Seeing Shinjuku Station so empty was honestly quite unnerving. I had only ever known this place to be a frenzied locus of movement and activity. Every memory I'd ever had of there involved endless mobs of commuters coursing through the labyrinthine pathways. This was a place typically surging with intent, with purpose, with the will of those who had places to go, people to see, conversations to hold, business to attend to.

Tonight, the stillness in the air was haunting. The entire space seemed to exist in a state of undisturbed entropy. Nothing could truly begin, nor could anything truly end. All that ever was had persisted right into that exact moment, and that exact moment contained all that will ever exist. The storefronts were shuttered, the newsstands and food stalls had tarps covering them, the display boards which typically provided updates on ETAs of incoming and outgoing trains were shut off. Even some vending machines were no longer illuminated. 

As I followed the signs directing me to the waiting room, the sound of my low-top sneakers marching across the tile floor echoed into a neverending nothingness, leaving doubt in my mind as to whether I even had taken such steps in the first place.

I slid open the door to my destination and gasped audibly at the sight that greeted me. Jungkook was still there. He was slouched over asleep in his chair. It appeared to me as though he had always been there. He seemed more like a fixture of this room, rather than an independent entity which had his own existence outside of this place. True to his account from the letter, he had abandoned the shaggy Beatles-inspired moptop haircut that I had remembered him for, in favor of a tidier curtained style.

He awoke as I gently called out his name, but I felt like I could notice him stirring even as I took the pensive steps to approach his still body. He looked back at me. I always remember his eyes as having qualities of both light and dark. Light, because there was this energy, this verve, in the way he looked at me, as if he believed wholeheartedly that the possibilities for us two were unbound by any limitations. He always looked at me like he was making wondrous plans for us both. Dark, because I sensed a vast expanse of contemplations and introspections, all of these thoughts of his roiling underneath the surface, none of them I could ever hope to be privileged to.

I wasn't given the chance to look into his eyes for too long at that moment. He sprang up from his seat and threw both of his arms, still wiry but by that point undeniably gaining more muscle mass, around my shoulders in an uninhibited embrace. I realized then that my heart had never left him during the course of the last year. Coming back here was simply my body reuniting with my heart.

Don't get me wrong, there were many things I wished to ask him. I'd obviously had plenty of opportunity to think about what I wanted to know in regards to how his life had been. Was he fitting in with his classmates at the high school? What club activity had he taken up? Had he perhaps even found a girlfriend?

In the end, we talked about none of these things. I'm not sure if we were too tired, or perhaps as we sensed another impending goodbye, none of it felt significant enough for us to spend what limited time we had left on it. 

We fell asleep on the floor, using our backpacks as pillows and our coats as blankets. By the time we woke up, the first trains were soon set to start running again. We donned our coats again, slung our backpacks over our shoulders. I reached for the handle of the sliding door, only to feel a light tug on the sleeve of my other arm.

I looked back to him, again with those eyes of light and dark. Once again, I didn't have much time to see into those eyes. He took a single dauntless step toward me, and, angling his mouth just so, brought his lips to mine. 

The kiss was soft, heartachingly so. It was only forceful enough to just barely convince me that it was indeed reality. But I found myself craving a greater intensity from him, to be given a stronger sign that I was welcome to reciprocate with my own intensity. Instead, he kissed me as if he were acutely aware that this state of being for us was meant to be fleeting. I found myself beginning to mourn the loss of that kiss as soon as he touched me. He backed away from me, before I could his hair, before I could cradle my arm around his back, before I could squeeze his hand.

He didn't look me in the eyes again.

As we walked shoulder to shoulder back to my platform, an insufferable sadness started to crawl its way through my being. I realized that he and I couldn't be together. Our lives weren't yet fully realized, and there was still a vast expanse of time that lay before us. Even if he were to offer himself to me, how was I to accept him? Where could I keep him safe? I didn't have these answers.

The train was already there by the time we reached the platform. I searched the furthest recesses of my mind for a poignant enough farewell but found none.

Instead, he took the initiative. "You'll be OK," he assured me, resolute yet tender. "I'm sure of it."

He placed his hand on my chest. His touch was gentle, but I somehow got the feeling that he was pushing me backwards, back through the train doors. Those doors soon closed before me. I reached out for him once again, only to be met by the unyielding glass of the window, the final affirmation that I was once again separated from him.

The train rolled its way out onto its predetermined path, undeterred by what was being taken away from me as it did so. When the sight of Jungkook had shrank away completely, I then recalled my letter in the pocket of my herringbone coat. Strangely, I didn't feel like it mattered anymore. The whole world had changed by then anyway. I could only imagine the world continuing to change, and everything I talked about in that letter would only obsolesce further and further. The world would be changing. I would be changing. And so, thinking only about that, I continued to watch the scenery outside the window.