I sat alone in the same classroom where Seung Ri let me cry all over his uniform shirt.  It was weird.  I didn’t like how I felt about this kid.  I’d just met him.  Literally, just – as in days before – met him.  Maybe it was something about his eyes.  A softness in them.  He, oddly enough, seemed like he could read me.  Feel me out.  I wasn’t a big people person, but I liked him.  The fact that he looked smoking in a uniform was just a bonus.

                And he had a girlfriend.  Story of my life.

                All that aside, it was also bizarre that I could get so caught up in someone when I was stuck in – as the news recently put it – ‘war torn Korea.’  War torn?  But it couldn’t be.  It was 2011 for God’s sake.  There wasn’t war going on like this anymore.  It wasn’t like it was Afghanistan or anything.  This wasn’t Rwanda where the Hutus and the Tutsis were fighting over whatever it was they were fighting over.  This was Korea.  North and South Korea had been in a truce for over 50 years.  Why did North Korea have to get all bent out of shape now?  When I was here?  Why are we all stuck here?  Why isn’t the US coming to the rescue?  Why can’t we go home?  Home.  I’d like to go home.  Wherever that may be.  Correction, I just don’t want to be here like this anymore.

                I stared out the window into the blackness of night.  I could always hear explosions more clearly at night.  We were in the suburbs of Seoul which meant we had a better view of the starry, starry sky at night.  What a contradiction.  How beautiful and peaceful the sky above looked when the ground below was so ugly and battered.

                Suddenly, something covered my eyes.  I jumped and put my hands to my face to see what had blocked my vision.  Hands.  Soft hands.  I felt all the stress that had built up due to my overactive mind melt away.  I swatted at the hands and turned in my seat on the shelf parallel with the window and saw Seung Ri standing there, smiling.  I playfully shoved him back, only to hide the fact that I wanted so badly to hug him.

                “Are you really an insomniac?” he asked, hopping up onto the shelf to sit next to me.

                I shrugged.  “Only when I’m locked in a high school for an indefinite amount of time while the world around me falls apart.”

                He laughed.  “Well put.  Point taken.”

                “Is the world around me falling apart?”  I stared at my hands in my lap, but out of the corner of my eye I could see him looking at me.

                “It could be worse,” he replied.  His voice lowering, he added, “We could be dead.”

                Like the poor innocent civilians in the villages unlucky enough to be positioned where the missiles fell.  His voice trailed off before he could say that part.

                “A bunch of us are getting sent a few hours south of Seoul,” he said after a moment.  “We have to help out the other units who are down there.  They’re fighting land battles, you know.  A lot of soldiers are dying.  More than civilians.”

                My stomach flipped.  “Are you scared?”

                “Of course I’m scared.  I’ve only shot my weapon during practice.  I’ve never killed anyone.”  He paused and laughed, nervously.  “I’ve never seen anyone die before.”

                I’d never seen anyone die before either, I thought.  I forced a smile.  I always wore a bunch of cheap, colored, plastic bracelets.  They were cute, I thought.  They were ten for a dollar back at a discount bin in a store I found about a month before I came to Korea.  I slipped the yellow one off my wrist and reached over, sticking it into the front pocket of his uniform.  He laughed and took it out to inspect it.

                “What’s this?”

                I felt embarrassed all of a sudden.  “It’s for good luck.”  I held up my wrist to show him the other colors on my wrist.  “We tie yellow ribbons in front of houses back in the States when we want a soldier to come home safely.  I don’t have any yellow ribbons, so the yellow bracelet will have to do.”

                A smile formed on his lips as he tucked the bracelet back into his pocket.  “You want me to come back?”

                I could feel my face growing hot.  “No, no.  I-I didn’t mean it like, well I know you have a girlfriend.  I just meant if you…I thought…”

                He patted my shoulder.  “I understand.  Thank you.  I hope I come back, too.”  He was still laughing, but I could tell he was nervous.  He pulled a piece of paper out of his other pocket.  It was a photo.  I took it and looked at it.  It was a cute Korean girl with short hair.

                “This is Yeon Soo,” I said, handing him back the photo, fake smile plastered on my face still.  “She’s cute.”

                He nodded and smiled, sticking the photo back into his pocket without looking at it.  “She only gave me that when I left for my military duty.  Not quite a good luck charm.”

                I giggled.  “So it’s a good thing you met me.”

                He nodded, eyes wide.  “Oh, definitely.”

                Soon, we fell into a comfortable conversation.  Talking about light things.  Music, movies, my hometown, his hometown.  Anything that didn’t involve war.  I finally pulled my legs up and rested my chin on my knees and faced him while he told me stories about when he was a kid.  He made me laugh.  Then he told me about the good times he had with his four best friends, those guys I’d met.  He said he felt bad about cutting school so much and making his parents worry about him, but he cared so much about those guys and now they were together again, here like this. 

                I managed to deflect many of his questions about my family, but not for long.  He somehow managed to get more information out of me about myself than, well anyone since Lisa in a long time.

                Drifting back into light conversation, we laughed a lot.  It felt good to laugh.  His jokes were pretty lame if I really thought about it, but he was cute telling them.

                “Are Korean dog tags the same as American ones?” I wondered during a lull in our conversation.  I reached out and touched the chain around his neck.  I peered in the dark at his tags.  One side was in Korean and the other side in English.  His name, his unit, a number that I assumed was like a social security number, and his blood type.

                “Yes, as far as information, they’re pretty similar.  The American ones don’t have a Korean side,” he laughed.

                “I’m O positive, too,” I mentioned.  “Does that mean something?  I heard that Koreans look into blood types and treat them like Zodiac signs.”

                He laughed again.  “Yeah, I mean, some people are serious about stuff like that, but mostly it’s just for fun.  Like the Zodiac in the States, right?”

                “Yeah, lots of people read their Zodiacs and all that, but I doubt anyone really puts too much stock into it anymore.”  Still touching his dog tags lightly, I asked, “What does it mean that we’re both type O?”

                He looked down at my fingers on his chain.  Feeling awkward, I pulled away and looked at him.  Laughing to show I wasn’t being too serious.  I actually had no idea what came over me to ask such a stupid thing.

                “That we’re unsuitable.  O and O are too stubborn to be able to get along well together,” he answered.  Then chuckled.  “We will probably start fighting soon.”

                “Well, you do like ballads.  I can’t stand them.  So maybe it’s all true.”

                He sighed dramatically.  “That’s it then.  I guess I’ll be going.”  After we both had a good laugh, his face turned serious.  “I don’t believe in things like that.”

                The air around us seemed to get heavy.  He was still looking at me.  I was having trouble breathing in this heavy air.  He dropped himself off the shelf and moved to stand in front of where I was still sitting.  Placing his hands flat on my knees, he pushed them down until my legs hung over the edge.  Me sitting and him standing, he was no longer taller than me.  I could look him right in the eye.

               He touched the fingertips of one hand to my cheek.  I felt myself leaning forward to feel more of his touch.   My mouth tingled when I felt him barely brush his lips against mine.  Before he could actually press his lips to my mine, my brain kicked in.  Damn it.

                I froze.  “Y-You…have…a girlfriend,” I told him no louder than a breath.

                He pulled back slightly.  “I know.”

                “Yeah,” was all I could say.  I wondered how long I could go without air.  He came forward a fraction of an inch again.  His palm on my cheek was setting my entire body on fire.  I felt the tip of his tongue touch my dry bottom lip when he his lips.