i'll be loving you (always)

Jiwoo couldn’t help but think that at this point, the universe had just decided how her story was supposed to unfold. Every time she tried to make a different choice, fate somehow nudged her to where it wanted her, back to you. 

She almost found it funny. At first it’d seemed like a silly little joke the universe had been playing on her. From day one, there you were. Same nursery, same primary and high school, same university. Every time she thought she’d escaped you, she'd turn around and find you again, as though you'd been waiting there all along.

She’d moved, changed jobs three times. Hell, she’d even thrown herself into hobbies she had no interest in, a bunch of things that kept her so busy she figured she’d eventually stop seeing you around. At first it’d seemed like it had worked. 

Until it didn’t.

Because for some mysterious reason she couldn’t explain, you seemed to reappear time and time again. 

Sometimes it was boarding a train after a long day of work, only to discover the only empty seat happened to be next to you. It’d be in the middle of the supermarket at nine o’clock at night, both reaching for the same bottle of milk. Hearing your laugh across the bar, a sound her heart recognised long before her eyes did. 

The first time it happened she tried to play it off as a coincidence. The second time, she decided that the world might be smaller than she’d ever thought it was as a little girl. By the fourth time, she’d decided that the universe lacked both originality and boundaries. After all, there were only so many times two lives could collide before coincidence started feeling like an embarrassingly inadequate explanation.

—

If anyone were to ask Jiwoo to talk about the first time she’d seen you, she wasn’t really sure she’d be able to give a proper answer, after all, you’d just always been there. So how exactly was she supposed to pinpoint a specific memory of a face she’d spent a lifetime accidentally memorising?

Something Jiwoo always remembered like it was yesterday was the first thing you’d ever said to her, as silly as it was. Five and full of bravado when you’d probably wanted to cry just as much as she had. She’d run into you while you stood squinting at the sun like the strange little kid you were.

You’d both fallen, ended up sprawled on the floor with split knees and bruised shins. Jiwoo had cried, in the way all five-year-olds do when they’re surprised by something and don’t know how to feel.

You, however, with the sound logic of the five-year-old mind, had decided at that moment that both of you crying was pointless. Instead, you'd simply stared at her blinking through tears you were trying very hard not to let fall, before climbing to your feet.

“I did that on purpose.” 

Thinking about it now, Jiwoo couldn’t help but feel like it had all been a little ridiculous. How you’d clearly pretended not to be hurt to get her to stop crying. How, when the teachers had come over, you’d taken the blame for what was, in actuality, an accident. How you’d told a silly story about slaying dragons to save a princess, or some other nonsense she couldn’t quite remember right now. Anything to make her laugh.

Jiwoo liked to think that if she'd been paying closer attention, she might've recognised the pattern then. Not that she'd fallen in love with you, no, that’d have been a ridiculous concept for a five year old. But no, she might have noticed that you’d always just been there. Scared, happy and everything in between. 

That was the strange part about growing up. You spend so much time learning that nothing lasts forever, that it’s an impossible concept. But then life throws you a tiny little exception that makes you question your beliefs over and over again. 

Jiwoo had spent most of her life beside you without ever choosing to. Surnames so similar, almost like they’d conspired to keep the two of you within arm's reach for years before either of you had learned what love was. Nursery pegs hung alphabetically, and classroom registers, seating plans, even graduation, all alphabetically organised. Every system designed to manage hundreds of children somehow kept returning her to the desk beside yours.

What she would later realise was that life had a funny habit of scattering people, and that sometimes proximity didn’t necessarily mean permanence. Maybe that’s why you never really made sense. Because no matter how far life scattered the two of you, you always seemed to come back, as if you were a boomerang she’d thrown.

—

At fifteen, Jiwoo had learned that life was a series of unpredictable events, and that from one moment to the next, everything could completely change. 

It was almost surreal really. One morning her grandad had been fine, complaining about how he could feel the cold in his bones, how it was making his joints feel stiff. The next, everyone was wearing black. 

The house had been fuller than it ever had before, but she’d never felt so lonely. Every conversation seemed to stop whenever she walked into the room, replaced by the same sympathetic smile that made her want to vomit.

