(teaching studio)

(seoyeon's workspace)

thathanagirl.blogspot.com

January 14th 2018 

I've never considered myself to be much of a romantic. I've never cared much for Valentine's Day, dinners at fancy restaurants and presents only a fraction of the size of packages they come in but a hundred times the cost. I don't see the appeal of grand romantic gestures, public declarations of love and carriage rides through parks in the snow. Shouldn't there be something romantic about every day you spend in love with somebody? 

I do believe, though - and maybe this makes me a hypocrite - in little magical moments. Tiny moments where you meet somebody's eye and think, "yes, this, right now, was meant to happen." It's fate, maybe, or luck, or a side effect of too much caffeine, but moments like that, I live for them. 

I had one of those moments today. I saw him again, my old friend. I suppose you knew I would, didn't you? But I didn't know. It's easier, I think, to think about our every meeting like it's our last. Then I won't be let down when it is. 

- S 

I wake up today, the sun shining brightly through the spaces in between my closed blinds, and realise that the rain is gone. I wiggle my toes back to life underneath my blankets and that is my first thought: the rain is gone. 

This is my second: Byun Baekhyun. 

I used to wake up every morning to Baekhyun behind my eyelids and underneath my fingernails. I made a deal with London: it let me love its neighbourhoods and its building arranged like squares of a patchwork quilt, and it let me love Byun Baekhyun, but when I left, it kept a part of me, and I knew I'd never be able to return and resume our relationship as it once was. I dream of London sometimes, of standing in the middle of Millennium Bridge pretending I'm flying above the Thames and before me, water that flows into the ocean. 

I climb out of bed and the memories follow me through my morning routine, whispering taunting things in my ear, does he regret you or does he regret not saying goodbye to you? and will you ever know? I tell myself I don't want to know, but the memories don't care. And I need them today. Today, I have to work on the book. 

Eight months ago, the first thing I moved into my new apartment was a box of things I never wanted to see again but couldn't bear to get rid of. I hid the box from myself on the highest shelf in the hall closet. I pushed it all the way to the back, and then put my box of high school yearbooks in front of it, as if their sheer heft could keep the memories from escaping. 

Today, I take the box down. I can feel the memories I've been trying to keep at bay crawling all over me like ants, a million tiny legs touching me all at once, an endless itch. I can't hide from the contents of the box any longer. 

And I need them. I need the memories. I know what I'll find in the box, matchbooks and receipts from every restaurant Baekhyun and I went to together, a business card from the hotel Yonghwa and I stayed at in Incheon, the ticket from the concert where I met Baekhyun. It was a Busker Busker show, that my roommate, Krystal, dragged me to. Krystal had had one too many to drink and was relying on me to support most of her weight, and I was worried about missing the last train. It wasn't my intention to trip over the curb and crash into Byun Baekhyun, only to be yanked backward a second later by his bodyguard. I apologised, dragged Krystal home, and thought that was the end of that. And it was until Baekhyun found me in a coffee shop the next week and looked at me like he already knew me. Like fate, he said. But I say it was mostly just luck. 

I pull down the heavy box of yearbooks, dropping it on the floor with a thud, and then I grab the edge of the memory box and drag it forward. It's coated with a layer of dust months thick, and it explodes into the air in a cloud when I lift it off the top. I take a deep breath and reach inside. 

The thing my hand touches is a teddy bear that Yonghwa gave me for our only Valentine's Day together. It still had the price tag on when he gave it to me. I ripped the tag off like it didn't mean anything like I didn't care that he bought me a last minute gift, but I still remember how hard I had to work to fake a smile when he gave it to me. 

I toss it aside and dig deeper. I don't really know what I'm looking for. I know this box doesn't contain answers to my questions. It can't tell me why it happened, why I fell so hard and it couldn't last. In the movies, it always lasts. In the books, too. I imagine my editor, Meiying, flipping to the last page of my manuscript with a sharp red-coated nail, only to see cartoon me leaving Heathrow alone, my suitcase filled with pieces of my heart. I know somehow that that's not what she wants. 

And that's not what I want either. I don't want to be the girl who hides memories of old loves from herself in the hall closet. I want to be whole on my own, okay alone. Taeson, my best friend, who's always been whole on her own and okay alone, is getting married. She called me last week, all the way from New York City after moving there a few years ago, practically a world away, to tell me. 

