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.