What we did together? Oh.

It depends on whether it was online or offline. Online, I talked to her almost every day. Maybe a few times a week. And I-I know she used to talk about how long I’d take to respond to her, or how little I seemed interested in her when I wasn’t with her in person… But… but I did try my hardest, always, to take the time to talk to her. I’m so bad at replying people quickly, even now, even with my manager because I’ve just been so busy all the time, and in spite of that I always tried to make time for her. Just to talk to her, Surface chat with her when I could. 

In real life, I always went to her place because… yeah, she could never come back to mine. Not at that time, not with my Mom and all the equipment around the house.

We’d done so many things at her place. She taught me how to bake all these things: gingerbread cookies, vanilla sponge, red velvet cupcakes, and she even learnt how to make carrot cake with me because I told her once, really only once, that it was my favourite dessert. Still is. She always remembered everything I told her. And I brought along my headset so we could play these free video games and go to pixelated places together. 

She tried to teach me how to play the guitar, but I was never very good at it. She taught me how to do these vocal exercises, but I’ve never been a strong singer. Seungwan used to play music on this old record player her Dad gave her, and we danced to those songs, or at least tried to. She was so funny, so jelly-like and expressive. My clearest memories with her somehow always have to do with music. 

She overflows with passion, and her fire travels to you, too. And it makes you- it made me, I… It makes you feel… things. 

Like, this one time. I don’t- I don’t remember when it was exactly- when that happened, but I know it was raining really hard. Most likely in mid-July. There was a thunderstorm outside, and I remember it being one of the loudest, scariest ones there were that year. They’d even mentioned it on the news. And I was so, so tired. Just so tired. Everything in me felt so sore and so done with-with just going on with life. 

I felt like closing my eyes and never wanting to open them again. My agency told me I was rejected from six different jobs, I’d lost twenty-thousand won’s worth of ingredients at work that day and my boss was threatening to fire me if I lost more, my-my Mom had just relapsed a week ago, my Dad was… my Dad… 

But she - Seungwan - asked if I wanted her to sing for me, like she knew how tired I was, and I just wanted to pull her down onto her bed and not worry anymore. And I did. And I felt her ribs under my arm expand and contract.

It was dark, gloomy, and the rain was hammering into the window but all I could see was her eyes, and, and she has such- I just loved looking into her eyes, and I could smell her. I remember breathing her in, pulling her close, feeling her chest pressed against mine. And so warm. She was so warm. Like when my mother gave me a hot packet after I’d played in the snow when I was five or six, and I squeezed my hands into fists and rubbed it against my freezing nose and cheeks. Warm… like that. 

I… I only thought about her whenever we were in her bed. Only her. Because she really, really does look at you like you’re the only person who matters to her, and it’s so easy to believe her. She asked what song I wanted her to sing, and I told her to sing whatever she wanted to. I’d catch her singing to herself sometimes, out of the blue, and I’ve always really enjoyed those moments. And so she sang. It was a song in English - her dad used to play English songs on his record player when she was a toddler - and at the time, I didn’t know what the song was or what it was about, but I knew it was about love. 

Falling. 

Longing.

I’d never felt that cared for in a really, really long time.

I felt like, deep down, I needed someone to care for me for once, and there she was. Singing about love. Her voice was like honey, syrup, so sweet. Hearing it in real life, it’s like my ears would… melt? And then I looked at her lips. I, I probably was staring at them.

They looked so soft.

Then I felt like doing something I thought was wrong. I didn’t do it, didn't do anything about it, but it triggered something in my chest, and it went down to my stomach. All of a sudden, I felt so uneasy, giddy, guilty for what I was thinking. But I looked at her eyes, then her lips, and back to her eyes, and I really, really just wanted to do it. 

Then she stopped singing, and I stopped feeling the vibrations that passed from her skin to mine, and she asked what was wrong. I don’t-I don’t know what I said, but she smiled this really cheeky, foolish smile and started singing again. I felt like my heart was going to collapse, like it knew something I didn’t. 

Because I wanted to kiss her so badly. And I didn’t know why I wanted to, or what it was that I was feeling at the time. I was so… clueless about everything. And now… now I know why, and now I know everything. And despite knowing everything, I… I still feel so uneasy. 