"He loves me like I'm the sun," she said, and I could hear it in her voice that she thinks the same of him. 

"That's amazing, Tae," I told her. "I'm so happy for you." As I said it, I remembered our road trip, the one we took just after I got back from London. We drove my car across the country and back and promised each other that we'd live like that forever if we could. We both knew back then that it was a lie, but I only really felt it when I booked my flight to New York City a few days ago. 

I find the Busker Busker ticket and slam the lid back on the box as if it's what I was looking for the whole time. I hold it tight in my hand for a second, feeling its bent corners, and then I slip it into the pocket of my jeans and go to the studio. 

I arrive before Minseo, which allows me the pleasure of unlocking the door, turning off the alarm, and turning on the lights. I loved doing this. It reminds me that the studio is mine, all mine, the results of years of hard work and a decade of dreaming. Minseo thought it would be nice to hang enlarged prints of some of my comics on the walls, but I didn't want that. Instead, I hang the drawings of my students. They remind me that I don't just draw for me. 

I draw for Hyejin, the 12-year-old in my Monday afternoon drawing class, who refuses to give up her art even though her hand shakes violently every time she holds a pencil. I draw for Changwoo, who took a figure drawing class a few months ago and now drops by one or two mornings a week to sit in the quiet of the empty studio and draw what he wants his kids to remember him when he's gone. 

And I draw for 17-year-old Kwon Mina, who entered high school thinking that drawing was silly, that it wouldn't get her into SKY, that it would never make her happy. She hid her drawings in the margins of math notes and the corners of history homework, and she never bought herself a sketchbook just because it was beautiful. I draw to prove to her, every single day, that this is what I'm meant to be doing. This is where I'm meant to be. 

In the back, I discard my bag on the coatrack and get to work. I spread kraft paper on the table and plot the book. I've been imagining its structure, its plot, in my head for weeks now, but I know I can't put it off any longer. It's time to lay it down on paper. It will have three acts, like a Shakespearean tragedy. You can't go wrong with a classic, my mom always says. 

Act one begins at my high school graduation. I see the first panel in my head: a bird's eye view of the event, a football field covered in a sea of graduation caps. You can tell which one is me because the cap is maroon among a sea of black, and when it comes flying into the air, you worry it's going to fly off the page and hit you. But it doesn't, because you turn the page just in time. And then you see me moving into my university dorm in London, a space with blank walls as of yet unsaturated by memory. All you see is the possibility. 

Flashback: a double-page spread of my childhood in an area of Gangnam. Gates and fenced rectangles, a dog waiting at the door every day after school. "I'm going to be a lawyer!" little me cries. "A doctor! An astronaut!" My mother, with less gray in her hair than she has now, smiles at me from the over the pages of a magazine next to my father sat on a sun chair. There is no tragedy here.

Back to college, where page by page, the walls of my dorm room become covered in my experiences. My first tequila shot, a bitter experience that ends with a kiss too many. My first C on a paper, the subsequent tears and then half an hour spent pacing the hallway outside the professor's office before I finally work up the courage to go inside. Taeson, the dark-haired, bright-eyed girl who lives across the hall, who I meet when she knocks on my door late one night, locked out of her own room and tipsy. I let her inside and I find out that she is also Korean. She takes one look at the drawings scattered across my desk and tells me I should be an artist. I don't believe her, but I never forget her words. 

Then my university boyfriend, for only a page or two, because the dent he made in my heart was easily buffed out. Kris, a drama major. I show our relationship on a stage, the two of us acting it out for all of our friends. Wild fights, screaming matches, each of us unsure how to handle the other's heart. We are too young to see beyond ourselves, too blinded by desire. The curtain closes just as the sophomore year ends, and then, come August, I pack my bags. 

In London, I am small, one in eight million. Over 300 languages are spoken, and I hear them everywhere, on the university campus, on the tube, in the supermarkets. My roommate is Krystal, blonde hair and blue eyes. I lay out our adventures together; the trip we take to the National Gallery, where I stand in the middle of every room and spin in slow circles, worried I will never be able to look at it all; and the Busker Busker concert, where I meet Baekhyun, where my world turns upside-down. 

