Jinyoung and I had been dating for over a month and honestly, it was a strange feeling. It was strange to have someone that I would know be by my side, to have someone that I knew that I could rely on. I still wasn’t used to it yet and I knew that he was waiting for me to open up more to him, I could feel it. The questions would be radiating off of him whenever something about my mother would come up or whenever he went to see her with me.

I had told her about my relationship with Jinyoung the day after the kiss. “So that’s why you were so happy,” she commented with a smile on her face. I had begun to notice that her body was starting to get frailer with each passing day. “That’s good, that’s good that you’ve found someone that you liked. I was afraid you’d be alone forever.”

          “We’re not talking about marriage,” I chuckled, “but he’s here today, if you want to meet him.” I tried to present it in the most casual way, like I wasn’t nervous about the entire thing. It would be the first time that Jinyoung and my mother were meeting. Jinyoung already knew that my mother stayed in the hospital but he didn’t know for what reasons. My mother? Well she knew nothing about Jinyoung, really.

          “I’d love to meet him, Minyoung.”

          As if on cue, Jinyoung slowly stepped through the doors of the hospital room and greeted my mother. “It’s nice to meet you, my name is Jung Jinyoung.”

          “Jinyoung-ah,” my mother whispered. “Yes, that’s a very nice name.”

          In that moment, once I saw my mother smile, all of my worries about the two of them meeting disappeared. It felt like Jinyoung and my mother were natural with one another, that it wasn’t the very first time that they were meeting one another. I really liked that feeling, that feeling of being whole. Perhaps it was the first time that I was feeling it, the first time I was really experiencing it.

          But since then, Jinyoung would regularly visit her with me and when we left, that was when I would see the questions coming off of him. I never said anything about why she was there or for what reason, but he was curious. Who wouldn’t be?

          The day I decided to tell him we were out for a picnic. It was a nice spring weekend afternoon and we both agreed that fresh air was needed. The two of us had gotten a little busy with our personal lives so we weren’t really able to meet with each other that often as we had before. I was busy working and doing homework and he was doing something else. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but I didn’t ask any questions. We had that type of relationship, we never questioned anything and let the other person come to us when they were ready. That’s what I liked so much about it.

          I had finished putting away the food that we were eating when I went over to Jinyoung who was sitting underneath a tree with a notebook on his knees and a guitar in his lap. “Are you writing a song?” I wondered when I saw the rows of lines that were on the notebook page.

          “Just getting some inspiration from this tree,” Jinyoung chuckled and closed the notebook. He set his guitar on the side and turned to face me. “Thanks for coming out with me today.”

          “What’s the point in thanking me? Why wouldn’t I come?” I chuckled.

          “You know what I mean,” he sighed and looked at the clear blue sky. “Do you think stars are out during the day?”

          “Huh?” That wasn’t the first time he asked about stars out of the blue.  He would sometimes ask about them so frequently that I wondered if he had some fascination with them. Sometimes I thought that he should’ve studied to become an astronomer. “Maybe.”

          “When I die I want to become a star, that way I can watch over my loved ones all of the time.” Jinyoung slowly closed his eyes while still looking at the sky and didn’t open them until he slowly faced me. “What would you want to be when you die?”

          “I’m not sure…” And the truth was that I really wasn’t. I had never really put that much thought into what would happen to me after I died, I just assumed that I did.

          “You have your whole life to figure it out,” Jinyoung sighed and leaned back on the tree. He opened his left arm and invited me to sit up against him, an offer that I took. When I was securely in his arm he leaned over and tightly hugged me. “I really love spending this time with you.”

          The two of us were silent and watched as kids ran around and played in front of us. There were also the other couples that were walking while holding hands and enjoying their time together as well. The world seemed bright and everyone seemed happy.

          “Those kids, they have it good,” I sighed and leaned my head against Jinyoung’s chest. “I don’t think I ever ran around like that when I was a kid.”

          “Really? What did you do then?” Jinyoung innocently asked. My body slightly tensed at the question and I knew that he felt it. Still, I tried not to let it get to me and made up my mind that I was going to tell him of what happened back then. I would tell him the reason why I would tense up at questions about my childhood and the reason why I was exactly the way I was. He would probably be able to infer why my mother was in the hospital.

          “I moved around a lot,” I cautiously said. Jinyoung didn’t say anything and waited for me to say more. “I never had a stable home growing up, therefore I never had any time to play. My family had no money either.”

          “A lot of people go through times like that,” was all he said.

          “My situation is a bit different than what other people probably go through.” I let out a forced chuckle as I tried to remain calm and continue on with what I wanted to get off my chest. “We got kicked out of my relatives’ houses because of my mother’s perpetual habit to steal. We never really had any money to do anything, let alone get a real home, and I spent my days off on my own to make money. I wanted to become independent as fast as I could so that when the time came for my mother to send me away, I would be alright by myself. So that if the day came when she abandoned me on the streets, I would be able to survive myself.”

          I felt Jinyoung move around a bit in his position and continued forward as I continued to stare out in front of us. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, I wouldn’t be able to. “And so I became independent. I was afraid of leaning on anyone, of looking to anyone for support, and of letting someone in. I spent my childhood alone in worry, worry that my mother would someday just die because of all of the drugs she took and all of the alcohol she consumed. I was afraid that my mother would sent me to an orphanage and that one day she would just die and I would be sent there. I had no family that would look after me, they all hated my mother. Becoming independent was the only way. So I didn’t have a fun childhood where I ran around. I worked hard and became an adult, there was no time for fun and games.”

          “So that’s why,” I heard Jinyoung whisper. He sat both of us up and had me face him. His hand slowly touched my face to wipe away the tears that I hadn’t known started falling.

          Even though I confessed my heart out to him it didn’t feel like the world was going to crumble like I thought it would. It didn’t feel like anything was different between us, in fact, it actually felt like our relationship just got better. It felt like I was able to get rid of a shell that I had kept on for too long. I felt free, liberated from the secrets of my past. The secrets that no one knew or that no one wanted to relive and remember.

          I wiped away my tears and looked at Jinyoung with a gentle smile on my face and saw him smiling back at me. It was a simple smile, a tender one, but I knew exactly what it meant. He was showing me that it was alright and that he was thankful that I opened up to him. He was showing me that he loved me.