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I want to live longer.
I want to love you longer, say it again,
I want to love you longer
& sing that song
again.
— I AM NOT READY TO DIE YET, ARACELIS GIRMAY
Chaewon is in Hyejoo’s bedroom again. Hyejoo knows this even from where she is standing in the hall, because she can see the pale gossamer of her hair through the doorway, slight as the shiver of a butterfly’s wing. Hyejoo knows this even though the dorm is locked and bolted and closed to the world, because Chaewon has always found her way in through to Hyejoo, through to her trapdoors and hidden places. Hyejoo knows this even though Chaewon died two weeks ago, because Chaewon is turning her face to look at her now, silver hair spilling down over her shoulders like water, mouth parting in the memory of a name.
Hyejoo, Hyejoo can almost hear her saying. Hyejoo-yah, come here.
She only imagines it, of course. Chaewon can’t speak, not anymore. But she doesn’t need to, for Hyejoo to know exactly what she would say. Exactly what she wants.
Chaewon is in Hyejoo’s bedroom. Chaewon calls, and Hyejoo comes.
The summer before Chaewon left for university, Hyejoo sank into what her parents called—very politely—a “funk.” You should go out for a run and soak up the sunshine, her father said. You should get a head start on your studying, her mother said. But Hyejoo did nothing of the sort, her beat-up trainers sitting neglected by the front door, her books collecting dust on her desk. Only slouched in various positions around her room and replayed video games she’d beat countless times before and took long naps to shut out the brightness coming in through the windowblinds. Her mother lectured her, and her father suggested she listen to her mother, but Hyejoo felt rather accomplished in her lack of accomplishment. What else was all this time for, she wondered. This in-between phase, lazy and lethargic as the primordial ooze inside a cocoon, stuck waiting to be transformed. It was this childish, self-satisfied thought she held in her mind as she drifted off, and when she woke up, Chaewon was in her bedroom.
“What’re you doing in here,” Hyejoo blurted. Her bedroom was striped in half-shadow, half-gold, both shades deep and dark. It could have been any hour of sunset, that knife’s edge poised between afternoon and evening, neither cleaved apart quite yet. Time always seeming to stretch itself infinite in the summer.
Chaewon crossed her arms. Her bike helmet hung from her elbow by the straps. She was standing by the foot of Hyejoo’s bed, and Hyejoo was struck with the horrible inkling that Chaewon had in fact been standing there for a long time, watching her sleep, just waiting for her to wake up. She could feel the drool drying on her cheek.
“—ignoring my messages,” Chaewon was saying. She had made a noble effort to keep her arms crossed in coolly righteous disapproval, but as she spoke she progressively worked herself up more and more until her hands eventually flew up and started flailing about to gesticulate her points. “I finally had enough and biked up here to get your mom to let me in, only to find you sleeping at six P.M. like you’ve finally gone and lost it—”
“What’s wrong with sleeping at six P.M.?” Hyejoo crossed her arms, too. Two could play at that game. She had fallen asleep on top of her blankets in the cloying heat, and she was only wearing an oversized Adventure Time T-shirt, but she felt no urge to cover herself up, no need to hide. This was Chaewon, after all; Chaewon who always seemed to find Hyejoo at her worst, and then stayed, like that was no less than what she’d been looking for. “Isn’t it weirder to break into somebody’s room and stare at them while they’re sleeping?”
Chaewon’s hands clutched at the air, found nothing, and gripped themselves instead. “You haven’t talked to me for weeks!” Hyejoo had seen Chaewon annoyed countless times; exasperated, sure; even outraged, at anything from inconsistently written drama characters to the girl who had stolen her iced coffee order the last time they went to Starbucks to global warming. But she’d never been this upset at Hyejoo; hardly hurt. A lump formed in Hyejoo’s throat, but she held her ground, hands fisted in her bedsheets. If this was what Chaewon wanted, barging into Hyejoo’s space and demanding to be let in, then this was what she got.
“I mean, what am I supposed to think?” Chaewon went on, hands on her hips. “That you’ve suddenly decided to ditch me? That you’ve fallen into a coma? That you’ve moved across the country?” She sucked in a breath to keep going, and then seemed to lose all her steam at once, hands falling to her sides, voice subdued: “That you’d left?”
The lump in Hyejoo’s throat rose into a wave of resentment, bitter enough to choke on. “Left?” Hyejoo repeated, voice low. “Me? How could that be, when you’re the one who’s leaving?”
The moment it was out, all the tension deflated from the room, as though a balloon ruptured with a pin. Hyejoo huffed out a breath, left feeling hollow, almost fragile for having aired her grudges so easily. An organ turned out and exposed, raw nerves pinking in the air.
Chaewon stared at her, eyes big and round. Mouth open in surprise.
“Is that all?” Chaewon said. She looked almost—relieved. “Is that what all this is about? That’s it?”
“That’s it?” Hyejoo repeated, indignant. “That’s everything!”
“Hyejoo,” Chaewon said, half-dismayed, half-delighted; she looked like she was struggling not to smile. “All along and you’re just mad at me ’cause you’re gonna miss me?”
“That is not what I said,” Hyejoo shouted, but the damage was done, her heart already laid out on the table. No way to put it back now.
“Hyejoo, it’s university,” Chaewon said. Corner of her lip still tugging up. Cheek puffed out as though she were holding a piece of hard candy in her mouth, a sweet secret they could share. “I’ll be home practically every weekend. It’s not even far—you can visit me anytime.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hyejoo said, slumping back down. “It’s not going to be the same.”
It was different. It was all going to be different, now. She knew this the way she knew most truths of her life, with the conviction of her youth that would not be proved wrong: Her life would be ruined if she didn’t get at least a 98 in math. The acne on her cheeks meant no one would ever love her, except maybe Chaewon, who could love even the ugliest of ducklings. And everything was going to change for the worse, her life up until now a ripening plum, souring after this summer into an irreversible rot. Reality itself bent and twisted under the ruthless hammer of teenage logic, the world weak and malleable next to the sheer miserable certainty of adolescence, that which lasted forever and took no prisoners but Hyejoo, still confined for another joyless, wretched year. She flopped back down, sideways across her bed. Stretched her legs up vertical against the wall and crossed her arms.
