Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 1: LINGER

You know I'm such a fool for you.

You got me wrapped around your fingers.

Do you have to let it linger?

“Did you dye your hair?” Funny, because Bobby was so fixated at the strands of my hair that when the train halted sharply at one station, he almost fell over before quickly (and with a bit of fluster) grabbing the strap-handler dangling above his head.

“I did, you notice?” I was sitting on the last empty seat of the packed Monday morning subway, and he was standing – towering over me, with the hood of his purple jacket framing the sides of his face. He was smiling down at me, nodding along at what seemed to be a delightful thought nesting inside his head.

“What’s funny?”

“Looks good on you.”

“It matches the tan?” Because summer had just ended and I wanted a fresher look for the autumn with the leftover that the summer heat had left me with, so I dyed streaks of caramel brown on my dark hair. It wasn’t my main objective to get him to like it, but something alike to the flights of butterfly loomed in my stomach as he declared his fancy.

“Perfectly.”

“But the tan will go away in two months, and it wouldn't look as nice?”

“Wouldn’t bother me much.” And that smile set again. That smile where his two bunny-like front teeth appear and his two eyes turn non-existent. Every single time I saw that smile, I couldn’t help but to throw my childish giggle away from his stare, embarrassed, fluster - all set of reactions. As if I was that nerdy eleven-year-old with thick spectacles and bruised palm at the school yard all over again, trying hard to bear the pain until it turned into an odd laughter, and the eleven-year-old gawky Bobby would stand over me, looking concerned asking, “Hey are you okay?”

Back then his voice hadn’t broke into the husky strains that he has now. Back then he hadn’t grown some feet taller than me. Back then he hadn’t gained his newfound confidence that he had acquired some years later in his late adolescence, that made him an alluring and magnetizing persona that he is now. Back then he was just Kim Bobby, the next-door neighbor.

More than a decade ago he and his family had left for America, and I still could remember his scrawny arms extending from the window of their mover truck as it was leaving, waving and shrieking on top of his lung, “I will be back!!”

That time it didn’t immediately settle with me that I wasn’t going to meet him again for so long of a time, or that he’d move somewhere so far away. Until I realized it took twelve days for my letter to reach his new home in Virginia, and sooner than I expected, his replies would lessen until it gradually stopped arriving altogether.

In junior high, I found his Facebook account and was met with an unexplained disappointment from my part to find that his statuses were all in English, a language I had yet to really understand that time. At the disposal of my understanding (or lack thereof) for his statuses was when the image of Kim Bobby, the next-door neighbor I’ve always felt reliably close to, had started to fumigate into non-existence. We used to have similar amount of allowance from our parents, we used to watch the same Japanese anime whose ending we would argue about, we used to have same model of bicycles, we used to have similar understanding of our parents’ financial statuses—which created sense of likeness between us two, as we talked about what we would buy if we were rich. Going for a holiday to America (back then we thought the whole Disneyland we’d seen on travel agent flyer, was the whole of America) was the dream that seemed impossible to reach. But all of a sudden, he left for America, leaving me in the gut of despair as someone who was left to wonder what it would feel like to be him. Only until then, he started to become just a figment of my childhood memory. Sometimes my friends would come over, they would ask who is that tiny guy in my childhood photo standing next to me, framed and hung on top of my bed along with family photos. I would always say, “Childhood neighbor – I barely remember him.”

But too late did I realize that when it came to Bobby, I had always been good at disguising my feeling.

“…and you go back into ignoring me again.” He sulked, although jokingly, but was enough to make me chuckled. Bringing me back from my split-seconds of strolling down the memory lane and back to reality.

I wasn’t sure how along the way he’d turned into this fine, flirty gentleman that he is now, but it dawned upon me that no matter how right it felt being with him, the unsettling sense of detachment I’ve been accustomed to for years towards him, had never entirely left. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that he’s engaged to someone else now.

“I was just thinking,” I looked at him, mustering every ounce of honesty in me, “how stunning Jisoo was in her light purple streaks she had last summer? I wish I could pull that off.” And there I go again, settling him back to the position that he constantly needed to be reminded of: Had and engaged.

