The fog rises over the tops of buildings and allows for the structures to hide away from the harsh world behind a wall of clouds. Slowly, this fog drifts down from its holding in the sky and reaches the streets that lie below, covering the cold concrete with the dull sheen of the morning mist.

Youngjae looks down at this scene from the spot at his windowsill situated high above the actions taking place. Here he watches in silence, savoring the feeling of the heat that rises up from the mug of tea he holds tightly in his grasp. As the clouds cover his view, a break appears and he finds his eyes lingering on the lone figure making his way along the weathered pavement.

Youngjae presses his face to the cool glass and squints his eyes, attempting to make out the details but remaining unable, his line of sight only allowing for the top of the man’s head to come into view along with a glimpse of his narrow shoulders and back.

The man wears a fading green jacket and a gray beanie with a few strands of wind-blown bangs peeking out here and there. He walks with a slight sag in his step and his posture is slumped as if he carries the weight of some heavy circumstances on his back. He turns his gaze up to the infinite landscape above, letting it latch onto the image where it rests for awhile before being forced back to the ground at his feet.

Youngjae continues watching from his spot at the window and feels the foreign sensation of a racing heartbeat and heated cheeks. However, as the alluring man’s figure is lost inside the fog, so too are the feelings lost from Youngjae, leaving his mind jumping from place to place and searching for an answer to his strange reactions.

His mug of tea sits forgotten on the table beside him, its heat having dwindled along with the time passing on the clock. On the wall in the attached room there also hangs a calendar and although it is mid-November by then, the date is still set to be somewhere in March of the previous year.

When Youngjae was drawn into the beginning of his hermitage, he decided quickly that inconsequential information such as this was no longer necessary to his survival and let the days blend into the next. Instead of knowing for certain the exact day of the year, he watches in solitude as the seasons pass by before his eyes, summer turning quickly into autumn then eventually repeating the cycle.  

In an attempt to ease the mental picture of the man from his mind, Youngjae gets up and walks into his bedroom down the hall. There, he picks up a book from the floor beside him and turns to the dog-eared page, inhaling deeply the unmistakable scent of rotting mildew and an imaginary world. Youngjae tries desperately to take this literary vacation from reality, but soon finds the activity fruitless as the thoughts of the man continue passing through his mind and leaving him unable to focus.

With a sigh, he opts to go back to his windowsill where he sits for hours, scanning his eyes over the heads of the passing people below and hoping that soon, the man will return to sight.

Youngjae has grown to recognize many of the faces, or rather, the heads of many regular commuters. He feels a strong connection to each of them and when they pass, he wishes them the best from his lonely spot in the sky. These nameless people provide his only outlet into the world outside and although he’s thankful for this, he strives for something more.

As he watches, Youngjae hopes for nothing more than to one day become able to join the passerby’s he sees each day. As he does this, he feels the envy seeping into his veins and turning them a permanent shade of green, his heart refusing to love and instead pumping out a chloroplast of jealousy that quenches his hunger for passion and keeps him going.

When the sun falls from its grace in the sky, Youngjae prepares himself to leave his spot and crawl into bed, resigning to the fact that the man will most likely never return. When he swings his legs out from under him, he hears the familiar popping of the joints in his knees and stands with unsteady balance.

However, he quickly presses his face back to the glass when out of the corner of his peripheral vision he spots the man. Youngjae looks down and feels a small smile teasing the edge of his lips.

The man doesn’t look up this time, but instead stares straight ahead of him. This change in angle allows for Youngjae to view the stranger’s face. Illuminated by the dim glow of the streetlamps that line of the road, the man appears as the epitome of all things that Youngjae feels is missing from his life. Noticing this aura, Youngjae catches his breath at the sight with his heartbeat beginning its race once again and staggering his intake of oxygen.

The man has a light dusting of sun on his skin with swollen lips and wandering eyes. Aside from these observations, Youngjae can see nothing more. When the man continues on into the horizon down the lane, Youngjae is struck by an aching void left somewhere deep inside of him.

Before seeking out his slumber, Youngjae opens the window to let the smell of uneasiness waft out and leave him feeling somewhat more capable of proceeding on with his nighttime routine.

 The man continues passing by Youngjae the next day and the days that follow.

Each morning, Youngjae wakes up at dawn and waits for him, drinking tea and humming softly to himself. When the man comes into sight, Youngjae begins anxiously pounding the window, the sound resonating throughout his apartment but never reaching the ears of the man for whom they were meant.

Over time, Youngjae can no longer stand the idea of never getting a closer look of the stranger and decides that it is time to invest in binoculars. He orders them to his front doorstep along with his groceries and upon their arrival he immediately takes them to the window and nearly loses himself when he sees the man’s face in closer detail.

To him, there is nothing more beautiful than the eyes of a dreamer. Perhaps, it is because he too was a person who believed in the ways of the world once, before his brain started changing its views and leaving him inconsolable and unstable.

