[A/N: Woah, I update earlier than usual...Well, it shouldn't surprise you because this early update is my compensation to my possible two-week zero updates starting next week. I'm deeply sorry about that, writer's block got the better of me and my quarter examinations is in two weeks, plus projects and school activies, and they somehow add up to my stress lately (like I'm not always stressed lol). I really hope you'll be patient because I'll be taking my time before coming up with Chapter 8 and I wish this last update, for now, will make you look forward to the next one no matter how long it will take me to give it to you.]

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On the afternoon of the day I run into Alisha in that deli, I woke up with abnormally hot forehead and neck, singeing the back of my hand as I touched those parts with it. My head was also throbbing and I felt weak, much like I was when I first got into the house, just plus the sultry sensation seeping through my epidermis down to my veins. I wasn’t feeling great and was then affirmed that I had a fever which was caused from being soaked by the storm, so I spent three days in my room. Really in my room. I never went out to any parts of the house. My mom, though we had a misunderstanding which wasn’t resolved yet, was considerate enough to set aside the conflict for the meantime and attend to my needs like bringing food to my room and making sure I drink meds.

Sunday, the first day of another week, rolls in and when I’m sure the fever died out already, I decide to rise up from being dead. Well, being half-dead. I draw my upper body up to straighten my back and hear my spine or whatever bone located on my upper posterior body crack. I’d really spent a great deal lying on my bed to the extent that carrying up a good spinal posture is closer to being completely deleted out of my system.

I meet Mom behind the counter of the kitchen, preparing for breakfast. She glimpses at the door when I arrive there, I think she was prompted by the sound of the slippers lapping against the tiled floor. It’s still makes me uncomfortable to look at here, though it’s my Mom who has every right to feel uncomfortable looking at me that not even a quick look can be made without straining her head from turning away.

As I walk across a space from the door to the counter, passing by the rectangular dinner table, I preoccupy my vision by looking out to the backyard which is already in vibrant green, leaves waving, the tips of grasses winking, and sparkly tall bushes, the beams of the sun kissing their stems and leaves, standing out among the shorter ones.

Mom turns to her side and the side of her body faces me, and walks to the fridge. She gathers eggs from the eggshelf by the top of the fridge. She walks back to the sink and are washing the eggs by the time I make myself seated on one of the stall chairs by the counter. I rest a foot on the circular stretcher underneath the stall chair and my other one leaning against the sidewall of the counter.

Briefly, she peeks over her shoulder to see me, “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mom.”

I tried to be cheerful but it came off forceful.

A small smile plays on her lips before she puts back her attention to the eggs. While breaking the eggs to the bowl single-handedly, she asks, “How are you feeling?”

“Better than yesterday. I think I’m okay now.” Physically, though. Mentally? A little bit. Emotionally? No progress.

“That’s good.”

I can’t see Mom’s face because her back is facing to me but I want to imagine she has a smile on her lips when said that but the pretentious normalcy of the tone of her voice only suggests she has a neutral face on while saying it.

We’re not yet through.

Propping my elbow up on the counter, I rest my chin on my knuckles and cover my mouth with my hand as I yawn. From my vantage point, I observe Mom’s right shoulder bob while she’s slicing peppers beside the sink.

 “You’re making omelet?” I ask, an attempt to fill the air with some words than sticky silence. 

“Hm-hm,” she hums and nods in agreement.

And the kitchen is back to being awfully silent. How am I going to get through this?

I give up. I’m going to stop my attempts to stir up a conversation to start over again. I’m going to stop hiding with wordy veils the fact that nothing’s good is going around here. Few minutes pass by so quickly and I don’t try to make another friendly jumpstart.

“Joshua….”

My head jerk up from being droopy, near dropping from my hand, when Mom called me by my full first name and not by “Josh”.

She straightens her back and lifts up her head to face the wall in front of her, before turning her back to the wall she just faced seconds ago to confront me. She leans her hips against the edge of sink and her arms are crossed on her chest.

“Now that you’re fine, I think it’s time to resume our unended discussion few days ago.”

I nod but too mum to speak because, here it is again. We’re back to this again.

She carries on, “Who is the boy?”

Cough. That isn’t the prelude of the discussion I expect.

Before answering, I shift on my seat nervously, trembling when I try to manage to sit up straight.

“Jeonghan,” I almost choke when I utter his name.

