It’s an essay.

It’s a ing essay.

Not a lingering taste of a special flavored coffee he tastes in a cafe, not an endearing sight of couples passing beside his right shoulder, not some soulful lyrics of a cheesy song he accidentally hears in a store. He doesn’t just turn around and finds himself looking into similar crinkling eyes, or run down the halls and think he hears a familiar voice.

Oh no, it’s not a stereotype like that.

Because, even that kind of doesn’t occur that easily.

“Okay kids, you have thirty minutes left to hand your papers,” calls the man whom he never gave a waving about, but still ended up having to spend four hours a week bottled up in a small room together – his literature teacher. “Don’t forget to note the date on the top right corner.”

the ing date, really.

Write about the most memorable person in your life, he reads for the umpteenth time. It’s as if the words are grinning at him with their pointed tails shaking behind their nonexistent , rubbing their palms together with sly eyes sparkling on their faces. His hand fists around his pencil, slightly raised and ready to stab the paper; thankfully sanity pokes him to remind that he’s frustrated over some ink on a cheap paper that would destine his mother’s mood at the end of the year. With a voiceless curse mentally thrown in the air, he drops the pencil on the desk, running an indignant hand through his bushy hair.

If an essay was enough to remind him of Him, what would protect him from wailing over a bench near Han River across the scene he has watched countless times with a set of thin but possessive fingers intertwined with his?

Then again, the thing he has just intended to chive with a mechanical pencil affects twenty percent of his final grade.

His name- he starts, but instantly scratches the words before he remembers what erasers are invented for. Looking at the clock above the teacher’s desk, he notes with slight aggravation that his inner ruckus has only lasted for two minutes; with a sigh to calm his raging memories, he spins the pencil once before rubbing the tip against the paper mindlessly, his control on his hand flying step by step with every line the graphite leaves behind.

For two people to be close, he writes absent-mindedly, there doesn’t have to be emotions to discuss, problems to be shared, or shoulders to cry on. If those two people are close enough, one should be able to understand when the other is feeling down. And when one of them understands the other is feeling down, they won’t fake sympathize; without investigating the subject and forcing them further into their trouble, they prefer focusing on fending off the desperate once and for all, allowing the other to speak up whenever they want. Instead of crying together, they should be able to laugh together.

This is what I think any relationship should be like. And he was the only one who gave it to me. 

Just like that, he’s pouring his heart out on the paper without hesitation; finding words is least of his concerns as he writes, even if it is just for an old man to read, about how they met during his older brother’s college graduation ceremony last year, how much of a prankster He was, that signature Cheshire cat grin of His; even though he always felt dull compared to Him as they sat and talked all night, He somehow found him interesting enough to take him into his life as his friend. He tells the first time he took Him to the dance studio he frequents, and how it became a routine for him to dance to His singing. The first introduction to His two other freshman friends, his hesitance to get Him to meet his, and those evenings they spent together on waterside. 

Memories he scribbles down mingle with the ones he has forever sealed into his heart.

It’s when he feels the tears are swelling up on his tearline he notices he’s absentmindedly writing how He left for a seemingly exchange program only to actually sign up to a university in China next year, and as rational as He was, He never concerned about what, or who, He was leaving behind.

He painfully smiles at the memory how He’d ruffle his hair annoyingly when He thought he got emotional again.

So, with some sense of privacy he now gains back, he erases the last few lines and decides he is free to wind up with a ty statement of “this is how two people’s relationship should be” and etcetera to make it seem longer.

It must have been a good reason, because as soon as he signs his essay, the ear-piercing bell bellows above his head.

(…)

He gets 50 points out of 100.

“The words are often repeated in an unaesthetic way of forming sentences. The style is more like a recollection than an essay. Ending is too sudden and barely related to the body of the text.”

What can he do other than bending his full lips into a polite smile and bow? As much as his teacher blabbers about emotions and inner sides, he knew the man had never been one to actually set a heartfelt effusion than an actually attempted literature.

And he wouldn’t really care even if he had.