The sea never changes; it stays in one place forever. However, people aren’t like that. They come and go as time moves on and sometimes they never return because unlike the sea, everyone’s time is limited.
 

You have to hold on to the ones you care about in order to live without regrets.  

Saturday 15th March, 10pm

Love road was full of different kinds of people that night. The smooth road stretched across the coast, with a wide view of the dark sea. Against the light of the moon, the waves glistened as they swayed back and forth. Seunghyun and Dongwook spent the evening walking along the path way to get some fresh air. They had had enough drinks for Seunghyun to start hallucinating the streets of Seoul. Dongwook was almost completely sober. He held his drunk friend as they walked to a bench to talk.

“It’s so nice to be back in Korea,” Seunghyun laughed. Dongwook chuckled at the mess in front of him.

“You’re practically blind now,” he shook his head, “I don’t even know what to do with you.”

“What p-part of Seoul is this anyway? The river is so ing dark, I can’t see the other side.”

“This isn’t the Han River, you’re in Muscat.”

“Muscat? If this is Muscat then...” Seunghyun giggled spoke in a child’s voice, “what are you doing here?”

“Stop being an idiot,” he slapped his shoulder, “I need to get you home, should I call Jiyong?”

“Don’t call Jiyong, that-that bastard hates me.”

“Then who do I call?” Dongwook sighed, “Jiyong’s father? It’s kind of late to call someone I haven’t even met.”

“Don’t call his father,” Seunghyun shouted. The two were starting to attract stares.

“Stop this, you didn’t even drink that much.” There was silence. Seunghyun stared at the ground for a while and then spoke quietly.

“I think I really hurt Jiyong bad. He always ends up getting hurt because... because he meets terrible people like me. What did he do wrong?” Seunghyun paused and looked at his friend, “he doesn’t deserve this. He’s a really good guy but he always gets all the crap. Even then, after all the , he still smiles and makes everyone happy.”

Dongwook sighed, “you aren’t a terrible person, Seunghyun.” The said man ignored his friend.

“When Jiyong smiles, he’s so beautiful. Nobody should be able to take that away from him.”

“Then why don’t you protect him?” Dongwook leaned back on the bench and looked up at the stars, “stay next to him, and make sure nobody takes his smiles away. That way you can make sure he smiles forever.”

“How can I do that when I’m the one who is hurting him?”

“Well, you’re the only one who wants to protect him. You might not be able to control everything, but you can control yourself. You won’t hurt him again.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Because I know you better than you know yourself. Now stop making me say all this mushy crap and call Jiyong.”

“Yes sir.”

Sunday 1:00pm

Jiyong stood next to Seunghyun’s bed, contemplating whether he should wake up his housemate or just let him sleep. Hyejung walked in to the room after seeing the open door and crawled on to the bed before her father could stop her.

“He’s still sleeping,” Jiyong whispered.

“Wake up,” Hyejung pushed Seunghyun’s shoulder, “you smell funny, Seunghyun-uncle needs a bath.”

Later that afternoon, Jiyong took Hyejung to the beach to play. Hyejung begged Seunghyun to come along, which made the situation slightly awkward. As Jiyong drove the car, Seunghyun and Hyejung made faces at each other in back seats.

“Uncle, why don’t you and Daddy talk anymore?” she asked the man sitting next to her.

Seunghyun was used to the strange questions, but he was still hesitant to give her an answer, “we, uh, we do talk.”

“But I haven’t seen you two talk in a long time,” she replied. There was a long period of silence, until Jiyong decided to speak.

“Your uncle and I talk all the time. We had a great time last night, isn’t that right, Seunghyun?” The question had a hint of sarcasm in it.

“Yeah,” he responded, “that was fun,” he lied. Seunghyun had no memory of meeting Jiyong the night before, so he assumed the other man was also lying. There were confusing memories of the Han River and various snippets of conversation flashing in Seunghyun’s head. “Last night was crazy.”

“Really?” Hyejung asked, “what did you two do?”

“Well,” Seunghyun tried to think of lies, “we played games.”

“What kind of games?”

Seunghyun nervously laughed, “we played tag, and then we played monopoly.”

“Oh.”

“I was thinking Hyejung,” Seunghyun tried to change the subject, “how about you call me by a nickname or something. ‘Seunghyun-uncle’ is too long.”

“What should I call you?”

“How about... Oppa.”

Jiyong interrupted the conversation, “Oppa? How can she call a man older than her father that?”

