a lot or talked on the phone. We loved and cherished each other. We dated like any other couple, but we dated with realness.

Lying in his arms or snuggling close to his chest – everything felt real with him. The softness of his hair, the taste of his lips, the sound of his breathing. He just had to be there, and I wouldn't lose my grasp on reality. He just had to whisper my name over the speakers, and I would know he was there. He wasn't an idea, he was real.

One afternoon, before those five months ended in the blink of an eye, I lay next to Hoya on his bed, looking up at the ceiling, my cheek on his chest, and I listened to his heartbeat. He brushed his fingers through my hair, and occasionally kissed the top of my head. My phone on his nightstand started vibrating in short intervals. I picked it up, and looked at the screen.

My Witty Friend Who Was Dating Sungjong texted me: We haven't been able to hang out recently. Let's go shopping or something. The three of us.

I replied with: I'm sorry, but I can't right now. I'm at Hoya's place.

Then I just switched off my phone, and turned back to Hoya.

“Can you imagine waking up and not being able to move your whole body?” he asked me out of the blue, letting his hand rest on my head. “You can move your eyes, and you can see the ceiling, but you're unable to lift your arms or to curl your fingers.”

“What is this sudden question? You once felt like that?”

“No, but sometimes I have this dream.”

“What kind of dream?”

“In my dream, I wake up and the blanket covers my whole face. I can't breathe, the blanket makes it unable for me to gasp for air. I try to move my hands, I try to lift my arms so I can pull the blanket down, but I can't move a single muscle. And I just lie there, powerless, and then I wake up. I return to reality.”

I hugged his torso. “Sounds scary.”

“It is,” he said. “But there are scarier things out there. Loosing your important people, for instance. Or dying for real. I'm glad that mine was just a dream.”

We looked at each other for a while, then he reached down to kiss me. He embraced my lips with his, and he did this with great desire and indescribable passion. His thumbs caressed my cheeks, his hands cupped my face. He held me in his arms, and we kissed for the longest time. We just lay there, kissing, holding each other, loving each other, thinking about each other, and we couldn't help it. We both wanted something real, and when we kissed, we got closer to our desire. When we kissed, the world around us didn't only seem like a scenery on canvas passing by. When we kissed, we knew we were there. Because when we kissed, we felt the feelings in a more real reality. I loved him a lot. And I was lucky to be able to say he loved me back.

When we stopped moments later, and some while passed by, Hoya asked me, “Your father used to tell you stories, right?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Tell me one of them. I'm curious.”

“But they are quite boring,” I said.

“Doesn't matter. I want to listen to your voice.”

So I told him the short version of the story about the girl with the beautiful smile and the scarred boy behind the fence. “There's a nine-year-old girl, and there's a boy who is twelve. He lives behind the fence that is separating the two. A fence as high as a skyscraper reaching the clouds. And they don't know of each others' existence until the boy, one day, just decides to stray off from his village and he finds himself near the fence, a place that is forbidden to get close to. The village elders say outside the fence there are dangerous creatures, evil things, and once someone gets near there, they will disappear or get eaten. So most of the villagers don't even dare to approach that place. But the little boy isn't afraid. He finds the fence tranquil and calming, and he loves its silence.

“His people find out about his outing, and since the elders fear the villagers will start to doubt their degree of accuracy, regarding rules and traditions, they tell him to leave the village, they banish him. They say, 'Go, and get eaten by hungry wolves.' And they say this with so much anger and hate that the little boy really starts to believe he did something wrong. For the first time in his life, he is scared.

“The little boy has no other choice than to leave the village and he finds comfort in the fence's silence. It is dark. The sky is painted with stars and a moon as golden as the locks of his hair. He lies there, lonely, abandoned, and he feels his stomach grumbling for food. He is cold, he is hungry. He doesn't know when he can ever speak to someone again, when he can listen to a person's voice, when he can feel their warmth, and he suddenly misses his people, and he starts crying.

