SEASONS

It’s snowing outside, and you’re twelve years old.

Waiting at a recital, as your piano teacher insists on calling it. Never mind that it’s just her living room—packed with folding chairs and parents barely watching while they scroll their phones waiting for their child’s turn.

You’re on the floor huddled by the fireplace, knees hugged to your chest. Hoping to melt into the heat and disappear. Failing to settle your nerves as the other students stumble through the same rehearsed pieces they’ve been practicing all year.

It’s a mixed bag, really: an older boy takes Alla Turca and butchers it to pieces. A girl plays Chopin like she’s haunting the room. You keep your eyes on the carpet.

Then, it’s your turn.

Your teacher smiles that gentle, terrifying teacher smile. “And what have you prepared for us?”

You open your mouth and your voice squeaks. The whole room laughs. Except one girl.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

You clear your throat, force it out of your chest: “I wrote this myself,”—and the laughter dies.

And then you play.

Your fingers shake on the keys. You slip on a few notes, and you know you rush through the bridge, but you can’t stop. That would be worse.

But somehow, miraculously, the music sings.

It’s a simple melody, but it’s yours. The first real piece of yourself that you’ve handed over to strangers.

When the last note fades, the applause is the same polite clap every other student got. Aside from your teacher—on her feet, trying to start a standing ovation all by herself.

Then, the next kid gets called up and you slide back to your spot by the fire.

Relief hits. Then something electric. You actually played something you wrote. You’ll never forget how this feels.

The girl who played the Chopin piece (a nocturne, she’ll later tell you) leans over. Close enough that her hair brushes your shoulder, and suddenly all the love songs that used to make you cringe make sense.

She whispers, “I loved your song.”

You want to tell her you wrote it about her.

You don’t.

The fireplace crackles louder. It’s in on the secret.

It’s snowing outside, and you’re fourteen years old.

You and Minjeong are inseparable at school—the only two kids who actually care about music.

Both absolutely hopeless nerds, while everyone else loses it over the singers, the idols, the celebrity of it all, you and Minjeong actually listen to the art.

Lunch is earbuds and library corners and hushed arguments about whose playlist is actually good.

She sings quietly when she thinks you’re not listening. You pretend you’re not memorising every note.

Your mothers get in on it, start making dumb wedding jokes—how one day you’ll be up there playing one of your own songs while she walks down the aisle towards you.

You roll your eyes so hard you see the inside of your skull.

They don’t get it. You and her aren’t like that.

Minjeong just laughs, and swipes another snack off your plate.

One afternoon she’s in your living room with her guitar, picking out a new song she’s found.

The lyrics hit slow and heavy:

Yesterday, today and also tomorrow.

In the future, still staying the same, still staying the same.

It makes you cry.

Quiet, stupid tears you try to hide against your collar.

She doesn’t say anything.

Just keeps playing until the song ends, then sets the guitar down and bumps her knee against yours.

No big deal. She gets it.

You vow right then and there to write her something that makes her feel the same way.

It’s snowing outside, and you’re sixteen years old.

It takes you five years to admit what your parents clocked the first time Minjeong walked through your door carrying that beat-up guitar case.

What they later knew for certain when you spent the rest of that afternoon hammering away at your piano after she had left.

You wait for the first real snow, because she once said how romantic it looked in some drama—the big confession, the dashing male lead confessing his eternal love under falling crystal flakes. The works.

In the lead-up, you’ve reviewed that scene many, many times.

You meet her at the record store that’s become your third home (after yours, and hers), the one that’s been dying for years but somehow is never actually put out of its misery, dragging itself through the last choked gasps of physical media in a streaming age.

She’s wearing her favourite sweater, the blue one with clouds on it—the one you gave her a couple of birthdays ago when it was still hilariously huge on her.

Now it’s just the right amount of oversized.

She’s washed it a million times and worn it through every winter since, and the collar’s all frayed and the threads are starting to come loose, but Minjeong still wears it like it’s the only thing keeping her together.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” you both say at the same time.

“You first!”

Again, perfectly in sync. Because that’s just how you two are.

Except when you’re not.

She looks ready to explode. You cave first, give her the floor with a little nod.

Her eyes go huge, and you’ve got every version of her smile burned into memory by now, so you already know this one’s gonna hit hard. She just says, “I got scouted!”

You freeze for too long. It all lands heavy between your ribs. “You’re gonna be an idol.”

