I couldn’t help but scoff at his remark. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It can mean anything. But there’s no way in hell—absolutely no way—that you didn’t come back for two and a half years, just because of work.”

We both stayed quiet at that. I rolled the car window back up. Jiwon had the air conditioning on and his car didn’t feel as stuffy as it was a few minutes ago. “You understand why I did that, right?”

“Hayi, after all these years, you’re still as transparent as ever,” Jiwon quietly remarked. We turned left, the empty street where the rooftop was, and found a parking spot right in front of the building.

When we got out of the car, all I could remember thinking about was how awfully quiet the night was, even with the deafening shrieks of the cicadas from the forest and the busy motorway from far away. Those noises were nothing compared to what I experienced living in the city.

There was a story Hanbin told us about that very same building. As an explorer Hanbin always was, he found that this building was always open no matter what hour of the day it was. And Hanbin, being the curious little twelve year old explorer, walked in during daylight and found nothing. It was just a big, empty and—surprisingly—clean building which held ten floors and a shabby rooftop.

What those ten floors contained; rooms, and what those rooms contained: none of us never really knew. Although, Jiwon had an idea about the building being used as the town’s storage or some sort.

So ever since that day when Hanbin walked in and discovered the rooftop, he used that space for music-playing and star-gazing. Then soon, it became our trio’s place, as well.

But the mystery of this story was this: why was the building always open? Why hadn’t we seen people inside before? Why did nobody ever stop us from trespassing?

Teenage rebellion, I must admit, came easy for the three of us.

“Hey, Hayi, do you think the elevator here works now?”

“I doubt it.”

I pressed the elevator button.

It worked.

. . .

The thing about places, they either stay exactly the same or they don’t.

Luckily, in this case, it did.

We settled for our normal spot besides the metal railings and grabbed a beer each. The moon was high in the sky, and its light spilled over our heads. We drank, basked in silence, and kept on drinking as the night went on. We talked about some topics here and then, but even when they were interesting, our conversations never lasted more than three minutes. I told him stories from the boarding house, about Jimin mostly, and he told me about how he went on with his life after Hanbin and I were gone. And then we were quiet at that.

Silence, I learned once again, wasn’t supposed to be an awkward thing.

“Hey,” he said. “What if I tell you I’m getting married?”

. . .

I gulped my drink quickly and felt the burn of the alcohol rush down my throat. I could only look at him for a moment. “Yeah, me too,” I replied.

“No,” he said, smiling a little bit this time. “You don’t understand. I’m telling you I’m getting married.”

“Are you drunk already?”

A quiet chuckle escaped Jiwon’s lips. “I’m not drunk. I’m getting married.”

“That’s weird.”

“It is.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Dead serious,” he answered, showing me his hand. Truth be told, I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking at: the small scab on one of his knuckles—or the ring.

“Wow. Give me a moment to think.”

“Think about what?”

“You know… just think.”

“You’re drunk,” Jiwon confirmed. “God, you’re drunk.” He gave me a look. “And over three cans of beer!”

I leaned on the railings with my back and stared at the sky. Though, I couldn’t manage to stare long enough because the stars made me feel dizzy. What a weird day. “Jiwon, I’m envious.”

“Envious?”

“You sound so sure.”

“You’re the only person who’s said something different from everyone else.”

“Well, I’m drunk,” I replied.

“True.”

“What do they say, though?”

“Are you sure about it? Hey, isn’t twenty too early? Don’t you realize that you have a bigger future ahead of you?”

“What kind of bullsh—”

Jiwon laughed. “Exactly! Of course I’m sure, because if I wasn’t then I wouldn’t have asked her in the first place!”

“Right,” I snickered back.

“I wanted to marry early,” he suddenly said. “I told myself this two years ago: once I’m over you and I find a girl I’m sure of, I’ll marry her straight away. I won’t let her get away this time.”

A sudden breeze carried the scent of the forest through the rooftop. Catching that familiar scent, I reminisced about the damned summer list we made back then. It was funny to me at the time, because there we were—the three of us—making childish summer lists, sneaking into the forest at night time to look at fireflies; and there we were now, me: tipsy from the alcohol, and Jiwon: with a small diamond ring around his finger.

“What’s the plan afterwards?” I asked. “After you marry her, I mean.”

