“You’re older than your brother now,” father remarked while my family ate breakfast together. Mom made seaweed soup, grilled ribs and noodle salad—the traditional birthday menu in our family. “Your brother used to hate your mother’s seaweed soup so whenever it was his birthday, he wouldn’t touch it at all.”

I chuckled. “I think I remember.”

“You do?” he asked, a puzzled look on his face. Mom had the same look on hers, too.

I looked at my food, paused for a couple of seconds and finally explained. “Ever since we visited home, small details of him started coming back to me. I didn’t want to tell you guys in case I got your hopes up—but yeah, I think I’m remembering again.”

“Oh, yeah?” my father said, a warm smile embracing his lips.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it, son.”

“Well, I remember his scent, he smells like that one soap that mom used to buy consistently when we still lived in Tongyeong. His voice is coming back to me, too, I think. Oh, and his jet-black motorbike. I remember this one time we went around town on that thing. I didn’t want to hug him, so instead I clutched onto the back of his t-shirt as tightly as I could and he screamed at me and threatened to crash the bike if I ripped his shirt.”

Dad started laughing and my mother, on the other hand, looked like she was about to tear up. I stopped right there, because I was afraid I’d make mom cry.

“When you remember those things, does it hurt you?”

I stayed quiet for a while and thought about it. Finally, I explained, “It makes me happy when memories come back—it almost feels like I’m solving math equations. It’s exciting. I think that it only hurts when I think about his death.”

Both of my parents stayed quiet.

“Listen, mom and dad,” I started. “I know that my brother committed suicide. I know all about that. Please don’t say sorry for lying. I don’t want to hear that. I just...I just want to know why. I’ve been trying to figure it out for months; why Jinhwan killed himself, how I lost my memories even though there was no accident, why you guys tried to hide the truth from me—but nothing. Nothing makes sense.”

My mother hugged me and started to cry. I wondered how this breakfast came to be so stern.

“At first we couldn’t figure it out either,” my father began. “You both fell off the same bridge at the same time. Your brother left a goodbye letter, but you…nothing. The people investigating the case said that you tried saving him, they said that you jumped after your brother. Falling from a bridge that high should’ve killed you—like it killed Jinhwan—but there was one difference between you and him: you wanted to live.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“You loved him a lot, Junhoe,” he answered. “The kind of love that even I never had for my own brothers. You looked up to him more than you looked up to me and your mother. Seeing that person kill themselves would’ve driven you insane. That trauma was far too large, that’s why even your own mind erased his existence. It was heart breaking having to lie to you, but we had to protect you. We failed protecting your brother—we couldn’t afford to lose you as well.”

I hugged my mother back, held her hands and told them both that I was truly thankful for what they’d done for me. I told them about the letters and Yunhyeong, then I showed them the last letter he wrote to Yunhyeong, and in return, my mother showed me the letter my brother left for me.

It didn’t feel right reading it when many memories were still blank, so I told my mom to keep it stored safely for me. Later in life, when I finally and abundantly remember everything about my older brother, I’d come back for that same letter.

. . .

“Surprise!” Hanbin whispered as he then, obviously tipsy, linked arms with me. Dahyun’s house was plenty packed with people. People playing beer pong in her kitchen, a few others taking shots in her living room, music so loud I had to wonder if my parents across the road could hear it. Our entire class was there and a lot of Jiwon and Hanbin’s friends, too. It was that kind of party that we’d only seen on American movies, the kind I never thought I’d ever experience in my teenage years.

I laughed. “What the hell?”

“Surprised?”

“Nah, I knew you guys were up to something. Just not anything like this.”

“You like it?”

I nodded. A few classmates played games, so I sat there listening and drinking beer. I never really cared to join in, playing drunken games and making myself look like a fool didn’t really appeal to me, and I had enough fun watching everyone else. Dahyun and Jiwon, however, were the two opposites of me. They joined in whatever the game was and almost always won it. Plenty of my classmates were entertained watching the two of them. The two were like a comedy duo.

Throughout the night everybody just got tipsier.

Maybe it was around one, just after midnight, when Dahyun approached me, holding two cold beers, she said, “I’ve got a gift for you. Come with me.” She handed me one of the beers, and with her other hand she grabbed my wrist and dragged me upstairs. A little drunk, Dahyun missed one step, and we almost fell back down the stairs.

Dahyun’s bedroom door was open and the lamp on the night table was on, its pale light spilling into the whole room. I sat on the edge of her bed, drinking beer, while she tried to look for something underneath it.

“Want some help?”

She laughed. “Not from you. By the way, were you enjoying the party?”

“Of course. I’ve never seen our classmates in a drunken state before, it’s hilarious.”

“Ah, thank god it’s still here!” she cried out. She held out a small box and threw it over to me. Inside contained a black watch and a letter. “That’s an expensive watch, y’know? Jiwon, Hanbin, Tzuyu, Chanwoo and I—we all saved up for that.”

I smiled. “It’s neat. Thank you.”

“And I wrote that letter on my own.”

“Is it a love letter?” I teased.

Dahyun didn’t say anything but smacked the back of my head instead. Then, she sat beside me on the bed.