"You'll probably never see him again," you see Krystal telling me. Reflected in her eyes, you see it all: Seoyeon and Baekhyun, forever a missed connection. He gets on the tube as I get off. I spot him across the street, but a bus crosses between us, and by the time it's gone, so is he. Our paths never quite cross. "What a tragic love story," Krystal says. 

But then you turn the page, and Seoyeon and Baekhyun do meet again, in a small cafe where I wait out a storm. You see my heart beat out of my chest when I see him. From there, you only get flashes, glimpses, like the ones in my memory. Our first date, an awkward evening at a too fancy restaurant. I am underdressed and squirm in my seat the whole time, but he holds my hand on the walk home anyway. Then our first kiss interrupted by Krystal arriving home. Greenwich at Christmas. Phoenix Gardens in all four seasons. 

My time in London flies by. You don't see all the details, but you feel it like I felt it. You feel London pulse with the heartbeats of a million lovers past, present, and future, and you see cartoon Seoyeon holding tight to the hand of the boy that she loves and joining them. You see her early cartoon, all of them of Baekhyun, his jaw, his nose, his square smile, the beauty spot just above his lip. You see her heart swell for him, a little bigger every day. 

And then you see Seoyeon's heartbreak. It happens on a Thursday morning, but you feel it coming. You see it hiding in the corners of the panels, where the paparazzi and the tabloids lurk. Upcoming tour for Byun Baekhyun, they say, and Kim Seoyeon to return to Seoul. The clock is running out, but Seoyeon ignores it, so you do too. Then Baekhyun leaves without saying goodbye. Cartoon Seoyeon wears sunglasses to hide her tears, but you see them anyway. Baekhyun leaves and London's sky fills with storm clouds. Seoyeon cries and cries and the barriers of the Thames threaten to burst. Seoyeon is breaking, and you can't help her. 

When you turn the page, it's blank, because I can't see the end of act three, the end of the book. Does it end with my return to Seoul, heartbroken and depressed? The months following, where I hid my memories away in a box and how I pieced my heart back together on a cross-country journey with my best friend? My first real drawing class, where I struggled for weeks to draw a self-portrait, afraid to look at myself in the mirror? Or with my college graduation, after which I moved back in with my parents, convinced I could make a living drawing? Or with Yonghwa, the breakup, the move to my own apartment? The opening of my studio? Or should it end with the drawing of the book itself? Here's me drawing this book, the one that you're reading, the thing that you're holding in your hand right now. Hey, I made that. 

"Seoyeon!" 

I jump, startled out of my memories by Minseo, leaning around the wall that separates the studio space from the teaching space. I look up at the clock and realise it's nearly noon. 

"Seoyeon!" she hisses again. "There's somebody here to see you." 

I raise an eyebrow and lift my charcoal-covered palms so that she can see them. Minseo rarely interrupts me while I'm drawing out of respect for my artistic process. I tried to tell her once that I don't really have one of those - I can draw almost anywhere, in almost any condition - but she didn't listen. 

"This one's important," Minseo says, giving me a pointed look before disappearing. I turn back to my story map, scribbling the date in the corner, and then I reach for a towel to wipe my hands. 

As I cross the room toward the teaching space, I hear Minseo's voice growing louder and louder with every step I take. She's talking incessantly to the visitor, and I hope for a second that she'll scare them off before I reach them. Now that I've realised how late it is, I want lunch, not small talk. 

"Sorry if she's rude," Minseo says loudly enough that she must know that I can hear her. "She doesn't usually see anyone in the mornings, but I'm sure she'll make an exception for you." 

I come around the corner ready to tell her off for this preamble, for making me sound like a moody artist type, and then I see Byun Baekhyun. My breath catches in my throat when I see him, standing beside the reception desk, flicking one of my business cards between his thumb and forefinger. It looks impossibly small in his hand. He looks impossibly huge in my studio, lit like a work of art by the fluorescents. 

When he looks at me, a tentative smile spreads across his face, tentative because he knows he shouldn't be here, tentative because he's hoping I won't mind anyway. 

"You know Byun Baekhyun?" Minseo will ask me later, her eyes wide. 

"I used to," I will say, dark and mysterious, and Minseo will imagine Baekhyun as a ghost of my past, come to my present to haunt me.

