I Remember

"Hey, lately, I've been feeling like the luckiest person in the world."

"How so? Did something happen?"

"Yeah, something amazing."

"What was it?"

"...You happened."

--

That was what she told him once.

He still remembered that day, as clearly as it happened, as though no years had passed at all.

“Meet your new neighbour, Guk-ah. Now, I expect you kids to get along really well. She’s new to Korea. Be nice to her.”

At first glance, there was nothing special Yongguk found about her. His mother ran an orphanage, so there were always new kids coming in and out. It never occurred to him until a later time what an odd child she was. Standing to about his shoulders was a child no older than himself, robbed of her smile, unable to truly accustom herself to the workings of the world. It must have been a windy morning, because he remembered her pink dress flapping in the soft breezes by their front porch, her hair separated and braided into two flowing strands down her petite shoulders. Her eyes could easily make gems of sunshine if not for the dull shades they adopted, but as much as Yongguk thought they looked pretty like a doll's she never boasted about them, like the other girls around the area liked to. She wouldn't even open to speak, and rarely, if not never, laughed. For the first few days since she moved in with the neighbourhood family Yongguk even believed she was mute.

 “Mum?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Why doesn’t Ji Eun speak to me?”

“That’s alright, honey.”

“Does she not like me?”

“Maybe she's shy?”

“...So she's really just shy?”

“Yeah. She just hasn't warmed up to you yet, that's all.”

But there was another reason.

Yongguk found out that Ji Eun had a sweet voice, naturally, for he heard her practicing the piano, playing the flute, singing in the big auditorium hall they had out in the deserted end of the orphanage sometimes. She was always limited to herself, though, and Yongguk remembered being jealous of her for it because she could always go by so unnoticed. At the same time, she was being so herself.

He couldn’t.

Nevertheless he tried very hard to make her smile again, for her own sake.

Needless to say, he succeeded.

It was 8:15 one spring morning when she first spoke to him. They were out on the verandah, under the first fall of a flowery crest at the orphanage. Trails of leaves and colourful flower buds paraded around them, as though marking their very spot in the back yard. His mother had gone to buy them a new set of colourful pencils and pails of paint for activities with the kids at the orphanage for the upcoming summer.

She was wearing a green t-shirt then, hair in a high ponytail, both hands in her red coat pockets. Her hair was a fiery bronze that day, radiating in the sunlight, unlike the lighter tones it had been before it. Two years later and she was definitely smiling much more than when she first arrived. It was indeed unlike her, but at least she'd opened up a lot more. His mother stopped mentioning her then, stopped nagging him to look after her properly, probably because she'd already fitted in, and Yongguk had to admit: he kind of missed that. He even found himself sneaking a peek or two at her every so often out by the front of the edifice because he couldn't help but think what a pretty sight her smile was, catching her as she would pop a pineapple kiss into every few seconds.

That day she returned his glances.

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“I'm not.”

“Yes you are.”

He didn't speak then, and the silence he felt had never been more dense.

“Whatever.”

“Sorry...”

Yongguk could have sworn he heard her scoff.

“How about we play a game?”

“Like what?”

“Tell me something about yourself.”

And in that moment, her interest peaked. Never before had it been a question about her; it had always been just for her. This time, it was different.

If Yongguk dare say, that was how everything began.

One day, she brought the game to a whole new level.

“Your turn, go on,” Yongguk nudged, certain something had been bugging Ji Eun all day.

“Well then, what do you like?” she began, barely giving him enough time to tear his gaze off the action figure set in front of him before she spoke again. “Because I like sweet things, and I like winter, although I hate the cold, and...”

“And?”

“And...”

Then, her face brightened, as though an idea had come to her.

It was the first time she smiled at him.

“And I also like you.”

All these years he had been building a fortification around his mind, blocking out everyone but himself, yet all it took for her to break it was a single word from the bottom of her heart. He wanted to comprehend the foreign feelings, but they came with such a rush he’d been swept away with it almost totally.

“Really?”

She only smiled a second time, only sweeter.

Yongguk shifted in the grass to regain his composure. “Wow, thanks.”

He was fourteen years old then, of course he didn’t understand.

Yongguk was sixteen when they first started 'seeing each other', behind his parents' back.

But little did they both know that their time together was going to be limited.

“Ji Eun’s leaving.”

“What?”

Everything must have come collapsing down after that because he remembered himself not being very conscious of his situation when he woke up the next day, like a new phase in his life had just begun. His mind was in a mess, like someone had come in, trashed it, and left in it a hole, only to be broken beyond repair. One foot down the wrong memory lane today, another word of reminder from his parents, and she was shut out of his life completely, the last fragments of memories she left with him, taken away, much easier than when she was initially to be absorbed into the neighbourhood.

