I’m not sure how long he cried for or how long I cried for.  The only sound I heard from him was when he sniffled or in a long breath.  He curled against me with his face against my neck and one arm around me, clutching the back of my tee shirt in his fist.  His other hand toyed with a piece of my hair.  I knew when he stopped crying because he released my tee shirt from his death grip and began smoothing his hand down my back.  He pulled away, sniffling, but left his face tear stained.  I tried not to look at him, but it was hard to look away from his heavy brown eyes.  Clearing his throat, he smiled and sniffled again.  He began adjusting the shoulders of my shirt.  His hands trembled as he wiped the tears from my face.  When he finished, I gained feeling in my arms again and reached to wipe his cheeks but he laughed, embarrassed, and swiped his hands down his own face.

                He crawled the few feet back to where he’d discarded my yellow bracelet, grabbing it, he sat back the way he was.  He took my arm and slipped the bracelet back onto my wrist.

                “Thank you,” he croaked out.  He cleared his throat again and ran his hand down my entire arm, brushing his fingers over each bracelet.  “You brought me back.”

                I laughed and shook my head.  “It’s just a dumb tradition from back in the States.  I didn’t do anything.”

                “I think it gave me strength,” he replied.  His eyes remained fixed on the colored bracelets in the dark as he kept running feather light touches over them.  “It reminded me of you.”  His eyes darted up to catch mine, knocking the breath out of me with the intensity of their stare.  “I wanted to come back to you.”

                I know how strangled my laugh sounded, but I was having trouble remembering to breathe in or to breathe out.

                Girl. Friend.  Girl. Friend.  Girlfriend.

                “Oh, you’re just saying that,” I tried to kid.  “If it helped bring you back safely then I’m glad, but it’s only because Yeon Soo isn’t here.”

                He pushed some of my hair behind my ear, still not letting me look away from his eyes.  His brown eyes.  I really liked his eyes.  “Who,” he said.  Not asked.  Said.  He knew who I was talking about.  My eyes began to sting from lack of blinking.  They were dry and hurt.  I blinked rapidly and swallowed the sigh that was creeping its way out of my mouth.  I finally managed to look away and tried to laugh again.  “Nikki, I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have said that.”

                But I wanted you to, I thought.  Which makes it even worse.

                “It’s ok.  Don’t apologize.  This is a full on war, I hear.  People do crazy things in times like these,” I rationalized.

                I think it was the darkness.  Like alcohol.  People get bold when they’re drunk.  People also get bold if they’re in the dark.  I could barely make out the features of his face when he stood away from the moonlight.  I figured it was the same for him.

                He sighed and pulled his hands away from me, shoving them into the pockets of his camouflage pants.  “I guess it is kind of crazy to be in love with someone you just met only a few weeks ago.”

                He did not just say that to me.  I could feel my palms begin to sweat.  I closed my eyes to try to come back to Earth.  Breathe in, breathe out.  In.  Out.  Inhale.  Exhale.

                When I opened my eyes, he was gone.  I twirled around and caught him standing in front of the window.  He was peeking through the closed blinds.  I hurried over to stand next to him. 

                I peeked with him, staring out into the blackness of the night.  The street lights hadn’t come on for days now.  I could hear the faded gunfire in the distance, amazed at how the sound didn’t faze me anymore.

                “Do you regret coming here?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the window.

                “No,” I answered after a moment.  “I’m glad I came.  I made some good friends.  I really like my students.  I’m learning a new language, well, um, sort of.”  He laughed softly.  I watched him gaze out at nothing.  “I don’t regret being here.  There was nothing for me back home, so I wouldn’t have changed anything I did that led me here.  Even now.”

                He nodded and let go of the blinds.  I straightened.  We stared now at the closed blinds.  He still wouldn’t face me.  “Do you regret your decision to join when you did?” I asked, glancing at his uniform.  Had this been a completely different situation, I may have dwelled more on just how y he looked in his army camouflage uniform.

                He sighed sadly and looked down at himself.  “No, I guess not.  I’m a man.  This is what men do.  So no, I don’t regret joining when I did.  Even now.”

                The pain in his eyes from all the violence and death they’ve taken in so far told me otherwise.  I knew he was thinking of Park Cho Won.  His dark eyes held regret.  And disappointment at feeling regret.  He in a deep breath and let it out, smiling sadly.  “I feel bad though,” he mentioned.  “I want to go home.  I miss my mom.” 

                In the eyes of national law, he may be a man, but deep down, he was just a kid.  Who wanted to play video games with his friends, not become a hardened killing machine.

                I nodded.  I angrily swiped at my eyes and laughed bitterly.  “Sometimes, I miss my mom, too.”  But then I come back to reality and realize I just miss the idea of having parents who care.

                This time when I felt his arms close around me, I mustered up all the energy left in my body to push away from him.

                “No,” I whispered.  “No, this isn’t ok.”  A particularly loud explosion sounded in the distance, making me jump.  My heart pounded furiously with dread.  Seung Ri tried to reach for me again, but I stepped back even though fear tore through me.  “You have a girlfriend, Seung Ri,” I reminded him through gritted teeth.  “And I’m damaged goods.  This isn’t ok.”

                He stepped forward and I stepped back.  Until I was backed against the wall with no where left to go.  He held his hands out to me, but didn’t touch me.  “Let me fix you then.”

