Hyeon,

In the real world outside of this page, where everything is less poetic and inescapably shitty, with no metaphors to mask what actually is — you’re not here. You no longer are.

Nine days after you had disappeared, your sister came by to drop this textbook off at my doorstep. It was out of the blue. More unexpected than the day you didn’t show up, and then the next day after. 

We have never spoken before, let alone have gotten acquainted, but her eyes vaguely reminded me of yours. An almost diasporic boredom that settled in her stare. A little like the way you’ve been looking for somewhere to belong to, mirroring the unspoken out of place-ness that gritted at your edges. 

Jin, as she introduced, gave me a curt smile the moment I took this thing in my hands, and in an almost fragile tone admitted she hadn’t been aware that you had another friend outside of your social circle; a bit of red climbing to rest on her nose as we settled in awkward silence. 

I anticipated the stilted atmosphere. The gut wrenching feeling of your disappearance was more prominent than ever after the first week of you gone — with no sign of return. I could’ve said the same at that moment – that I didn’t even know you had a sister. That I’m faced with the fact that I don’t know anything about you at all.

I had a feeling that you were as much of a stranger to your own sister, as you were to me. The way she stared off into the distance as I walked her back to the station was enough for me to perceive that. It was rarely something two strangers could distinctly relate to – the futile waiting for an answer to a nineteen year old question, the mystery that you are, and yet there we were.

The realization was discomposing. I don’t know anything about you. What did I know, other than the act that you had plastered on for me all this time?

It’s unsettling how little I’ve been let in — or maybe it’s how limited I’ve tried to get to know you. 

The bond I thought we had is starting to crumble under these thoughts and reflections. The thought that I probably wouldn’t even know your favorite color if I hadn’t made that disinterested guess out loud that time you were bleeding, the graze of scarlet on your arm greeting the fluorescents of my room after getting caught on a shrub on your way to my house. The line was almost too perfect to be deemed an accident — but I didn’t trudge further. I never believed it was my position to make the move, and pry for answers that I’m not meant to hear.

My dad, ever the off-kilter character, always bought the multicolored bandaids from the pharmacy, much to your fascination when I brought the box over. In typical Hyeon fashion, you childishly refused and tossed the random grape purple I had handed to you. Instead, you scavenged through the assortment, and chose a chartreuse strip buried under all of the deeper colors. You smirked up at me, at the way I rolled my eyes.

“Huh.” I scoffed as you gingerly stick it onto the glistening cut. “Didn’t take you as a fan of yellow.”

“Hm.” You hummed in approval, a little nod following. The darkness of your eyes met mine. “It sort of reminds me of myself.”

Yellow, the blinding color of a sweet lie. The shade of your existence that beamed and bursted without a forewarning. A stain on the stark, bland paper white of my memories.

It had began to settle. The lingering thought of your back being swallowed by the vignette of that night, and the following days that you didn’t show up, the lies you proclaimed that I believed were true, and the questions that I’m left with to fill the void you’ve left.

The more I realize that I may never hear your answers, the more desperate I feel and yearn to see you again. Talk to you more about the universe, the stars, the way you burned so brightly against everyone else, against me. I no longer want to be a stranger – I don’t want to be a stranger when it comes to you. I want to know more. I want to know, I want to pry, I want to listen, I want to, I want, want — but what about you, Hyeon? What do you want?

Do you want me to find you? Do you want to stay hidden? Do you want us to step back? Is this what you wanted?

Before your sister had the chance to cross the station’s gates, the string that had been holding me together all week finally snapped under the weight of your book, numbing my clasped fingers that have begun to squeeze the pages as if that would juice out the answers — this almost out of grasp farewell. I couldn’t stomach it. The unspoken truth of your face beginning to disperse from my mind the longer you didn’t return, and how I couldn’t handle that.

So I asked your sister why. I don’t know why I did it. It must have been the desperation, the way I’ve been keeping my composure up for days when the thought of what you might’ve done and your safety turned my stomach inside out.

I asked her why she had decided to give this textbook to me. Why you could have left without giving us a forewarning. A reason. How she knew how to find me, if you had told her — why you wanted me to have this instead of anyone else. The questions kept brimming out of me that I was finding it hard to breathe, all choked up that your sister’s face had turned all blurry from the way my chest tightened. I felt pathetic then. I felt like I had lost the moment I let all of this happen.

Jin looked wounded at the questions, confused, because why would I ask her these seemingly obvious things when I should be one of the few people who should’ve known why?

The desperation in my voice was hard to miss. It was the first time I’ve digested how real your absence was…how the thought of you never coming back is more terrifying than anything. The crack in her expression mirrored the vulnerability eating away at me, baring its head for the first time since you’ve left.

She had stopped to think of an answer, and told me that you would’ve wanted me to keep it. That I could be different from the rest of them. That you might have trusted me enough to keep a piece of you with me. That I could probably convince you to come back to us – because why else would you write my name on a ripped sticky note and leave it over this thing? 

I hate that I should have seen it coming – that exact moment of myself, dumbly standing in the busy station with your book in my hands and nothing else left other than the question of if you’ll ever return, and if I even deserve the answer.

But with you laughing at the sky the last night I saw you, I couldn’t see anything in my peripheral. Hyper focused to the fact that you always came back, as long as I waited — blind to how thin your walls have become, how you’ve began to dull down, how you’ve grown quieter, how yellow has always been the color that’s so easily drowned out by everything else, by the white of nothing at all.

A star on the verge of losing their glow.

I didn’t notice the way your hands have started to shake every time you held mine, how you looked at me as if I was miles away. I never really saw past the emotions crowding my vision, zeroed in to how much I adored the way you existed next to me, always came back to me.

Goddamnit, Hyeon.

You should’ve just socked me in the face that night, screamed at me, demanded what I’ve been neglecting, so I wouldn’t have been such a fool to laugh with you when you stroked the way I’ve acted so passive, not fucking destroy me by—

I hate that you didn’t ask for help. I hate how you left us all. I hate the way that you’re hurting me so much. I hate that I can’t seem to grasp you even though you’ve all but buried yourself into my head, my heart that has always been weak against the fragility of your existence —

Why didn’t you tell me?

Why did you leave without telling me why?

I hate you.

(I don’t.)

(But lying feels good for once.)

Yours,
Jun

(—who wishes he can 
lie like you.)

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© Rizu Lu

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