"Mr Lee?"
I snap out of my train of thought and focus on the woman sitting in front of me. For a split second, I have trouble recalling where I am and why this woman is calling my surname. Until it hits me. It's the same reason why I am wearing a suit and this stupid tie which has been restricting my breathing. This is one of the interviews with the lecturer.
Worriedly, I blink up at her and my brows furrow as I try to ponder what she could have said to me before I was grasped by the memories that have been flooding me in waves since that revelation last night. In my mind, I keep replaying every single interaction that Kai and I have had and it causes an enormous amount of bemusement to play around my head.
"Can you please answer the question?" she requests formally.
My lips tighten into an embarrassed smile. "Oh… I-I… sorry, can you repeat the question please?"
Reassuringly, her lips tug up and then she shifts around so that the formal stance she once was sitting in is no more. Kindly, she asks, "Are you feeling okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine. I'm sorry."
I rub my hands against my thighs.
And even if I'm not fine, I am not going to admit that to her. She seems like a nice woman, and she comes off as extremely understanding unlike a certain brutish person who interviewed me yesterday, but I would rather keep the fact that I may not be as focused as I claim to be to myself.
Filling my lungs with just enough oxygen, I try and force myself to relax, to stop thinking about the memories which are arising bit by bit. I now know what happened after Fleance left the room with my water bottle.
"You do not have to be nervous, okay?" she says reassuringly, the soft look in her eyes making me relax in my seat. I nod stiffly. Not quite so relaxed. "Do you want to drink some water or step outside for a while?"
"No, I'm good to go. Thank you for the offer."
"Just think of me as an older friend who you are sharing information with. You don't have to answer with what you feel I'd like to hear, but how you want to answer. Remember, this is as much a learning experience for me as it is for you."
"I understand."
Her lips quirk up in satisfaction. "Okay, let us proceed."
After the last interview with one of the medicine tutors, I leave the university a little bit more positive than I did yesterday while tugging my tie off. Mrs Freon may have been a little too harsh.
The lecturers made sure that I was comfortable around them and I feel like I answered their questions to the best of my capability. Some of the questions, I could not conjure up an adequate response to but I did reply with as much knowledge as I could. At the end of the day, it was recommended that I sign up for some extracurricular activities when I got back to school. Then forward a portfolio of said activities to their email.
I hope I can do enough to secure myself a spot in the school, but you know what, if I don't get in then that's fine too. I know that I did my best and that's all that matters. Now, if I keep repeating this, eventually I will believe it.
"Majoring in Astronomy."
"Ah, Ursa Major."
He throws his head back as another train of laughter bursts past his lips.
I rub a hand over my eyes and blink the memory out of my head. Why are all these images replaying in my mind so many times? Scenes from the party have been hitting me ever since last night. Why is it that I'm recalling that night now of all times?
"Seong Jin? Is that you?" I turn around at the sound of my name. "It is you."
Sabina smiles big when my eyes meet hers and she hurries away from the boys walking with her and approaches me. I wait and involuntarily, my eyes shift over to the boy on her right. He has a curtain of short dreadlocks, curving over his face. His eyes are trained on his phone even as the other boy speaks to him. He looks familiar like I've seen him before. And that's when I realise that he is one of the boys who was sitting with Kai in the café yesterday.
Just in time, my eyes flicker to the boy walking beside him and my breath hitches in my throat at the familiar sight of my friend's older brother, Kai. He stops talking to his friend and his jade-brown eyes focus on me. For a while, we hold each other's gaze.
At this point, I am simply wondering why fate keeps making my life its personal playground, some kind of slate for it to play around with as it pleases. Even when I feel something cautiously pressing onto the side of my arm, my eyes still don't waver from his.
"Seong Jin?" I snap out of my reverie and glance down at the girl from yesterday, Sabina. Worriedly, she muses, "Are you okay?"
"Um… yeah. I'm fine."
I feel like I've been saying that so many times. Reassuring so many people that I'm fine. I state it without even hesitating. When really, I haven't been fine ever since I left Shoreditch. Maybe even before that.
"Are you sure? You don't look so good."
"I just came from an interview, so I might look a little flustered from that."
"Oh, and… how did it go?" she questions me, her eyes glowing excitedly.
"Um… good." I bob my head up and down, but my actions and my tone don't corroborate my confidence in myself. "You know, I want to believe that it went well."
"That's good. Always stay positive." She grins again.
I bob my head up and down in agreement and then take in her outfit.
She looks as beautiful as she was yesterday. Maybe even more. She has on a grey, fur coat and underneath that is a black cropped top. I don't fail to see her abs below the low-cut shirt which prompts me to believe that she exercises too. She finalises the look with a black, leather skirt, stockings and boots. Her make-up is done up perfectly as well, naturally.
