6 – Reunion (1)
Still, at first, I didn’t think it would end like this.
I couldn’t really believe the excuse of being tired, but even so, I couldn’t let her go like this.
I believed that I could change her heart.
For a whole week, I made dozens of phone calls and sent messages.
Just meet me once more and talk.
But she didn’t grant me even that tiny hope.
[The phone is off, connected to the voicemail…]
She kept ignoring my calls, so I went alone to her apartment and knocked on her door.
*Bam bam bam!*
“Hey! Seo Ha-yeon! Come out. Let’s talk face-to-face. Why don’t you answer the phone? Seriously?”
However, I couldn’t meet her even once, whether she was intentionally avoiding me or if she had moved somewhere else.
In the end, I gave up at some point.
Now, I had no choice but to admit it.
I truly realized that the woman I had seen for 16 years was gone.
From that moment until the time I enlisted, I lived in a drunken state.
I couldn’t endure sober moments without a sip of soju.
Ha-yeon was a significant part of my life, and the fact that she left me shattered me endlessly.
“Ha-yeon… why are you like this… seriously…”
Every day, I sat in my apartment, looking at Ha-yeon’s picture on my phone and lamenting.
It was truly a time spent like a recluse.
Drinking soju by the bottle without any side dishes, I complained to the Ha-yeon in the photo, cursed her, and got angry.
“…Why are you really like this? Me.”
Sometimes, I regained my senses.
On those days, I would be surprised and self-blame when I saw my wretched appearance in the bathroom.
“What kind of mess am I in just because of one woman who abandoned me.”
But even with such thoughts, the next day, I would be back to my usual state again.
Looking like someone who had gone insane wouldn’t be considered strange.
Those moments felt pathetic even in my own perspective, but emotions were not easily healed.
Especially when betrayed by someone I trusted, it was even worse.
But they say time is medicine.
The military enlistment that was less than a month away quickly approached while I lived like a recluse.
And I enlisted in the ordinary army.
At first, it was harder to adapt due to the hardships in my heart.
The rigid culture and stress of the military didn’t give me time to reflect on myself.
But as my body started to tire, the pain in my heart gradually faded away.
Two years of enduring and repeating the difficult and disciplined life in the military.
Gradually, my longing for her faded away.
“Corporal Yoon. Isn’t she totally insane? She was treated so well and she’s just bored and over it.”
“Yeah. She’s totally insane. Completely insane.”
“Wow. If it were me, I would meet another girl even if I felt wronged. I can’t stand it, I really can’t live with this feeling.”
As I stood guard, these were the kinds of conversations that would take place between my replacements.
I now thought I had completely let her go.
I finished my military service without any problems and returned to school after 2 years.
“Ugh. You’re late on the first day. Seriously.”
The first day of the semester after re-enrolling.
I jumped out of the bus and ran into the classroom.
Since being discharged, I failed to wake up early in the morning due to my ruined sleep pattern from hanging out and so on.
Honestly, I was worried about running into Ha-yeon as I returned to school.
But unless something amazing happened, Ha-yeon was a senior and was about to graduate.
So even if I had bad luck, there wouldn’t be much to see.
In the first place, we were in different departments.
The buildings for each specialty were different, and it wasn’t easy to run into each other.
“Why do I have to avoid her? What did I do wrong?”
There was no reason for me to avoid her more than just being a little uncomfortable.
I might feel annoyed when I see her, but there was no reason for me to give up my studies for it.
“Ugh… Why is this school so damn big, seriously.”
Our university was quite large, with the humanities and natural science campuses mixed together.
So if I was late, I had to run and suffer like this.
As I ran frantically around the corner of the street, I bumped into someone with a thud.
And the other person bumped into me and fell back.
“Ah!”
When I heard a surprised scream, it seemed like it was a woman. I apologized to the woman who fell backward and offered my hand since it was my fault for rushing.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s ok…”
As we said these polite greetings to each other, the woman I collided with froze in place as if struck by lightning, just like I probably was. Standing before me was Seo Hyeon, the one who had left me cruelly.
“…Ah…Ah…”
Her eyes widened, and she suddenly let out a gasp as if she were unable to speak.
Hyeon’s atmosphere had changed quite a bit in the past two years. The sense that she looked paler and more emaciated than before.
The long hair that I liked had disappeared, and she had become a short-haired woman. Her cool image still suited her better.
“…Yul?”
When Hyeon called my name, I withdrew my hand from her. I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my chest. I thought I had completely forgotten about her, but hearing her voice made me feel worse.
I had left her like that and now she called me using a nickname as if we were close.
I was wrong, and my desire to help her up had disappeared. I just turned my body and left her alone to walk towards the lecture hall.
“Wait, Yul! Please, stop!”
“…?”
“I need to say something to you. Yul, please wait for a moment!”