                “There’s no fixing me.  I have no family.  I have no home.  I hate most people.  You’re just scared.  I understand, but you shouldn’t be making any rash decisions at a time like this.”

                “You don’t understand,” he argued.  “You don’t.  Me and Yeon Soo, it’s not…it isn’t like…”  He ran his hands over his head again and rubbed the back of his neck, wincing in pain as he looked to the ceiling for a second.  “Yeon Soo doesn’t look at me the way you do.  She doesn’t see what I can tell you see.”  He faced forward slowly and stared at me, letting his arms drop to his sides.  My breath hitched.  I could see the fire and determination blazing in his eyes.  He grabbed one of my arms by the wrist and slammed my hand against his chest.  “Yeon Soo doesn’t do this to me.”

                I struggled at first, futilely.  His heart raced in his chest.  He held my hand in place and carefully placed his other hand on my chest over my heart.  His features relaxed slightly.  “Feels like mine,” he murmured.  “You understand now, don’t you?”  Another loud explosion.  I gasped.  I felt my blood freeze in my veins.  Gunfire crackled.

                “Why do they sound so loud suddenly?” I growled angrily.

                He dropped his hands off me and glanced back at the window.  I bent down and picked up Bamboo, sticking him under my arm.  “They’ve been on the move,” he whispered.  As if on cue, the radio hooked to his hip crackled.  Korean words came through.  He spoke into it and then listened intently.  More Korean words.  He said something else and hooked it back onto his hip.

                “They’re in Seoul.  We have to move the civilians again,” he told me.

                Before I could ask him what was going on, he’d grabbed my hand and ran from the room, dragging me behind him.  When we entered the hallway, soldiers were already running in and out of classrooms waking people up.

                Back down on my floor, he yanked me toward my classroom.  “Get your stuff together.  We’re getting you all together and moving you farther out of Seoul.  It’s not safe here anymore.”  Another explosion.  I could almost feel this one.

                Just then another soldier came up to Seung Ri and began speaking in loud, speedy Korean.  They took off together.

                I turned to face inside the classroom.  People were becoming frantic as they grabbed their belongings.

                “…only take what you can carry.  We need to move now,” a US soldier was saying from the middle of the room.  It was hard to see exactly what was going on in the dark like this.

                I reached under my cot and grabbed my backpack, stuffing Bamboo inside.  Anything that meant anything to me, anything important was in that backpack.  I didn’t care about my suitcases.  I slung my backpack over my shoulder and ran from the room to find Seung Ri.

                “…don’t know.  They’re meeting in the basement to take inventory of the remaining medical supplies,” I heard another soldier saying.

                I stopped dead in my tracks.  I whipped around to face the soldier.

                “Do you guys need help?”  Feeling possessed, I lied, “I was a nursing major in college.”

                The soldiers looked at each other and looked at me.  “Great.  We could use all the help we can get.  Go to the basement.  We only have three military doctors stationed here.”

                I nodded and rushed down the hallway to get to the stairs leading to the basement.  I didn’t make it that far.  I slammed into Seung Ri.

                “What are you doing?  Get out there.  The bus is leaving soon,” he told me, grabbing my shoulders and trying to turn me around.

                I pushed his arms away from me.  “No.  I’m not leaving.”

                “Are you crazy?  Don’t you hear that?” he snarled.  Gunfire.  It had been coming in more frequent bursts now.  “Go.  They’ll take you somewhere safer.”

                I grabbed his face and forced his eyes to mine.  “I’m. Not. Leaving.”  His eyes darkened angrily.  “I’m staying.  The medical team that’s stationed here needs help.  I told a couple of American soldiers that I was a nursing major back in college.”

                His eyes narrowed and he covered my hands with his, lowering them between us.  I could tell he was racking his brain for our past conversations.  “You don’t like people and you don’t understand them, so you studied the mind.”  I nodded.  That’s exactly what I said.  “You were a psychology major in school,” he remembered.

                I smirked.  “No one but me and you know that.”

                “I’ll tell them.  You can’t stay here.  I won’t let you.  I won’t let you get…”

                “My high school forced all the students to do community service.  I volunteered at a hospital for four years.  I bet I can be of some help, so you keep your mouth shut,” I snapped.  I softened my expression and, not caring about the people darting and pushing around us in a panic, I pecked him on the cheek.   “I’m not leaving if you’re staying.”  He said nothing.  I placed my hand over his heart.  It was still racing.  “Are you staying?”

                “I have to.”

                “Then I’m staying.”

                “Nikki,” he tried again.  I yanked another bracelet off my wrist and shoved it into his pocket.  A blue one.

                “Some cultures believe blue means protection.  Stay close to your friends, maybe it will keep them safe as well.”  I pulled the green one off too and added it to the blue one.  “Green is supposed to be a healing color.  Give it to Ji Yong when he returns, ok?”

                He covered his pocket with his hand.  “If you’re staying here, you’ll need protection, too,” he said. 

                I patted his chest and side stepped him to head downstairs.  “That’s what you guys in uniform are for.  You’re the ones with the guns.”

                I turned and ran.  Just as I reached the entrance to the basement stairs, another explosion went off.  I swore I could feel the whole building shake with that one.