Mina waved at me when she saw me through the bus windows. She was wearing a black skirt, cream-coloured blouse and her usual sunglasses. When she entered bus, she sat beside me and took her sunglasses off.

“Happy birthday,” I said. I pulled the book out of my bag and handed it over to her. I told her that I had only bought it the day before, and I was sorry that I couldn’t wrap it.

She smiled with the slightest curl of her lip and smoothed her hair with the palm of her hand. “You really didn’t have to. But thanks for this, June.” And then she took the book, observed it for a short while, and gave me another smile. “Robert Frost.”

“Do you like it?” I asked, placing my hand on the back of my head. “When we went to Guri yesterday, we came across this old, big bookstore. It sold everything from comic books to poetry.”

“I like it,” she replied. “But I’m curious—why Robert Frost?”

“The book was left on a different shelf, some shelf away from the poetry section. It kinda just looked like it wanted me to buy it.”

Mina chuckled, and suddenly she just stared straight at me. “You didn’t get a wink of sleep last night, did you?”

“Is it obvious?” I asked, scoffing.

“Just the circles under your eyes and your voice. Did something happen?”

I fell silent for a second too long, but then I finally said, “I told them about my brother.”

A worried look appeared on her face. “What were their reactions?”

“They were just quiet, and Hanbin seemed mad at the start,” I told Mina. “I mean, we’ve all known each other for two years. I spend most of my days with them, and yet I still chose not to tell them. I think they’re hurt.”

“At least you’ve finally told them.”

I nodded, and stayed quiet. “I guess there’s that. But where are we going? It’s your turn to pick a place, after all.”

“How about Dahyun?” Mina suddenly asked. She wouldn’t let go of the subject just yet. “Do you think that she’s hurt as well?”

I thought about it for a second.

Usually, if an interesting conversation came up within the group, Dahyun would be the first to call me at night—waking me up, and forcing me to discuss the topic in even more depth with her. And so it made me a little uneasy how Dahyun didn’t call me after I finally told them everything.

Why wasn’t she asking me any questions?

Why wasn’t she calling me at midnight, disturbing my sleep, just to talk about it?

“I don’t know.”

Mina looked at her hands for a moment, and she intertwined her fingers. “You’re the only person that can read her like an open book. And yet you say you don’t know. If that’s the case, June, then doesn’t that mean she’s shut herself out from you?”

I simply told Mina that I didn’t want to think about what had happened the day before. I felt like talking about such things on her birthday was unfair to her, and furthermore, I didn’t want to think about it. She said she didn’t mind hearing what I had to say, but nevertheless we just carried on as normal. She took me to a restaurant that specialised in barbeque meat, somewhere inside Jung-gu, and like always, we ate and talked until the skies got darker.

By seven we were stood beside the bus stop, waiting for the next bus to arrive. And when it finally did, Mina suddenly looked at me.

“Thank you for today, June. It was really nice. I’ll make sure to read this,” she said, holding up the book that I gave to her. “See you at school.”

“Happy birthday,” I said, smiling. “I’ll see you at school.”

She smiled back, and just as soon as she was to step inside the bus, Mina suddenly stopped in her tracks, turned to me and gave me a hug.

“Thank you. I had lots of fun.” she said, head buried on my chest. “But I hope you don’t mind if I do this.”

And then she kissed me.

. . .

Dahyun didn’t call that night either, or the night after. 

I tried calling her on the following Sunday night, but nobody answered and I gave up after two tries. Chanwoo and Tzuyu visited on that same Sunday, and they simply apologized for acting awkward towards me.

“I understand,” I said in return. “I wouldn’t know what to say in the same situation either.”

“It was just too strange to acknowledge,” Tzuyu told me. “You were suffering all this time and not one of us even noticed. It’s not that we’re angry you told us so late. We just feel bad for not knowing sooner.”

“Have you guys heard from Dahyun?”

Chanwoo and Tzuyu just looked at me.

“I talked to her on the phone yesterday. Why?” Tzuyu asked. “Did something else happen?”

I shook my head. “It’s nothing. It’s just that she lives across the road from me, and yet I haven’t seen her for three days.”

“You’ll see her tomorrow,” Chanwoo assured me. “Don’t worry about it too much, man. It’s only Dahyun. I mean, remember when Hanbin said that she resembles a tofu and she didn’t speak to him for a week?”

We both laughed at that.

Of course, I thought to myself.

The short-tempered Kim Dahyun who doesn’t know how to stay mad at someone for very long. The stubborn Kim Dahyun, whose manners were sometimes non-existent.

It’s only Dahyun, after all.

And things were ought to return to normal again.

. . .

Like always, I rang the doorbell for Dahyun first thing in the morning, only for the door to be answered by her mother.

I was taken aback. It was my first time seeing Dahyun’s mother in a while.

“It’s June, right?” she asked. Wrinkles lay scattered over her face in a strangely warm, ironic way.

“Yes, ma’am. Is Dahyun inside? We planned to walk to school together.”

“That’s weird,” her mother pondered. “She set off early today.”

I nodded. “Maybe she’d just forgotten. Thank you anyway, ma’am.”