For a second his eyes went dark, before a half smile appeared and he muttered under his breath, “Yeah, I wish you could.”

The train finally stopped at the City Hall station, where like hundreds of others, I would get off, rushing away to our offices before the clock strike at nine, and Bobby would continue the ride to his favorite cafe five stations away from the City Hall for his customary morning Iced Americano, then taking a smaller bus to his studio nearby. We have grown up to be two different adults at different bays in life, I’ve always found it enticing to see reflection of ourselves at the mirrors hung in subway station whenever we go out together after work. The differences manifested in our attire were striking – but never thoroughly discouraged me from being closer with him as time goes by. My neat-cut formal attire required for ministry staff, and his . . . whatever he felt like wearing that day. The thrill of conciliating our appearance differences as we hold hands, magnified by the pride of having people around us turning their necks at us, as if such difference is scarce in the world of uniformity. The illusion of riding the wave of rebelliousness in the union of us would only be shattered when a nosy elderly lady would ask, “Are you two dating?” And Bobby would be the one to answer, “No, we’re best friends!” in what felt like a mocking tone.

I tried to get used to that, but sometimes the sting would feel more vivid than the other days, and I couldn't help but to bear a heartbreak. Over and over again.

I realized that it was nearing my station. I finally got up from my seat and tapped his arms lightly to say goodbye, but he reached for my fingers and to my surprise he held my hand, preventing me from going just yet, “Take care.” I scoffed because it sounded atypical of him, especially considering the fact that we always ride the same train together every morning ever since he came back to Korea five years ago.

“Yes, of course?” I put a cynical jeer, trying to break off from his unusual joke, but as we were standing face-to face so closely, it was clear that there was no trace of humor on his expression.

“Take care,”

“Yes, of course Bobby, the door is closing soon—”

“I want to see you tonight.”

At that moment, I did not know why, but I could feel the veins around my eyes tensed as these unwanted tears budding in my eyes, and I wish it could go away, but it only grew more apparent, until embarrassingly enough my voice broke into a pathetic sob of: “What are you talking about? Of course, I’ll come to your engagement dinner.”

Chapter Text

Four years ago, as a junior staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I was assigned to a rotational position in the immigration department that required me to be stationed at Incheon Airport. One Friday morning, I was given a case of a family relocating back to Korea after fifteen years residing in America, and to check whether they had a clean history in America as to minimize the possibility of fugitivity which unfortunately was a common case. I looked through their paper works, finding out that the patriarch of the family had been working as an accountant for the first five years of their settlement, before establishing his own accounting firm in Virginia, handling clients which were mostly Korean companies in America. Everything seemed of squeaky-clean nature. The family pays their bills well, they belong in the upper middle tier of tax bracket, and their sons had obtained Bachelor’s degree in local colleges. The oldest son chose to remain in Virginia following his marriage at a local council, while as the parents moved back to Korea, the youngest son followed suit. The case with the youngest son intrigued me, because while parents often have sentimental reason to return to their motherland, the children –more often than not— would be less so. Especially those who have settled abroad since young age, they would think the prospect of being fully American is a better option than being neither of the two countries. Before lunchtime, out of curiosity, I looked at the youngest son’s papers, and although I was relatively unsurprised by the fact that he had attained dual-citizenship, I was startled by the name written in his American passport: Bobby Ji Won Kim.

