First Snow

Miracles in December

"I didn't know how thankful your love was, I thought it would stop once it ended"

~

Muttering curses under his breath Minseok makes his way through the halls of the university that are familiar to him by now with quick steps. He is too early and actually, there is no logical reason for him to hurry as much as he does. But Minseok just has this habit of walking faster when he is mad about something. Or in this case rather someone. His best friend to be precise, who not only wrote Minseok's name on the participants' list for some project group without telling him about it beforehand but also spontaneously gave him the job to greet the volunteers from the lower semesters. Of course, Minseok could have tried to get out of this and many times he had almost gathered up the courage to go to the responsible professor and ask for his name to be taken off the list. But in the end, he never went through with it. His friend, of course, saw this as a sign of Minseok's acceptance. After all, he had told him from the beginning on that he only did this to help Minseok because he just couldn't take the sight of Minseok locking himself in his room. But in reality, it was the prospect of receiving some badly needed extra credits that made Minseok stay in the group.

When his friend had given him a folder with an attached sticky note telling him the room number this morning Minseok had been really close to dropping the project. Literally. Minseok wanted to just slam that folder down at his friend's feet, but instead, he had swallowed done his anger and very clearly stated that his friend owed him one for that.

So Minseok hurries through the university, way too early and the folder neatly stuffed into his bag. He can already see the small room that will serve as a meeting place when he hears it and suddenly all other noises disappear. As if someone had pulled the plug on the old television that had been filling the house with static sound until just now. All the small background sounds of everyday life are gone at a blow so that Minseok can hear the small laugh that is sounding muffled through the door. The door that has the same number as the note he is holding. Minseok would recognise this laugh everywhere in the whole world.

Minseok has read somewhere once that the first thing one forgets about another person is their voice. The more you try to recreate the voice in your mind the more it changes, turns into what you think it used to sound like until in the end there is nothing left but a delusion. A broken record that keeps playing the same recording over and over again, but somehow it doesn't sound quite right. Everything else gets lost after that. Suddenly you're not sure anymore whether their eyes had been the colour of dark chocolate or rather that of ground coffee. If their cheekbones had really been as eye-catching. Time after time the image you have of that person begins to blur until almost nothing is left. But the voice disappears first.

The voice disappears first but still, it takes Minseok not even ten seconds to remember the laughter that he hears through the door. How could he have ever forgotten it? How could he have forgotten him? And together with the laughter, a storm of memories crashes down on Minseok like sudden hail.

Secret meetings in that comfortable coffee shop down the road, every Monday because they had a free period in the afternoon and no one would question where they were. His eyes had definitely been too dark to be chocolate, they were pure black coffee, no milk, the kind that Minseok had always liked most. Stolen kisses in the backyard of the school, on the lips, the neck, the cheeks. Yes, his cheeks had really been just that beautiful. And most of all his laugh. He had laughed when they had walked home from school together, he had laughed when they had spent the evenings playing video games together and he had laughed when they finally somewhat confessed their feelings to each other. That had been the most beautiful laugh of them all, so incredibly free of worry and filled with relief. Actually, he had always laughed, only at the end he didn't.