When I entered our classroom, I saw that Dahyun was, in fact, sat in her usual seat, talking to a few people. It was a typical classroom morning scene. Dahyun, in the middle of everybody’s attention, laughing loudly and making everybody else laugh with her. Chanwoo, head down on his desk, organizing his things and writing notes—Tzuyu, doing the same thing.

“Morning,” Chanwoo mumbled, a pen hanging out of his mouth.

“Morning,” Tzuyu and I repeated. I sat on my seat and started organizing my stuff, too.

“Two more weeks of this, huh,” Chanwoo remarked. “Then we’ll be in our senior year, with all the exams and heavy workload, and the hyungs won’t even be here anymore. That sounds depressing, doesn’t it?”

“When you put it like that,” Tzuyu replied. “But I guess it won’t be too different. We only see Jiwon and Hanbin during our lunch breaks, anyway.”

He let out a huge sigh in reply. “That’s true. And we can always visit them in their dorms, can’t we?”

“Exactly,” I scoffed.

“Still,” Chanwoo added, eyes drooping. He placed his arm on his desk and leaned on them. “I really can’t stand big changes. Even if it means good.” He looked at me, gestured towards Dahyun, and raised an eyebrow.

I shook my head, and scoffed. “She walked to school without me.”

Chanwoo chuckled. “Of course.”

. . .

During lunch, the six of us gathered around our usual table in the canteen and talked about all sorts of things. Hanbin and Jiwon were telling us about their choices after high school.

Prior to this, Jiwon had told us before that, like his older brother, he wanted a business-related course for when he enters university, and that’s exactly what he ended up applying for. Hanbin, on the other side of this, applied for an engineering course somewhere in Seoul.

Tzuyu and Chanwoo were both thinking of applying for medicine, and I told them that I wanted to do architecture. Dahyun said that she didn’t have her mind set on anything just yet.

And after the talk about our futures, we continued talking about other similar topics.

For some strange reason, Dahyun was back to normal, teasing me about the little things and being her usual talkative self.

I admit that it made me feel uneasy, but I decided to play along anyway.

. . .

It was already late in the afternoon when Chanwoo and I finished with basketball practice. We said our farewells at the main road, where Chanwoo’s neighbourhood was located on the left, and the shortcut to mine was on the right. So I took the right turn—to the path where I had to walk across a small playground to reach my house quicker.

The sky was a shade of orange, and the chirps of the cicadas were being replaced by the crickets. The summer heat made me feel drowsy. Five minutes of walking and I was sweaty enough to take off my uniform blouse and go with the t-shirt underneath it instead. I was about to put my earphones in, until I heard a familiar voice behind me. I turned around, and I was taken aback by the sight of Dahyun sitting down on the playground swings.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows.

“Damn, June. Do you know how long I was waiting for?” she said, sighing underneath her breath.

“How long were you waiting for?”

“Thirty freakin’ minutes. You could’ve at least bought some ice-cream on your way here. It’s freakin’ hot.”

I scoffed. “You could’ve at least told me that you were waiting for me.”

She gave me a playful look. “Who said I was waiting for you? I was waiting for ice-cream. C’mon, let’s walk to the shop. It closes in ten minutes!”

“It’s only a good twenty minute walk away from home now. If you want, you can come to my house. We’re making patbingsu today.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Yup.”

“Call,” she said, smiling.

. . .

“June,” Dahyun suddenly said. She had rolled the sleeves of her blazer up to her elbows, and beads of sweat had trickled down her neckline. “Do you remember anything about your brother?”

I looked at her. “Almost nothing.”

“Almost. So do you remember at least one thing about him?”

“I don’t want to say it. It’s weird.”

Dahyun shot me a look. “C’mon now.”

“His scent. That’s the only thing I remember whenever I think about him.”

“I see.” She nodded. “It’s called lacunar amnesia, isn’t it? You end up erasing gaps in your memories when it becomes too painful to handle.”

“You did your research well,” I returned.

“June, it’s a good thing that you remember his scent. We can work with that, because that means you haven’t completely forgotten about him just yet.”

“I guess so.”

Dahyun jerked her head towards me, and stared straight at me. “Listen, I’m sorry for making things uncomfortable these past couple of days. I was angry at you for not telling me sooner, and I was hurt when I found out that you told Mina before you told any of us. But then I finally realised, hey, what am I so angry for? I mean, you’re the one going through a hard time—not me. Forgive me, alright? I’m only human after all.”

“It’s my first time seeing you act so humble,” I remarked, chuckling. “I shouldn’t have kept it from you guys in the first place. It’s not your fault, so don’t apologize for it.”

She gave me a hard whack on the back on my head. “Okay, then I'll take back my apology. I forgive you.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets and gave her a glare. “So you weren’t acting humble, after all.”

Dahyun grinned in return, and looked up at the orange canvas above us. I watched her long, straight hair swaying right and left where it met her shoulders. “It’s funny because even from the start I knew there was something mysterious about you,” she chuckled. “Even from the very start, June.”

I scoffed in return.

She glanced back, and smiled when our eyes met. “Goo Junhoe, thank you for finally opening up.”

. . .

adversity // 

please do tell me if you see a typo! i'll proofread it later.