College AU | Fluff
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Kim Hyunjung promised herself that the only time she would write letters— love letters— was when she found someone worth writing for.
Every year, she wrote letters to her mother on occasions she deemed special. Every birthday, she would add a letter to her gift for her sister; and every spring, she would write one letter to her father. She'd tell him about her life, about the people she'd met, and about what she wanted to do when she was older. Afterwards, she would lay the letters down on his grave, pinned under a small rock.
Hyunjung never thought about what would happen to the letters.
When she met her mother's best friend during the last weeks of her first year in high school, at a time when she went on a vacation trip with her mother, she started writing letters to her. Meanwhile, she had the chance to play with her mother's best friend's daughter, Soobin. Then she went to a theme park in the nearby cafes with her aunt. And there, she met Juyeon and Sojung.
The list of the people she loved grew and grew.
So did the letters.
But not for long.
In middle school, she was crushing so hard on a boy in her class, and she wrote her feelings down. The next day, she tried handing it to him during break. She didn't really know what she was expecting, because he just laughed at her and handed the letter over to his jock friends. They read her letter aloud in a mocking manner, in front of the whole student body within earshot, and not only did he humiliate her and rip her letter in two, but he also broke her heart.
High school drama was the worst, Hyunjung recalled. Everything you do was scrutinized— when you dress like them, they have something to say. When you don't, they still have something to say. When you speak, they murmur. When you don't speak, they murmur even more. So when one time they mocked her again about the letter, Hyunjung's classmates whipped their heads and started to laugh with him.
Hyunjung vividly remembered clinging to the self-control she had left, lest she jumped on him and beat the crap out of him. Or get beaten— but at least it would have felt good. For the moment, anyway.
She transferred schools after that school year. Her mother got a new job in a lively city outside of Busan, and they high-tailed out of there. The city, it turned out, was Seoul.
Businessmen bustled around and street vendors were everywhere. There was a large library located in the center of the city, and cafes were situated next to the universities. Unlike the quiet of the night in Busan, the people here never seem to sleep; there was a night market that captured the main road and it was like a carnival of colors, and a lot of things Hyunjung has never seen before.
Hyunjung definitely didn't miss Busan when everything she wanted was right here. She could always visit her father once in a while during break; Hyunjung was sure her mother would never miss his anniversary.
So to summarize, Hyunjung was happy and contended.
But she stopped sending letters.
Not because she was closer to her friends than ever before, but because she thought maybe it was true, that she had kept doing it so many times that it was no longer special—and people wouldn't appreciate it anymore. After all, they had phones, wifi, and social media. She could just tell them all what she felt through text; it would take less effort than writing ink on paper.
She had a bunch of those unsent letters hidden under the foot of her bed— in a dusty shoe box with a faded logo of Nike. They were organized alphabetically; and before Hyunjung left her old house, she was certain she would need another shoe box soon because she never missed a month of writing them—
