Hey, Spring. You know, I thought about your story with that girl. She really was terrible, and yet I can’t help but think that she must have suffered a lot, as well. I can’t help but feel sorry for her, too.
She was pregnant in a country like ours, where pregnant teenagers are treated like garbage—the bottom of the pyramid, if you will—and the only person she could turn to was…well, you. Of course she’d say the things she knew you wanted to hear. It was wrong to lie about it, but that was her way. Her way of saying thanks. You saved her while she was in a desperate situation, after all.
And about the last words she told you. I think she still hates herself for saying those words. She is only human, after all. – Hayi

I never looked at it like that. Not that I had any chance to think about it, anyway. But I think I agree with you. Somehow. – Spring

Do you still hold grudges? – Hayi

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I am only human, after all. – Spring

Using my words against me. I see. – Hayi

It’s true, though. Anyway, why are you still thinking about that? – Spring

I thought, maybe I can help with the healing process. – Hayi

Is it working? – Hayi

I don’t know. – Spring

Does it hurt? – Hayi

It’s starting to. – Spring

Then, that’s a sign that it’s working. – Hayi

Hanbin stared at the pixelated screen for a long time and breathed out. Chin in hand, he smoked half his cigarette, then crushed it out in the ashtray.

He started typing.

Why are you helping me, Hayi? – Spring

You asked for it in the letter. – Hayi

No, I didn’t. I asked for a friend. – Spring

Hey, , what do friends do? – Hayi

. . .

“Hey, , quit smoking and take your damn meds,” Kim Jinhwan remarked. Jinhwan was Hanbin’s older cousin; older, yet Hanbin, at the age of only fourteen, had already surpassed Jinhwan’s height. Jinhwan was a very interesting individual, and Hanbin often found himself looking up to him. Like a role model, if you will. An older brother. Of course, it'd be a lie to say that Jinhwan was perfect. However, he was the only person Hanbin knew who didn’t talk about topics that he felt indifferent about. “I didn’t go to med-school for this .”

“I can see your language is still as foul as ever, hyung.”

“Only when you’re around!” the older one faked a punch and Hanbin flinched. “You fall for it all the time,” chuckled the boy.

“Only because one time you actually punched me the stomach, bastard!”

“You deserved it.”

“Anyway, I’m really glad you’re my doctor,” Hanbin said. Jinhwan’s house was only a few minutes’ walk from his home, so it was easier to collect his pills rather than travelling all the way to the local hospital. Having Jinhwan as his doctor was convenient, and on top of that, he'd sometimes gain a meaningful conversation out of it, too. “Why are all doctors in those damn hospitals so boring, anyway?”

“They’re all old. While I’m young and cool.”

“You’ll be old, too, someday, hyung.”

With that, Jinhwan could only give him a smile. Maybe a smile of pity because Hanbin would never reach the age of old, while he, someday, would. Sadness was apparent in his eyes. Silence took over.

“Hey, bastard,” Jinhwan started. “Shouldn’t you be with your friends, or something? Aren’t you eighteen this year? Shouldn’t seventeen year olds be singing in karaoke bars and getting wasted? Why are you lazing about in your hyung’s house?”

“I’m not. I came to collect my medicine.”

“Three times this week,” the older boy corrected, while leaning on the dining table. He slid the box of pills over to Hanbin. “You’re just using me as an excuse, aren’t you? Don’t you have any friends?”

“I do. We play in the pool hall a lot. I just don’t have money left, since father—well, you know.”

“Since uncle caught you gambling?”

The younger one lowered his head.

“Promise me something, Hanbin,” Jinhwan started.

“What is it?”

“Find a friend,” he said. “Not those boys you gamble with. Stop hanging around with those kids and find yourself other friends. You don't have to make a lot of friends, just one, if you wish. A genuine one. One who’s read Catcher in the Rye or something.”

“What does that have to do with anything, hyung?” Hanbin laughed. “Catcher in the Rye?”

“I’ll teach you a life lesson, Hanbin-ah,” he replied. “People who read books as a hobby are twice as smarter than we are. Trust me. They’re sincere, and people like us need that sincerity from time to time. Similarly, they’ll seek our warmth, too. Because we emit some kind of warmth that isn’t a permanence in books.”

“Are you talking about your ex, hyung?”

Jinhwan flicked Hanbin’s head and ruffled his hair. “I’m not. Now head on home. Tell your father I said hello.”

Hanbin scoffed back. “I’ll promise to do that. Find a friend, I mean. But I won’t quit smoking! Bye, hyung, see you tomorrow.”

The younger boy walked away with one hand inside his pocket while the other held a box of pills.

Hanbin didn’t see Jinhwan the day after.

Well, technically, he did see him again—if discovering Jinhwan’s corpse counted as seeing him.

Jinhwan was hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen, and it seemed like he used the dining table as a platform to jump from. There he was, the boy who Hanbin was just talking to the day before, now hanging lifelessly with a necklace of rope tied securely around his neck. There was no blood. No suicide letter. No formal farewells.

Just a corpse and a long rope.

That was just it.

Hanbin found out that when he was never going to see someone again, it wasn’t the good-bye that mattered. What mattered was that he was never going to be able to say anything else to them, and he was left with an eternal unfinished conversation.

