Hyunjin looks pretty under the moonlight. Behind her, a light casts a gentle glow of white and it illuminates her smile while Heejin hangs upside down on the pull-up bar. Sitting on top of the monkey bars, Hyunjin revels in the peace that comes with being alone with Heejin at midnight. Only the two of them, the moon, and the low chirping of crickets, it’s like the world stops for them.

Heejin has spent many nights like this with Hyunjin—walking aimlessly through the town, twirling around lamp posts, precariously balancing on beams, hands holding tight to the ones walking on steady ground. Being with her on these nights are serene, a break from realitdoesny, and her sanity. It’s laughing with Hyunjin until her stomach hurts and tears well up in her eyes, it’s holding her hand and stuffing them into her jacket’s pocket to keep them warm in the cold winter. 

The days too are occupied by Hyunjin. The sun makes the coffee brown of her eyes shine and it makes Heejin’s breath catch. In the daytime, Heejin can see how the corner of her crinkle when she laughs, can see how clouds tumble by with Hyunjin’s arms behind her head when they lie on the grass to watch how the sky changes and bleeds from blue to orange and pink.

Heejin could always count on Hyunjin, could always find her laced through her days and nights. Ever since they were young, Hyunjin was always be by her side, growing alongside her and watching how the sun rose and fell every day. Biking along the Han River, sipping banana milk at the park, playing tag, dancing carelessly, Heejin had grown to see how Hyunjin changes through the tears. Growing to be just taller than her, Hyunjin’s wide smile is still the same, her laugh too. Getting to be stronger too with all of the sports she comes to do throughout all of the years, Hyunjin has spent innumerable nights helping Heejin doing pull-ups that just ended up with the other girl hanging upside down on them rather than pulling herself up. (And thus, in those nights, she helps Heejin’s hands find the bar so that she could flip herself upright again.)

Experiencing life with Hyunjin for as long as Heejin has, she has grown to know Hyunjin better than she knows herself. She knows how Hyunjin likes her rice (not too soggy, but not too dry), how Hyunjin has a shorter pinky finger on her right hand (she had jammed it when she tried to rebound a loose ball during a basketball game at one of her club tournaments and Hyunjin cried after the game so Heejin lightly kissed it after her coach tended to it and wrapped a metal splint on it—her affection didn’t make the pain go away, but it certainly distracted her from it), how Hyunjin hates raisins in her banana bread (because they were too sour and she liked her desserts almost teeth-rottingly sweet), how Hyunjin disguises her affection with teasing (Heejin is her main target mostly because she likes how she reacts to her jestering with small curled fists and cute pouty lips), how Hyunjin likes making origami cranes to fill up her time being bored (Hyunjin has given enough of them to Heejin for her to hang a flock of them on her ceiling with enough extra to scatter on her windowsill and work desk). She knows how Hyunjin would much rather spend her nights at her house because her father shouted too much and too loudly that it startled her—knows that even though Hyunjin looks tough, she’s really just terrified of being hurt.

And just as she knows Hyunjin well, Heejin knows when things start to change. It’s the beginning of senior year and it all starts with Hyunjin rejecting Heejin’s offer to hang around at the park because she promised a teammate of hers that she would hang out with her. Reasonably, Heejin lets it pass, but the next time she sees Hyunjin, a white stick sits between her pointer and middle finger. Watching as she puffs on it and the end’s embers light a bright orange, the smell is foul but not new to her. When Hyunjin offers her it with curious eyes and Heejin shakes her head, it’s the first time Hyunjin feels far away from her. It’s not that Heejin has anything against , just knew that it wasn’t hers to indulge in. She just thought that Hyunjin would have the same belief.

It’s the first time Heejin stumbles and gets something wrong about Hyunjin.

