JI HANSOL

It doesn’t matter how many times it happens, the process ends up the same. A letter, at times a text but mostly letters from girls I don’t even know-words that I am sure hold no meaning to them, ‘Hansol-oppa, you are very cute I think I like you’ or ‘I fell in love with you at first sight’. It never was ‘I want to get to know you better’, ‘I find you interesting’, ‘I want to listen to you’ so any words that were on the letters just held little meaning in my opinion. At times I wished I could get a letter that would end up putting a smile on my face—that I would read words that I wished for so bad. At times I wished that someone like Hani would send me something like that, willing to listen to me.

Maybe it was too much asking, for someone who would have it in her to get to know the depths of my mind. To ask for someone like my best friend.

“She wasn’t there?” was what Hani asked me the moment I returned from the journalism faculty as she saw the letter still in my hands, “Why in such a rush to turn her down?”

“It’s better this way right, Hani?”

“What would you mean by that?”

I wanted to say really badly that it is better when you manage to put an end to illusions and wishes that aren’t going to come true, because I didn’t want to be the cause of a girl feeling that way-I didn’t want to cause any pain even though rejection felt way worse. But the pain of thinking that you can get to win’s someone’s heart and finding out it is impossible—that’s a type of pain I didn’t want anyone to go through, “I just wanted to say that it is better like that”

“That’s brutal”

“Yah Lee Hani!” and she turned her head to the side, her gaze landing on mine with that playful look on them that always showed in her eyes when she was being sarcastic and feeling playful, her lips curving into a smile that I had known pretty well for years, “I meant what I said—It is better that I turn her down, the sooner the better”

“Savage, that would be the 4th girl this week” she said as she rolled her eyes, her hand slowly raised up and she faked a gasp, “Are you by any chance enjoying this now?” 

“Would you enjoy being led on?” I asked, “Or to feel like you have no chance with someone yet still like them?”

I am not sure why, but the moment she heard that, her smile faded, “See? You wouldn’t—that’s why I’m doing it, it would be cruel to just accept girls that I don’t have feelings for”

“Well, that’s logical, I guess” 

The time our class was done and I finally had to face that girl came, it wasn’t nice to do this and it wasn’t like I found any sort of enjoyment in this. I guess I just found words in those letters so empty and what I was craving for just wasn’t there, as cold as it sounded even to me. I could have probably got to know those girls, but there was always something that prevented me from doing so, coupled with the fact that I found it difficult to open up to random people in general.

I rose to my feet and left the classroom in search for the sender of this letter, even though I heard Hani and Hojung telling me to leave it for another day—I could still hear them saying to wait another day, but I couldn’t. Especially after many thoughts began plaguing my mind.

“I thought it was from you” it still was in my mind, the words that escaped my lips at that moment, words that I couldn’t understand if they had any meaning behind it all, but her usual reply “I don’t date my best friends” would resonate endlessly, her rule—It was odd, but whenever I heard about her rule and her saying I felt something stinging deeply inside my chest. And at the same time, I felt like I had to respect whatever her decisions were, after all-she had the right to fall in love with whoever she wanted.

Another thing that came to mind as I was walking through the halls of my university and out of my faculty while I headed to the journalism one were Hojung’s words.

And his words for some reason made me snap, like it was a signal for me to rush this rejecting process and get it over with as soon as I could. I got stressed quite easily about this and I just needed to put an end to this. I wasn’t mad at Hojung though, he was too nice for me to get mad at him-but his comment kind of made me feel weird.

‘As long as it isn’t Hani’ he said, at times I wondered if there was something going on there between them, something I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to behave like I was a possessive best friend either, so maybe he was a bit right about me not being that close to her—perhaps that was a subtle way of his to tell me not to get too close to her even if we had many years of friendship and in those years I hadn’t seen her with anyone else. Maybe he knew she needed her space to be able to fall in love and perhaps it was possible that I was an obstacle to her falling in love with someone. Maybe even Hojung was that someone for her and I was in the middle of them both.
 
It would be okay though right? It’s going to be okay if Hani ends up liking Hojung right? It’s not like she likes me-but why does it make me snap when I hear Hojung telling me not to date Hani? At times, I believed it was because of having been together for so long that maybe seeing her being closer to someone else made me feel weird about it all. And probably deep inside I hoped that if she dated anyone it would be him-at least I knew he would take care of her for me in the case he liked her. 

