ephemera 一 baek dohwa.

xi

The days pass in the same manner: bus together, study together.

Dohwa finds that your work ethic is so powerful that you get a full hour of studying together each day during the lunch slot. He still struggles with remembering English vocabulary, but he’s starting to see the tiniest improvement in Maths.

So you come up with a genius plan. You read your English novel to him, twenty minutes each day, and give him bits of vocabulary to memorise and be tested on later. You even get him to read passages aloud. It’s slow going, but you’re so patient that sometimes he gets too distracted looking at you out of wonder.

You’ve also exchanged phone numbers, so every now and then when he’s brushing his teeth at night or making his bed in the morning, he’ll receive a notification from you. It’s often an English word relevant to the day ahead. He recognises good morning and sleep well at first glance, now, and strange words like terrific or abysmal.

A week goes by, then another, and another.

Dohwa finishes the worksheet from the supplementary Maths class before 9pm. Su-ae struggles beside him, so he helps her. Strangely enough, he doesn’t feel his gut-wrench like it used to when she smiles at him. He still teases her and messes around with her, but it’s a good feeling with no painful repercussions.

He used to feel so sick that he’d want to throw up when he got home because no one truly knew him except Su-ae. And that was what hurt him most of all, knowing that when she was all he had to rely on, she would always turn to someone else as her first choice.

But it’s different now. When he skips school, even for days on end, you'll still be on that bus, waiting for him without asking any questions. You'll make time for tutoring him.

He’s not sure what to call the bond between the two of you, but there’s something there.

You've started to get off one stop earlier just to walk that extra ten minutes of a detour with him. He winks at you when you pass each other in the corridor, even when you pretend not to see him otherwise. He enjoys seeing the small smile curl on your lips.

You always walk to the second last row of the bus to sit next to him. It’s your seat now, in Dohwa’s mind. Sometimes you lean your head on his shoulder. Sometimes he’s the one who leans on yours. He enjoys the head pats you give him then.

Whatever this is, Dohwa is finally starting to feel happier.