“That night, he falls asleep with an empty stomach and he dreams of his deceased mother. In his dream, she softly calls his name with her soothing voice, and she says, 'Son, I am going to send you an angel.' But when he wakes up and realizes it was just a dream, he starts crying again.

“The little boy spends two days living with loneliness until, on the third day, the girl appears. He thinks she is the evil thing that the village elders talked about, but she is too beautiful to be evil or to mean harm. She has big eyes and plump lips. Her hair fall over her shoulders, framing her face. The little boy believes she is the angel her mother talked about in his dream. So he asks her whether she has something to eat for him, and she nods and pulls an apple out of her little bag. She throws it over the tall fence, and he catches it on the other side with a smile. They naturally fall in love.”

I stopped and checked whether Hoya was still listening, and he surprisingly was. He seemed quite immersed in the story, his eyes focused on me, but I wasn't too keen to tell the whole story with details, so I skipped some parts.

“The only problem is, the tall fence is not letting them be together. They want to love each other. He wants to hold her in his arms, and she wants to embrace his body. They want to be together in the most natural sense, but the fence is too, too tall. They can't climb over it, for it is too tall. They can't dig a hole, they don't have the tools. They can't break it, since it is too strong.

“But the little boy doesn't want to give up. He loves her too much. He loves her with all of his heart, 'from the tips of his fingers to the nails of his toes, from the corners of his lips to the pupils of his eyes',” I said, quoting my father. “He loves her so much, he even gives up on the idea of his mother reappearing in his dreams.”

Hoya was still listening attentively, so I continued. “One night, the boy says to the girl, 'I have an idea, my love. I might know a way for us to meet and for us to be together.' And she asks, 'But how?' Then he says, 'I have never seen this fence at any other part of my village, and when the village elders say we are not allowed to get near it, they always point towards this direction.' But she doesn't really understand what he is trying to tell her, so he clarifies it. 'This fence might not only be surrounding my village. There is a high possibility that it is built around the equator, meaning you might live near the North Pole and I might live near the South Pole. And if that is the case, don't you think chances are that somewhere out there there is a hole that someone has already made with suitable tools or maybe even a door in the fence? And if we find this place, can't we be together, then, for eternity?'

“The little girl, of course, likes the very idea of being with him forevermore, so they spend years and years walking along the fence, sometimes standing still to hold hands through the little gaps, sometimes staying to rest for a night, sometimes stopping to appease their hunger, and they never cease to give up on the hope of being together. They walk and walk, and they never quit loving each other. They go over mountains and rivers and even desserts and forests. And after many, many years, they finally find an opening in the fence.

“With her raspy voice, she asks, 'Can we be together for eternity now?'

“And he smiles at her, the wrinkles by his eyes deepening, and says, 'We will always be together.'

“Then he walks through the opening and embraces her with all the love that he has piled up through those many, many years, and they kiss, and until eternity they will never ever let go of each other again.”

I had heard this story three times in my life, but never from my own lips, and while I was telling the short version of it, I realized how different it sounded with my voice, how I could never tell the story with as much passion and conviction as my father, and how great he actually was at conveying emotions and feelings. I couldn't help admiring him for that.

Hoya looked at me in awe, and said, “That's a beautiful story.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, it's so beautiful.”

“But my father stole it.”

“What do you mean?”

I sat up, stretched my arms a bit, and looked down at him. “This story already exists in a book. It's called Angel At The Fence by Herman Rosenblat.”

“So your father just retold you the story?” asked Hoya, surprised.

“No, no. It isn't exactly the same story. The book only begins with a guy behind a fence and a girl who passes him an apple. The village in my father's story is in the book a concentration camp somewhere in Germany. The girl and the boy don't fall love with each other when they are still children, and they most likely won't walk along the fence to find an opening,” I said, fumbling with my hands, eyes cast on them. “My father just picked out the beginning and created his own story.”

“But how do you know?”

“I once found the book in his bookshelf.”

“Hm...”

“That's just the way my father is,” I told him. “He likes telling his own versions of the truth. He likes changing things to his own preference.”