Later that night, during dinner with my parents I had brought up the topic of the Kims relocating back to Korea, and while my mother seemed ecstatic by the discovery I have came upon (she seemed to have an endearing memory of the family), my father shrugged it off rather coldly. I supposed it was due to his disdain towards Korean diaspora which he had made clear when our family was struggling financially following the crisis that hit Asia when I was in the first year of junior high. Before the crisis, we were considerably well-off with father’s small property brokering business at Incheon. We used to live in a two-stories, five-bedrooms house of a rather idyllic suburban community – the place where I got to know Bobby and his family. Then the crisis drove our family’s business to declare bankruptcy, and to make up the loss that our family endured, we had to sell our house and moved to a two-bedrooms apartment in the outskirts of Seoul. During moments of frustration, my father would mutter in resentment, “This is what happens if our people keep trading their loyalty to our nation for easy money! Look at the Kims, running away just in time before our country burns to ashes.” As I grew up, I came to learn that it was a way of my father’s coping mechanism, by projecting his bitterness onto someone else’s fortune. Positioning the Kims as the black sheep, a martyr in the unraveling of my father’s inability to maintain his business afloat in the time of crises. But back then, I took my father’s bitterness as what the Kims were, instead of admitting that there was none to blame but himself.

I supposed my father’s narrative of the Kims grew on me, and upon discovering Bobby’s Facebook account which all seemed so foreign to me, what nested within me was only a petulant anger suffered by an eight-grader. Years later, I still never was an independent thinker, even after a bachelor degree in politics, when I first discovered Bobby’s relocation back to Korea my first thought was neither mere curiosity nor delight, it was instead a sneer, wondering whether life in America had been rough to them, for them to relocate back? Wondering – whether they’d think that it was a mistake to leave Korea on the first place? To leave me?

I hadn’t been anywhere near of getting in touch with the Kims days after I discovered their relocation. I simply declared to my staff that they had passed the paper screening and hadn’t began to think of them again for weeks. Until one day, I presumed it was my luck, when a stranger tapped my shoulder as I helplessly tried to munch my lunch in the middle of skimming bundles of paperwork at the City Hall canteen. It was due to my faulty decision that this story began, I had committed a fatal mistake, something I would undo if given chance – I looked. I could have shrugged it off and told whoever it was to sod off without identifying who it’d be, like I would have if it wasn’t for a momentary second of surprise, seeing the figure reflected on my metal cups, displaying whose taps were those on my shoulder. So I looked, and as disbelief started to nested in me, he said, “It’s you.” And in all of a sudden, I was removed from all adulthood miseries as I met the person that reminded me so much of my childhood. A remembrance of simple happiness and past days innocence – personified – standing in front of me, with that typical grin I’ve missed so much.

He was home.

And suddenly all the anger, the jealousy, the disappointment was nowhere to trace.

Chapter Text

That evening, he was dressed in a light grey suit with a white shirt tailored to fit his size and his hair combed aside like he never usually did. He wore a maroon skinny tie and a leather shoes colored in oxblood. In the hallway leading to the banquet, I caught Jisoo tucking a stem of white rose into the right pocket of Bobby’s suit. She looked pretty in her ivory off-the-shoulder dress, wrapping her hourglass body so gracefully. A moment later they’d kissed, thinking no one was seeing, like two teenage kids in love. But I saw it and, in a jolt, I turned my glance away.

During the dinner speech, their parents seemed to be in an awe at how much in love both their kids were. Teary eyed, Jisoo’s mother declared that she’d never seen her daughter as happy before she met Bobby, and such flattery was mutually resounded as Bobby’s mother broke into happy tears next to her. It was scenic, and I had the widest smile plastered all over my face. I was smiling from ear to ear, but strangely enough, it felt like a mockery for myself because I could not deny the deep sting lying underneath my chest.

“Huh, I’m not the one to say all the sweet things, but—”

Bobby paused mid-sentence, chuckling to himself, “—but—” He lifted his eyes and through Jisoo’s neck he looked at me sitting on my seat, immersed in the cheery crowd.

“—but I hope you had come sooner in my life.”

And not until he finished his sentence did he turn his glance back to his fiancée.

Chapter Text

Do you know why he chose to relocate with his parents, instead of continuing their family’s thriving business in America with his brother?

Because while his parents wanted to take care of his elderly and sickly grandmother, he had met someone. Someone enormously special to him that he would ditch all the possibilities America could have given him, and chose to return back home to the land he only briefly remembered from his clouded childhood memories.

