Why did everything have to pile upon me today?

Not that if it were some other day, it would have made any difference but still. I could not remember details of Kai’s condition or Sehun’s confession but both of them were making me nauseous. As I waited for my Financial Advisor and the girl to meet me at the café, I felt my stomach churning. I felt so much under pressure that I wished that Kai and Sehun would disappear momentarily.

“You don’t look well” My Financial Advisor commented as he placed his palm against my forehead to check if I had fever. He had such a cold palm even in this hot summer. Not finding anything wrong he pushed the delicious looking sandwich towards me as I pushed down the lurch at my throat.

“No,” I whispered, “Take it away.”

“Go to the infirmary!” she yelled. Her shrill voice hit my ears and magnified my throbbing headache. “Ignore her,” he said checking my pulse, “your pulse is weak. Want to call it a day?”

Going home was not an option for me. In there, waited another reality, another revelation.

Have you ever wished to drown? To let go off your body and mind, and let the current take you wherever it desired- to relieve yourself off all leaden weights, to escape from brutal reality, to run away from everyday chores or bid farewell to life. Do not get me wrong, I do not mean death but I mean a stop, an end to living.

How would it feel to have the water surround you, embracing you in it is never ending arms? Will it feel like being cradled in mother’s lap, unaware of the burdens in life, happy within the little world, involving mother and I or will it feel like a forceful resignation, a self inflicted clipping of your wings, a deliberate attempt at glorifying cowardice?

When is it enough? When should I stop tolerating? When should I let go? What should I let go?

More questions. Vague answers.

I let myself drown for this one time because I knew there was no running away from life, there was only hiding away from it. So I hid myself for the final time before I took the ultimate leap forward, before I revealed my true self to the world.

I thought I heard someone shout my name in fear and anxiety but then my foggy senses were not one to be relied upon.

It felt cold. Even in the sweltering heat, the hand felt cold. But the way it caressed my head, the manner in which the dainty fingers grazed the forehead and the soft texture of the tips made me feel warm. This touch; it was unfamiliar. I tried to locate the sensation but failed. I felt a little drowsy but even in my somnolent state I could feel the anxiety and angst radiate from the owner of the hand. The owner of the hand! There was a person sitting next to me!

I opened my eyes slowly, trying to take in the surrounding and searched for the owner. The room was draped in white curtains and painted in white. It was soothing.

“Finally!” it came out as a raspy whisper, a breath of relief, an exclamation of rejoice.

“You passed out at the café,” he explained, retrieving his hand from the tangles of my hair. Why did he do that? It felt nice. . .

My eyes finally adjusted to the light in the room. I was at the school infirmary and according to him, I had passed out. Why did I have to wake up?

“You’ve got to stand up and face it,” preached Kai, his voice was embedded in my memory, “But it’s all right to fall back some times.” With an incredible amount of effort, I seated myself on the bed I had been lying unconscious on for the past two hours. Kai was sitting at a little distance away from me, his eyes; red and lined with dark circles. He was supposed to be at home, what was he doing here?

“He called me,” he explained as the omniscient narrator, pointing towards the person sitting adjacent, “I am sorry. I should have taken it slow.”

Taken what slow? Uggh! My brain had dulled down severely. Why was everyone talking in riddles?

“May I take her away now?” Kai asked, cupping my face and trying to look into my eyes.

“You may,” the angelic guy replied, “but take care of her.” Kai pecked my forehead and whispered, “I will.”

The weather was bright and cheery. The weather was blistering and sweaty.

The people looked happy and jubilant. The people looked hypocritical and scared.

The flowers were blossoming beautifully only to be wilted in a matter of a few hours.

The skywalk looked clean and shiny waiting to be stained by footmarks.

The clothes at the clothing rail looked spotlessly white only to be soiled later by use.

“Dichotomy,” Kai spoke as we walked towards an unknown destination, “is self created.” I did not look at him but went over my list of observations. Yes, dichotomy was self-created.

“Who decided the opposite of dark is light?” he asked rhetorically, “Who decides that the antonym of good is bad, black is white, angel is devil?”

“We decide,” he answered.

“Do you understand where we are going?” he asked.

“For now the destination seems unclear, “I answered vaguely, “but I shall eventually find out.”

I felt Kai smile and then taking my hand he guided me. “We are the creators of our own differences,” he elaborated, “If today, you decide to establish that the opposite to white is not black but grey, 50 people were protest, 20 will ponder over it and 5 will agree. Do you know why people do that?”

I shook my head in despair, watching a little cat trying desperately to climb over a wall.