From there on, Heejin sees less of her in the daytime, even less of her in the night time. Caught in her new friends and the things they do, Hyunjin starts to blur away. Even if Heejin sees her still, it’s not the same. Watching as the girl tries to kickflip on her new skateboard, the white stick in between her fingers is an unfamiliar stranger to Heejin. The sky is overcast—grey and gloomy and cold—just as it feels between her and Hyunjin. It never used to feel that way. Even on the coldest and bleakest of days, Hyunjin made her feel warm with her babyish laugh and her fingers laced with hers.

It’s getting harder trying to talk to Hyunjin, trying to find similarity and the things that spark interest in her eyes. It’s harder trying to get through to her, to get her to smile and laugh, to get her to again like she used to. Hyunjin is someone new and Heejin would patiently wait for the Hyunjin she knows and loves to come back. Because throughout the years of growing up with Hyunjin, she came to love her too. In what way, Heejin doesn’t know, but that never mattered to her. Especially now. Too focused on watching Hyunjin slip between the cracks of her fingers, Heejin tries to remember all of the things that made her feel so reverently and sincerely for her.

She tries to remember how Hyunjin packs two banana milks and doubles of her lunch because she knows that Heejin would rather sleep than take the time to prepare her lunch and snack. She tries to remember how Hyunjin doesn’t laugh at her when Heejin shoots a free throw and the ball rainbows under the net, how Hyunjin comes behind her to adjust her hand under the ball and how gentle her voice is when she tells her to bend her knees and to focus on how her guiding hand’s follow through. She tries to remember how pride bloomed in her eyes when Heejin won the presidential position on the student council for her senior year, how Hyunjin had spent hours painting posters with her and incessantly told everyone she knew to vote for her because Heejin is the most reliable and loyal person she knows.

She tries to remember how Hyunjin holds her on nights where everything feels like too much, how she runs her hands through her hair to comfort her, how Hyunjin weathered through the hours of watching Naruto for and with her. She tries to remember how good it felt to be around her, how secure and right it felt.

But sometimes, there’s no use clutching onto a memory that has passed.

Everything changes way too quickly, far too abruptly for Heejin’s likes, so much that it gives her whiplash.

When Hyunjin comes late into one of their classes, Heejin can smell the very faint scent of when Hyunjin sits next to her and adjusts her hair to the front. Watching her unfocused eyes and how she slumps in her seat, a part of Heejin twists and turmoils. It’s not the first time that this has happened. Hyunjin never used to be tardy, always early or on time to class, her notebook and pen out ready to take notes. She had always been studious and motivated to do well in school. But, now, Hyunjin comes late to class, sometimes just barely catching the last fifteen minutes of it and Hyunjin doesn’t need to tell her, the red angry marks on her test is enough, that she is doing poorly on her tests. Watching as her best friend—someone who she came to love as something more—begins to spiral, Heejin couldn’t just sit and stare at how Hyunjin starts to change for the worst.

~

There’s never a right time for confrontation. There’s never a perfect time for Heejin to talk to Hyunjin about her change in behavior. It’s not like Hyunjin was hurting anyone, if anything, she was only hurting herself. (But then, in turn, it hurts Heejin to watch how she spirals, how the light in Hyunjin’s eyes dim). Acknowledging reality, recognizing the disparity between her and Hyunjin isn’t easy; it breaks her heart to watch how distant Hyunjin became whilst still being right next to her. Heejin didn’t want to leave her comfort zone, didn’t want to desert the spot meant for her beside Hyunjin, but sometimes, the world can prove things to be necessary.

On a day where Hyunjin isn’t preoccupied with basketball and her friends, Heejin is able to take a moment of her time. It’s been awhile since they have gone to the park that they used to hang out at—the same park Heejin hangs upside down at—and Heejin felt her excitement to see Hyunjin bubbling in her stomach. She has missed her even if she saw Hyunjin almost everyday. (It’s not just Hyunjin she misses. She misses the old Hyunjin).

