home.

 

 

Lee Jeno would be a math problem, if he hadn’t dropped out of school before learning how to solve equations with the degree of three to travel the world without her.

Jeno is one part confusing, two parts frustrating, and all parts out of her reach where Kim Seol cannot find him. She hates him, sometimes, and other times she doesn't. He mails her postcards without a return address, crisscrossing around the world for weeks on end before her mailbox sits empty for half a year. His friends can no longer reach his old phone number. Seol, on the other hand, has never tried; she thinks, though, that if he had his archaic phone with him he would still pick up for her.

Seol remembers, vaguely, the scent of his varsity jacket draped over her shoulders, and the feel of his head leaning against hers as they shared a can of Arizona Tea on the baseball bleachers. The sound of his laughter is a distant memory, a path in her mind that hasn’t been walked by anyone for the past three years. She's in her final year of high school, drinking ty vodka for the first time, and she hasn't heard his voice since the day he and Mark Lee had dropped her off back home after a movie.

Renjun jokes about how the two of them should have taken him to the doctor before he disappeared. Donghyuck comments that Lee Jeno would have certainly been diagnosed with the curious case of wanderlust. Jaemin doesn’t talk about him to the others, and Seol doesn't think he’s ever spoken his name since Jeno skipped town, and she doesn't blame him. The two of them have shared one too many coffees at three in the morning at her house, hoping that Jeno will ring again, for her to be surprised.

“I miss him,” Seol remembers saying last Tuesday. Jaemin’s slumped on her couch, arms wrapped around his favorite pillow and staring at the wall. It’s weird, because Jaemin stashes away cute plushies under his bed, but she supposes the pillow makes him feel closer to what isn’t there anymore. Neither of them want to be the one who admits that waiting around is hopeless.

Neither of them want to be the one to mention that insecurity preying at the corner of both their minds: Lee Jeno is gone for good.

“I miss him, too,” she remembers Jaemin answering. “Do you think he misses us?”

She thought back to the polaroid she had found buried under her college acceptance letters - the ones clamoring for her name and her title and her money. The Coliseum in Rome had been easy to recognize. The boy in the picture was even easier. Seol would know that smile anywhere.

“Yes,” Seol said to Jaemin, but he didn’t reply. He had fallen asleep, chin dipping and hitting the white fur of the pillow he was gripping.

 

 

 

“This is getting ridiculous,” Donghyuck complains loudly. He’s slumped against his desk, having unceremoniously dumped his backpack in front of Seol. “We’re graduating next week, and they’re still assigning us projects!”

Seol lowers her book and wrinkles her nose at the commotion. Back in her first year, she never would have expected that she would befriend the resident troublemaker of her class. But then again, back in her first year, Seol had thought she could get away with remaining separate from everyone. Friendships are fickle, just like the rest of the world.

“They need some way to keep us occupied,” she points out. Against her better judgement, she reaches out and yanks off his snapback. “You’re not allowed to wear that here, you .”

Donghyuck shoots up to glare at her, but he stops when he sees her put his hat on her head. A grin crosses his face. “You’re one to talk. Are you gonna steal that from me too?”

Seol pouts, almost comically. “I’m rich. Why would I need to?”

The sound Donghyuck makes next - a half-snort, half-laugh, because he knows that she's going to take his hat anyway  - makes Seol giggle a little. The two of them are drawing stares; it’s nothing new, because the other students remain insistent on seeing Seol as the other. To them, she's different. She's cold. She's apathetic to their struggles. She doesn't even need to be here, yet she is, stealing away the attention of the three popular boys who remain.

High school is stupid.

The people in high school are stupid, because they can’t see that those three boys still haven’t let Seol in, not completely, and Seol's just as stupid because she doesn't know what to do. Everyone has their secrets, and they are just particularly good at hiding it from everyone else. Just like her.

She sobers at the thought. Shoving Donghyuck’s backpack to him, she says, “But hey, at least we’re in the same period. Do you think we could work on this one together and leave Renjun to struggle?”

“Of ing course. That’s what he gets for not changing classes,” Donghyuck scoffs. “Who do you think I am? Na ‘I have to volunteer at every single community service event’ Jaemin?”

“Hyuck,” Seol chides, even though he has a point, “maybe he found a cute girl at the animal shelter.”

Donghyuck hits his knees on his desk and swears loudly enough for the inattentive teacher to look up and glare at him. But it doesn’t matter. The two of them are in their final year of high school, and there’s only one week left, and her gap year plan is sitting pinned to her corkboard at home.

She still hasn't talked to Jaemin about it. She should, sooner rather than later. It’s a touchy topic and a plan that Seol has a strange feeling that she will have to follow through on her own.

“Let’s go hang out after school,” Donghyuck says, abruptly changing the subject. His voice snaps her from her thoughts, and Seol straightens, adjusting the snapback and wishing that Renjun hadn’t snatched her phone from her back pocket last period. At this rate, Donghyuck will be the one planning the outing. When Donghyuck plans, bad things usually ensue. “We should go get some street food and hang out at the arcade.”