She really ought to become a stylist. I see her as someone who always puts in the effort to look flamboyantly fabulous. And I thought I was stylish.
"Oh, and these are my friends," she introduces the boys when they come to a stop near us. "That's Keiji, but we just call him Kai to annoy him and that's Richard, but I just call him Dick also to annoy him." She puts her hand on the corner of her mouth and 'whispers' to me, "You can call him Dick too."
Looking over at Richard who's currently glaring down at me as if to silently dare me to call him Dick, I decide right then and there that I won't be calling him Dick anytime soon. Maybe never. He looks like he'd pounce on me the moment that I utter the 'd' in Dick. I would enter the gates of heaven, blinking in confusion. Then I would approach little, ol' St Peter and he'd relay to me that I died from calling Richard something he obviously doesn't want to be called.
I stretch a stiff smile up at him and say, "Hi, Richard. I'm Seong Jin. Nice to meet you." And then I hold out my hand for a handshake.
After a moment of silence of us just staring at each other, the sides of his lips tilt up just a little bit and he balls his hand in front of him. My eyebrows arch up in surprise and hastily fist-bump him. With the formalities out of the way, he goes back to his phone and ignores me again. I think I have earned myself a place in his good books. Then I turn around slightly to look at Kai who I've felt staring at me throughout this entire interaction.
"Uh… hi," I murmur quietly, waving at him anxiously.
"It's good to see you again, Seong Jin."
"Again?" Sabina muses, watching me in bemusement and then she directs her attention onto Kai who looks between us with wide eyes.
"Oh, uh…"
"Uh, well we've… we've met before," Kai answers her.
"Yeah. Plenty of times… apparently." I look at him pointedly.
His eyes widen awkwardly, and he watches me questioningly.
"Whoa, that's so weird. What a small world, right?"
"Yeah," Kai stammers out after her.
"So… small," I echo still staring at him through a narrowed gaze as if to gauge whether he knows that I know that yesterday was actually our third time meeting each other.
"Sabina," someone calls, and she glances over her shoulder at the person who is waving her over urgently.
After she tells us that she'll be right back, she tells us to get even more acquainted with one another and then rushes over to the blonde girl. With her gone and Richard running his hands feverishly fast over his phone, an uncomfortable silence prolongs between the both of us. It probably wouldn't have been this awkward if I hadn't found out that he's someone I have run into multiple times before.
Just as I do when I'm nervous, my arm hugs my stomach and the other hand slides up and down said arm. Kai makes it a mission not to meet my gaze.
So I take that as my cue to get the fuck out of here.
"Seong Jin, wait."
I stop when he exclaims in almost a panic and slowly turn back around to look at him exasperatingly, but when I realise that he hasn't done anything wrong in actuality, I sigh deeply as if to extinguish the bitterness. "When were you gonna mention that you're Fleance's brother?"
His eyebrows flick up and I watch the shock in his eyes from my words until it dawns on him what I'm implying beneath those words. "You remember?"
"The night of the party? Yeah."
After opening and closing his mouth a couple of times, he eventually responds through stutters, "I… I thought you knew."
I give him a disbelieving look, shaking my head as if to silently tell him to try again. Right… he thought I knew, but he didn't think to bring it up.
As he lets out a deep sigh, he brings his hand up to his face and pinches his eyes shut, perhaps trying to ward off the chill of the weather.
Eve though his appearance is the last thing I should be paying attention to at the moment, I cannot help but take advantage of the moment to observe him more closely, admiring his soft and gentle features.
Despite the cold, he looks completely cosy while wrapped up in a thick, light blue puffer jacket that fits him perfectly. His head is adorned with a woolly hat, which seems to be keeping him warm, and I wonder what his hair looks like under there. Overall, his appearance is both comfortable and cosy, making him look like he belongs in this winter wonderland.
"Okay, I thought you knew at first, because… I mean, I thought you had sobered up by the time you left with… that Dominic guy, but when you didn't say anything about it, I just sorta thought it was better this way."
"Better for who?"
He rears back, stunned by my tone.
I expel a sigh from my chest to compose myself. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I just…" I rub a hand up and down my face tiredly.
With a soft look, his eyes watch me encouragingly.
"I'm really stressed out over this whole university thing because I have to now prove that I'm different by doing this extracurricular thing and if I don't get accepted my mum is gonna be really disappointed and don't get me wrong, I really do want to go here, but I also… really wanna go home."
When I gulp, I realise that there is a lump stuck in my throat.
