That Night

007

Time sure flies by, but its pace is never the same. Sometimes, you just blink and the day already elapsed before your eyes, other times, even if you blink a hundred, a million times a day, even the second-hand needle seems to be frozen on its spot and betray your hopes of reaching the end of the day without a hint of boredom running round in your head.

Life is like old songs played by a worn tape recorder, forcing us to go through verses and refrains, speed up and slow down buttons in option. When a song comes to its end, a new one starts and the story goes on.

Jinhwan's life, twenty four hours ago, was still in a refrain.

Every day followed the previous one with the same schemes. Waking up, going to school to graduate from his psychology major, alternating classes and practice. Jinhwan was a workaholic when it came to try to understand human's behavior and ways of thinking. He was only 21, soon turning 22, but already in his last year of master degree and teachers couldn't be more pleased by this assidious student. But somehow, he'd been disappointed by the actual thing. Theory promised him exciting and active reflexion on complicated cases with unsure outcomes, but practice put him behind a desk in a lost room in an even more lost middle school. Young teenagers have always been a great concern for him. They were unpredictable, running on hormons and thirsty to discover life's pleasures and unexpected events, those humans being, adult-to-come through the long maturation process were simply fascinating. Thinking he'd been one before would always make him feel dizzy. How could a living form go through that amount of changes, not realize it at the moment and end up drastically metamorphosed while still having the same name and the same face ? Caterpillars change into butterflies, flowers into fruits, humans remain humans ; fascinating. At first, he didn't mind and was rather happy to finally meet fresh blood and not the usual musty smell of his old books, rather happy to finally test his skills and be able to see concrete results, but things turned out to be a little less challenging than he thought it would be. The few students coming to his office were usually dropped here by the principal and had nothing serious to talk about except low grades and no motivation to continue school. He did talk about the fact that it wasn't his field with the directions, but no one seemed to care. God, he wasn't in psychology to talk about some random scholar orientation .. Sometimes though, while talking with the student, he found ways to help them and ended up satisfied with the work accomplished, but not completely satiated. Then, when he felt like dying engulfed in an endless humdrum, an interesting student would show up and it would brighten his mood by a decade, but the sudden joy would always fade at the end of the road and only routine and desillusioned expectations were left. That's why he set his mind on graduating and quitting this middle school as soon as possible.

Coming home after a school day or a work day wasn't fun either. Loneliness would welcome him as an old friend and his empty fridge wouldn't help to cheer up the mood. Acccepting his sad fate, he would have his usual cup of instant noodles and then take a long shower before heading out to the winding of the city by night.

He didn't expect a simple choice to change the song played by his tape recorder though.

The night he met Hanbin, his day had been particularly boring and he needed to take a break from reality. He heard his classmate, was it Yunhyeong perhaps, talking about a new club in town. It was pretty far from their neighborhood but the feeds back were excellent and people kept on bragging about how the atmosphere was incredibly hot inside, and so were the barmen, so he got curious. From his two years of experience, he had etablished his own list of trustworthy clubs, where he found his most merorable partners in fact, but he was an eternal adventurer and his thirst for new experiences seemed inexhaustible.

The question now is : Does he have any regrets ?

It was almost 11 P.M and the night was growing darker and thicker, not a single star glowing in the sky. And here they were, sitting on a bench in an empty park, fingers and toes freezing, tip of the nose and cheeks red, sight lost on an uncertain point. None of them was prepared to talk, but the silence slowly became awkward and he felt the urge to say something to erase the uncomfortable feeling creeping in his stomach.