“It’s because things start getting muddled up, set beliefs and conceptions get uprooted and challenged and people, people get unnerved. They start resisting change because they are unsure of what it has to bring,” he explained, “You see when you create dichotomy you make sure you take two extremities. This avoids confusion. You have a prescribed right and a prescribed wrong. They are so extreme that if one even slightly deviates from it, the difference is jarringly visible. It is human tendency to avoid confrontation and that’s why the various layers between the good and bad are stubbornly avoided.”

The little cat failed to climb over the wall and I was sure it would walk off but then it jumped through a little hole in between and I smiled, involuntarily. There was always the middle path.

We both fell back on a comfortable silence watching people rush by us. I didn’t know what I was doing, walking down unknown streets but it felt nice and that is all that mattered.

“Oh! Look! It’s so perfect!” I exclaimed, tugging at Kai’s arms to draw his attention towards a five year old’s drawing of a girl on a stucco footpath.

 “Even with the asymmetrical eyes, even with the line figure, even with the shabby hair, even with the box skirt, even with the colours escaping from their rigid domains, it’s perfect?” he questioned as he bent down to cuddle the five year old.

I stared at the drawing intently and then looked at the artist giggling with Kai over some joke.

“Yes,” I said, going up to the child, “It’s perfect.”

I had some idea of where I was heading.

We resumed our walk. Kai held my hand the entire time most probably, fearing that I would faint again and reached an empty children’s park. “This is going to be a long story,” Kai said,” so it will be better for us to sit.”

The soft, dewy grass felt like a yielding blanket. While I sat down with my legs curled to my chin, Kai sat on it Indian style, plucking the grasses almost immediately as he sat.

“Do you know why I left this country?” he asked.

“It was because of my skin colour,” he answered, knowing I was ignorant about his question, “When I was young, I was not all that aware of my skin colour. In fact, I never used to think about it! All I had in a my mind was playing and dancing, that was all that my little world comprised. It was when I started going to school, that I became aware of being different.”

My eyes scanned his exposed hands. A slight tan bordering on honey, he looked exotic and mysterious but indeed, different.

“My friends used to tease me a lot,” he continued laughing resentfully, “I had this nickname ‘Kkamjjong’ but I treated their teasing as a joke, as friendly nonsense. But every day when I went back home, I looked at myself in the mirror, and stared at my body. No, deformity. I used to wonder why I was not born fair! What had I done to be born different! My self confidence had hit rock bottom because of this difference, this hierarchy which was created because of my skin colour.”

“Things went from bad to worse in eighth grade when my crush started calling me ‘kkamjjong’. It didn’t sound funny anymore, it didn’t felt like a term of endearment anymore, it felt like an insult. At night, I began sneaking to my mother’s room and stealing her cosmetics. I used to apply the fairness products every night wishing I would wake up and turn pale white but ever morning served as a shock of reality. My dark skin was my reality and I didn’t want to accept it, I wanted to contort it,” he confessed, his face contorted with pain and anger.

He stopped for a while and looked at the sun, squinting his eyes. I felt him slipping back into the past, reliving every moment: the pain, the insult, the heartbreak, the self-loathing.

“Sorry, I-,“ he spoke after a prolonged silence.

“It’s all right,” I comforted, “Go on.” I knew Jieun, I knew Sehun and I knew Kai but today, I was being introduced to Kim Jongin.

“Mom noticed that her cosmetics were disappearing and one day, she found it stacked in my drawer,” he continued,”She did not take it well. She assumed that I was a closet homoual and in fear that I had a lover here, sent me abroad. I did not resist her even once, neither did I ever tell her the real reason behind it. And thank god I didn’t because going abroad turned out to be my healing therapy. The country I went had people of all shapes and sizes, all colours and nationalities. I, no longer stood out individually. That is when I started thinking. Just because someone said dark skin was a sign of ugliness, I believed it? Was I that ignorant? Was I that superficial?”

This man with his sparkling eyes and charming smile had so much hidden in his heart. Who would have thought?

“That is why,” he disclosed, his voice confident and stable, “I decided to help you out. I saw in you, an extension of my younger self. Last night, I had drowned myself in alcohol because I was sure I had failed in liberating you from the clutches of societal expectation but seeing you today morning, even in my inebriated state, I knew not all hope was lost. I know you are not feeling well, that you want to rest but you are almost at the end of the old life and almost at the beginning of the new life and I didn’t want you to rest now.”

“Jongin” His name made my heart flutter but I ignored it and proceeded,”why were you so awful to me in the beginning then?”

“Would you have let me into your world if I had been nice?” he rebutted.

No. I would not have. At that point, I was at a stage where I could take criticisms well but compliments made me feel pitiful or instigated in me a suspicion about the person’s intention. I was prepared to take insults but always unprepared to accept compliments.

“You actually stopped time,” he used, throwing some stray grass on me. My revenge equaled throwing a haystack on him.