What is happening right now? Am I actually about to cry just because I am a little homesick? Jesus, that is so fucking stupid.
When Yang Jin's face flashes before my eyes, I make sure to quickly flutter my eyes to eliminate said tears back into my tear glands. I can always rely on my brother to prevent me from crying. He was always making fun of me for being a crybaby. No amount of reprimands would get him to stop laughing at me whenever I cried. It prompted me to refrain from crying. I genuinely think he has traumatised me.
When I feel Kai putting his hand on my shoulder, I look up at him and even though I just snapped at him unnecessarily, he wears a warm look on his face, directed right at me. "Then you should go home. If you feel like this place isn't for you then you shouldn't force yourself to stay."
Whilst he's saying this, I get the feeling that he doesn't really mean it. As if he is only saying this because he thinks that's what I want to hear right at this moment. But isn't it what I want to hear? I frown in bemusement. No, I don't think it is what I want to hear right now. I don't want to be told that it is okay to give up on my dream university just because I miss the familiarity of my home and my family.
"I'm saying that because you do seem like the type to run away when the going gets tough," he states with a deadpan expression peeking up at me, but I don't miss the playful glow in those beautiful heterochromatic eyes of his.
"Excuse me?" I rear back and now it's my turn to be stunned.
"He said you look like a little bitch," Richard echoes after him without glancing up from his phone.
My widened eyes flutter over to him and I gape at him. Feebly, I argue, "I do not."
"Then don't run away like a little bitch. I've already sneaked in a good word with my uncle."
"Your uncle?" I question, brows scrunched up.
"He's the dean's nephew," Kai inputs, grinning at me in amusement. "If you don't get in, we're abducting this motherfucker."
"I don't remember agreeing to that but throw in my Nintendo Switch during the whole kidnapping ordeal and we have ourselves a deal." They slam their fists into their palms and bow down briskly.
I stare at them weirdly for a long time. "You guys are so weird."
"Being normal is overrated so I take that as a compliment," Richard states before ignoring us again and thumbing his phone.
When I glance over at Kai while blinking in surprise, he lifts his shoulders as if to convey that he silently agrees with his friend's statement and when his lips arch up into another amused smile, my gaze follows the crinkle in the corners of his eyes as he performs the action. That warm feeling from before forms in my stomach again and for some reason, I cannot control it when my lips reciprocate the action.
His smile then widens and his entire face brightens when he does this. Shyly, I shake my head and my gaze wavers bashfully. I cannot help it. His smile is infectious.
"By the way," he starts, causing my head to lift and I notice the cautious look in his eyes as he muses, "how much of that night do you actually remember?"
"I remember why you made that reference to Ursa Major when we first ran into each other again."
He arches his eyebrow and watches me expectantly, as if waiting for me to say something else and when I don't, he questions, "That's it?"
"I mean, there's a bunch of other random stuff that happened which I do recall but they don't seem that important," I respond with my tone conveying how unsure I am.
"Huh," he murmurs ponderously.
My brows furrow curiously as my races with questions. "Is there something I should be remembering?"
Guilelessly, his eyes widen and he shakes his head before averting his gaze and quickly picking up a conversation with Richard.
My eyes narrow at him suspiciously.
* * *
After many hugs and kisses on the cheek, I finally escape out of my aunt's clutches and head back home to Shoreditch where my family is waiting for me on the other end of the bus terminal.
When I get there, Ji Ho hugs me, Chu Hua punches me in the stomach and Yang Jin ruffles a hand through my hair to purposefully make me look rugged. I get questioned about normal things. How is Aunt Merlin? How is the school? They don't ask me anything more about the interview, as if they can see that I don't want to speak about it.
On the eve of Christmas, we leave Shoreditch and take a flight to South Korea where we will spend the day with our grandparents as promised. No matter how many times my little sister begs to stay with Kayla, my mum says no and we leave first thing in the morning.
When we get there, we do things as usual. We leave our shoes at the doorway. We greet my grandparents with a slight bow, down on our knees. Harabeoji gives us some sweets with a thin, weak smile. I heard that he has trouble getting out of bed nowadays, but today our grandmother forced him to get up and my mum said that he had to take a few steps around the house.
Even though my grandmother may present a tough demeanour, I can always see the love she holds for her husband when she demands him to have some more Stinky Tofu and for him to finish his Aiyu Jelly. When he gives her tired eyes, she huffs exasperatedly and feeds him instead whilst grumbling about how much she hates him under her breath, of course.
Grandma interrogates me in Cantonese and when I tell her that I don't understand what she's saying, she argues with me and asks me what they teach us in our school. Then she turns her question into a monologue about expensive schools being useless. I reminded her that I only speak Korean.
