It didn’t take as long as before to see him again. There was a strange idea in my head that thought that he was purposefully seeking me out. But I had to remind myself that the first and second time were entirely chance based. I didn’t know that he would come into the store and I didn’t know that he would be outside of where I lived. But maybe I was the only one that didn’t know.

          I was headed to the hospital that day to visit my mother. It was one of the rare nights that I didn’t have to work, so I could visit her in the afternoon, at a finally appropriate time.

          I didn’t notice him at first. I didn’t notice him until he called out to me. “Minyoung!” he called. I immediately turned my head and saw him leaning against one of the columns. His hands were across his chest and his feet were crossed in front of him. He had jet-black sunglasses on and the same black leather jacket that I saw that night on the rooftop. He was also wearing another pair of ripped jeans. He moved his hand away from his chest for a moment to wave and I gave a small smile back. I wasn’t used to greeting people in public, or greeting people at all, really.

          Since my life was always busy and since I strove to be independent, I didn’t have friends. And since my mother ruined every relationship and family tie she ever had, there was never anyone for me to greet. It was a strange feeling, actually knowing someone on the street and not having to run away from them.

          My mother always borrowed things from other people, things that she was never able to pay or give back. Essentially, it was stealing. I watched as she would steal from the people that were trying to help her and how there would be severed ties as a result of it. She would always be on alert, as much as she could muster, when we were out on the streets. Sometimes we would run away from family members or others who spotted her. I hated living like that, but I was too young to say anything and even if I did, she probably wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. She needed her next fix. Sometimes I thought that I was a hindrance to her entire life.

          I continued on my way inside after the awkward greeting and heard him call after me. “Hey, Minyoung, where are you going?”

           “Inside,” I said like it was the most obvious thing on earth. It fascinated me how much this guy wanted to talk to other people, but I thought that maybe I was the weird one for not wanting to talk. I never really had a reason to, and I was not expecting to start having one. I had no time for friends or anyone. I had to focus on my career and my future and making sure my mother and I were going to be able to live a comfortable life.

          “I know that,” he chuckled. “But why?”

          “I don’t see the need to tell you that.”

          “Okay then,” he slowly said drawing out his words. “Are you always this cold to everyone?”

          “Huh?” I asked slightly taken aback once again by something he said. “I’m not being cold, this is how I usually am.”

          “Do you not have any friends then?”

          “Friends?” I almost scoffed in his face. “I don’t have time for friends.”

          “So then you have no friends,” he said with a sly look.

          I glared at him. He didn’t know what he was talking about. How would he know about my life? He knows nothing. He’s just someone that I happened to run into a couple of times, if entirely by chance I wasn’t entirely sure. But that didn’t mean that he knew anything about me. I had no friends because I chose not to. I chose to cut myself off from everyone and be focused in my studies and on my future career.

          “It’s a choice,” I told him. I didn’t know why I was explaining myself to him, but it just felt like something that I should do. “I choose to be alone. Now if you would excuse me, I have some place to be.” I started walking and was silently thanking myself until I heard his voice again.

          “Are you getting a checkup?” And I thought I was in the clear.

          “You never stop asking questions, do you,” I said turning around and staring at him. We were just inside the lobby of the hospital with everyone bustling around us, patients, family, doctors, nurses, and the like. He slowly took off his sunglasses and gave me a smile.

          I really didn’t understand him. He just seemed to free-spirited. It seemed like he was the type of person to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted and asked questions later.

          “I can’t ask a friend questions?”

          “Friend? What in the world makes you think that I’m your friend?”

          “We’ve seen each other enough times now,” he explained. “And I know your name and you know mine.”

          “Who says that I remembered your name?” I wondered.

          “I’ll just tell you again,” he shrugged. “Jung Jinyoung, my name is Jung Jinyoung, and you’re Minyoung. You didn’t tell me a last name.”

          “Who says I want a friend though?”

          “I can see that you’re lonely,” he said. He moved so that he was standing in front of me and looked me right in the eyes. “You may not admit to it now, but that night on the rooftop when you were crying, I saw it then. You may say that you’re strong, that you choose to be alone, and that you’re not lonely, but you are.”

          “Who are you?” I asked. I could barely get the words out. How could he say those things to me? He didn’t know me; he didn’t know anything about me. So maybe it was a moment of weakness, the whole crying at the rooftop. But it wasn’t even like I was crying on the rooftop, it was the leftover tears.

          “I’m someone who’s been there before,” he plainly said. He stared right into my eyes and I could see how fierce they looked. “I’ve been in the spot you’re standing. I’ve felt what you’ve felt.”

          “You know nothing about what I feel,” I angrily said. What was he trying to get at? He wasn’t me, he barely knew anything about me, so how in the world would he know about what I felt and what I knew? It was starting to anger me. How could he just start talking about how he related to what I felt? He wasn’t raised in the situations that I was raised in and he probably didn’t see the same things that I saw when I was little. Our situations were nothing alike.

          “And that may be true,” he slowly began. It seemed as though my anger was getting through to him. “But trust me when I say that sometimes it’s better to talk to someone else instead of holding it all in. Sometimes it’s better to live freely without regrets because you never know when there won’t be any more time.”

          I curiously started at him and watched as he put his sunglasses in his pocket and walked away with his hands behind his back. I never knew what to make of him in the beginning. His random questions, his sudden thinking that he knew what I felt and what I was going through. Maybe that was his tactic all along, but it was slowly starting to rub off on me. He was slowly starting to rub off on me.