She remembered escaping to the back garden, sitting on the old swing set, the coldness of the air making her eyes sting. Or maybe those were just the tears she’d finally let escape. The gate had creaked, and somehow, without even looking, she’d known it was you. 

You hadn’t asked how she was, hadn’t even tried to give her that smile everyone else had. Instead, you’d just sat next to her on the adjacent swing and remained quiet. After a few minutes, you’d reached into your blazer pocket and handed her a chocolate bar, her favourite kind.

“Funeral food sucks, everyone's too bothered about drinking instead.”

Jiwoo had laughed, the kind that felt wrong, like she shouldn't have been allowed to laugh given the circumstances. But she had felt joy, even if it were just for a second. She remembered not being able to find the words to speak, but you hadn’t expected her to.

Instead, you’d just reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly in your own. 

“I remember when my grandma died.” 

That was all you’d said. Nothing more, nothing less. No ‘it’ll all be okay,’ or ‘Things get easier with time.’ Just that, just enough to tell her she wasn't sitting in the sadness by herself.

You didn’t speak again for a while after that, but looking back now, Jiwoo often wondered if that was the first time she'd understood what comfort actually looked like.

—

Years passed, some quicker than others, and by the time she was twenty, Jiwoo experienced embarrassment in front of you for the first time. It had taken two decades, and honestly that was probably more impressive than she’d ever given it credit for. 

You'd seen her cry over scraped knees, braces, terrible haircuts, exam results and funerals. But none of that seemed to bother her as much as something she still refused to talk about to this day. To you, it was barely worth remembering. To Jiwoo, it remained one of the most embarrassing moments of her life. 

It’d happened in the café near the train station, coincidentally you’d both been heading home for the weekend and picked the same train. Or perhaps it wasn’t coincidence, but by that point, Jiwoo had long since stopped arguing with the universe. 

She'd been halfway through telling you some story she couldn't remember anymore when she'd laughed at something you'd said. Unfortunately for you, you’d been slightly too funny for her to handle. And that’d meant that you’d ended up with her entire drink down the front of your white t-shirt. 

She remembered bursting into tears, which looking back at it now felt ridiculous, but in the moment, it felt like the world was ending.

“Oh my God.” 

You'd looked down at yourself, blinking at the massive coffee stain that made your shirt cling to your chest before looking back at her. “Jiwoo, it’s fine.”

She remembered fumbling through her bag for napkins, hands shaking so much that she'd dropped half of them onto the café floor. You'd crouched down beside her before she even had the chance, picking them up one by one, and somehow, that’d only made it worse.

It had taken her years to understand why spilling coffee on your shirt had felt so much more pivotal than scraped knees or bad exam results. Embarrassment only really existed when you cared what somebody thought, and somewhere along the way, you'd become the one person whose opinion suddenly mattered more than she'd ever intended, even if she hadn’t quite realised that back then.

You'd eventually laughed. Not at her, but just at the silliness of the whole situation. “You done?” She'd nodded, and you’d figured that it was as good a response you were going to get right then. You'd peeled your soaked t-shirt away from your chest with an exaggerated grimace. “That’s good, because this is starting to get cold.”

Against every expectation she'd had, she'd laughed. A proper laugh, the kind that can't be contained, one full of the sort of joy you couldn't fake. That had made you smile, because somehow you'd always known exactly how to ground her.

—

And then, just as it always seemed to, life carried the two of you in different directions once again. That was how growing up worked, or at least that’s what Jiwoo told herself. People left, destined to just be a small chapter in the story of her life, and she’d made peace with that concept. 

But not with you, not completely, anyway. Because every time she'd finally convinced herself she'd reached the last page of your chapter, life would turn another, and there you'd be again.

You disappeared often enough to make her believe that this time might finally be it. Different lives after graduation, different careers in different parts of the city. Months passed without so much as a glimpse of you. 

She’d spent so many years of her life convinced you were one of those strange constants in her life, so much so she feared that if she were to tell anyone, they’d probably think she was a conspiracy theorist. 

At first she'd still catch herself looking for you in the most mundane of places. In every crowded train station, in small cafés with overpriced coffee. She always expected to see you there, even for just a glimpse. 

But eventually, even that stopped. At age twenty-five, for the first time in her life, Jiwoo stopped expecting to see you. 

You have no idea how much that hurt.