“You really know how to barge into other people’s lives don’t you” I mumble to her as I readjust a fallen blanket. She smiles back, her eyes still peacefully shut, and I roll my eyes, knowing that she is actually listening.

► ► ►

Click Click. Click Click.

 “So Myungsoo, do you have any friends?” the man sitting across from me asks (while politely gesturing me to stop playing with his pen). He calls himself a consoler but he is just like the others, except that a shiny white certificate is nailed to his wall, all brandished and tidy, pronouncing his title with scribbly cursive loops (I roll my eyes).

“I told you, my name is L”

L for lucky I’m stuck with you for the next few hours.

“Myungsoo” the consoler tries again, “Do you have any friends?”

I sigh in defeat, “Sure”

“Sure? Is that a yes?” the consoler raises his eyebrows as if he is surprised, I try my best not to be that insulted, after all is just a balding man in a sweaty grey tie and stock pile of troubled kids all waiting to listen to his advice. Ha.

“Sure, yes, whatever” I clarify clearly. “One friend”

 “Good, very good” the consoler nods his head up and down, droning away on his notepad. “So tell me more about this friend”

“I don’t know….” I mumble, suddenly becoming shy “I just meet her one day and we became friends I guess”

“Good, good. And what is her name?”

“……Bae Suji” I managed to mutter, though inside, I really didn’t want to share her name with the likes of him.

Her name was Bae Suji.

► ► ►

52 days later

Paint-ridden bedroom walls

Handprints and splatters.

Metallic buckets with squeaking handles, once filled to the brims with glossy colors of paint.

Dripping brushes, long forgotten.

Our hands stained with creases of carmine red and smokey topaz, and the rims of our fingernails with teal and an overcoat of purple wisteria .

The walls were once stale white, lonely and deprived.

But approximately 1 hour, 23 minutes, and 59 seconds ago, Suzy spun in with paint buckets and a crazy idea to the bring the walls to life and there we have it {this}.

We’re on the ground: heads piled above a swept pile of month old newspaper lining the wooden floor, our hair sprawled like a dangle of circuits, sweat glistening, heart pumping like a churn of summersaults, minds completely dazed.

It was that that moment I felt life was limitless.

It was a of emotions all held up in the concrete tile of this concluded room. I didn’t know what to do with myself but I looked over at Suji with her loosened braid tickling her cherry red lips and her careless little smile flying above the colorblind sky and its limits, and I breathed again, letting the worries fall back centuries in the future.

“This reminds me of before” Suji whispered, turning over so that our noses were millimeters away and our eyes balanced on the same level.

“Before?” I ask back

“Remember? …You don’t?”

I shake my head and Suji’s eyes blatantly forget to hide their disapproval. 

“When we made a cake out of vegetables, but you forgot flour {Idiotic Myungsoo, only you would do that}. Nobody wanted to eat it, but except Bomi, who was probably just being nice to you. Then we flew paper cranes in the local kite race, it was a tough race but I’m pretty sure we won. And there was the time we chased lightning on these bicycles we found on the middle of the street, you have to remember that right?! “

I did.

And her words take me back: 44 days before.

It was a Friday afternoon, rainclouds and storms looming over the building tops. And while others hide beneath the brick walls of their apartment complex or petite little coffee shops, Suji had dragged me by the collar outside into the realm of tempest.

“Let’s catch the lightning, it’s getting away!” Suji nudges me with a wet sleeve, pulling me towards a line of bikes.

“Are you crazy?! Do you want to die?!” I scoffed

 “I’m not scared of death. Death is scared of me” Suji raised her chin and proudly proclaimed; there was a glint to her confidence that almost reassured me.

“Your delusional” I mutter as I hop on to a bike, not quite registering why I’m listening to another of Suji’s crazy ideas again.

“Just like you” Suji smiles back, speeding away on her own bicycle, turning back only once to shout “Hurry up you turtle! Death is going to catch you at this rate!”

“Well I’m not scared of death either!” I shout back as I hit the pedal down with a slam and race until my bike passes Suzy’s.

I felt the electrical beat of the thunder grasp my skin and the thumping pulse that rang till my fingertips were sore from excitement.  We followed the lightning on skinny green bicycles with rusty handles, until we collided with upcoming traffic and fell back on the cold, grey-washed pavement.

The people passing by in taxi cabs and polished cars must have thought we were crazy, but Suzy didn’t care so I didn’t either.

I felt alive in the danger, in the uncertainty, in the midst of not knowing anything yet just believing.

“Yes Suji, I do remember”

 ► ► ►

66 days later

I have a history paper due tomorrow. This time I promised myself I would turn in something. But little did I know, words were harder than thoughts and a mere three sentences had taken me up till 12 pm at night.

“Do you want to catch some stars?” Suji plays with the edge of my sleeve; I shake her off, my eyes digging into the computer screen lifelessly.

“Busy”

“How about a ramen eating contest?” Suji tugs again; I shake her off again.

“Busy”

“What about – “

“Stop being so childish!” I groan, clenching my hands to my head.

“You’re the one who is really childish” Suji shoots back “I’m leaving!”

“Fine”

“Fine!”

“Just leave, you’re distracting me anyways….”

Only silence replies and I turned to my back to see the white lace curtains wavering the wind, the window pulled wide open. Suji had left before I could blink my eyes.

The door squeaks open and I almost expect it to be Suji again, but it’s not.

“Myungsoo? Who were you just talking to?” my mother peeks in, her bony fingers pressed against the ashen door frame nervously.

                “Nobody” I whispered back.

                I almost meant it that time.

► ► ►

73 days later

There’s a fishbowl in my living room. There’s Suji in my living room.

