It was an unusually dark night. He was used to the long, lazy summers that he had grown so accustomed to while he was attending university, but moving back to his hometown really brought him back to the past. Cold, cloudy days and long, dark nights.

And with Eunji standing in front of him again, with her politely bored yet professionally detached expression, made him feel like a fourteen year old boy again.

The scent of cardboard wafted through the air. It was a typical retail store, after all. Cardboard boxes of all sizes were strategically placed all over the store to the sides, indicating that the cashiers opened the boxes with their box cutters to place the items whenever there wasn’t a line. Her latex gloves were dark and covered with grime and dirt. 

It was a small store that he had practically grown up in during his high school days. It looked so achingly familiar to him--the workers wearing their red uniforms, the bright pink posters advertising their products and sales all over the store above the shelves, and the Japanese music playing in the background made his heart throb. Jihyun used to drag him into the store over and over again. She used to always link their arms together as she would gush over how cute the items were, and while she was going on and on about their products and how she wanted to buy everything in the store, he would watch her like she was a fascinating species.

Now it was Eunji standing in front of him.

Her professional voice, artificially coated with enthusiasm and friendliness, rang through his ears as she repeated her question to Joohyuk. “Do you need a bag for twenty cents, sir?”

Joohyuk looked as stunned as In Guk felt.

“Yeah, I need a bag,” he said slowly, as he wasn’t sure what he was seeing in front of his eyes. He placed his arms in the pockets of his coat, looking for his wallet as Eunji nodded. Her eyes were averted to the counter as she placed his items in a brown paper bag, waiting for Joohyuk to pay.

Finally, a black leather wallet emerged from his pockets. As he pulled out his card, Eunji reminded him of the price. It was obvious that she wasn’t paying attention as she said to him a monotone voice, “Please slide your card here. Please select credit or debit, please confirm the price, and please sign in a moment.

She sounded like she was reading a script as she continued to stare at the machine, refusing to make eye contact with the two. Her pale face was emotionless.

Why was the process of buying seaweed so tedious?

Joohyuk didn’t even have a chance to interrupt her until she was thanking him for his patronage, clearly indicating to him that it was time for him to leave so the next customer could pay.

A woman approached the counter upon seeing Joohyuk signing his name on the machine, but signed in impatience as she tapped on the ground with her heels when Joohyuk took his time pretending to have trouble with the confirmation page.

"Eunji, I’ve wanted to see you for a while,” Joohyuk blurted out as if he couldn’t help the words from spilling from his lips, reaching his hands out to retrieve his bags. His hands brushed by her hands as she pulled her hands bank, recoiling in disgust from the contact.

If the situation wasn’t so strange, In Guk would have laughed in amusement. Joohyuk was a tall young man with sharp features. His chiseled jaws and his artfully tousled dark hair (that In Guk knew for a fact that he spent ten minutes on every morning) attracted admirers from even a far distance. He also dressed very nicely, mostly in black coats that accentuated his long legs. No girl has ever rejected Joohyuk.

Except for perhaps Eunji. Her pink cheeks stood out in stark contrast from her pale face as she blinked rapidly, seemingly trying to calm herself down from her interaction with Joohyuk as she tried to wave the next customers in line to throw their items in her counter in desperation.

She got prettier, In Guk couldn’t help but think. His mind would always wander to Jihyun whenever he thought about girls, but Eunji was always pretty. Her bangs had flattered her features nicely, her pink cheeks were always so pretty whenever she came to school back then, and her smile (although the last time he had ever seen her smile was in freshman year before she stopped talking to people) used to make his heart pound.

In  a manga he had read when he was younger, he stumbled upon an arc in the story where the female character was prettier because she had her heart broken by her first love. Her eyes were filled with sadness, but yet she seemed to unapproachable and so much more mature.

It was a sad thought to think that girls were considered prettier when their eyes were filled with sorrow, but perhaps there was some degree of truth to it.

But weren’t people most beautiful when they were happy?

That was what he used to think, anyway, before the emptiness in her eyes spun the stars in his mind around.

"She doesn’t look happy,” Joohyuk murmured as he slung his arm around In Guk’s shoulders outside of the store. He sighed like the weight of the world was on his shoulders and he had to share the burden with the closest human being to him.

In Guk shook his shoulder off, not wanting to be involved with Joohyuk’s thought process. He noticed that his arms were clinging onto the handles of the bag as if he had more than just seaweed in there.

“She hasn’t looked happy for years,” In Guk answered, avoiding Joohyuk’s wondering gaze. He instead chose to focus on the stars in the sky and the paper lanterns suspended in the air, giving him the illusion that he was in Japan again for their festivals.

Ah, how he missed Japan. Studying abroad was the best part of his college experience. Too bad he never took the effort to actually learn Japanese, however, or he would have probably spoken to more girls while he was trying to forget Jihyun.

