The second is another person who wishes to remain anonymous, which is funny since in real life she has about three different first names. She spent a good portion of her stay here horribly ill, and didn't even get the opportunity to go volunteer until a week after she got here. Her coughing is fairly legendary - its not the kind of cough that makes you think "Oh, she's got a cold, she should probably drink some water" it's the kind that shakes her entire frame and makes you think "OH GOD SHE'S GOING TO DIE." Luckily, she didn't die. She was, however, the only person that managed to put up with me during the week I was the primary English teacher at the blind school - a job I should, by no means, ever have again. No matter how insane and stressed I got attempting to plan three lessons completely in Spanish every Tuesday and Thursday, she still came with me, and provided some much needed company and weird joking around. She was, and still is, determined to be married by age 25, and thus her prompt for me was "I want to be a princess and end up with a tall, handsome Asian man, preferably Korean." Eventually, I got her to drop the princess part, but everything else was still the same.
Since Michelle's prompt for me was "a love story with a happy ending" and I'm really not very good at writing that kind of thing, I decided to combine their requests into one story so I wouldn't have to try to write two happy romances in a row. This thing was a bitch to write, and I'm sure it's cheesy as all hell. Sorry. Despite that, though, I am glad I got the opportunity to write out of my comfort zone. No matter how much I hated doing it.
Four Times
The first time she met him, she was stoned out of her mind.
She hadn’t intended to be, of course. She was coming out of a meeting with her adviser which was, generally, not a place for one to be stoned out of one’s mind, but, circumstances being what they were during that period of her life, she was. Quite so, in fact. She had spent much of the meeting contemplating such stimulating questions as “Is my mind nothing more than a screen to be broken?” and “What would happen if I were to take one of those M&M’s?” She could barely remember what her adviser had been trying to tell her. Later in life she would remember the moment she stumbled out of the office, only distantly aware of her surroundings, as somewhat of a low point - though not lower than the moment she had decided it would be a good idea to be stoned for an adviser appointment in the first place. Decision making had not been her forte at the time.
She was contemplating the way the grass looked along the quad when he approached her. She couldn’t quite remember if she was standing up or lying down - in fact, at the time, she probably wasn’t terribly aware of which either - but she did recall looking up at him, and noticing immediately how the sun seemed to change the color of his eyes.
“Jay,” he said, “My name is Smith.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Smith,” she replied, still preoccupied mainly with the light in his eyes, “Can I help you?”
“I believe we’re supposed to be lovers.”
Now, even if Jay’s mind hadn’t been running slower than average at that particular moment, it would have taken her a bit of time to adequately respond to a statement like that. It wasn’t every day someone tried to hit on her in the middle of the quad, let alone with a line like that - it was confusing even in a moment of sobriety.
“Um,” she began, “Do you...you know, have any proof of that?”
“Well, there was that past life we shared.”
“What?”
She was only barely following the conversation as it was. The idea of a “past life” didn’t entirely register immediately. All that was really making an impact were, again, his strangely fascinating eyes. There was something about them, something in the way the light hit them, in the way they animated his expression - it stirred something in her, that she wasn’t quite sure she was in the right state of mind to deal with.
“Um,” she said again, “could we, maybe do this another time? I really need to, you know, get out of the sun.”
“Of course,” he said, “Just let me know.”
He smiled, and stepped away. He may have helped her up, but the surreality of the moment was a bit too much for her to focus on. The rest of the day was somewhat of a blur. Somehow she made it back to her apartment where, after relating the experience at the quad to her roommate, she proceeded to get even more blazed than she already was before passing out on her living room couch to the soothing, repetitive sound of reality show reruns.
The second time she met him, she was hungover as fuck. And, of course, a little stoned.
The cafe at the back of the student center was virtually deserted, and yet she felt as if the noise was going to tear her in half. She clutched a coffee in her hand for dear life, but had yet to decide if she was feeling up to actually drinking it. Her throat felt like there was acid sliding down it, and she was sure something horrifying was twisting and bubbling in her stomach.
Naturally, it was at this attractive moment that he decided to sit himself down across from her.
“You’re looking well.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’d rather not.”
Of course, had she been honest with herself at the time, and not preoccupied with the sting of the student center’s fluorescent lights on her throbbing brain, she would have admitted that she was rather glad he didn’t fuck off either. She had been waiting for a moment to see him again, and to stare like an idiot into his frustratingly intriguing eyes - in part as a way of convincing herself that he was real.
Unfortunately, she was really not in a state to stare at anything other than her pillow, nor was she feeling particularly up to contemplating the reality of a man who seemed to draw out emotions he hadn’t realized she was capable of experiencing. When thinking back on this moment, she would forever recall it as being beautiful and unreal, with specific emphasis on the beauty of it. At the time, she was more concerned with the reality of it - a reality she was beginning to realize was becoming more and more fractured by the day.
“What’s your deal?” she demanded, not even bothering to raise her head off the table to look at him, “Are you crazy, trying to hit on me, slipping me something, or do you really think we’re reincarnated lovers doomed to find each other at this shithole of a university?”
“I think,” he began, “that I’ve known you the entirety of my existence, and that somewhere in the very base of my being, I, for lack of a better term, burn for you. I’ve dreamt of you. I wake in the middle of the night expecting and hoping you’ll be there, and when you’re not, I physically ache. I have never felt anything more profound in my entire life, despite knowing intrinsically that I’ve felt it before. I would die for you.”
