Chapter 9 : When He Disappeared.

It’s been over three years since Jong Suk hyung disappeared. Since then a lot of things have changed. I just graduated high school and I have entered S university. No one would have guessed that the trouble maker Kim Yoo Jin would be able to get into a university let alone S university. But as fate had it, I’ve somehow, by sheer luck, passed the entrance exam and I’m starting my freshman year next month.

I still wonder if things would be different today if Jong Suk hyung hadn’t left that day…Will our parents have dissolved any thoughts about the engagement…Will they perhaps have accepted Jong Suk hyung as my brother’s lover? Will my brother be different from who he is now? Will he have perhaps runaway with Jong Suk hyung if our families opposed them?

I still wonder these kinds of things when I see my once lively brother’s soulless body stumble across the living room.

Although I feel the urge to strangle Jong Suk hyung to death, I don’t hate him. I guess it’s just that I miss him too much…I have never hated him…not even when he left us all leaving only a single letter addressed to my brother.

I still remember that day; my brother and I had just gotten home from school and there was a letter addressed to my brother. It had come in the post that morning. Jong Suk hyung had left home to visit his aunt in Busan for few days at that time. I had thought that it was strange he wanted to visit her all of a sudden, but no one else seemed to suspect anything; not even my stupid brother. I peered at the letter when my brother sat down on our living room sofa and opened it curiously. He started reading it and I also followed his eyes. The letter said:

Dear Woo Bin-ah,

When you receive this letter I may not be by your side. For that I apologise. But I think you will have a brighter life if I’m not there. I know that you love me and for that I am grateful. I had started falling in love with you in middle school…no perhaps it was since the first day I met you at our elementary school. At that time I thought it was our friendship…I believed, that I loved you because you were my most precious friend, the only person I wanted in my life. But I realised, when girls started chasing you, when they started getting closer to you, that I hated it, that I wanted you for myself. That’s when I realised; all along I had loved you.

I thought that love would never be returned. But when you gave me that ring and kissed me like a sweet lover, I knew I wasn’t alone in this love. I was grateful to you for being my first love, my first kiss and the first person to make love to me. You know that right? That you are my first in everything? Well now you know it.

And I know that I was your first in everything too. That’s why I’m even more thankful to you Woo Bin-ah…

But other than those first kisses and my body, and my useless love, there is nothing I can offer you Woo Bin-ah. I can’t marry you, I can’t bear your child and I can’t be by your side…because I was born as a guy. Sometimes I wonder, even though we are twins, why was I born a guy and not a girl…I think that is something I regretted the moment I fell in love with you. If I were like Jin-Ah, I would have the right to stay by your side…but I’m not and so I don’t have that right.

I don’t want to be the regret of your life. So I have decided to leave before that happens. The love we shared, the kisses we secretly stole, the momentary brushes of our fingers we shared behind our teachers and friends eyes, the sweet dates and the nights you climbed into my bedroom like some secret lover—well I guess you were one—I want those memories to stay as sweetly as they were. I don’t ever want you to regret those moments we shared together, not now and not in the future.

I’ve decided to leave you to Jin-Ah. You know that she has been in love with you right? I always felt a bit guilty when she looked at you with the eyes full of love and when I realised I had stolen the subject of her affection first. Perhaps if I wasn’t born in the first place, you might have fallen in love with Jin-Ah…perhaps if I was born into a different family somewhere far far away from you, then you would have fallen in love with her…sometimes when I’m alone, these kinds of thoughts invades me.

I believe you will eventually fall in love with her…perhaps because we both look alike, so you will be able to love her. You will be able to marry her, have children with her, have a beautiful family and perhaps someday even talk about our love with her like a sweet memory of a first love from your teen years. Just a memory that is left in your life. A memory that you would not regret of gaining or losing. I hope to become something like that…though I don’t know if I would have the right to become even a memory in your life….I will let you decide that.

Before I leave, lastly I want to say…live a happy life with Jin-Ah. She loves you and she will be a good wife for you. I don’t know if we will ever meet again, but if our fates ever do cross again, I want us to be friends…just friends.

And one more thing…though I never had the chance to tell this to you in person, I thought I should at least let you know it before I leave….

My Woo Bin-ah…I love you….

You are my first and last love.

Yours

Jong Sukie.

My brother cried after reading that letter; he started banging his chest like some crazy man, he started pulling his hair, running all over the house, crashing whatever was in sight, banging his head on whatever came in his sight, he cried like an idiot. I cried with him, because I could feel how much pain he was going through, because I knew how much he loved him, how much they loved each other. To my brother, losing Jong Suk hyung meant losing his soul, his heart, his life. Because that’s what Jong Suk hyung meant to him and I knew that better than anyone else because I watched them since our elementary school days.

My brother searched for him in every place he could think of. He went days without a single meal, weeks without a wink of sleep, months without a rest as he searched for Jong Suk hyung, but he didn’t even find a trace of him.

Why was Jong Suk hyung such an idiot? I don’t understand how he could even think that my stupid brother would have a brighter life without him…when the sun of his life is Jong Suk hyung himself. Even I knew that much, yet that idiot hyung didn’t know it. He had no idea what he meant for my brother. Now the shadows of darkness have completely swallowed my sweet brother. He no longer smiles and he no longer cries. That brightness in his eyes has long disappeared into an empty shadow that hollows to his core.

When I see him like this…I have the urge to strangle Jong Suk hyung to death…but I don’t hate him…because even until this day, he is the only person who can shine in my brother’s world once again and chase away the dark shadows that have swallowed my brother’s heart.  

That’s why I’m still waiting…for Jong Suk hyung to walk back into our lives—back to my brother’s life again.

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