All this stressed me to the point I found myself in the journalism faculty faster than I would have wanted to, asking where the classroom for the 1st year students where while also wanting to find out where the girl who sent me this letter was. I asked many students if they knew the girl who had sent the letter, some looked at me like they wanted to begin gossiping and I could hear some girls giggling and saying how it was princely-like that I had come to look for her.
 
But if only they knew what I had come to do then they would have probably wanted to kick me out the moment I stepped foot here. Some girls approached a bigger group and began talking and mentioning my name-apparently, they knew who I was. And afterwards, one of the girls from that group approached and told me to wait at the rooftop of the faculty and that the girl I was looking for would show up in a few minutes. I tried taking a look at the group before I left, but I wasn’t sure who was the girl that had sent me this confession so I just nodded in reply, and headed there, rushing up the stairs to that place in which I hoped there would be privacy for me to be able to say what I wanted to. 
I rested against the fence that surrounded the rooftop as I waited for her, the view was nice since this building seemed to be taller than the one where I studied. The atmosphere was calm to me, until I heard footsteps coming closer, the sound growing louder as the steps approached the end of the staircase fast. I saw the door to the rooftop opening in a rush as a girl ran up to me, “Sunbae!”

I hadn’t ever seen her before so she wasn’t familiar to me, but I still bowed to greet her, “Hello” I mumbled as she nodded and softly smiled while trying her best to regain her breath.

“I…” I heard her whisper as she clutched her skirt while trying to avoid meeting eyes with me. It was a very awkward situation to be in, one that was usual but no matter how many times it happened-I couldn’t help but to fear the crawling anxiety that was travelling all over my body as I struggled to find the correct words to say no, to say I am sorry, I am sorry I am not in love with you without seeming like a cold-hearted dude that didn’t mind if the girls that he turned down were going to be okay after the rejection. 

I bit my bottom lip as worry began taking hold of me, I could see the girl in front of me was fidgeting and at times playing with her hair, “I’m Kang Sunhee…” she finally introduced herself to me, the same name I had read on the letter she had asked Hani to give me. The only thing I could do at the time was to nod—I  wasn’t sure how this particular occasion was going to go and had no idea of the final outcome, but I hoped it was over soon.
 
“Ji Hansol…” I said almost in a whisper as I took out the envelope she had given me out of my backpack, I had avoided folding it so she didn’t believe I was rude, “I um… well my friend gave me your letter” I began, it wasn’t the first time I was going to say this-but for some reason it felt difficult every time, no matter how many times the situation repeated itself. 

“Yes!” she beamed as she took a step closer, her eyes growing bigger when noticing the envelope I was holding, “Yes that’s the letter I wrote!”

“Um… thank you” I said, while I struggled with coming up with the words I wanted to say, searching for the correct ones for the situation I was in while trying to keep my voice steady and  not let the awkwardness take hold of me. I wasn’t feeling as comfortable as I wished to-but who would feel comfortable when you are about to reject someone? It would be weird for me to be confident about this, but they always felt like it was as though everything had turned ice cold.

Of course, it would be difficult to understand the way I was, it would be hard to be able to get the idea as to why I behaved in such. And in fact, only Hani and Hojung understood how I was, my behavior, my way of talking and everything that made me who I was.  They were the only ones whom I didn’t feel anxious around or stressed regarding not being able to open up or being too quiet. I could talk to them far more easily and at times even play around, especially Hani, especially her. She was the definition of a safe place to me, one in which I didn’t have to get worried about talking too much or not talking at all. She was the first person I said hi to in the morning and the one I told goodnight to from my window every day. 

But I could obviously not bring her along to moments like this, situations of this kind that would add to whatever worries she had that were making her smile fade away from time to time. These were for me to deal with on my own as complicated as they were, so I had to stand here like on many other instances and find myself saying ‘no’ like an automatic response, “I read your letter, Kang Sunhee-ssi..”

“I am so glad Hani-sunbae gave you the letter! I well…” her gaze was on the floor, her fidgeting didn’t come to a halt but instead, she took a step forward, “Did you read it all…?” she asked.
 
I did, actually every bit of it. And while I didn’t feel anything in particular, she did-I didn’t even know how, but in most of her letter I could see the words ‘and you are really cute’ repeating over and over again. My system always told me I wasn’t c