“Well, maybe. Probably not. I mean, hundreds of girls get scouted every year, and like only a tiny fraction of a fraction actually debut,” she says. She’s smiling, but it’s shrinking right in front of you. Like she’s bracing for the tiniest hint of disappointment on your face. “But it’s a big deal! They’re a big agency! It’s exciting, right?”

You force your face into something that hopefully looks happy. You can already see the whole thing playing out—tours, cameras, all that distance stretching between you. Saying it out loud feels like it would make it real, so you swallow it down.

“You’ll definitely debut,” you tell her. “I know it.”

She blushes, looks down at her boots. “Thanks.”

“I can see it, Minjeong,” you tell her, trying to sound more enthusiastic than you feel. She’ll kill it. She’ll be where she belongs. “You’re going fill stadiums. You’ll be amazing.”

Minjeong nods, eyes shining. They’ll shine for other people one day, too. “But what about you? What’s your big news?”

You suck in a deep breath. Cold air hits your lungs, sharp. Puffs out in a cloud between you.

Then you chicken out.

“I found this new song! It’s so good.”

Minjeong laughs and shakes her head. “Go on then, show me.”

You hand her an earbud, fumble through your playlist, looking for something, anything, before finally landing on a song.

It’s called ‘Together’.

Minjeong closes her eyes as the music fills the small space between you. Her head tilts to her left, how it always does when a tune gets its hooks in her.

You can’t look away as she listens, desperately trying to remember every expression on her face because it might be the last chance you ever get to witness it in person.

She feels each note, each lyric. Each word that you’ll never get to say.

When it ends, she looks at you and says, “This song sounds like you.”

“Like me?”

“Like something you’d write. Something you’d play one day.”

You laugh like it’s nothing. Inside, something breaks.

It’s snowing outside, and you’re nineteen years old.

Military leave isn’t getting plastered in Gangnam, or booking out love hotels with a casual situationship. No, it’s mostly fixing your mother’s sink and rearranging her furniture and solving her Netflix issues.

You’re in the middle of another one of her endless tasks—at the supermarket, bagging your groceries, when you see her.

Both of you in hoodies and baseball caps, home for the holidays like ordinary people.

But she doesn’t feel ordinary anymore.

Face sharper, hair longer and styled behind one ear. A painted kind of perfection, polished deep into her.

She’ll always be your Minjeong underneath it, though.

Same bright eyes, same small, slanted smile that turns wide when she spots you.

It hits different now. Brighter. Enough to make you feel like a teenager all over again.

“It’s Winter, now,” she says.

You glance outside the window at the snow. You blink. “Yeah, I noticed.”

She laughs, soft. “No, dummy. That’s my stage name. They’re going to call me Winter.”

“I liked Minjeong.”

Minjeong shrugs. Her ears go pink. “They didn’t.”

You take a stroll down the streets you grew up on together, catching up, trading tales. She tells you horror stories about sociopathic trainees and psychotic teachers, you trade your own about asshole seniors and brutal commanding officers.

You spend the remaining two days of your break like that, a blur of streetside tents drinking soju and scoffing down convenience store snacks and visiting the same record store that’s somehow still alive and kicking.

Apparently, physical media has swung back and vinyl is cool now. You wish people felt the same way back when you were in school.

On the last night, you’re splitting a final bottle, rocking side by side on old playground swings.

Winter stares right at you when she says it. Like she’s been waiting for the answer for all this time. “Why’d you stop texting?”

You thumb the tear off her cheek before it can fall. Back when you were kids, you swore to yourself you’d never let her cry.

“I figured you were moving on. Big life, big dreams. And I just,” you try to laugh, but it breaks away from you. “I didn’t want to be the guy holding you back. I don’t even know where I fit anymore.”

“Idiot,” she says, but there’s affection there. Warmth you haven’t felt in a long while. “I know where you fit.”

You manage, “Oh?”

She turns the bottle in her hands, swishing around the last dregs of liquor.

“That song you wrote. The last one you sent me,” she says, quietly. “It’s good. You’re good. Do you remember what you told me before I left?”

“You’re going to fill stadiums. You’ll be amazing.”

“Yes. The same goes for you too.” She’s smiling, a little loose from the soju, but her eyes are steady on you. Seeing straight through you. Finding the same kid who used to sprawl on her bedroom floor scribbling lyrics nobody else would ever hear.

And it’s like the dream never left. Just got buried under years of pretending it disappeared the same time she did.

“You know,” she begins slowly, carefully, scared of stepping on something fragile. “This is the last time I’ll be home like this. Before it all starts for real. My last night as Kim Minjeong.”

