a constellation of midsummer (redux) yonghwa/seohyun 2439w pg "maybe i want to like you, or maybe i think i like you.

u. or maybe, despite everything and against my better judgement, i already do." - the day before their contract expires, yonghwa takes seohyun out for a drive. They are riding in a truck with Yonghwa behind the steering wheel. The blue paint is chipping off the side of the passenger door like paper coins, and there are cracks in the windshield. A toy frog hangs from the rearview mirror like a funny little ornament. It's six in the morning, and the roads are starting to fill, slowly, like creeping waves along the shore that reach further in as deep as it pulls back. Sunlight is rippling across the windows of tall-story buildings, reflecting shimmers of light, and all they can see are orange and purple hues along the skyline while Seohyun murmurs in amazement: "Everything is really pretty." Yonghwa agrees while gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles, racing through a yellow light, and steals a quick glance at her profile, how she cranes her neck to see the sky through the windshield, her cheek barely grazing the dashboard. She pulls back and looks at him with morning eyes, and he smiles reluctantly at her. The mood is heavy. They sigh at the same time, their breathing is even, and the radio crackles with classical music. She rolls her side window down, and leans her face against the strap of her seatbelt as she holds her arm out, letting the wind beat against it, the air whistling through her fingers. "Sometimes I forget you're only twenty," he says, light-heartedly. "Twenty-one in three months." It sounds like, We could have aged one year together, and this time you might remember to wish me happy birthday or I remember everything you've ever told me about you, but it really means, We won't see each other anymore. He changes lanes, fits tightly between two other cars. "I won't forget." (Her arm feels numb. You're not obligated to remember anymore.)

He counts calories and runs off the ones he can't remember eating. The days and nights are blending fast, and sometimes he dreams of flashing lights, pink dresses, and a tiny kiss that feels more like a whisper against his cheek. One day, backstage, a senior looks at him from head-to-toe and nods in awe. "You look like a new person," he says. "How do you feel?" (He had been fifteen the first time he dreamt himself as a moth. He has ordinary wings with dull colors, fluttering against the walls of his house. At nightfall, he cocoons himself in the folds of forgotten clothes, closes his eyes, and waits. Nothing happens. When he wakes up not as a moth but as Jung Yonghwa, he inhales all the air his lungs can hold and stops breathing. He counts three tears that drop onto his hand when he allows himself to breathe again.) "Like running." It's a crisp Tuesday evening, and the moon is a buttery yellow. His stomach is grumbling, so he counts the indentations of the ceiling, recalls the varying degrees of her smiles, and the number of times he's caught himself staring. He thinks about white houses on green hills with sad, little gardens, rusted swings, and train rides that never stop. When he picks up his phone, his fingers move quick over the keys, as if they've remembered exactly where he's stored her. Menu, contacts, fifth name down: . It rings.

Seohyun is half-asleep once during the drive. She never asks him where he plans on taking them, except she knows they've been driving for two hours now. They find themselves on the back roads where there are more trees and less towers, and an endless sense of calm falls over her like a cotton blanket. It's comfortable here - the silence, the quiet, the heat. Tall grass and

streams, tiny homes and dirt paths, and sky all around them. The city is distant now, dotted specks along the horizon, and she feels like she's on a boat sailing away from the world. They stop somewhere a hundred miles out of Seoul in another sprawling metropolis, surrounded by mountains. They're on their way to nowhere and everywhere, and he tells her that he would drive all around the country (with her) if he could. She sits on the driver's seat, legs swinging to the side through the open door, and watches him as he stretches his limbs. When he stands straight, he catches her gaze and smiles lightly. She wants to say, You look worried, like you're running away for the first time, but she settles for nothing instead.

"Come with me," he says. It's the only thing he says, but there is an urgency in the cracks of his voice. It's a quarter past eleven, and it feels like she's sharing a secret over the phone. Silence and static are exchanged between them as she stares at the white walls, how they enclose her in this small bedroom, how they meet at the open space of her bedroom door, and she sees her other sisters milling around the living room and laughing. She doesn't say this to anyone, but sometimes she feels worlds away from them in a way that no one else can understand, and he's only tugging her along while she's all too willing to comply. They're like Peter Pan and Wendy Darling without flight. "Okay." Standing on the truck bed, she surveys her surroundings, and there is nothing but vast flat lands and rolling hills. Squinting, she holds her arms up to shield her face from the setting sun, bright orange and bleeding. Her arms fall limply against her sides, brows furrowing, as she calls out to Yonghwa. There's a rustle to her left, his playful, boyish laughter growing distant as he disappears further into the tall, silver reed grass. His movements are quick, and she follows his linear path with her eyes, committing it to memory. And straight on 'til morning, she thinks. "I'm not looking for you!" she adamantly declares. Her voice echoes and fades, and she finds herself alone on the side of a road. Her directional sense is a mess. She resigns herself to search for him, giving chase when he runs back into her line of vision and makes faces at her. "Catch me if you can," he taunts her with a toothy grin, and she thinks of full moons, dark beaches, and sea salt. They run, their voices layering over each other. Sometimes he stops just long enough for her to be a finger's breadth away, but he starts off again until they're breathless. They're the only ones here, this bright star, the second to the right. (It's all ours.)

