Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Last night I had a dream that felt like a memory.

A glimpse of what could have been. Crossed signals from another life.

Where instead of all this—I had you.”

Lang Leav

The first day he’s pushed out of the orphanage with nothing but two million won and an investment competition accolade he had no one but himself to share with, Han Ji Pyeong forgoes his perfect academic attendance and races to look for rental accommodations.

By his fourth failed pursuit, he leaves the latest real estate agent and his shoddy place with a continuous, gurgling stomach and a bitter taste of injustice running on his tongue. The money dropped on him from the government was barely enough to cover the deposit, much less the continuing rent he had to scramble to pay for or the food that he had to get to survive. Reeling in from the conversation he had with an inconsiderate case of a man, the hammering reminder of his lack of bloodline deepens the testament to his inborn disadvantage at life in this damned country.

Ji Pyeong has been circling the whole town for an hour now, peering up at hopeful signs of rooms to rent, or even just a room to stay in for the night. A cheap and safe one preferably, as a motel is obviously out of the question. He can’t get away with more than a week of absences, or else his risk of academic probation will ultimately doom him from a shot at a better future.

The future. It’s the only thing that's keeping him sane these days, to be honest.

The years leading to his displacement at the orphanage had always been noted and counted for, and he had plans from A to G jotted down his brain for the day that would inevitably come. But now, standing under a nonoperative street light in broad daylight with money he isn’t willing to spend on just for a good meal, Ji Pyeong is realizing his desperate lack of options—mostly because of his idyllic thinking beforehand of not weighing in physical variables like his health, raging emotions, and mental sanity to the otherwise systematic, linear plan.

When he comes around an area filled with restaurants, his feet stops in front of a noodle shop. The smell alone knocks on his senses, placing a fantasy of a full, satisfied stomach. Before his desires topple over his logic, his eyes wander through the translucent glass of the noodle shop and promptly, the television snatches his attention. An announcement rolls out across the screen, subjecting its viewers on the year’s mathematical olympiad and the shiny, young winner. It features a young boy holding up a board, to which Ji Pyeong knows looks vastly similar to the one tucked in his own bag.

Mathematical Olympiad — 1st Place Winner, NAM DO SAN — brandished across as letters for the whole nation to see. His parents, bearing proud grins, place steady hands on the young boy’s shoulders. The father grips a bouquet of roses and the mother leans down to drop a kiss on the boy’s cheek.

They are a perfect family.

A burst of deep resentment worms its way in Ji Pyeong, and he’s highly aware it’s not because of the broadcasted young genius’ mathematical capabilities. He turns away after scoffing, giving one look at his own board of achievement before tossing it down a row of trash bags next to his feet. He comes back quickly, though, to begrudgingly pick it up when rain acknowledges his head with an unexpected shower.

Searching around desperately, Ji Pyeong finds himself drawn to a rather parochial area with cherry blossoms in full bloom. The colors vibrantly greet him despite the harsh rain shower. A pole on the street has several signs up and he quickly goes to check those, a euphoric gleam springing from him instantly as he eyes a sign too good to be true. Besides his dissuading logic on the absurdly low rent on the sign screaming right at his face, he desperately chooses to give no shit under this torrential downpour and goes to snap the slip of paper with the numbers printed on it.

A voice halts him from reaching further, “Hey, mister, do you need an umbrella?”

Han Ji Pyeong turns and faces a little girl with a pink umbrella. Her face, seemingly expressionless, brightens as the spark of recognition broadens her already round eyes, “ Hey ! You. You’re - You’re the boy earlier? At my halmoni’s shop?”

Panicking at the thought of someone noticing him as a dog begging for scraps —Ji Pyeong snaps indignantly, “No!”

“You are!” The girl steps closer. Her forehead crinkles when he steps back irritantly in response, “It’s raining like crazy, mister. Aren’t you freezing? Don’t you have an umbrella?”

“Of course,” his grip on his board tightens. “I lost it.”

She nods distractedly. Her attention fastens quickly on the sign behind him. “Why are you looking at rental signs? Are you homeless? You don’t look homeless.”

He ignores the girl, turns to the pole, pressing his eyes forward.

“Don’t fall for that, those signs are a scam,” she edges closer. “Everyone who lives here knows that.”

Ji Pyeong cranes his head, scoffing at her, “And what do you know? You’re a kid.”

“Fine. Get scammed!” She crosses her arms, while one hand squeezes the handle of her umbrella. She gives him a scathing glare up and down with her round , round eyes. Swollen patches take up the flesh on her cheeks, as if she had been crying, “You’re a kid too, idiot!”

“No, I’m eight—” Ji Pyeong shuts his mouth, more angered now than annoyed. The words of his youthness, blasted out of the girl’s lips, flow in front of him with startling clarity. A reality that, in one year, will soon be over when he hits his nineteenth year.

“Get lost, kid,” he proceeds to say, voice hardening, after a short pause.

The girl, however, is not done, “You’ll get sick in this weather. Here, take the umbrella.” She wiggles it but still has her tucked under it like she expects him to just bend down to her height and take cover beside her.

He just stares, mouth just itching to snarl at her ridiculousness, “Just leave and find someone else to bother.”

With that, Ji Pyeong quickly rechecks another poster on the pole as lightning strikes overhead. He flinches mostly from the unrelenting coldness seeping through his school jacket, but his form remains resolute. He has to find a place to stay tonight — a place where he can gain his bearings for a duration so he can draft up another plan; A place where he can find some similitude of peace for just a few, short hours; and hopefully, a place where it’s clean enough so he won’t accidentally get a case of bacterial infection and a untoward visit to the hospital. His dignity, after all, has not lowered enough yet to settle for dirt-spattered tiles of public though rent-free bathrooms.

“That’s a bust, too,” the girl says flatly as he looks back at the pole for just a millisecond.

“Are your ears broken?” Ji Pyeong snarls, whirling to face her. “I said, mind your own business!”

The response that comes isn’t normal. There’s just silence and round eyes scarce of reaction, like an electrocardiogram flatlining. He only realizes that he had idiotically stood and had actually waited for her response when the girl finally provided the smallest of movement — just a furrow of her brows, a confused knit — which shocks him back from his short-lived reverie.

When the girl opens her mouth, despondency blankets her voice. “You sound like eonni.”

The lights in the functioning streetlights behind her burst open. Up close, she’s short, pale and plain-faced. She’s about ten or eleven, maybe older. Her hands quickly shield some sort of box when his eyes latch on to it, ruffling her up. She gives him another knit of her brows again, with a more suspicious tint to it now, as if she thinks he’s planning to steal it. On the other contrary, he’s more pressed on why a girl as young as her is still walking around in the dark this late. Don’t families usually have dinner at this hour?

Ji Pyeong blinks when she suddenly extends her umbrella past her own head, now exposing her body to the cold rain shower, “W-what are you…” He trails off as she fumbles for a cold glare to send, but with her despondency it turns to a form of a melancholic grimace. He shuts his mouth, perplexed, but mostly perturbed.

The umbrella shelters his drenched head. The sudden act leaves him flummoxed, a tiny bout of gratitude tossing and turning in his stomach like a lone seed despite his earlier humiliation from being caught looking for rooms by a mere, privileged child. In turn, she grabs his hand so tightly that his initial defiance to pull his grasp is thwarted. Her hand, surprisingly warm and small, barely covers his own. He wants to recoil a second time, but it is his first form of human touch in weeks.

She shakes his hand, not caring about the unequal reciprocation of movement. She then steps forward, unbothered by his lack of motion, deciding she has stayed too long under the rain. While she’s back under her umbrella and somewhat tighter in his proximity, she blinks, adjusts, and maximizes the most possible widened space between them. “My name’s Seo Dal Mi.” When he doesn’t give a semblance of a reply, she continues, “Well, uh, if you’re looking for a room, you can stay at my Halmoni’s shop. It’s just over there.”

Why?

Ji Pyeong stares at the scrawny thing, wondering what it’s in for her if he accepts her proposal of accommodation.

Kindness is a foreign concept in his life. Occasionally, a hand may reach out, but he had learned a long, long time ago that a hand like that usually came with a cost — the cost, most of the time, bore a price he could never really afford. He dabbles her words in his head, trying to lay it out, trying to look at the situation in all angles, and trying to forecast what form of payment she will ask for — if he accepts her hand. Silence supplied by him, she makes the decision easier. Shrugging, she points just across the street, towards the little shop and its birdbox dangling from a tree, “The room’s open if you want it.”

He just stares. Under her umbrella, she becomes the makeshift eye of the night’s unrelenting thunderstorm.

⧫

The place is barely the size of the orphanage’s kitchen, hardly enough to accommodate three people, but is a little more than what he’d expect from the back room of a tiny corn dog shop. Despite the lack in size, the hot running water and sauna-like floorboards are enough to hold back any negative quips he can think of towards the nosy girl. But he couldn’t thank her nor collapse from his tiredness yet. The girl he had followed had gone and went to get her Halmoni, so the ticking tunes of the clock set behind makes him especially aware of the high possibility that he can still be sent out in the rain.

Ji Pyeong makes tender steps around the tiny space, examining the peeling green paint and worn-out cabinets. He’s hit a growth spurt a few years back and has heard the other grown-ups talk about how he obviously hasn’t finished growing yet, but even with that in mind his form feels a bit too big and paradoxically too tiny for the space, like everything in it is intermittently sucking and heaving him in a human-sized black hole.

“Oh, it’s you,” says the halmoni the moment she sees him. Standing in the middle of the room, Ji Pyeong hides a momentary flinch and grips his bag while giving a stern nod and bow. Halmoni sighs underneath the threshold. Without a second to waste, she buttons off her soaked raincoat and in exchange, ties on an oil-stained apron. He makes a tiny gurgle of sound, wondering if he should help the old woman; but when he takes a step, she shoots him a suspicious glare, therefore forcing him to do nothing but tenderly sit on the floor in waiting.

Ji Pyeong’s insatiably ravenous, so when the halmoni plops down a plate of corn dogs, her afterthought weakly commenting about the lack of food options tonight, he ignores her and plows down the food appreciatively. His chewing and gulping happen at a rate that should be deemed concerningly unhealthy, but he couldn’t care less. When he finally satiates his hunger, a chasm that he was earlier worried he wouldn’t be able fill tonight, he looks up, only to find Seo Dal Mi watching him across the table sitting cross-legged and curious. There were no sounds of feet pattering nor a door opening as he recalls. But the kid’s eyes are slowly filling itself with sympathy, thus bitterness and humiliation of his previous display of rabid hunger vomits a current of nausea that is seemingly creeping up the back of his throat.

“My appa says that eating too fast is bad for the stomach,” Dal Mi offers weakly, just loud enough to break his unblinking silence.

“Do you trust everything your parents say?” Ji Pyeong finds himself quickly mocking over a filled stomach and wet, worn-out holed socks. He curls his feet up, hiding them underneath the table.

It’s not unlikely for him to be initially rude to people — always having his guard up ever since he can walk — but his code was usually different with beneficial strangers; after all, he was conditioned to always be plastering his best self once upon a time for possible rich adopters. Unfortunately, this girl, and her naivety in particular, seems to be ruffling him in all the worst ways — despite a handful of hours only passing by since he first met her.

Dal Mi leans forward, “Why were you looking for a room? Did you run away?”

“ Aigoo - Dal Mi-yah, the boy’s tired,” Halmoni hushes her, tugging her up. “Leave now. Appa will be worried about you for sure, and he’ll call me and will be twice as worried when he finds that I’m not answering the telephone at home.”

At the mention of her parent, Dal Mi sits down grumpily, her eyes casting shadows downwards. There is a tinge of annoyance that he gets from her face. “Appa and Eomma won’t be worried.” And she says it so simply, so quickly, that he can’t help but wonder if the two parentals were the source of her unhappiness.

What a brat, he thinks, slowly grasping for the Yakult the halmoni had placed down.

Her shoulders cave in, pressing towards herself, “Also… I sent him here, Halmoni,” Dal Mi’s words interrupt Ji Pyeong from pushing a straw on the lid of the Yakult. “Can’t I just stay for a few more minutes?”

Her voice, as carefully light and breezy towards her halmoni, had an insistent yet somber undertone – her refusal to go home as clear as day to him. Bothered with her clandestine gloom and incessant yapping, Ji Pyeong looks up from his sitting position and plainly says, “Yes. I ran away.”

Startled by his pretend narrative, Halmoni pats her heart in response. Dal Mi, initially shocked, tilts her head at him, her round eyes dimming like she thinks she can feel the weight of his burdens. A brat that thinks she can relate to him. This engulfs him with something akin to cold fire. Heavy bitterness is ready to give him his third burst of nausea.

Ji Pyeong hates the way Seo Dal Mi looks at him, as if all the sympathy in the world can help him out if she tries. If he had thrown the truth at her, his actual lack of parents, will she descend into tears for him? Will she reflect on his parental absence in comparison to what she has present? Will she go home, then, see her parents and praise God that she isn’t in his shoes?

The more he glares at her in his mind, the more her eyes seem to dim darker. If only he can send excruciating lightning down her spine just by his eyes, he’ll gladly do so. Bringing the straw up to his lips, he takes a moment to revel in the finishing patterns of outside’s rain, and not on the heavy silence encompassing the tiny space.

“Why did you run away? Were your parents fighting? Did you hate them? Do you have other siblings?” Are the next few words that leave the girl’s lips while she fingers the ends of her clean jacket, nervously fidgeting on her clean Hello Kitty socks. Ji Pyeong falls to stunned silence, fuddled with the sudden spray of questions he doesn't know how to lie for.

Halmoni, though, is pressed to get Dal Mi home, “Ay-ah! Stop with the questions, young lady. He’s probably had a busy day looking for rooms. You should let him rest properly now. Also, why were you even in this area in the first place? And at this hour too! Kidnappers are no joke, you know. What did I say about being cautious?”