“But that's not necessarily bad. Maybe he just likes giving it a new touch. You know, like, giving it personal emotions.”

“Probably.”

Hoya sat up straight to meet me at eye level. “But I really like his story. The idea of being together for eternity. It sounds awfully beautiful.”

“It is beautiful.”

“But it somehow has an underlying sadness in it, don't you think? They are right next to each other, with only the fence between them, but it feels like something is missing. Like they aren't together after all.”

“It's like greed.”

“It's like greed,” he repeated.

That night, I came home later than promised. My father was sitting in the living room, his legs crossed, his hands in his lap, gaze fixed on nothing particular. He didn't move nor flinch when I entered the room, and he didn't avert his eyes from that invisible spot to look at me. I greeted him, but he said nothing back. It was strange, the way he ignored me, the way he didn't react although I was his everything, and I knew something was wrong. Though, like every other time, I pretended not to know. I just walked straight to the kitchen, hoping he wouldn't unnecessarily pose questions.

But of course he did.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“At Hoya's place, like I told you.”

“Why didn't you answer your phone?”

“I turned it off,” I said, slightly getting annoyed at him.

“Why did you do such a thing?”

I decided to lie. “Because the battery was dead.”

He finally stood up to face me, his eyes reflecting strong emotions of anger and disappointment. He said, “Then you shouldn't have used up all the battery by texting that Hoya so much. I think you don't realize how much you've changed since you started dating him.”

“He is not that Hoya!” I cried out, irritated by my father's choice of words. “Stop being so overprotective. I already told you that I was at Hoya's place. Why would you want to call me?”

“You said you would come back by eight. Look at the clock, it's past nine.”

“Oh God, stop it. You are so obsessive over me.” My hands started trembling for no reason. I was almost shouting. “This sickens me so much. I feel so suffocated by you. You always call me, always text me, always want to know where I am and when I'm coming back. You want to know everything about me. Seriously where's my privacy there? You are so paranoid, thinking about the worst consequences. This is just so annoying. Just...really, just stop it.”

My father looked at me with meaningful eyes. “You are my daughter. It's my job to look after you.”

“But not to this extent, okay. You are exaggerating.”

“That's not for you to decide, Myungeun.”

“God, sometimes I just wished Mom were still alive, so you would stop bothering me.”

Suddenly he stiffened, and his eyes went blank. He looked at me with such sad emotions, it was like reading one of his stories from his face, minus the happy ending, plus a more evident sadness and suffering. The world around him, the living room, his favorite chair, the walls, the floor, everything suddenly stood still. It was as if the living room had just become an interior painting made by an unknown artist. It was as if the reality of the view in front of me were starting to crumble apart. In that moment, my father lost all colors of life in him.

I said, “Dad, I didn't mean it like that... Iㅡ”

“It's okay,” he responded, not letting me finish my sentence, as he looked down at the floor. Then, after a long silence, he added, “Dinner's on the table. You just need to heat it up.”

When he left the living room, and I stayed there, lost, broken, guilty, sad, with all these emotions mixing together, I looked over the dining table, and painfully remembered the time my father and I used to leave the dining room in order to sit on the couch so he could tell me one of his stories that I loved so much as a child, and then I almost started crying out of nowhere because the mixed rice was getting cold and it made me so sad to see the mixed rice being left alone like that. It looked so pitiful to me, so lonely. And I really started crying when Hoya hung up the phone...

Before I went to bed, he called me.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” I said back.

“Did you arrive safely?”

“Yes, I did.”

He sighed at the other end of the line. “I'm relieved.”

“Why?”

“My mom just came to my room after work and asked me whether I had called your already. And I asked her why I should have done this when you had just left not moments ago. Then she said because there was an accident near the intersection. And your bus was involved. But it turned out that it wasn't the bus you had taken. It was the one earlier. So while that accident was taking place, you were still with me. And now I've heard they somehow want to put a traffic light there. Because too many accidents have happened in such a short amount of time.” He paused, and I listened to the sound of his breathing. “I am calling to confirm your safety. And maybe to listen to your voice.”