Now, Baekhyun looks at me like he knew in the past and he knows me in the present, and he wants to know me in the future, too. I don't know how to look at him. Do I want to know him again? Will he break me once more? Will I ever be able to look at him like I didn't once love him more than anything else in the whole world? 

"Yeon," he says, wincing when the nickname slips out. "Sorry, I should have called first-" 

"You don't have my number." Didn't. I watch him wrinkle my business card in his hand and there are a million unsaid things in the back of my throat and I think they've all been waiting for this moment. "How did you find me?" 

He shrugs. Lifts a hand to push his hair back. I notice his sunglasses tucked in the front of his white shirt. This is not your Byun Baekhyun. "Googled you." 

I don't know what to say, and there it is the awkwardness. The it's been three, nearly four, years awkwardness. The you left without saying goodbye awkwardness. And there's Minseo, watching it spread between us until it's hard to see anything clearly. 

"Minseo," I say, turning my eyes on her, "would you mind mixing some paints for this afternoon's class?" 

Minseo probably finished mixing the paints an hour ago, like she does every day, but she jumps to her feet obediently and gives a quick nod before heading into the back. Then I look at Baekhyun again. He's looking around the room, taking in the artwork hanging on the walls, the stools and easels scattered around the room. I watch him look, and I wonder what he's thinking. Is this where he saw me ending up, all those years ago? Or am I am entirely different Kim Seoyeon then the one he imagined? 

When he turns his gaze back to me, there's a smile on his face that I don't know how to decode. "This is amazing, Yeon. Really." 

There's the nickname again, and, paired with the compliment, it makes me blush. I look away from Baekhyun, feeling my cheeks grow warm. Baekhyun used to find delight in making me blush. I did blush oh-so-easily back then, but I thought I grew out of it. "Thank you." 

Neither of us says anything else, and I feel the awkwardness return, but I look at Baekhyun and wait. He came here, and I know he won't leave until he's said what he wants to say. 

"So, listen," Baekhyun finally says, shifting his weight back and forth. He his head at me and I see the boy I used to know peeking out from behind this Baekhyun's shield. "Do you want to get some lunch?" 

This surprises me. Everything about this Baekhyun surprises me. And yet it all makes sense, as if, oh, of course, this is who Baekhyun became three, four, years after I knew him. It's only natural. 

So I let myself be surprising too. "Okay, sure," I say. "Let me go wash my hands." 

There's a sink at the side of the room, and I don't look over my shoulder at Baekhyun while I scrub my hands. I wonder if he's watching me, tracing the visible lines of my spine through my cotton blouse and remembering the way I used to squirm under his touch and his eye, self-conscious about my visible bones. So fragile, so delicate, everything I didn't want to be. 

"Bones are stronger than they seem," Baekhyun used to tell me. "Stronger than steel." 

I never felt like I was made of steel, I still don't. I am made of bones and flesh and blood, all held together by a healed heart. I feel my heart beating like a time bomb in my chest as I duck into the back room to grab my bag. It's warning me, this man is dangerous, this man is pure and dangerous. 

When I return with my bag held to my chest like a shield, Baekhyun's leaning against the reception desk, reading the class schedule, and I look at him and forget my heart's warnings. 

"You teach all these classes?" Baekhyun asks, straightening up and leading the way to the door. 

I shake my head. "Most of them. Minseo teaches one on Tuesdays, and a lady called Jihyun teaches figure drawing on Monday and Wednesday evenings." 

Baekhyun nods. "That's amazing, Yeon. All of this is so amazing." 

"You're one to talk about amazing," I say to distract from the way I'm blushing again. If things were different, I might bump him with my shoulder, a gentle, teasing push, but as things are, I look at the ground, watching out feet fall into step. I picture the cobblestone of Covent Garden under our shoes instead of the asphalt of Seoul. 

He laughs, but it's forced, and shrugs. "Yeah, I guess. It's all ... yeah. I've got some time off right now, before our next tour." 

"Is that why you're in Seoul?" I realise now that he never answered me when I asked him this question in the cafe. I didn't want to know the answer then, but I do now. I watch Baekhyun's shadow overtake mine on the sidewalk and I realise, that I want to know everything that's happened to him in the three, four years since we last saw each other. 

"Yeah, as well as visiting family." He pauses, pointing at a restaurant just ahead of us. "Have you been there before?" 

I shake my head. 

