October 5th, 2023, 2:54 am. A lonely, rainy...night.




To whomever ends up opening this letter, 

    Don't worry. It isn't lost, it isn't cursed, nor is it bad of you to take it. Rather, I'm grateful. For the words you're about to read, are ones for no one.

Ones I have written about someone, yet is for no one, well other than the one to pick this strange letter up I guess. This is about Karina Yu, Jimin.

You see, I hadn't fallen in love even when I was 18,19. Heck not even at 20, but the magical number was 21. Although, truthfully? The only magical thing was the fact I actually fell in love.

I ran into her, October, walking backwards while talking to my best friend, Aeri. I immediately spun around to apologise of course, I wasn't an after all, but I saw no one.

I had seriously thought just a little, that I might've gone crazy, until Karina had laughed from the floor, palms supporting her upper body weight as her legs rested out in front of her.

"I'm down here silly!" And she smiled at me, in hindsight it was her smile, but back then it looked like a smirk. I thought she was making fun of me, you see- and well… I called her a .

"I apologised already, ." I shouldn't have, maybe then I would've been her friend...earlier at least.

After all that we spent... 6 months? Glaring at each other, bumping our shoulders into each other, anything to annoy the other. 3 months later we ended up sitting right behind and infront of each other, I practically had to stare at her head 40% of the time. Almost like fate was playing a game with us, not to mention I still hated her at that point.

Now, as a person, I'm on the quiet side, heck- Aeri was probably my only friend except for the cats I fed on the way back from school.

But Rina- she was SURROUNDED by people, I'm talking every lunch break and there's guys who'd have already brought food for her, girls who'll pull seats to sit around her, and they'll all be talking about anything and everything and I'd have to listen to all of it with Aeri who was always telling me the interesting tea as I'd been, y'know...wearing headphones, I always was.

Aeri and I, we didn't TALK talk. We'd just spend the whole lunch break texting each other what we were gonna say, of course we didn't usually do that but when it's a 2v7 or 10 in terms of sound- yea we did that.

But something weird happened, all of a sudden this other guy appeared in Rina's circle, a jockey, muscley, hair slicked backey, guy. And he was...loud.

And touchy.

I hated him, I might've hated Rina too at the time but I hated him FOR her. He cut his way into the group, brought even more people and slowly Rina's friends started leaving and she was basically surrounded by his henchmen. 

She started falling quiet, yes sure she wasn't loud like those around her, but she wasn't my level of quiet. Until she was.

It gradually got worse, at first it was noticing her wearing jackets more often, masks, hats, longer pants, all of which that guy hated. And voiced his opinions on, that was when I sort of...felt as if I had to do something?

After all, no man who'd been in war will tell you to join it, unless it's for patriotism I guess. She wasn't the type to be able to survive happily alone, she wasn't the type to be able to be quiet about her stupid dinosaur facts, little things she had happen to her in her day, she wasn't who this guy had made her. Looking back, I knew too much about this girl to really say I hated her, I think even back then...I was afraid.

Aeri and I sat around her table, me in front of her and Aeri on the side, obviously, the 'henchmen' were mad.

But, with the power of the Sony WF-1000xm5 earbuds and my trusty old xm4's, let's just say they could scream and shout all they want, all I'm hearing is frank ocean.

I draped my headphones onto her head, my ears were already plugged, and I immediately took her phone out her hand, downloaded the app for the headphones, got her number, played her a neutral song, midnight love by girl in red, and sat in silence. At this point she looked- confused. Really confused, so much so I had forgotten all about how much I had hated her, and ended up holding her gaze a little too long. She was mesmerising up close, and being the subject of her gaze? Oh thank god it was only a little too long.

I handed her phone back to her, after adding her into a group chat with me and Aeri, wanna know what's her first ever message?

"Hi, who is this?" I mean- seriously. I literally just took her phone, who else COULD it be?

" I'm in front of you."

"Oh what's up Minjeong Haven't annoyed you in a while"

"So you're telling me...you know it was annoying me?"

" Your reactions were cute"

" Am I interupin sumn here-" Aeri never could type well, something about her nails being too long. Jimin, well she just never used punctuations, almost always made her messages hard to understand too.

That's where our little friendship started, then in July, right after the June holidays, NingNing joined our group.

A girl Aeri kidnapped from her club, or- as she said, "made friends with" She kidnapped her. Definitely.

Jimin had integrated herself well into my life. After school, on one sort of rainy 4pm, I caught her leaving her umbrella for the cats I fed.

Even talking about me too.

"Where's the person who usually feeds you guys? Did they abandon you, babies?" I was offended, I'D NEVER leave Myong and Myang.

" Well, I got