“Oh, your best friend in Korea..” Mom’s trails off as she her head to the side, thinking or I assume, talking over with her memories about bringing up who Jeonghan looks like and what kind of person he is to her head.

At this point, it hits me that I haven’t formally introduced Jeonghan to my Mom except share with her few stories about him, the most significant among them was when the first time I talked to her about Jeonghan who I brought out as my first close friend in Korea, to whom I could confide my worries and secrets to and I imagined to have a better future when it comes to the name of friendship. (Apparently, I half-imagined a bountiful future under the name of something-more-than-friendship.) I could see Mom’s smile from the other end of the line for her voice seemed to paint it and delivered it along the telephone waves when she knew I’m all right being in Korea, being half a world away from her (which really was nerve-wracking for her because I’m her only son) and to know that I wasn’t lonely after all, and couldn’t be lonely because I’ve found a friend.

Although at this moment, in this room, after all the things that had happened and darkest secrets of me I had shared, I doubt her views about Jeonghan would still be the same. If she can still view him as a friend, which my revelation had proven it’s more than that.

After a minute of clustering possibilities of what kind of person Jeonghan is, Mom exhales deeply as she returns to her bell peppers, “Does he know about your feelings?”

I shake my head, but upon recognizing Mom’s not facing me anymore, I say, “No. I didn’t tell him. Doubt he would still keep me as his best friend if I did.”

I hear my heart crack but choose to ignore it. Mom’s low ponytail bobs roughly as she nods.

Silence fills the passing minutes after that, and I’m an antsy child rubbing an ankle against the other and itching my palms.

Mom peeks over her shoulders again and my fidgety movements voluntarily stops, “Can you, at least, try?” She asks.

I, who truthfully knows what she wants me to try out, play dumb, “Try what?”

“Change yourself?”

Yeah, unlove Jeonghan, you mean?

I take a sharp breath, “Mom…”

“In one condition, Joshua,” she places the knife beside the sink and faces me, her wet hands on her hips. Droplets of water drips down from the sides of her pink banana-printed apron, blotting the fabric. She continues, “I can only send you back to Korea in one condition: change yourself.”

That was my main business in going back here, wasn’t it? To fix myself because I blindly hoped I can fix myself. I took up a hiatus to go back here, in my hometown, and start over from square one in knowing myself because I blindly believed, or I unreasonably convinced myself, that those fluttering-butterflies-in-my-stomach chills-along-the-spine-every-touch and heart-racing-marathon-along-my-esophagus things with Jeonghan were no more than my system’s way to fill itself the necessary love ardency one must feel during adolscence stage because we were severely isolated from girls since our trainee days with our 4-year dating ban up.

Yet, hearing it from my Mom’s mouth sounds like it was more her decision than mine. I feel myself holding back. I feel like my imaginary alter ego pull me back to him and ask me, through gritted teeth again, “Was it really what you wanted to do in the first place? Are you really willing to change yourself?” Changing myself which equates to unloving Jeonghan, trying to forget about him which I know I can’t do, getting over him and all those beautifully different emotions which I will keep searching for no matter he’s there or not. It’s like I’m back to being the highschool Joshua questioning myself if is studying really hard and smart needed to be successful in life or is it more meaningful to do what I want to do with it.

I lock my hands into a fist on my lap. From my shouders up to my elbows, I feel the muscles tense. My back freezes, mostly the muscles lying over the scapulae. I have my head bent down, my eyes staring at my rigid fists. Underneath the flesh of my jaws, the bones clench.

I’m forcing my nods, “I’ll try.”

“No pressure.”

Mom delivers it in a hoity-toity assurance, like she is some school counselor just hiding her urge to strictly apply the healing method recommended underneath the breezy statement of “Just take your time”. Except that those counselors know how being gentle to oneself helps along the process of healing. Mom just wants to show she’s not totally upset as she honestly is.

My breath come out hard and effortful for the hammering of my chest disrupts the smooth flow of the air along the passages inside my body. I am in a laborious situation of breathing – one can almost say I might be having an asthma or some breathing problems – until Mom’s done cooking with our omelets. I eat my share at the counter after she finishes hers at the table. So I don’t have to pretend a smile for her as we eat together. So she won’t see how I’m in a hard knocks, not only with myself, but with the person I love next to Jeonghan.

