DEPARTURE

So far as you can tell, Yeji never loved you. A wish beyond your reach.

-

April, and you were barely seventeen. It was spring, but the weather hadn’t gotten wind of that just yet. So—cool, rainy, just like every April before it.

Yeji’s voice stuck a perfect landing in your ears. “ You know what’s crazy?”

“No?” you responded cautiously.

“Apparently this stuff starts out as a wheat, or a rye. You believe that?”

You paused. “What the hell is rye?”

“It’s… well, it’s like a wheat.”

The wood crackled again, embers sent flying into the chill night air. Now that the fire had already begun burning out in front of you, you pulled your jacket tight around your shoulders.

“Okay. Ready? On three.”

“Wait a second.” You raised a finger in the air. “One, two, three?—or, one, two, three go?”

“Who on earth does one, two, three, go?”

“I dunno.”

Yeji twisted an eyebrow without saying anything and leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees. The coals and dying gasps of the bonfire between you illuminated the sharp, perfected features of her face, casting a set of even sharper shadows.

“I mean some people do,” you added.

“Do I look like some people?”

That mischievous smirk again pulled at the corner of her lip. It was dark and hard to see, but you could feel it.

“ You look like you’re trying to get me sick,” you said.

“Don’t be such a baby about it. Just do it with me.”

“On go?”

“On three.” She curled her lip, dissatisfied with you yet again. “One. Two. Three.”

Eyes closed, you tilted the cup back against your lips. A dark, dreadful liquor pooled in your cheeks. And against your better judgment, it finally seared its way down your throat. For a moment, it sat woefully in your stomach, like a question mark. Your eyes watered, your chest heaved, coughing and choking.

It took a beat, but eventually you would make peace with it, the beverage equivalent of a kick to the head. You were just thankful it had not elected to leave the same way it came.

“ Ugh,” you sputtered, wiping your mouth with your sleeve. “I swear it’s like someone wondered what would happen if you tried to drink dirt.” Your eyes drew over the bonfire—or at least what was left of it—to find a face beaming with the smuggest grin you’d ever seen, the drink in her hands entirely untouched.

“ Gotcha,” she lilted.

“Oh of course, you ass.”

Yeji’s hand covered a laugh, the corners of her mouth sneaking out from behind it. The sound of it alone made nearly puking worth it. She stood. And in one uninterested motion, tossed the contents of her cup—a kind of alcohol you’d only learn later in life could probably be used to start a car—right out into the grass. Twisting the insides of her jacket pockets, she sauntered around the pit, briefly lit in the spits and licks of the dying fire.

“Think there’s any room on that tree stump for one more?”

Her eyes, sharp and magnetic, always pulled you deeply into her. She held you in them for a moment, a long couple of moments, and the flickers of the fire painted bright streaks of gold in those whirlpools of deep, earthen brown. When she smiled, the corners of her eyes creased, snapping at your attention.

“You deaf?”

“Dunno. Depends,” you said, still clutching your chest and clearing your throat. “Who’s asking?”

Hwang Yeji. Your first kiss. Your first a lot of things actually. However for the sake of this story, your first kiss. It was somewhat crude how she’d stolen it off you too. Though still that was your fault mostly. It’s only fair that you got what was coming to you for the way you had dragged your feet.

A playful slap landed on your shoulder. “ Scoot over.”

You think about it less and less now, and as a result, the actual details of it have begun to elude you. Obviously you remember kissing her—or rather her kissing you—but that’s just about all you remember. There’s the way it started; her fingers under your chin, dragging your eyes away from the pile of embers that glowed in the fire pit. And of course how it ended; a wide smile dimpling her cheeks as her lips pulled away from yours. But everything in between? Years after the fact? God, your guess is as good as anyone’s.

Still, in spite of their incompleteness, Yeji shows up in a lot of your memories, the good ones anyway. You tease them through your head time and time again just to make sure they’re still there, intact.

She’d been around for a lot of the growing up you had to do in school, persistently dissatisfied you wouldn’t do it any faster. Never before had you gotten that close to anyone, let alone someone as vibrantly charismatic and beautiful as her. Allowing yourself to think back on it, there was a lot of downtime, time where nothing in particular was happening at all—the walks home after classes and clubs, Saturday afternoons just spent hanging out on your parent’s couch, not to mention all those late night runs on the local Pelicana for more chicken wings than anyone should ever eat—it all seemed like such a big deal at the time (though arguably, Pelicana is still a big deal).

To be clear, no, the two of you never dated. It was far too difficult to describe it like that. When one of you would turn eyes to the other for comfort, for compassion, for a sincerity absent in those everyday flirtations, you’d always find her—or she’d find you—with eyes pointed away, thoughts elsewhere. Though that didn’t mean you wouldn’t get teased about it, relentlessly you might add. Your friends would see the Friday evenings and Sunday mornings you’d spend together on what must’ve looked like nothing other than what they were: dates.

But the truth was more complicated than you ever cared to explain. So—you let them think what they wanted. You’d always return back to them and field twenty questions about what the two of you got up to, if she was good at kissing, what position she liked, how she was down there, whatever the color was of the underwear she wore that day. You’d make up your own answers, the ones they wanted to hear. It always did shut them up.

So, officially, you were friends. And you were the first person she came to when she got the news.

“In Seoul, huh?” You shoved your hands in your pockets.

“Yep.”

“For how long?”

“No one knows.” She twisted at the collar of her shirt, pulling and turning it into a tight knot. “For some people it’s a year and then they know it’s not really gonna work out. For others it’s a whole lot longer.”

“Well, it’ll get pretty quiet around here then won’t it.”

Yeji smiled. “You’ll survive. I know you will.”

A brief silence hung between you, different from any of the other lulls in conversation or times just spent quietly in your thoughts. Dry leaves crunched and mashed as you walked, and you could hear the wind shake old tree branches of whatever was still left on them.

“I bet you’d be good at it.”

“What’s with that?” A muted laugh and Yeji’s eyes were again pointed up to the sky, as if she were counting stars. Always she was looking at the sky like that. You knew it. Maybe she knew it too. She didn’t belong here.

You let out a short sigh and shrugged your shoulders. “Just a hunch.”

-