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It was silent. Dusty. Dark. I think I was scared.
It felt like there were a ton of bricks laying on me. I couldn’t move. I didn’t think I was breathing. I strained my ears– at least I think I did– to hear something. Something that would say that this wasn’t the end. That I’d see my Eomma and Appa again, that I’d be able to meet On-jo tomorrow because I promised her, and I never went back on my word when it came to her.
Maybe, the tomorrow we promised wasn’t tomorrow, maybe it was twelve years ago when my Eomma promised it for us.
I was clutching at her pants with sticky fingers, burying my face in the cotton and only looking out of it once in a while to catch a glimpse at the girl looking at me and my Eomma. Her hair was in two pig tails– that despite two star clips attempting to help– was messy, and she was wearing a bright, yellow dress that was clumsily put on, but the whole of it perfectly matched the joyful energy that protruded out of her very being. She stood in front of her father who was acting wary like I was, only just more polite, and her very being seemed to charm my mother beyond care.
“Nam On-jo is it? Well this is my son, Lee Cheongsan.” She nudged me out from behind her leg to face the sun that was Nam On-jo, and without anything to block her even slightly, did she take over you entirely. From that moment, I knew I was gone.
“Hi.” She bounded over to me as our parents watched us for a second, only to lapse into conversation that I wasn’t listening to as I took all that was her in.
“Hi..”
“Do you like the colour yellow too? I love it a lot.”
I never once thought about what colour I loved most, but in that moment yellow became my favourite colour because when I told her that I liked yellow too, her smile grew so wide that I knew it’d be my favourite colour until the end of time if it looked like that.
“Appa! Appa! Can we go play in my room? I wanna show him my yellow crayons!” I looked up at Eomma, I really wanted her to say yes so I could follow her. I’d follow her anywhere.
Eomma said no, but she promised that tomorrow we could. That tomorrow she’d even cook us chicken to eat after we finished playing. That tomorrow came, and so did every other day with her. There wasn’t a day we were apart nor a day we– I– wanted to be.
I believed in all the imaginative stories she’d come up with even though I knew they could never be true, though she told them with such conviction and glee, how could they be anything but true?
We ate warm, love-filled meals together with family around a table we could barely see over.
We slept together in dark rooms that never felt cold because everything about her was just so warm, that even when the moon came out I never took notice, because the sun never left me.
We laughed together because there was nothing we did without the other, because where one ended the other began.
We grew together because where one went so did the other. When she got taller so did I, and when I grew so tall that I had to make the effort of looking down just to see her, my eyes never strayed because nothing I could see was the world I knew.
Nothing was worth as much as her.
I loved a lot of things in life; Gyeong-su, food, the weekend when exams are done, yellow.
But nothing came close to the level she was on.
I couldn’t justify how, or why I loved her so much. All I knew was that from the moment I met Nam On-jo, the world was never the same.
She was everything happy, and so full of love and light. The laughter in the room when the joke you made didn’t land how you wanted it to, but she didn’t want you to be alone.
She was the chance you didn’t deserve, because for some reason, she could find something in you worth fighting for.
She was the feeling of firm arms in a hug that said you weren’t alone.
She was the hope you needed in the worst of situations, because no matter what she had been through, she always had more to give without fail.
She was the epitome of life. Joyful, on-going and ever-giving. In comparison, I wasn’t much, but I was hers. In yellow, and in both body and soul I belonged to Nam On-jo.
I told myself I’d go to the grave with this crush, because it meant I wouldn’t lose her in life nor death. That some part of her selfishly would belong to me rather than nothing at all because I was never brave enough to tell her the truth. The idea of asking her out was rooted in the fear of rejection as it’d mean I’d lose my part of her that beamed so much upon me. One that if poets knew only half of how it felt, would dedicate the rest of their lives writing hymns about it.
So I went to the grave with this crush. In body; I clutched her name tag in my fist as I held Gwi-nam while the explosion rippled against our skin, the heat of it engraving her name into me. In soul; I chanted her name the moment I pulled Gwi-nam down the elevator shaft with me, as a pity that there wouldn’t be a tomorrow. That I was imprinting my worst fear on her knowing that if it were me it happened too, I would be without repair. This moment was the moment where the red string that tied us together to the point of not knowing where one ended and the other began found the piece to tug at that would unravel us completely.
I was being ripped apart from life, physically and metaphorically and I wasn’t thinking about how sorry I was to lose my life. I was distraught thinking about how I was losing my life when I had just tasted the beginning of it. I had tasted tomorrow on her lips, and it was the closest to that promise I’d ever get.
In no world would I not come if On-jo called, because there was only such little time in the world we had known apart. That’s how I knew in the silent, dusty, dark scene I was dead, as there was no place on this earth I’d be without her as through any disastrous scenario I’d make my way to her.
And when the explosion destroyed my body beyond repair, the one thing it could never get rid of was her. In silence on my ashes, lay her name tag that titled the site of my death as hers, because in life and death, body and soul, in yellow, that was all I was.