Noeul didn’t remember much of anything when she kissed Baekhyun. It was more like she felt a strong desire to express herself, and words didn’t seem to do any justice for how she felt. She wanted so badly to apologize to him.

When she was in third grade, her mother took her out to the zoo. She’d always felt an affinity toward animals, still, being at the zoo pained her. She hated seeing the animals stand in their own filth. She especially hated seeing animals nervously pace as they were scrutinized by humans. Day after day.

They were trapped in cages, unable to do anything. And she took that personally because she too was trapped by her own mouth. She could never quite voice how she felt. Most of the time, because she hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. She chose to remain nice and quiet, watching the lions tear up the red meat fed to them by the zookeeper.

She wondered if the zookeeper ever apologized to the animals. How was he able to sleep at night, knowing what he had to return to the next day? Everyone had circumstances, so she liked to believe that he had no other choice.

As she scanned the giant venue, she noticed how all the other children carried big smiles. Most of them clung tightly to their parents. She held onto her mother’s hand as well, but her grip was flimsy. And as she grew older, she began to notice that her mother had grown weak, often complaining of muscle soreness. And sometimes, she would scream inexcusable things at Noeul.

Out of pity, Ms. Herman told her that her mother didn’t mean any of it. And really, she’d also like to fool herself into thinking that her mother didn’t mean to call her a mistake.

Her mother took her to the ice cream stand. “Come on, darling.” The older woman points to the menu. “What will it be? Vanilla or chocolate?”

Noeul didn’t want ice cream. She had sensitive teeth, but she didn’t want to disappoint her mother. “Vanilla, please,” she responded robotically. Her eyes wandered around the zoo again when her mother leaves.

She spotted a scrawny boy, leaning against the trash can. He had speckles of soot around his hands and feet. Noeul wondered if he was okay. The boy was shivering, though, it was the middle of summer.

She bent down beside him. The boy stared up at her. His eyes were beautiful, and she couldn’t find the words to describe them. He seemed to embody a diamond in the rough. She heard Ms. Herman call her that once.

She handed him her mother’s scarf. Not sure why she felt the need to do it. Her mother had chronic cold hands because of Parkinson’s. But despite running the risk of getting screamed at, Noeul didn’t seem to care in that moment.

His hands reached out. The first thing that she noticed was that he had very pretty fingers. Instead of grabbing the scarf she offered, he pulled her into his chest. She vaguely remembered the smell of wood. It brought her back to the time she was five when she got lost in a clearing of woods, but as she reeled in his hug—all she could think about was freedom. What was it like? If she were to get lost in the same woods, would she come back?

“Thank you,” he whispered.

But before she could respond, she was dragged away. Her eyes widened as she watched the boy fall onto his back from the impact.

Her mother yelled and pinched her, but Noeul couldn’t feel it anymore. She would forever be haunted by the image of his pained expression. It replayed in her mind over and over like a broken cassette tape. She tried reaching for him again, but he was dragged away by a security guard.

The ice cream cone tipped over in her mother’s hand, falling to the ground with a harsh splat, right in the direct path of the boy who hugged her.

Ever since that time, Noeul despised ice cream, but most of all, she wanted to apologize.

Baekhyun lifts his hand from her waist, gently holding her face. Their lips hover only a hair’s breadth apart. She can hear each and every breath that he takes.

“You taste like the woods,” she whispers.

His eyes flutter open upon hearing her speak. “What?”

She smiles, feeling bitterness settle like rocks in her stomach. Nothing has changed. She still didn’t have any power.

Sporadic knocks send them apart, and when the door opens, Ms. Soto peeks her head in. “The books aren’t going to put themselves back,” she teases in her old, wrinkly voice.

Noeul sneaks a look at Baekhyun whose expression remains neutral. Flustered, he excuses himself, making a beeline for the door.

She watches as he disappears between the bookshelves, once again, feeling like the girl who gave her mother’s scarf away.

###

“I just don’t get why you have to move,” Bianca implores with an insensitivity that grated her nerves.

Noeul doesn’t answer, instead anchoring her attention on what seemed like her entire life encased in boxes. She began packing at dawn. It was another sleepless night, and she thought maybe—just once—her brain would shut off if she kept herself busy.

“Why are you here, Bianca?”

