“You look happier, did something good happen?” Mom wondered one day when I was visiting. It had been about two weeks since I started dating Jinyoung and it still felt surreal. Nothing really changed in our schedules. He and I still lived our separate lives and met up with one another occasionally. The only real difference was that our relationship now had a label, one of that being a couple.

          “Happier?” I wondered. It wasn’t an adjective that people normally used to describe me, if they were even able to.

          “I don’t know,” she sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “Just…there’s just something about you, the air around you.”

          “The air around me…” I repeated after her, but didn’t elaborate on what the source of the happiness could be even though I knew perfectly well what it was from. There was no doubt that it was from Jinyoung.

          I kept thinking about her words that night when I was studying. For the first time in a very long while I found myself distracted and unable to concentrate. Were her words about happiness bothering me that much? I thought that maybe it was because she probably didn’t know anything about happiness. Her definition and mine were two completely different things.

          Before I was able to get back into studying I got a text from Jinyoung.

You busy?

          I thought about the text for a moment before responding wondering whether I was truly busy or not. Of course I was studying, but I couldn’t get into it and made up my mind that I probably was just going to call it a night on that. What was the point of studying if I wasn’t going to be able to remember anything? With that decided, I made up my mind.

No. Why?

          It didn’t even take a minute before the reply came.

Good. Come outside.

          I stared at my phone strangely before getting up and walking out the door to see Jinyoung leaning on my door. “How long were you out here?” I immediately wondered.

          “Just got here,” he said with a smile.

          “And what if I said that I was busy?”

          “Well then, I guess it just would’ve been a failure and I would’ve gone home.” He stared at me for a moment before walking over and enveloping me in a hug. I questioned why he was suddenly hugging me and I guess he must’ve sensed it because he answered without me even having to ask. “I missed you, that’s why I’m hugging you.” He stayed like that for a couple of moments before he pulled away and looked at my face. “So, Minyoung, how are you tonight?”

          “Good,” I said with a smile. “How about you?”

          “Could’ve been better, I had to go all day without seeing your face.”

          “Where do you learn those lines?” I asked with a scoff.

          “Not important.”

          “Hey…um…” I slowly began as I thought of my mother’s earlier statement. “Do you think anything about me is different?”

          His arms immediately dropped from my shoulders and I saw him survey me as he tried to find something, or to see if something was different. Maybe he thought that I was asking that question to see if he noticed the little things about me, but I was really just asking it to see if my mother’s statement held true. Did I indeed seem happier?

          “Did you do something different?” he wondered. I saw the slight worry in his eyes that perhaps I would be angry at his statement, that maybe he would say something wrong and not notice what was different about me. I couldn’t help but break out into a small smile at that. “What’s so funny? Is it a trick question?” I silently shook my head. “Then what is it?”

          I sighed, with the smile still on my face, and shook my head again. “It’s nothing, really. My mom just said something about me looking happier.”

          I saw him slowly digest the answer and watched as his face changed from that of confusion to a simple smile. “Did she say that? How has she been lately?”

          “Good…I guess,” I shrugged. “I guess she’s as good as she’ll ever be.”

          “How long is it until she gets released from the hospital?” he proceeded to ask.

          “I…um… I…” I fumbled my words. I didn’t know how to react and I definitely didn’t know what to say. The lies that were able to roll off my lips so easily before were now stuck on them. I figured that if Jinyoung were someone else, the lies would just flow. But because Jinyoung was Jinyoung, I was finding it harder to lie to him.

          He silently nodded and I saw the curiousness flash in his eyes. He was probably wondering why my mother was in the hospital, probably wondering why, after around a month, she was still there and for what purpose. It was only normal that he would be, though. He never saw her before and I definitely never talked about her besides briefly mentioning her every once in a while. He also knew that I saw her whenever I had any free time.

          But I wasn’t ready to tell him. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone and I wasn’t sure if I would ever be. I grew up having people talk about my mother. They talked about her when they thought that I wasn’t listening or when they thought that I wouldn’t hear or understand. But I did, I understood everything they were saying. I didn’t want people to judge me based on my mother and used everything that I could to escape from the type of influence she had on the way people viewed me. I was afraid that Jinyoung would perhaps see me differently if he knew what kind of person my mother was.

          “Can I…say something?” Jinyoung cautiously asked. I wondered if maybe Jinyoung saw that he struck a chord in me by asking those questions.

          “Sure,” I cautiously answered. I didn’t know if he would ask about my mother, what she said, or something completely different. Honestly, I was totally scared about what the next words coming out of his mouth might be. But there were no words that came out of his mouth.

It took what felt like forever before I realized what was finally going on and when I did, my body took over before my brain even had time to process it. My eyes closed and I felt the pounding in my chest. It actually felt like my heart was going to explode. I felt Jinyoung’s arms wrap tighter around me as he kissed me harder and brought me closer to his body. And I kissed him back.

          I wondered if what I felt during that moment was what my mother was talking about, whether that was the happiness that she was referring to. It felt like I could fly to the moon and back, it felt like I had the power to do anything, it felt like I could trust him with my entire life, and I felt comfortable. Was that the happiness that she was talking about? Was this the happiness that normal people experienced?

          The fact that I wasn’t able to answer Jinyoung’s question about my mother didn’t seem to matter anymore. I wasn’t even aware of anything around me. All of my focus was only on Jinyoung.  

          When Jinyoung pulled away and looked into my eyes, I felt like I understood everything. The issues with my mother didn’t matter, the miserableness up until that point in my life didn’t matter. The most important thing to me was Jinyoung and if I was with him, I felt like I could do anything.