He met her in the old-fashioned mutual friends’ match-up.  And all I heard was that it was love at first sight, a laughing stock of today’s bitterness but they always said there was nothing modern in their union. It was pure and innocent, and in her captivating ivory skin, her honeydew lips, did he find haven to his 20-something wonderings. They praised his bravery, something of rare nature these days, to quickly make up his mind to bend on one knee just a year after their first meeting.

They said he could hardly function when she returned to Kore, and I supposed in the dread of longing did he finally made the bold decision to relocate with his family and his future wife.

When Bobby met me, he was already engaged to Jisoo. And I guess somewhere in the dubiousness of moral and conscience, there was me in it, an unwanted insertion in their stories. Like a ghastly little wound, my part was pain for everyone and even if they wanted to remove me, there would be scars that would take years to fool naked eyes into thinking that there was never an infliction there on the first place.

My father never liked Bobby. I’d like to think that it was the tattoos, or the piercing that would strike as too defiant for my family’s Eastern conventions. Or perhaps the old sentiment of his family immigrating to America. Those thoughts are the excuses I tried to convince myself with, positioning my father as the one on judgmental side, because it was nice to think that my father never liked Bobby for reasons that I had no say in it, it was nice to find refuge from being responsible of a cause. But, as you might have guessed, the truth was far from it, and reprimanding from my side –however strong I tried it to be— could never alter the reality.

Bobby and I had grown to be very close only months after we were reunited by stark coincidence, and moments when we were not together felt like moments lost to me. It would be a big understatement to say that I had never met anybody like him before, rather than a discovery of someone new, coming up to Bobby waiting for me at the subway station and having myself greeted by that bunny smile – always felt like coming home to me.

And I guess somewhere along the way, the home was caught on fire.

There was one time when my mother had just recovered from a major operation. A surgery of mass effect on her body that it had left her partially impaired and bed-ridden for almost two months. It was a momentous time to see her finally getting back on her feet, and festivity was our kind of congratulatory to her. After weeks of begging and constant phone calls to our extended family members to take some days of leave, our family finally got to arrange a short getaway in a beautiful villa overlooking the Yellow Sea in Gwangju.

I remember it to be a solemn and beautiful evening spent together. Long table full of homemade foods my grandmother had prepared all the way, the fleeting sound of my nieces playing catch in the backyard, the melodious hum of old tale folks that my father had been singing all day long, and on top of that, my mother with all the tints of rose on her cheek, a reflection of liveliness that I had not seen on her for many months.

In such moment of rarity, right before our family’s feast of gratitude, my phone rung and very atypical of me, as if there was a force of reluctance, I did not pick it up immediately like I always did, but when it kept on ringing after three call attempts, I finally looked as the name Kim Donghyuk appeared on the caller’s ID. For as long as I could remember, he had always been Bobby’s closest friend, and even though I never knew him personally, Bobby forced me to save his number, for emergency, he said. So when that name appeared on my phone, my heart plunged in apprehension, awaiting for something dreadful to happen. Something must be wrong.

“Hi—sorry—to call you like this—”

Donghyuk was panting from the opposite side of the line, a rumble of street noise distorting his full sentence but the desperation in his plea was loud and clear on my ear, “—he needs you, pretty badly.”

“W-what happened?”

“He’s got caught up with something, he’s in the police station now. In Annam-dong.”

That night, I could not find even the sheerest tinge of hesitation. That night I just abruptly left, leaving my family baffled with the rash in my decision. The misplaced bravery of a woman to brace a four-hours car drive from Gwangju to Seoul in the middle of the night on her own; the blinded impulse of a woman so madly in love with someone who never even had a gut to boldly define what the two of us were, in spite of the drunken kisses, the hands that travelled to places less than sacred, and the feelings professed only in the absence of his fiancée.

I could still remember the look of disgust in my father’s face when I told him that I was going, and through all the revulsion pining in his guts he muttered, “He never even cared to visit your mother when she was at the hospital, and yet you see him every day. And now you want to leave your family only for a man who does nothing with his life but to mislead you on? Don’t you have dignity?”

The truth was my father never liked Bobby neither because of his tattoos nor his piercing, it was because of the effects he got on me. For better, or much worse.