The Longest Winter

Sometimes I have a really good memory. It just depends on how important the certain event is to me. That particular winter ate up my whole. I am still numb from it.

They say winter is coldest season of all seasons. When the cold sweeps in, those alive and well go under cover for warmth. That winter, I couldn't find the warmth to hide behind, so I bared the cold.

Even so, even when I found the warmth...I couldn't hide behind it.

This is the longest memory I have.

The heat of the fire was quietly crackling from his right; its flames distorting the room with its shadowy images. Every time it climbed up the walls they looked like the monsters in his dreams long ago.

Eased breathing wept beside him coming in and out, in and out so calmly. Xiumin turned to look at her sleeping away soundly. They were lying together in a bed in a hotel he was staying at. Yesterday night was still clear in his memory. The torture from having looked at her had ripped him up inside. It'd only been a few hours ago, but he could still feel heated lips hovering over his chest and his heart raced.

It was perhaps late into the night. Much too late already.

A motorcycle zoomed by outside the window before death silenced in again and he couldn't hear a thing, but her breathing. The soft of her skin brushed his as she shifted, made some noise, and continued sleeping.

She was like a lost child, nothing mattered to her. There was no sincerity left inside her heart as if all that made her up were packages of ice.

Xiumin was jealous. He wanted to be sleeping well too, but there were too many things running through his head. Things like this shouldn't have happened. This night should have belonged to his best friend; the person who was no longer alive. Things like she shouldn't be out here like this. Things like his job. Things like his responsibility to fulfill his dead friend's wish and return her home. Things like that crisscrossed through his mind splurging him with sick oncoming anxiety and worry.

Kim Namjoo completed their trio. She was their light, the glue to the group, the sunshine, and the one that kept them going. But one day she suddenly left home.

Xiumin was always jealous of her. His parents were divorced, but Namjoo's father was a pastor; her mother a Sunday school teacher. She had the ideals in society he didn't have, but she never seemed proud of it.

Xiumin knew Daeho always liked her. From the first time they met Xiumin knew. He probably still loved her up in the high heavens and had probably seen everything. Daeho probably knew everything he was thinking. Xiuimin lay there sunk in guilt and listened to the fire continue to cackle.

Namjoo shifted again beside him and he felt her head touch his shoulder.

During the first snow fall when he just received news of his probation the call came. Daeho, who had been suffering a severe case of lung cancer, was now dead.

Jang Daeho, his best friend, had always been a good kid. A clean record consisted of his neat biography; he was a church boy, a good worker, helped the homeless, and gave food to strays. The nicest of the nicest was his best friend. Daeho never swerved off track until the day Namjoo destroyed the trio. Being a bum was his career, smoking every single minute of the day had been his choice. Destroying and abusing himself had been a long term goal and he was only meant to die that way.

During the years Daeho spent searching for Namjoo; Xiumin busied himself for a set future. A well off future was his goal. Something different from his parents' lives was what he aimed for. Not poverty, not a life drowned in love and love again. Xiumin wanted different, so he became a cop and the only one of the two who moved on.