“I was…” Her eyes, round and real, darts around. “Um. I was feeding some stray cats. They like chicken, you know.” Halmoni eyes her, in a way Ji Pyeong assumes to be in disbelief, but she doesn’t add anything further and turns to address him instead. “Ya, boy! Make sure to tidy up the place when you leave.”

Ji Pyeong grimaces inwardly but manages to give a tiny, meek bow with his head, “Yes, ma’am.” She sends him an eye that seems to dabble in the middle of wariness and suspicion, but Dal Mi sits down hurriedly in front of him as soon as she leaves Halmoni’s loosened, distracted grasp. A rapid burst of questions come out of her lips like she’s been storing 400 questions up in her head for this very moment.

Ji Pyeong tries to speak as quietly as possible, especially when Halmoni herself sits down in compliance with her annoying granddaughter, who’s staring him down like a suspect in an interrogation room. He doesn’t know why he’s even communicating ordinarily, as if it was a conversation set in a classroom. But a temporary gift of shelter has just been bestowed upon him. If he can provide answers for the odd, confusing brat, he will suck in his pride and provide them. Telling the truth, however, is an entirely different matter altogether.

Nevertheless, Ji Pyeong finds himself answering patiently to Dal Mi’s whimsy, childish questions, quickly growing accustomed to fashioning an imaginative past. He wonders if he can delude himself into thinking that a runaway is all that he is — that somewhere, just out there, a family is waiting just so that he can return — and that he isn’t what he’s been all his life, a lifeless orphan boy desperate to be a man.

After a while, a look at the clock sends Halmoni gasping. “Look how late it is, Dal Mi-yah,” the little girl grimaces when she gets a tiny flick at her forehead, “This is all your fault. Your eomma must be angry and tired — waiting for you. Let’s go. Aigoo,” when Halmoni bends, her knees crack, but she’s quickly up and about jamming her things into her bag, “If you had gone home instead, the poor boy could have gotten some rest from your annoying voice. Great. Just great. I’ll get to hear your yapping, yapping eomma again. This will be the last time then, I swear, that I will subject myself to another damn lecture from her until the day the Lord almighty takes me away.”

Dal Mi rolls her eyes, groaning as she stands up herself. “I’ll take you home first, Halmoni,” she grumbles, “It’s already ten o’ clock.”

“Exactly. Already ten o’clock. You’re an absolute idiot, you know, when you think with no repercussions,” Halmoni’s dark but weary gaze lands on him, holding up a hand that has seen better days. “No offence, boy, you could have been a serial killer dressed in a school uniform for all we know, and I’m thanking the heavens you are not. But I’m just trying to teach my granddaughter ,” Dal Mi glares at her in response, “That sometimes, not everyone will appreciate the help freely given. That there are people out there who respond to such help with an ulterior motive backing them.” Then, she finishes with a look poured straight at him, “I hope you’re not one of those. After all, I’m leaving the room to you alone the whole night.”

He watches them pack up their things, clambering about in hasty steps. Halmoni doesn’t say anything, opting to leave with a grab of her umbrella. The clatter of the door signals her departure.

“Oh, hey, wait,” Dal Mi tells him while putting on her backpack straps. “Hey, don’t be scared…Even though I definitely would be if I slept alone without my eunnie. The ajusshi next door knows karate, or so he says.” She shrugs. “So… You can just, I don’t know, knock on his door if someone tries to get in or you just need some company.”

“I doubt it,” Ji Pyeong holds back on the tempting negativity behind his tone, settling for a complacent, polite nod.

Dal Mi stops herself before trailing after her grandmother, standing before him with settled shoulders. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I usually stop by here before school with my –“ She cuts herself off, sourness hitting her lips. “I mean, I can definitely keep you company so you won’t feel too lonely. Halmoni – she’s really nice when you get to know her. I’ll bet you’ll grow on her soon and she’ll start feeding you like crazy. She’s weird if she doesn’t ‘cause I think you’re really nice when you’re not being grouchy.”

“I don’t need your company. Nor anyone else’s,” Ji Pyeong grits his teeth. “I’m out of here by morning, so save your sympathies for the next stray you find.”

“Hey. I didn’t mean it like that… it’s just that, you ran away from your parents,” she scratches her nose. “Not the whole planet.”

Ji Pyeong has been alone for the past eighteen years. He fed himself alone, clothed himself alone, nursed himself alone, and finally forced himself alone to run through hell and back just to gain most of the things he wanted. Alone is his last name. It’s not just a word that defined him in singularity, but rather in the first second he’s ever set foot on this planet. He doesn’t understand, doesn’t even recognize, what it means to not be alone.

“I can take care of myself,” he says sternly, blood rushing to his ears. “I’m not weak like you, scared to sleep without the presence of someone close by. I’m perfectly capable of doing everything on my own, so don’t assume I want a friend just because you think I’m a stray and just because you offered me a place to sleep. I can leave this place right now and sleep on the streets if I wanted to. Understand, kid?”

Something glimmers in her eyes, but she nods meekly nonetheless. “I understand, then. I’m sorry for assuming. I was just trying to — No. Nevermind. I’ll just..” She takes a step back, swiftly pushing her eyes down.

Bile seems to accumulate in his throat. When Dal Mi slowly turns from him, an oddness clouds the air between them. Ji Pyeong barks after her, wanting to wipe out the irritation that was starting to blind him, “For the record, you’re absolutely crazy. And please, next time, just listen to your Halmoni. You shouldn’t leave me here just like that . Don’t you have any form of common sense? I can do anything tonight — steal her supplies, trash her things — and your Halmoni will blame you for inviting a total stranger to her shop. It’s going to be your fault, you know?”

“Yes. And I’ll take the blame,” Dal Mi faces him, invigorated. “It doesn’t matter. As long as I know I helped with the bottom of my heart I know won’t feel bad. Also,” she beams. She actually beams , radiating a kind of vibrancy he’s never witnessed before — as if she just didn’t get soullessly pulverized by him. “I have a really, really good feeling that you needed my help anyway. Just consider it as fate’s hand, then, if you feel that bad accepting other peoples’ help.”

“You’re leaving it to fate?” Ji pyeong scowls, fists clenching. “You’re an idiot — And you’re scary.”

She laughs like he hasn’t just insulted her so-straightforwardly. “You’re not scared of anything, but you’re scared of me?”

“I’m afraid of the bullshit that leaves your mouth.”

“Did your mother ever teach you not to swear?”

“I don’t –” Ji Pyeong catches himself, remembering his lie, and he snaps his mouth shut, just absolutely fuming.

“Besides,” Dal Mi says. She brings down her vibrancy to a tee, smothering it down like ruffled feathers of a yellow chick. “You’re not just anyone to me now. I’ve talked to you, fed you, saved you from the rain— “

“A stray, essentially,” he says.

“ — You’re no longer a stranger.” She smiles, oblivious. “We’re already having an interesting conversation. And I know you’ve run away and need a place to stay. So… I’m pretty sure we’re just about qualified to move past the stranger danger stage now.”

He’s at a loss for words.

“Besides,” Dal Mi continues, “You’re not just anyone. You’re Han Ji Pyeong,” she points to the board marginally peeking from his bag on the floor. “My special guest, I suppose, and Halmoni’s too. Someone just can’t be a stranger if you know their name. That’s already rule number one.”

A pin can drop and he’ll hear it.

Ji Pyeong stares, “Go.”

With a final triumphant beam, Dal Mi slips out the door with much less of a squeak. The room is totally quiet for once and eerily enough, it feels like hours right after a sunset, the entire planet plunged into a universe of darkness. After gaining his bearings at the situation at hand, his eyes flutter open so that he can absorb the situation he’s stepped into; but his attention is quick to attach to a girly post-it note hanging on his blue and white 1ST PLACE investment competition board. He blinks, plucks it, wonders how on earth was it possible to place a post-it note so quickly without him seeing, and finally traces the floral embellishments lining the margins as his eyes run through the words over and over again until it burns on the retinas of his soul.

Good night and Rest well!

- Seo Dal Mi

“Seo Dal Mi,” he says to no one.

Next to her name is a squiggly drawing of an animal, somewhere between a hedgehog and a puppy. It definitely shows her artistic skills—and the absolute lack of it. Ji Pyeong crumples it up in an instant and throws it in the waste bin.

⧫

Ji Pyeong is busy washing up the next morning when steps come in the form of thundering. It’s too heavy to be Seo Dal Mi’s, so it must be the halmoni’s. A lack of surprise blankets him when he hears an exhaustive sigh of relief succeeding an insistent murmuring of stolen money. Halmoni jumps at his voice when Ji Pyeong announces his presence, relaying his initial thoughts of almost stealing it.

Sourly, he catalogues the old woman under the list of people who had thought of him wrong, and then casts it off to the back of his mind in an instant. Being marked as a thief didn’t really strike him as much as it would to a normal person, he just found it displeasing how his unlucky, genetic circumstance showed off such a bad reputation. And it’s not like orphans did it without reason, as stealing children had been rampant at the orphanage. Stealing isn’t too bad when it becomes a necessity.

Ji Pyeong can feel a watchful gaze glued on his back when he picks up his bag, his stance ready to head out.

“Dal Mi-yah can definitely pick out a good person when she meets one,” Halmoni loudly muses to herself, patting the can of money in her arms. She looks up and sends him a knowing smile, “Aren’t you a Good Boy?”

Ji Pyeong balks at the outrageous moniker, a name more fitting on a newborn puppy rather than his eighteen-year-old almost- adult self. “You should take that to the bank. Open an account. It’s not safe to leave it lying around.” His feet harshly stomps across the floor. He’s about to head out when the old woman snaps at him, her form relying on her knees, “Help me out, Good Boy.”

His hand comes out as a subconscious reflex to physically help her up, but instead she thrusts out the bucket of cash in his periphery. “Help me open an account.”

Hesitation denies Ji Pyeong’s initial response of agreement — of submitting to the elderly or authority or whatever. He’s got other priorities, like finding another place to stay the night. He’d go to school but he’d rather find momentary shelter for his physical needs first. However, the nagging thought of debt overwhelms his ruminations. Halmoni waits for him, smiling, and he can almost see the little girl aging overnight. Their physical difference is wide, but the same disposition is present: bright, shining, like a beacon of hope in the middle of a thunderstorm.

He sighs, “Fine. Let’s go.”

It’s barely even noon when he encounters Seo Dal Mi again. After hearing his name called out in an insistent, annoyingly girlish tone, an immediate sigh leaves his lips. He shuts the textbook heavily and turns to face the little girl he had met in the rain a night ago.

“You never…,” Seo Dal Mi pants, stooping down between her shins when she stops in her tracks. She doesn’t look dirty, just ruffled, with no nameplate on her jacket, thus he doesn’t know why her name is embedded in the matters of his brain. “So I came to stop by this morning but didn’t see you at the shop. I went around the block asking for you but an angry teenager in a high school uniform doesn’t exactly narrow the search down.”

His only response is a sarcastic smile, and he turns his feet the other way, to which the girl quickly demands after, “Ji Pyeong-ssi, you should thank me at least.”

Ji Pyeong imagines tight fists placed on her hips, and the amusing thought almost tempts him to look if it corresponds to reality. She calls behind him, “If it weren’t for me, you would probably be in the hospital by now suffering from pneumonia.”

“Your eomma told you that?” Ji pyeong says coldly, finally craning around just to send her a scathing look. He’s used to the weighing scale of debt, how things have to balance out. He’s known about paying back — He’s done it most of his life, and he knows whatever form of help must be given back. Kindness is never freely given, at least to him — an orphan. He should have known the girl will return; hand expectantly stretched out for whatever payment she wants him to provide. Unable to resist, he sarcastically prods, “I thought I was your special guest. You ask for payment from guests?”

“Not payments.” She looks at him funnily. She doesn’t have her hands on her hips like he’d thought she would, but the fiery in her eyes shoot like a giant meteor hurtling towards earth. He keeps watching her, just to see her eyes dance big fires alongside her breathing.

“What do you want?” Ji Pyeong demands impatiently. He consents to facing her directly, just to get it over with.

“What?” She stumbles.

“You said I should thank you. What do you want? Tutoring? My abilities fall short on English but I guess I’m pretty capable with Mathematics. Or—” Ji Pyeong continues hurriedly, watching her face morph throughout the speech he’s left in between them. “—I can’t do anything like fighting. If you got bullies, sort your own shit. I can’t get expelled or sent for community service; I have a scholarship to maintain.”

“What?” Dal Mi’s lips form a tight O. She’s seemingly stunned, until she widens her eyes and starts laughing. “—Oh. You thought I was going to ask you to literally pay me back? What am I, a gang member? I just wanted a thank you, like the words. Spoken out loud. To my face.”

Ji Pyeong‘s neck reddens. He grudgingly looks away from her. “Oh. Well, thank you.”

After, he waits for her to finish laughing. It’s only when he realizes something’s wrong when she doesn’t stop laughing.

Ji pyeong’s jaw clenches as a reflex. “Are you… Are you okay?”

She does that thing again, the one where her shoulders droop and start caving in like she’s trying to fit herself into a ball. Her laughing pulls out tears in her eyes, and the droplets dwell in the crevices around her eyes. He wonders if there are other things that are causing the wetness, aside from the supposed humor. He grits his teeth, looking away. Brat, brat, brat, brat. He doesn’t care. He can’t.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Dal Mi wipes her cheeks with cold hands, and she’s back to looking at him with, to him suddenly— dead, pretending eyes. “Wow. You’re funny.”

“Why were you really looking for me?” Ji Pyeong attempts to bring his attention back to the book’s words, but her ill obscured gloom bugs him, leaving him with mentally divided attention.