“Aww, Hyejoo,” Chaewon said. “Are you sulking?”
“I am not,” Hyejoo said. She was, just a little.
“C’mon, Hyejoo.” Chaewon’s tone was no longer hard or hurt but cajoling, and to add insult to injury, it didn’t sound like she was trying particularly hard, either. Like she’d already won whatever this was between them. “We’ll still talk every day—if you don’t decide to ghost me again, that is. You won’t even notice I’m gone. And besides. When you get in, next year, we’ll be back together again. Just like we are now.”
The mattress shifted underneath Hyejoo. Chaewon was crawling onto her bed, lying down next to her, shoulder to shoulder, her pale hair fanned out beneath her like wings. She propped up her legs against the wall, too, knee knocking into Hyejoo’s. Skin against skin.
“So hurry and catch up,” Chaewon said, turning to look at her, her white-toothed grin tilted sideways. “And come find me.”
One year later Hyejoo did exactly that. Packed her bags and met Chaewon at the train station, and Chaewon helped her move into her dorm, took her around campus, introduced her to all her friends, showed her the best study spots and grocery stores and routes for late-night walking by the river, and three weeks after that Chaewon went and got herself struck down by a taxicab while crossing the street.
So now what, Chaewon? Hyejoo thinks. Where do I find you, now?
Her roommate, Yerim, is concerned about her.
Or at least that’s what she says, her tone calm and soft, voice pitched low and even. Hyejoo, it’s been a while since you came out of your room, or since you last ate. Hyejoo, I’ve informed your professors, but it might be a good idea to think about deferring the semester. Hyejoo, are you okay?
Over Yerim’s shoulder, Hyejoo can see Chaewon sitting perched on the kitchen countertop, swinging her legs back and forth. She’s looking not at Yerim, not even at Hyejoo, but straight ahead at the wall before her. No boredom, no expression at all on her face. Only a deep-set blankness.
What do ghosts eat, Hyejoo wonders.
“Hyejoo,” Yerim repeats. Her hair tied back into a low scratchy ponytail, rubber gloves on her hands; she’d been washing the dishes when Hyejoo emerged from her room. “What do you need?”
Hyejoo stares at her. The vivid purple of her hair, a boldness that had shocked Hyejoo when she first moved in, then excited her; all the new colours revealing themselves in her life. You ready for this? Yerim had asked that first night they’d moved in, the two of them clustered around the table, unable to sleep for all the anticipation in the air. What? Hyejoo said, and Yerim grinned. The start of the rest of our lives? Hyejoo hadn’t had an answer for her then. She still doesn’t.
Now Yerim’s downturned lips and furrowed brow are out of place on her youthful face, lined heavy with exhaustion, with worry. Yerim has known Hyejoo for little over a month; has met Chaewon only a handful of times. At best, she hovers at the periphery of the black hole that has yawned open in her home, but for some reason she remains right at its crumbling edge. Seems intent on looking in.
“I’m going out,” Hyejoo says.
Yerim’s hands flutter up, like butterflies unsure of where to land. “Ah—by yourself? Are you going to meet with someone? Wait—will you eat something, before you leave, I made kimchi stew—”
“I’m going,” Hyejoo repeats, and pulls her scarf tighter around herself, and does exactly that.
Winter seems to have set in earlier this year, crooking cold fingers into every hollow it can reach. The trees shedding their gold fast and hard, leaf-veins laced with silver; the chill relentlessly finding its way into slivers of exposed skin at the wrist and throat; the pale fog of her breath following after her footsteps. Hyejoo walks unseeing down streets and sidewalks, carried forward by the momentum of the evening crowds, by muscle memory. Snatches of conversation and laughter pass by as though frequencies changing on a radio channel; Hyejoo hears none of it, ears numb from the cold. Everywhere lights blur like reflections on a river. The river, Hyejoo remembers, and suddenly finds herself there, as though having conjured it up with her mind. But she knows she had no more summoned it than it had summoned her: the steps she can retrace without conscious thought or intention, only the deep-rooted gravity of her body like metal to a magnet, iron blood and bone and heart all running back to the river.
Chaewon had taken her here the first night Hyejoo arrived in the city, worn thin and tired from moving and unpacking and reintroducing herself to every unfamiliar face, and the moment the cool night air touched the nape of her neck all her fatigue melted away as though carried by the breeze. “This is one of my favourite spots,” Chaewon explained as they made their way through picnicking couples and kids inventing games just for the excuse to chase each other in the tall grass, and Hyejoo could see why, past the incessant buzz of mosquitoes and the residual noise of the scattered crowds. Here in the untangled overgrowth of the riverbanks it felt as though they had stumbled upon the wild heart of the city itself, left to teem and flood with life amid the rest of the concrete jungle. The skyline stood on the other side of the river, towers and buildings rising up under the industrial haze, but here it could not reach them. Nothing could.
Neither can Chaewon. Hyejoo stumbles blindly on, trampling grass and weeds and dandelion heads under her boots, coat snagging on the bushes of bramble. She’s strayed off the footpath and veered straight for the riverside—walking, not running, no—and when she finally pulls up to an abrupt stop her breath hitches in a gasp, air cold and sharp in her lungs, chest heaving. Ahead, the city glitters upside-down on the surface of the water, muddied dark and dirty: an underworld of shadow and spectre. Chaewon died far from the river and lies even further, but Hyejoo still imagines her climbing out of that underworld, dredging herself up out of the water with fistfuls of silt. Shaking off the wet, dripping dark from her long uncombed hair, and swimming through the waist-deep grass to find Hyejoo.
Hyejoo’s hands clench white-knuckled at her sides, empty. “It’s not worth it,” she mumbles. Her cheeks burn in the cold. “You should’ve stayed buried. Stupid. Why did you come back? Why would you come back to me?”
Grasses rustling in the wind. The steady crest of the current. In her perfect memories Chaewon turns her head across the gulf of time, her immaculate face pointed straight at Hyejoo, and she says—she said—“Not bad, huh?”
“Not bad at all,” Hyejoo said, because it was summer, then, and because it was Chaewon.
