Not everyone's Last Summer happens at the same time. There's no set year or age. Most people around you will not know your Last Summer is here, but they always know when it's gone. They can see when your eyes don't light up as bright. They can see that your heart drops more than it flutters. They can see skeptisism instead of wonderment in your gaze. The worst part of having gone through your last summer, I think, is not that you are less excitable, less useful, less...you. What hurts is not all of that, but the looks you get from those around you when they see that the inevitable has happened. At first, I thought it was pity.

Then I learned it was fear.

I met him mid-July -- the point in time where most remember that bliss doesn't last forever. It had been about three years since my Last Summer, and two since my last summer. The difference is that one is permanent, and the other can be remedied by simply enrolling in school once more, which I had already done, and would be starting university in the fall. I was well aware of my point on the calendar. But I swear, he made me forget it.

He had tan skin, and a bright smile that was almost as blinding as the optimism he exuded. His name was Jongin, but his friends called him Nini as a joke. I called him that out of endearment. He liked to dance and flirt.

But all his favorite past times and nicknames could never compare to how much he liked to dream.

And all my pent up thoughts, my aggressions, my discontent -- none of it compared to how much I liked to listen.

Perhaps it was cruel of me.

He was interesting from the start. He sat beside me on the docks as I looked out to the water, and just started talking with abandon. Speaking as someone who didn’t care who listened, but the way he would pause occasionally and gauge my reactions gave him away. He cared deeply. Even dangerously. He would pause, peak through his messy, young, dark hair, and make sure that I was clinging onto his words. It was like he was throwing his life out there in sincere hopes that I would catch every toss. And I did. Oh, I did. Within the first day, I knew him better than my best friend. By the second day, I knew about his family in detail. By the third, I knew about where he wanted to go. By the fourth, I’d become his best friend. By the fifth, I actually learned his name, since he’d neglected to tell it.

“How do you do this?” I asked on the sixth day, making him stop. I asked questions, usually. Little things to keep him going -- asking why’s and how’s about the pursuit of his dreams or his strange preference to putting the milk in before the cereal (“It’s like watching the cereal go swimming! It’s jumping in!” he’d told me. I’d never been so enamoured with something so absurd).

“Do what?” he asked back.

“How do you put all of this out here so easily? Why?” I elaborated, and at first, he recoiled. It was clear he was afraid he’d made the wrong choice. I rested my hand on his, the first contact I ever really made with him, and gave him silent assurance that I was simply curious.

He looked out to the water, and for the first time, I saw sadness in his eyes. Desperation.

“I don’t want to forget…” he spoke softly. “I want to...I want to hang on. I want to be me. And I don’t want anyone to forget me.”

He squeezed my hand and gave me a sad smile, reminiscent of the one my mother gave me before she told me my father had died when I was in high school. I squeezed it right back, and he breathed out slowly. “I can feel it.”

He didn’t need to elaborate. I knew the feeling, and I understood his rationale. I knew it was obvious that my Last had come and gone. His had come, and he was living it. And he was so, so afraid. “I can feel it,” he repeated, his voice cracking, but the tears not coming. He cried about this alone, it was clear. He’d trained himself not to get torn up in public. Falling apart in front of strangers was never acceptable, no matter what the circumstance.

“I can feel it coming, and I want to run. I’m going to go to America before the end of the summer. I’m gonna join a dance company, Soo. Everything is better there. I heard that the Lasts never come there, and they stay happy forever. They don’t forget. They don’t change…”

His grip was intense and began to hurt my hand, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. His dreams were beautiful, and they were so fragile. The last thing I wanted was for them to be crushed. I heard the same story he was telling from many different mouths, worded many different ways. The place was always different, but the point was the same.

We were searching for Neverland. A place where we could go without forgetting. Without hurting. Where our old friends wouldn’t forget our names or birthdays, and adulthood still seems easy and so, so far away. And god, the look in his eyes made me want to search for it with him, even if it would do nothing for me. I hated the idea of seeing that twinkle in his eyes leave along with the liveliness in his voice. So I played along.

“I think it’s not a bad idea,” I smiled and rubbed the top of his hand with my thumb soothingly. “But what will you do while you’re still here? I’m sure you don’t want your last days home to be spent with some sad guy who sits on the docks.”

Jongin’s smile returned, and he stood, never releasing my hand. “Then walk with me!”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. Let’s have an adventure together before I have to go,” he persuaded and tugged upward a bit on my hand to emphasize his point. I felt the sun beating down, burning me, but tanning him. I felt the water lapping against my feet and looked at my sandals sitting beside me. And I looked at him, eyes full of hope and determination; I stood, and as he tugged me along a bit faster than it took for me to put on my sandals properly and we left the dock together, plunging into the streets lined with shops, admiring puppies in the windows and sharing ice cream we could barely pay for, and then laying in the grass of someone’s front yard who would likely scold us later, I forgot that it was mid-July. I forgot that summer was almost over. I nearly forgot that my Last had even come.