“Can I read it now?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. It’s embarrassing, I’m really bad at writing those, y’know?”

I had to laugh at that point. It felt as if letters were becoming a reoccurring theme in my life. “I’ll read it later, then.”

Sunk deep in her bed, Dahyun was quiet for a long time. There we were, sitting quietly side by side, and no one could see us even though there were plenty of people downstairs. That’s the way it felt—like Dahyun and I were the only ones there.

At last, Dahyun’s quiet voice broke the silence: “Do you remember the first time we drank beer with the others?”

“Yeah.”

“That was really fun, wasn’t it?”

I chuckled. “Fun because you got to kiss Hanbin.”

“Shut up,” she said, laughing.

Perhaps it was because I was on my eighth beer already, but I felt as if I might be swept into outer space. I lay there for a long time, letting my mind wander from one memory to another.

“I hated it,” I suddenly blurted out.

She took a quiet sip of beer and gave it some thought.

“Yeah,” I drunkenly carried on. I felt a sudden rush of confidence surge through me. “That’s right, I hated it. When you grabbed his face like that, I wanted to puke. I think it killed me inside.”

“It kills me inside thinking about it now. Makes me want to puke, too.” Dahyun laughed. “Anyway, you’re freakin’ weird, you know that?”

I looked her in the eye, and she looked straight at me. I couldn't tell if she knew what I’d meant. We stayed like that for a while, and soon I stopped worrying.

“Do you like me, June?” she suddenly asked.

“Do you really think that I answer my phone to just anyone at three in the morning?” Nervous, I only chuckled. “Of course I like you.”

“You’re not saying that just because you’re drunk, are you?”

“We’re both drunk.”

She paused for a moment. “I know, but—”

“I’m being dead serious. I think I liked you ever since you had those ridiculous pink highlights in your hair.”

Dahyun chuckled at that.

I laughed nervously and clasped onto the back of my neck. “I think I gained too much confidence when I drink. This really isn’t how I wanted to confess.”

“Then how?”

“I wasn’t going to do it at all. I was waiting for my feelings to go away,” I told her. “But it didn’t. I still like you no matter how hard I try to stop myself. There’s still only you, after all.”

Dahyun stopped short. So did I. Then she stretched over to me and touched her cheek to mine. After we had been in this gentle embrace for a while, she put her hands on my shoulders and peered into my eyes. Those beautiful eyes of hers were looking inside me for a long, long time.

“Thank you, June. I’m really happy that you said that.”

“My pleasure,” I said.

“I’m sorry for hurting you.”

“What?”

“You said it yourself before, when I kissed Hanbin, it killed you inside.”

I scoffed. “I chose to like you knowing you already loved somebody else. None of that is your fault.”

“What I felt for Hanbin and what I feel for you—they’re two different things, I realize,” she started. “When I liked Hanbin, I’d feel the force of a thunder inside me, y’know? I’d pretend to be someone I wasn’t whenever he was around. I was always anxious around him. I changed myself for him. But with you, it’s like the sunshine after the storm or something. I feel nothing but calm—no, warmth, even. I knew I only had to be myself.”

“Thunder and sunshine, huh.”

“Yep,” she said. “Thunder and sunshine. Infatuation and love. Two very different things, right? That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m sorry for hurting you before, but what I felt for him back then, it was just infatuation.”

“So, do you like me?”

“Are you copying me right now?”

“Do you like me?” I asked again, without missing one beat.

“I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I feel and what I am trying to say. In fact, you’re probably the only one in the world who can understand. I like you. I really like you.”

Again, she looked into my eyes, and I into hers. I put my arm around her and kissed her. The slightest ache went through her shoulders, and then she relaxed and closed her eyes for several seconds. Lips on lips, it was a short kiss, clumsy and wonderful in its own way, one that wasn’t meant to lead beyond itself.

The first to talk was Dahyun. She held my hand and told me, with what seemed like some trouble, that she couldn’t answer to my feelings yet.

She was moving away before summer.

“My parents drive me crazy, June,” she began. “And yeah, maybe I’m just running away, but I can’t take it here anymore. If I stay in this house one more year I think I’ll really go crazy. You understand why I can’t accept your feelings—not right now, anyway—right?”

“I understand.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that. I wasn’t expecting anything from you, I’m just glad I finally got to tell you.”

As if a dam had burst, Dahyun sobbed into her hands for the longest time. As she cried, I rubbed her from the top of her shoulder to her waist, feeling all her bones. For some strange reason, it made me smile.

“Why are you crying?”

“What the hell is up with our timing, June?” she said, half-crying, half-laughing. “It’s frustrating.”

I laughed. “I know.”

“Will you wait for me?”

“I will.”

“Even if a better, prettier girl comes along?”

“Even if Myoui Mina asks me out again.”

We chuckled.

Dahyun leaned against me on the bed. When I put my arm around her, she rested her head on my shoulder and pressed her face to my neck. We talked for what seemed like hours, and while holding her, I felt warm in the chest. There was nothing else we had to think about. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to go anywhere.

I just wanted to stay that way forever.

. . .

night time melody // 

(fiiiiiinally)