“Well. I don’t know,” Dal Mi bites her lip, blinking at him. “I felt like I needed to.”

Fate again. Ji Pyeong sends her a glare, more from impatience now than anger. “As a I said, scary.” He slams his book shut and starts marching off. She’s a pest who he wants to scrape off his shoe. But like a pest that can’t die, she starts to follow him.

“Is that how you treat someone who helps you? Mr. Good Boy?” A knowing tint ends her tone. “I heard what you did for my Halmoni today. And what you didn’t do.”

He ends up walking faster in irritation.

“See!” She gives another laugh, a bit hurried now that she’s ambling after him. “I told you I was right about you. You’re all bark and no bite. Hey, can I walk with you? — I want to experience that kindness for myself.”

Even as Ji Pyeong hooks his sight on the horizon, ignoring her small shadow is difficult.

“Gosh, is looking for a friend a crime in this neighborhood?” Dal Mi huffs when he still remains silent.

They stop in front of a crosswalk, among the many waiting for the signal to hit green. Ji Pyeong closes his eyes, counting to five, and whirls, “Friend? Are you Mother Teresa? You barely know me. I could be a—“

“Yeah, yeah, a horrible stranger with bad intentions, you and everyone I know says that like a hundred times,” Dal Mi crosses her arms, voice retorting loudly, but a smile wanders to her lips. At least two office ladies narrow their eyes from the public nuisance.

Ji Pyeong can’t himself. Everything about her bothers him. “I’ve known you for less than 24 hours but I feel like I’ve already been bothered by you a hundred times. Are you that friendless? You don’t even know me.”

“But I want to.”

“Go stalk someone your own age. You’re worse than all of the annoying things in the world combined.”

“See!” Dal Mi shoots a finger gun at him and he looks at her sourly, “That’s why we’re meant to be friends, ‘cause you like exaggerating things and I like exaggerating things. I don’t make friends with people who don’t like hyperboles. Not exaggerating just makes the world boring.” She pauses, then follows him hurriedly as he starts speed-walking at the signalled green. “And you’re not a stranger, remember? I mean, you look like a good person. You’re wearing a uniform so you can’t be a—“ A zooming car passes, and Ji Pyeong is quick to pull back Dal Mi’s arm before the vehicle can chop her head off like a guillotine.

“Juvenile delinquents exist, by a huge margin,” Ji Pyeong pointedly says, his heart racing from the almost accident that could have occurred to the kid. When they reach the end, he hastily looks her over to check for any injuries as she yaps about the smallest possibility of him being a juvenile delinquent, swearing firmly up and down that she has had experience with juveniles before so she knows what she’s talking about. Seeing none on her, he grips his bag and continues his path towards the corn dog shop. Unfazed and too enraptured in her audacious conversation, Dal Mi barely keeps up with his heels. She points another finger at him, “Besides. I know your name so either way, if I ever get blamed for your misdeeds, in case you actually are a juvenile delinquent, at least I have a name to blame, Han Ji pyeong-ssi.”

Ji Pyeong sighs for what seems like the thousandth time, his hand suddenly wandering to his throat in exasperation. “Forget me, did you hear what you just said? We should call the police on you. No wonder you were so nice to me, you’re a witch in a little girl’s body. You’re evil.”

Dal Mi gasps, and for a moment he’s panicking for a second realizing that he just insulted a little girl, but he catches the mirth jumping out of her eyes. “I’m not a witch, you jerk!”

He rolls his eyes, hiding his relief, “Cannibalistic, sly tiny witch looking for children to feed on.”

“Take that back,” she attempts to yank his arm, but he swerves around her.

“Yah! I’m telling Halmoni–"

She makes a face, “Yeah, tell her and see how she’ll say I’m the most angelic grandchild she had ever brought up–"

“I can see your red horns even from a distance,” he retorts.

“You have horrible eyesight! And you’re stupid. You couldn’t even tell that the rooms on that poster were too good to be true! Good thing I was there or else you would have been conned!”

“I’m pretty logical when I’m not being hounded by an immature child.”

“Well, your logic’s screwed up.”

“You mean your logic? Who invites strangers to their homes at first meetings?”

“My appa always says to give a helpful hand when the helpless needs it.”

“Let’s cross out the witch, you’re too much of a naïve idiot to be sly.”

Dal Mi readies herself like a loaded gun, but her shoulders droop at a sight of someone behind him. Ji Pyeong blinks, his roaring excitement crashing at the loss of response, and turns to see what she’s staring at.

“Speaking of witches…” She mutters when an older girl in a high school uniform comes in Ji Pyeong’s view. The older girl pauses when she catches a sight of Dal Mi, and quickly spins on her foot towards the opposite direction. Dal Mi runs ahead, just point-blank forgetting him. Ji Pyeong, against his better judgment, follows the girl like night follows day.

That’s the first time he catches a sight of Dal Mi’s older sister. Later on, he’d get to hear her name coming from Dal Mi’s lips in continuous rapidity, but for now, he ends up watching them behind a tree. It’s audible enough that he can hear a few words here and there, like ‘divorce’ and ‘choosing’ and ‘separating’, but mostly the stern sounds of anger and disagreement are the ones that keep him attentive. He can’t bring himself to leave, even when he hears Seo Dal Mi’s usually irritably perky voice transitioning to a tone so desperately sad. It seems that her sadness is more annoying than her happiness, and as far as he’s concerned, this side of her is almost catastrophic to behold in comparison to her falsely joyous state. After a while, his throat hitches when an echo of silence replaces the expected bouts of sisterly anger. A tiny bit concerned, Ji Pyeong palms the tree and comes out to check on her, trying to catch a look of Seo Dal Mi.

She’s wrapped up in the older girl’s arms, visibly content despite tear-stained cheeks. There, in his view, is Dal Mi’s face tucked behind her older sister’s shoulder. Her eyes reflect a joy so real, the vibrancy he had witnessed last night had been nothing relative to this. Ji Pyeong can’t look away, not when her eyes are lit up, filling with dancing fires.

And it hits him. This eunnie—she’s everything to Seo Dal mi. She’s the source of her joy and happiness and maybe even sadness; a life she holds so dearly, and just … Just someone unrestrainedly hers . Ji Pyeong blinks and adjusts his chest so that he can breathe properly. What is it like to hold someone in your arms like that, to be able to cry so openly in front of someone, to shed off anger and fear and worries after an overwhelming day and after, fall into someone’s arms like nothing because you’re deeply loved and everything you do is forgiven anyway?

What would life be like if he would come home and find notebooks strewn all over the sofa, maybe candles lit up when there’s a power outage, messy plates in the sink for him to wash, things moving away from the places where he had originally left them? To see clearly, deeply understand, and know whole-heartedly the domestic underbelly normal strangers would never show. Will he still slave away with a system he’s used to now? Will he still think about the next possible moment he’ll be able to get a full meal? Will he still head towards success with such frightening tenacity that even he thinks of tasting it in his sleep? Will he wake up one day, just like this, and think, I must make a beginning for myself, or else no would—like he did in this life?

And finally, will he feel more alive?

Averting his gaze, Han Ji Pyeong loosens his grip on his bag strap and leaves with light, quiet steps. He resolves on doing his studying early tonight.

⧫

Every now and then while he’s doing his homework, Ji Pyeong will look up and he’ll imagine the possibility of Seo Dal Mi barging through the door with such propulsion of a cannonball that he’s impossibly amused throughout his mundane work in the stall’s back room. He thinks of this surreal daydream like a fact entrenched in his brain, as if it’s bound to happen at any point throughout his stay in this place. (Spurred by the sudden beneficial utilization of Halmoni’s bank account paired by his own inability to register his own, he’s relented to staying with Halmoni for just a while until he makes a bit of money before leaving for university.) But interlacing such a daydream with that scene Ji Pyeong had witnessed, and her usually perky voice that apparently hid her real feelings, he doesn’t get why he’s waiting with bated breath for her to come over and sit beside him when she should be completely fine to mope all by herself.

Ji Pyeong had seen Dal Mi around after that moment with her sister, but hadn’t had the purpose, nor the pride, to forgo his apprehension and just open a conversation with her. Her ever-present gloominess nowadays contrasting her sporadic show of dancing eyes compels Ji Pyeong’s thoughts to wander to her too many times to count. When he realizes that he’s actually waiting for her to show up at the stall every morning (she does so, he just doesn’t come out until she leaves), he firmly decides that she’s taking up too much of his space. Figurative space.

One day on his way back, he spots her figure running up to Halmoni with caved shoulders. Dal Mi doesn’t really say that much, but her cries are loud and her arms around the older woman are tight. Ji Pyeong, once again, is stuck on his feet, witnessing what seems to be a sequel of the Seo Family melodrama. Halmoni hugs her tightly, gently patting her back. Ji Pyeong only makes his presence known when Dal Mi runs off again, and he takes Halmoni’s rake soundlessly. Absentmindedly, she lets him take it, and he cleans the fallen blossoms off the street with itching skin and a heavy heart.

Nevertheless, Ji Pyeong minds his own business. Homework is done meticulously on the table while Halmoni prepares the nightly food supplies beside him. He doesn’t ask questions, firm on the routine he’s been so long primed to enact. Numbers. Rational Solutions. Studying, studying, studying. Things he knows answers to with forthright volition. Things that he doesn’t dwell on too much in his head because it’s facts and facts aren’t supposed to be meddled with. Ji pyeong does these routines each day, like a wheel going on and on, despite the accompanying tediousness, because he’s in complete control. As long as everything is in control, he will not worry. Will not have sleepless nights wondering about what he should have done a bit more or done a bit less. A privileged child, with parents backing them, may falter and make mistakes, but he can’t afford to be on the same road as them. Everything must go on smoothly, especially for an orphan like him. Nothing should be taken to chance, because if he doesn’t watch himself, no one will.

So, Ji Pyeong doesn’t deviate from his routine. He does this in defiance of the deluge of thoughts antagonizing him about the reckless Seo Dal Mi. (He can’t risk his scholarship-maintained grades just to comfort some weird, unusually miserable girl. He just can’t.) Thus, in that way, the rhythm of his everyday ebbed and flowed like the tide.

One day after school though, Ji Pyeong spots the familiar crown of her head on a road in the middle of a cherry blossom-filled saturation. With her familiar slumping, gloomy shoulders, the temptation of just watching over her just wins him over. He succumbs to closing his textbook and walks a whole distance behind her. When he watches her get home safely, he waits a bit from a block near her house before spinning on his feet to return to Halmoni’s back room. The next day, he sees her again in the same pathway, thus repeating the process of watching her get home safely from afar. Ji Pyeong isn’t the kind of person who can comfort someone. He’s too jagged, too sharp around the edges. However, making sure she gets home safely just feels right to him, so he thinks at least in this way he’s still paying her back.

By the fifth time Ji Pyeong does it, it becomes comfortingly rhythmic. He’s not bothered at all when he does so, and even looks forward to it because he can clear the noise in his thoughts when he’s focusing on one single being in his periphery. On the sixth day, he ends up waiting for her on accident, and he gets to the cherry blossom pathway much earlier than her. His neck burns when he spots the tips of her face, head low and noticeably more downtrodden than usual. Thankfully, when she trudges past him trying to look all distracted – she doesn’t even notice him. He’s not sure if he should be relieved or just stupidly frustrated.

Regardless, Ji Pyeong performs his routine the same, hands warming his pockets. It’s just a thank you, he thinks, making sure she gets home safe. It’s not supposed to be electrifying, or even thought-provoking, the voice follows as he watches her with as much intensity as a hawk, it’s a thank you. Just a thank you.

His work is done when she’s a few feet away from the place Ji Pyeong quickly learns to be her residence, in his mind mentally depositing her to a safe space in which his concerns smoothly subside. He’s a few seconds away from heading to Halmoni’s when out of the blue, Dal Mi turns and heads off the other way — veering from her house. Panic spills in his stomach and Ji Pyeong curses, pursuing her. Where the hell is she going? It becomes a bit of a goose chase, a quiet one at that, with Dal Mi’s unawareness of his ruffled presence clambering after her. He ends up swerving across busy career women and slamming into worn-out white collar employees, just in time to see her ponytail slipping into a tiny crack of a route that’s not known to be preferred.

“ Dal—” Ji Pyeong stops himself just as she’s in sight of his, her shoulders drooping to a degree worth asking about, not in a physical sense but metaphorically, like she’s got the weight of the world on hers to carry. She finds a public cobblestone bench and yields to its function. Ji Pyeong hesitates, wondering if he should just grab her and take her home right there and then, but he ends up sitting down too (on a hidden spot near the trees) and watching her until nightfall.

And then… Nothing. She just sits there. Literally just sits there.

The crickets wander out before the girl even starts budging. It’s like she’s affixed to her spot, resolute in marking her place, with no plans to head home. Her cell phone rings — twelve times in quick succession. She doesn’t move. His eyelids are slowly collapsing, tiredness hitting him right in his eyes, and he allows himself to doze off just a second or two. The next time he opens his eyes, there is no longer one figure ahead of him — There are two.

He doesn’t even think, just runs.

“Dal Mi-yah,” Ji Pyeong says softly in contrast to the tight grip he casts on her shoulder. She flinches visibly from the unexpected touch, but relaxes in seconds when her gaze envelopes his face. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” Then, Ji Pyeong slowly leans back, exhales, and frowns at the man etched in a sinister gleam before them. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

“I — uh — I just,” such gleam wears off from the stranger, his suave composure smoldering up in flames. “I was just asking this little girl where the closest bus stop is.”