Would you think I’m insane if I told you I hear her voice sometimes? That I hear her singing to me sometimes? Because I do, and I don’t know if it’ll ever stop. Four-and-a-half years. Almost five. Five in two months and seven days. Yeah. 

I don’t know if I ever want it to stop. 

< br / >

Kim Joyeon, her ex-agency’s Talent Director, had said something three years ago during a late-night dinner with the other directors and cash cows (Joohyun included) after one too many a drink. Despite it presumably being directed at one of the director’s godawful exes, now and again, she thinks about it. 

Really thinks about it. 

“The opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy. The opposite of love is when you’ve truly gotten to the point of not caring for someone, really not giving a damn about them or what happens to them,” she still manages to hear her say, in her high-pitched and self-important tone. 

It definitely doesn’t feel like the opposite of love, what Joohyun feels as her eyes flicker open, instantly bombarded with thoughts of “Where’s Son Seungwan?” and “What did I say to her last night?” and “What did I do to her?” So much so that not the unfamiliar room she wakes up to nor the slightly nauseating pulsing in her head really throw her off guard. 

Seungwan clouds her mind.

It strikes her in this moment that what she feels and has felt for Seungwan must be the opposite of the opposite of love. The anti-anti-love. Of caring for her a tad too much; about giving too much of a for her, of thinking about how she’s been, where she is, what she’s doing, even as she’s miles and miles away and they haven’t even talked, let alone seen each other, for months, then years. Of worrying. Relentless, tiresome worrying over countless sleepless nights about a girl she’d once known and tried to forget about, and even to hate. 

It’s too much for Joohyun to think about the evening before, to really think about the night before - past questions about consequences and where they’re at now. To think about Seungwan and how she’d found her mid-panic attack downstairs (and God how embarrassing), or how she’d gotten her luggage for her, accepting her into her home without another thought, or how she’d been so hospitable, so sickeningly lovely and warm and accepting. How the kindness had managed to stay and grow in Seungwan’s heart despite the years and the fading of adolescent naïveté.  

More difficult to deal with would be how Seungwan had changed. Or at least, had changed from how she looked the day she’d last seen her, which was consequently how Joohyun had always pictured Seungwan from memory after she’d come to delete all traces of the girl from everything she owned. 

Had Seungwan gotten another piercing, and how many does she have now? 

Had she lost weight, and I hope those jeans had just stretched over the years.

And had Seungwan always looked like that, and how can someone’s smile make me feel so empty? 

And she definitely wishes she won’t have to deal with what’d happened between them, alone, in Seungwan’s room with her flask of Cognac. Joohyun winces at the thought of how she’d acted in front of Seungwan, too assertive and too unseemly. Definitely too comfortable. Because there was one thing on her mind the whole night and alcohol could’ve drowned it out. But there’s a possibility it didn’t, and Joohyun doesn’t like dealing with stacked odds. 

She buries her cheek into the pillow, but pulls away immediately because she just knows how much it would smell like her. Then she asks a question she’d asked herself a million times before, yet has never quite found a satisfactory answer to, and shifts in a bed that upsettingly reeks of shampoo and the same cheapo brand of laundry product she’d critiqued years ago. 

Joohyun shuts her eyes tight, then opens them to look up at the ceiling, with its serendipitous brushes of blue wall paint against its otherwise old and bare whiteness. It looks so low she feels like it might collapse onto her, like she can barely breathe. 

Her elbows propping her up, she swings her legs over the bed and sits up, stretching her arms and back out and feeling her muscles resist her with their aches and pains. But it’s routine for her to feel this dreadful whenever she opens her eyes, so she looks out the window and breathes a sigh. It’s the same window Seungwan must look out every morning, and it must frame same view Seungwan looks forward to seeing every day (she is, obviously, that kind of person). 

Joohyun knows it’s morning, but the sky is overcast and such a depressing shade of yellowish-grey that it effortlessly blends into the as-depressing labyrinth of apartment blocks before stretches of even greyer clouds. It’s ugly, even compared to Songpo, she thinks. The southern districts never do see many blue skies, if any. 

Joohyun remembers why Seungwan paints her bedrooms the colour she does. 

She flinches at the abrupt slam of a door outside and frowns at its loudness, though her lips manage to curve even more downward as she realises who’s capable of making such a racket this early in t