Chaewon hummed a little. A faint pulse in the air, itself its own reverberation. “Yeah. I know it’s not like what we have at home, but now that we’re here—well, we can start to make a new one, don’t you think?”
She had said it shyly, and Hyejoo had stared at her with ears slowly burning red, a giddy thrill in her chest, one she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to feel. But looking back down the wrong direction of time, Hyejoo can no longer make out Chaewon’s expression past the layers of light between them; an empty gleam eroded by memory into the facets of a jewel, reflecting nothing but herself back at her.
And what was it she had said—
“Because I don’t know where we’re gonna end up, but you can bet—” and here she nudged at Hyejoo, as though letting her in on another precious secret “—you can bet we’ll always be together.”
The echo thrums and fades. Hyejoo scrubs at her dry eyes, blows air into her cupped palms. Nothing else to be done. She shoves her hands into her pockets, turns and starts walking home to Chaewon.
Chaewon doesn’t do much, for a ghost. Doesn’t float or phase through walls or write threatening messages in blood on the bathroom mirror. She just—is. Standing by Hyejoo’s bed when she’s trying to sleep, reflected strange and silver in the back of Hyejoo’s spoon when she eats, taking up space in her home like she belongs there. Hyejoo’d tried talking to her, at first; even touching her. Chaewon felt solid enough, if a little cold, but flickered on and off like a string of cheap lights, and if anybody else ever noticed she was there, they hadn’t mentioned it yet. “Chaewon,” Hyejoo would say in hushed, coaxing tones, the two of them arranged on her bed so they were sitting facing each other. “What is it you need? What do you want? You can tell me. You can tell me anything.” Chaewon blinking back at her, mirroring Hyejoo’s position exactly: cross-legged, palms on her knees, leant forward so that her hair poured down her shoulders. She would say nothing, though her head was tilted ever so slightly. No sign of recognition, of anything inside. Hyejoo was filled with the sudden fear that if she leaned in close and pressed her ear to Chaewon’s mouth she would hear nothing but the roar of a distant sea at the lip of a hollow shell. She jerked back, away, in horror: what was this thing she’d let on her bed?
But Chaewon doesn’t shriek, doesn’t wail, doesn’t claw out Hyejoo’s throat in the middle of the night. Hyejoo shouted for a while, threw things at her, and finally settled for just ignoring her, like she would a spider on the wall. Harmless, but still an uncomfortable presence, one you always checked to make sure was still there. Sometimes, though, Hyejoo studies her from a careful distance, searching for the flaw in the design, always finding none. Her doe eyes, her round cheeks, the mole on her neck. The same spot of silver in her delicately pinched mouth, when Hyejoo once pried open her jaw to check. She even wears the same clothes she had on when she died, short sleeves and bright colours. Stupid, Hyejoo has the urge to say, sometimes; put on a jacket. Forgetting that Chaewon is colder now than any winter, and then remembering. She wonders which part is worse.
Aren’t ghosts supposed to be frightening? Wrathful? Hyejoo would’ve preferred that, a bloody-mouthed vampire rattling chains under her bed, scraping nails across the window glass. Or an annoying ghost, Chaewon dangling upside-down from the ceiling and gleefully breaking dishes until they fulfill some sort of bucket list so that she can pass on peacefully to the next life or nothingness, whatever. Anything would be better than this silent presence, watchful and waiting. Stuck replaying itself like the broken record of a voicemail message, frozen in its final memories, its lingering, useless instincts. This quiet company is so much more cruel than a vengeful spirit or a bratty poltergeist: a wrongness she can almost live with. If you had to come back as a ghost, Hyejoo thinks, staring at the last echo of Park Chaewon curled up on her bed, you could have at least come back as you.
Then again, Hyejoo’s hardly the same girl Chaewon remembers either, if Chaewon still has the capacity to remember. That girl who found intrigue in all sorts of things, places, people she hadn’t met yet. What it would be like to run across the country, master a talent, travel the world. Now Hyejoo mostly just sits there and watches Chaewon watch her. Neither of them speaking a word. As though each waiting for the other to make the first move.
In her dreams, though.
In her dreams Chaewon speaks.
In her dreams Hyejoo’s coming just that close to beating the recorded high score on Ultimate Zombie Hunter when Chaewon pops into her field of vision waving a fried hot dog sausage on a stick in her face.
“Cheese corn dog?” she says cheerfully, as Hyejoo’s character gets mauled to death onscreen. GAME OVER in smug flashing letters. PLAY AGAIN?
“Ugh, unnie!” Hyejoo slams her rifle down dejectedly. “I was on a roll!”
Chaewon takes a bite of her own. “So... is that a no?”
Hyejoo glowers at her. “Give it here.”
They’ll have to eat quickly, because the ketchup and mustard are dripping everywhere, and because food technically isn’t allowed in the arcade, not that anyone’s watching. They’ll wolf down their corn dogs so fast Hyejoo will burn her mouth and Chaewon will get ketchup on her nose, a red smear that Hyejoo will eye nervously, getting too caught up in thrillingly tame fantasies of wiping it clean with her little finger or offering a silk handkerchief from her pocket like a suave hero in the movies or even just leaning in close and—
“Have I got something on my face?” Chaewon says, wrinkling her nose, and Hyejoo remembers she doesn’t have a silk handkerchief, so she hands her a rumpled napkin instead. Like she does every time. Because this isn’t so much a dream as it is a memory, and not even that—a memory of a memory. One worn down to its brightest points and patterns, run over and over again through Hyejoo’s mind: the arcade screens flashing like emergency lights, the flat numbness of her burned tongue, Chaewon somehow managing to turn sucking the grease from her fingers into a gracefully elegant act. Everything as it’s happened before, and as it will ever happen.
Except Chaewon wipes the ketchup off her nose, which Hyejoo remembers, and then she blinks at her like she’s seeing her for the first time, which she doesn't. “Oh,” she says, eyes wide, “Hyejoo.”
Hyejoo blinks at her dumbly. “Uh, yeah?”