When Hyunjin pulls up, she turns off the engine and throws rocks at Heejin’s window the way she always used to do. Coming outside, the smile that Heejin loves is fixed on Hyunjin’s lips and it reminds her of the days when the other girl used to smile so freely and innocently—before Hyunjin had to grow up and see that the world was unkind. With Hyunjin holding her arm out, Heejin laces her arm through it and nuzzles into Hyunjin’s cheek with her nose. Everything feels the way it used to—the same unbridled innocence, the pure hope for a good day, the optimism that everything is okay. 

Walking to the park with her, balancing on the beam on the way there with her hands tightly grasping onto Hyunjin’s to keep herself steady, and listening to her soft and smooth voice makes Heejin forget that anything was ever wrong in the first place. Just like those nights at the park before, Heejin hangs at the pull-up bar while Hyunjin sits on top of the monkey bars, two bottles of banana milk open and on the floor. When Hyunjin gets down from the monkey bars and sits cross-legged on the floor in front of Heejin, she’s close enough for Heejin to see how her eyelashes flutter with every blink.

“I miss being with you like this.”

Heejin finds comfort in knowing that she wasn’t the only one to miss the way things used to be.

“I do too, so much.”

Hyunjin sighs and Heejin can barely see how her eyes shut in shame. “I’m sorry for pushing you aside the way that I have been. There’s just been so much happening.”

Blindly reaching her hands out to squish her cheeks, Heejin smiles at how Hyunjin lets her and how she allows for her to smoosh them with gentle hands, “It’s okay; I understand that sometimes things need to happen for you to figure things out.”

Hyunjin sighs and she holds the hands cupping her cheeks. “It’s not okay. You didn’t deserve to be pushed away like that.”

Pulling her face closer, Heejin kisses her forehead without thought, something that she has done since they were kids whenever Hyunjin accidentally hurt her and seeked for her forgiveness. “Maybe it’s not okay, but there’s no use in dwelling in the past. I know you; I can feel how sorry you are. Just, don’t do it again, please. Does that sound good?”

Heejin sees how the canines in Hyunjin’s teeth show when she smiles genuinely and sees how Hyunjin’s shoulders loosen up, “It sounds perfect, Heekkie.” 

When Hyunjin kisses her cheek, right where her mole is (she doesn’t need light to know where it is, has kissed it enough to know exactly where it is), Heejin thinks of all of the times Hyunjin has kissed the marks on her face and even the ones on her arms. It started with Heejin being insecure in them, how she thought that they were imperfections on her face. It ended with Hyunjin kissing them every single day until Heejin saw the charm behind them. And even when Heejin begins to love her beauty marks, Hyunjin still occasionally kisses them—usually when she’s at her happiest and most peaceful. 

(Even when they were younger, she used to kiss the marks because it was just something she wanted to do. Hyunjin used to kiss the ones on her neck too before they both grew up and learned that kisses in certain places meant more than others. The mole on her bottom lip was no exception to that. When they were five, Hyunjin had kissed her quickly and playfully over their cups of milk and then proceeded to dunk her cookie into her milk right after it.

It’s not exactly a first kiss, but Heejin still considers it as one because she likes the thought of Hyunjin being her first kiss.)

“You know you’ll always have me, right? If you need someone to listen, I must say that I’m pretty good at that. And if you just wanna sit alone together, we can do that too.”

When Hyunjin’s thumbs lightly brushes against the upturn of Heejin’s lips, her own smile widens at the playful one Heejin wears, “Yeah; that’s the one thing I’ve never doubted, Heejin. And you know you’ve got me too?”

The way Heejin’s heart quickens at her words is nothing new to her. Same with the comfort it brings to her. When Heejin nods her head as an answer, Hyunjin laughs and sits up again.

“Have you had enough of the blood rushing to your head?”

Muffled from how Heejin groans at the pain coming to her now, Hyunjin helps her down from the pull-up bar. Heejin can barely take two steps before stumbling. When Hyunjin squats down in front of her, Heejin doesn’t even need to be told to get onto her back. (This also happened often too—Heejin losing her coordination from hanging too long and focing Hyunjin to walk them wherever they pleased to go.)