“Ajhussi,” Ji Pyeong brutally barks, “You think she knows where the closest bus stop is? She’s—what— barely even half your age! You think she knows more than you ? Find a tourist guide or the police station. Speaking of which, I can take you to the police station myself if you want. I know a lot of reasons why men will speak with unchaperoned, little girls—and the police will definitely be interested to know why you approached her—by her lonesome, in the dark.”

Ji Pyeong hasn’t even slammed out most of what he wanted to say, but the conspicuous child predator stumbles backwards and runs off through the trees, leaving two children in his wake—one distinctly relieved and the other fervently breathless. He collapses on the bench, grasping his throat. When silent Dal Mi perches herself down tenderly, giving a delicate shake of his shoulder, Ji Pyeong swivels and explodes, “What’s wrong with you?!”

Dal Mi explodes herself—in tears. She launches herself at him, her cries audibly smothered by his clothes, arms wrapped around his waist.

Ji pyeong stiffens, then slowly takes out his hand to warm her back.

“Thank you for saving me,” Dal Mi palms her cheeks dry later on.

Ji Pyeong narrows his eyes, “I don’t care what happens to you. Why didn’t you just go home? You’re irritatingly reckless.”

She chews on her lip.

“Fine,” he slams his hands down his pockets. Her silence bites back at him, bringing him agitation rather than the tranquility he had once expected when he viewed her differently. “I don’t really care anyway.”

Ji Pyeong hasn’t even taken a step when her voice streams out behind him.

“Every time I come home—” She chokes, “—I see my appa, and I keep remembering what I lost. My parents. My mom, she left, and she took eunnie. Well, actually eunnie followed her, and I stayed… So I’m the only one helping appa out with everything. I’m scared because when I go home, no one’s there because appa gets home around seven and I get home around four. So that’s three hours without anyone and I’m scared because eunnie used to tell me there’s a ghost on the third floor so I'm scared it’ll come out when I’m doing my homework. I miss eunnie. A lot. She tells me where to go and makes sure homework gets done correctly and she walks me to school and back and she always tells me what I need to hear, even if I don’t like it. Without her voice—I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. What if I say or do the wrong things?”

There’s silence, and the beating of his heart. It echoes towards the recesses of his mind. “You.. You made a scary choice of helping me—an absolute stranger—but you’re scared about... that?”

“Of course,” Dal Mi stammers, looking at everything else but him. “Everything you do feels scarier if it concerns the people that you love. I feel frightened. Terrified. All the time. I keep wondering if I chose wrong. But at the same time, I know I shouldn’t feel this way. Because if I followed my eomma, appa would have been left all alone. I wonder every night if eomma is regretting it. If eunnie is regretting it. I wonder if one day I’ll see eomma when I come home from school, begging appa to take her back after storming out like she did. I’m scared if she does do that, because I don’t know how I will feel when that happens.”

“That won’t happen,” Ji Pyeong says firmly. “No, a person with enough pride will not crawl back to a place they storm out of.”

“But my appa, he says—"

“Adults lie,” he whirls to face her and finally talks in his angry forest fire that the only time he had taken it out at her was the day they first met. “They lie so naive children like you can’t get hurt. Out there, outside your bubble—shit happens. That’s life. That’s reality . That’s why adults lie if they can and when they can, so that their precious children can’t get hurt. So please. Just accept the fact that your parents have separated, because wallowing in your past will cost you more than you expect it to.”

The words wash over her, looking she’s just been doused with cold water. Suddenly, Ji Pyeong doesn’t see a brat—just a heartbroken child mending broken glass. He bends down, warming her shoulders firmly with his hands. “I’m just being honest. After all, everyone deserves to hear the truth. I’m trying to help you, kid, please don’t cr—” She explodes into tears once more, burrowing her head in his already wet jacket.

He feels like shit. But not for too long, she pulls herself away and surprises him, giving a miniscule nod, all the while tears stream down her cheeks and her nose blossoming red. “I- I… I understand. Thank you for saving me.”

Numbly, Ji Pyeong offers his hand out. Nothing beyond devastation impresses on her face, but she seems to understand. Her hand is cold and trembling, but she forcibly holds on to him nonetheless.

⧫

One of his routines develops into helping Halmoni around her business. After the daily clean-up and closing, Ji Pyeong comes to the stall in aid of the inventory. Apparently before his presence had slipped in and overtaken Halmoni’s back room, she hadn’t bothered much with accounting. The bare minimum of nothing being lost on her part was enough for her to keep going the next day. It had taken him a few times before she had relented to his help, chastising him that he should be focusing on his studies instead.

Hesitation, though, did stop him—his consciousness bringing a second-guessing of thoughts knocking on his mind. Why did he have to offer that? His humanity, once again, bit back at him. Thus, his logical sense eased him, saying that Halmoni was supposed to be someone holding out space for him, a makeshift landlord. If everything in his life was supposed to be equal—even this room, granted its cost-free amenities, then it definitely had to be paid for. So, in this way, his payment is this—and of course, making sure the kid doesn’t get into trouble like she almost did the night before. He sours quickly with that thought, squeezing his knuckles just until they turn white.

That night, Halmoni sits beside him while his tedious study work is continuous on material he’s past gone over. Because of the tiring repetitiveness, Ji Pyeong gets past the passiveness of his revisions, being quickly engulfed instead by his wonderings about Dal Mi’s whereabouts—if she’s seen the ghost, if she’s taking a nap, or if she’s eating dinner with her appa now. He had walked her back and she didn’t say much of a thank you or a goodbye, and he has thought nothing but her state of well being. A child that young, that… kind and pure, shouldn’t feel so deeply sorrowful. And the words he had thrown at her. That had sliced through her. Guilt creeps up in his stomach.

Halmoni’s also staring off in space. He wonders if their thoughts, more or less, line up the same.

“Is there anything wrong?” Ji Pyeong can’t help but ask, putting his pencil down. The edges of his tongue wants to ask about Dal Mi, but he forgoes the thought immediately and grips his pencil back.

The older woman jumps, rubs her eyes, and answers him with a suppressed frown, “No. It’s just that… Dal Mi-yah. Her parents have split up and her sister has gone with their mother.”

He nods, aware.

“Her only friend is her sister.” The pencil falls from his grasp.

Ji pyeong catches a phantom of the girl’s voice, asking for a friend, wrapped up in a tone so complacent, so cool, that he wonders how he could have missed the loneliness apart from the pressing sadness. He squeezes his knuckles, “And she’s alone.”

Halmoni nods. He looks down on his equations. How cruel it is to be so heartbroken from a gaping abyss so severely placed by the two people who brought you together in the first place.

When he looks up again, Halmoni stares straight at him, years older by the second. “I’m scared for her. She feels all alone… And my son, so hardworking, will only get to see Dal Mi’s false grins, because that’s how she is. She doesn’t want people to be upset. That’s why, I’ve been thinking on how to help, because I want to help her, my poor grandchild. She’s always a joy to be with, and she’s never asked for more beyond what she already has. If I can make her smile again, see her pretty eyes, that will be the best Christmas gift I can give to myself,” she turns to him. “Will you help me?”

“W-what?” Ji Pyeong croaks, his throat immediately drying. “What do you mean, Halmoni?”

She just smiles with a touch of concern, bending up and scuttling off somewhere. She returns with a folded, worn-out note, “I have a favor to ask,” her voice comes out in measured tones. “I want to give her a friend. I want her to feel joy in this time when she feels most down. You can do this tiny, little thing for her—can’t you? After all, she sent you here.”

And she did...when he needed it the most, even if he never would admit it out loud.

Ji Pyeong hangs his gaze on the stretched out paper, held by the woman who’s causing a guilt trip worse than anyone has ever done to him. But, he wordlessly takes it. When he feels the time-worn texture, it beckons him back to the fleeting glance of Dal Mi behind her sister, remembering the singular glimpse of her dancing eyes—and how it was indeed pretty.

Had Ji Pyeong ever smiled that way, just like her, thinking about someone? Because all he remembers about his childhood—just five minutes of it elapsing before it ceased to be—is the stark, dark reality of being irreversibly alone; thus, shaping his world around such fragmented reality.

The epiphany pangs on his heart like a palindrome. He doesn’t want that for her. She doesn’t belong here with him, in the deepest concavity of loneliness where he had no choice but to call it home.

She should be happy—always. Her eyes shouldn’t be closed off, because when they brighten, they rival stars and galaxies. When they brighten, it’s a city life source all in itself.

No. He shakes himself inwardly. Be logical. She shouldn’t be. She should learn to get over this situation, to force herself until she can breathe properly and not look back. As he had screamed at her to do so. But how?

First, she must mend.

“No,” Ji Pyeong tries weakly, pushing the note away. He drags his attention back to his work but Halmoni sends him a frown. She pushes it back to him. “Come on, Good Boy. ”

Multiple attempts aren’t warranted. By then, he’s already made up his mind. Ji Pyeong blinks and slowly opens it, skimming through what he thinks is utter bullshit probably done up in the 1800’s. “Let me edit this. Not even the worst highschooler could write like this.”

“Ah,” Halmoni pulls her shoulders back, brushing off the comment, “Let’s make someone up then. Someone kind and sweet… Handsome and comes from a wealthy family?”

If bitterness is a bee, it stings like hell.

Ji Pyeong, neck burning, turns back hastily and snags the newspaper. The headlines are the same as what he viewed on TV a few days ago. It’s still about the Mathematical Olympiad and the current darling of the academic world.

“Nam Do San,” Ji Pyeong barely even registers the name and forgets it the next minute he’s not looking at the newspaper anymore. “He looks like he’s from a wealthy family.”

“Yes, he does look kind and sweet. Oh, look, they’re the same age. It’s perfect,” Halmoni says, looking over at the picture with his family. “Alright, alright. Let’s use the name.”

Several mornings after, Ji Pyeong awakes and prepares everything like he always does. When he puts his shoes on, he stands outside and spots Dal Mi coming from a mile away, looking especially jubilant dashing towards him in the sunlight.

The fiasco that almost happened is still fresh, especially for him, so he’s perplexed at the smile tinting her lips, as her cries never bled through his jacket. He can still recall her crying and the stark anxiety rolling off him in waves. Even now, the panic still surges in him—what if he had not opened his eyes in time? What if he hadn’t followed her in that particular afternoon? What if she had been kidnapped and sold to human trafficking?

“Good morning!” Dal Mi’s voice makes him jump, cutting his thoughts. She tilts her chin up, offering a tiny wave. She looks better now, clearly. Ji Pyeong can’t put a finger on what it is, but regardless, his own shoulders relax at her wellness. He doesn’t feel weird at the thought of communicating with her, but feels more strikingly open now—like he’s unlocked a side she’s never shown to anyone. His chest feels oddly lighter with that realization.

“Good morning,” Ji Pyeong’s voice suddenly echoes around him. Despite the sense of openness, he dumbly realizes again that he doesn’t know how to interact with her—jagged edges, after all, is what you don’t give to a child. Hence, numbness paralyzes his body, making his movements feel almost crooked and unistructural, like a toy soldier. He forces himself to breath properly and he moves swiftly around her, marching off without a goodbye.

“Wait!” She grabs his elbow, reeling him back. “I haven’t said thanks properly yet.”

Ji Pyeong rubs the spot where she had held him tightly. “So thank me. Right now, so I can leave. I have stuff to do.”

“Thank you. Hm...Is it okay if I walk with you today?”

“What?”

“I’m asking if I can walk with you today. It seems that we go in the same direction anyway. Might as well make things more fun. So...can I?

“You’re already here.”

Just like that, Dal Mi perks up and positions herself on his right as they walk, “I just wanted to say, I feel much better now than I did when we last talked.”

“You are?” Ji Pyeong recalls a snotty nose and tears falling down her cheeks. Her face today contrasts so widely, that his head echoes dizziness.

“Becauuuse,” Dal Mi sings, and then brandishes out paper that he hadn’t noticed she had been hiding all this time. His heart gives a jolt. It’s the letter. Folded around the edges, a bit crumpled—but still his letter. And her hands, the way she clutches it, it’s like she’s holding a beating butterfly. “Look! I’m not friendless!”

Ji Pyeong exhales.

“Ah.” He averts from the glimmer in her eyes and forcibly walks on. “What is that?”

Dal Mi’s a duckling hobbling after him. “I have a secret admirer.”

“What?” Ji Pyeong chokes, trying to grasp all the words he’d written. Had he come off as a confession rather than a simple offer of friendship? Shit . It’s all Halmoni’s fault, trying to add all sorts of mushy stuff he never would have penned down on his own.

“Here, look!” Dal Mi presumptuously unfolds the letter and starts reading it out for him in the middle of the early morning rush.

Embarrassment ties him down in prelude, but as her voice goes on, it starts to sound differently. The words don't feel like it came from an angry highschool boy writing in forced secrecy, but rather, from a child undeniably confident, well-spoken, and to be honest, endearing.

Ji Pyeong’s left cheek rises for a smile but he catches himself and drowns it out with a shortened grimace. “I… I see. Well, I’m glad for you. I guess,” then after a pause, he questions hesitantly, summarizing the frazzled inquisition trapped in his mind, “Do you feel better now?”

“Loads! Halmoni says that Nam Do San approached her himself, and told Halmoni that if I’d want to reply, I should place mine in the bird box. That way, we can exchange letters.”

“Exciting.” He bends down and masks his shaking fingers, retying his shoelaces.

“I know! Isn’t he clever. Ugh. I wish I could meet him, but I feel like he wouldn’t do so now. Especially not when I haven’t said anything back.”

“You should say something back. To him. I mean,” Ji Pyeong clears his throat, then he heads towards the direction of his school while she still continues to scuttle after him.

“Well, what should I say then?”

“Anything. Judging from what he wrote, it seems that he’s… nice. I don’t think he’ll care what you’ll say as long as you’ll reply to his letter. I think he’ll be…” He thinks and selects carefully, “ Joyous with that.”