“What do you mean?” I asked helping him tidy himself.

“You believed yourself to be ever evolving but you actually forced yourself to stop time,” he emphasised, “You didn’t move forward or backward that’s why when I tried to make some changes it felt like a revolution. If you had let time take care of you, if you hadn’t resisted change then my efforts could have run smoother.”

“Are you complaining?” I asked annoyed.

“No, you idiot!” he chastised playfully, “I am advising you to stop fighting for some time. A little tweak to your constant life causes a culmination of repressed events and then you are unable to handle it.”

“I am worried about Sehun,” I confessed wrapping my hands around my knees and pulling my legs closer.

Kai laughed and lay on the grass staring at the endless, blue sky.

“That kid,” he sang, laughing to himself, “he turned out to be the most complicated one.”

I turned over and laid on my chest, propping up my elbows. “What do you mean?” I asked

“I mean he is the most messed up,” he elaborated, “Do you know how people create their identity?”

I shook my head and mouthed a ‘no’.

“By defining themselves by who they are or who they are not,” he answered, “So who are you?”

I examined those black diamonds sparkling under the sunlight, glinting in excitement, waiting for his report card.

I smiled and said, “I am a smart, brilliant woman who is at times, full of herself!”

Kai burst out laughing and turned to his side clutching his stomach. I joined in too but my poor health did not allow me to laugh the way he did.

“Indeed! Indeed!” he agreed, his laughter ceasing, “With Sehun things worked in the reverse. He thinks he is not as intellectual as you are, he is not as good looking as the last year’s vice president, and he is not useful as I am, he is not as sporty as the basketball team’s captain, he is not Jieun’s lover and he is not your sole admirer. He searches himself in others and when he does not find it, he defines himself as not being the person in question. He goes by the principle of negation.”

I sighed and stared at Kai lovingly. God knows what would have happened if he had not arrived! I would have most probably been stuck in the little bubble world I had created, Jieun and I would have just remain facades. He was right when he had said that I am chirpy. My coldness, my indifference they were all constructed to protect myself from any attack. It was all a façade, which over a period I had come to believe it as the reality.

“I just keep my eyes and ears open,” he said as if reading my mind, “ All of us are way too self indulgent that’s why we fail to see certain subliminal messages. We are all victims caught in an opppressive system designed by the privileged elites; we need to fight it, get out of it and let ourselves blossom. I’ll be leaving by the way.”

I jolted from my laid-back stance, sat up alert, and erect.

“What are you talking about?” I hollered, losing my calm causing my head to hurt with magnified intensity.

With a firm hand against my cheek, he pushed me to lie down again and said, “Relax, and the reason why I stayed on at your place was because I needed to observe you to help you. My intention was only to help you although, certain unplanned things happened . . .”

He spaced out once again, thinking and rethinking. May be he was wondering how things had turned out like this? With I in love with him and he, in love with Jieun.

“Sometimes,” he murmured his mind still in a space I could not reach, “sometimes I wish I could resist change.”

“Never mind,” he interjected himself, “I have found a place to live so I’ll be shifting there and as for the contract . . . I wish I could tear it off but my hands are bound. Only father can do that.”

It would be better if he left the mansion now. If he stayed on, getting over him would be immensely difficult but what about Jieun.

“What about Jieun?” I asked.

“Jieun . . .” he mused, ruffling his hair and smiling shyly. He let the name roll in his tongue as if it were his favourite candy about to dissolve, “she is finding herself and my presence would act as a buffer. I will pursue her but from a distance. Aish! I do not know! At this moment romantic relationship is not what she needs!”

This boy! He knew everyone so well. He was so observant and analytical when it was about us but when it came to Jieun his brain got all muddled up.

What is perfection? Was it the sharp bridge of Jieun’s nose or my sharp wit? Was it the pale skin of Sehun or was it the tanned skin of Kai? Was it the blazing sun or was it the dull moon? Was there even something called perfection?

Kai got up and dusted his hair and pants off the grass, which stuck to him adamantly. I looked at him one last time as the guy I loved. I memorised that soft unkempt hair, the strong jaw line, the smiling eyes, the proudly jutting Adam’s apple, the lean torso, the slim waist, the sinewy arms and the long legs. He was an odd combination of lethal and placid. I had chosen my first love wisely.

“All words have been said; all deeds have been done; now let’s proceed into a new world,” he recited. I smiled brilliantly and got up with a bounce.

Not all words had been said but today, I did not have the courage to enunciate them so I shall wait.

“I love you.”

The three words sounded so simple now that I had said it. It took me four days to build up my courage and confess my love to him. For days, I had practised before the mirror, blushing every time I said ‘love’ and then finally decided to chuck the practise out the window and go extempore!