I never wanted to go against my Mom but I think it’s part of someone’s life to cut himself out from his own blood. 

***

Is it called suicide if all my intention is to be carried by the waves back to South Korea when I skip over this knee-high seawall separating the land from the Pacific Ocean? One of the ironies here is I still want to be in South Korea even when I decided it’s much better to be back in Los Angeles, and it’s because there’s so much more the things I miss of my second home than I miss of my first home. I miss how it’s not so hot there during summer, unlike where I am standing right now, glared by the sun  it can surely fry me now. Fry, because the oils are my sweat. Summers in South Korea just heat up to 30 degrees while Los Angeles’ summer temperature notches up to 40. The first time I set a foot down on South Korea (that was around June too and it’s summer, my first summer in the place), I was surprised by how the temperature differences varied so much. It’s like one of my experiences in my hometown where I step into a moderately vented local store with low air condition after being scorched by the glowering heat of the sun, surprisingly making me heave a relieved sigh. I didn’t expect my skin was actually oppressed in its silent protest of being under too much of Los Angeles sun, not until I had it exposed under the South Korea sun. But I have to forcibly admit I missed the California beaches while I was there.   

This year will also be my first in five years where I’m not going to experience winter. I never fancied so much about the season, but sometimes, when I was young, my mind wandered to it. I have questions about what it feels like to be covered with all those white and large mounds of snow which its smaller version I only see in smoothies and slushies, and wonder if snowflakes taste like those shaved ice in summer beverages. I can also remember I wasn’t satisfied when someone reasoned out it’s one of a crappy season when it snows, earning the season its names such as “The Most Bitter Season”, “The Season of Slumber”, “Hibernating Season” (because it’s much better to sleep during winter, they say), but I can’t bring myself to agree snow is crappy or ty or not worth the appreciation of eyes that’s why it’s more suggestive to hibernate than play around snowballs or create snowman like what I’ve seen in movies and pictures. It’s been embedded in my curiosity, how is something so beautiful make other people say it’s bitter?

The first time I touched snow and tasted snowflakes was in my first December in South Korea, and what makes it more special is I spent it with Jeonghan.

            “Hey! Jisoo!”

I’m arranging my clothes in the closet when Jeonghan calls me. I look behind to see him peeping by the door of the room I shared with Woozi and Seungcheol. A playful grin plays on his lips, and though outside looks dreary and gloomy – the dimness of the winter dusk shades the surroundings in gray – but Jeonghan’s smile seems to be the sun the picture needs.

“Look outside!”

He winks at me and I laugh even though my forehead is starting to wrinkle into a frown.

“Come on! Look outside! Hurry!”

I practically see him bouncing in his place, although I only see it’s his head rocking gayly. I shake my head laughingly while I start my way to the window. I draw up the blinds and discover a misty glass window dribbled with snow around the frames. If raindrops are for rain, then we have snowdrops for snow. Snowdrops. I know the snow are far from the flower named Snowdrop, but snowdrops they are.

“You told me you haven’t experienced snow.”

I glance at my side and glimpse a hand of Jeonghan bracing the windowframe. I feel him standing over me, though he wouldn’t likely look like a giant over me because we’re just of the same height. I almost feel a skin of his chest against my shoulder. He’s dangerously close to me, I shift a little to the side.

I nod to respond to his statement.

“Why don’t we go out and enjoy the first day of Korea’s snowfall?”

He turns his head to me, and with the knowledge that he’s too close to me, maybe an inch closer, I carefully turn to him so I can’t cause any unnecessary brushes against his skin or worst, accidental kiss either on his cheek or lips.

He’s far too dangerous in being close to me when I finally have my gaze fixed on him. Slight nudge on my left shoulder and my lips could probably land on his. I stare at him because he’s such a beautiful human being up close. Most of the times, I doubt if he’s a human being with his milky-white skin, cherry lips, and eyes making me feel like I’m gazing at the clearest lake in New Zealand. I am stunned I can’t answer.

“What do you think?”

He nudges my right shoulder and makes my organs inside startle for a bit upon nervously assuming it’s my left one he nudges.

“Really? I want to see!”

I cover my nervous self up with an excited dispostion, like pulling up the zipper of a one-piece costume but a costume of me being excited. I am still in daze when I answer but thankfully, it doesn’t prevent me from answering properly like everything’s fine. We good, yeah? Actually, no. Nope.

