CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

stars and kisses

‘It’s a first time you called me over instead of the other way round.’ Jongin’s eyes were blinded by the morning sun. It was unusual of him to wake up so early, but Rei had called him down, and nobody turns Rei down (because she rarely ever calls them anyway). She was standing at the foyer in front of the main administration building with a group of other athletes, a book in her hand, as it always is. There were larges bags on the tar road. Some of the athletes were talking among themselves, some were still sleepy and catching a shuteye on the steps of the foyer.

Surprisingly, Sehun was nowhere near Rei. He was sitting slightly away, talking to the coach instead of trying to distract Rei or join in on her reading. ‘What could the smartest girl in the world probably need from me?’ Jongin asked her.

‘Don’t flatter me, Jongin.’ She finally glanced at him with an amused look. ‘I’m here to talk about Soojung.’ She quietened her voice, and then pulled Jongin farther away from the crowd.

‘That’s pretty honest of you.’

‘I prefer cutting to the chase rather than being subtle.’

‘Hm. So what about her? Did she break down again?’

‘She did.’

Nursing Sehun was not the only thing Rei woke up at 3 in the morning for. Of course, it was hard to go back to sleep when her palms were burning from the heat his skin was emitting due to his terrible fever. But as she was wiping his body with a towel drained with ice-water, she thought she heard the wind groan from outside.

There was a sad pitch of a hum that persisted in the air, and she went to the window to trace it. What she found instead was that it was coming from a voice that did not belong to the wind. She recognized that voice; she heard it sometimes in her sleep when she was in her dorm room.

Rei left the room and found Soojung sitting out in the cold at the balcony. She was hugging her legs, her back against the grille and her head was tucked at her knees. ‘Soojung?’

She raised her head, her grey eyes filled to the brim with her tears and her face was flushed red and damp. Rei lowered herself in front of her. She took her hand gently. ‘It’s cold out here.’ She looked into Soojung’s eyes. ‘You could get sick.’

There was a momentary pause.

‘Good then.’

Rei forced a weak smile, then tugged her hand. ‘Come on, let’s go in.’

Soojung obliged and was put on the couch by Rei. Rei fetched a glass of warm water for her and then sat next to her. ‘Take a deep breath.’ She saw how bad Soojung’s chest was staggering. ‘What were you doing outside?’

Soojung refused to look at her.

‘Is it the same reason you cried that night?’

‘Yeah.’ She said with a faint voice, her lips twitching.  ‘It’s the same. It’s always the same.’

Rei waited by her. Soojung’s eyes were swelling from too much crying and her face had gotten pale, as if all of the warmth from her body had left her when she sat outside in the cold for too long.

She began crying again, mumbling words that Rei had to quickly rearrange to understand what she was trying to convey.

‘I just lost someone I love.’ The look in her rainy-like grey eyes suggested that whoever Soojung had lost was never going to come back. She forced a smile of loss on her lips. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it because, I don’t know, I feel like it’s all too much, you know? One day I’m fine and another day I’m crying and looking like this. Like a mess.’

‘What happened?’

‘The person left.’ She hung her head. ‘We didn’t even know each other too long. I mean, I’ve had longer relationships, but-‘ she shook her head. ‘-I keep crying about it.’

They met two years ago, Soojung said. It was Christmas when they met. I’ve never been resuscitated from the dead before but I like to imagine that was what we were like. She looked out aimlessly into the darkness of the apartment as she talked.

Rei smiled. Soojung’s face glowed a little from reminiscence. ‘Why do people leave us?’ her eyes were louder than her question. They were pleading for assurance, for enlightenment from the dark golden orbs that Rei possessed. ‘Isn’t it weird that they have fun with us and teach us so many things about themselves and how they see life and suddenly they’re just-‘

‘I thought maybe I could do the things I learned, on my own. If I got bored at night I could always sneak out on my own but it never feels the same. All of the new things I learned were all things we did together.  So now that I’m alone, it just doesn’t feel right.’

The other understood in silence.

‘Can you kiss me?’

Rei did not raise her eyes at first; something inside her made her hesitate, but she listened. ‘Rei?’ The hollowness of Soojung was transparent in her voice, and in her shaking hands. ‘I know you don’t like me,’

There was a distinct pause.

‘Why?’

Soojung’s eyes barely looked sad – instead the greyness of it looked more solid than ever, as if it had lost all soul it had once possessed.

‘I want to remember what it feels like.’ To be loved, she clasped her lips. Rei finally looked at her, though Soojung idled her eyes as if not wanting to look back. She was afraid to. Instead, she closed her eyes, and Rei caught the tears that were squeezed out of them.

Rei swallowed, putting down her book. It’s nothing I haven’t done before. She pulled her hair behind her ears, then leaned forward, and with a hand holding Soojung’s neck, she placed her lips on hers.

Soojung had always cherished blindness; it lessened the pain and created the illusion of a beautiful pleasure. In the infinite of pitch blackness, she felt the security of a hand holding her, the feminine softness of a girl’s lips and the warm air that emitted from their closeness, tinted with the sweet smell of hair.

She etched for it, for her curves, the solidness of her youthful body and the tenderness in the way she kissed her. It felt like feathers, smelled like flowers and tasted like cherries.

And it was all, very, temporary.

Soojung started crying.

Clutching onto Rei’s body, she began crying awful sobs. Sobs that cried longing, as if she so terribly wanted something she could no longer have. She sounded almost apologetic too, and the way her head hung was like that of a man on his knees trying to beg forgiveness.