“You really had fun today, huh,” Chaewon says. An oddly wistful look in her eyes. And it’s only a dream, but the sight of it takes the breath from Hyejoo’s throat—the most alive she will ever see Chaewon again. This expression, even if conjured by Hyejoo’s subconscious, is new. The rest of her lives only in her memories. “The corn dogs weren’t even that good, honestly.”
“What are you talking about?” Hyejoo isn’t sure what's happening, but she plays along, as though one wrong move will unravel the dream away from her. Sure, it’s only her imagination; only a memory of a memory. But any dream that gives her Chaewon as she is—as she was—as she could have been—is a good one. And Hyejoo wants it to last.
“You wanted soda,” Chaewon says thoughtfully, as though hardly speaking to Hyejoo at all. “But I wanted iced tea. We argued about that all afternoon. I don’t think we ever realized that we could have just gotten different drinks.”
“I was, like, fourteen, you can’t blame me for being short-sighted.” Hyejoo keeps her eyes steady on Chaewon, like a sudden movement will send her bolting, a startled deer disappearing back into the woods.
No need to worry. Chaewon blinks again, and seems to focus on Hyejoo, pulling out of her faraway gaze with a delighted upturn to her lips. “Fourteen! Oh, you remember being fourteen, don’t you, Hyejoo? I remember—you were trying out for track and field, and I would have been fifteen, then, and I had a crush on that guy in my year that lasted all of two weeks, what was his name...”
Hyejoo scowls. This is her dream—what's with the irrelevant references to other people? “I’d rather not remember,” she says loudly. On her screen, the game is still flashing: PLAY AGAIN? “Isn't the whole point of going through puberty that you never have to relive it again?”
“It wasn't all bad, though.” Chaewon’s still standing with her corn dog stick in hand, the dreaminess returning to her eyes. “You were really intense that year, I think—you were so determined to make the track team that you would run everywhere, and what was worse, you made me join you, too!” She laughs, the sound tinny and distant, eyes focusing somewhere over Hyejoo’s shoulder as though she’s watching them in real time, fourteen-year-old Hyejoo racing fifteen-year-old Chaewon home; as though they’re just around the corner, coming into view, coming within reach. Hyejoo grits her teeth. What’s it going to take to get Chaewon to stay here, right here in this moment with her?
“That was a long time ago,” Hyejoo says, sharp, and Chaewon sighs, shakes her head as though to clear it.
“Sorry. It’s just, time, you know, I forgot how precious it all is—” She claps her hands together. “Oh, and that time you tripped over your shoelaces and fell! It looked really bad, I started freaking out because I didn’t have my bike and when I tried to leave to get help you burst into tears—”
“I did not!” Hyejoo gapes at her.
“You did, I remember—”
“I never cried! Not once!”
“Oh,” Chaewon says, and a shiver goes down Hyejoo’s spine as she realizes that for the first time, Chaewon really is looking straight at her, the intense focus of her gaze enough to prick the hairs on the back of Hyejoo’s neck, “but you could have. You know that, don’t you, Hyejoo-yah? You were so, so brave, I know. But if you wanted to. You could.”
Hyejoo lurches unsteadily to her feet. The arcade room is beginning to tremble around her, all blinding colours and lights melting together, a kaleidoscope turned over and over. PLAY AGAIN? “This isn’t how it happened,” she says, her voice shaking. “We played a couple rounds of Speed Racer and then we went home. That’s real. This isn’t.”
“It’s always happening,” Chaewon says, her voice almost sad. “Hey, Hyejoo. It’s okay.”
“What?”
“I had fun today, too.” Chaewon smiles again, gentle. She lifts a hand, and Hyejoo sucks in a breath, but she only reaches forward and tucks a strand of hair behind Hyejoo’s ear. Her touch is so light it feels like nothing at all. “I always did, with you.”
The arcade shudders as though tearing itself apart. PLAY AGAIN? “It’s only a dream!” Hyejoo’s shouting, now. “Only a memory of a memory! Only something that happened when I was fourteen—”
“Or something that didn’t happen,” Chaewon muses. The lights are bleeding into each other, red and gold of wildfire hues, but Chaewon stands separate from it all, almost glowing white. Face smooth and shining as a pearl. “Should’ve happened. Hey. Hyejoo?”
The arcade is caving in on itself, but Hyejoo stays rooted to the spot, helpless as she watches Chaewon before her, Chaewon with a smile on her face as their world’s all coming down. “Yeah?”
“Listen, Hyejoo,” Chaewon says, so of course that’s when Hyejoo wakes up.
It’s morning. The other Chaewon, the dead one, the real one, is standing by her bed. A look on her face like a lost thought.
Hyejoo stares up at her. Chaewon stares down at her.
“Fuck,” Hyejoo says, and pulls the covers back up over her head.
They didn’t always used to be friends. Sure, everyone thought they were the same old story, kids who met each other in the sandbox and a couple of castles later they were ride or die. It could very well have happened like that, but it didn’t.
What actually happened was that one afternoon in class Chaewon borrowed Hyejoo’s yellow crayon without asking.
It was a combined class in a small school, so of course Hyejoo already knew who she was. Park Chaewon, one grade higher, a slow runner but always valiantly tried to keep up in playground games of tag. Tongue stuck out in meticulous concentration as she coloured in the wings of her butterfly drawing. They’d hardly ever spoken, but they were about to. Because it didn’t matter if she was older; if her butterflies were actually quite pretty. It was the principle of the thing. One minute Hyejoo had been crowding as many teeth as possible into the jaws of her drawing of a wolf, and the next some kid had stolen her stuff right in front of everyone, without asking, without even seeming to realize what she’d done. Just continuing to colour, careful to stay inside the lines, a slightly pleased quirk to her lips.
No way. Hyejoo reached across the desk, snatched the crayon back out of Chaewon’s hand, and pointedly put it back in her crayon box.
Chaewon blinked down at her now empty hand, mouth rounded in an o like the world had just pulled an elaborate vanishing act on her. Slowly, she raised her head and stared at Hyejoo, who—in a rather inspired move—stuck her tongue out at her.
“I was using that,” Chaewon said, astonished.
“It’s mine!”
Chaewon scrunched her little face up in confusion. “But we’re supposed to share!”
“Well, you didn’t ask!”