             Jeonghan jumps few steps back from me, “What are you waiting for?” – holds his hands up by his sides, palms facing up – “Grab your thickest coat and meet me by the door!”

            Jeonghan darts to the door in a minute.

I grab myself a peacoat from the closet which I didn’t know I had because I never actually worn such, or even coats in general, back in Los Angeles. Coats aren’t a thing in a place where winter is a passing comet happening once in a hundred years. When I reach the shoe rack situated against the wall on the small space extending to the threshold, intended for slippers and when kicking off shoes, I pull my pair of black-and-white Chuck Taylors and slip my feet into them.

I’m walking my way to the door when Vernon interrupts my steps.

“Josh, where are you heading to? It’s too cold outside. You sure ‘bout going out?”

I turn to my back and nod. “Yeah, I’m sure. Jeonghan wants me to experience my first snow, and I’m also curious to how it looks like for real.”

I stretch a half-smile.

“Right~” Vernon nods in agreement, but in a way like he was pulled out of wonder, “This is going to be your first snow. Go on, you must enjoy it.”

I hurry back to my steps and by the time Vernon shouts, “Don’t forget your mittens!” I already close the door behind me.

Jeonghan is standing to the left side of the door, rocking on his heels, his hands buried in the pockets of his peacoat with a black shade darker than mine.

“Ready?”

I shrug confidently, “As always.”

“Great!”

He grabs me by the wrist and the two of us dash down the hallway to the elevator. While inside the elevator where we are standing side by side, facing the door and our hands in the pockets of our coats, I ask, “How’s the temperature outside?”

“Not yet below zero degree, but I think by next days, it’ll be around negative.”

“Good. Vernon told me it’s too cold and it made me expect I’ll become a block of ice in an instant as I step out.”

Jeonghan laughs, “Don’t worry, you won’t. I’ll take care of you. Besides, you don’t want to miss this, do you?”

He nudges my right shoulder again.

“I don’t know. I’m thinking the snow ends by March, right? So I still have plenty of snows, I presume.”

“Man, this is first day of snow! You musn’t miss it!”

“Why though?” I look at him with a frown and he looks back at me with a glare. “I mean, I’m curious.” I add up.

I notice him look up to the elevator’s ceiling, surveying the whole area from end to end,  and hums monotonously while thinking of an answer, and his monotonous non-musical Thinking Hymn stops as he lands his eyes on me.

“Actually, it is only unless you want to wish something is when you shouldn’t miss it,” he goes on, “but hey! Won’t you want to wish for a successful debut?”

I chuckle, “I’ll consider that.”

“That doesn’t apply, actually. Wishes about love are mostly made during first day of snow.”

Wishes about love, I reflect on that part of his statement.

A ding comes off, signalling we already reach the ground floor. Jeonghan keeps talking about some traditional customaries and superstitions Korean people do and believe in on the first day of snow while we push past the crowd at the mouth of the elevator. He mentions about couples prohibited to walk by  “this” wall because their relationship will likely to be ruined, which I find a hard time hearing what wall it is when he said the name because, aside from he spoke Korean way too fast and advanced from a newbie like me, it’s also noisy down the lobby. But it doesn’t prevent me to make a mental note not to go there with him from fear that our friendship will be ruined. (I count it as a relationship that musn’t be ruined.)

Frosty wind blasts at us as we step outside the building. Snowdrops – yes, snowdrops, I can’t believe – trickles down the skin of my face and I find myself flinching a little both out of tickles and cold. Although awhile ago I planned to hold a hand up to the sky to touch the snowflakes but with the coldness of air biting my skin, my initial reaction is rub my hands against each other. I can also hear my teeth chattering.

Jeonghan, sensing that I am having a hard time, steps closer beside me, “You okay?”

I stammer due to my teeth chattering,  and not forget, wheeze, “Is this…is this….what below ten degrees…feels like?”

He nods energetically, “The air around you is barely above zero degree. Just imagine it going down to negatives.”

“I don’t – I don’t think…I will live.”

He laughs as he throws an arm around my shoulder. I wince as the surface of the arm of his snow-stricken peacoat hit me on the neck, “You’re exaggerating.”

“Here,” His hand finds my shoulder and he pulls me closer to his chest. My insides are shouting beyond the normal pitch, clattering like wild animated kitchen utensils, and any second by now, I couldn’t be able to keep my act together. I will dive into him, into his soul.

