1. Still

[ A/N: Hi everyone I'll be leaving song suggestions for every chapter that I feel would fit the mood of the chapter, and do give the songs a listen while reading! The song for this chapter is Crash by Usher. I hope you enjoy!]

Kim Yongsun

Today I find myself sitting in the corner of the room where the memorial service was held, the priest’s voice droning on in a monotonous rhythm. I try my best to catch his words, failing as soon as I start.

(Why were death anniversaries called anniversaries? They didn't seem like a cause for celebration. “Happy being dead for four years?” That didn't sound right. Every year was just a loop of anguish and loss for me.)

I shift uncomfortably under the solemn eyes of the church staff attending to the service, hunching inwards on myself as I try to make myself as unassuming and nondescript as possible.

I pull my cap further down over my eyes.

“And today we remember the passing of Moon Byulyi, who will live on as a loving memory in all our hearts. Let us pray.”

I don't close my eyes, instead taking the time to slowly pass over the faces of the guests, who attend with increasing rarity over the course of the years. Of course, today her mother is here, without fail.

Before I know it, the service has ended and I stay unmoved, as the people stream pass the pews out of the room. I watch the sunlight flicker through the tinted glass windows, an array of colours beaming in, illuminating the space.

It's been four years now, yet I still don't see you here.

I shut my eyes.

I still miss you,

An infinitesimal tear runs down my cheek.

every single day.

Then I feel a hand brush my shoulder, a light graze upon the cotton sleeve of my outfit. My heart palpitates.

Byulyi?

But when I turn around, I'm met with the sorrowful face of Mrs Moon, her face bearing an uncanny resemblance to my Byulyi. Her eyes are weighed down in bruised colour bags, evident of her exhaustion, the skin around her eyes and forehead creased in a plethora of wrinkles.

I spot the graying edges of hair near her temples, the tremors of her hand, and I know that she is a victim to her guilt, as I am to mine.

“It's hard to believe it's been four years since she's been gone, isn't it?” she begins, her voice resonating with remorse, hurt, and an underlying melancholy.

“Sometimes I catch myself forgetting how she looks like when she smiles, or the little things she used to do, and I hate myself all the more for it.”

I can do nothing but smile wanly at her, because I know exactly what she is talking about, and she is aware of this fact.

Mrs Moon subtly smiles at me, her expression betraying her feelings all the more. “Thank you for being such a good friend to Byulyi, and for coming,” she says, before she loses herself to sorrow once more.

Except that we were more than what people knew us to be. She was more to me than just a friend, she was my moon, my universe, my galaxy. She was my best friend, and my lover, she was my family.

The world could not know of even a hint of what happened when we were alone together, those stolen, moonlit nights we spent, where hours felt like minutes, and days felt like seconds.

She was everything to me, much as I was to her, and yet we could never let out even a word of what we were to anyone.

Not to her family, not to our friends.

It was a forbidden love, a love so taboo yet so real, it was intoxicating. A romance between two girls. In Korea, that was unthought of.

I remember the first time we met, in a dinghy convenience store not far from where we would later move into an apartment together.

She was the dim moonlight softly bathing the surface of the earth, the gentle sigh of a lasting memory. I was sitting at the tables near the end of the store, a cup of instant noodles in front of me. I remember watching the flashing lights of cars as they passed, the desolate streets ringing with loneliness.

Then I heard her, that deep, husky, yet sweet voice of hers. “Is this seat empty?” she'd asked, gesturing to the seat beside me.

“Yes,” I'd said.

“Great,” she'd said with a smile.

And it was, great.

Later when we got together I asked her why she had approached me.

“Because I thought you looked beautiful under the soft moonlight,” she'd said simply, looking at me with that sincere expression of hers.

Then, I'd chided her for being greasy again, but I knew deep down she'd meant every word she said to me. She wasn't someone who said their 'I love you's often, but when she did, she meant every one of them.

“I love you, Kim Yongsun,” she'd said to me the night she confessed to me, the look in her eyes that night stirring up a warm tingle in the pit of my stomach.

“Will you be my girlfriend?” she asked.

Of course, I said yes. It was hard to say no to Byulyi. Not that I would ever say no to her. I was wonderfully, entirely, in love with her.

She’d smiled adorably, her nose scrunching up into her signature, dorky grin. That was one of the infinite number of things I loved about her.

I hear a loud bang at the back of my mind, and I am jolted out of my trip back down to memory lane. “Anyone still here?” I hear a gruff voice call out, the sound resonating within the enclosed space, “I need to lock up now.”

I snap out of it, collecting my belongings before darting out of the room. I walk aimlessly down the gravel path near the church premises, minute pebbles finding their way into my sneakers.

It would be a nightmare for Byul's feet in her scruffy converses full of holes. Except, she wasn't here to grimace at it anymore.

Before long, I reach our apartment-

(I should get used to calling it my apartment now, shouldn't I?)

and the flicker of the faulty bulb in the living room welcomes me home.

A ty replacement for how Byul used to greet me at the door with a passionate kiss, and a 'welcome back’, if you ask me.

But as they say, beggars can't be choosers... right?

I stumble in the living room, my legs heavy as lead. Then I brush against something resting on the small coffee table Byul used to call her 'work table’.

The leather-bound book falls onto the ground with a dull thud. '!’ I cuss.

Today wasn't a good day. In fact, it was downright terrible, I was in a foul mood and cleaning up after my girlfriend (who left me all alone on this very day four years ago) was not high on my to-do list.

Of course, I'm not angry at you Byul...I just miss you, way more than I can handle.

I bend down to retrieve the fallen book. 'Byul’s Bank’ it read.

I brace myself as another flood of memories drown my thoughts out.

“What's this?” I asked, fingers trailing across the leather finish of the book sitting in front of Byulyi.

“Come here,” she'd said, patting the ground next to her, “I'll show you.”

I scooted over, cuddling up to her, marvelling at the way Byul's homely smell curled around me, enveloping me in a familiar embrace.

“This is my greatest treasure,” Byul started. “After you, of course,” she added as an afterthought, anticipating my cringe attack she knew would come.

“I write down the beautiful words of other language that I come across in here,” she said, smiling fondly, “so I can remember and keep them with me.”

My eyes wandered to the pages, slightly creased from the loving touch of its owner. I skim the page with my eyes, ‘Deunde, Hanyauku, Dépaysement…’

I land upon a word written at the bottom of the page. “Saudade,” I breathed, as if it were fragile, the word unfamiliar on my lips. “What does it mean?”

“It refers to an intense longing one has towards something or someone who's been lost,” she said, equally gently, “a beautiful word with no equivalent in English.”

“That sounds really...sad,” I intoned. (I was never really one who was good with my words, okay.)

“It is, isn't it?” she agreed, her eyes seeking mine. I looked into them, and found a million possibilities, a galaxy of immense expanse, yet the cozy feeling of home, the quiet calm after a storm.

“I love you, Moon Byulyi,” I blurted out, “never leave me...I wouldn't be able to take it.”

She'd smiled then, a small one full of love, “I wouldn't dream of it.”

And yet you still did, I thought bitterly.

The reality of the situation washes over me, the stifling, entangled mess of human complications. The mess that left me thinking of her every breathing second. The mess that told me I still loved her despite.

Despite everything.

That night I fell asleep, dreaming of nothing.