Then before I know it, there is Suji tossing pills into the fishbowl.

“Hey! What are you doing!” I shout as I walk in. “Those are mine!”

Suji doesn’t look at me. Instead she taps the glassfish bowl and watches as the pills settle to into the tiny brown rocks.

“Why do you take those?” Suji’s whisper is faint,

“Maybe because my mom wants me to, maybe because my doctors told me to, or maybe because I just want to be normal for once, not that crazy kid in the corner that everybody throws pencils at!” I shout. My voice bounces off the walls and angrier then I intended, and my whole body is trembling in uncontrollable quivers.  Then I realize it’s the first time I ever yelled at Suzy.

The guilt sinks in and before I know it we’re both crying with wet, salty tears. There is a loud sobbing and I’m not sure who it’s coming from.

We cry until our eyes are dry because tears are easy than words.

► ► ►

99 days later

I invited Suji over for dinner that night. It would be the last time I would see her.

Suji came over for dinner

“Hi, we haven’t formally met yet, I’m Bae Suji” Suji extends her shaking hand out with a weak smile.

“Myungsoo. We need to talk” my mother says instead, turning her back on Suji, who sinks back into the silence, her hand paused in midair and slowly shrinking back to her side.

“I know you have had a hard time adjusting around here, especially with all these new people and the divorce that happened lately”

“Mom, we’ve lived here for six years…. It’s not about adjusting….”

“Then what is it about?”

“I’m not like everybody else. They like their normality and I just want to be me”

My mom breathes in a deep sigh and shakes her head exhausted “Let’s bring this conversation to the dinner table before the rice gets colds. She disappears into the shadow of the hallway and I nudge my head, inviting Suji along. 

We take a seat, Suji and I, parallel on opposite sides, my mother by my left side. The table feels longer than usual.

The meal begins quietly and progresses till I reach for my second serving of beans when I notice Suji’s empty bowl. Her hands are tucked together in the middle of her lap at the fold of her white dress and her bare arms quivering unsteadily.

“Do you want some beans?” I ask quietly to Suji.

“No thank you, Myungsoo” my mother replies

“I wasn’t talking to you” I sigh and look back to Suji. She tilts her head upwards and then back down almost in the fashion of a worn out mechanism. I take me a moment to realize that she is nodding.

“Here you go” I lift my spoon of beans, prepared to transfer it into Suji’s empty bowl, while in my head wondering why she has been so quiet today, but suddenly my mother roughly grabs my wrist and the beans are launched indefinitely into the air, clinking glass cups and silverware as they make their descent back down.

“What the hell!?” I cry out, snatching back my wrist. “Why did you do that?!”

“No Myungsoo. I should be asking you that” my mom cries out, tears peak from the brim of her blood-shot eyes. (I wonder how long it has been since she last had a good night’s rest)

 “Myungsoo” Suji whispers, her pale translucent hands trying to grasp on to something like they always do, my hands, I realize.

But I shake away her “Suji, stop!” I’m shaking my head now too; my eyes searching for anything that makes sense.

“Myungsoo, there’s nobody there…”

It was then reality hit me, hard, like an airplane colliding with a skyscraper or a pile of cards toppling over. It was more than heartbreak, it was a dichotomy of myself and who I thought I was.

“Hello! My name is Bae Suji!”

Bae Suji

Suji

Suji!

I look up.

Suji

The room is empty.

There are two chairs and two bowls, both half-filled.

And I’m crashing

S l o w l y   

                     d

                            o

                                   w

                                           n

► ► ►

3 years later

The school bells rings. Friday afternoon; 3 pm, it’s my cue to leave.

“Myungsoo! Wait up!” Sungyeol calls from behind me.

“What” I sigh, readjusting a fallen backpack strap as I shuffle down the stairs past a crowd of students.

“Where are you going? We have a class party today remember?! Everybody’s expecting you to be there!”

“I have somewhere I need to be” I say, pausing to look up at the window one last time.

“What?!  Yahhhhh, Kim Myungsoo. Kim Myungsoo!” Sungyeol calls after me but I shove two ear buds into my ear and drone his voice away with the beat of silence.

<> 

My room is just as I left it in the morning: textbooks piled to the ceiling in alphabetical order, chip bags peeking out of drawers and bed sheets knotted in a scuffle. It was just like any other seventeen year old boy’s room: mundane and ordinary, too ordinary to the point I often forgot the room was even mine.

The walls are white and even. I repainted them a few years back and all that’s left of the paint splatters are a few colorful cracks in the wood floor, that grow duller by the second.

I take a seat on my bed, my head resting on the white walls and close my eyes. Often times a draft of cold northern air would blow in and I’m leaving me feeling lonely and awake. It would be times like that I would rummage through the traces of my memory, far back into what almost felt like a dream, to a familiar name of Suji, who took my soul along with her once she left. Sometimes I would think back to wishing on stars, racing through alleyways on skinny bicycles, and standing on the edges of bridges, gazing down into the wavering blue water, all the crazy things we did, that were now only memories stored in a glass bottle that should have been thrown into the ocean long ago.

Sometimes I would grow impatient with her, wondering when she would come back, even just for a moment to say hi and tell me how stupid I was for wanting to be normal. Then maybe I would remind her of the day we caught stars on our fingertips and how I made that very wish and it came true, just like she said it would. But as I have learned, memories stay memories, just as the past stays in the past, miles behind us only surfacing up when you turn your back.

<> 

I opened my eyes, taking one last look at the room, lingering a moment too long on the glassy window still where my distant signature in jaded black ink fades into the glass, and then finally leave the room.