It's dusk when they stop somewhere where the field has opened up. The reeds have been pushed down, forming a wide and open circle, and he watches her collapse in the middle with her head hung low, catching her breath but still smiling. Addicting, euphoric, their legs still running at what feels like fifty miles an hour, pins and needles, and a jolt. He's bent over, resting his hands against his knees as he inhales and exhales slowly. The sky is dense with stars, and the air smells like jasmine and home. It's warm, too warm, and he's nervous and dizzy, the blood rushing straight to his head. He approaches her from behind, circles to her front and crouches down so they're leveled. Her hair is mussed with bits of silver, and he is dumbfounded at the sheer look of open honesty and brightness on her face. Her fingers tug on a strand of his hair, straightening out and dusting off the feathered seeds clinging to his head. His heart is somewhere in his throat, as he struggles to press it back down. He isn't surprised, not really, just stunned in the way your breath is knocked out of you when you realize something perfect is in your grasp (and that it could be clever enough to get away if you let it).

Yonghwa looks down, shaking his head. She curiously looks up at him, tilting her head to the side. "What is it?" "," he chuckles. He restrains himself from ruffling her hair, even as his fingers itch to do something. He isn't good at this (or at least he used to be) - this closeness, this isolation from everything else, and he thinks that maybe she could be thinking the same thing (but she's not). "Hey," he says. "'Hey?'" she repeats, still unsure. She examines his face with blinking eyes. "What do you think of us?" The question isn't new, not entirely. But the sound of his voice is, like he's choking on it, afraid to have even thought of it. It's strangely soft and fragile, belying his solid silhouette, the firm conviction in his expression. She opens her mouth to answer, but he interrupts, laughs jokingly and almost painfully. "Ah, Seohyun, sometimes I think you could kill me." You could. He hasn't moved and she hasn't either. They remain motionless for what seems like hours, surrounded by cool reeds and feathered grass. Suddenly: "I'm going to tell you something, all right?" Yonghwa briefly buries his face in his hands, making the sounds he does when he's embarrassed. "And you can't laugh, and you can't just - please don't give me one-worded answers because I don't understand them. I'm not good at this, and I can't read you as well as I think I do, even though I pretend that I can." Everything is still and quiet. His heart is on the verge of collapsing, and all he can remember is the last time he'd been honest, so honest it almost killed him (I fell in love with a girl, you see, but she liked someone else). He can hear her breathing and is aware of the way she looks at him, the way her position shifts like she's preparing for something unpredictable - that it might hurt her in a way that doesn't hurt at all but, rather, like her carefully crafted world of fairy tales, of things that can't touch her, will fall apart at even the slightest touch - that things are different, and she's not ready for it. He looks down at his hands and fingers his ring instead because it gives him something to do. "All this time, this stupid 'marriage' - you know, it's not stupid but ... it isn't real. I thought that, that maybe I just wanted to like you because I'm supposed to feel that way, or maybe I deceived myself into liking you because everyone else thought I should. Or, I don't know, maybe," he sighs and looks at her, almost pleadingly, "maybe, despite everything and against my better judgement, I already do. I like you. I like you, okay? You."

Seohyun knows what heartbreak feels like without ever having experienced it firsthand. She's seen it in Sooyoung's eyes when she had come home one night, her eyes sad and her mouth quivering, unable to speak; she's seen it in the way Jessica, who carefully constructs her persona to the public, cries breathlessly and buries herself underneath blankets in an attempt to suffocate herself. Most of all, she feels it in the way she has never been able to do anything about it. The romance of love is tempting and beautiful, but the utter helplessness of it scares her.

When she looks up, he's gone. Five minutes have passed, and she decides to stay for another ten. Time is floating around her, a dense untouchable mass. There's nothing left but her and the sky, and she dreams of big voices to give her answers that she's reluctant to find. She

knows it isn't so easy. It takes her a while, but she makes it back to the road and finds him sitting on the truck bed. She bites her lip and climbs up, invites herself to sit down close to him without making eye contact or saying a word. She thinks about how funny it is that she doesn't need to fill the silent gaps with thoughtless words, that even like this there is a strange sort of comfort just being together. (Or maybe it's funny because it feels like it isn't anymore, not with something else here.) "I think," she starts slowly in an almost-whisper, "I think it's okay. I don't - it's new, but ... it's okay." She feels like her heart is ready to give out, like it's ready to implode. So she pulls her knees to her chest and presses her palms to her eyes, trying to keep the built-up tension, the tears, from escaping. He's afraid to touch her, but he reaches for her anyway. His fingers graze along the length of her hair and, finally, pats her head and rests his hand there. He leans in toward her and rests his forehead against hers. Thank you.

The ride home is different, the headlights guiding them as they leave. Sometimes he looks at her as she gazes out the window; sometimes she tilts her head just slightly to watch him as he concentrates on the road. It's colder now, and the air is pressing down on them. It's different now.

When they pull up to her building, Seohyun steps out and stands beneath a fluorescent streetlight. He comes out and stands in front of her, hands pushed deep into his pockets. Tomorrow, they'll be Yonghwa andSeohyun with no forgiveness to bind them together. Broken halves and nothing whole, and maybe I'll grow up faster now, and maybe I'll catch up to you and see you at one hundred. Yonghwa searches her face for something - anything - and sees it in the way she frowns and in the way her eyes gloss over. He thinks he might regret what he's about to do, but he's sure of everything he's feeling and almost as sure of hers - and it's about as good as anything. "I'm going to count to ten," he speaks, suddenly, and her eyes dart up to his face. "You can stop me if - if you feel uncomfortable at all but just ..." He swallows hard. "One." He thinks she wants this and can almost see it from the intensity in her eyes. "Two." But he isn't sure, not when she looks this way all the time - the way her eyes pull you to her. "Three." Gravitational pulls, the universe, an endlessness so far beyond them. "Four." The signs are crashing together, and he doesn't know - doesn't think they exist at all. "FiWhen she leans up and presses her lips to his, his eyes water and he shuts his eyes tight. Five. Time consumes, and they're infinite.