After a second, Ji Pyeong realizes she’s plunged into silence. He’s forced to turn around, going frigid at the sight of her unmoving form and eyes pouring into his soul. Crossing her arms, she peers at him suspiciously. “Have you met him before? You must have. You’re always helping out at the stall now.”

“No!” He justs his chin. “No way.”

“Then why are you being defensive?” Dal Mi unfurls.

“I’m not.”

“You are!” She chides, his ears turning red and his fists clenching in his pockets.

“I am not!” Ji Pyeong exclaims in horror, fuming. “Take your damn letter and leave me be. I’m going to school.”

“No, wait!—“ He hears footsteps pounding and then once again, his elbow gets retracted harshly, forcing him to stop walking. Sensing a growing pattern he does not want to get used to, he hurls a short-lived glower at the sky, wondering what on earth made him agree to writing that stupid letter in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” Dal Mi says unabashedly. “I need your help, though. You’re the only boy I talk to, aside from my appa. And you’re always around. Can you please help me write back?”

“Absolutely not. I don’t write love letters.”

“Ji Pyeong-ssi! You’re my only friend,” begs Dal Mi.

He pauses, senses bile climbing up his throat, “ What ?”

“What.” Da Mi echoes his confusion. After a glum glance to her feet, she huffs and continues, “...You’re my only friend.”

He stares, and just does that for about seconds straight. “You’re only friend is… me.”

“And?” She clicks her tongue impatiently.

“That’s not normal.”

“Friends can be all sorts of people, not just from your age group.”

“No. I meant, why am I your friend?... Why me?”

“Because you’re nice to me,” Dal Mi says matter-of-factly, knitting her brows. “Because you already helped me before. Because you’ve been watching me get home for days, even though I thought that was a bit creepy at first—“ All the blood in his face drains for his ears and neck. “—But it made me happy knowing someone was looking out for me. That I’m not forgotten.” She shrugs, avoiding his eyes. “Oh! And also, you’re my special guest, remember? That’s already quite a number of reasons why we must be friends.”

Ji Pyeong doesn’t reply, still embarrassingly dazed that she had known all this time. When he’s still reeling in from what’s happening, in his hazy mind she fumbles and brings out a pink post-it pad and a pencil.

“I’m not your friend.” Ji Pyeong decides to forgo babying her feelings and goes to slather his truth. He clenches his jaw. Then his knuckles. Then his whole body feels like it’s all hot and stuffy and everything feels tight in all the wrong places. He wants to shake her shoulders, telling her to be rational for once. Why him? Why can’t she pick a normal classmate? Why did it have to be him of all people? I don’t know how to be someone's friend. “Pick someone else,” the words come out demandingly, like with all the things he has ever done in his life.

But Dal Mi looks at him for a long, long second, before admitting softly. “I don’t have anyone else left.”

She stops writing and sends him a beam, “I choose you, Ji Pyeong-ssi. Wait for it—one day you’ll get used to my presence, and you can’t do anything but love it because when I set my mind on things, I make sure it happens. I’m pretty persuasive, you know. Someday—“ She ignores his deepening frown, “—maybe in the far, far future where you’ll probably be older and working and acting cranky all the time, you’ll probably cry and regret not knowing me earlier. You’ll see! Just wait for it.”

It’s like he’s always fumbling in the dark with her.

“I can’t believe this.” Ji Pyeong turns and sends a steel-cut glare that can melt through even the hardest metal. He throws out all the tender feelings he had absorbed from watching her cry, and spits downright catatonically, “I’m not a good person to be around with. You’ll see. And you’ll regret being friends with me one day, for sure. Wait for that.”

She laughs, chiming like bells, “I don’t want to sound like I’m forcing you, but you’re really putting yourself down. You’re not Good Boy for no reason. I see you. And I like what I see, so that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. But okay, I’ll humor you even though that probably won’t happen. Friends?” She doesn’t wait for him at all, and rather pulls his hand for them to shake. She does it for them. Before he knows it, he’s suddenly friends with Seo Dal Mi, and he wonders if he’s entered to some sort of deal with the devil. Then, she peels off the note she’s written on and pats it on his shoulder. He plucks it off harshly and sees the current date and their names together.

Seo Dal Mi and Han Ji Pyeong — Friendship Day. A squiggly animal, must be some sort of hybrid squirrel and fish this time, finishes the declaration.

Ji Pyeong feels a headache coming, mainly from the ridiculousness of this female child. He doesn’t know what to say, to reply to such blatant admittance of friendship, as if he’s a wild pokemon and she’s caught him with her dancing eyes and octopus hands, therefore he swivels on his feet and leaves her be.

When he’s a foot away, Dal Mi yells, “Hey! If it’s any consolation, at least I have two friends now!”

Guilt kicks his lungs in rapid succession, knocking air out of him. Before Ji Pyeong regrets anything else, he haphazardly returns, breathing out. “Dal Mi-ssi.”

He grits his teeth, desperate to say all the things floating in his mind, but he relents to choosing one thing instead.

“Just be honest...and don’t hold back on anything that you feel. Tell him about your day, what you ate at lunch, what you saw on the street, the stories that you heard, and the dreams that you seek. Writing someone a letter—It’s all about sharing with a good heart…So, don’t hold back, and everything else will follow.”

Dal Mi tilts her head up, smiling again—but since she was already smiling, this one is absolute sunshine.

⧫

“You’re not supposed to touch that.”

“You’re not supposed to touch that, either.”

“Dal Mi-ssi. One more and I’m taking us home—” Ji Pyeong recoils from his blunder, almost wincing at the way the words have effortlessly slipped out of his lips. As if home was truly something that existed for him.

Dal Mi, thankfully, doesn’t notice. The girl whizzes past him, eyes bright and open as she takes in the next few paintings the walls are decorated with. He’s slowly going insane. There’s no way to control her. He shouldn’t have taken her to this museum, even when it had screamed free admission for students eighteen and below.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” he grips the cuff of her uniform, pulling it up just as he would with a cat’s neck. Dal Mi pouts, almost adorably. He blanches at the sudden thought and tugs her out of the museum to remedy his aggravated state of mind. Any longer inside and he’ll explode.

The afternoon greets them in flocks of orange accompanied by the afterglow of evergreen, the wind caressing their cheeks with the promise of fall. Dal Mi marches ahead of him with quick skips, sloshing her head around the new leaves that the destiny of fall provides every year. Ji Pyeong has his hands tucked in his pockets, watching her from behind, ready enough with a stern tone making sure she doesn’t trip.

In more ways than one, It’s laughably just a normal afternoon for him.

A flashing sign appears in the corner of his eyes. He tells Dal Mi to wait for a second, and he returns later with a plastic bag. He takes out a newly bought strawberry milk from his impulsive purchase and hands it over Dal Mi’s eager grasp as she talks about her day. He nods, letting her voice dance in his proximity. Oftentimes when she weaves a story from her constantly whirring brain, her hands tend to shoot around like a crazy octopus. He doesn’t really mind, as long as no one gets hit by her unconscious flailing.

Dal Mi doesn’t thank him. She just grabs it, pops a straw in, and drinks it with much relish while she continues regaling him with tales of her school day’s current activities. Ji Pyeong is half-listening, he doesn’t really care much if Ah-Rah-ssi from Class B has a boyfriend, nor if Jun-Hyung from Class C got called in the office for blasting the school fire alarm, but he tightens his jaw muscles anyway. Embarrassingly, his tendency to smile often turned up to a hundred when Dal Mi’s feminine tone soothed away the ever-growing worries lingering within the depths of his mental faculties.

“Why did you get the strawberry? I prefer the banana one,” says Dal Mi, ever sipping happily.

Ji Pyeong rolls his eyes, “You’re the worst to please. Next time I’m never getting you anything ever again.”

The carefree tone vanishes when she says, “Hey, look, do you think he’s lost?”

Dal Mi moves away from him, eyes fervently focused on a sight beyond them. In the middle of a busy crosswalk, an old man sits like an ape with his torn T-shirt, the black stars printed on the material’s washed-out grayness. His eyes wander, fear emplaced like everything around him is out to get him. His hands do a bout of twitching, and the congested throng of employees and other walks of life divert from him, forming just a man-made enactment of Moses parting the Red Sea. Soundlessly, she walks further but Ji Pyeong slips his hand into hers before she runs off with her usual, idealistic judgment.

He starts pulling her the other way, but she pulls back, “Wait! I think he really needs some help. He might hurt himself.”

“Dal Mi-ssi, How many times do I have to say that you can’t just help everybody you see—“

“But—“

“I’m taking you to Halmoni’s now. Don’t even think about going back here.”

“No, No. Listen to me first and take a good look at him. He’s scared, see? What if he’s sick in the head and needs proper help?” Her gaze, worried, wanders over to the man. He’s making a mess now, and Ji Pyeong flinches when a car almost hits him. It swerves thankfully before it even brushes a single hair off him. Even from a distance, the man’s confusion and desperation are most eminent even to the fleeting onlooker.

But Ji Pyeong can’t risk their safety. He has to get Dal Mi home, before she does anything beyond his already catastrophic imagination.

Throughout their walk home, it’s obvious to him that she is pissed and fuming. Her arms are crossed over. But he doesn’t care—and he tells himself this over and over. If the man turns out to be senile and dangerous, it’s all going to be his fault for sure, not some little girl who wanted to help and chose wrong. It’s just all self-preservation, a practice he’s sworn to for years. He wants to promise to Dal Mi that if she does the same, she would see the uselessness of providing an extra hand or an umbrella; wants to show that her Halmoni is right, that oftentimes letting go and watching yourself first should be the ultimate priority.

Why is she taking so much effort to help anyway? She doesn’t even get anything in return.

Stopping in his tracks, Ji Pyeong pulls her aside. He watches the girl’s eyes—a stormcloud of feelings, often the catalyst of his thoughts and had been the origin of his curiosity; never ceasing to annoy him in all the best ways possible.

Everything she feels, he can see. Usually, there is no filter with the dancing fires in her eyes, and his affinity to honesty is the moth to such flames.

“I thought we promised to be honest with each other,” is the first thing he chooses to say.

“We did. It’s still on-going.”

“Then why are you not speaking to me? Why are you all silent and weird?”

Dal Mi brandishes on a tight smile. “Because I’m being honest.”

Ji Pyeong presses his eyes closed, gripping the younger girl’s shoulders in exasperation. He opens them, muttering, “Why are you getting angry at me when I’m just trying to protect you?”

And he hates the way he feels—like all his feelings are stacking on top of him and he doesn’t know which card of emotions he’ll pick out the next time something bad happens. The next time something Dal-Mi-related happens.

She wrinkles her nose, slowly pushing his tight grip off her shoulders. “You’re getting angry too! What’s your problem with me having a problem with you?”

“Because I thought we would be honest with each other and—“ Understand each other, Ji Pyeong wants to say. Isn’t that what… isn’t that what friends do? Despite the disagreements and faults, that you would see them for what they’re trying to do? Then again, she does have a point. He, too, cannot understand the gravity of his own problem with Dal Mi helping out anyone she deems helpless, despite knowing in the back of his mind that without her taking a chance on him, his life would have definitely been something similar to the man frightened by everything on that street.

Ji Pyeong instantly pushes the latter thought down to the recesses of his hauntings. No way, he clashes with himself forcefully. You’re never getting as lost as that man. Even if you had gone on without her, you would have been completely fine. You’re never scared, remember? He shakes his head mentally, wondering where all these doubts are coming from. He looks back at Dal Mi, who’s gone to play with her empty milk box thoughtfully.

He never had to explain himself to someone before, so at least he’s aware of where his frustrations originate.

Scratching his throat, Ji Pyeong begrudgingly utters, “There is a high chance that man is just a homeless person trying to find someone to loot off of. I’ve seen it before. You probably haven’t. So let’s chalk this disagreement off so we don’t leave each other angry. Is that okay? It’s a… it’s a good afternoon, I don’t want to waste it.”

“Fine.” She grumbles. “I… understand. I’m still annoyed though. I know by now that not everyone is good, it’s just that I like the act of helping itself. It makes me feel good.”

“There are charities for that,” he points out dryly. “If you get harmed you’ll never see me again, you know? Halmoni will make sure of that. There are situations that you have to use your eyes to evaluate, before you plunge in the waters, before you accidentally hurt yourself. There are costs to everything that you do.”

“But,” she bites her lip. “I’m trying to see your point, I really do. But how could you say that to me when all you do is help me out all the time?”

Ji Pyeong widens his eyes, shoulders going rigid. She leaves him, marching on. He follows shortly, his steps the only semblance of a reply.

“You’re a hypocrite,” she says softly when he slips back beside her. “And you’re weird. I don’t know if I want to keep being angry with you or just ignore you.”

“Don’t do either. Just keep talking.”

They continue their walk, and this sudden mixture of comforting yet different silence infuses their normal, everyday companionship. Ji Pyeong silently takes their trash and puts it in a bag for him to dispose of in a passing trash can. Once he returns to her, he tugs on the strap of his bag across his chest, “Do you know the story of The Lion and the Rabbit?”

Curiosity lights her eyes up, diffusing the weird air. “No, but I will when you tell me.”

“One day, there was an angry lion. He was the fiercest animal of the forest and was deemed the king. He was constantly hungry so he ate all the animal subjects one by one.”

“—Is this story R-Rated? Is this going to make me feel better?—”

Ignoring her, Ji Pyeong never strays his sight from the horizon, “In the same forest, there lived a very clever rabbit. The rabbit thought that if he planned hard enough, he could kill the king lion to let them all be free from his vicious appetite. So, on the day that the rabbit was next to approach the king, he came late and told him that there was another lion that was new to the area. This new lion had told the rabbit that he was the new king of the land.”

