truth | ➳ kth × kdh

I

eunwoo was going to brain camp. it had another name, a real name. but that's what everyone called it.

"okay," he said, cramming a final pair of socks in the corner of his stuffed suitcase. "the list. one more time."

i picked up the piece of paper beside me. "pens," i said. "notebooks. phone card. camera battery. vitamins."

his fingers moved across the contents of the bag, finding then identifying each item. check and double- check. with eunwoo, it was always about being sure, being prepared.

"calculator." i continued, "laptop..."

"stop," he said, putting up his hand. he walked over to his desk, unzipping the thin black carrier there, then nodded at me. "skip down to list two."

i scanned down the page, found the words LAPTOP (CASE), and cleared my throat. "blank CDs," i said. "surge protector. cables. headphones. . . ."

by the time we'd covered that, then finished the main list—stopping to cover two other sub-headings, TOILETRIES and MISCELLANEOUS—eunwoo seemed pretty much convinced he had everything. which did not, however, stop him from continuing to circle the room, mumbling to himself. it took a lot of work to be perfect. if you didn't want to break a sweat, there was no point in even bothering.

eunwoo knew perfect. unlike most people, for him it wasn't some distant horizon. for eunwoo, perfect was just over the next hill, close enough to make out the landscape. and it wasn't a place he would just visit. he was going to live there.

he was the all-state math champ, head of the debate team, holder of the highest GPA in the history of our high school (he'd been taking AP classes since seventh grade, college sections since tenth), student council president two years running, responsible for an innovative school recycling program now implemented in districts around the country, fluent in korean, english, and french. but it wasn't just about academics. eunwoo was also a vegan and had spent the past summer building houses for a new neighborhood. he practiced yoga, visited his grandmother in her rest home every other sunday, and had a pen pal from south america he'd been corresponding with since he was eight years old. anything he did, he did well.

a lot of people might find this annoying, even loathsome. but not me. he was just what i needed.

i had known this from the first day we met, in english class, maybe about three years ago, in grade ten. we'd been put into groups to do an assignment on macbeth, me and eunwoo and a girl named chaeyoung park who, after we pulled our desks together, stubbornly announced she was "no good at this shakespeare crap" and put her head down on her backpack. a second later, she was sound asleep.

eunwoo just looked at her. "well," he said, opening his textbook, "i guess we should get started."

this was right after everything happened, and i was in a silent phase. words weren't coming to me well; in fact i had trouble even recognizing them sometimes, entire sentences seeming like they were another language, or backwards, as my eyes moved across them. just printing my own name on the top of a page a few days previously, i'd second-guessed the letters and their order, not even sure of that anymore.

so of course macbeth had totally messed with me. i'd spent the entire weekend struggling with the outdated language and weird names of the characters, unable to even figure out the most basic aspects of the story. i opened my book, staring down at the lines of dialogue: had i but died an hour before this chance/i had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,/ there's nothing serious in mortality:/all is but toys.

nope, i thought. nothing.

lucky for me, eunwoo, who was not about to leave his grade in someone else's hands, was used to taking control of group work. so he opened his notebook to a clean page, pulled out a pen, and uncapped it. "first," he said to me, "let's just get down the basic themes of the play. then we can figure out what to write about."