The weather grew stifling, nearly unbearable. Yellow dust forecasts were on every news channel and the humidity palpable. Students resolved to hanging around the common area where the buzzing air conditioners cooled off the sheen of sweat perspiring on the back of their necks. Nightly they would recumbent on the linoleum floors and call those beds.

It was nightfall by the time Myungsoo checked into the dorm. The hands of the clock ticked and tocked, two hours before the midnight curfew. The open window breezed in a temperate zephyr that wholly enclapsed the skin on my body. I was skimming through a slim novel I discovered in one of the drawers a past student had left behind. Something about a dog sent to Alaska and the primordial life.

There were precisely three sharp knocks on the door of my room, definite strikes that showed no hesitation. A perfect noise it was almost pulchritudinous to the ear that one would nearly want to hold a tape recorder to the door and record it, so as not to lose the sound. It was that impeccable.

"Come in." I said.

The door complained as it was pushed, squeaking like a mouse caught by its tail. I instinctively lowered my head slightly to greet but the man that entered the room cocked his up instead. Without a word, he ped his bags and deliberately transferred his clothing articles into empty drawers. His movements looked practiced, like he had done this many times before.

I found this odd. Why? He hadn't commited any true sort of wrongdoing but for that split second his actions left a bad aftertaste. I peered down at the text in my lap.

"But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and

silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the

might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space."¹

Pushing one of the bags towards me Myungsoo slightly inclined his head, "Hyunseong?" he kept my name on his tongue for a second, rolling it around, smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and tasting the sound of it like candy. "Is that right? The lady at the front desk said that's your name. Anyway, help me, will ya?"

This wasn't a question meant to be refused, I saw that, so I marked the page I was on, left the bed, and sat cross-legged near my new roommate. Once more, in silence, both of us transferred the items in his bags to appropriate locations. Sometimes I'd ask him where to put something or he'd remark where to put them.

My first impression of Myungsoo was formed within the first few sentences he spoke. First impressions, however, are not always correct. Myungsoo didn't use honorifics nor dictated I use them too. Formalities were swept beneath the rug with a large broom. It was in one word, peculiar. No matter how I tried to see it, at that point in time in our culture and society, Myungsoo was, and may still be, an anomaly. Not in dress, hair, or habits but in words, sentences, and demands and mindset.

Our first meeting was, in a way, pathetic. No tumultuous atmosphere or cool beginning but simply the way I remembered it and the way it occurred. It was the flattest line on the plain and calmest wave in the sea. Of course, the storm would come later. Slowly, but in time.

¹call of the wild by jack london