“Feeling warm now?”

I look at him on eye level and nod. If you think I’m lying just so he won’t get away from this embrace, you’re mistaken because I actually do feel a little bit warmer, enough to save me from being turned into a block of ice, the moment he pulled me closer and hugged me sidewards.

I stop rubbing my palms against each other and hold a hand up to the sky to feel the snowdrops dropping on my hand, each of their snowflakes melting on my palms. Not only on my palms the snowflakes are melting, but on my face and on any part of my skin exposed to the surroundings. Snowflakes kissing every inch of me, much gentler and softer than the sunrays. Instead of describing the flakes as harsh slits of frozen ice, they’re diamond slits cut from a cloud of diamonds up above with smooth edges and soft ends and taste like caramel melting in your mouth. As I want to think of snowflakes though.

            Pavements, which were once dim and dull in their grayish and blackish cements, are gradually being damasked in white. Snow drapes over bars of guardrails and handrails, as if coating them with white fur like those of furry coats. Lampposts light up and the snow cloaking their lampheads glow with a golden shade, the dribble of dropping snow are golden pixie dusts falling from a fairy’s wings.

It is that moment – the first time I ask myself, how come something so beautiful makes other people say it’s bitter?

Looking up to the sky, I open my mouth slightly to let the snowflakes fall into my mouth, while I’m still holding up my hand. My innocent reverie with the snow is interrupted when I hear Jeonghan snicker beside me.

“That’s only water,” he keeps snickering.

“Let me lavish my first snow.”

From snicker, now he’s laughing.

As I bring my head down, back to its normal position, I turn to Jeonghan just in time he looks at me in the eyes, teary-eyed from his outburst of laughter, and his perfect set of white teeth, as white as the snow around us, breaks into his lips. It makes me laugh, too, and we find ourselves laughing together amidst the bustling common people with their heads hang low, busy on their walk along the way to their final destination as if it’s the worthwhile final destination, refusing to stop for a moment to lift their heads up to the sky, taste the snowflakes or feel them melting upon their hands – to admire how beautiful the winter is.

And another Korean first snow tradition pops in my mind as I keep laughing together with Jeonghan, the last one he shared to me back to the lobby before we stepped outside: If you’re with the one you like by the day of the first snowfall, true love will blossom between you.

Wishes about love?

I wish Jeonghan will love me as much as I do.

And that’s what love does to us, makes us wish upon silly objects and seasons which are nothing more than the object and season itself stands for. Temperate countries experience winter because of the tilting of the Earth on its axis and the shortage of sunlight received by the place. While we are all about true love, couples breaking and wishes about love, it is, truth be told, nothing more than that concise and realistic explanation

Here I am also, metaphorizing the lonely line of the horizon stretched ambitiously the place where my heart badly wants to jump across if only the seawall didn’t stand as a barrier and the wide ocean an inescapable abyss.

It’s not only South Korea that I miss, it’s also that one person to whom my heart I left behind. 

Powerful waves of the great Pacific Ocean billow upon the command of the Western wind and washes repeatedly, retreating then attacking, the consolidated stones by the shore supporting the seawall. The sky is clear blue while the ocean is a contrast to the clarity of the sky.

I hear rattle of bicycle wheels and look around, fright brewing inside me and I hurriedly turn to my bike to see if no one’s been in an act of snatching it.

An eagle of fantasy drops me back into the real world after soaring with it through the clouds when I see Alisha on her bike stopped beside mine. Her one foot over  a pedal, the other on the road.

She’s the last person I think about coming up today.

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[A/N: So what do you think? Did I pull it off just fine? I really hope so I did, or even greater than fine, because to be honest, this chapter is, so far, my favorite and the best one I had made out among the others. And I really hope it will also become your favorite, I’m wishing though. Even just for now, until I come up with something better than this. I guess that’s all for this time. Sadly, you won’t be getting updates from me, but I really hope you will be patient, nonetheless. Thank you so much for lending your precious time in reading this. Yes, I always thank everyone for their time especially when my story made it worthwhile, because it’s not really good to spend your time reading something that does nothing but waste your time, right? I hope mine didn’t, and you got something out of it. Okay, it sounds so much like farewell but this isn’t really a final farewell. I’ll be back soon, I promise. And it would really wipe my stress all out if I knew you’d wait. ^^]