For some reason, she was following me with quick steps. I wondered what she could possibly have to say to me. Could she be apologizing for what happened two years ago? If that was the case, she should have done so then, not now that things have already happened.
I couldn’t understand English. I just wanted to pretend not to know each other and go to school.
I ignored her and kept walking, but suddenly Hayeon reached out and grabbed my shoulder.
“…Don’t hold me. I have nothing to say to you.”
As her hand touched me, I felt a shiver down my spine and pushed her hand away.
Now I had nothing to say to Hayeon.
“…Yul-ah.”
“Don’t call me that. We’re nothing to each other anymore.”
“Just for a moment, are you on your way to class? Then, after it’s over, even for a short while, please.”
Damn it. Just leave me alone.
Why does she appear out of nowhere at a moment I want to completely forget about?
I ignored her and started running from that spot.
I could hear her yelling from behind, but it didn’t matter to me.
Of course, she couldn’t possibly keep up with the running speed of an adult male, and Hayeon soon vanished from my sight.
“Huff… huff…”
I entered the building and looked back down the hallway in front of the classroom.
But there was no sign of Hayeon, not even a glimpse.
Of course. From the start, Hayeon had no stamina or athletic ability.
Now, as I gasped for breath, I muttered with a dirty feeling.
“Why does she have to be like this on the first day. Seriously.”
I met my girlfriend, who wasted the first day of college.
I really thought she had no luck at all.
*
A bar near the university.
I poured a high-proof soju with a red cap into my mouth.
“Why are two guys like us drinking soju on the first day of school.”
“It’s regular for two guys to drink soju together. Kid.”
Muttering, the guy drinking with me was Lee Jinho.
Among my college peers, he was my closest friend.
We became friends during our freshman year and maintained our relationship even after completing military service.
He had a broad mind and a good personality.
She was a friend who had more dating experience than me, so she often gave advice during the time I was dating Hayeon.
I’m not sure if it was intentional or sincere, but he was a pretty decent guy except for one thing, Yeo Mise.
“…So why are you feeling down again today?”
“It’s nothing like that. I just called because I wanted to drink.”
“Ah, don’t bullsh*t me. Where can you find a guy who calls another guy to drink? Seriously.”
After drinking more than a bottle, I felt a bit light-headed.
I was debating whether to speak or not.
What Jinho said wasn’t wrong.
Honestly, I did call him because I wanted to vent.
Since meeting Hayeon this morning, I’ve been feeling down all day long.
Whenever memories of her came up during class, I repeatedly banged my head on the desk.
“Spit it out already. Change your mind and go home before I do.”
“…I saw Seo Hayeon today.”
Finally, under Jinho’s urging, I revealed my inner thoughts.
“Oh? Where?”
“You know the corner near the Humanities Building at the main gate? I bumped into a girl there, and it turned out to be Seo Hayeon.”
“…Oh boy. So our Gunyul has been depressed all day because of running into his ex-girlfriend from two years ago?”
“Hey, seriously, don’t talk like that before mind-reading schoolteachers.”
A chill ran down my spine as if I were being interrogated by a kindergarten teacher.
Looking at Jinho, who was teasing me and laughing, I felt like I chose the wrong person to confide in.
Ugh. Why would I complain to such a jerk? Me.
“You punk. You have no luck at all. How did you bump into her on the first day?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
I pushed the glass to my lips again, savoring the bitter taste of soju on my tongue.
Still, apart from Jinho, I didn’t have a friend to confide in.
He was the person who knew our situation best because we had counseled each other.
Even the pathetic reason for our breakup.
“Can’t you forget her yet? If it were me, I would’ve already moved on from that crappy wagon.”
“I thought I had forgotten her too… But seeing her again, it seems like I haven’t. It hurts.”
It seemed like I still hadn’t forgotten her.
However, even though two years is a long time, it won’t be long enough to bury sixteen years of memories.
But if you ask whether there was any lingering attachment, that wasn’t the case.
The truth was that just encountering each other like today would undoubtedly put me in a melancholic mood.
“Wow, life is so damn hard. If I hadn’t seen you for two years, couldn’t we start fresh now? Should this hyung help you out a bit?”
“What could you do to help? I want to live comfortably like you too.”
He’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t even care if he broke up with his girlfriend and started dating someone else right away.
I thought it would be nice to have about half of Jin-ho’s indifference.
Jin-ho cleared his throat and then started talking to me like a professor giving a lecture.
“You’re supposed to forget about a girl once she becomes a woman, Geonyul.”
“…So?”
It was an intriguing story.
Having been rotten in the military, now men are being bitten as much as they deserve.
Because of Ha-yeon, I didn’t have a chance to get close to girls at university.
So compared to me, who was only close with guys, Jin-ho had a lot of close female friends.
“Do you want to go on a date with me?”