When she hears those words leaving my lips, she gets visibly angry and immediately pulls Amma into a corner to chastise her just like she did last Christmas. This time my mum just stands there with a defeated look on her face and when she turns to look over at me, I lift my one shoulder.
Her hands move and I catch them signing, "Nothing ever pleases her."
"Do I have to learn Cantonese now?"
"Fuck no!"
I snort and that turns my grandmother's attention onto me, but I quickly make my escape into the kitchen to help Yang Jin with the dishes. Just out of the goodness of my heart, I tell myself when really dishes are far better than my grandmother's wrath.
When I start wiping the dishes, Yang Jin gives me this indecipherable look out of the corner of his eye and for a while, I stare at him in question until I decide that I don't care. So in silence, we continue with the process of washing and wiping and packing.
Every time that I visit my late father's grave, I always have this thought that I need to be sad. That it's something that should happen naturally without even having to remind myself. I should still be mourning his tragic death. It is the case. Well, that was the case.
In the beginning, it was a given that I was going to miss him. He was my father. I would have to not be human to not cry. That's how I ended up crying so hard that not even Yang Jin's laughing face could hinder me from pouring out the Nile River from my eyes.
But as the years went by, that clench in my chest slowly faded away until the pain was merely a dot pressing onto my cerebrum. As if to remind it to feel sad and mourn my late father. It's something I was guilty about. Was it fair on my dead parent that I allowed another man to fill in the void that he left vacant? Was I betraying him by letting Franklin make me happier and happier as the years went by?
I would like to think no, but if I am wrong then I do apologise to his ghost for feeling betrayed.
My crossed legs shift deeper into my body and I pick at the grass. When I visit my dad, I always bring my camera along with me. I play him the vlogs and explain to him the missing pieces of the puzzle if it needs an explanation. I imagine him listening attentively with a look of focus on his face, his eyes drinking in my every expression and ears hearing every single word.
I received my camera on the fourth of January a couple of years ago. The item was given to me as a birthday present from my dad back when I was five, a year before he died in that car crash. At the time was I devastated? Of course. Even as a young sapling, I understood that once his coffin sunk deep into the dug ground I would never get to see him again. That he was gone forever.
I remember tugging on the camera, as if to seek some form of comfort from it, hoping that it carried the warmth that my dad showed us. It did not. It was an inanimate object at the end of the day. When I didn't receive what I wanted from it, I sought it from something else, or rather someone else.
Glancing up at my aunt guilelessly, I wondered if she could hold my hand, but then Chu Hua started whimpering in her hold and was now wide awake. Imo turned away to quietly tend to her and I knew I had lost a person to seek warmth from.
Yang Jin?
I looked up at him and watched as he showed little to no emotion. Is he not sad, I recall thinking with a confused look on my face, but I didn't voice it to him. Ji Ho was in his arms, wide-eyed and taking in the world. He did not cry as much as his twin did. How the roles have reversed. When his gaze landed on me, he spread a gummy grin onto his face which unconsciously made me tug my lips up as well. He silently giggled.
And just like that I found my warmth; in my two month old, younger brother.
It was an odd scene. Two children of the parent being buried were exchanging smiles as if they were free of any worries as if they had not just lost someone dear to them.
This caused Halmeoni to scowl in anger and she hastily grabbed my hand, tucking me under her dress in embarrassment. My little brother giggled at my expense. Yang Jin then watched his youngest brother with a frown, yet a hint of amusement played on his lips from the sound which left him.
Ji Ho had given us our warmth.
I had never imagined a life without my dad so the fact that he wasn't going to be there the following day, the fact that he would never read me another page to finally conclude the tale of Cinderella or that he would no longer teach me the arts of fashion design was a huge blow to the chest. It was a depressing road to walk; very difficult to trudge through even if I still had my siblings.
But as the old saying goes, there's always light at the end of the tunnel. And there was in the form of Franklin.
"You know," I throw my head over my shoulder and see Yang Jin, "I thought I'd find you here."
He takes a seat beside me and we both stare at the tombstone, the quiet atmosphere creating a warm blanket around us.
The writing on his tombstone is in Korean even though my grandmother fought tooth and nail to try and get it to be written in Cantonese, Amma disagreed with her and sided with my late father's mother, my other grandma. I rarely ever see my dad's side of the family. I think the burial is where I met most of my cousins. After we went back home, that is my dad's parents' house, we were all forced to play with each other.
"Are you still angry at him?" I curiously ask him, without directing my gaze onto him. "Are you mad at Appa for leaving us? For leaving you?"