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Hyeon,
Let's talk about blackholes, your fascination with them, and how easy it was for you to create one inside of me.
It started on a Tuesday.
The start of the collapse came in the form of you – blushing, bruised and burning – quietly sneaking into my room at four in the morning, chiming a nonchalant "D'you mind if I hang here for a bit to pass my time?" – said so casually I would've been fooled that we were long buddies (we were not) and almost dismissed the fact that you well-nigh lived on the opposite end of town, or that you have never spoken a word to me before except for the cordial smile you once shot me when our eyes randomly met during that year's entrance ceremony.
I was baffled, and in my foggy half-asleep state, I quietly questioned why some random kid from my grade was suddenly sitting in my room, out of nowhere, and is strangely acting like we've been friends forever.
I was too sleepy to kick you out, zeroed away to it all. To a stranger with half wild eyes and a colossal grin that begged to stay—
(Stay. Hah. Funny how that turned out, wouldn't you say?)
You felt familiar, so I let you in. Let you stay and shuffle through my shelves and books, utterly shameless.
You felt right at home, despite being a complete stranger, and I was foolishly dumbstruck by how well you fit into the tight scope of my bedroom. The afterthought of you — a familiar face that grinned like he knew why we're all existing right here, floating a few times into my dreams that night when I clocked out from watching you quietly read from the corner of my eye.
I didn't really care, only a thoroughly confused Who the hell is this? gurgling at the back of my throat that was never said out loud, when I found you knocked out next to my bookshelf when I woke up that morning. Curled so delicately on my bedroom floor, that I could've sworn it was a dream if it weren't for the fact that I could somehow recognize you from the back of my mind, and that you felt benightedly soft under my touch when I poked you awake.
When I asked what cultured your odd urge to sneak into random rooms with the risk of being caught trespassing, you only giggled behind your mug of buttered coffee and riposted a drowsy "I get a little bit too lonely in this blackhole sometimes.", eyes blinking up at me, as if you knew I'd understand somehow.
"Don't you have any friends?"
You only smiled, boxy and magnetic, didn't leave any room for argument and told me to expect you again.
"This part of the blackhole is a lot less lonelier."
The next time I saw you, was akin to a distant flicker. A beam that reflected the last remains of summer vacation, draped over a bench in the middle of the quadrangle assembly. You were light, surrounded by your friends that almost ricocheted around you like pawns. The sun, blazing in August, was nothing against the white of your uniform— the wind nothing against your laugh.
You grinned at me once you found my gaze in the sea of dreary chatter, glowing like the sky, jagged by the seams. Bright in a way that almost nips at your edges. A small part of me moved that day, and as I dumbly leaned on our school gymnasium's facade with my garden weed for friends, I began to understand what you had meant that morning.
You crawled back to me almost a week later.
And like an infatuated fool — I let you in. Again.
But now, I've started to ask myself. If I could do it all over again, with the knowledge that you'll somehow, one day, cultivate a dark hole to remain in your stead when the void of the collapse catches up to you — would I still have let you in?
There could be a thousand alternate realities where I could confidently say that I won't make the same mistake twice. Never again.
But in this reality, where I refuse to dispose all of your things from my drawers, and the photographs you've taken left all over my walls –the floor, and your lingering scent remains stuck in the folds and creases of my sheets — I'm still the same fool who let you in. And I'll do it all again, if I could.
I'll meet you for the first time at the break of dawn in a thousand different ways and let you trespass past my ribs and let you build a home here — be your collection of blackholes again and again if I have to.
(Because it's the only way to have you back.)
In the end, I'd still choose you.
Yours, Jun
(—the fool who'd open his window every night.)
┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈
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