“The king lion was furious and demanded to see this new lion. So the rabbit took him to a deep well and claimed that it was the new lion’s fortress. When the king lion looked inside, he saw his reflection, but he had thought it was the other lion. When he roared and heard himself, he thought it was another lion. He then jumped in the well and drowned. The end,” he pauses and attempts to smile, turning to look at her. “Isn’t that a good story?”

Dal Mi eyes him with contempt. “Wow,” she dryly remarks. “What does it mean? Is this a fable from the States?”

“I read it once, but I don’t remember which book it came from. Anyway, I’m just saying that you should be careful and be clever like the rabbit.” When she makes a face at him, he grimaces, “ Aigoo—you even look like one.”

Dal Mi’s brows furrow and she bellows out an irritated sigh. “Yeah, the rabbit’s okay but remember that other story where it was also the rabbit and the lion and someone was hurt and someone helped? Where the lion had something stuck in his paw and the rabbit helped pull it out?”

“That’s about a mouse,” Ji Pyeong corrects flatly.

“Regardless,” Dal Mi waves him off. “Even if the lion didn’t like the rabb—"

“— Mouse —"

“The mouse,” she grumbles. “Still helped the lion out.”

“The mouse did so because the lion knew that he couldn’t do it himself. He was helpless,” Ji Pyeong wryly finishes for her, and he’s astonished when he turns back and sees her stopping in the middle of their path with a blinding beam. Dal Mi shoots a finger gun at him, “See! There it is. Exactly what you just said.”

“W-what—" He sputters, then shuts his mouth before opening them again. He angrily snaps, “Ya!”

“Don’t go back to what you said just now,” she wiggles her eyebrows snootily. “Or else you’ll be a liar. Not just a hypocrite.”

“Not doing what I say isn’t being a liar. You don’t have to do everything you say. Most people are like that anyway, they say things they don’t mean.”

“And clearly, you’re one of them,” Dal Mi giggles now. “You’re a total liar. Do you want to be a thief now too?”

If he can hit a kid, he will. But he’s more amused now than annoyed. Dal Mi suddenly runs off, “Liar! Liar!”

Ji Pyeong grips his bag and launches himself off in pursuit, “Be the rabbit, not the mouse! Ya! Brat! DO YOUR HEAR ME?”

⧫

There is a rhythm that plays every now and then. Ji Pyeong slips into this song by routine. Coincidentally, it’s composed by a girl conducting his words jotted down a piece of paper. Seo Dal Mi never fails to show up just to read his penned words out to him, sitting beside him on the pavement in front of the stall, ignoring the odd looks from throngs of bystanders as they go. In his wishful thinking, it is a song only he can hear, and he wishes that it’s a song that will never fall to its conclusion.

Her smile is infectious. It brightens as her eyes latch on to the words he’d written in the wee hours of the night. The words should be tiring to write, much like an essay he needs to submit weekly. But somehow, it miraculously never feels that way. Not when it promised a form of validation only he can enjoy, a form of instant gratification he has hopelessly fallen into. Halmoni had stopped with her own inputs to inject, had been satisfied just by watching her granddaughter read the letters with shining eyes and excited shoulders. For her, he thinks, it doesn’t matter anymore what was written down, just as long as it keeps her happy.

Ji Pyeong likes her reactions, and can’t get enough of them. Aside from the wandering, octopus hands when she reads out loud, the voice she makes use of breathes life into his pale, polite penmanship. She says it, interprets it, and sticks a sense of magic onto it. Like she’s spinning a spell, and it becomes its own giant-sized, foot-long entity.

“I like this part where he says, ‘Dal Mi-yah, the world for me seems to go on and on. I can’t keep up with it, even with how much I try. Sometimes, I wish I can just be a tree —to stay in my own place, to grow roots that can go beyond where I intend to be, and to grow leaves that can bring joy to people who see,’'” she places it down, near to heart, absolutely brimming with elation. “He’s tired of being on a wheel. It must be bad, especially when he’s already achieved so much. His parents—no, the world, probably—must be pressuring him to do things he doesn’t want to do. I think he wants a place to rest his head on. A place where he can find some peace and quiet. He doesn’t want much, it seems...but I think he just wants to be loved.”

“...Don’t we all?” Ji Pyeong attempts a scoff, but her words hammer against his chest. He moves his kneecaps a bit, pressing his chest out to breathe properly. “You got all that from a flimsy paragraph? He’s a good writer, I suppose,” he adds quietly, one eye out for her response.

“He is!” Dal Mi defends, tenderly rubbing her fingers against the soft corners. “He’s so… Poetic, and mature. That’s what my appa says so too.”

“It sounds like it's a cruddy romance novel.” He comments under his breath, looking away.

“It is romantic. He understands me so much,” and her cheeks actually redden when Ji Pyeong swivels to face her. He clears his throat, blinking uneasily. Then, clapping his hands, he stands and puts out his hand, “I’m going to study soon. Let’s feed your stomach and I’ll walk you home.”

Is this how writers feel when their books get published and recipients around the world will send in their responses? If so, then he gets why writers write more books and publish more stories. It’s addicting. The happiness. The feeling that someone out there enjoys what you make. The feeling of being wanted.

There was never a time that she had held a letter and radiated anything other than happiness. Never. She always ends up looking like a child on a sugar high, and while he's never been a big believer in constant happiness, he just wishes an exception can be made possible for just this one, special girl.

The inclusion of Dal Mi in his system is surprisingly interesting. His tide still ebbed and flowed, but her presence comes and sets forth a beckoning with the gravity of a riptide. When she’s not pestering for help with letters, it’s always ‘what should we do today?’ and ‘hey can we check this museum out it’s free for students.’ And Ji Pyeong gives one look at his assortment of papers and due dates and application forms, and he leaves the door with the girl without a brush of hesitation. There is something crazy in the works, for sure. The sudden arrival of this girl who did little but caused so many, is the origin of the chain reaction in his head, seeding the doubt and giving him new eyes on his tediously churning wheel of life. It is enough to make him wonder what else had fate brutally stripped off from him early on.

There’s joy, Ji Pyeong discovers, in searching for the mundane, and sometimes on the waters of something new—all in all to enjoy the wheels of life with a companion. There is joy, he realizes, in understanding what it’s like to not be alone anymore. That there is someone waiting to see him the moment he gets up for the day. That someone actually wants to hear what he has to say. That he isn’t placed on a sorry pedestal, or as a pitiful inspiration, for those who want to succeed in life with the backing of a bloodline. That someone who sees him… for him. Han Ji Pyeong.

There is beauty in not being alone, he supposes. He quite likes it.

Later on, when Ji Pyeong writes his next letter, Halmoni scuttles in the room with a soft goodbye, signalling an early night off. In emptiness, he calls forth his thoughts, echoing the last few months of life. The rain. The girl. Her words.

Alone. Alone. Alone. All his life.

Then... Not alone, anymore.

Ji Pyeong rubs his eyes, pulling back from the tiredness setting in after spending the day in a library with horrible WIFI. Thus, he starts writing, and doesn’t stop until he finishes. He stands, tapes it shut, wanders out to the street, and sticks it in the bird box in the middle of the night. He stares at the dark hole and the fading colors on the wood, wondering how something so simple can make him so happy. Tiredness fully sets in, and he yawns before waving a goodbye to the ahjussi across the road. The old man waves back in return. Contented, he wanders back in his room, shedding off his shoes and jacket.

In his attempt to sleep, he can’t seem to let his thoughts shut. The other world of darkness quickly beckons him to go back to them, asking to sink his physical body on the warm floors and find a few hours of rest and impossible dreams. He doesn’t question himself, knowing already the reason for his restlessness. Sleep is no longer his refuge. It’s not where he can wear the right clothes, talk to the right people in the right way, and find joy in imaginary situations. Why would he, when suddenly, his daylight seems to be more exciting to him than this supposed sanctuary?

But he needs the sleep anyway. The sustenance it provides proves to be beneficial for his sake. At that note, he wills his body to mold into the action he could usually fall into without a second’s notice. He chooses to sleep, not to sink into his fancies, but rather, to hasten his future.

⧫

Ji Pyeong looks through the clear window, just like any other night in December. At first glance, it sends him back his reflection, a pale ghost in the middle of the nightly frost. Subsequently, it provides him a glimpse of a young girl sitting on the pavement, absorbed with her feet playing in the fallen snow.

“It’s freezing,” Ji Pyeong immediately admonishes, just after piling a mass of thick wool around her quickly reddening neck—a makeshift scarf momentarily borrowed from Halmoni’s dusting storage closet. “Are you determined to die by frostbite?”

Dal Mi, rose-tinged cheeks, pats the spot next to her eagerly. Little flakes of snow puff out as a result, prompted by her excited, gloved hands. Ji Pyeong relents, melting down on the ice-cold spot as his bent kneecaps move to face her. She doesn’t waste time, pulling out the letter from her pocket. She reads it out to him as he feels his nose redden from the temperature that seems to be getting lower by the minute.

Ji Pyeong takes in the multi-colored lights blinking across the shops littered around the block, the humming glow casting a light in the essence of Christmas. He is drawn out of his reverie when he hears his name getting called, and he shoots a mildly irritated glance at Dal Mi, “Yes. Yes. I heard all of it. Don’t worry.”

She crosses her arms, but it comes off weirdly, “Well it seemed like you didn’t.”

He frowns. “Are you cold?”

“No. I’m fine,” she sniffs.

“No, I’m stupid enough to have let you stay outside even for a minute. Let’s get you inside, rascal.”

“What were you looking at though?” Her voice is tinged with curiosity when they’re back inside. Shedding off her jacket, scarves, and shoes, she gulps down warm water that he passes to her and then accompanies him across the table.

Ji Pyeong hesitates, pressing his fingers on the floor for warmth, and tells her even if it sounded stupid. “The lights. They were really beautiful. It reminds me that even the mundane can be that beautiful.”

He realizes, in that moment, that it is his first time to ruminate on the season. He never had the reason to do so in the first place. It was an event fashioned for families, which he clearly had the absence of. Lights, in one way, had been a trigger—forcing him to face what he’s got none of. “It was just really nice to see them, in one strip together. That’s all.”

Dal Mi takes his words in, nodding in agreement. They fall into comfortable silence as the clock ticks. His mind hums to the tune, wondering once more if he had ever slowed down this way before. He might have a few winters ago, but in the hidden corners of the night, eyes watching the snow fall from the window in a quiet orphanage, imagining a grown tree strapped with red and green bells, gifts thrusted to his eager grasp, someone gently caressing his forehead as he slept towards the morning. In those years relying on his daydreams, he would wake up on Christmas eve in better spirits than the rest of his parentless peers.

This year, Seo Dal Mi denies his imagination. She takes too much space in the room, and way more in his head. He’s not sure if he should feel anything else aside from affection, but she’s here and she won’t walk away.

The comfort cracks when Dal Mi stands up rejuvenated, quickly grabbing at her shedded, snow-sprinkled clothes. She pats them dry, then pats for the pockets. Her gasp is resounding when she finds a bit of money, and she turns to his bewildered self with a lunatic smile and dancing eyes to match.

“What are you doing?”

“Han Ji Pyeong-ssi, I’ll take you somewhere way better than this street. Just a whole park filled with Christmas lights and Christmas songs and ugly elves dancing,” she hurriedly puts them all on, ignoring his protests. “You’ll get your mind blown, I promise.”

“I thought we were working on your response,” Ji Pyeong curtly says. His curiosity is pulled, however, and he’s suddenly clothing himself in layers, finding himself following her out of the door. The cold air slaps them, heightening up his risk radar and giving him a resounding this is not a good idea, but Dal Mi grabs his hand and his shoulders jump. He looks at their conjoined hands as they depart, watching the way her gloved fingers wrapped around his own. Christmas lights from all over casts their sheen on her hand, and his affection barely bubbles out even in the afterglow.

He makes sure she holds him tight, the street is slippery after all.

Beyond that escapade, the weeks of Christmas move in multiple colors, and he falls into a rut due to his unexisting pile of work to do. This offers him a break from the tediousness of his normal system, and his decision moves to allocating most of his time on cryptocurrency instead. A day in the middle of this season, Halmoni closes up the shop earlier than normal, using the unexpected snowfall for its intended reason, which is to go home and take shelter there. She scuttles out and prays for him to have a good rest, then disappears into the night.

Ji Pyeong stops his studies and resolves to catch up on his sleep. But the appearance of Dal Mi’s recent letter buzzes his attention, swirling around the space in his head, tempting him with her probably words that usually drizzled honey. When he finally opens it, he’s amused. It seems that the man of the Seo household is as clueless with Christmas decorations as him. Dal Mi recounts the tale of her father trying to put up Christmas lights but she ended up taking him to a street filled with one instead. Ji Pyeong smiles at this in the emptiness of his room, reminding him of their own adventure many nights ago. He had bought her over-priced hot chocolate with blue and pink marshmallows from a vendor down that street, refusing one for himself despite the tempting deliciousness. It’s okay though, the look in her eyes was worth it.

He pauses to yawn, and puts it down for a while. After laying out his bed for the night, he picks it up to read again, but widens at the sudden mention of his name. His real name, written in Dal Mi’s handwriting.

...I would like to tell you about someone special I have met just this year. His name is Han Ji Pyeong and he lives in my halmoni’s shop. He likes corn dogs and he does everything in such a boring, routine manner that sometimes I’m surprised he still has humor left in him. He was a bit mean at first but he’s really nice now, especially since I have gotten to know him better.

