Only Friends ?

VI. Is it Love ?

 POV Wonbin

I couldn't help myself. When I saw her with the necklace around her neck, her cheeks rosy with pleasure, her arms around my neck, I gave free rein to the urges I'd been holding back since my birthday party. Now I had a new photo to look at as I drifted off to sleep. She looks happy, I'm her first boyfriend. It scares me a bit. I don't want to leave her with a bitter taste. I keep her hand in mine and we walk in silence towards the meeting place. Then we'll have to pretend we're just friends. I'm so happy. I'm going to draw her tonight.

POV Nora

The world ahoy, I'm in a relationship ! I'm nearly eighteen and I'm in a relationship with the boy of my dreams, one in the flesh, not an idol. He loves me and has showered me with gifts. I'm so happy. Iana keeps pestering me with questions. I think she's a bit jealous but she knows she's still too young to be in a relationship and I've explained to her that we won't flaunt it. Our habits and our sisterly ravings won't change. Mum suspects something, but she hasn't asked me any questions, even though she's probably bubbling over with curiosity.

Evenings are my favourite time now. We talk about everything and anything, just like before, except that I also get emojis and messages of love. I always find a little surprise in my locker: a cake, a flower, a mini perfume, a scarf. His smile in the morning when I arrive, the kisses stolen in the park during lunch break behind a tree, his thigh touching mine when we sit side by side, the knowing smiles exchanged from afar, the balls picked up for me in sports class, his jumper on my legs when I come to school in a skirt to please him. I could go on and on. Sometimes we meet up at weekends in town.

At the cinema, we can hold hands and I can rest my head on his shoulder and get kisses on my neck and hair. He never ceases to surprise me. He's learned to play five of my favourite choruses on the guitar. He only wears the colours I like. He listens to every single thing I say. How could I have believed before that it was disgusting to kiss someone? Certainly not the French kisses, but Wonbin is so gentle and respectful. He doesn't push me or ask for anything more.

Months go by in a flash. Before I know it, it's May. Wonbin has won the Brussels city maths competition. The maths teacher is trying to convince him to stay on for another year. If only it were up to him. But I know that his father's contract stipulated a transfer of just twelve months, just long enough to get the Belgian subsidiary of the Korean company where he works up and running. The deadline will have passed in September, but he has decided that the family will travel around Europe for the summer, before returning to Korea. This means that Wonbin and I will have to separate at the beginning of July.

We both knew that. We knew it from the start and we made sure we had lots of memories. I'm his groundhog and he's my teddy bear. I know his innermost dreams and he knows mine. I'm going to miss him terribly, but I know we'll write to each other.

The exams went well. Thanks to Wonbin, maths doesn't scare me any more. I'm very grateful to him. He also helped me in physics and chemistry. And his French has improved a lot. He'll be able to boast about it in Korea. He'll be taking French as an option and that'll earn him points for his university application later on. He still doesn't know what he wants to do and that reassures me because I don't either.

We spend his last evening together at his place. Iana also has to say goodbye to Yeri. The two of them will definitely keep in touch. We have dinner with his parents. I realise that this is the first time I've spent so much time with his father. He's the joking type. He compliments us on our Korean. He gives us his business card and asks us to pass it on to our parents. He wants us to visit them if we ever come to Korea.

The parents then let us go up to Yeri and Wonbin's rooms.

He plays the guitar for me and explains the programme for the trip. He hands me a beautifully wrapped parcel and makes me promise not to open it before my birthday. We're afraid to touch each other because his parents are there, but it doesn't matter.

At 8.30pm it was already time to go home. Dad came to pick us up and Wonbin and Yeri's parents greeted him very politely.

Before going downstairs, I hid my goodbye present under his pillow. I prepared a diary of our first times together. There's the page about our first fake kiss, our first fake dance, our first fake date which led to our first real kiss, our trips to the cinema to watch films we couldn't remember afterwards, our cappuccino frothing contests at the Starbucks where our relationship was born, our first time sleeping in the same room on a rainy afternoon when our parents weren't around, my first poem to him, his first song to me. I owned at least three of his sweatshirts, which I wore to bed and regularly returned to him so that they could once again absorb his scent. He did the same with the t-shirts I'd given him. My poor mother couldn't understand the way those clothes appeared and disappeared and I hid them away so they wouldn't be washed.

Despite all my efforts, I think the whole school knew that Wonbin and I were a couple, but I hadn't been made fun of. I was expecting worse at the start of the next school year, but those months together had been more than worth it.

During his trip he sent me photos of everything he'd liked and disliked about Paris, Rome and Barcelona. I'd so much liked to have said goodbye to him at the airport, but their flight left too early in the morning and I couldn't see myself explaining to my father that he should accompany me by car to Zaventem at 5am. We whispered to each other, me under the duvet, in tears, him in the waiting room.

" Please don't cry, little groundhog. I'll keep sending you messages, I'll never forget."

" Don't you dare."

He tried everything he could to cheer me up, but deep down I knew that I wouldn't be seeing him again any time soon, and that once he got back to Korea, his old life would soon catch up with him and our story would turn into a travel souvenir. My first love had filled me with happiness and I was about to lock him up in the depths of my heart. Goodbye Wonbin, goodbye my love, my fondest memory of my 17 years.