“We’re travelling around the world. Meeting people all around. I think I’ll be gone for two years. And after those two years, I don’t really know.”

A little envious, I scoffed, and asked him, “What is she like?”

He shot me another look. “She likes to sing,” Jiwon answered, trying hard to hide his obvious smile. “A lot. If she’s not singing, then she’s humming. Her eyes disappears when she smiles—almost like mine. She’s funny. And she never has to be mean to be funny. She’s smart, too.” Jiwon paused for a moment, and then he continued, “Sometimes she reminds me of Hanbin.”

“Ah,” I said.

“When I started falling for her, I understood something.”

“And that something is?”

“Why you fell for Hanbin. Why you always chose him over me—over everyone,” Jiwon said quietly. He stuck out his hand on the metal railings, emptied his beer and put the can aside. “I heard you’re going back in five days.”

“Yeah.”

“Stay a little longer, Hayi.” Jiwon grabbed something from his jeans’ pocket. An envelope. He held it out for me and I took it.

A light yellow wedding invitation.

A wedding was about to take place in three weeks’ time, it said—Jiwon’s, of course.

And a girl called Jang Hanna.

What a very familiar name, indeed.

Jang Hanna, the girl with the weird name, the girl who I took to the infirmary back in middle school because she passed out from not getting enough sleep, the girl I used to trade books with, who used to talk endlessly about her favourite movies, who listened ever so carefully to me even when nobody did—she was my best friend back then. I couldn’t remember it in intense detail, but I recalled some of those short memories we had with each other. My thirteenth birthday when she baked a chocolate cake for me, my fourteenth when she gave me a signed Harry Potter book, the Goblet of Fire, our favourite, of course. At one point, we were even inseparable.

However, change was an inevitable thing.

Jang Hanna was my first experience of change.

After our final year in middle school, we were headed towards different high schools, that’s when our parting began. Of course came the: “It’s okay, we might be in different schools but we’ll still be as close as before.” But we both knew and predicted very well that in fact, that wasn’t going to happen. And me, scared as of the consequences of change, decided to tell her what we both already knew. She simply accepted that truth.

Thinking about all the things that made her so much nicer than the other girls in high school, I sat on my desk feeling terrible about what I'd done, but there was no way to undo it.

I would try to forget her and find new friends.

And yet every now and then, I still found myself wondering how Hanna was doing, and why that had happened to us. If we were still friends, would she get along with Hanbin and Jiwon, too? Had we stayed in the same school, would we still remain friends even now? I sometimes thought long and hard about it, but the answer was right next to me.

I finally got the grasp of why Hanna reminded Jiwon of Hanbin.

She said things that made people feel. And even better: she listened as well. Those type of people, I admit, are the rarest kind around. Jiwon and I both knew that very well.

And to think that this girl was marrying Jiwon in three weeks.

Coincidence, on par with change, is the strangest thing in the whole world.

“It’s your wedding invitation,” I said.

“Yep.”

With that, I leapt from the position I was in and hugged Jiwon tighter than I had ever before. I heard him groan under my weight but I continued and crushed him with the weight of my arms. After we let go, Jiwon’s smile didn’t waver, and he said, “I was expecting that reaction minutes ago!”

“I’m a bit slow at reactions,” I shot back.

“So?”

“So, what?”

“Will you stay?”

“I can delay my flight for my best-friend,” I said. I offered him my pinkie finger. He wrapped his around it, and we sealed the deal with our thumbs. “Does that mean I get to be your best man?”

He chuckled. “My brother’s already taken that role, sorry.”

“Damn.”

“Now, let’s take you home. I’ll call a taxi. Can you make it downstairs?”

“Jiwon,” I whispered. “I’m really glad it’s her.”

“What?”

“I said I don’t want to take the taxi,” I told him. “Let’s walk instead and sober up.”

. . .

“Hey, Jiwon.”

“Hm?”

“I liked Hanbin.”

“I know.”

“But let’s just get this straight. I would have never chosen him over you. You asked me about it in the infirmary, do you remember?”

“Clear as day.”

“So say, if you and Hanbin were both drowning and I had to choose one person to save. I would have chosen myself.”

“How so?”