The snow keeps falling.

Neither of you moves right away.

The night goes still, waiting to see who breaks first.

You don’t think.

You just close the distance before you can talk yourself out of it.

And then you kiss her, and it isn’t clean or certain or anything like the fantasy you used to imagine. It’s five long years of almosts finally collapsing into something definitive.

That night, you don’t let go of her. Not once. It’s clumsy hands and shaky breaths, perfect in impossible ways. Terrifying because it’s real. Brand-new and feeling like a beginning and ending all at once.

The kind of delicate that songs and words always fall short of capturing.

But when she’s gone—when Winter leaves—for the first time in years, you’ll try.

It’s snowing outside, and you’re twenty-three years old.

All those shitty gigs for no money and nights crammed in the back of a van somehow stacked up into this: an actual stage, an actual crowd that didn’t walk out.

Sure, you’re just the opener for some UK band with real fans. Maybe ten percent of the room even knows your name. But you’ve learned to grab wins wherever you can get them.

Then you start playing.

No nerves this time.

You’ve done this dozens—shit, probably hundreds—of times. You’ve survived rooms that wanted you dead after the first chord.

The longer you play, the more the setlist clicks, and the crowd leans in with you.

Tonight they actually listen.

You’re reaching your final song, the one you’ve saved for the end even though your manager begged you not to. Why would you hold back the one track people might actually know?

“Saving the best for last,” you tell the crowd. Half-true.

The other part of it is, and always will be, Winter.

You sent her a ticket, attached to a polite e-mail that contained something along the lines of ‘but only if you can make it, if not, it’s not a big deal.’

But you’re hoping. God, you’re hoping she shows up. Even if she slips in late, even if she only catches this one song.

The second you start playing it, the crowd reacts. As if they’ve been waiting for this.

Adrenaline crashes through your veins, heart kicks hard against your chest, and you’re feeling a fire you haven’t felt since you were twelve years old.

The melody takes over completely—notes you sweated over, lyrics you’d rewritten until your eyes burned—spilling into a space bigger than you ever thought you could reach.

Strangers mouth the words along with you. They sing lines they couldn’t possibly understand the full weight of.

Outside the snow’s turning into a full blizzard. Stage lights flicker like they’re keeping time with the beat. You play the song and imagine her listening.

When you hit the final chord the crowd goes dead quiet.

Then erupts.

You just stand there after the last chord, letting it all sink in. Feeling like you’re floating a foot off the stage.

You wonder if this is what she feels every single night.

After you’ve shaken all the hands that need shaking and smiled through way too many back-pats that go straight to your head, you finally duck out and head for the green room.

Door’s cracked open. Lights are on.

Winter’s there.

Holding a bouquet of flowers the same gold as her hair.

You’ve seen her on the internet in summer, on TV in spring, on billboards and bus stops in autumn—but having her here, in front of you, feels right in a way nothing else ever has.

Your eyes meet and the years fold in on themselves.

She’s wearing that same favourite sweater, patched and resewn so many times it’s faded into a different kind of blue.

“You’re here,” you say. The words almost drown under the roar still rushing in from the crowd outside.

“Obviously. Had to see you so I could say 'I saw him live before he was cool’.”

You laugh, cheeks burning. “How much time do you have?”

“Not enough,” she answers, and she’s already moving, pulling you into a hug like there was never any distance between you to begin with.

And suddenly you’re twelve, and you’re writing a song about a girl you just met.

You’re fourteen and you’re crying because her voice tears you in two.

You’re sixteen and you’re chickening out of a confession you’ve been dying to make.

You’re nineteen and you’re learning what it feels like when love might be leaving.

You’re twenty-three and she’s right here, real and warm and laughing and you can’t stop kissing her while the crowd outside keeps cheering and you’re convinced it’s for the two of you.

You end up on the couch, her head on your shoulder, bouquet on the floor.

She laces your fingers together.

It feels right.

“Your last song,” she says.

You kiss her forehead.

She squeezes your hand.

“I wrote it for you.”

Minjeong pulls back just enough to look up at you.

And it’s this. It’s all of her—the girl you didn’t know yet, the Minjeong that became your best friend, the Winter that you’ve fallen in love with.

This is what you’ve been trying to put into every song you’ve ever written.

“I know,” she whispers. Her eyes are shiny, there’s tears trapped behind them. “I always knew.”

Outside, the snow stops falling.

The room feels warmer than any fireplace could.