It was raining the following morning, not like the heavy downpour the night before, instead it was a fine, almost invisible autumn rain; you could only tell it was raining through the ripples on puddles and the sound of dripping from the eaves.

Everyone ate breakfast in the kitchen.

We all gathered around the dining table which was big, round and had enough space underneath to fit ten chairs. The food that aunt prepared for us shielded the whole surface of it, and with a cup of coffee, she leaned against the radiator, deepening the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes as she looked at us for a time. There was always a smile that remained, as if permanent, on aunt’s face. She stood there for a long time, watching us devour her cooking as if we were her children.

I pondered on about whether aunt had her own children or not, and I soon dismissed the idea of the latter. Everything she did reminded me of what a mother would do. It’s a strange way to put it, I guess, but aunt had this aura that was very mother-like.

Apart from all the patrons being exchange students and the boarding house being ten minutes away from the university, there was another asset to living there that Jimin had forgotten to mention: despite being thousands of miles away from it, the boarding house really felt like home.

“Aunt, can I have another fried egg please?” Taehyun asked as he read a book on one hand and ate rice with the other.

Nodding, Aunt patted his head and said, “Anyone want more eggs?”

“Me too, please!” answered Mark.

“Oh, !” Jennie suddenly yelped, grabbing her coat and rushing towards the living room. “I’m late, I’m late!”

“It’s only nine, dear!” shouted Aunt.

“My class starts at fifteen past. I think I can catch the train. Bye!”

“Bye!” they all said simultaneously.

I observed everyone. It was almost out of a movie scene, really. A huge family eating their breakfast together whilst the chattering midst the table got louder and louder each second that went past.

For a moment, I thought of the word happy.

It was a word, but it felt like it was visiting me right there. I knew it wouldn’t last for very long—that loneliness would strike me again after it left—and that it would somehow be worse because it’s one thing to be lonely and it’s another thing to feel lonely once you’ve been happy. Feeling lonely after you’ve been happy is the worst thing in the world.

“Hayi, let’s get going,” Jimin said. She raised her face and looked into my eyes, diverting my thoughts into somewhere else. “We won’t have to rush if we set off now.”

“Hey! How about us!” Jackson said, sulkily pointing at him and Mark.

Jimin just sighed in defeat, and said, “Let’s go then.”

The two boys shot us a playful smirk in return. We bowed towards aunt; said our thanks for the breakfast, and with that, we grabbed our coats and set off.

. . .

“The trains are especially crowded during Saturday mornings,” Jimin informed me. We were at London’s famous: underground. The sound of the trains were almost ear-splitting and the noise from the crowd echoed here and there. Before long, the place became swarming with even more people who, like us, were waiting for those first trains to come. “Well—every mornings, to be precise. There’s not many bad guys here in England, but just be careful, alright?”

We got on one of the trains. They weren’t like the trains they had back in Korea at all. There were just two rows of seats wedged on both sides of the wall of the train, facing each other directly; the middle section of the train completely empty; there were long yellow bars on the sides of the seats.

I looked at Jackson and Mark, and I was almost sure that, like me, they had no idea where they were heading either.

“You seem to know the city well,” I remarked, smiling at Jimin as we took some empty seats near the corner.

She smiled back. “You impressed? I’ve always been a city person, after all!”

“What’s so good about cities, anyway? It’s always damn crowded,” Jackson moped. “The damn city noise won’t even shut up at night and the streets smell of pee. Do you like the city, Hayi?”

“It’s different from my hometown, but I think I’ll get used to it.”

“You see, these city people,” he continued, “They’ll never understand the good about living away from the cities. No lights, but more stars at the sky!”

Mark scoffed, and Jimin added, “You can see stars here at night sometimes. What’s so different from the stars over there from the stars here? In the end, aren’t they all the same?”

“Jimin, one day, I’ll bring you to my hometown and I’ll show you what’s different about it,” Jackson replied, as he then teasingly ruffled Jimin’s hair. “City stinks, and you’ll realize that then.”

I stole a quick glance at Jimin and Jackson. She scoffed, while a mischievous smile played on the latter’s lips. “Fine,” was all she said in return.

How they quarrelled made me think of the way Jiwon and Hanbin would argue, too—about the smallest things—and how easily they made up afterwards. Just like that.

I suddenly remembered Jiwon.

Jiwon once told me that he noticed my feelings for Hanbin long before I noticed it myself. “It’s the way you look at him,” he explained.

And it came to me then, comprehended, as I observed Jimin myself.

All the secrets of the universe was right there, sitting serenely inside the brown of her eyes. Calm yet stirring, like a tiny little flame ignited on a candle.

The boy Jimin was in love with was Jackson.

. . .

I guess, after several months of living in the boarding house, I got to know everybody a lot better.