He could have stopped them from making her leave.

Should have.

But what was important, was that he didn’t.

He called her to their favourite café that evening, hoping to confirm the details himself. He noticed her lips were paler than usual that year, and that her skin was of an unnatural glow, despite the dim light in the room, yet he was never convinced enough to believe in the words his mother and friends were so keen on getting across to him.

“Tell me seriously, Ji Eun, are you dying?”

She told him once that she would never leave him, unless it was death that called for a separation, so he thought his assumption was plausible.

“Nonsense. I’ll only be leaving for a little while, that’s all.”

But she lied.

“Where are you going? When? How long? Can I at least know why?”

Her answer was more clear-cut than he hoped. A lie to tell him she was going to be okay, words with an inch of hope for him to cling onto; anything would have been better than what she had left him hanging with.

“Probably somewhere far, oppa, I don't know. But I just have to.”

Yongguk flinched as she reached from across the table to place her hand on his, carressing it softly.

“Besides, if I leave first... at least I know I'll be remembered.”

She lied big.

“I'll be back in a little while.”

But a little while was never fit to be three or four days, or a month or two.

Because when she said she'd leave, she meant to say she didn't have much longer to live.

She meant she was never going to come back.

Yongguk didn't know.

It was Yongguk’s seventeenth birthday that year when Ji Eun was last found throwing pebbles at his window from the neighbourhood street below, late into the night. He knew she was leaving soon, they hadn't interacted in what he felt was a long time, so when she presented herself outside his doorsteps he didn’t hesitate in the slightest to see her for a little moment longer.

When he reached the door way to greet her, there was something different about her, though he couldn’t quite figure out why. He invited her in, making sure not to wake the any of his parents, and saved her a spot by the heater in the lounge room where she would be shielded from the cold.

“Here, for you,” she said, handing him an antique pocket watch just as he had taken a seat, nestled neatly into a light music box he could easily recognise as a production of her own craftsmanship. She liked rhinestones and music as much as he did, after all. Then, she pulled out an identical piece buried around the lace collar by her neck, which Yongguk actually thought was a pendant all this time, and synched their times together, leaving Yongguk bemused.

“That way, as long as we both have one each, we’ll never lose each other. Time will always be on our side. I’ll be able to keep track of you, and you’ll be able to keep track of me. We’ll always know where to find each other, even after I’m gone.”

She smiled the sweetest that night, like it had been her who was receiving the birthday gift all along, and Yongguk could only call her silly back then.

“Happy birthday.”

He would miss her so much, after she left. Yongguk could feel the tears on the rims of his eyes, when she leaned forward and pecked his cheek, leaving her cold mark on him forever.

“Thank you for everything.”

But he always had the impression that one day, she’d come back. He never really thought she would ever leave. Really, leave. Did he know that was going to be their last meeting, would he had taken better care of her. He would've have cherished her more, taken more photos, created more proof of her existence so that those who never got the chance to meet her in his future would at least be able to understand what a beautiful person Song Ji Eun had been, both inwardly and literally. So that he would never forget her.

“See you again soon.”

But she didn't give him the chance.

That was the first birthday present he’d ever received from her, and he'd been keeping it on his bedside cabinet ever since. It was also the last.

"I'm yours."

“You're mine.”

“Don't ever forget me.”

“See you.”

“I said I'm going to look for Ji Eun. She came back the other night, I swear I wasn't just seeing things!”

“Yongguk honey, listen to your mother very carefully.”

Pain buzzed through his ears.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Sooner or later, you will have to learn to come to terms with it.”

Bitterness suffocated his throat, and he couldn’t speak any more. He remembered it all, every single tiny fragment of time and the conversation as a whole, the voice of his mother that very day she introduced her to him. How could it have been the same person, telling him all this? Suddenly, it was as though there was no more air for him to inhale. It was as though all he’d ever been building his world on had just stopped running for a millisecond in the universe, and shattered around him.

He found himself listening more intently than he wished he ever had.

“She isn’t real anymore. Stop thinking about her. Stop talking about meeting up with her or whatever. We know you miss her, we all miss her, but stop thinking about her. Ji Eun isn’t real anymore. She died, do you understand me, son? She’s gone. Forever. Ji Eun died two years ago.”

