Hyeon,

Like everything else whirling through space, I had barreled through time without any direction — free in a sense. I had no person I gravitated to, no dream to conquer, nothing to treat as an epicenter.

I lived, and in a way of my own, that was enough.

But ever since you stepped — broke — into my life that second night, I started to find my axis.

My balance, once as solid as the gravity that’s keeping me stuck here, had disintegrated into pieces for you to rake through — the night I finally took a good look at your boyish features under the dim fluorescents of my room and noticed how you smiled with your eyes and yet still looked so devastatingly sad. 

You had nuzzled your head into my shoulder, soft hair brushing against my cheek that smell like a time I can never truly recall. It caught me off guard. The way you sat so close to me, and how at the same time, felt incredibly distant.

You would whisper, sometimes, as if all you had to say are secrets for me to keep. And maybe we were a secret. Something you can keep in your pocket for the time you’ll walk into the sea — heavy enough to keep you from second thinking, from looking back.

From being found again.

I wish I ran after you. I wish I had pulled you closer, tighter. I wish I had folded myself over you to hide you away from everything that made you look at me the way you did. 

I couldn’t tell why, but you’ve always felt so far away. The feeling, the first sign of the tear, began to collapse a version of myself that I thought I was, the more you buried yourself into me. The free fool that didn’t care, the one who would’ve moved away when you’d raise those effete fingers to touch the side of my face. It festered, the more I grew curious, the overwhelming ache to reach out to you — to finally keep up. 

And as if you understood the longing that began to take root inside of me, your lingering touches started to grow, gaze boiling with an unknown type of intensity that caused the lines to blur until there weren’t any lines to begin with.

I started to revolve around you, the more you strayed into my world. Every question you asked felt like another meteorite catapulted into the air, and like a fool, I tried catching them one by one — not because I had the answers, but in a hopeful attempt to keep them in my own pocket for later.

(They ended up charring my fingers and burned out too quickly.)

It became a cycle. You smiling at me from across the room and the growing shooting stars I’ve been collecting inside the small pocket within the back of my mind. A place that only exists to preserve the conversations we’ve had — a ratty old sweater that can house you, the fragility of you.

The floor got colder, my bed grew warmer, we were still nothing after all the sleepless nights we’ve spent just asking questions we have no answers to, and yet we didn’t care. 

(I always thought we never cared.)

The night you ineluctably slipped under my duvet right next to me around quarter past one, I didn’t push you away. I didn’t have the heart to. 

“I saw you once.” You whispered, a sacred secret. Your fingers traced the sheets, as if drawing what you’ve seen. “It was around this time, at the suspension bridge in Odaiba.”

I immediately knew the exact moment you were referring to. My chest constricts, at the way your eyes refused to meet mine, at my heart ringing in my ears. You smiled, a small knowing grin to yourself. Your fingers hesitate.

“You stopped someone from jumping off.”

The memory is hazy, almost unmoving. It was freshman year. That morning, I had gotten into a rough argument with my dad. Reluctant and refusing to go home after cram school, I randomly picked a line, got on a train, one after the other. Headed to nowhere. 

I had found myself loitering around Shibaura by the time I caught glimpse of a figure, a middle school girl, attempting to climb onto the other side of the crosswalk. I didn’t know why I felt compelled to stop her, why I couldn’t just keep walking like other people in this city would have done — but before I knew it, and a little bit of fight, I had hauled the girl off and away from the railings.

“You were there?”

“From a distance.” You confessed, eyes finally meeting mine, and an expression on your face I foolishly failed to distinguish in the darkness. “I thought, ‘Wow, that guy’s really cool.’ — but then I realized how stupid you were, at how you tried to pry her off the ledge.” Your voice grew thin. Softer. “And how your back looked from where I was when you protected her, how you looked kind. Stupidly kind.”

I remember her crying into my chest until the sun spilled over the city’s silhouette. I remember her thanking me. I remember my dad’s angry face when I finally returned home after he looked for me all throughout the night. I remember him looking resigned, and relieved. I remember the warmth when he wrapped his arms around me, and imagining how that girl must’ve felt when I held her there.

I watched you watch me that night as I unload that day, watery eyes freezing the air in my lungs, a quiet question directed under the faint glow brushing your cheekbone from the yellowing streetlight outside my window — a little bit like asking for the same idealized arms that pulled strangers off the edge. I didn’t answer since I assumed you already got your reply when I didn’t say anything and held your hands that have not stopped fidgeting.

(I suppose with how everything turned out, I thought wrong.)

A fracture formed that night. An untold yearning for answers, for holding — a promise of saving.

“I wished to meet someone like you.” You had whispered after a moment of silence, when I thought you were finally asleep and I moved your hair away from your eyes. And I thought it was unfair, how easy it was for you to reel me in, to make me feel bigger than the universe in that moment.

You drew me in so easily, almost like you have a gravity of your own that traps anything — anyone — that flies too close.

And I hated it. I hate it so much. I hate that a quiet touch from you can make me forget who I’ve always been. I hate that one word from you can make me break into a thousand worthless pieces. I hate that the idea of your existence makes me drop onto my knees, onto that bridge, right back down into earth where everything is just so ugly without you.

I have the answer now, Hyeon. I’ve always had the answer.

But I have a feeling that you no longer want to hear it.

Yours,
Jun

(—the guy who was once stupidly free,
then came you.)

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© Rizu Lu

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