9
年
後
NINE YEARS AFTER
“Hyeon.”
The name feels like black guck against the man’s tongue – coarse like melted asphalt, licking away at the tense air enclosed in the vicinity. His heart blurs around the edges, of hearing himself say it out loud once again with that purpose. A calling. A little bit too overdue. Almost a decade too late. Too long. Too worn. Too many days left unsaid and rotting away in the deepest pits just below his ribs.
The wildflower stems dig into Jun’s palms as he heaves in a breath, heartbeat resounding in his ears, willing himself not to run away because it’s been years. It’s been nine years, but it still hurts. It still bristles through his skin, oiling away at his nerves — charring the memories back to life.
As if Kim Woohyeon had just been over yesterday, asking him his purpose, playing with his fingers, pulling him further into the fall with his all knowing grin.
And it hurts — always hurts. God, how much did the boy hurt him.
The raven can see his reflection against the glass, already spotting the growing devastation in his features as he makes out Woohyeon’s framed photo through the delicate barrier, a few wilted flowers and a ceramic box that contained everything the boy once was.
The aisle feels miles wide as Jun takes a step forward to finally face the truth he tried so desperately to ignore all these years. Refusing to meet the boy he once loved—still pestiferously loves, once again. Fearful of everything that comes and unravels after the truth is set and he has all but faced it.
Reality has never felt real since the day Woohyeon ceased to exist. But now, looking past the glass and into the stagnant, developed eyes that he’ll never see again beyond the photographs that the boy has left, it’s more real than ever.
In loving memory of
キッム·ウオヨン
1995 – 2013
“I guess I’ve finally found you, huh?” Jun tries to scoff, fiddles with a small flower from the bunch in his hand — yellow, exactly like the boy’s favorite color. The soft scoff morphs into a choke through the silence — broken. Still so hurt, he heaves and the back of his eyes sting, so frustratingly painful that he has to desperately rub them to chase the upcoming tears away. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to attend your service back then, Hyeon. For years I never visited you at all, I—all these years, you must’ve been waiting. I’m sorry for taking this long.”
There isn’t a day when Jun doesn’t hurt. No day where he forgets the sound of Woohyeon stealing his heartbeat and breath away. No day when he isn’t trying to cope and forcing himself to swallow the cold, iron truth of his best friend’s insidious decision of choosing to end his own life.
Jun needs closure. He owes himself that. Nine years is enough time to grieve. Nine years is enough time to forget. That’s what they all say. But he just can’t seem to grasp the concept of forgetting Kim Woohyeon, his first true friend, his first love, and everything else that he could’ve been if he just held on — just enough for Jun to save him from the fall he had planned to jump into.
But these are selfish wishes, Jun decides, because Woohyeon doesn’t owe him that, and he doubts he deserves a second chance with the boy, when he had more than enough time to do what he had to if he had chosen to years ago.
“I’m sorry, Woohyeon-ah. I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job at keeping you company when all you wanted was someone to be there. God, I miss you. I miss you so much, Hyeon—” a shattered sob rips through the man’s words, sounding younger, a version of himself that has frozen in time from when he last felt free. The guilt tips over his heart, stems breaking skin, a few stray petals falling off as he grips tight to ground himself because it’s been years but he still can’t get over it.
“And I have so much to say. I had so much that I wanted you to know, but I guess I’m nine years too late.”
He fishes for the boy’s beloved book in his bag, the same old astronomy textbook he has written on to pour the thoughts Woohyeon has left him with. It’s been inside a box for years, candidly collecting dust on top of his closet where he shoved it after he moved out for university a few prefectures over. It’s only recently that he got reacquainted with the pages that enveloped his confessions, and amidst packing his belongings into the moving boxes, he finally found the reason why the boy wanted him to have it. Why his sister went out of her way to deliver it nine years ago. He heaves, chest yanking as broken pieces of his old self spilled out of the pages.
“You know, I finally got to read what you’ve written.” Jun chuckles, a broken sound, remembering the afternoon he found his first love’s own scribbles between the last paragraphs of the book. As if Woohyeon knew he would find it. Someway, somehow. His vision blurs, mind staggering because it hurts more that Woohyeon shrewdly knew he’d find it. Knew he’d end up writing there too. The once bright boy knew him too much. “God. You’re a jerk.”
He finds the page, rereads the confession that isn’t his. Reads it again, and again, until the words start burning themselves into the back of his eyes. Until it’s all he can taste.
“I know I’ve been selfish to even ask you to come back to me, to suffer for my sake, but you’re really too cruel–” Jun laughs bitterly. “Don’t—don’t tell me you love me when you’re already dead. Just when I thought I’ve moved past the guilt, you come back with the words I’ve always wanted to hear. All these years I’ve been asking the same question, and all this time it was just under my nose. Still, you gave me an answer. It took your truth nine years to reach me, but it still reached me, Hyeon.”
His voice sounds like a knife, fingers gripping the paper until the edge tears. Body shaking, he smiles, a broken smile, and finally lets his guard down.
“I—I loved you too, Kim Woohyeon. And fuck, I wish you knew. That I’d have been okay with holding my breath next to you for as long as I could if you wanted someone to be there next to you while you drowned into yourself. That knowing and holding your hand through the unknown of this existence was enough. I wanted to be what you needed–” Jun heaves. “But—but I also wanted you to tell me what I could’ve done to make you stay longer.”
“I’m always plagued with made up memories of what could’ve happened if I just tried to understand you, really understand you— and I often wonder what life would be right now for us if I just gave you the answers you’ve been longing for. If I actually just listened to what you were trying to say.” Jun cries, and he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care that he’s loud enough for his pain to echo and resound within the hall, doesn’t care that he’s starting to shake a sob out of his system. “You didn’t even say goodbye.”
Opening the glass takes incredible strength, just a few breaths after his cries have mellowed down into the nostalgic twilight peeking from the window panes — but seeing the vibrant yellow next to Woohyeon’s once bright smile, it’s a reassurance.
Jun steps back and engraves the image of Woohyeon’s face, because he knows it’ll be the last time he’ll stand here. In this sleepy town that almost preserved their memories like a glass bottle. The last time he’ll acquaint himself with the futile could-have-beens, the regret, and the hurting that comes with it. He vows to keep Woohyeon’s memory tucked at the back of his heart. Now what only remains is a young boy full of wonder, who had so much to ask the world, and left when he didn’t hear the answers he was looking for.
Kim Woohyeon was abrupt. A shooting star. Bright, passing, and yet he has left his mark, a whiplash, somewhere lost within the cave of Jun’s chest. Engraved on the surface of his beating heart that once pulsed for him, for a boy so lonely and lost who had so much to offer.
Kim Woohyeon lived as a question, and Fujisaki Jun lives as his answer.
“And Hyeon–” Jun stops, his suitcase coming to a halt that echoes through the room. He looks back once more at his first love’s grainy smile framed to keep his memory alive, until all is forgotten, and everyone falls into the same oblivion. Time heals. Time gives back. Time forgets.
Time, like its cruel nature, ultimately destroys everything it has created eventually.
A flicker of a yearning nineteen year old boy smiles sadly in return. “The world is far more lonelier without you in it.”
Fin.
© Rizu Lu
All Rights Reserved.
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