“We’re going to get kicked out,” she says, ever the voice of reason.

“We’re going to have fun,” he corrects. He’s already pulling out his phone and texting Jaemin and Renjun, in the groupchat that Lee Jeno has not left and the groupchat full of messages that Lee Jeno has not read. By the time he starts typing, she already knows that it’s pointless to argue.

Besides, there’s only a week left.

And then summer will begin. It would be the last summer Kim Seol will ever spend as a carefree, stupid teenager.

 

 

 

“We’re going to get kicked out,” she says again, resigned.

“What,” Donghyuck says, slinging his arm over Renjun’s shoulder, “too classy to ever have been kicked out of a place?”

Jaemin sniggers into the back of his hand, as if Seol can’t see him.

 

 

 

“You want me to bring my camera for graduation pictures, right?” Seol asks, rolling over onto her stomach. Her phone lies on her pillow, connected to Bluetooth and blasting the background noises of the animal shelter through her room. If Jeno were here, he would probably tell Seol how strange it is that Jaemin spends so much time at the shelter. But then again, if Jeno were here, Jaemin wouldn’t have started throwing himself into community service work in search for a distraction.

It’s funny, how everything comes back to Lee Jeno.

“Yeah,” Jaemin says quietly. He must not be calling on his break. She stifles a laugh at the thought. “It would be nice to have some pictures to remember everything by, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” she replies, burying her face in her blankets. Somewhere by Seol's feet is her computer, open and recording all the hours spent on the powerpoint Donghyuck had sent her . Donghyuck hates doing schoolwork, but he definitely gets it done quickly. If she hadn’t known him, she might have never guessed that. “But we’re not going to be too far from each other in college, anyway. Renjun’s going furthest, and it’s only an hour away on the bus.”

Even before the words are out of Seol's mouth, she realizes that she sounds like she's trying to convince herself more than him.

Na Jaemin knows her too well not to pick up on that.

“You’re not,” he says, and she feels the world freeze. He’s the only person to ever openly acknowledge it. Renjun dances around the topic with the skill of an advanced politician. Donghyuck is too blunt around the edges to pick up on it.

“Not what?” Seol asks tentatively.

Jaemin sighs. She can hear the way his breath hits the microphone, and she winces at how loud her speakers make it. Maybe she should have asked him to call her back later, when she was done with her playlist.

“You’re not coming back, are you?” he says slowly, and she realizes that Jaemin must not have thought much about it either. Like her, he must have hoped it would go away if he didn’t address it. “Just like him.”

She stiffens. Jaemin rarely brings up Jeno outside of their late night hangouts.

“I don’t know,” Seol answers, running her hands over her face. It’s not good for her skin, and she knows that, but she's past caring. “I don’t even know where he is now.”

“Well,” Jaemin starts, “try Rome. But graduation photos, first.”

“Right, right,” she laughs. “I’m warning you, though, I’m rusty.”

 

 

 

Seol hesitates to pick up the camera the weekend before the graduation ceremony. Donghyuck is in her kitchen, probably raiding her mother’s wine cellar, hoping to find alcohol worthy of being their first try.

“Come on,” Renjun urges, leaning against her door. He’s wearing a white dress shirt, just like the others, and she thinks that she must have missed out on an exciting adventure to the tailor. “Don’t start crying now.”

“Why would I be crying?” Seol asks irritably, brushing hair from her eyes. her fingers wrap around the edges of the camera. “We haven’t graduated yet.”

His answering laugh is a bit dry; but then again, a lot of things are dry these days. The edges of her friend group are fraying. All of them are turning brittle, like plastic in old age, ready to break at any moment. Seol wonders if it’s because she is now even more keenly aware of her plans to chase after a pipe dream, or because a piece of all of them have been missing for far too long.

“Never change,” he says, and she looks at him quizzically. “You have a strange way of telling us that we’re your best friends ever, and you’ll miss us when you go to college.”

“Thanks,” Seol says, thinking about how they are probably her only friends, and how they would bend space itself just to meet up once a week when college started. After spending four years with them, she feels as if she know them well enough to assume that. “I guess.”

“Come on,” Renjun repeats himself, more insistently. His fingers wrap around the handle of her door. “Donghyuck’s going to talk Jaemin’s ear off about your house design.”

She lets out an incredulous laugh, one that sounds a little too loud to her. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he replies, completely straightfaced.

And Seol follows Renjun out of her room to the kitchen, where Donghyuck is pulling out a bottle of red wine in hopes of persuading her to open it. Never mind that she hasn't done it before. Donghyuck would insist that she learn in five seconds or less.

 

 

 

It’s easy pretending that her Nikon D5 is nothing but an expensive camera. It’s easy to pretend that the last time Seol had picked it up was the time she went down to the creek with Lee Jeno and taught him the basics of photography. It’s easy to pretend that nothi