“So there was an accident,” I repeated, as to let those words sink.

“Yeah.”

“Is anyone hurt?”

“No, fortunately, not.”

“Howon, do you love me?”

There was only the slightest hesitation. “I do.”

“I do, too.”

I really did.

We broke up a few weeks after that. I was at his place, sitting on his bed, and he looked at me, knowing exactly what was going to happen. We talked about our relationship for many, many hours and we reassured each other that it was neither one's fault. I started crying at some point and I told him that I liked him so much, that I really did, and he just hugged me, telling me it was okay. I apologized, although I didn't know exactly for what, and he just embraced me tighter, and said he hoped our paths would somehow cross in the future. But I knew it was never going to happen.

I stopped taking the after school classes on Tuesdays, and I also stopped taking the same bus. My home was a thirty minutes walk away from school, and I just decided I needed more time for myself to ponder about things. Sometimes I would feel lonely without him, and I would suddenly get all sad, so sad that it was almost unbearable. The scenery around me, when I walked home, would become blurry and unrecognizable, and I would sometimes loose my grasp on reality. But then I had my friends and most of all my father, and they somehow made everything seem a bit less painful.

There was one time after the break up that I took the bus on a Tuesday afternoon, and it was raining that day. I walked to the bus stop with a heart as fragile as glass, but when I arrived at the fence, Howon wasn't there. And neither were his friends or the elderly couple. I was alone, under the bus shelter, as the rain poured down with silence. It was like living in a world where only I existed, and that loneliness was beyond all bearing. It was like living in a different reality. There was no one in that place to suggest a solution for the sorrows in my soul, no one there to lead the way. And when I went back home that afternoon, I lay in my bed and cried for a long time, feeling powerless. I just stared at my room's ceiling and felt no desire to move anymore. My arms were limp, my legs were tired. And the worst of all I never woke up from that dream.

The break up, I realized months later, was maybe a decision that no one else besides us could understand. Maybe only we would know why I needed time, and for what I needed it, and why it had to end like this, why we couldn't stay together. Our mutual friends had probably wondered why we separated when we liked each other so much, but it was impossible for them to understand, even if we tried explaining.

After we broke up, Howon became a memory. The realness of his person slowly faded, and he simply turned into an idea of the past. He was just a mere story. The reality of his kisses, the warmth of his breath, or the touch of his skin, they cruelly slipped away from me, leaving me with an emptiness of being once in love with a person who used to bring me closer to the desire of having something real.

And then I understood why people, or my father, refrain from telling the sequel of a story. The truth is, there is no happy ending. Not in my father's stories or in books or in movies or in life. There never was and never will be. Because one of them will die sooner or later after all, or one of them will cease to love the other, or a new circumstance will come and get in between them. Loving someone eternally only happens in a fake reality. Stories, in their final form, are only beautiful because they are altered, changed, reshaped, in order to display their fake shine. An ending can never be beautiful, so people stop at the happiest moment to portray a fake happily ever after.

And in the end, Howon was just the boy behind the fence.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

First of all, this is for my favorite person in this Aff-universe. It's for my hyung, my bias, my baby, my love, beautiful, my stalker, my fellow Hoya-biased. This is for the person who celebrated her birthday four months ago, whom I had promised a one shot. (I am late, I know.) This is for the girl who is always in my heart.

And this is also for my bias in Infinite because, people, it's the 28^th March and this means it's his birthday. (I'm good at killing two birds with one stone, or as my favorite person used to said, “Killing one Gyu with two stones.”)

So this is for H and this is for Hoya. And I'm just waiting for the wedding bells.

(PS: Don't ask me what's the connection between the title and the story!

And yes, the book Angel At The Fence does exist. And the story is a hoax. People thought it was based on truth, but it wasn't.

And I love my readers. And I have no idea how suddenly, recently, people started subscribing to this here.)