There were times that I felt like the city streets could swallow me. These times, anchored to the window rampart at the apartment I used to live, between one and other sip of coffee, I felt like I could dive into the concrete and merge into the memories recorded in every inch of Seoul streets. Sometimes, with not a damn coin in my pockets, I needed to grab every opportunity just not to give up and get back home, because home was too far away and too far uncomfortable and hostile, and I knew I wouldn’t stand staying away from Seoul, because It was as a living and self-contained being that pulled my strings like nothing else.

It was in one of those lean days that he has appeared. Lee KiKwang. And he, too, seemed to pull my string as in a weird and powerful witchery.

It started with a call in the mid of a Tuesday afternoon. The chance of finally finding someone who could share with me the outgoings of the little apartment on Gwangjin-su’s suburb got me completely excited and later that same day I took all my belongings of the only bedroom just to shove them anyway in boxes or accommodate them on part of the shelves. My clothes have also been accommodated inside of a few trunks and these became part of the living room’s furniture, where I would sleep then. My cameras, my pictures, they have found space carefully stacked beside the TV and in smaller boxes, and these have been huddled in a corner of the main room, serving the ones who would come to visit me and my new occupant as an improvised seat.

I confess I felt a little self-conscious when I had to explain my situation to the boy that sat in front of me at the cafeteria where we set up a meeting. I was 22, had not completed high school and worked as a free lance photographer to a local gazette, barely earning enough money to pay the rent and the light and water bills, because the phone have been cut out of the apartment several months before and mobile bills had accumulated.

KiKwang also didn’t have the best of the lives. He told me he worked in a restaurant nearby the cafeteria and that was his day off. He wasn’t in town for long and not mentioned the reasons behind his moving from a small town in the countryside to the capital, but admitted that was not what he expected and the money was getting too short for him to continue living in the rented room in a family house.

- Besides, I feel like I’m invading their space, you know? A stranger living with a couple and their children… I believe sharing an apartment with one person… Well, I believe it is less complicated! – He completed and finished with a shy smile.

And those were the most interesting forty minutes of my life.

Because the effort that the boy, one year younger than me, made to try to look comfortable was quite noticeable, as well as his actual discomfort. Maybe he just wasn’t the quite outgoing type of guy, which, for someone with his looks, was completely unacceptable. After all, even though I refused to accept the idea of thinking a guy was cute, KiKwang was somehow mesmerizing in everything he did, and the face and his body, all about him was beautiful. Especially the smile.

This smile I couldn’t take out of my head. The smiles that makes his cheeks rise and his eyes get even smaller and turn into small crescents, which makes his peculiar face even more beautiful.

His lips also invaded my dreams sometimes. Full lips and that seemed to move slowly when he told stories and laugh when he reads something funny or some passage of one of his favorite books for me. Those books he did not feel pity to leave streaked with notes and drawings in it’s jackets, marking quotations with highlighted text marker, or even pulling out entire pages. Those books, he warned, should not be read by anyone else.

They were his and he was printed on each page.
In one month we were close enough to share some little secrets and create jokes that only we both understood, like old friends. But I soon realized how he felt empty and depressed when I saw him outside the privacy of our apartment, completely different from the KiKwang always so happy that I knew. Just realized that things were really critical when the youngest once got home and immediately locked himself in his room, making the face to show only the next morning.

 It had been a real surprise to see him leave the room in the middle of one particular night and come to me on the sofa bed, just lay down beside me and cuddle closer as he wept silently in a quiet request for a little support. And I gave. I limited myself to kiss his forehead and accommodate him against my chest, watching him sleep until I fell asleep and when I woke up before sunrise, it was impossible not to feel the cheeks getting hot to see him slide his fingers over the tattoo on my forearm, watching it carefully. When he saw me move he looked up and smiled.

- I always wondered what it means.

His statement has made me pull the air with force and I couldn’t contain the urge to press my lips against his in a first kiss that made ​​it memorable. In a first moment his eyes opened wide and his fingers tightened on my arm, but soon became less firm when he closed his eyes slowly and relaxed his muscles. Then his lips parted, inviting and soughing my tongue, still shy, but completely chummy and I would repeat it in my head for days on the end.

- Enjoy the moment and believe in tomorrow to a minimum. ¹ - I whispered against his lips and allow me to run my eyes over the beautiful face, without noticing the pained expression before the younger sniff and stick his head against the crook of my neck, holding me tightly.

I've never been the more person, so maybe I had missed so many signs that KiKwang sent and maybe so, too, I had never given me work to ask how he felt, what was happening. That morning, until the sun was high in the sky, I restrained myself to embrace him and sometimes hold his face in my hands to wipe away his tears as if they were my own, expecting him to tell me what was happening when he feel comfortable enough to do so. And to my relief, or not, he did the next day.

There were many things about KiKwang;

The subtle differences in his expressions, the different tones of his voice, every one of his smiles, I had learned every secret of younger and I loved each of them more as if it were possible. When I even realized I was hopelessly in love with him I was suffering because he was suffering for other person.

All these things about him, even the small ones, were marked in me and it was only when we were living togetherfor six months that I realized how bad It was being away from him, cannot touch him, cannot demonstrate what I fell. Because after that first and only kiss there was no longer any contact between us and the tension became so palpable that at one point even living with each other became difficult. Even just being in the same room as the boy seemed to make him uncomfortable.

One day I got home in time to see him finish arranging his belongings in boxes and putting his clothes in bags not really big.

-Are you going to live with him? - I assumed, and the youngest only nodded his head in response.

‘Him’ was, of course, DongWoon, a boy who worked in the same restaurant that my (then) ex-roommate. They were in a relationship for almost one year and only I knew how much Woonie, that washow he was called as KiKwang refer to him, could hurt KiKwang. And it was for him who KiKwang cried and he used to left in KiKwang bruises that I hate, but over time I learned to ignore.

It was not just one or two times Kwang appeared injured at home and not have to be a genius to know that the excuses he invented to justify every new bruise or strain was just that, excuses, and none of them believable enough to receive any credit. And I hated DongWoon. I hated him because he hurt the man I loved. I hated it because it made KiKwang suffer. I hated him, mainly because he had taken my love from me. But I had resigned myself to never have KiKwang and knew thathe would never be in love with me just as crazy and even that resigned as with DongWoon.

The days without KiKwang had become boring, tedious and, above all, tiring. Yet there wasn’t the smell of coffee in the morning or the old songs on the radio that he forgot to turn off when need to leave for go to work. There was no longer his smell on the sofa bed, a second tooth brush in the bathroom or even a waiteruniform dropped in a few rooms of the house. It seemed that no one else besides me had lived there.

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¹ Free translation of 'Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero' that is what would be written in the forearm tattoo of JunHyung.