From what he can gather, Youngjae pieces together that the man is most likely a student judging from the dark-circles making their home beneath his eyes and the backpack he carries from time to time. This makes him around the same age as Youngjae, around 21, and still caught mercilessly in the grip of adolescence. Youngjae feels that this is a sign of some sort and finds himself growing more and more attached to the stranger. 

As the days turn to weeks, Youngjae begins to pride himself in noticing all the little things about the man, from a changed part in his hair, to the fact that he always keeps one headphone imbedded in his left ear playing the songs that he hums to as he walks carelessly along.

Youngjae would do anything to be able to learn what kind of music the man listens to, what his favorite color is, his birthday, and more than anything else, his name. Despite this, Youngjae is still incapable of leaving the safety of his apartment and making the long trek out the doors of the building, so he settles for only the visible things.

Youngjae finds himself becoming more and more convinced that he has fallen in love with this mysterious passerby. But perhaps, he is just looking for anything nearby to cling to and claim as his and his alone.

Youngjae doesn’t know and he no longer cares which, so long as the man continues drifting into his sight every now and again, Youngjae will be happy to remain a silent admirer.

In time, November turns to December with Christmas breezing by Youngjae without one present or phone call. He spent the day as any other, nose pressed to the brittle glass with glazed eyes forever searching for the man, but he didn’t pass by that day and Youngjae sobbed at the pathetic nature of it all. For dinner, he made himself a cup of tea and half a bowl of instant ramen, then ate it in silence at his dining room table. Holidays are the worst time for him because he is forced to recognize the fact that inside a planet inhabited by billions of people, he is still left quietly on his own.

The following day, when the man passed by, Youngjae beat his fists against the glass louder, screaming inside his otherwise soundless confines and still remaining unheard and ignored.

These days, the man wears a navy-blue parka and hunches his shoulders together to keep warm as he walks to his unknown destination and out of Youngjae’s viewpoint. The bitter wind is whipping ruthlessly, but Youngjae remains heated to the bone, sitting at his windowsill wrapped in a blanket of solitude.

In the kitchen, dirty dishes lie unwashed in the sink, gathering in piles and overflowing onto the counter-space beside them. There is little food left in the cupboards, but Youngjae doesn’t mind. His body is thinning out and his face is becoming gaunt, but this too is considered irrelevant as there is no one there to witness this change aside from the solemn reflection that stares back at him from the mirror.

Youngjae knows that the way he is living can hardly be considered a life, but he can to nothing to change the tide of the situation and resigns himself to his fate.

When the man passes, Youngjae strikes up a conversation, asking questions and answering them himself as though he were the stranger, lowering the octave of his voice a slight pitch to create a realistic quality to the illusion.  

He creates a personality inside his mind of what he supposes the man is like, or what he dreams of him to be like. He names the man Daehyun and addresses him as such, sitting at his dining table and setting two placemats on the off chance that Daehyun will drop by unexpectedly for dinner one night. This never occurs, but to Youngjae, even in absence Daehyun’s aura is felt and loved.

Youngjae eventually is able to fool himself into believing that he and Daehyun have actually met, that the love is mutual and not just that of a single person and a dream. When he spots his love strolling past, Youngjae laughs hysterically from his window and begins chanting a mumbled mess of gibberish. His brain is deteriorating more rapidly than before, but Youngjae is already too far gone to notice, living happily in his fantasy and not fretting over anything else.

-----

Spring comes along, but Youngjae pays it no mind. Hearing his alarm, he knows that dawn has arrived so he assumes his usual post at the windowsill, but this time something is horribly wrong.

Daehyun does not walk alone, but hand-in-hand with a girl of fragile appearance and features. Continuing to walk together, Daehyun swings their clasped hands up and down then kisses the girl on the cheek before looking away with a hint of blush rising up onto his face.

Youngjae drops the set of binoculars from his grip and feels the tears welling in his eyes. In a fit of rage, he loses himself and walks out his door, sprinting down the flight of stairs and into the world outside. The fresh air causes him to gag slightly at first, but when he becomes accustomed to it, he is able to breathe normally.

Youngjae feels his legs pumping as he runs down the sidewalk, attempting to find Daehyun and confront him with the evidence of his infidelity. When he reaches the man, Youngjae stops cold in his tracks and calls his name, chanting the syllables of Daehyun louder and louder. The man walking turns around and stares, eyes wide before he protectively steps in front of the girl and releases their hands.

Youngjae runs to him and catches the man in a hug, but Daehyun pushes him away roughly, asking Youngjae who he is and what he wants. Youngjae looks with tears streaming down his cheeks and whispers “You’re finally mine, Daehyun.”

The man reels back in disgust saying that he must have the wrong person, that his name is Yongguk and that he doesn’t know who Daehyun is. Turning back to the girl, they quicken their pace, leaving Youngjae alone to wallow in the muggy air.

When Youngjae returns to his apartment, he resumes his spot at the windowsill, ignoring the events of the day and instead waiting for his Daehyun to approach once more from behind the horizon.

But now, Yongguk walks a new path to avoid the gaze he feels burning into his back when he passes by Youngjae's window and Daehyun is lost forever.