Carus Jung Jaehyun.

This letter is started confusing, ain’t it? Carus, instead of dear. You may wonder what the hell Carus is. You may open your dictionary, Google translate, or whatever means you use to interpret the word. And there, you will find. Carus. It is a Latin word. Carus, instead of dear. Because ‘dear’ has been way too common that it has lost its magic to me. ‘Dear’ could sometimes be way too formal. ‘Dear’ is everyone’s favourite. And you deserve better than ‘dear’. You are entitled to something that’s more special than a ‘dear’. And even though you are everyone’s favourite like a ‘dear’, but ‘dear’ would never do any justice to show how much I favour you.

So carus, instead of dear it is. Beloved. High. Valuable. Expensive.
Even though there are more words in my Thesaurus to describe what you are to me.

Here we go again. I wrote this letter again. Yeah. It’s been the third since I knew you. I could’ve actually written a letter every single day to greet you as you open your eyes in the morning, but I chose to write it occassionally only on your birth date. Because then, you will keep longing to my letter. You will feel the craving taste to these words in your head, and perhaps you will start to think that something is probably wrong with me, or with us, when I stop sending this on your birth date.

Jung Jaehyun.

It was untrue when you asked whether I do really like you. Because “I like you” would be too much of an understatement to describe the feeling that I crafted for you. I have gone way beyond “I like you”. Even though I am not sure if I should have said that “I love you”. To me, the word “love” itself is too vague. I love my Father. I love my mother. I love my sister. I love music too. But you are nothing like them. To put you in the similar verb with them may cause a different context that everyone has known, but I would like to be clearer than “I love you”. I would want the words that would exactly scream my adoration, admiration, and affection to you:

“My heart aches for you.”
“Cor cordium”, if I might borrow Oliver’s words to Elio in Andre Aciman’s book.

Little do you know, I put “Cor cordium” as your name in my contact list. So the next time you lost your phone and wanted to call it with mine, you know what to type. Don’t complain that I didn’t save your phone number ever again. I mean, that would be a total nonsense.

Ah, sorry. This letter should be more about you than me. I didn’t mean to steal your spotlight. I knew myself. I often get nitpicking over tiny details whenever I wrote a letter for you because I am afraid these words would not be sufficient to elaborate my feelings to you.

Happy birthday, Jung Jaehyun.

It has been a truly beautiful journey by having you in this life. Whenever you have doubts on yourself, always remember that I have always been so inspired by how you manifest your words and dreams into actions. Never have I ever met somebody as fearless as you are. Whenever you have worries about the hate a