Swirling his coffee in the plastic glass of McDonald’s, looking sophisticated and polished even in the shabby place, he smiled that slow, shy smile I had yearned for. Delighted as I was, it pained to think that this was the first and last time I would ever get this smile.

“You know,” he said looking out the glass window we were seated next to, “my answer.”

I knew it very well but I had to confess irrespective. If I had never confessed my feelings I would have bottled them up and kept it inside me until it began to rot and eat away my heart.

“I feel privileged though,” he added as an afterthought. He left home 4 days ago and leaving my parents no one stopped him. Not because he was unwanted but because both of us, Jieun and I, were developing an addiction for him.

“I was expecting a fancy restaurant,” he complained, “but what is this blasphemy?”

I laughed heartily at his drama and tucked a few strands of my hair in the crook of my ear. He was not going to know why I got him here. This was my special place, mine and my other two dear friends. this place held special memories. It was one of the first places I enjoyed imperfection.

“There are still some-“

“Unanswered questions?” he completed raising an eyebrow inquisitively. 4 days of living alone had added a few years to his personality. He carried himself in a manner of a mature male.

I nodded and asked my question. “Why did you kiss-“

“Kiss you at the amusement park?” he completed for me again. Like always, he had an uncanny skill at looking into me, peering into my mind. I nodded again, resting my face on my palm dying for his answer.

“There are two reasons,“ he answered, sipping on his coffee with leisurely ease, “and they are not in order of priority.”

It sounded like a disclaimer but I did not interrupt him.

“The first one,” he said, his upper lip wiping the froth, “is the fear I had harboured in my heart. When you kissed me my mind went blank and the only thing I could think was ‘this was not what should have happened’ but when I sensed a hesitation in your kiss, I instinctively kissed you back because I feared if I didn’t, you would return back to your shell in a flash and double your security. I was almost there to letting you free and I didn’t want any silly mistake on my part to mess up the process.”

Therefore, the kiss was just a part of an elaborate plan, a plan made for my betterment. It was a consolation, an act of pity.

“The second reason,” he continued, his large palm eclipsing my tiny, clenched fist, “was because I wanted to. I wanted the kiss to never end, I wanted to wrap my arms tighter around your tiny frame, I wanted time to stop. In fact, I had almost confessed my feelings for you but then you mentioned Jieun and everything went blank.”

I felt myself blushing furiously. His manly voice had turned into a husky whisper and I failed to think properly.

“So are you saying you loved me?” I asked, cautiously.

“I don’t know,” he replied, reclining against the steel chair, “I really don’t know. When I saw those various sides of you, I had some unexplainable feelings bubbling in my mind but I couldn’t put a finger on it. I thought it was love and maybe it was, but my love for Jieun proved to be stronger.”

“You know,” he continued, bending his body over, his face inches away from mine, “even if I did love you, I would have never confessed. There is a possibility that I could be in love with you, right now but I won’t satisfy your curiosity.”

His heavy laugh emitting a childlike innocence filled the noisy eatery. I would never know whether he loved me or not, whether he loves me or not. In addition, I knew the reason why. Kai was afraid of being used as a crutch. If he had reciprocated my feelings there was a huge possibility that I would use him as a crutch, a support and cling onto him for my entire life; for I had been only released from my cage, I still had to learn to fly.

“You were my first kiss,” I whispered shyly.

Taking both my hands and cupping it on his own warm ones, he looked into my eyes and said something, which surpassed the three words I had said.

“And so were you mine.”

I cannot describe the moment I shared with him. it was magical, it was surreal.

“Although I would love staring at you like this,“ he interrupted, “the guy across the road busy ripping the roses from the bouquet he has bought for you won’t really appreciate it.

I looked across the road to see the breathtakingly beautiful guy, dressed in a grey polo t-shirt and black jeans, who was trying desperately to not run across the road and kill Kai.

“Don’t keep him waiting,” he said following my line of vision,” Nine years is a long time.”

I got up and slung my purse over my shoulder. Dressed in my peach pants and vintage white shirt complete with strappy wedges, I checked my reflection in the glass window and winked at the person across the street. He noticed my wink and blushing situated himself at the corner of the shop.

“What a tease,” Kai grumbled in a sarcastic montone.

“You are single and jealous,” I said haughtily, “Well off I go!”

I laughed and walked out of the eatery to meet my pissed boyfriend with a destroyed bouquet in his hand.

“Are you done discussing your love life?” he asked, grabbing my hand and pulling me closer.

“Ah! Sehun ah!” I replied cheekily, “We were actually discussing our first kisses.”

The bouquet never reached my hands. It just landed in the nearest garbage dump but he hadn’t let go off me, just as he had warned. Hand in hand, I walked down the street with my grumpy lover wondering how perfect my life was.