I’m telling you this because he’s my best friend. He reminds me of eunnie sometimes that it scares me that one day he’ll just get up and leave just like she did. Although I have been seeing eunnie regularly, recently I think she doesn’t feel the same anymore and she’s tired of me. I’m scared that one day she won’t meet up with me anymore and she won’t ever return. To be truthful, I’m scared my best friend would do the same. I think I love him as much as I love eunnie.

What do you think, Nam Do San?

Ji Pyeong puts the letter down, completely in stunned silence.

Loud knocking interrupts his thoughts. He deposits the letter back to the table. He puts his ear towards the door, cool wood attached to his skin, and he quickly reels back. He springs away to grab a shovel first before turning the knob. A face surprises him, accompanied by a swat of the door banging on the wall. Halmoni walks herself in with a frustrated huff, tearing off her scarf.

She gives him a pointed look, “Took you long enough, Good Boy. It’s very cold out there for an old woman, you know.”

“Halmoni,” Ji Pyeong helps her out with her coat, but as usual she brushes his hand away in distaste.

“Yeah, yeah—I can do this myself.”

He shuts the door carefully, and locks it up as Halmoni rubs her hands for warmth.

“Halmoni, what brings you here this late?” Ji Pyeong walks over to the room’s water dispenser, letting it trickle out steaming, hot water. He hands it to her, to which Halmoni gobbles up immediately. The smoke billows, and she looks up at him as she smacks her lips.

“Can’t I visit my own shop at this time? Is it illegal?” She huffs, warming her hands around the cup but then starts to dart her eyes around.

Ji Pyeong lets out a little smile, but melts it off instantly. He rolls his eyes. “Of course you can. Now will you tell me why you’re here? I just wrote Dal Mi a letter and I’m just itching to shut my eyes any minute now. Churning them out every week, it's hard work. You should consider actually paying me now as a ghost writer.”

“Oh look at you acting all tough,” she teases. She wanders around the room, bringing out a pot. “Let’s make you some hot chocolate. I’d been craving for one myself.” A little closet filled with her supplies is cracked open and he sighs and deposits himself against the table.

“You couldn’t just have one at home?”

Halmoni pauses from her search, turning to him with a small smile. “Tell you what? For all your painful work, I’ll offer this cup to you as payment for making her happy. Will that make my unexpecting visit less awkward?”

He scoffs, curling his toes. After her search is complete, she wanders over to her things, pulling out a brown-covered package with a ribbon tying it together.

“Here.”

A toss of the unexpecting package shocks him. He eyes it warily. “What is it?”

“Open it,” Halmoni demands, but turns around so her back faces him.

Shoes. Blue ones. Clean ones. He looks beyond the room, his old, hole-filled ones just a step away from retirement. Lightness blooms in him and he clears his throat. “Thank you.”

Then, he lets his eyes wander to the opened letter near his laid out sheets, just flickering with its innocent material for him to pick it up and read its content over and over again.

Like a recording device, her words are transmuted into her voice - the voice he hears everyday, yapping and churning out ridiculous thoughts with no demand - and he can feel his heart hammer as the smell of hot chocolate wanders through the air. Halmoni suddenly gasps beyond him, aghast, spatting at him for forgetting to close one of the windows properly. Ji Pyeong, surprised, blinks repeatedly, standing up stiffly to shut them without meeting her gaze.

Halmoni sits herself down after pouring out warm, brown soothing liquid into two mugs. He inhales the scent from his, while she takes a sip of her own. She sets it down while he examines the steam rising from the filled concavity.

Later on, when Ji Pyeong’s pulling up the sheets to his shoulders, eyes wandering to the letter, and the newness of the shoes laid neatly beside him, if there are tears streaming down his eyes—it’s probably due to the cold that he’s catching from the blistering wind outside.

⧫

Before Ji Pyeong knows it, it is February.

On their shared pathway, little leaves decorate the ground in celebration of the second month of the new year. Ji Pyeong and Dal Mi spend a bit more time dawdling around the edges of the park, pressing forth on staying to enjoy the air and the banana milk that they had procured from the Seven Eleven around the corner. The sky, a brilliant shade of blue, sits above them with the white orb of the sun whispering its soothing sunshine. They sit on a bench in view of the milling crowd of life surrounding them, and they sip their straws in honest, comfortable silence.

Dal Mi smiles, pointing out several people as they come and go. She laughs at weird clothing and makes up stories for a man walking by in a top hat. Ji Pyeong finds himself agreeing that indeed, the man must be in a hurry for his wedding and unfortunately had his car wrecked two hours prior. Such an unfortunate circumstance. They end up in hysterics, before proceeding to do another one with mocking glee.

“Are you done?” Ji Pyeong stands after the fifth one.

Dal Mi nods, sitting up properly and handing him her trash. Ji Pyeong collects them and throws it in his make-shift trash bag. When they depart for the nearest waste can, a woman in light-green scrubs waves a tired hand out to stop them. Dal Mi blinks at her curiously while Ji Pyeong narrows his eyes, sensing familiarity, “Sorry, who are you?”

The woman gives a tired smile. In her hands is a torn-out missing poster, still with used tape stuck to it. “Sir, were you the one who gave this to me a few months ago? You’re wearing the same school uniform.”

Dal Mi tilts her head, “Sorry, ajhumma, who are you?”

Then, Ji Pyeong spots the picture blinking in the poster and he holds back the shake of hands, blinking back his realization of handing the same damn poster to this woman a few months ago. Although, she had been wearing faded jeans and a polo when she had thanked him profusely with reddened eyes. The incident had been so long already, that it had tucked itself smoothly to the cupboards of his memories.

The woman, her weariness haunting the air around her, tries for a better smile, looking between the two children. She looks at him and softly says, “I just wanted to give my deepest thanks to this boy,” she smiles tiredly at him, “Months ago, I had been up and everywhere for days looking for my appa. He’s…” She blinks back a bit of watery eyes, “He’s got stage two autism and I was worried sick for days and I couldn’t sleep throughout the time he was lost. One day, this boy out of nowhere called my number and hour and came to me, saying that he’s seen him. Saying that, my appa’s face was familiar when he saw my poster. Bless his heart. I cried in absolute relief, and this boy—he even came to assist me in getting him off that crazy street. Thank the heavens my appa hadn’t moved from his location at all.”

Dal Mi’s neck swivels so quickly it might snap. She does that thing again, where her eyes dance fires of some sort. Ji Pyeong blinks, tightening his lips to pull a smile, but his face muscles bite back with soft embarrassment. It comes out as sort of a reddened grimace. “It’s no problem, ma’am. I just happened to remember his face by chance… Thankfully, his T-shirt had a very memorable print… I hope for good health for your appa.”

Dal Mi is beaming like crazy. If her eyes can bulge any wider it will burst. On the other hand, he’s sweating mostly from the unusual attention. “We’ll leave now—”

“Wait,” the woman puts an insistent hand up, “I just… I just wanted to find you again and thank you in person. You see.. If I had truly lost my appa and had never seen him again, I wouldn’t have—I wouldn’t have known what to do with my life… You don’t know, young man, how much you have done for me. Thank you for taking the time.” She exhales, “And thank you for caring… The Lord, may He bless you, son.”

He wants to leave, but his palpable shock and Dal Mi’s beam forces him to stay still in his spot, “It’s not a big deal, I’m just happy… J-just… Just happy that I could… help—”

She gives him a hug, motherly in its essence. He’s shocked and shuts his mouth, eyes darting towards Dal Mi, but her eyes evoke no surprise but rather a sky filled with starlight. When the stranger pulls away, he grips his bag strap tightly as the woman gives him a final smile and a bow, this time towards the both of them, “Bless your heart, son,” then placing hands on her kneecaps, she runs a hand through Dal Mi’s hair, “Be good to your brother, okay? The family must be proud of him.”

Dal Mi grins instantly, “We do. He’s awesome.”

Exhilaration climbs his throat, accompanied by an insurgence of tightness forming in the back of his eyes. Ji Pyeong quickly looks at his feet and bows, “T-thank you, Ma'am.”

This sense of joy overwhelms him, and it’s peculiar—the feeling, he means. It’s different from eating a good meal, or getting an achievement.

This feeling.

It is akin to a lone flower growing after a millennium of drought.

Time, as it always does, passes in a blink of an eye. Ji Pyeong sees its hand move in the patterns of the season. And of course, with the brightness that dimmed ever so fluorescently at the end of his current tunnel, everything is muffled as he rides on this particular train, his everyday almost dream-like in his head.

He wonders if he had died already. After all, no one can be this happy for too long.

It’s only a few days before Ji Pyeong receives another reply from Dal Mi. By this time, he’s finishing up his sordid ties at the highschool and graduating soon. At the fading glimpse of the sunset, he catches the brush of a pale envelope in the hidden trenches of the little bird box, and feels the brush of anticipation.

When Ji Pyeong gets in the room to read it, Halmoni’s there with her arms crossed, “Get out.”

“What?” He looks up, his voice terse, numbness overtaking his shoulders. She starts walking across the room, face unreadable. In her hands is a calendar. It’s one of his make-shift calendars, messily drafted up to mind his due dates and important events. She brushes past him and towards the door. Craning her neck, she arches her brows almost demandingly. “I said get out. Let’s go. I’ll take you to my place. I’m cooking a lot for dinner tonight, so you can eat there instead. It would be too much of a bother for me to cook twice tonight. So, you must come with me, right now.”

Panic subsides. Ji Pyeong’s confused. “Why? It’s fine… I already ate.”

“What did you eat?”

“Ramyeon.” He blinks, lying smoothly, “Seven-Eleven.”

“Aiyah,” she clicks her tongue, closing her eyes then opening to send him an irritated gaze. “No. Not tonight. Ramyeon is not a meal to be eaten to celebrate, especially not for a growing man like you. Follow me and I’ll cook for you. You only graduate once after all,” as a sort of reason for her actions, Halmoni brandishes out his calendar and everything clicks in his head. Many months ago, Ji Pyeong had written Graduation Day on that, circled in red ink.

He turns away from her irritated eyes, and within them a weakly-covered goodness. He scratches his throat, feeling hot. “I…,” he bows a little stiffly, and already, Halmoni impatiently waves at him from outside.

Ji Pyeong wants to turn away, but his stomach growls and he blinks at his body in utter betrayal. Breathing in, he leaves the little room he’s finally deemed as home.

Turning away , he finds, is getting harder and harder to do these days.

“Here. Use this tissue to wipe that.”

“Thank you.”

“Here. Take more of this. It will make your bones strong.”

“Thank you.”

In the four walls of her kitchen, Ji Pyeong is once again small. He’s sitting on an actual chair eating dinner with someone. It’s domestic. It’s weird. It feels surreal… but at the same time it doesn’t . Halmoni puts down the rest of the side dishes, putting down some fish and beef on his bowl of rice. He’s soundless, affection blooming in his chest, and he digs into his meal with great relish.

“Thank you,” he bows his head, incredibly out of place in a space as homey as this. He doesn’t know what else to say but thank you.

“Go on, go on. Just eat,” Halmoni tuts, swinging her chopsticks. “There’s plenty of food, don’t get all shy with me now, Good Boy.”

They end the meal with distended stomachs and chamomile tea. As Ji Pyeong pours her a cup, she speaks after a long, quiet while, “I believe... the Lord must have sent you in the rain, on that street, for a reason.”

Ji Pyeong stills, but carries on with pouring. “The Lord didn’t send me there. I did. It just so happens that it was raining, and I was looking for room.”

She smiles tenderly and accepts the cup he’s finished filling. “Two lost souls in their youth, that just needed each other, even just for a while.”

“Why—" Irritation flickers in him. “Why are you… Why are you being all philosophical? I’m not used to this. Go back to being rude to me like you always do.”

Halmoni weakly laughs, but she looks down, gently fingering the arm of her cup. “I haven’t had someone to talk to in this house for years. Not at ten p.m. in the evening, and especially not with a cup of tea. I’m just enjoying this. Just humor me Good Boy. I guess I have been a bit lonely, just talking about the mundane things. We’ll get back to being rude to each other in the morning, I promise.”

He nods and picks up his tea. “Alright.”

Beyond that, Halmoni asks him about his plans for the future. Ji Pyeong is initially speechless, but recalls the initial plan he had drafted when he was still tucked in the orphanage. Funny. That seemed to be a lifetime ago.

“How about your parents? I’m sure they’re scared for you. I would, especially for someone so good and determined. I understand that they must have done something, you saw something in the house that made you leave—But parents… They’re the reason for why you’re here. What made you who you are today. What made you—”

He slams the cup down. “I don’t have parents. I lied. I didn’t run away. I came from an orphanage just outside of town.”

And perhaps, this is the most haunting silence Ji Pyeong has ever heard all his life.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t snatch his steel-cut gaze away from Halmoni’s stunned own. “So whatever crap you say about parents shaping who I am, the now that I made myself to be—It’s all bullshit!

“Han Ji Pyeong!” For the first time, his name is uttered from her lips. Her eyes send worries down his spine.

Ji Pyeong scoffs, giving a sardonic laugh—just pressing on because he wants to. Needs to. “Because... Do you… Do… Do you even know what I had to do to get myself to this point? I—,” He puts a hand on his closed eyes, just trembling from all the things he wants to explode with, “...I had to force myself to be someone. Force!”

“Ji Pyeong,” she says softly, her hand being swatted off when she attempts to touch him.

“No one ever taught me how to comb my hair, do my homework, use my chopsticks, or even utilize money—It’s just me! It’s just me and my bare fucking hands….” Ji Pyeong exhales shakily, slamming his hand down. Both of their teacups quivers. “What you see now is the creation of my own work. Do you understand?”

And then, it’s quiet again. All he hears is his own crying. His own beating heart. The sudden, closed off lungs and his attempts to grasp for oxygen. But, a chair squeaks.

