Bom sat on her usual spot to wait for her driver. Her mother said that it’s dangerous if someone sees her out of a psychiatrist’s office, given that people have been speculating over the President having family members with a mental disorder. Well people aren’t wrong; she has been suffering from anxiety disorders and depression. And there was her dead sister. It has been a year since Bom received her first therapy. People have been saying she’s getting better. She forces herself to think the same.

She liked the stairs on the north of the psychiatric ward’s office. It has a vast and lovely view of the hospital’s garden plus people could barely see the stairs from outside, due to the giant hollow tree right beside the window. This makes the staircase as her perfect waiting spot. She gazes at people from the stairs, seasons changing, people growing, people exiting. She wonders when she will leave the stairs, but at the same time, she doesn’t even want to leave. She was at peace with the stairs, as if the stairs was a warm living person. As if the stairs was her real psychiatrist.

Bom sat on her usual spot to wait for her driver. Her mother said that it’s dangerous if someone sees her out of a psychiatrist’s office, given that people have been speculating over the President having family members with a mental disorder. Well people aren’t wrong; she has been suffering from anxiety disorders and depression. And there was her dead sister. It has been a year since Bom received her first therapy. People have been saying she’s getting better. She forces herself to think the same.

She liked the stairs on the north of the psychiatric ward’s office. It has a vast and lovely view of the hospital’s garden plus people could barely see the stairs from outside, due to the giant hollow tree right beside the window. This makes the staircase as her perfect waiting spot. She gazes at people from the stairs, seasons changing, people growing, people exiting. She wonders when she will leave the stairs, but at the same time, she doesn’t even want to leave. She was at peace with the stairs, as if the stairs was a warm living person. As if the stairs was her real psychiatrist.

--

Jiyong had just finished his father’s order from the hospital’s staff. Jiyong thinks it’s great that he gets to work for his father. He knew it was a way of his dad putting trusts on him, even when a working 13 year old is out of the norm. Even more out of the norm, the boy himself was deaf. He lost his hearing abilities when he was three, his father said he had bacterial infections which forced him to remove his cochlea before the disease damages his other senses.

The elevator was somehow packed with visitors since it was Saturday. Jiyong decided to use the stairs, on the north side of the hospital where he delivered his last order of the day. As he reaches the third floor; the psychiatric ward, he stumbled upon a girl, sitting silently with her gaze fixed on the view of the window. He stomped down the stairs in hopes the girl would turn her attention to him. But the girl never did, and so Jiyong leaves the girl on the stairs and continued his way down to go back to his father’s street vendor in front of the hospital.

--

Jiyong purposely used the stairs every time he delivered his orders at the hospital. By two weeks, he had the girl’s face perfectly memorized; the way she splits her long hair, the way her big eyes looked sad, and her perfectly shaped earlobes. Everything hers was spectacularly beautiful in Jiyong’s eyes. He wonders if this is how people fall in love. But what does he know about love, he’s only 10.

He tried to talk to the girl, even though talking is not an option for him. He tried to steal her attention with stomping his feet along the way down the stairs, but not once had the girl turned her gaze away from the window’s view. And one day he finally decided to stop and see the view from the window. He sat three steps of stairs above the girl, sitting silently and tried to understand what the girl was seeing.

It was only a view of the hospital’s garden, and he could see his father’s bulgogi rice food cart beside the hospital’s gate. Along with the girl he observed strangers’ movements and interactions. There was an old man hand in hand with a younger man, possibly a family of his, some children playing around the water fountain and some other strangers in their respective hospital gowns.

In Jiyong’s hands was an extra pack of his father’s bulgogi rice, which he purposely sneaked out to give them to the girl. His palms were all sweaty and the edges of the lunchbox were all bent as a result of Jiyong nervously clenching them with both of his hands. He slowly stepped down and sat beside the girl, and when he finally settled, the girl finally turns her attention to him.

The two exchanged awkward stares, and Jiyong’s palm got even sweatier and the lunchbox nearly slipped. He shakily handed the lunchbox to the girl and the clueless girl accepted them with her eyes still fixed on the boy beside her.

“What is this?” Bom asks.

There was no verbal answer from Jiyong, only a decent smile. Bom opens the lunchbox and sees a plentiful volume of rice with a side of bulgogi, still warm and neatly packed.

“You’re giving this to me?”

Jiyong still answers Bom with only a smile.

“Well, I guess you want me to eat this.”

Jiyong handed Bom a chopstick and Bom started eating. As she tasted the meal, her heart felt full. She said to Jiyong that it was the best thing she had ever tasted and gave him thumbs up. And Jiyong, unsurprisingly still answers her with a smile.

--

Bom welcomes the boy who came beside her at the staircase, together they observed the outside scene. Sometimes Bom would comment on how beautiful the weather is, how she wants to go outside with the boy and go play like the kids they saw. Maybe take pictures with her newly bought Fujifilm camera. The boy never gave her a verbal answer though, the only response she gets from him was his smile. Sometimes if she’s lucky, she’ll get a laugh from the innocent looking boy. But she never came up to think that the boy was incapable of hearing her.

Jiyong would sneak a pack or two of his father’s bulgogi rice and feed Bom, while studying Bom’s motions and gave her his brightest smile as she speaks to him. He does question himself if Bom realizes that he is deaf, but he was too mesmerized by Bom’s facial expressions and the way her face enlightens when she tells him her stories.

--

Jiyong grabs Bom’s hands and made her run three stories below to be outside. It has been two months since they first watch time passes behind the huge glass window. Jiyong thinks it’s about time the two of them breathes the garden’s air instead of the usual smell of disinfectants all hospitals have. Besides it’s going to be the end of Spring soon, what better time to go outside if not now?

“Where are we going?” Bom asked.

The boy continued to drag her down the stairs and constantly turns his head towards the girl to see how the wind blows her hair in a flawless state. In both of their lungs was the fresh air of 1999’s Spring. When Jiyong finally stops dragging her, Bom tries to catch her breath. Her chest rises and falls with every breath she inhales and Jiyong couldn’t stop noticing how attractive she looks even when she breathes. Their eyes met and the two adolescents laughs until their lungs gasped for more air.

Bom held his hands and walked through the hospital’s garden, and at the exact moment she wishes that half of herself would go and sit at the staircase and watch this other half of her and Jiyong walking. She felt warm at the thought of her walking into the scene that she had observed for nearly two years, to describe it, it felt as if she walked into a scene of her favorite movie. And to further describe it, she felt happy.

She forgot that she was outside of the hospital’s wall and she’s inhaling real air without suffocating. She disregards the fact that she found her sister dead in their bathroom with her blue Hermes scarf three years ago, or her mother’s words for her to not go into the broad daylight and be noticed. In fact Bom wasn’t scared of people noticing her at all. She wanted to show the world that she was happy. In split seconds she recognized that the boy holding her hand was her only true happiness.