There was a fun routine to living there. Each morning, we’d all eat breakfast together before setting off at different times for school. While most days consisted of work, going to lectures every day, staying up late at night just to finish a project, being given more work in return; every Fridays, all the boarders would somehow gather and drink beer together in that cosy living room, exchanging with each other what kind of hardships we had to go through during the week, as well as the funny stories and encounters. And then the whole week would restart.

Again.

I mean, I guess it’d be a lie to say that each week went as easily as that, because it didn’t. There were bad times as there was good. There needed to be a balance to things, after all. But came those times when the bad outweighed the good, when the balance sometimes broke, I managed to endure it because of those people.

Things were bearable because of them.

It made me realize that living in the boarding house not only gave me a fun routine, it promised a life-long friendship, as well.

As time grew, I grew closer to them, too—so much that it was enough to hold me back from going back to that warm, intimate little town that I missed so much.

Even so, after a couple of years living away from home, every now and then I’d feel a violent stab of sadness hit my chest like long, sharp needles. My heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and heave with a stab of pain. I would close my eyes shut and grit my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass—but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving me with a dull numbness as it did so.

At those times I would find myself listening to Hanbin’s show.

“That was Oasis’ Married with Children,” Hanbin announced. I deemed it strange at the time, how we’d been apart for so long and yet his voice still felt oddly familiar. I could tell he was drained from his voice alone. “Next: the last playlist of tonight.”

I realized that I kept missing Hanbin even though I tried hard to not think about him. For some reason, the very image of that summer we’d spent together, going to the forest and staying up to watch the sunrise, burned into the back of my eyelids.

The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more.

And it was because of this that I felt empty.

Especially after that long year when I met Hanbin, doing almost everything together, going to school together, listening to the same music, eating the same food once every week—I felt like Hanbin ultimately became a part of me. And it didn’t matter to me how short those times were, however limited his part was, it still stayed close to my heart all those years.

As time passed, that part was fading into memories.

I had not cried for Hanbin before—not even on the night he left—but right there, as I listened to the songs I knew he had carefully chosen himself; finally I did, taking in massive sums of air between each sobs, burying my face into my pillow, because then no one would hear me: I missed him I missed him I missed him I missed him.

. . .

“Hayi!” Jiwon cried, his voice merely stifled on the phone. I simply couldn’t sleep, so out of nowhere I decided to dial his number. “The last time you called me was four months ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied.

Unfortunately, there were no more excuses I could give. I mean, maybe I was too engrossed in adjusting to the new surroundings, or maybe it was because I was racing against numerous work deadlines that I’d forgotten to keep in touch with Jiwon. 

Then again, those were simply excuses. They were too transparent, and excuses like those would have only hurt him more.

Silence.

“Has he—”

“He hasn’t,” he quickly dismissed. “Hanbin hasn’t returned.”

“Does he even have any plans of seeing us, at all?”

“Are you still pissed off?”

“How he left us, how he changed his number, how two years have passed and he still hasn’t explained why? I mean, yeah, of course I’m pissed off.”

He chuckled. “Then, should I be pissed off, too?”

Ah, that’s right, I thought. I’d been so focused on Hanbin leaving us, I hadn’t even stopped to think about how I left Jiwon, as well. Just how much did I hurt Jiwon back then? Asking myself that question, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart.   

“I feel like—with Hanbin—we’re looking for answers when the question has already left us,” I pointed out.

“You’re just impatient, Hayi. Let’s trust him for now.”

Bits and pieces of the letter came back to me. The ‘I hope this trust stays within you’ part. It was always that part which I could never stop thinking about.

“You said that last year.”

“And I’ll say it again next year if he doesn’t come back. I’ll keep saying it until he finally does.”

Quiet loomed once again.

I didn’t notice how much I’d gotten used to the city until that moment of quietness between Jiwon’s voice and I. Despite the fact that it was already midnight, it was still loud outside. The sound of cars honking, yelling people, barking dogs, some old waltz music in the background, the deafening sirens of police cars—I learned how to ignore those things. I knew how to sleep through those bizarre rackets. Fitting in was quite a satisfying feeling.

“Hayi, our class is having a reunion next month,” he suddenly announced. “Everyone will be there.”

Everyone. My eyes widened. I stopped dead on my tracks and held the telephone closer to my ears. “Do you think…?”

I heard Jiwon smile. I even had to stop and ask myself, was that even possible? To hear someone’s smile?

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’m trying not to get my hopes up. But will you come, Hayi?”

I hesitated for a moment. The thought of work crossed my mind for a second, then the thought of plane ticket prices. I wondered whether the money I made from my part-time job would make cut for those prices.

I hoped so.

“Okay,” I told him.

“Okay?”

“I’ll come.”

. . .

our shadows // "明日まで あと少し なにかがかわるかなぁ" ~ "it's almost tomorrow; i wonder if anything will change"