TItle: Symptoms

Prompt: The best place in the world is in the arms of someone who will not only hold you at your best, but will pick you up and hug you tight at your weakest moment. 

“This is so like her.” Jiho grinned from ear to ear as we all looked up at the tall, imposing building. We had traveled five hours in a cramped car from our small town to the sleepless city. All to visit our friend, the girl who made it, the girl who got out. “I can’t wait to see her!” 

Chanshik smiled, ruffling his over excited girlfriend’s hair as she made a sprint towards the apartment complex. Once outside of the glass doors, she dialed the apartment number we were given, and we waited as the phone rang. 

“Hello?” A voice I hadn’t heard in over a year asked, even though I was positive she had spent the last hour expecting us. 

“Open the door, freak!” Jiho yelled into the receiver, bouncing more rapidly with each second. She was the most excited out of all of us to go on this trip. We were finally seeing her best friend, after all. 

The ride up the elevator was just as exciting for Jiho, but then again, everything was. As endearing as it was, it was also embarrassing, to have people get on the elevator and automatically know that we weren’t from around here. Not just from our accents, but from her mannerisms. I guess it was true that everyone in the city was just colder than everyone else. We finally made it to the 10th floor, where she was already waiting for us with a bright smile. 

“Yeonju!” Jiho ran towards her, taking her in a huge embrace. Chanshik followed, with a much less enthusiastic response, but still much more enthusiastic than mine would be. I wasn’t sure whether it was appropriate to hug the girl that broke my heart, the girl I had been practically obsessed with for so long. 

“Are you just gonna stand there, Sunwoo?” She called to me, softly. She stood with her arms opened widely waiting for me, and a million dollar smile plastered on her face. I knew better, though. I saw it in her eyes. She was happy to see us, but even momentary happiness couldn’t cover up the time of sadness I knew Yeonju felt. 

I still walked to her, reluctantly almost, and gave her a tight hug. She whispered an almost inaudible “I miss you” into my ear, and I pretended like I couldn’t hear her, for the sake of my pride. 

My relationship with Yeonju was odd, to say the least. Later, in my time away from her, I realized that “manipulative” was a much better word to describe her. Everyone knew I was practically in love with her from the moment I saw her; we were 16. Except her, of course. But maybe she acted like she knew nothing about it because it would be easier for her to push me around if I thought she might’ve liked me too. We never established a relationship, even though she was my first everything. I remember when she kissed me, I was ecstatic, thinking that the girl of my dreams was finally mine. It wasn’t the case, she acted like nothing happened. She tossed me around and used me for assignments, rides, even dinners every so often, just for her to casually “forget” every connection we seemed to have. But there I was, still in love with her. I thought that maybe after a year of no contact with her, I would’ve gotten over my silly, adolescent infatuation, but when Chanshik brought up that she had asked if I was tagging along with them to the city, the same feelings returned. And with the thought of her came the same gut wrenching sadness she always caused. I was attached to her, I was sure that I always would be. 

Chanshik cleared his throat, probably thinking he was being funny. Yeonju pulled away with a smile, ushering us all in. 

“I can’t believe this!” Jiho bounced around in her seat, as we sat on three chairs placed in front of her countertop. Her apartment was so small, she didn’t even have a table. The kitchen was cramped, openly connected to the equally cramped living room. And while one could call her decorative style minimalist, I knew her desire for extravagance would not be pushed aside anywhere, so I concluded that she could only afford so much. Jiho paid no attention to it, she was still gushing at the view of the city Yeonju lucked out with. 

Their conversations got drowned out in my mind, as I looked at everything in the room enough times to have it memorized, down to the angle of the crooked artworks lazily hung. I tried my best to look everywhere but Yeonju, but it was impossible. The magnetism in her gaze was too much not to notice. She’d glance at me, and I was forced to glance back. In terms of Yeonju, one glance was enough to determine what she was thinking, feeling. It made me terribly sad. 

I remember the first time I realized that Yeonju was ill. It was long after she was gone, long after I had decided to get her out of my memory, or at least, it felt long. I took an abnormal psychology course at college, along with tons of familiar faces. Town was like that; you knew all of the same people for your whole life, it was more than likely that even college would feel like a traditional high school environment. We were discussing depression, the warning signs of someone suicidal. The entire lecture, I couldn’t get my mind off of Yeonju. Every warning sign added to the list only succeeded in making the blurred image of her stored away in my head become more defined. 

Is the person distracted or withdrawn?

Yeonju was good at acting. When she was surrounded by people, she knew to smile, to laugh, even to raise her eyebrows in interest at a story I knew she di