Happy birthday, June!
By the time you’re reading this, you’re probably recovering from a hangover. The surprise party was Jiwon’s idea. The watch was Tzuyu’s idea. And this letter was mine, however none of the others know about this one, so I’ll kill you if you mention anything about it.
I’ll start it off with this. I’m moving away before summer starts. I signed up to become an exchange student in London, and this morning a letter came through telling me that I could go. The exchange programme could take up to five years, so I don’t want to leave Seoul with any regrets. It scares me writing this, but here we go.
You’re very special to me, June. When I'm with you I feel something is just right. Sometimes I think how nice it would be to have you by my side forever. I have no idea how things turned out like this, but I were to stay right here in Seoul, I’d ask you to be with me in a heartbeat. For now I just want you to know that I like you. Very much.
Thanks for everything, June. I hope you enjoyed your birthday.

Your good friend,

                Kim Dahyun.

. . .

“Ever since I was eight, when I learned how to walk home from school, I’d come home to this big, empty house. The house would be dark, with no smell of food in the air and it would just be completely empty. It was real sad, y’know?” Dahyun reminisced as we sat in her kitchen.

A few weeks went past after the party—since both of our confessions—and I suppose, things between Dahyun and I were going great. We spent more time together than we had before, and I realized the more we talked, the more open we became with each other. I found out about stories that she never mentioned to anyone before and in return she’d succeed in tearing more of my walls down. We hung out almost every day, had our own jokes, and plans of watching movies together, or going to restaurants from time to time. We’d even hold hands when walking home.

She was not mine, nor was I hers, but whenever we walked home holding hands, or whenever she kissed me, or whenever we shared the silence together; for those brief moments I’d find myself pretending as if we were together. That she was mine, and I was hers.

Whenever I felt greedy, I had to tell myself that my time with Dahyun was, for now, limited.

I didn’t even notice how I ended up counting the days. From that moment, as I sat there in her kitchen, listening to a story about her childhood, Dahyun had exactly one month left in Seoul.

“Mom used to prepare food back then, but then when I turned eleven I started microwaving my own meals,” she said with a soft chuckle. “I’d get home, microwave my food, and watch the television until about nine. That’s the time they get back from work.”

“Weren’t you bored?”

“Of course I was! I enjoyed going to school more than I enjoyed coming home.”

“Damn.”

“I mean don’t get me wrong, my parents gave me everything. While other kids were asking their parents for plush toys, I was already getting the newest games for my Gameboy. My parents would always come home from work with all these new toys for me and I’d be so happy.”

“Have they ever said sorry?”

“Sorry for?”

“Never being there.”

She looked at me. “I think that’s why they used to give me so much things. They never actually said it, but I think they spoiled me with toys to make up for never being there.”

“That’s still terrible, though.”

“I know. I have a lot of good memories with them nevertheless. My mom used to brush my hair and hum to me when I was little. When I got the highest grade in freshman year, my dad almost cried out of happiness. Times like those makes me realize that they’re not bad people. They’re just bad parents.”

I bit my lower lip, and in hesitation, I asked her, “Then why are you still leaving?”

“I want to know whether I’ll miss them or not.”

I stared at Dahyun, she just tucked her hair behind her ears and flashed a boyish smile. We both knew that what she said wasn’t exactly the truth—maybe half of it was, but the whole truth was this: Dahyun wanted to test out whether her parents would miss her or not if she disappeared for a while. She wanted to finally feel the love she always yearned for as a child. It was a cry for attention.

“What?” she asked. “Stop staring like that, it’s weird.”

I scoffed at her remark, and again I simply asked, “What will you do if you end up missing them?”

She paused at that one, her eyes sparkling. I already knew the answer by then. “I’ll come back,” she answered without holding back.

And I just had to laugh at that. She was changing her life permanently, leaving the country, her closest friends—and me—to simply catch a bit of affection from her parents.

Dahyun was a complicated girl. Her ways of dealing with problems were always often too complex for other people to understand. I’d tried plenty of times to unravel that part of her, but I could never seem to do it.

“You really have your own way of doing things, you know?”

I thought about that very statement and remembered exactly three incidents where it was true.

The time she humiliated that girl in front of everybody and wrecked her belongings just because the girl had given Tzuyu a mean remark.

The time she ignored for me for the whole weekend when she found out I’d told Mina about my brother before I told her.

The time she got drunk with Hayi and Hanbin even though it still hurt her seeing the two of them together.

She glanced at me, and smiled. “Yet you still like me.”

And it was right then that I realized no matter how long or hard I tried, I would never solve the great puzzle that is Kim Dahyun. She would always remain somewhat a mystery to everybody—even to me.

Things were always going to be complicated with Dahyun. But it didn’t matter.

I was in love.

“That’s right,” I said. “I still like you nevertheless.”

. . .

It was a warm evening when the six of us came back from Yangpyeong. Like we always did, we spent the whole day walking around in the heat, talking about unimportant things and eating street food. Yangpyeong is a small, quiet town, located east of Seoul, the nature there was abundant compared to Seoul, but there was almost nothing special about it. It was, all in all, identical to most small villages we’d ever visited.

What made it so special to us, though, is that it was the last place we ever visited as a group.

And so like the old times, after our trip, we decided to walk home from the train station in hopes that the day wouldn’t end just quite yet.

“That was our last one, right?” Jiwon casually remarked. “The last train ride, the last trip. When do you guys think we’ll do this again?”

“When Dahyun and Tzuyu comes back,” Chanwoo said, smiling, and everybody simply just agreed with that. The air was warm, yet the sky was dull, showing that there would be a downpour sooner or later.

“It’s quite sad, isn’t it?” Dahyun started. “I mean, one second, we were sixteen, always hanging out, taking the train to random places we’d never been before, but now here we are. Everybody’s always busy one way or another. It took us two weeks to plan this trip, when before, we wouldn’t even plan it—we’d just go.”

“It just means we’re growing up,” Jiwon said.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“The girls are leaving us,” Hanbin chuckled. “It’ll just be the four of us when summer begins.”

I smiled a little, and looked up at the sky.

“When Hayi left Seoul, we didn’t speak for almost three years. We loved each other not too long ago, spent most of our days together, but suddenly, there she was, a person I couldn’t even get a hold of.” Hanbin put his arm around me. “It all worked out in the end, though, didn’t it?”

I wondered, then, if the same thing would happen between me and Dahyun. I pondered on that thought longer than I had expected. But the moment the thought that things might not work out crossed my mind, I suddenly felt a rush of loneliness swipe at my heart.

The conversation continued to be a little stern and heavy, but our hearts were warm. How long the six of us took to walk home that day, I had no idea.

It was the last time we ever held such deep conversations. After that day, we would all begin to grow apart, and Chanwoo would later on be the only friend I’d keep in touch with.

Friends, no matter how much I cherished them, I learned, could come and go in a blink of an eye.

It was all part of growing up, after all.

. . .

habits // 

i can't thank you guys enough for waiting!!!