Being carried along the lit streets of the city, Hyunjin follows the directions Heejin gives her. “So, what does our ASB President have planned for the school’s Winter Formal?” Launching into all of the ideas and things she has to get done before the day of the dance, Hyunjin attentively listens as Heejin rattles off and away. 

Walking to Heejin’s home again, with the other girl walking now too, Hyunjin stops at Heejin’s mailbox before opening it. Watching her with curious eyes, Hyunjin pulls out something from it.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I stashed this in your mailbox because I didn’t want it to get crushed.”

Unraveling her hands and revealing a pink paper crane, Hyunjin lays it in Heejin’s open hands, “Unfold it.”

Heejin frowns, “Why? We both know that I won’t be able to fold it back together.”

Hyunjin smiles and she wraps an arm around her shoulder and giggles into her hair—it’s a sound, a feeling, a moment that Heejin chooses to remember, to engrave in her memories.

“I’ll fold it right back up for you. Just, open it, please?”

Cautiously unfolding it with Hyunjin’s help, in neat and tidy writing—something that Hyunjin doesn’t have unless she tries especially hard—Heejin can make out the words on it.

Be my date to winter formal?

Feeling Hyunjin’s eyes focused on her, how intense and attentive her gaze is, Heejin can’t stop the smile that blooms from her lips, can’t stop her heart from pounding and racing, can’t stop her elation. When she tries to kiss Hyunjin’s cheek, she barely grazes the corner of her lips and it makes blood rush to her cheeks, “I wouldn’t want to go with anyone else, Hyun.” When Hyunjin curls her further into her arms and kisses the temple of her forehead, Heejin hopes and prays to every deity out there that this night is not just a dream, not just a scarily elaborate and beautiful imagination her brain conjured up.

Before heading in, Hyunjin folds the paper crane again, this time, the words on the outside. When Heejin holds the pink crane in her hands after getting ready for sleep, she places it right by the picture of her and Hyunjin on her nightstand by her bed. 

Heejin hopes that this will be a turn of change, that Hyunjin will no longer feel eons away from her despite being so close to her.

When Heejin wakes in the morning and is met with the sight of the pink crane on her bedside table, Heejin has the sleepy mind to kiss it before snoozing her phone for an extra ten minutes of sleep.

(When Heejin fully rises, she can’t remember kissing the paper crane, thinks that maybe she imagined doing it, has too much shame to rifle for the answer that it wasn’t just a blurry confusion between dreaming and reality.)

~

When Winter Formal comes, everything is too good to be true. 

From the way Heejin is dressed (and how Hyunjin coordinates with her) to how Heejin picked the right DJ for the dance, the night is like a dream—it’s everything cliche Heejin could want for her last Winter Formal. It’s Hyunjin being lost for words when she sees her, her mother taking pictures, Hyunjin slipping a corsage over her wrist (and Heejin doing the same for her), and dinner at some fancy restaurant (it doesn’t stop Hyunjin from playing around with her food and making a mustache out of breadsticks). It’s coming to the dance with her arm laced with Hyunjin’s, bouncing with her to the energetic songs, and swaying along with her for the slow ones. The feeling of Hyunjin’s arms around her waist, her forehead on hers, hearing her voice amidst the speakers in the dance hall, and seeing how she smiles when Heejin twirls her around is enough for everything to feel like a hazy dream of fluttering butterflies and a flurry of euphoria.

The haze of it all crashes when Hyunjin is dropping her off after the dance. 

Searching for her clutch, Heejin opens the front compartment at the passenger seat of Hyunjin’s car and instead of finding it, she is met with an abnormal amount of plastic orange canisters, all with green buds in them.

“I found it! I forgot that I-”

When Hyunjin circles around her car to hand the girl’s clutch to her, she freezes like a deer in headlights.

“Hyunjin, what is this?”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

Heejin frowns, the glossy dream of the night ripped away from her hands.

“Then what is it, Hyunjin?”

“Listen, I’m not doing weed anymore. I can’t because of the testing for basketball. People just buy it off of me.”

