Nocturnes

I am inhabited by a cry.

Nightly it flaps out

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

(Sylvia Plath: Elm )

_

"Stay at home today."

Junghyun's eyes are something unknown as he closes the car door without looking back. Mom pokes her head out of the back of the car. She has her smile on, the one that tells me she has no idea.

"It's alright," she says as I stand there and cry. "It's alright. It's going to be alright."

_

"I've killed someone."

These are Taehyung's first ever words to me.

These three words out of the seam of his lips and the heavy feeling in my limbs fades away as I try to work out if he's lying or not. He's still in his uniform, school tie straight without a crease, the crisp white collar mounted clean and high. He has a school bag slung over one calm, steady shoulder. There's a speck of blood on his tanned right cheek but he doesn't notice.

I do.

After a while, he says it again: "I've killed someone."

I say, "You can't be serious."

"I wouldn't lie about something as big as this."

He doesn't seem scared, he seems perfectly at peace. I try to place him. I try to remember any conversation with him, any time I've run into him during class. He seems to know this and he waits patiently. His shadow slopes androgynously across my doorway and I realise looking down that there's blood on his shoe.

He looks too, frowns a little, wipes it off on my lawn.

I say, "Who was it?"

His eyes land on mine. "My father."

"I don't believe this."

"You do," he tells me without missing a beat and he's right. This is the heavy feeling I've had ever since this morning. My body's seen this coming even if my brain has not, and as I hesitate with my hand on the door he says, "Can we talk inside?"

"I'm sorry?" I say.

"Can we talk inside."

I look at him. Perhaps it's because of the tint to his eyes but, without quite knowing why, I let him in.

_

He's sitting at the kitchen bench on a high stool, his feet dangling over the tile. He's rolled up the sleeves of the school shirt, his bag on his lap, he's digging in it for something. Nervous, but at the same time strangely exhilarated, I stand with my back to the stovetop and watch him in silence.

A pack of cigarettes emerges. He takes one out.

"You want one?" he says to me.

"I don't smoke."

"Suit yourself."

For a moment I think of stopping him or else my Mom will smell the smoke in the curtains. And then I remember Mom's not around anymore. I swallow the absurd impulse to swat the cigarette from his hand.

"Did you really kill him?" I say after a while, watching the smoke curl up lazily from his mouth.

"Of course."

"How did you... you know. I mean – "

"Knife," he cuts in and I shut myself up. "Kitchen knife."