But, death wasn’t an alien concept to Hanbin. In fact, even from a young age he knew that he’d have to face death much sooner than everyone else he knew and loved. Death had taken the cancer patients he visited from time to time. Death had taken the homeless old man who stayed near the convenience store, just a road away from Hanbin’s home. Death had taken his fourth grade teacher, Mrs Kim. Death had taken his grandparents.

And now Death took Jinhwan.

Hanbin was familiar with it all; the concept of death.

And at that moment, as the boy choked back on his tears, he watched the ambulance take his cousin’s corpse away, and he wondered, which is more painful? Watching people die or experiencing death yourself?

He figured that he’d have the answer soon enough, anyway. So the boy left it at that.

His bet wasn’t on the latter.

. . .

So that’s why you wrote that letter. – Hayi

Yeah. But, what happened to “the only way is up”? – Spring

Then, maybe, that rule applies now. After your friend’s death, maybe that’s when you reached the lowest point, not when she left you. Not even when your father committed adultery, or when your mother kicked you out.
Perhaps your friend’s death is your breaking point. – Hayi

How much lower do I go to go up, Hayi? – Spring

You tell me. How much more can you take? – Hayi

I don’t know. – Spring

There’s your answer. You're strong. – Hayi

“I’m not,” Hanbin could only breathe out. If he was strong, he wouldn’t have felt as broken as he felt right there. If he was strong, like the girl named Hayi just said, he wouldn’t have yearned for comfort from a stranger through a mere phone screen. If he was strong, his own thoughts wouldn’t have drowned him every so often. His thoughts were not water, after all.

Hanbin was the furthest thing to the definition of strong.

Goodnight. – Spring

So you take the exit route, ‘Goodnight.’
You really have hated yourself all this time, haven’t you? – Hayi

Let go of those thoughts. That’s the first thing I learned when I was recovering. – Hayi

It isn’t as easy as that. – Spring

And I know that better than you do. I’ve succeeded in doing it, after all.
But, Spring, I think you can pass this breaking point. I don’t think you’re the type to sink down to the very bottom of the ocean and just stay there, drowning slowly to your death. I think you’re stronger than that.
Even if you doubt yourself. – Hayi

Why are you trying so hard to fix me? This wasn’t part of the deal. You already got your story, you won’t get any more even if you fix me. I don’t want to owe you anything. – Spring

I understand. I don’t want to owe you anything, either. – Hayi

Then, why? – Spring

I think you’re interesting, that’s all. So trust me when I say that I’ll probably get more out of this than you will. – Hayi

You’ll only get hurt. Goodbye. – Spring

The last thing that Kim Hanbin wanted to do was to hurt the stranger behind his phone screen. The messages have simply gone on for too long. Two weeks was enough.

And right there, as he lay gazing up at the broken glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, the boy found himself asking a million questions. Was this stranger as fond of Hanbin as much as he was fond of her? Did she, too, find herself longing for his words when she felt all the loneliness of the world? Would she care if he died? No, scratch that, would his death even hurt her?

It only came to him then; that the only way to avoid hurting Hayi was to simply stop. Stop seeking for her comfort. Stop wanting to find out more about her.

Stop replying.

Yet, those were the only things that he couldn’t do. And then, came her reply:

Hurt is inevitable, isn’t it? – Hayi

Have you ever experienced seeing someone die before? Do you know how much it hurts? – Spring

No, I haven’t, and I do not know how much it hurts.
I have, however, experienced hating someone to the point I wanted them to die.
Spring, I have been hurt before. Plenty of times. So please stop thinking that I’m fragile. – Hayi

I’m sorry. – Spring

I wondered why your messages had felt so distant lately. But I finally figured it out. You were worried about me, weren’t you, Mr. Spring? – Hayi

. . .

It became a hobby for Hanbin to visit Jinhwan every day. Every morning, he’d sit on the gravestone of his older cousin’s, smoking cigarettes and talking to the dead. In fact, he did this so often the boy had even learned to bring his own ashtray each time.

“Hey, hyung,” he started. It was a quiet morning. One long streak of cloud hung pasted across a dome of frozen blue. It almost hurt Hanbin to look at that far-off sky. He watched warily as the column of white smoke from his cigarette rose up, just to disappear into the vast atmosphere. “You really hurt me the most, you know? How you just died on me like that. At your funeral I thought, ‘bastard, death isn’t a race. Why did you cross the ing finish line?’”

Hanbin scoffed.

“I still wish you left a letter or some sort, though. Actually, I’ve been missing you less lately. You told me to make a friend, so I did. Technically,” he said quietly. “Technically because I haven’t met her. But, I don’t know, I think her words alone are enough. The words that she chooses are so alive. It makes me forget that she’s still a stranger.”

If Jinhwan had heard that, Hanbin had imagined his reply to be something of: “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, it scares me,” Hanbin answered, limp as he stared out into the open sky. “It scares me because I don’t want her to get hurt like I did when you died.”

“Hmm. But hurt is inevitable, isn’t it?”

“That’s exactly what she’d say.”

“Then, what are you so scared of, little brother?”

Puffing on his cigarette, Hanbin seemed to be lost in thought

“She reminds me of you.”

. . .

we found each other in the dark // title says it all, really.

the comments for this were overwhelming. i'm deeply grateful, thank you;;