“You’re not even using it!”
“I am now!” Hyejoo hurriedly scrawled two round yellow circles on the wolf’s face for eyes. “See?”
At this point the rest of the children were looking on in great interest. The teacher cleared his throat.
“Chaewon-ah, Hyejoo’s right. You have to ask before you borrow other people’s things, okay?”
Chaewon lowered her gaze in a pout. But she very demurely raised her eyes again at Hyejoo, and with a flutter of her lashes, asked very nicely: “May I please borrow your yellow crayon?”
Hyejoo looked at her. At their teacher, who was pointedly nodding his head at her. Then at the yellow crayon fisted in her hand.
She thought about it for a moment.
Then she snapped it in half.
The rest is history. But fast forward several years of pointed ignoring and playground shoving and somewhere along the way Hyejoo and Chaewon grew up, or else just got used to each other. It would have been impossible not to. They’d been there for everything, after all: Chaewon singing in choir alongside Hyejoo’s dance club performances at the same talent show every year, Hyejoo and Chaewon roped into the same schoolyard games of dodgeball and soccer and hide-and-seek, Hyejoo the only witness when Chaewon toppled off her bike one spring afternoon and so the only one to rush forward and wheel her all the way back to school for the nurse and a pack of ice for her split lip. After that it felt pointless, even embarrassing to hold a grudge of such childish colour. Instead of looking back at all the time they’d wasted, they overcompensated for their past stalemate by moving ahead as fast as possible, trying to beat each other in games and in grades and to the last spicy rice cake in the same shared bowl at the side of the road. There was only ever one race, though, that Hyejoo couldn’t outrun: the time between them. She always lagged one year behind, watching Chaewon graduate first from elementary, middle, and high school, always off to the next big thing. Still, Hyejoo was at least there for all of it, except that year Chaewon moved into the city, and except for what happened after.
Because Chaewon died and Hyejoo wasn’t there, was sitting in one of the middle-back rows in her stats lecture, half-awake and watching the laptop screen of the girl streaming video games on mute three rows down, thinking less about the presentation she had due in a week and more about the group of third-years who had burst into suspicious laughter just as she walked by in the hall on her way to class. Did she have something on her face? Was she wearing her shirt inside out? Should she get bangs? She slid her phone face-up onto her lap, typed one-handed: should i get bangs? Five blocks away the message lit up the fractured glass screen of a phone on the ground. It had been flung out of Chaewon’s hand at the moment of impact and now lay cradled in the crack between asphalt and curb, screen glowing from the gutter, then turning black. That’s how it happened. And how it always will.
There’s a little girl catching butterflies by the river. Armed with a net that’s almost taller than she is, determinedly trawling through the bushes, her hair sticking up in tiny pigtails. Ahead of her, the rest of her family is taking their leisurely evening stroll; she’s lagging behind, and every once in a while has to run to catch up.
It’s not yet November, but winter still approaches, clear and cold on the horizon. Time after time, the girl’s net comes up empty. That doesn’t keep her from bringing it down and down again, the silver mesh casting a fine shimmer in the air, the downward arc of a falling star.
Hyejoo watches her, sometimes. But mostly she watches the river.
When she gets home Yerim is waiting for her.
“You’re back!” she says when Hyejoo opens the door, the relief clear and urgent in her voice as she jumps up from her spot on the couch. The dorm, now that Hyejoo looks at it, is entirely spotless, all in order, everything taken care of. Only Hyejoo remains out of place, as though just another mess to be dealt with, a shatter of old glass too sharp to touch.
Then she sees Yerim’s face, and regrets the notion, the bitterness she’d thought it with.
“Have you eaten?” Yerim says, and she’s only Hyejoo’s age, just another student who’d come to the city expecting her life to start, too young to be mothering her own roommates. So don’t bother, Hyejoo thinks, looking at her, or maybe that’s not exactly what she wants to say, something more like—put yourself out of this misery, or even just, it isn’t fair. But neither is the fact that in another year Hyejoo will turn the same age as Chaewon, and after that—
“Hyejoo?” Yerim repeats, eyes wide.
Chaewon is standing by the sink. Looking out the window. Or she was. Now she’s looking at Hyejoo. Leant towards her as though pulled by string. Mouth half-open, like she’s remembered something she meant to say, or like she’s just forgotten to close it.
“Hyejoo,” Yerim says, again, and there’s a touch at Hyejoo’s wrist. She looks down. Yerim’s taken hold of her hand, clasped between her fingers. Her skin is warm. “Hyejoo, I don’t know what to do. Please. I don’t know how to help you.”
The audible tremor in her voice grants Hyejoo resolve. She returns Yerim’s tight grip, looks into her eyes. “You can’t,” she says, and she means it not to be kind, but merciful. “It’s okay.” Once they had made a different promise to each other: Let’s stick together, Yerim said on the last night of the summer, no matter what happens, and Hyejoo had believed herself lucky. Now she can return the gesture; feels a reciprocal echo of the relief this must grant her. It’s okay.
Yerim stares at her like she’s a ghost.
Hyejoo releases her hand. Steps around her, down the hall and into her room. She closes the door, but Chaewon gets in anyway. Already sitting on Hyejoo's desk, hands folded in her lap, the dead weight of her stare following Hyejoo like the owl-eyed gaze of a wooden clock, ticking back and forth, back and forth in time.
Hyejoo barely notices. Her mind is stuck on a single pulse point, a creeping feeling. She can stay here, with this Chaewon made after the fact with moving parts that don’t fit quite right, or she can find the Chaewon she remembers—infinite and terrifying and absolute.
It’s not quite night, but she crawls into bed. Closes her eyes.
And when she opens them again, she’s in the same place. Her bedroom. God damn it, she thinks in frustration, and then she freezes, because Chaewon isn’t sitting on her desk anymore. Instead, she’s heaving Hyejoo’s giant suitcase into the room, face red from exertion, panting for breath. Pale hair tucked up under a cap, cardigan slung over her shoulder. A lollipop sticking out of her mouth.