“That’s quite painful. A horrible life,” is the only thing Halmoni says. She deposits her own cup down on the table. Then, she stands up slowly, falling on the chair just beside him. “Aigoo…” She mutters, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

He blinks through a wade of tears, letting the warmth surprise him. Then, he snatches her hand off, albeit weakly. “...I formed my own morals, my own thoughts, my own dreams… in this alien world, grasping at alien straws. I formed all of these things myself, just so I can even hope to build a shed while all those lucky people with families help them build mansions. But still…”

“Still what?”

“But still. Everyday, I force myself to believe that I have a purpose. That something, out there, is just waiting for me to reach it. Because if I don't force myself, no one will,” Ji Pyeong swivels abruptly, snarling at her motionless form, “Do you understand!? I am alone and no one will ever be scared for me. I can’t be scared for my own self, because if I do, that just means I am weak and I will never be able to achieve all the things that I have planned for myself,” he ends it with a painful gasp.

“Did you know… Why you met Dal Mi that day?” Halmoni softly questions. “Why she was there on that street?”

His lips quiver, “I… She was feeding strays.”

Halmoni slowly shakes her head. She puts her hand again on his shoulder, and this time he lets her. “She was running away.”

Ji Pyeong stills.

“She was running away from her future… That girl. That hard-headed, emotional girl. When her parents fought that afternoon, she was asked to choose between them. Her sister, In Jae, chose on the spot. Dal Mi couldn’t—it was too difficult for her—so she just ran. Just ran with her uniform like a blasted idiot,” her hands move from his shoulders to his own. She gently pats them, smiling warmly for the first time that evening. “My Dal Mi…. She wanted to stay in the past… God didn’t want that and thus, gave her you .”

Her words echo on the hardwood floors and the stark, fluorescent beams through the hollowless night.

“You pushed her, Good Boy. To look ahead. To not look back. She is happy now, more than ever, because she gets to see you.”

“I am filling her eunnie’s place. And being a penpal to fill her friendless circle. I am nothing but a placeholder.”

“You think you are. But she doesn’t think that. I don’t think that. You belong…. You fit… You have purpose… And you are needed. You are your own person here, Good Boy. You exist. And we would get scared if one day, perhaps... you disappear like smoke. So when you do leave, which you will soon as university is definitely important… I want you to call us. Send us letters from whatever dorm room you choose. Tell us how your day went, the stories you’ll get from your friends. Share the most tiring aspects of your work, maybe even the boss that you’ll hate when you climb up…. Everything. Not just the best parts, Ji Pyeong. Even the moments that you think are lackluster. Because.” She caresses his forehead on that whimsical, effervescent night, “We will answer you, I promise. And Dal Mi will, for sure.”

There is no sound but the beating of his heart.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

“I want to thank you, Han Ji Pyeong, for all that you have done and... haven’t done yet . You’re such a good, wonderful boy,” she says, “And I’ve never met anyone as good as you.”

He supposes, then and there, that there is someone out there watching. Fate, God, whoever it is. Someone out there had caused a fateful collision. Of his stones and his nightmares and a girl’s ever present glow despite her unhappiness.

They intersected, at the right moment in time—on a fateful night in the middle of a thunderstorm, and Han Ji Pyeong realizes, and by now fully accepts, how excruciatingly lonesome his world would have been if he had never been picked up by the girl who had run away from her future.

He wonders, for a second, if there is such a universe out there where she had not looked at him with her dancing eyes and sheltered him from the rain.

Han Ji Pyeong finishes his tea, lukewarm in its liquid, ceaselessly hoping that there is not.

When Ji Pyeong departs from Halmoni’s door, he spots a man climbing up the hill with his sling bag. Ink jet black hair almost fading into the backdrop of the night, exhaustion obviously rolling off his expression in waves. As he walks, a stack of fliers flip flop in his clasp. The plastic bag hanging off his other arm jostles side to side. Ji Pyeong warms his hands, tugging them in his pockets. He goes straight towards his way home, until the man in his periphery trips against a large rock, sending his papers and the plastic bag flying pretty much everywhere.

From his haul amongst the contents of the plastic bag, the coke cans are bent but fine. It’s not the same for the drumsticks that have fallen against the pavement, their bits a mess and dirtied. The man simply hangs his head, bending down and sighing heavily, “Aigoo…”

Ji Pyeong readily gathers all the items near him and holds it out for the man before he even notices. The man bends up, surprise tinting his energy-depleted eyes, but he still stands fully to send him a jovial smile. “Oh. Thank you, kid.”

“I’m sorry for the…” Ji Pyeong eyes the chicken. “The loss.”

“Indeed it was. It was for my daughter,” The man sighs again in dismay, crossing his arms, “She likes chicken,” his voice trails off as an afterthought, more on shaking his head at the accidental display of food waste. “It was a surprise for breakfast.”

“Here,” Ji Pyeong places all the cans inside the plastic bag, then even picks up the few pieces of chicken. “I think this can still be salvaged. Someone told me that the stray cats around the area love chicken bits. I hope you can think of it in this way so that it won’t go to waste.”

He sends him a small smile, wiping the oil off his hand on his T-shirt.

“You’re right, they do like the chickens here,” the man says, eyes twinkling, “I always say that to my daughter, but she never does get the time to feed them. She’s always doing her own thing, that kid.”

Then Ji Pyeong hands over the rest of his things before bowing. The older man thanks him, surprising him a bit when he gets an affectionate pat on his shoulder.

“Thanks. You’re a good man.” The man says with a grin, beaming this time with dancing eyes. Ji Pyeong freezes. Then when he realizes he’s staring, he nods quickly, stumbling to bow again. The man walks past him, tired, weary, but still joyous, and as Ji Pyeong watches, he happily walks towards home—where a daughter awaits him.

That night, Ji Pyeong can’t sleep and he rolls over to his things, grasping fresh paper and a pencil, desperate to write it all in one go.

“I’ve lived the same daily routine everyday until now…”

He can’t help but with the way the words just pour out of his senses.

“…I think of you, wait for you, think about your day…”

“I don’t know if we can stay happy like this forever, “ He goes to sleep with his words humming in the back of his reverie, like a tune to a funny earworm he can’t let go – “But if you stay with me, and always be with me like this…

… I think it might be possible.”

⧫

The next morning, Ji Pyeong is bleary-eyed and tired when he takes her to school. He’s woken up in a rush, mostly from insistent pounding of knocks coming from the door. He opens it, finding Dal Mi screeching about being tardy and leaving him. He had retorted that she could have just gone to school without him, and it wasn’t like she was a big baby that needed him. This leads to both of them tacking on a foul mood, nullifying their usual morning breeziness. In the middle of their path, he’s half expecting her to give up first with a toss of her hair and an insult, but she surprises him once more by not uttering a single sound even until she’s out of his sight beyond her school’s borders.

She doesn’t even say goodbye.

In his own form of disgruntled spirits, he goes forth with his plan of finding rooms again, this time with a much more coolish demeanor. There is an absence of rush on his shoulders, knowing full well that he can afford the initial deposit, and even more. He has long since packed his things up, knowing full well about his plans of leaving the tiny room he had slowly come to see as a sanctuary. It’s for him to move on and stop living off Halmoni. It’s time for him to stand firmly on his own two feet, so he can meet them head to head without guilt creeping up every now and then.

The room is good. It has a crisp, pristine air of something anew. The tables are smooth to touch, and he imagines Dal Mi sitting on the couch, and then Halmoni at the door, bringing a plastic bag brimming with dishes. Ji Pyeong smiles, shutting the cupboards with a peaceful sense of finality.

And for once in his life, he does not seek anything else.

But fate isn’t done. And this is how his world ends, not with a bang but an earthquake.

The earthquake comes after when he realizes his money is missing. The aftershock comes in the form of a man with dancing eyes and the woman who sired him.

Ji Pyeong is frozen. And nothing can deplete him of life except for watching the woman who had touched his heart, turn her back against him just like that. Just like that . Spitting in his own existence, with the mere push of his money, towards a man he thought so highly of just by reading about him.

His world, in all that sense, is destroyed.

There is no more aching. No more sadness. No more joy. Like a second after a magnitude of equivocal destruction — There is numbness, echoing of silence, and the loss of life that have once been treasured.

The lifeless are shocked into living. In retrograde, he is a life-filled being shocked into lifelessness, and all the loss of things that he had been desperate for. Once again, for Han Ji Pyeong, it is all darkness, and it is all empty. The construction of his world has fallen, just in a singular, vast moment, and has gone back in a way the universe had once been before its cataclysmic big bang.

So, he screams.

And Halmoni simply says, just shortly after his pulsating flamethrower, “...That’s amazing. In just so little time, you have made so much.”

His hands shake. “I can’t believe you… you used me . You made me help you in your stupid business and forced me to write those stupid letters for your stupid granddaughter…” he trails off, watching Halmoni just send him a small smile.

“She’s not stupid,” Halmoni replies, watching him with an soft, haunting gaze. “And you know that too.”

He scoffs and stomps his foot down, knowing fully well that he is the one stupid here. The year he had spent stuck in this place was a collective fever dream. Entirely episodic of a wasteful, mindless drama. He should have known that for him, it was all too good to be true. Just a mirage in a dessert. Just a room that rented far too low, his stupid self oblivious to the broken walls and cracked roof rafters.

At the end of the day, he is no one.

“You probably set me up. The two of you. You irritating, old pushover of a woman. And she—an absolute witch that pested me every hour of my life spent here—You think I’ll still thank you when you just used the money that I made just for someone, a hopeless adult trying to scavenge for his dreams, so that he can undeservingly achieve a minor breakthrough?” Ji Pyeong is gasping for air. “You are all evil. Explicitly evil. Stabbing me right in the back after giving me everything I wanted to hear, just so that you can use me and throw me away!? I understand that I am trash. I understand that I seem like I have no future. But you know what? You…. You know what? I’ll prove all of you wrong. I’ll rise to the top and you , and your stupid granddaughter and everyone who has ever kicked me down, will understand that I have worth. That I have a place. Not for just some stupid penpal job or being a goddamn hearing aid, but as someone who will exist properly with nothing else to want in life.”

There is numbness. There are shaking shoulders. There is a grandmother, watching him with nothing left to give; except she does actually. With nothing squeezing out of her eyes nor his lips, she walks back into his room like he had said nothing. For a second, it is quiet. And then she returns, a giant bag on her arms.

She slams it onto him. His veins numb. He looks down, and he feels nothing. The money is still warm, tucked in organized plastic.

“Then what…”

“It was mine,” she says. “That’s all yours. All 70 million.”

There are cherry blossoms that have fallen, crushed under the stompings of his dreams.

Ji Pyeong storms off and doesn’t look back.

In the end, as they say, is always the place that regret comes to say their condolences. If fate had led them to meet each other, then fate can go fuck itself.

⧫

The first night his world gets destroyed with nothing but seventy million won and a vision he had no one but himself to share with, Han Ji Pyeong forgoes his past, perfect year and races to look for bus tickets. His throat is dry and he is bitter, and for the first time after he had acquainted himself with an idiotic girl named Seo Dal Mi, he is alone and hopelessly lost yet again.

There is something painful about leaving, Han Ji-Pyeong thinks, that it feels akin to a tree being unrooted out of its tendrils from the deep, soiled ground. Like he’s just cut off entwined cardiac muscles and ruptured the skin of his myocardium.

Suddenly, his hands move to get paper. He stops, pausing, dwelling on the gravity of what he had lost. This is unfair. But maybe, it isn’t. Maybe it isn’t for him. Maybe he’s paying for something he’s done in another life—and this his moment of reckoning, a form of cross signals from another life.

That thought is dashed immediately. If there’s anything that he hates and is ironically filled with, it is his presumed reliance on instilled fate and hope and dreams. Like his systemic life, his idiotic reliance on those abstract things ebbed and flowed with no source of logic. He promises this: no longer will he rely on such things. Not anymore. Not this time. Not towards a future uncertain.

(No one sees him off, not in this universe.)

Ji Pyeong finds a seat quickly because it’s a night fare. He sees tired eyes and yawns, and wonders if anyone here carries a weight similar to his. If they can measure up to anything he had ever felt this past year alone. If they carry a burden of guilt so effervesecently loud and ground-shattering that it makes them want to scream. He pushes down the bitter vomit wanting to desperately spill out with his mixture of desperate, cold tears, and he swallows with his tucked bag and blue shoes. By the time the bus is rolling, he looks out and sees the spring greet his nose.

Dal Mi will adore this sight.

Has it already been a year? A year of scaling up a tree, with his eyes sky bright and dream-filled, ignoring the fear of getting back down?

Yes. It had been so. He had been such a fool climbing up so high up with her.

Ji Pyeong opens up his bag to get his bottle of water, but a deep patch the bus passes sends his open bag tossing out his things. He curses and attempts to get his notebooks back in proper order.

“Young man,” he looks up and catches a girl holding pieces of worn paper. After thanking her, he takes them in his hands with a sense of rabid possession. Folded pink post-its, was what it all looked like to an unsuspecting individual. To him, a ghost of a lifeline.

He smoothens them out carefully and slips it between the composition of his notebook.

Ji Pyeong plans to take a cat nap for a minute or two. He knows when he gets off, he’s back to where he belongs: the cold, unfriendly street. Rain or no rain, he’ll be racing off to find a place he can stay, to find the lowest rate so that the money in his bag won’t feel ostensibly used. His plan is still on course, of course, despite his once idyllic thinking. There is no used to dwelling in the past, in this guilt, for there is a cost that will hurt more than he expects it to. He will refurbish his lost ground, this lost world of his, and he will plant sleek buildings and skyscrapers. He will be so high up the ground that he can only see what lies up and beyond, into the heavens above. He will never have to look back down again.

But for now, Han Ji Pyeong is terrified as the bus leaves for Seoul.