However, it was true that Eunji hadn’t looked happy in years. He felt like no one else had noticed that she stopped talking in their sophomore year of high school, but that was probably because it was such a large school and she had only spoken to a few people in the first place. It was evident on their first day of sophomore year when she stood in line for her new schedule that she was a completely different person. And as the year progressed, he noticed that he had never seen her smile. Indeed, she stopped talking and she stopped looking directly at people whenever she was forced to speak by her professors. She no longer favored bright colors and started wearing only black clothes (probably to blend in with the sea of students who also favored darker colors) which only made her dark undereye circles even more noticeable. Once, he was walking in the hallways when he passed by her being lectured by her professor. When the professor practically screamed at her as she asked Eunji if she was doing drugs because her voice had turned hoarse from the lack of speaking, In Guk practically ran away, not wanting to be part of that discussion.

A few girls passing by giggled as they stole glances at Joohyuk’s profile. Sure, Joohyuk may have been handsome, but those girls didn’t know that he hated to do laundry and wore the same clothes over and over again. A black coat, a gray or white sweater, black jeans, and sometimes a scarf. But then again, when one wore dark colors all the time, it was impossible to tell if they were dirty.

Little did they know, Joohyuk rarely paid attention to girls. The most he would ever do is act friendly towards them, scratch his head in bafflement when he was asked out, and shrug his shoulders when he had to explain to his friends why he rejected such a pretty girl. The young man certainly had many friends, but once those very friends tried to cross the boundary from being friends to lovers, Joohyuk would casually reject them with a smile.

Joohyuk’s voice brought him back to reality as they passed by the beach. The surface of the water was barely distorted from the gentle wind and suddenly, In Guk simply felt pathetic. He had told himself to forget about girls entirely until he met that one hot lady in a bar that he could see himself marrying and having genetically blessed babies, but here he was, talking about Jung Eunji (of all girls) with Joohyuk, especially because he seemed to fancy her from the way he had tried to reach for her hands earlier.

“Seeing her again...I felt like I was back in high school again.” A chuckle emerged from Joohyuk as he looked at In Guk with a defeated expression. “There are so many girls out there, but Eunji was the only one who could ever capture my interest. She’s interesting.”

In Guk should have allowed him to keep his arms wrapped around his shoulders, because it was almost as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He didn’t want to continue looking at him.

Sure, Eunji was cute, but that was about it. She had no personality and no facial expressions, but the way she had blushed and tried to pull her hands back from Joohyuk...she suddenly seemed so much alive at that moment before her neutral face (the one devoid of emotions) reappeared and her professional voice rang through the store.

The paper lanterns in the shopping mall were much more interesting than her. They were colorful and decorated with pretty things like...butterflies. And stars. And hearts. And they glowed in the dark, which was very cool. But In Guk felt obligated to ask him questions. Although a part of him didn’t want to talk about her any further, a part of him was curious to hear about Joohyuk’s interest in her.

His voice was low and intentionally uninterested when he asked Joohyuk about why he found her interesting.

"Because she used to be such a happy person and she made me laugh back in freshman year,” he recalled with a fond smile, seemingly lost in his wave of memories. The beach was so peaceful and quiet at night as more girls in crowds walked by Joohyuk and whispered to one another about how cute he was. Unfortunately for them, he paid them no attention.

"My locker was near her locker, and I would come to school early just so I could say hi to her. She would talk about some random stuff, like how she should stop drinking so much tea at school because she kept having to excuse herself to use the restroom, or how she read a book that she absolutely hated because the main character was a cheating scumbag. But it was funny to me because she would force herself to finish the book so she could complain about the character and have evidence to support her opinion if she ever got into a discussion about the book.

But after that year, she suddenly stopped talking. I would say hi to her at our lockers, and she wouldn’t even bother trying to fake a smile. She just gave me small waves to acknowledge my presence, and I guess that was all I had of her after that.

I suppose I’m just interested in her because I want to know what made her change so much,” Joohyuk sounded happy about having found her after so many years and raised his head up. Wisps of smoke appeared and disappeared as he exhaled into the night air, and the solemn expression that In Guk had was reflected in Joohyuk’s dark brown eyes.

"I think she’s been stuck in our hometown while we all left for college,” In Guk said. It was probably true.

Joohyuk, however, continued speaking as if In Guk hadn’t spoken at all. “But I wonder if I’m only interested in her because I’m intrigued by her. And once I find out her past, I wonder if I’ll lose interest in her. That’s a scary thought, isn’t it?”

Silence engulfed them as they continued their way home. In Guk was lost in his thoughts, Joohyuk was lost in his memories.

Somehow, it felt like a mistake for In Guk to return to their hometown.