“Ugh, get off the bed, lazybones, and help me help you,” Chaewon says around the lollipop, struggling to get the suitcase open. “I should just leave you to suffer—”
“No,” Hyejoo bursts out, because it’s what she’d said at the time, and because it worked—she’s back, the Chaewon of her memories, the Chaewon of her dreams. “No way. You're stuck with me.” The Hyejoo of the past had said it with an insufferable grin, blinking innocently up at Chaewon, who’d flung her cardigan at Hyejoo’s face in response. It comes out distinctly softer this time, all choked up in Hyejoo’s throat. Chaewon gives no indication of having noticed, still fiddling with the suitcase latch with one hand, holding her lollipop in the other.
“Your roommate seems nice,” Chaewon says without looking up. “You lucked out—my roommate in first year was so weird. Sometimes I could hear dog noises coming from her room, but she didn’t even have a dog.”
“Uh-huh,” Hyejoo says. She watches Chaewon closely, to see if what happened last time will happen again, the strange newness of her expressions, the shining clarity in her eyes. But Chaewon only shoves the lollipop back in her mouth, as at her feet Hyejoo’s suitcase finally gives in with a groan and a shudder, top flying open and spilling out its contents, christening Hyejoo’s moderately new, moderately clean bedroom carpet.
“Oops,” Chaewon says, muffled slightly around the lollipop in her mouth. “Hey, hold on, did you seriously bring your signed Hyuna poster—”
Hyejoo’s startled into a laugh—she’d forgotten about that—and the shock of it startles her even more. When was the last time she laughed? That night, by the river— But more than that, it’s the familiarity of the action, of the joy that bursts too sudden and violent to be contained in her chest, and how much it hurts, as though exercising a muscle hardened from disuse. Her ribs ache around the hollow space where it used to be.
“Hey,” Chaewon says, tilting her head. “You okay? It’s fine. You’ll settle down in no time.” She’s mistaken Hyejoo’s moment of pause for nervousness. Is this how it happened—? The thought’s barely crossed Hyejoo's mind before Chaewon is getting up from the floor and flopping onto the bed next to Hyejoo. Her elbow digging into Hyejoo’s side, leg hooked around Hyejoo’s. Oh, yes, Hyejoo remembers this, and her throat goes dry, when she should be feeling relief, or regret, not—
“I know it’s scary,” Chaewon says, head turned sideways to meet Hyejoo’s eyes, lollipop forgotten in her hand. Her tongue is stained cherry red. “But time will pass, before you know it. You’ll be looking back on these days and laughing at us, at how we worried over the most useless things, how we made everything so much harder than it had to be.”
“But I don’t want it to,” Hyejoo says before she can stop herself. It’s not how it went. But Chaewon’s eyes only soften.
“You don’t have to be afraid of time,” Chaewon says. “It’s how we find our way back to each other. Everything’s always happening, all the time, as long as you’re still here to remember it.”
It sounds vaguely familiar, like something Hyejoo’d heard once in a movie, or a dream. She lets the words wash over her, stuck on something else: the curves of Chaewon’s face, her eyes bright, her lips licked shiny and red. Closer than she’s ever been. And all this time, Hyejoo thinks, all this time I never told you—
“You don’t have to worry about a thing,” Chaewon says, and smiles. “Hey. Listen, Hyejoo—”
She only registers that she’s woken up when she snaps her eyes open to a sudden darkness, stolen fast and silent over her room. It’s the middle of the night, and Chaewon is not here, has not been here for a long time. A shadow stands by her bed.
Hyejoo doesn’t turn on the light—can’t bear to look at its face. So she keeps her eyes trained on the wall as she sits up and swings her legs over the side of her bed, bare feet finding the carpet. Brisk pace to the door—not quite running, no—and she pulls it open, intent on getting to the bathroom or the kitchen or anywhere, really, but here, and nearly steps on a container left on the floor outside her room, a pair of chopsticks laid neatly over the lid. She stares down at it like it’s an alien object. There in the dark, it may as well be, the shapes of the hallway before her coloured odd and unrecognizable by the moonlight, eclipsed in shades of silver and blue.
Down the hall, Yerim’s bedroom door is closed, but the crack below it glows warm yellow. A light left on, inside.
Hyejoo bends down on autopilot, picking up the container and bringing it inside her room. She sets it down on her desk, takes off the lid. It’s rice with cuts of beef, slices of carrot and red pepper, mushrooms and spinach. A comfortable meal. Home-cooked with care. Hyejoo looks at it with an emptiness that is not hunger.
She doesn’t want to be ungrateful. Wasteful. What a proper-mannered child she used to be, taught well by her parents, praised by her elders. She eats all of it there in the dark in small, economic bites, even though it’s long gone cold and hardened, was meant to be reheated on the stove and mixed with spice and shared at the table, surrounded by warm steam and soft light and the laughter of friends. But the closest thing she has to a friend is staring at her from across her desk, eyes with the same dull, flat shine as coins.
She scrapes the bowl clean with her chopsticks, picking up every last grain of rice. How she had thought then, that she couldn’t go on. Thank you for the meal.
The girl with the butterfly net is back.
Hyejoo is sitting in the grass quite a distance away, but she recognizes her at once, her puffy orange parka, her stubby pigtails bobbing up and down. The way she pounces with her net on a bush or a patch of grass, and then peeks carefully inside as though expecting to have struck gold.
The grass is wet with dew. Soon, it’ll be frost choking the plants brittle yellow and brown. Then the ice. The butterflies will be long gone. Somebody should tell her, Hyejoo thinks, but the girl’s parents, grandparents, siblings are letting her keep up her fruitless chase, twirling and spinning through the undergrowth. As they approach Hyejoo feels the urge quicken inside her, the thought taking root with insistence: somebody should tell her.
But they pass her by, and she returns her gaze to the river, washing up slow and unhurried, half-forming reflections and then swirling them away. The currents are littered with leaves plucked from trees and carried by the wind, swept downstream, dirty strokes of rust and copper against the clear water.
“This is one of my favourite spots,” Chaewon says.
A chill soaks wet against Hyejoo’s back. She’s laid out on the grass, the dew penetrating through her shirt. Chaewon is sitting beside her, dressed for summer, hair tumbling down her back and touched gold by the setting sun.