Baekhyun grins before walking up to the door, me trailing behind him, and then opening the door for me. Five minutes later, we're seated in the back of the restaurant, away from the windows. I notice Baekhyun doesn't have a bodyguard tailing him like he often used to, but he glances over his shoulder frequently enough to make up for the absence of a shadow. The waitress brings us water, takes orders, and disappears, leaving Baekhyun and me without menus to hide behind. 

"So-" 

"I'm-" 

Baekhyun laughs and shakes his head. I feel myself blushing again. I don't remember things ever being this awkward with Baekhyun before, but now we have a past. 

"No, you go ahead," he says. 

"I'm working on a book," I tell him. His eyes light up, so I elaborate. "A graphic memoir, kind of." 

"That's brilliant, Seoyeon," he says. It sounds like he means it. 

You're in it, I think. It's a memoir of you. You're in all of my memories. 

Then he asks me about the studio, about how my career's ended up where it has, and I manage to talk until the food arrives. I want to ask Baekhyun about his career too, but I don't. Instead, I ask him about his family, his friends, his life back in London. He grins when he talks about all the people he loves, and this is the Baekhyun I remember, the one with the big heart, never too busy to drop everything to help out a friend. 

The conversation grows less awkward, but all the while I feel all the things we haven't said brewing between us like an open wound. I think of Baekhyun's older brother, married to a doctor, Baekhyun tells me, and I wonder at all the things that must have changed for him in four years. So many things have changed for me, too, but, as Baekhyun talks, I realise all of the emotions from years ago are still here. By the time the waitress clears our empty plates, I feel ready to burst. I've spent years with these feeling festering in my chest, frustration and anger and sadness and regret, and I open my mouth to spew them out onto the table, but Baekhyun speaks first. 

"I'm sorry I left without-" 

I cut him off, unable to bear his words. "I'm sorry I let you go without saying goodbye." 

The apology hangs in the air between us and I realise I was never mad at Baekhyun like I thought I was. I've been angry at myself for being too afraid to say what needed to be said. Now that I've said it, the weight of the regret lifts off of my heart. I take a deep breath and look at Baekhyun. I know he's not done yet. 

"It wasn't fair to you," he says, shaking his head, his voice low. "It wasn't fair for me to start something with you when I knew I was leaving-" 

"I was leaving too, Baekhyun," I point out. "And we had nine months together. That's a long time." 

"Still, I shouldn't have-" 

I shake my head. "Stop, Baekhyun. Whatever you're apologising for, you don't need to." 

He raises an eyebrow, and I can't tell if he's annoyed that I haven't let him finish a sentence or if he's about to laugh at me. "You don't need to apologise either." 

"Too late, I already did." 

Now he does laugh, big and loud enough to bring a smile to my face. "I would have too if you'd let me finish a sentence." 

I grin at him and I hope that he knows that the only bit our time together that I regret is the way that it ended. He looks at me and I think that he feels the same way. Baekhyun looks at me and I think about how strange it is that he's reappeared in my life now when I'd finally convinced myself that I was okay alone. I didn't love Yonghwa, but I know it wasn't because I can never love again. Baekhyun didn't ruin me. I'm okay without him. 

But here he is, right in front of me, and I let myself imagine, just for a second, a future where I'm not alone. If this were any other love, I'd think that this would be the end of our story. We'd laugh awkwardly, finish our lunch, and go our separate ways. Except Baekhyun is looking at me like I'm a question he doesn't have the answer to yet, and I know things aren't so simple for us. 

When the waitress brings the check, Baekhyun grabs for it instantly, refusing to let me pay for my meal. 

"This is what old friends do," he says, but I know that we'll never be as simple as 'old friends.' He walks me back to the studio, our shadows side by side. Outside the building, we stop and I look at Baekhyun, his face backlit by the sun, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. I itch to draw him, to draw this moment so I can keep it forever. 

"I'll call you," he says as I brush by him, smelling his cologne, and then I'm inside and the door closes before I can process what he said. 

I don't have time to think about it because Minseo is there, jumping up from the reception desk with wide eyes, shouting, "Did you just go on a date with Byun Baekhyun?!" 

"I don't think so," I say, and then I duck into the back to get ready for my first class before she has a chance to say another word. I remember the Busker Busker ticket tucked into my back pocket, and I leave it there.