Heejin’s eyebrows shoot up, her voice in a hushed whisper, “You’re people’s plug?”

Hyunjin runs a hand through her hair, panicked and anxious, “Jesus, Heejin. It’s not like that. I just distribute whatever my plug gives me.”

Everything feels too real, too much for Heejin to process and accept in such an abrupt amount of time, “This can get you in trouble, Hyunjin! You’re not even old enough to smoke legally. What the are you thinking? You’d be in deep if someone else found this!”

Frustration and panic never pairs well together, especially if it’s Hyunjin facing someone that she never wanted to disappoint. 

(It’s too late for that).

“You think I don’t know that, Heejin? You wouldn’t get it so just leave it be.”

Without realizing, Heejin’s voice turns scathing, “Wouldn’t get it? It’d help if you told me what the was going on in your life, Hyunjin! It’s like I don’t even know you anymore. The Hyunjin I know wouldn’t do stupid like this. Especially when she has scholarships lined up for her. I don’t like what’s happening to you, the type of person you’re turning into.”

When Hyunjin turns away from her, Heejin can see how her fingers are curled into a fist, how tense her shoulders are. When she turns back around, Heejin is met with a vision that she wished she would never have to see, would have never wished to be the person at the opposite end. But, wishes don’t come true. Her eyes are sharp and cold, her voice low and her tone pointed and caustic, “Well, have you thought that people ing change, Heejin? Things change and people have to go along with it. I’m changing and if it’s not good enough for you, if this Hyunjin in front of you isn’t the one you want, then you’re better off leaving.”

Slamming the car door closed, Heejin takes one last look at Hyunjin and feels pain at how she fails to recognize the girl in front of her—how she is only a shell of the person that she loves.

(It’s inconceivable to Heejin how only an hour ago, they were swaying together amidst the bodies of high school students and how it felt like they were the only ones there, how good it felt to be in her arms, how Hyunjin felt like the girl that Heejin has always loved).

Striding past her, taking her clutch that was still being held in Hyunjin’s hand, and doing the best that she can to not look back, Heejin refuses to give her heart the pain of watching Hyunjin’s face when she walks away, “Maybe I am, Hyunjin.”

When the door to Heejin’s house slams shut, it’s the first time Hyunjin cries without having anyone to run to. It’s the first time she doesn’t have someone to talk her through it, to run their hands through her hair to calm her down. How could she when the only person who gave her the time and day for it just left her?

Now, more than ever, Hyunjin feels alone.

The one person who she could count on to weather out her storms and to wait out the chaos thundering through her couldn’t withstand the one that has been tearing through her life for the last couple of months.

Loneliness is a deafening silence to sit in.

A silence that often Heejin could override with her endless stories, her laugh, and her presence alone.

Hyunjin cries and there’s not a single thing in the world that could ease the pain of losing someone—of not being good enough, of disappointing the one person she loves, of being helplessly hopeless. 

Hyunjin knew she was a lost cause the moment her father disowned her and only extended a cold household for her to live in. If her mother couldn’t stay and if her father couldn’t have the humility to love her, how could anyone else?

For the briefest of moments, Heejin made her believe that someone could, that she could be that someone. But, who would stay for someone who could barely get through her day without ing something up? Surely, it’s too great of a responsibility to give to anyone, too much of a burden for Heejin to shoulder.

A dream turned nightmare, a pink paper crane shredded into an irreparable mess, and a relationship equally in ruins wasn’t how Heejin expected her night to go.

She didn’t expect to fall asleep crying with a heavy emptiness in her heart, an anchoring feeling of guilt and grief.

She didn’t expect to leave Hyunjin—she even made a promise to her that she wouldn’t.

But, Hyunjin knows all too well that promises are meant to be broken.

She just thought that Heejin would be the exception.

~

When the next morning comes, Heejin’s notification center is a mess of Instagram likes and comments, her Snapchat bubbles attending to their streaks.

But, not a single text from the one person Heejin ached to hear from most.