The Everything

In your final moments, there is only one person you can think of ever turning to. It wasn’t even hard really—it shouldn’t be. Not when she exists.

The one that has held your whole being in its entirety for a lifetime now—Naoi Rei.

From the passenger’s seat, it isn’t difficult to make out how this mess of a human looks amidst this crisis that has befallen you all: disgruntled, desperate, scared. You have nicknames for everyone in the group. Yujin’s the ‘leader’. Wonyoung’s the ‘muse’. Gaeul’s the ‘counselor’. But Rei? Rei didn’t have a special nickname to you. Why? Because you have always just labelled her as one thing: yours. Because that’s the role she filled in your life.

Naoi Rei was your everything.

Staring into her dilating pupils, you notice between the shifting tones of expression across her face that there’s a trickle of starlight in her eyes. It’s tiny. Almost imperceptibly ignorable. But when you focus on it, your own eyes go wide—not in horror, not in fear, but rather, in awe.

As the mote of possibility beams right at you, swallowing you whole, you accepted your momentary blindness and allowed the unknown to consume you.

Of all the rooftops she could have chosen to meet you at, of course it’s the one that smells like death. It’s not even the good kind. It reeks of years of tar and nicotine that’s soaked into the concrete here from the different staff—and students—who have dared to try and sneak a smoke break on campus. Ever since the invention of vapes—and ever since it’s been made legal to use inside schools and universities—designated areas to smoke like this are now things of the past. You’re pretty sure nobody comes up here anymore.

Nobody except a pair of crackheads like you two.

Gasping for air, your lungs reel at the realization that the air it’s getting smells like decades of cigarette smoke that still lingered. It’s surprising that the lock on the door to get to this rooftop was busted before you even got here. But then again, considering who you’re meeting, it shouldn’t come as a surprise anymore.

Sure enough, as you look around and peek down the opposite side of the rooftop entrance, you see her. The one you’ve been looking for. The reason why you’re back on the rooftop of your alma matter at nine in the fucking morning.

Naoi Rei.

“You’re late,” she utters without even turning around, without even having to hear you say a word yet. “Been waiting here for hours now, jesus. Thought you were going to ditch me.”

“Late? You’re just early,” you say in between pants that you’re trying to force down. You don’t want to make it seem like age has caught onto you poorly—not in front of her. “Why the hell are we here anyway? You couldn’t come to a batch reunion, but for some reason, you could make it here? I’ll never understand you.”

“Never asked you to. Only asked you to be here,” she replies, tapping something locked between her fingers against the surface of the withered concrete railing. “Too many people. Too much noise. Up here is better. It always is.”

You join her by the railing, leaning against it. From the way she’s been sassing you these past few moments, a great part of you wants to push her aside and sake the living daylights out of her—maybe then she’d start making more sense to you. But the moment you catch a glimpse of her visage from your peripheral, all of that anger and frustration melts away.

She’s Naoi Rei. There was no way you were every going to hate her.

Sighing, you gesture to the cigarette in her hand. “Still smoke? Going to light that? At least tell me when you do.”

“Does it look like I’m going to light it?” she snaps back, placing the stick now between her teeth. As if to demonstrate, she mimics the motions of taking a long drag, pretending to let the nicotine enter her system, and with a heavy exhale, billows out what should have been smoke into the air around her. “I’m a bitch, but I’m not an asshole. Remember you still got asthma.”

You roll your eyes. “How romantic. Anyway, what’s your deal here? I had to skip work just to meet your sorry ass. It better be worth my time.”

“When have I never been?” she says with a smirk, playing with the cigarette across her teeth. “Remember that time in sixth grade?”

“Which one? Too many incidents to remember,” you scoff, elbows scraping against the concrete. “That time with the principal?”

“Close—I meant the time at the flag ceremony. Remember when we tied a fake flag to it?”

“Oh fuck you, you used my fucking underwear for that one. My mother grounded me for a week when she found out. Those were expensive briefs too.”

She chuckles. “Cute. Remember the Saturday detention we did back in eighth grade?”

“Do I? Of course I do. That was the first time we ever ruled the school. Mr. Hwang was out like a light the moment she drank those sleeping meds. I don’t think he ever recovered from that.”

“Well fuck him, because when I think back to that moment, I remember driving the school bus around the parking lot. Felt fucking epic doing donuts on such a big ride.”

Shaking your head, you don’t realize you inch closer towards her. “I guess we can’t forget what happened in senior year, huh? At the senior’s ball?”

Rei almost burst out into laughter at the mere mention of it, memories replaying in her head in an instant. “Which part? The sextape of your ex with the guy she was cheating on you with playing as the same-day-edit, or the fact that I nearly set half the school on fire when I swapped the balloons with helium ones?”

You pause. Because the moment you remember the most with Rei back then was her grabbing your hand as the two of you ran down the heated corridor.

“I-I guess both.”

“Tch, thought we were on a roll there, killjoy. Anyway, we had some good times, didn’t we? It’s all I think about when I get the chance to reminisce—our school run since elementary. Shame we couldn’t go to college together.”

“And whose fault was that?” you bicker back towards her, trying to match her energy. “You and your family up and left without saying a word. Not even to me. And this is how I find out you’re back—.”

“My father died.”

Those were not the words you expect to hear coming from Naoi Rei’s mouth.

You’ve known her for more than half of your life. You’ve grown up with her. You’ve spent your formative years—unfortunately—with her. So much so that you can almost anticipate down to a very minute tee half the things she might say in any given moment.

But this—this is not something you could have seen coming. At all.

Brushing over your lack of an initial response, Rei continues, hands cupping her body like she’s trying to search for something on her person. “Yeah, the old man? He’s dead. Was expected. Cancer’s a bitch. Nothing we could do about it.”

You know how complicated Rei’s relationship was with her father.

For as long as you’ve known her, you could never really tell whether she truly loved him or not. On one hand, he would always forgive him for the troubles and antics she would get herself in, often even offering to help her out of sticky situations in the past. But on the other hand, he’s the same reason why Rei turned out to be the menace she was—and arguably still is to this day.

Something about attention. Something about wanting to be in control. Something about doing something for herself.

Since her family left the country for Rei’s tertiary studies, you two have barely kept in touch. Apart from the awkwardly timed and awfully paced back-and-forth messages, the only real communication you two have had was in the form of memes and Tiktok brainrots you would send each other.

Having a conversation like this with her is like going off the deep end right after wading in the shallow waters for so long.

“I … I’m sorry for your—.”

“Stop. I don’t want your pity. I’ve heard that too many times already,” Rei blurts out, teeth clenching against the tip of the cigarette like one would a plastic straw. “I came here to be real. You’re the only person I’ve ever gotten to be real with. So deal with it.”

You move away from the railing for a moment to catch your breath. “Go for it. Hit me.”

And she actually does punch you in the gut, sending you keeling for a few seconds. But you let it slide. After all, it made her smile from ear to ear again—something you haven’t seen in a long time. Maybe some pain on your end is a small price to pay for it.

“I … have a favor to ask you.”

That’s odd. Rei never asked for favors—she always made people do it. Hearing this from her is giving you all sorts of bad tingles across your body, but you let it play out first. “Sure. Hopefully it’s something I can do within the next hour. If I’m not back before lunchtime, my boss is going to—.”

“Can you bury this somewhere? Somewhere nice? Somewhere with … a lot of space. But not somewhere where a lot of people would visit.”

She slides you her personal cigarette box, the tin surface scratching against the railing.