Four Times Around The Sun

I come here every day for you.

You are always there with a book in your hands, fingers brushing against the corners of paper. On that wooden bench that remind me of the floorboard from my home back in Busan, a flimsy paperback matching your tender touch and serene face. You have a pair of beautiful, large eyes that dab your vision with a tinge of hazelnut brown. You have a button nose that you occasionally rub when the cheeky petals from the neighboring oak tree dribble past and tickle you. You have a pair of vermillion, heart-shaped lips that you purse every once in a while while you read.

I constantly sit on the bench opposite you where the view is, to any other park visitor, more lackluster as compared to yours. If they were to sit here at the correct time to see you with your crossed legs and tilted head, they would understand why I choose to sit here under the cherry blossom tree instead of opposite it. Sometimes, your glasses slip down your nose bridge and I wonder if the cherry blossoms fall to your stunning, unbeatable grace. Your hair is chocolate brown and your skin is sugar white. I want to know what kind of red your lips taste like.

It has been two months since I began coming to this park and occupying the bench opposite you. I had found you by accident, striding down the cobbled path with my headphones on. I still do not know your name.

Often, our eyes meet and I hurriedly fixate my gaze on the illegible words between my palms. In a bid attempt to act like I had not been staring, I look around the park and stretch my arms. When it is safe (your gorgeous, gorgeous eyes back to your novel), I return to staring at you.

I carry a different book every day in hopes one of the titles may incite your interest and you will come over to start a conversation. Perhaps so, because I am too flustered by you (too in love, maybe) to take the first step. This is even though I lay in bed and think of surprising you with a bouquet of dandelions, so gentle and tender like you, and I practise how to ask you out on a date. Then I call myself a fool and lower my expectations, reciting the request for you to take a stroll with me through the park. I envision your feet crackling the autumn leaves coating the pathway and hope it breaks the ice, leaving footsteps of our first conversation to return to.

The rustle of pages coincides with the bristle of leaves as you flip the pages, the caressing wind delicately waltzing past you. My eyes are focused on bewildering words, hoping to imitate the act of indulging in literature. Yet the only story I know of the past few months is of you, the boy at the park who quivers my heart without a single movement.

I look up to see you gone. My eyes go wide and I hastily search for you, when a presence materialises in my peripheral vision. I nearly leap out of my seat, in disbelief to see your beautiful face up close. Your lips are curled out into a docile smile. I want to kiss you.

"I noticed," your voice is like honey streaking down slender branches and my heart pounds so fast I irrationally question if you can hear it, "you've been on the same page for quite a while."

The anxiety leaks through my nerves and I pray I do not go red in the face from our proximity. You are so much more intoxicating near that I wonder how I had been contented sitting so far and admiring you.

I try to stammer out a reply but all that comes out hoarsely is a pathetic "oh" along with a clumsy flip of the page. Your lips look so pretty. I really want to kiss them.

You lean back into your seat, knees together and loose white dress shirt grazing the seat. "What's your book about?"

"I- um," you are sending me into overdrive. I swiftly skim through the words on the open pages before realising they are incomprehensible. I... have been reading it upside down for the past hour. How careless was I to go by custom and forget that I needed to pretend I was actually reading, even though my only intention was to gaze at you like a wishful boy under the starry empryean?

Before I can react, you lightly turn the book the right way, melting into an amused chuckle. Your profile against the lush green trees and baby blue sky is indescribable. I want to hear you laugh again.

"If it helps, I don't know what my book is about either," you say simply, patting the book in your lap.

"Huh?" I brashly return, such a foil to your peaceful nature and sophisticated words. You twiddle with the book in your hands and veer your eyes to latch on mine. The universe stops for that moment to encase it into its most magnificent phenomenons.

"I've had this book for a long time, but all I've been doing is rereading the same few pages over and over again."

Your lips move in such a mystifying way. I question you shyly with my eyes, though my mind paints the scenario of my arms around your waist and our mouths linked.

"That's because you've been distracting me." I abruptly lift my head to find you with a bashful simper and I think my heart has blown up into champagne-dipped confetti with your name on it.

You put out a small hand, lips still quirked enthrallingly. I fall helplessly in love with you once more.

"Hello. I'm Yoo Youngjae."