“Uh huh,” she said, “Well, that’s, you know, great. But, just for the record, I’m really not feeling up to all this burning and aching and dying and shit, I really just want to go back to bed, so, can we maybe, you know, like last time, not do this right now?”
“Um, I guess so?”
“Alright.”
She got up, somewhat unsteadily, and attempted to make as close to a graceful exit as she could.
Unfortunately, given the state of things at that particular moment, she went about as far as the trash can to the right of his seat before plummeting to the floor in an uncoordinated heap. She could never entirely remember what she said at that point, only that it was probably more filthy than it needed to be. He offered a hand to help her up.
Without thinking, she accepted it, and immediately collapsed backward again.
She felt as if she had been waiting for his touch her entire life. It was familiar and perfect, and made her feel for the first time as if she were complete - as if, there was nothing wrong with her. She wanted it all over her, constantly, touching every part of her until the end of everything.
“Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.
“I’m Jun,” he said, somehow just as breathless as she was, “And yeah, I felt it too.”
She climbed up. Her mind was spiralling. Between the hangover, the sleep deprivation, and what was clearly an infuriatingly physical hallucination, she was falling apart. Without saying a word, she ran out of the student center, stumbling over tables, chairs, and even people without bothering to give a shit. All that mattered was getting to her apartment. And possibly having a cigarette. Or fifty.
She nearly broke down the door to her living room. Her roommate lay on the couch, bowl in hand, watching Toddlers & Tiaras.
“I’m so fucked up.” said Jay.
Her roommate nodded, and took a hit.
“Aren’t we all?”
The third time she saw him, she barely knew where she was.
She would never be able to remember what she had done that night. As far as she knew, she was supposed to have been working on a paper, but had obviously elected to do other things - namely, things that probably should have killed her.
And it nearly did. She felt death claw at her mind that night - tearing it slowly into a thousand shattered pieces.
She may have grasped at space. She fell, fast, and tried to hold onto something. Nothing was still, everything swirled like a hurricane, and she couldn’t keep steady. This was the last night, the end of all things - her existence lay blackened and torn in the dizzying sphere around her. Reality had crumbled and gone, and in one last attempt to reach for it, she screamed.
But the silence was deafening.
And yet, there may have been sound to it. Distant, mangled - more noise than sound, she may have heard something.
“Jay? Jay? Are you ok?” They might have said. But of course, they didn’t. Nothing existed to speak, nothing was real.
She felt a warm touch. It was familiar and, in her current state, overwhelmingly electric, but it was nothing. It grew in intensity, but she was sure it wasn’t there. It couldn’t be.
And then lips touched hers. Her shattered world exploded as she lost herself to the feel of something she couldn’t even begin to put words to. It took her down and brought her up all at once, and somehow, ever briefly, managed to calm the disarray.
She was flooded with memories that weren’t hers - of some sort of perfect love she was sure didn’t really exist, and yet, she was certain she had experienced. As she fell further into what might have been a kiss, she thought of Smith, or Jun, or whatever his name was, and wondered, even though he wasn’t real, if he would ever know if she were to die here.
Her last piece of reality cracked. She knew Hell. Nonexistence clawed at her, and in a moment, she was gone.
The fourth time she saw him, he was real.
She felt plastic sheets beneath her. Fluorescent lights beat down on a sterile smelling room. Someone sat in a chair in the corner, anxious as he slept. She coughed, and he stirred.
“You’re awake.” he said, “How are you feeling?”
Jay took a moment to examine herself. She was attached to an IV drip, and for some reason, had several scars and wounds on her arms and legs. Her head felt like someone was driving a jackhammer into it, and, of course, there was the fact that she had absolutely no fucking idea how she had gotten there. None of these variables signified that she was in a particularly good state, and yet, for the first time in quite a while, she felt almost fine.
“I feel like shit,” she said, “But I think I’m ok.”
“Jesus fuck,” the guy in chair said, “You scared me so hard.”
“I did?”
“Yes.” he stood up and came to the side of her bed. He was tall, and muscled in a light, attractive way, with neatly tousled black hair, and the slightest hint of a five o'clock shadow. His eyes held some sort of unusual tint to them - dark, but inconsistent under the flourescent lights. Something about them was inherently puzzling, or even possibly familiar.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Byung-hun,” he said, “I found you under a tree in the old fields by the basketball court. I thought you were dead.”
“What?” She had no memory of being anywhere near the old fields, or even anywhere on campus last night. Her last, coherent memory was of taking a hit off a bowl with her roommate, casting aside some assignment she had no intention of doing. Everything else was a strange mix of nightmarish half-recollections and nonsense. She remembered being paralyzed somewhere, ready to die, until -
She looked up. Suddenly Byung-hun was the most familiar man in the world. She saw him both as he was now, and as he had once been. Different, but always hers. Slowly, and with considerable effort, she reached up and poked him. He was solid. Real. He took her hand in his own and studied it for a moment, as if having a similar revelation.
“Have I met you?” he asked, baffled.
“I don’t know,” she said, smiling, “My name is Jay.”
“Jay,” he repeated, almost reverently, and, as if not quite realizing what he was doing, he bent down, closed his eyes, and kissed her.
No matter who she was, who he was, or who either of them had ever been - on whatever strange, surreal plane of existence they happened to be on - in that moment, both of them were instantly sure of one thing. They had met before, they had loved each other before, and now, they were in love again.
And so, after spending a significant amount of time taking a fucked up break from her own life, Jay, through the strangest of means, rejoined the real world.
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