Her half-sister frowns. “Mom was picking up some of her things when she noticed all the furniture covered in plastic. I just thought that maybe I could talk you out of it. Or something…”

Noeul didn’t know whether to envy Bianca for her ignorance or for growing up with all of the things she didn’t. As she begins to pick up the boxes, she stumbles into Bianca who’d initially stepped in to help. The boxes fall, and a loud shatter echoes in her now-empty room.

She opens the box, eyeing the broken porcelain of what was once a mug. Noeul picks up a fairly large piece, examining the text.

I love dad this much!

Besides the messy childlike writing was a stick figure drawing of a girl with her hands spread wide apart.

“Oh my god! I’m so sorry,” Bianca yelps, reaching to pick up the pieces.

Noeul carelessly drops the porcelain. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I feel so bad. Didn’t we make these mugs when we were six? Dad loved them,” Bianca laments as if an inanimate object could somehow transfer its pain to her.

Noeul tries not to laugh harshly because she remembered just exactly how that day went. Ms. Herman came back with two newly purchased mugs. She encouraged the two girls to write a sweet message for Father’s Day, which was two days away.

She’d been excited. Hope spread through her like wildfire, burning through a grove of weeds. Her chest was hollow with weeds that seemed to exacerbate in growth whenever she found herself looking up at the back of her father.

His back terrifyingly unreachable, and even now, she couldn’t quite reach him.

Bianca finished her mug first. When their father returned home, she sprung up from her seat, ing her decorated mug straight into his hands.

His eyes shined with appreciation, and Noeul, from the dining table, watched as her father lifted Bianca into his arms lovingly, bouncing her around.

Noeul hid the mug from his sight, afraid that he would compare their work. Ms. Herman tried to get his attention for Noeul’s sake, but when her father looked at her, all he uttered was “you should be more like Bianca, Noeul.”

The truth’s always been there. In plain sight. She just pretended not to see it. She didn’t have to do anything, and his disappointment was clear as day. She’d known then that neither of her parents meant to have her.

Bianca stayed, helping her pack up the rest of her things. To fill the silence, she talked about random things. Mostly about how her day went. Then, she told Noeul in detail of how she’d brushed arms with Baekhyun earlier.

Ms. Herman, in the past, told the two that they were very good girls for getting along so well without a hitch. Noeul knew it was only possible when she let Bianca do the talking. So, ever since then, she listened and her sister talked.

As they were about done, loud music explodes from next door. Noeul sighs, wondering if she would be able to catch a wink of sleep tonight. Hendery’s party often went late into early next morning.

“What’s going on?” Bianca asks, hopping to the window to peer at the commotion.

“It’s nothing,” Noeul answers airily.

Bianca fixes her a strange look. “That doesn’t look like nothing to me! Seriously, we should go. It looks fun.”

It is a wild understatement that Noeul does not want to go. In fact, she was never tempted to attend any of Hendery’s wild parties. She saw many things come in and out of his house.

A dozen kegs illegally obtained, several strippers, and a couple of quick drug deals.

“You’re always such a party-pooper, big sis. God, please, can we go? I’ll make it up to you.”

“No, Bianca. I’m tired. You’re welcome to go alone,” she says.

The latter resists, “are you kidding? What if I got drugged or something? You have to come.”

“You don’t think there isn’t a possibility of me getting date either?”

Bianca’s jaw drops. “ Noeul! You are so crude. Seriously, I always make excuses for you. Mom says you’re a terrible influence because you’re always acting like it’s the end of the world.”

Noeul is silent for a beat, too exhausted to argue with her simple-minded sister. “Okay,” she finally relents, sighing deeply. “I’ll go.”

Bianca jumps. “Yes! Thank you! Thank you! I love you so much.”

The only response Noeul could offer was a weak smile. Did Noeul love Bianca? It was hard to say.

###

Noeul entertains Bianca by letting the girl do whatever she wanted on her. After an hour, Bianca coerces her into a skimpy lace bustier and black jeans.

The night is stark cold. September flew by, and before she knew it, October rolled around, turning all the leaves a rusted brown color. She shivers when the wind picks up. At Bianca’s haste, Noeul didn’t bring a jacket. She eyes Bianca’s cardigan with envy.

No matter, the two of them push past the enormous crowd of people in the doorway. Hendery briefly stops the two of them as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Smiling sleazily, his eyes fall onto her hardened s from the cold. Noeul sighs, forcefully crossing her arms. “Well, well, well—who do we have here? Noeul. I never thought I would see you here.”

Noeul is uncomfortable by the way he looks at her as if he’d begun to anticipate that the night would go in his favor. There was no way she was sleeping with him. Ever.