Hyejoo sits up so they’re shoulder to shoulder. The point of contact a spot of warmth between them, solid and familiar. “Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. I always come out here when I’m feeling bogged down, by work or pressure or just not knowing what to do.” Chaewon twists a blade of grass between her fingers. “It’s not a secret place or anything, which makes it even better. All these people and it finally feels like we’re on the same page for once. All looking at the same thing.”
She’s looking out over the river. Hyejoo’s looking at her, the slope of her nose, flush of her cheeks, hollow of her throat. The sunset hour cloaked around them in velvet, like something old and worn, something loved. This is what you meant, Hyejoo thinks, I figured it out, what you told me. I found my way back to you. The rush of it a seed of happiness threatening to break her apart from inside, lines of light cracking long and open and free. As long as you’re here—As long as we’re here—I’ll never lose you again—
“What do you think?” Chaewon turns to her, face softened in the outpouring of light, so bright Hyejoo can barely make it out amid the blue flood of the river and the green of the grass and the sky a great chunk of amber overhead, crystallizing them in slow-moving honey like flies, delicate wingbeats carving a hazy distant pulse suspended in layers of time. Time—
“Not bad, huh? Not like what we have at home, but now that we’re here—”
Time is always—
“Now that we’re here we can start to make a new one, don’t you think—”
Time is always here—
“Because I don’t know where we’re gonna end up, but you can bet—”
Time is always happening, here and everywhere, forever where she can stay—
“You can bet the view’s always gonna be spectacular.”
Time returns to itself. The last living minute of daylight, the sun still white as marble on Chaewon’s face; another heartbeat and it will pass over into shadow. Around them the couples sitting in the grass and the daredevil cyclists streaking past and the elderly forever on their evening walks. The plants flowering with branches and insects and birds for no reason other than that they live.
“Listen to me, Hyejoo,” Chaewon says, reflecting radiant as her own star. “Don’t you worry about a thing. Trust me. You’re going to be amazing.”
And it’s funny, but in that hushed hour of sunset it sounds almost like she’s saying something else—
“Excuse me, miss. Are you all right?”
Hyejoo’s eyes flutter open. She’s lying on her back in the grass. The sky is dark. A pair of girls are hovering over her, looking worried. One has her phone out like she’s ready to dial emergency services. A miniature penguin charm dangles from it, winking at Hyejoo in the night.
“Miss?”
“Yes,” Hyejoo says; it comes out a rasp. Her throat is very dry. She runs her tongue over her lips, moves to get up with her elbows braced against the ground. The girl who’d spoken instantly thrusts out a hand. Hyejoo takes it after a moment, lets herself be pulled up.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” The girl seems reluctant to let go of Hyejoo’s hand. “You were just lying there unmoving, we were really scared, we thought you were—”
The other girl elbows her, hard. “As long as you’re all right,” she says. “It’s really cold out. You should think about getting home.” Her hair is dyed blond. Hyejoo looks away.
“It's fine,” Hyejoo says. “I just fell asleep. Thank you.”
The girls nod, though they don’t look particularly convinced.
“Miss,” the first girl says, slowly. “Do you have somewhere to go?”
The wind is cool upon Hyejoo’s upturned face. Her hands are numb. The grass around her is unmarked, undisturbed. She’s alone here.
“Yes,” Hyejoo says. “I do.”
She starts walking.
Listen, Hyejoo—
After the funeral Hyejoo’s parents had urged her to stay at home, but Hyejoo couldn’t. Her bed, her room, the whole damn neighbourhood—Chaewon had touched it all, the roads and the fields and the sprawling chain-link fences, and they still remained standing when Chaewon had gone, the entire landscape of their hometown only a living memory of the places where she used to be. Everywhere Hyejoo went, there was Chaewon, welling up raw like blood to a bruise. She rode the train back into the city alone. In a way it was even worse. The indifference of its flat edged planes of reflective metal and glass, the railways and streets and buildings all part of the same rattling white skeleton of an old dead thing. This was where they had dreamed of living, but not a single piece of it was alive, not a single stone or brick or bone—
She opened the door of her dorm, walked past a startled Yerim, entered her room. She dreamt horribly that night, of screeching traffic and roiling rivers and a howling beast so starved it ate itself, and when she opened her eyes Chaewon was in her bedroom, standing by her bed.
“Oh,” Hyejoo said.
Chaewon said nothing at all. There was a terrible sort of expression on her face, like she didn’t know what she was doing there, only now it lit up, like she remembered. Eyes ravenous on Hyejoo's face as if she couldn’t stop looking, wonderment and rapture. She leaned in and kissed her.
“Oh,” Hyejoo said again, into Chaewon’s cold mouth.
There isn’t much worse than being in love with your best friend. But only finding out they loved you back after they’re dead might come close.
Hyejoo gets back sometime after midnight. The dorm is silent. Yerim must be asleep. She hangs up her coat, slides off her shoes. Walks on quiet, socked feet to her bedroom door, hand on the knob, and pauses.
What was it Chaewon said? It’s happening all the time. It has been, in Hyejoo’s memories, in Hyejoo’s dreams. The phone is flying out of Chaewon’s hand, arcing up, screen not yet splintered, and Chaewon is flickering through the seasons, spring in the arcade and summer in Hyejoo’s bedroom and autumn by the river and winter on the other side of this door, and somewhere out there, somewhere in here, Hyejoo is still running, fourteen years old forever and ever.
She lets out a breath she doesn’t feel. It’s time to stop running. Come in from the cold, Hyejoo-yah; it’s time to go home.
She pushes open the door, and inside, Chaewon is waiting, the curve of her face lit white by the window like its own crescent moon. Her mouth slightly open, tracing not a word but a movement, a last longing.