Hyejung asked, “like Oppa Gangnam Style?”

“No, your father thinks it sounds weird. How about ‘Hyung-ah’?”

“As if that makes more sense,” Jiyong mumbled to himself in Korean.

“Hyung-ah?” Hyejung repeated.

“You’re good at pronouncing Korean words, should I teach you something else?”

“Okay,” Hyejung answered, “but what does Hyung-ah mean?”

“It means ‘older brother’.”

“But you aren’t my brother, you’re my uncle,” Hyejung corrected him.

“Yeah, you use the same word for your uncle: Hyung-ah.”

“May be it’s better you don’t teach anyone Korean,” Jiyong commented.

Once they got to the beach, Hyejung left the two men alone to make ‘her own sand castle’. Shatti was a cluster of restaurants and cafés in front of the beach. It was the same place Jiyong took Seunghyun for breakfast, the first time they went to see the beach in Muscat. The two men sat on a mat with coffees between them and watched the wave.

“If I could choose who I want to be in love with,” Jiyong started talking in a calm voice, “I would choose the sea.”

Seunghyun grinned, “why is that?”

“Because the sea always comes back. It doesn’t die or run away, no matter how long I leave it. Besides, it’s beautiful, it listens to me and it always makes me feel better about myself. The sea is the perfect lover.”

“But you can’t have it,” Seunghyun countered.

“Well, I don’t get much response from it either,” he said with a laugh.

“Then how do you know how it feels? A one-sided love isn’t a real love.”

“But it’s fulfilling, because I know I can be with it forever.”

“I see...” he paused and thought about the conversation in the car, “by the way, how did I come home last night?” Jiyong turned his head to look at Seunghyun, who was looking at the ground.

“You don’t remember anything?” Jiyong was slightly annoyed.

“No, I just remember hanging out with Dongwook.”

“What about the part where you called me to pick you up? I should have recorded that phone call, you were...”

Last Night

Seunghyun was very nervous as he waited for Jiyong to pick up the phone. When the phone answered, a sleepy voice on the other end grumbled.

“What do you want?”

“J-j-jiyong? Can you pick me up right now?”

“What? No, take a taxi.”

“But I don’t know the address... and I... I have been drinking.”

“So?” Jiyong moaned, “fine, where are you?”

“Next to the Han River. I’m not sure where...” Seunghyun looked at Dongwook questioningly.

“What the ? Give the phone to someone else.”

“Right, I think I remember that,” said Seunghyun. The other man raised his eyebrows.

“The call?”

“No, the Han River... and some of the call.” Seunghyun’s response made Jiyong sigh.

“Anyway... after that I came to pick you up. I thought you weren’t too drunk because you were pretty quiet in the car. You just sat in the back and kept drinking your Korean Sprite.”

“Korean sprite?”

“I thought it was alcohol, but you kept saying it wasn’t... those green bottles in your plastic bag.”

“That was soju.” Seunghyun looked in to Jiyong’s eyes with a worried look.

“The label was in Korean so I didn’t get it.”

“You can’t read Korean?”

“Well, I’ve never needed to read it,” he was slightly embarrassed at the fact, “what the hell is soju anyway?”

“Well, it’s an alcoholic drink,” Seunghyun tried to think of a way to describe it, “but I think you should try it to understand exactly what it is.”

“That explains why you threw up when we got home,” Jiyong mad another angry face, “you threw up in my mother’s flower pot. She brought those flowers from Thailand.”

“I’m so sorry.” Seunghyun was just as confused as he was apologetic.

“It’s okay, you helped me clean it up afterwards,” he paused, “but then you did something you really shouldn’t have forgotten.”

“What did I do?” Seunghyun asked curiously, “did I hurt you?”

Jiyong was slightly enjoying this conversation, “you think I’ll just tell you?”

“Was is really bad? Come on, I want to know.”

“Well...”

After Midnight

Jiyong got back in to bed and sighed. He to his side and looked at the wall next to his bed; he started thinking about the night at the hotel. All at once, the bathroom door crashed open and Seunghyun ran up to his bed.

“Jiyong I’m so so sorry, I’m such a terrible person please forgive me,” Seunghyun cried at the bedside. “I can’t believe what I’ve done to you.” He got on to his knees and put his hands on the bed.

“You don’t have to cry about it,” Jiyong didn’t know how to react, it was the first time he was seeing the man cr