Bianca laughs, blissfully unaware of the animals around them. “Hi, nice to meet you! I’m Bianca.” She shouts her name over the loud music, and Hendery turns his attention to her.

“Hi, beautiful. Mind if I get you a drink?” He asks, his voice dropping a couple of octaves into suggestive territory.

Noeul scoffs, reaching her arm out over Bianca’s chest. “Do you think we’re stupid?”

Hendery’s sweet smile hides his nasty intentions, but she can see straight through him. Straight through the halo on his head. Past the princely exterior. “Oh, come on. Ease up, goddess. Let yourself have a little fun. You’d be as pretty as Bianca, here, if you weren’t so uptight all the time.”

Noeul glares at him, opening to snap back.

“What’s the harm, Noeul? I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl,” Bianca announces in the middle of the heavy tension.

Hendery’s smile morphs into a sneer that goes unnoticed by Bianca. “Yeah, Noeul, what’s the harm?” He repeats these words in a snide voice, his face looking really punchable at the moment.

Bianca pushes Noeul’s arm off of her and joins Hendery when he wraps his arms around her shoulder. She watches the two intermingle with the high volume of people swaying to the ual music playing in the background.

After they were gone, she no longer saw a point in staying inside. And immediately starts for the back door, pushing through crowds of people.

She follows a long corridor that finally leads outside. The cold air pierces her lungs, relieving her of the heavy cloud of smoke from the kids hotboxing nearby.

Noeul inspects the yard, adorned by what looked like very expensive furniture. The grass is cleanly maintained, circles of stone dotting it and leading straight to a wooden swing, lit by warm, ambient lights.

Taking a slow breath, she sits herself on the swing, pushing her legs gently to add momentum.

But before she can elevate higher, a pained groan comes from behind her, which causes her to roughly ground her foot onto the grass to stop the swing. “I’m sorry! Are you okay?“

Noeul gawks at Baekhyun who studies her closely.

“What are you doing here?” She stammers, suddenly losing the ability to form words.

He blows out an incredulous laugh. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

Baekhyun and Hendery were in the same circle of friends. It makes her wonder from time to time why because the more she got to know him, the more he didn’t seem to belong there.

Her eyes dart to the joint lodged between his fingers. His eyes are red, and she deducts he must’ve been here for a while now. “Aren’t you cold?”

He coughs out a laugh. “Should you be asking me that, doll?” For a split second, Baekhyun makes her feel conscious of her clothes, but his eyes don’t linger. He doesn’t care, yet, in some twisted way, Noeul finds that she wants him to care.

“Can I join you?”

“Finally,” he says, blowing out another cloud of smoke. “A question I can answer.”

Noeul ignores this, setting herself down beside him. “Why are you outside?”

“Why are you outside?”

She bites on her bottom lip, one of her more terrible stimming habits. “Because it smells like a field of burning straight to hell.”

He hums, “touché.”

“Why don’t you answer my questions, Baekhyun?”

“Because,” he exhales around the same time as he blows fumes out from his chest.

At this time, Noeul grabs the collar of his hoodie, tugging him close to her. She inhales the faint cloud barely visible in the air.

His eyes implore hers. “What are you doing?”

She hunches over to cough, obviously having never done this before. “Seeing if it’s any good,” she answers, slowly inhaling air back into her lungs again.

“Is it any good?”

She tilts her head. “Not at all.”

He laughs at her answer. “Have you ever done drugs?”

Her smile slips. “Yeah.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

She leans back against the hard wood behind them, observing the sky. Tonight was a new moon. “I may just surprise you,” she murmurs, not really caring if he heard it at all.

“What changed?” He asks. When she returns his gaze, she notices him playing with the loose strands of her hair.

“A small fender bender at the doors of death.”

“What was it like?”

She isn’t sure why she’s able to talk about it with him. She never told anyone other than Junmyeon, and she never planned to either. But, surely, the words come out. “Warm.”

He gives her a strange look. “You weren’t scared?”

“Not really,” she answers truthfully.

He smiles bitterly at this like he somehow sympathizes. “I wasn’t either.”

“What brought you back?”

He looks away, assessing the night sky. “I guess I didn’t want to be alone.”

She traces the small veins on his hands. “If I die, will you be there?”

“That’s awfully gloomy,” he murmurs, covering her hand with his.

“It was a joke.”

“I’m glad, though.”

“Why?”

“That you’re alive.”