Maybe Hyejoo invited this. Chaewon became a ghost and Hyejoo built herself into a house for her to haunt, filled it up with empty attics and dusty cellars, every rusted lock coming undone at the memory of her touch. Or else Hyejoo was the one who drew her back with the pull of her own yearning in the only direction she remembers, old dreams washing onto the shores of morning, water up from a well. It doesn’t matter either way. This isn’t real, Hyejoo reminds herself as she takes one step forward, and another. It’s only a wish. It’s only a ghost. It’s only Chaewon who double-knotted Hyejoo’s shoelaces extra tight before her track practices so she wouldn’t trip over them when she ran, Chaewon who cried the whole way home even long after her split lip stopped bleeding and hugged Hyejoo so tightly on the back of her own bike that her tears soaked through Hyejoo’s shirt and into the puddle of sweat on her back, Chaewon who has forgotten everything earthly but her own desire, and Hyejoo cannot turn away, push her off, deny her hollow hunger. She takes the final step forward and tilts her face down, lets Chaewon take her by the shoulders and draw her close, her breath cold and shivery upon Hyejoo's cheek. Lets her kiss Hyejoo’s mouth open, slow and unhurried and sweet, as though they have all the time in the world.
Hyejoo has never kissed anyone before. Chaewon will never kiss anyone again. In the tenuous moment Hyejoo tries to make this up to her, surging forward across that gulf of difference and pressing her mouth to hers once more, misjudging the distance. Their noses bump; teeth knock against teeth. Chaewon runs her tongue along the inside of Hyejoo’s mouth, something about the movement young and newly curious, as though mapping her from the inside. Hyejoo pushes back, tugs at Chaewon’s bottom lip and bites down, her hands fisted in the front of Chaewon’s shirt, clumsy and desperate and determined, and Chaewon—Chaewon huffs not a breath but a laugh in Hyejoo’s mouth, shocking her into pulling away.
The smile on Chaewon’s face is not dreamy nor distant but brilliant, a fond tinge of pale pink in the night, the first colour she’s shown since she came back. She reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind Hyejoo’s ear. She looks both like there are a million things she wants to say and like she has nothing left to say at all.
And then she’s gone, a breeze in the air, a lingering light. Hyejoo hitches a breath, nothing left but a cold wetness on her lips. She lets herself fall to her knees, and cries for the first time in years, coming out of numb shock into something far less bearable, a bitter selfish grief seizing in her chest. Wait, Chaewon. I wasn’t ready—I never told you—I wanted—I still do—
“Hyejoo?” There’s a commotion behind her, in the hall; Yerim, her face ashen with worry. “Hyejoo—oh, Hyejoo—”
She can’t understand. She’s still here. She rushes forward and throws her arms around Hyejoo, sweeps her up in a hug, and Hyejoo buries her face in her shoulder and lets the sobs wrack her body, a misery so great it seems almost possible to be inhabited by two, for just a moment, just one night.
It’s all going on. It’s all gone.
And Yerim doesn’t say shh, doesn’t say it’s okay, doesn’t say you’re going to be alright. Just holds on to her tight and cries with her, like they’re both mourning some part of the same thing.
“This was her favourite place,” Hyejoo says.
Yerim doesn’t say anything. Just squeezes her hand in understanding.
The days are getting colder; no longer a hint on the wind but the real thing. Hyejoo’d withdrawn from her semester. Got a job at a convenience store, because she likes the late night shifts, likes organizing the shelves and watching the people come and go and closing up and walking home on the empty streets. She’s thinking of finding some other jobs, too. Saving some money. And then maybe going on a trip somewhere. She doesn’t have a specific place in mind, but she knows it’s something she used to want. And she doesn’t know if it still is, but she thinks she’d like for that girl of the past to get what she wants. Maybe that’s how she can find her again.
In the distance—a blur of movement. Something catches Hyejoo’s eye. Someone. A girl with pigtails and a butterfly net.
“Hold on,” Hyejoo says, and is moving before she can think about it.
“Excuse me,” she calls, and the girl turns to look at her. “Excuse me.” Hyejoo bends down to her knees, looks her very carefully in the eye, and then realizes she has no idea how to break it to her. “Um. Hello.”
“Hello, miss!” the girl says cheerfully, having no such reservations holding her back. “Wowww, you’re really tall!”
Hyejoo blinks. The girl’s mother is watching them, but thankfully doesn’t seem to consider Hyejoo a threat. “Um, thank you?”
The girl points her net at her. “I’m gonna be as tall as you one day!”
“I have no doubt. Hey, listen. You know it’s winter, right?”
The girl squints at her like she’s asking a trick question. “Uh-huh?”
“Yeah, of course you do. So, um. I don’t think you’re going to find any butterflies this time of year.” Hyejoo’s hands clench, balanced on her knees. “I’m sorry,” she adds, if only because it should be said.
“What? I’m not catching butterflies,” the girl says, face scrunched up in confusion. “I’m catching frogs.”
Hyejoo chokes. “Frogs?”
“Frogs,” the girl affirms, nodding her head. “Or toads, I’m not picky. They’re both cute. Well, I’ve never actually seen one, but they’re cute in the pictures.”
Hyejoo catches the girl’s mother’s eye, who mostly looks at her with an amused expression on her face, like: you cracked open this can of worms, you deal with it. “Ah,” Hyejoo says faintly. “Um... are there any frogs here?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” the girl agrees, nodding solemnly.
“Well,” Hyejoo says, shaking her head. “I see. I wish you the best of luck.”
“Thanks, miss,” the girl says, and she’s off, running headlong through the grass.
Hyejoo stays there for a moment. Frogs. Chaewon would’ve been disgusted, but also delighted if just for the look on Hyejoo’s face. Hyejoo wishes she were here. She wishes a lot of things. She returns to find Yerim, who’s still standing where Hyejoo left her.
“It’s beautiful,” Yerim says, though she’s looking not at the river but the people gathered by its banks.
“You should have seen it in the summer,” Hyejoo says.
Yerim turns to her with a small smile, fragile for its faith. “I will.”
But that isn’t what Hyejoo meant.
“Do you...” Yerim hesitates. “Do you want to stay here a while?”
“I’d like that,” Hyejoo says.
They sit in the stiff-frozen grass and watch the girl look for frogs in the bushes. Weather reports are predicting an early snowfall. Soon it’ll be cold and wet and dark, in all the places Chaewon touched, taking over every last trace of gold from the summer. Or almost all. Because even when the winter comes and lays a sheet of glass down over the water, even when they can’t see it anymore, underneath the river runs on, as it always will.