Yongguk never thought the pain would come back and hit him so hard again, three years after the incident actually happened. Yongguk always thought that was funny. At the time of the scene, you didn’t think too much about the details, but it was amazing the amount of detail you could recall everything in at a much later period. Its significance was impossible to determine at the time, but as time pressed on, the weight of the memories he had left of her seemed to only multiply, forming something of a prison for him, caging him in.

What confined him were not the white walls of his ward room, but the remnants of her.

He told the therapist once that everything he saw reminded him of her, the high-rise buildings where darkness used to chase the sunsets through their tinted windows, the cosy bus stop shelter where they used to spend time counting neighbourhood cars, cats and umbrellas, the green vending machine from the end of the street that ate their money once. Today, Yongguk thought her smile was like the sun hiding behind the clouds on a rainy day, because it was a kind of warmth that was always there, just never visible. At night time, the void she left shone even brighter, her name permanently written into a canvas of the stars. She would be the one that was blinking the most, reminding him that he was not alone. Even the sound of her movement resonated with the evening breezes.

The fountain in front of the orphanage where they met years ago had frozen over during the winter. Sheets of fine ice could be noticed layering the stone parapet from metres away, and that had made it extremely cold to sit on. Cold, like her hands when he took them on their first date under the street lamp on the fourth street, yet warm at the same time, because it was b with a unique sort of trace only she could leave, scenting on the same ground he walked, in the same hour, same breath, a beautiful mark.

He knew it was going to be hard forgetting about her, but he didn't know it was going to be this hard.

Where was she now? She hated the cold. She must be cold.

His heart was still cold.

The snow globe toppled about in his palm, the flake pieces slowly setting like confetti heaps on the miniature platform. He stared at it, blatantly reminded also of how he used to whisper her words of how much he loved her. Everything she did for herself, for him, for them, he now understood. Keeping the hiaku poems they would exchange out in the yard, returning him the things he'd lent her, having stopped writing in her diary because apparently she ran out of things to write after she'd met him. Reality had become a much better place for her. She even went to the extents of changing their secret hang out area the way she changed clothing everyday, telling him that if ever one day she was to stay the same in any one place, she would be regretting for the remaining hours she had left to live.

How could he have not picked up on those?

He hated himself for having missed the cue.

He hated himself for not being able to forget her, and move on, like he should.

Yongguk could hardly call her crazy anymore.

Maybe he was crazy.

She’ll be back.

She’ll be back, not.

She’ll be back.

She’ll be back, not.

She’ll be back.

But he never waited long enough to count to the last tick on their pocket watch, because the same time each night, his mother would come into the room and set down a basket of accessories or fruit, for her son. That one night, loaded in her weak hands was something no less than a couple of kilograms, parts of her hair poking out from her bundle, as though she had been so stressed for the last few years of her life. He pretended to sleep then, evading his mother's evening greetings with just enough time remaining to see her switch off the lights again, and leave.

He didn’t want to hear her words.

The hallucinations were getting worse, he knew, and that was probably why his mother had transferred him into an asylum ward for the time being, but he knew he wasn't ready to accept the loss yet. It pained him to realise what a wreck his life had become, but it would pain him more to erase her every fibre from his memory.

In fact, he didn’t even want Ji Eun to come back and stay.

All he wanted was much simpler.

All he wanted to know was that all that time, from when he met her to when they fell in love, she was real.

Or had she been a ghost, too, when she first spoke to him out on the front porch, some four years ago? What about when she came to bid him farewell, that night of his birthday? No wonder his mother stopped mentioning her.

All he could hear was the ticking of the pocket watch beside his beating mechanism. He couldn't help but think that one day, it would stop. He clutched it tighter.

“Please, Ji Eun. Come back and tell them. Tell them you never really left. Tell them you're only overseas, not dead, that you're still waiting for me to find you.”

But her intentions were clear the first time they came around. Whether Yongguk was to find his way out of this maze, was up to his willingness to let her go, it seemed.

“Have you missed me?”

"I've missed you."

“Don't ever forget me.”

“See you.”

No, it couldn't stop.

It would never stop ticking for them.

“Come back, please, and tell them I'm not crazy. Tell them I've still half my sanity.”

And in that moment, he didn't know what he was; all he knew was that without her, he would never be complete.

________________________________

a/n: AAAHHHHHHH my first attempt at this oneshot disappeared like a hundred times because of a glitch in the aff system ;~; so like I spent two or more so days trying to refine the only unedited version I had of this saved onto my laptop (luckily T^T), and this is what we have otl. Everything ...but hope you guys enjoyed it! be back and write more soon, hopefully, xo