Hyeon,

I hear you giggling. Mostly at night. When I press my ear against the wall, the same spot where you’ve found yourself slotted against too many sweltering dawns – I can hear you beyond the chaffing wallpaper.

You sound happy. Less lonely. Half breathless, half cloy like all the cotton candy suckers you stuff in your puffer coat pockets — like the night you confessed that you liked a girl who seemed like she bloomed every time you saw her.

I knew when you peered at me, mirth swimming under your gaze, heat of your fingers searing on my arm, that I’m a fool for falling for you. You, the ever charming, reckless stranger who keeps ricocheting from my grasp — pretty, destructive, lost boy — grins back like he knows there’s more to your grip, more to your hushed avowals, frivolously catching one heart after the other. 

I couldn’t understand, but it still rang clear between the bitter taste that your confession had left me with.

I’ve fallen in love with you.

The realization felt easy. It was a point that spread an unknown, buzzing warmth under my stomach, tugged on a part of me — my heart, it felt like — that’s gotten softer since it knew you, and has grown even lighter through the nights you had spent wasting away next to me.

Unlike how you couldn’t swallow around the way your eyes would sometimes linger on my back, I could stomach the truth. 

Somehow, the reflection of liking you almost felt inevitable. I’ve never liked anyone before, so I didn’t really get a chance to know my preferences – didn’t get a chance to warn myself when I let you in. It was an unforeseen turn of events, liking a boy — liking you, but it didn’t ruffle my resolve. Instead, I became gentler. I grew curious of the way your movements sometimes stuttered around my gaze, almost wanted to conceal this incredulous budding affection from the world’s judging eyes, keep it here, where it’s safe for you to settle into.

But as I’ve come to realize the night we listened to your favorite vinyl record, curled next to each other on the cold unwelcoming floor of my room, we didn’t share the same sentiments about each other — about liking the same gender.

Because you were someone like that. You’re Hyeon. You scratched on dried scars until they bled, dug into my chest like you wouldn’t leave in the end; said she smelled like sun when my chest swelled under your intensity and I almost let the affection proclaim the truth. And when I asked you how you just grinned, eyed me like I am the exact opposite of that. 

My heart that got to know you through the dawns we’ve spent — how you’d sometimes stare at the moon in dumbstruck awe as I begrudgingly read to you next to my window, how you’d look at me like I glowed a mellow warmth that also drew you in enough to keep coming back — discerned which you actually preferred; gravitated to. A saccharine realization that brought a ripeness to my face that I couldn’t help.

Despite the truth peering at me in the face, I stayed quiet. Like I’ve always been sufficiently good at. For your sake. Or maybe for my own.

You had cracked, three hours after the blithe confession. You told me you were lying, and laughed like it’s funny to edge me off your palms like that, hurt me like it’s love. Lie to feed a fire, confess the truth to dowse the burn. Because you don’t like girls, and you can’t like boys. Voice plangent while you gripped my hand, tucked your softness that felt more hollow on my shoulder and giggled like the empty void living inside you didn’t sting.

I thought I did the right thing by staying quiet, but maybe I’ve always been wrong about what you had wanted that night, and all the nights after. Maybe I wanted to protect myself more than I had wanted to protect you.

The ghost of your giggles still echoes, and I find myself melting. But no matter how much I miss you, the noise gets too much and my heart starts bruising around the edges, so I play your favorite Daoko record to drown you out.

It never works, so I open my eyes instead.

When I open them, the sun’s in my eyes – blinding, and I can only hear white noise. There’s no sound and it’s more deafening than anything. There’s no you. No giggling, no whispers — just the gaping silence of your absence. And the cold hard truth that I can never hear you talk about the universe like I used to, fall asleep to your whispers, and wake up to your noises.

You’ve left, and now, I only ever hear you in my dreams. Where I find myself back in my room, against the wall, listening to you still exist on the other side.

Yours,
Jun

(—the only person that can still
hear your empty laughter.)

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© Rizu Lu

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