SOUR

'Brown guilty eyes, and little white lies,'

milli.

"What's that?" Sunwoo asks, eyeing the papers in my closed fist.

I take a moment to remember I brought Mj's old love notes to throw in the sea. It's dumb, I know, and now embarrassing too since Sunwoo is here.

"Oh, just... trash." I say.

"You're lying."

"No, I-Im not," I say, tilting my head at him and he looks at me suspiciously.

"Come on, are you really gonna keep a secret from me now?" Sunwoo asks.

"Well I... I mean I still don't know everything about you," I point out.

"What in the hell is there to know about me other than that my former best friend ruined me?" He asks.

"I mean you said your parents are... shit," I say very quietly.

He smiles. He smiles.

"Hearing you cuss sounds so illegal." Sunwoo says, his lips still upturned.

"Yeah yeah." I wave him off.

"It's exactly what it sounds like—they're horrible people who don't give a fuck about my happiness, only about my future." He says.

"Like about college and stuff? But you made it," I say.

"It's never enough," he shrugs. "They actually got divorced a while ago. Living with my mom was hell after she got so depressed and took it out on me and my grades. And then around the same time of the year Sola and Hyunjae started dating, my dad came back. And as if it weren't fucked up already, he fucked it up even more."

"That sounds awful to go through," I say, wishing I could have been there for him. I don't know if he would have let me, but I want to give high school Sunwoo a hug.

"And now he's living in the house and they're so weird together. One minute they want to act like nothing happened and we're a family, and the next they don't say a word to each other." He flattens out the sand with his finger. "I know it must sound irrelevant to you, because, well you know..."

I let his words sink in. I don't know if he's ever talked so much at once to me. I didn't think he would ever open up.

"Just because my problems are different doesn't make yours any less valid." I answer. Because he's not the first person to tell me that. In high school when people first heard what happened to me and my family, they were afraid to talk to me. Not just because I'm sensitive, but because they thought I would invalidate their feelings.

Maybe that's part of why I cover up how I'm feeling now, it just became a habit.

"That's some poetic shit." Sunwoo says.

"Thanks." I say. "...so then what do you want? For your future I mean."

He shrugs. "I don't know anymore."

"Then what did you want before? Before your mom got all obsessed with your perfect life."

Sunwoo takes a while to gather his thoughts. I watch him sift through the sand and then look out at sea.

I think he may never respond, and our conversation gets lost in the howling wind.

"Music."

I turn to him again. "Music?" I ask.

"Ugh I'm cringing from just saying that out loud." Sunwoo shudders. "It's so stupid."

"No, it's not." I say firmly. "Don't say that."