“Hey, June, I’m sorry.”

A gentle wind swept past us, carrying the smell of a familiar takeaway place. We crossed the road, and the cars continued moving along.

The sky was darker, the cloud cover thicker than before, the moon invisible, and the light that shined from the city was far more attractive than it was during the day. Light that came from the cars, the buildings, shops, houses and streetlights—as if merged together to create a beautiful urban set. Like a brightly lit candle in the middle of a dark room.

“For what?”

“For calling you this late.”

I scoffed. “It’s alright.”

“I really am sorry.” Dahyun continued. 

“I know already.”

Dahyun narrowed her eyes and smiled, tiny wrinkles appearing around her eyes. “You’re really interesting, you know? After all these years, you still talk like the first time we met.”

“I wonder.”

“I wonder,” she imitated. “The way you talk is so polite—so distant. You still haven’t dropped the honorifics, too. Are you still uncomfortable with us? Or perhaps only with me?”

“It’s just how I talk.”

She smiled and joked, “I hope you’re telling the truth.”

. . .                

I should mention a few things about myself. Things that only a few people know.

I’ll begin by saying that I was fifteen when I left my hometown.

It was at that time of life when most people first made contact with what their future was going to look like. That beautiful age where many people experienced their first love, first job, first crush, first cigarette. It was a popular age for firsts.

In my case however, I spent most of that year in rehabilitation after an accident. Though everything seems like a blur to me now, as a teenager, I often reminisced about what I lost in that accident. My parents explained that I lost my brother that day. And I know that the idea of losing a brother was terrible, but when those words came out of their mouths, I thought of nothing. Blank. It left me confused for quite some time with nothing but a resounding, “I had a brother?” inside my mind.

From that accident, all I knew—all I could ever remember—was that I was robbed a year of my adolescence. Nothing more. Nothing less. That was how far my memory went.

That was it.

And as you can guess, my parents were dead disappointed with my reaction. The fifteen year old me, battling with self-esteem issues and going through an important phase in life, had almost naturally assumed that what they felt was something deeper than disappointment. Maybe they got hurt whenever they saw me. Maybe inside they told themselves, “They should have taken this one instead.”

And maybe I spent too much time wondering what my brother was like. Who was Jinhwan? What made him the favourite child? And just how much had he meant to my old self that I completely erased his existence from my memory?

Afterwards, many people visited our home, clustering inside the living room with bouquets of flowers, telling our family that they were sorry. We were happy with that. But still, there was nothing they could do to fix what had happened. Not even a bouquet of flowers could have saved my mother from crying herself to sleep every night.

The out-turn of all this is that when I was young, only fifteen, I began to draw an invisible line between myself and my parents. And soon enough, boundaries between me and other people started to appear as well. Like a bad habit. No matter who I was dealing with, I maintained a set distance, carefully observing the person’s attitude so that they wouldn’t get any closer.

 “A fresh start would be nice, don’t you think so, Junhoe?”

“I wonder.”

With a heavy heart, our family moved to Seoul just before I turned sixteen. I left that town for good, and the name Goo Junhoe along with it. I would no longer be the pitiful Goo Junhoe who lost his brother. I would no longer be the boy who couldn’t even remember that person.

I would be June.

Just June.

After we moved, I studied in a public high school in the suburbs of Seoul. Being the only person a year older than everybody else, it was hard for me to fit in, and it was only by pure chance that had brought me together with my friends.

Three boys and one girl. Jung Chanwoo and a girl named Chou Tzuyu, who were both in the same class as me, and two boys named Kim Hanbin and Kim Jiwon, who were in the grade above us. To sum it up in a nutshell, Tzuyu, Chanwoo and I were put on the same after school cleaning duties, and after the small talks, the “What kind of music do you listen to” or the “Do you have a girlfriend?” questions, naturally (or gradually) they began including me in their close-knit group, introducing me to Jiwon and Hanbin.

“So you transferred here because your father got a job in Seoul?” Tzuyu asked.

“That’s right.”

“What made you miss a year of school, then?” Chanwoo chimed in.

“I got into a car accident and had to stay in the hospital for a while. My legs wouldn’t move for about a month.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry. Nothing tragic happened,” I lied. “My legs are fine now.”

“June,” he said. “Are you free this weekend?”

“Sure.”

And so as simple and innocent as that, ultimately I became a part of their circle.

Chanwoo was the one with the best grades. He was warm and genuine to people, which is why I never questioned his popularity within the school, or why plenty of girls would turn red just speaking to him. But as often is the case for tall people, others often mistook his age—treating him older than he really was. In the group, I suppose, he was the gentle giant.

Tzuyu was tall and slim. Most people who passed her on the street would turn around for a second look, but she seemed to find her beauty embarrassing. She was born in Taiwan, and her Korean wasn’t yet perfect. But except from her beauty, she had other charms, too. She was the best listener out of all of us. Sure, she preferred to stay in the background, but she offered good advice when we really needed it.

Hanbin and Jiwon, on the other hand, were both impressively built, with wide shoulders and rigid chests. Jiwon was the captain of the school’s basketball team, while Hanbin was the pitcher of the baseball team. They were the closest people to my age, but I hardly knew much about the two of them. All I could really say is that Jiwon’s humour was his greatest virtue in the group, his presence was something you’d notice first, and he was the kind of guy that was always there. Whenever you needed somebody, he was there to listen. In a way, he kind of played the role of an older brother to all of us.

On the contrary, Hanbin was the most serious one. He barely smiled and usually kept to himself. His only passions were baseball and music, and his face would light up as soon as one of the subjects were mentioned. But that expression would be gone in a second.

“He wasn’t always like that,” Jiwon told me one time. “Not until Hayi left him.”

“Hayi?”

“I’ll save this talk for next time, June. You should head back.”

And that was that.

For a time, we remained as a happy five, but it was only a month later that I realized we were a six all along.

. . .

The second I saw Kim Dahyun, I thought, Oh . Trouble.

She was twenty minutes late to homeroom, and everyone stared at her like she was some sort of alien. Long, brown hair with pink highlights. An expression on her face that yelled, “Notice me. I’m here!”

Her cheeks were chubby, a little wide, her nose on the small side. Apart from her unusual pink highlights, she didn't have the kind of looks that immediately attracted attraction like Tzuyu. Her beauty wasn’t something that made people stop in the streets to catch another glimpse, instead it was something which grew over time.

We lived in the same subdivision, her home just a few houses down the road from mine, and so every day we walked to school together. During the short ten minute walk, she’d tell me all sorts of things. She could be sarcastic while saying those things, but she had a unique, refreshing sense of humour. Anyone who talked to her took an immediate liking to her. She was eager, charming and curious. She had an expressive face and a great sense of humour. She was short, and even in a bad mood she talked like she was happy. She was short tempered, too, her grades were pretty bad and she cried easily. Still, she had something that drew people to her. Even I couldn’t identify what that something was. But it was there, always there, like an invisible mark inside her eyes.

I might as well go right ahead and say it. I was in love with Kim Dahyun. From the moment she shook my hands and said my name, I was attracted to her. For a long time she was the only thing I could think about. I tried to tell her how I felt, but somehow the right time and the right words wouldn’t connect. The invisible boundary was still there. I thought, maybe it was for the best. If I had told her my feelings, maybe she would have just laughed at me.

I already knew for a fact that she was in love with someone else.

And so I decided I’d leave it at that. 

. . .

tian mi mi // just because i really love this version of the song

i need to get into writing as much as possible again because college is starting in less than 20 days :-( also why are first chapters so hard to write omg.
p.s. please tell me about any grammar or spelling mistakes. i have no energy to proofread tonight