What do you say when there's nothing left to tell? Just the final details, the flimsy bits, or maybe not so flimsy at all, that round out the end of the story. This is the part no one ever wants to share. But here it is anyway.

I skipped school after first period the day of the shooting. I couldn't stay there, looking at my phone's screen, empty of messages and calls from Jongsuk. The guard wasn't at the school parking lot when I left, but if he had been, I don't even know what I would've said, what magic words I could've summoned to win my release. I was speechless, silent, and all I could do was cry. And I didn't even know anything for sure.

That would come later, hours after I showed up tear-stained and shaky at the office, giving Wooyoung what he would later call, when he told his part of this story, "the scare of his life." He wasn't a news person, and Eomma never paid attention to anything on TV or radio other than SBS Commentary, which she'd cut off early that morning. So they'd had no idea what was going on, instead immersed in the details of their wedding planning. We'd had to go next door to the stationary store, where they had a TV in the back, all of us crammed into their tiny office watching live coverage. I remember Eomma kept looking at me, her face more worried than I'd ever seen, while Wooyoung held my hand, his other arm over my shoulder. So close, and yet nothing, and no one, could get to me.

I tried calling Jongsuk every few minutes, and checked his social medias, where other people were also begging him to update. He'd last logged in was the night before, posting a picture of his cleats after a muddy practice. I'd look at them frequently.

Later, at home, after pizza arrived that no one ate, Eomma and Wooyoung kept leaving the room for huddled conversations of which I caught only a word here and there: "contact," "question," "interfering," "necessary." They asked if I had a number for Jongsuk's parents, an address, anything. I didn't. But even if I had, I wasn't sure I could've called at that point. Jongsuk would never have made me worry. He would've gotten in touch, somehow, as soon as possible. So I knew, by then. But I didn't want to know.

It sounds so weird now. All of this seems tear-streaked and damp. How could I sit so silently in front of a TV for hours, fingers gripping my own fingers, until that moment early the next morning when the names of the victims were released. There were four before him, and, I knew by the math, two after. I didn't hear those, though. When I saw his name on the screen, everything went black.

It would be days later that I'd finally piece together the whole story. Partly from a friend of the family who answered the phone at the Lee's when Wooyoung finally got through and explained who he was. Some from the news stories that put together timelines, marking the exact spot in the gym where Jongsuk had come running after hearing the shots that killed two females. He'd tried to talk to the guy into putting down the gun, witnesses who looked to be in shock. I'd sat with Eomma watching SBS Commentary so many mornings, and now, suddenly, they were talking about someone I knew. Someone I loved. The picture of Jongsuk all the news outlets showed, provided by the family, was one I hadn't seen, a candid from junior prom the year before. Every time it went up on-screen, I wanted to believe, somehow, it wasn't him after all. Like if I didn't know Jongsuk, it couldn't be mine who was gone.

I watched everything I could, even after the major networks moved on. Nothing about the shooter, though. His name and details were of no interest to me, not deserving of a single breath I was still struggling to take. But the special reports on the victims, details true or not ("Lee Jongsuk loved soccer, swimming, and, his friends say, AOA") I soaked in like water. And when they weren't on, and I was alone, I ran over our own story, that one night, again and again in my mind. Every bit, from the minute I stepped into the damp sand until he drove away, a flash of red through those whirling revolving doors. Like if I repeated it enough, I could conjure him up, bring him back, and this would all be the bad dream I wished it was.

I wanted to go to the service. When it was announced on the memorial page his friends had put up, I immediately made plans to make the trip, Wooyoung and Eomma offering to come with me. The night before we were to leave for the airport, though, I started vomiting, the sickest I had ever been. It was like my grief was toxic, turning my very body against me. After I passed out walking from the bathroom back to my bed, Eomma put her foot down and told me to stay home. I didn't speak to her for three days.

They had a group memorial that was televised, a "healing event" for the community. Students held candles, teachers linked arms, everyone cried. The coach, between his own sobs, talked about how, on that morning, he'd asked Jongsuk to his gym office to tell him about some interest from a college recruiter. When AOA, all dressed in black and minimal glitter, was introduced to sing their song about loss, a favorite of one of the victims, I held my pillow to my mouth and cried.

There were more details. Like how I missed a full week of school, staying in my bed and crying. The way Gayeon came by every afternoon and crawled in beside me, her arms around my waist, holding me as I tried to sleep. The brightness of the sky outside, the filtered sunlight through the tree just past my window, the most beautiful fall, everyone agreed. It probably was. But even though I was there, and lived it, I couldn't have said so. the dead aren't the only ones who vanish: you, too, can disappear in plain sight if enough is taken from you. I was still missing, in many ways. And I wasn't sure I wanted to be found.