She cried all night long in Rei’s arms, and it was then-

It was then, Rei’s eyes flashed of revelation. ‘Why did she have to go?’ Soojung mumbled.

She’s gone.

‘You kissed her?’ Jongin was more amused on the part that Rei never meant to highlight. Rei crossed her arms. ‘Right, I’m sorry. Well, uh-‘ he knitted his brows. ‘I didn’t know she was into girls.’

‘No!’ Rei hissed, looking behind her to make sure no one was looking. ‘I mean, yes, enlightening moment but that’s not the point.’

Jongin was curious now. He looked at Rei, who struggled to express herself. ‘Remember I told you she’s been very upset lately, after your sister passed away?’

Whether Jongin was frozen or took a longer time than usual to register the implied meaning of her words was unknown, he held a stare that struggled to accept that it was possible – whatever it is that Rei had come to believe of Soojung.

‘Wow.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, what do we do?’

‘For now, let’s just not take that into account, and just focus on the fact that we know she’s lonely.’

‘How do we make her not lonely.’

‘Take her out. Be with her every night,’

‘What? Like a boyfriend?’ Jongin seemed startled with the idea. Rei sighed.

‘Just tell the boys and cheer her up. Bring her out or just, you know, sit and do homework together. Do things we used to do. But keep the romances low.’

‘Understood.’ He nodded.

‘Thanks.’ She patted Jongin on his arm. The athletes were queueing up now, and one of them was checking names.

‘Why is Sehun not talking to you?’ he said.

‘He is.’ Rei looked clueless to his random accusation. She joined Sehun, who did talk to her, as Rei had said.

They sat next to each other in the front seats of the bus, with Rei at the window. Jongin almost felt like a father waving the two off and watching the bus disappear.

‘Is it still terrible?’ she asked Sehun.

‘No, but I am sleepy. Shame I didn’t get to eat your hangover breakfast.’

Rei laughed. ‘The others were pretty hungry that day.’

‘Anyway, you’re not a sit-at-the-back person.’ He said.

‘Not in a bus, no. I prefer for conversations I’d rather not listen to be to be done behind my back.’

‘Who knew.’ Sehun curved a curious smile.

‘And you are the same.’ She picked up on his expression.

‘You must know, you used to be with them back in freshman year.’

‘I know too much.’ She looked back out of the window.

‘Do you ever think about how mathematicians come up with formulas? Like, did Pythagoras really have to test many right-angle triangles to come with the whole a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared? And that’s probably the simplest formula I know. What about quadratic equations?’

‘Do you know why we don’t get eclipses every month?’ Rei pointed to a moon that was still high in the bright sky.

‘Why should we get them every month?’

Rei explained about the moon, and then the stars, looking beyond the sky in their little moving bus. Sehun added humorous remarks and they would laugh before he asked another question, and they would dive further and further into their own world of fascinating things.

In between their discussions they would not talk, only look out the window as if looking for more things to ask.

Sehun broke the silence.

‘Why do you think kisses feel nice?’ he asked, his eyes still gazing out of the window. Rei looked at him with the same curiosity he felt; neither of them barely reminisced the sentimentality of the intimacy that they shared the other night.

‘I think it has to do with how we’re wired. I guess both you and I are physically-inclined. We feel things when people touch us.’

‘Anyone who touches us?’

‘That would have to depend on you, wouldn’t it? Do you differentiate kisses by the kisser or the kiss itself?’

‘Did you even feel anything? That night?’ he was looking at her now, and she at him, but nothing mattered more than his question. They could care less about memories.

‘I suppose I did.’

‘I think I did too, even though I was mad drunk.’ He resolved. ‘Do you know another reason I don’t casually hang out with the people at the back?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Because we come from different places. I used to think it was stupid that cliques exist, how people would be with people who were just like them instead of mixing around but when I became more and more distant from my dad and his family, I started to realize that where you come from determines the kind of things you go through, you know? Like there are things I wouldn’t understand about people who were different like me, and vice versa.’ He said.

‘Maybe I would have ended up just like my father if my mother wasn’t as active as she is, and if we didn’t have her parents to take care of me too. She comes from a different place and their family’s not as rich as my dad and that shapes their norms and values. My dad would splurge whenever he wanted and did whatever he liked but my mother is more careful. And it shapes what you talk about too, and some differences aren’t bad but it affects the way you interact with people.’

‘You just can’t mentally connect with people who understands things way too differently from you.’

He returned his gaze to her. ‘Do I make sense?’

‘Perfectly.’ She said.

‘Are you like that too?’

‘People from the same background can have differences too, surprisingly.’ She smiled. ‘Girls and boys, old and young. It’s interesting to see how varied people are but you can certainly identify a pattern in the way they all talk.’

‘Is there a reason you don’t hang out with them anymore? You know like, you stopped mentally connecting with them? Or maybe our clique is way more fun to be with?’

‘Both.’ She grinned.

Sehun laughed.

‘Come to think of it, I was kind of scared to talk to you the first time. To me, you were very superior and an exact epitome of perfection.’

‘You exaggerate just as much as everyone else.’

‘Don’t you think highly of yourself?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because everybody else does.’

‘You need to stop with your hyperboles.’

‘It’s true! You should write about yourself sometimes and see how different you are from all of us commoners.’

Rei shook her head, clasping a smile.

‘One more question; if I was drunk, and I’m too honest when I’m drunk, and you were sober and God forbid you lose control of yourself when you’re sober – does that mean we both wanted to kiss?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe we need to kiss again to find out.’