“I’d flee from the scene. Can you imagine the guilt I’d feel for not saving the other person? I’d save myself from that guilt.”

“So you wouldn’t drown with us?”

“Absolutely not.”

“And why is that?”

“I have friends and family that would be sad if I drowned. It’s selfish, right?”

“Hayi.”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

. . .

Inevitably, the weeks went even faster than it had before. Between the night at the rooftop and Jiwon’s wedding, I found a summer job at a local convenience store. It didn't pay much, but the work was easy—just watching the place and scanning items four days a week—and they even let me buy snacks for a cheaper price.

Jiwon dropped by every now and again. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked the first time. I simply told him that I felt guilty for lazing around at home—might as well make some money while I was at it.

I also talked to Jimin on the phone a couple of times and assured her I was definitely going back, despite the delay. “You scared me,” she replied.

“I know.”

“I miss you, Hayi. This place doesn’t feel right without you.”

“I miss you, too.”

And that was that.

Soohyun, on the other hand, confessed to me. She confessed about how difficult things actually were in high school, despite the good things she told me about before. She told me about Jinhwan going to the army, and that he comes back when she turns eighteen. “I’ll confess to him then, if my feelings don’t waver for two years.”

I could only give her a smile. A smile of pity? I didn’t know. Adolescence is a tough thing, and I understood that very well. As an older sister, all I could really do for Soohyun was tell her what everyone kept telling me before: “It’ll get better.”

I really meant it, though.

“But you won’t be here forever, you’re going back soon.”

“Everyone is fighting their own battles. You’re going through the most difficult time of your life—it’s a test of strength,” I said. “And you’re a strong kid.”

“Say, sis,” she said, changing the subject. “You remember Hanbin?”

“You choose to bring him up now?” I scoffed. “What about him?”

“When you left for England. He called a few times.”

My eyes widened. “Ah, is that so?” I said, my voice sounding much quieter than before.

“I told him where you went, and then he made me promise not to tell you that he… he called. But you haven’t forgotten about him, have you, sis? I certainly hope that you haven’t. I don’t know what happened, but both of you must have been really hurt, right? Ah, look, I broke another promise.”

“It’s fine. He might never know about it.”

“No,” she insisted without a hint of insincerity in her voice. “He said he’ll surely be back. That he wanted to see our family again. That he thinks about us every day.”

Why Soohyun chose to break that promise, I never got to asking her. But if her intentions were what I thought they were.

What a hurtful move, because then I was back to square one.

Waiting.

And several weeks into the summer holidays, came Jiwon’s wedding.

. . .

I got access to see Jiwon before everyone else could. So an hour before the ceremony began, I entered the small room through the back of the venue. Jiwon and his brother were the only ones in the room, and Jiwon was the first to see me. “Hayi!” he said, flashing me that trademark smile of his. He wore a traditional black tux: black bowtie, white shirt and a violet handkerchief.

“Nervous?”

“My heart feels like it’s going to jump out,” he answered.

His brother was trying to fix his bowtie. From the mirror, I observed Jiwon for the longest time and found that he was altogether too handsome.

“Hey, Jiwon!” shouted an unexpected voice from the bathroom. “Shouldn’t I change my bowtie? Aren’t we too similar? Wouldn’t it be weird if the groom and his best man look the same—”

The dark figure from the bathroom emerged out into a much more familiar face. His wide eyes, still childishly earnest, were framed by long lashes, and those same eyes looked straight into mine.

“—Hayi.”

When the realization struck me, it aroused such a disclosure that the tears fell out of me. I knew it looked damn stupid, but sometimes you do things and you do them not because you're thinking but because you're feeling.  

And when you’re feeling too much, you cannot always control what you do.

. . .

move on // so a funny story about how i discovered this song: i was downloading the kooks albums and somohow ended up downloading this. i was confused because the voice was different from luke pritchard's, and turns out it's not the british kooks, but the swedish band, the kooks. still, it's a damn good song.

again, i took some time off revision so i decided to write. thank you so much for the encouragement you've given me! ^^ 

RiaBrie22 #10 Mar 13, 2015 11:33:02 Reply All 
PS: Ever thought of compiling the songs to a playlist? Soundtrack is superb!

I'll definitely do that after the story's finished. Thank you for the suggestion!