I knew from the second I’d learned about Jongin’s Last and his intentions to stay that there would be a chance he would forget me. Nay, a fact that he would forget. But he did dumb things to my heart, and the third week, when our adventures were sometimes just lounging on my couch and talking about nothing and kept the windows open to watch the sun set, I found myself getting closer to him. He would talk and talk, and we would begin sitting upright, and then slowly tilt. Our lulling fell to one side gradually, and soon I was listening to his thoughts like a song alongside his heartbeat. His hand rested on the small of my back, and I was at peace.

My heart grew fonder and my mind more absent, and on the end of the third week, when we’d talked so long that we were watching the dawn come, dusting the world in blue, I looked up and told him he was beautiful. And he looked down and told me I was even better. I didn’t believe him, but I kissed him anyway.

I never said it, but I loved him. I loved him so much.

The fifth week came, and instead of sitting on the dock, or walking in the streets, or lounging on my couch, I found myself standing in an airport. I stayed in line with him, though there was only one ticket. We held it together, and as the line inched closer and closer to the entrance of the plane, I looked up at him. He looked down at me. I had never seen someone so beautiful look so terrified.

“You’re going to be outstanding,” I assured him, then brought his hand up and kissed it softly. “You’re are outstanding.”

“I won’t forget you,” his voice cracked for the first time in weeks. “I’ll write you. I will never, ever forget you.”

‘I love you’ was on the tip of my tongue, but I refused to hold him back. He kissed me one more time before our hands were unlinked, and I didn’t know if the tears on my cheeks were his or mine. It wasn’t until I couldn’t see him anymore that I wondered if someone could have their Last Summer twice.

A year later, I got my answer in the form of a letter that I found in my mailbox after getting home from class.

Dearest Kyungsoo,

I meant to write you sooner, and I feel guilty for not doing so. But every time I picked up a pen, I had nothing and everything to say, and no real way to phrase it.

It’s summer now. It’s been an entire year, and with the feeling of another summer, I can finally fathom my thoughts and conclusions into words, and you’re the only person in the world I want to hear them.

Everything in America is so flashy. New. Even the old things seem whimsical and new -- and it’s not just because I’m a tourist. I met people who have been in these cities for years that give the same loving sigh for the places they inhabit. But there’s something deeper in those sighs that becomes eerily familiar the longer you stay.

Nostalgia.

Kyungsoo, I ran away. I ran like a lot of people do. In a way, I regret it. I was crushed as soon as October came and, despite all the new things, I felt the same feeling I knew would come that I ran so passionately from.

I learned that the concept of a Last Summer -- the relative change that happens to us and makes us into a different people, is simply growth. Growing apart. Away. The difference is that, where we live, there is a word for it. There was never any talk of a Last Summer anywhere else because it wasn’t in the language. I guess you could say it was lost in translation. I don’t know if that’s a testament to our home’s own pessimism, or the world’s own quest for bliss through ignorance. Whatever the case, I can only guess how many other people learned what I did, and how scared they were.

But there’s something else I learned.

There are moments we have even after our Last that can make it feel like it has never happened. Moments that make us remember what it’s like to live and dream and look forward to the sun rising as opposed to simply knowing that it will. For some people, it’s a song. A building. A time of the day. The Last doesn’t have to be the end, and growth doesn’t have to move away or apart. It can move forward and together.

We grow up with the persistent idea that things lose their value after a certain age or point of experience. We think we’re broken for taking time in existing in this world we’ve been given, not realizing that it’s constantly growing too, and that dreams only stop when we stop believing in them.

I don’t know when I will return. I don’t know what I want to do or what the world has in store for me, and in a way, I am in pain. Always. I’m always going to strive for what once was, as I think anyone does. We only appreciate what we loved once our hearts start to break. But that being said, the time I spent with you, and even just remembering it, makes me forget that pain for a little while. It makes me dream a dream of things that are beautiful and new, and it makes me dream of what it would be like to explore it with you.

I will never forget you. That was a promise. You made -- no, you make me feel like my Last was a First, and I can only hope you feel the same too.’

I do, Jongin. I do.

Thank you for reading~

I'm sorry if it seemed rushed or anything. Comments and critiques are appreciated ;; 

I'm getting back into the swing of writing again, so I'm gonna have a lot of oneshots like this. 

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