Nostalgia. —Present

“Hyung, I’m leaving first.”

“Sure, see you tomorrow!” The taller man waved with a rare grin and the other man nodded, staring at his hand. The hand she held at our third meeting. The hand she drew on. The hand she… Stop it. Without knowing, he’d walked by the path where he first realized that girl was following him.

Again, unknowingly, he closed his eyes and raised his head, taking his mask off slowly. That way, he could feel the rays hitting his face.

            “Listen, you little kid! Listen to the wind, and how the leaves dance to this simple music… It's beautiful.” The girl smiled, yet her eyes were sad. Her hair was blown up, the soft brown strands dancing to nature’s music, like the leaves she’d described.

He let out the breath he’d been unknowingly holding in and bit on his lower lip, opening his eyes and cursed when he stared right at the Sun. With his eyes tightly shut again, he tensed up then relaxed. The man supposed he never really understood her. The girl read him like an open book, destroying all his defenses and picking fun at them while he could only stand and stare, with his mouth open. It was always that way that he’d gotten too used to it. So comfortable about it that he never expected to have to build those defenses back up again.

            The rain fell, and he stopped upon hearing the ‘click’ behind him. He’d been suspecting it for a while now, but apparently someone was really following him. He made no move to continue walking, and neither did the person behind him. The sound of raindrops covering the ground would have perfectly masked the sound of footsteps, if any.

He took his hands out of her pocket, remembering the words she told him. “Your hands are getting warmer.” To him, it was because he had her around. He always had her to warm his hands up, and he’d gotten way too accustomed to it that without her around, he was freezing.

            He stared, as the running figure spun on her heels. And he could only stare. He never expected to see that crazy girl again, but a part of him wanted to. She was approximately 10 centimeters shorter than he was, a perfect height in his opinion. Her eyes, though, made him freeze on his feet.

The man sighed, putting his hands back in his pocket. Despite being spring, the weather was pretty chilling.

His feet had brought him to one of the places he least wanted to stop by. The tree had long, thin leaves and he never knew its name.

            “Shake it.” “What?” “Not your ! I mean the tree.” She narrowed her eyes at the man and he coughed, partly out of embarrassment at misinterpreting her message. Standing with the recorder in her hand, she grinned and clicked her tongue. “Dirty boy.”

Touching the rough covering, he bit hard on his lower lip and smiled, the expression feeling so foreign on his lips.

            She nodded her head, gesturing at his bicycle and he frowned. He couldn’t understand the girl. One moment, she was all smiles and the next; she would be throwing random requests at him. He couldn’t place a finger on it. Hence the only thing he could do was to let her do what she wished.

“Who are you, really?” All she threw at him were puzzles, and as he slowly got tangled up, he began loving those puzzles. He started to try solving them, to feel challenged, to feel alive.

            “April 27th, 2012. I met that guy again! He was waiting outside my door, that little stalker.” She laughed, her voice the soothing melody he loved. “He’s adorable. I hope to meet him again. I really do.” He was standing on the other side of the wall, having followed her after the walked a distance away and turned the corner. He knew something was off that very instant.

The man brought his hands up to the sides of his head, trying to muffle her voice in his head. It was such a dilemma—he wanted to remember her voice. Yet, having that in his sea of thoughts all the time was painful, so, so painful.

            Her hand was white, her fingers long and those of a musician’s. They seemed smooth, but somehow he knew they were probably not the kind of smooth average girls had. “Hi, my name is—”

He clutched at his throat, trying to smother the sudden flames and took a deep breath, followed by another one. Just when he thought it was getting better, it struck him again.

            “No, what are you doing outside my place?”

Stop it. Get out of my head.

            “Because I felt like it? What’s your name? How did you know I lived here?” She kept the warm smile on her face, and then dropped it with a frown. Yet, he knew there was no real confusion or anger. She was toying with him, and he knew it. They both did. And they both knew he didn’t mind getting played. “Were you stalking—?”

The man finally fell to his knees, the unworldly pain gnawing at his chest. It hurt.

            “What’s this ‘I’m-stalking-you-but-I’m-too-manly-to-admit-it’ guy’s name?” She grinned, shifting her weight from her left foot to the right, then back to the left.

By now, the man had given up on trying to stop it.

The sting was illogical, he reasoned with himself. The pain was just something caused by his longing.

Yet, he couldn’t stop it. And he knew it.

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Hey! An update!