LIBEROSIS: THE DESIRE TO CARE LESS ABOUT THINGS

I met Wonho again after exactly two days. It was finally the weekend and the sun was already glimmering gallantly at 8 o'clock in the morning. I was still half asleep, rocking back at forth on my seat at the almost empty bus. I didn't yet know where he was taking me.

"I still don't have a clue where we are going," I told him as I turned away from the window and faced him.

Clad in a grey overdized sweatshirt and dark blue jeans and sneakers, he beamed at me. "You'll see," he laughed a little by himself, all along his feet tapped rhythmically on the floor.

"What was the urgent matter that day?" I stifled a yawn. The question didn't seem to reach him.

His eyes whirled around the bus, and then again he turned to me. "Almost there." Despite his radiant demeanor, the circles under his eyes indicated how deprived of a good sleep he had been.

When he called me early in the morning and told me he'd pick me up in ten minutes I thought I was in a dream. It registered three minutes after and by then I was jumping up from my bed like a clown puppet attached to a box with a string.

I was sure my short hair looked as frantic and crazy as a crow's nest, and even that might be an insult to the crow. I tugged onto the hem of my red hoodie and yawned a little. "The mall?" I peered outside the window and by then Wonho was tugging onto my sleeve, pulling me out of the seat with him. We stepped out on the bus stoppage. The road devoid of people, obviously no one was crazy enough to awake early on a weekend.

"It's not open yet." The humongous building complex glared down at me, even from the outside it looked deserted and hollow.

"They start to open up around nine. Come on." He fished for my hand and blindly pulled me along with him. I followed behind reluctantly, my other hand placed over my eyes to shield them from the torturing morning sun of the summer.

"You sure about this?" By the time I had asked him that, we were already to the front and main gate, long glass panels which parted away when we stepped closer. There was a very tired-looking old man with stubble and a head full of graying hair, wearing his security dress and staring at us droopy-eyed as he sat on a stool.

"Hey pa, how are you doing?" Wonho asked him cheerfully but didn't stop. The man begrudgingly lifted his hand for a terse second and didn't spare us another of his bored glances.

"You know him?" I asked when Wonho was pressing the button for the elevator to open up. Inside the mall, no one was there, except for that guard. It was cold and barren, and dark as far as my eyes laid ahead, the shops were closed under the metal shutters.

"He's known me since I was a kid. He lives in our block," he explained and we both stepped inside the lonesome elevator. He pressed the button for the eleventh floor, not letting go of my hand all this time.

That's why the night guard gave him a pass. Wonho might have dropped by here more often than I'd thought. And I still had no idea what we were doing here, yet, strangely I felt calm and collected. All I did was look at him with my peripheral vision carefully. I'd never seen him so excited. Was this a good thing for where his fate led to? Shouldn't it be?

The answer to why we were here landed upon me when we finally arrived at the eleventh floor, but I still couldn't grasp it fully. It was a gaming arena and we stopped right before a wooden wall of merely three feet, and beyond that the floors were white in hardwood, reflecting under the dimmed purple and azure neon lights.

It was a rollerskating rink.

Before I could open my mouth again and leave another awestruck comment, or a question, a guy in pajamas and casual tee, and flip-flops, a blanket draped loosely on his head approached us. His eyes puffy and not bemused at all gave us a quick once over.

"Hi," Jooheon said as he peered his blanket draped head at me. Under my questioning stare, he answered for himself, "I work part-time here."

"And sometimes sleeps here too," Wonho said with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Yeah when your sister, her two kids, AND her unemployed husband stay in your house along with your parents and grandparents, sometimes you just have to make your workplace your home," Jooheon said matter-of-factly, he wasn't amused at all and nor did he show any other expression on his sleepy and swelled face.

Suddenly I remembered Hyungwon once told me he had to sleep in a mall often when working along with Jooheon. This was what he meant.

"You arrived late. I'll alarm you guys before the manager shows up, till then this place is yours." Jooheon retreated back inside the ticketing office just like he came out there a moment ago.

When Wonho was about to drag me along again I pulled on his hand instead and made him stop. "I see what you're doing." I couldn't help but cackle as I uttered my next sentence, "but I can't skate."

His jaw almost dropped on the floor. "When you said you wanted to skate, I assumed you knew how to."

When I shook my head to the sides, still laughing and then I told him I madly wanted to, but never even tried before, he eagerly said it didn't matter, that it was easy and I only needed to hold him if I found myself losing my balance.

I didn't have one clue about skating as he had to help me with the skate shoes too. He didn't seem to mind at all. Finally, I was starting to feel the thrill coursing through my veins. No longer was I sleepy but the reality was fixing upon me. I had really wanted to try this for a long time, and now here I was, with him.

Though as soon as I'd try to stand up, I immediately plopped back down on the bench with a loud thud, the wheels under my shoes feeling like they had a life of their own when they rolled ahead deliberately and made me fall flat on my back. But I laughed and Wonho was giggling hard with me. He took me by my arm, his strong hold carefully propping me back up. This was not going to be easy.

Hand in hand, arm in arm, with me almost in his embrace and with my head brushing on his broad chest, I whimpered and cried, and closed my eyes shut whenever I found myself falling again, but I didn't, he was already holding onto me. Even amidst this fright, I couldn't help but laugh nonstop too.

The floor was slippery as glass and ice, it made me tense thinking how much it would hurt if I crashed on the hard ground but that didn't intimidate me as much as I thought it would. We teetered along the edges of the walls before he finally took me to the middle ground.

Out of the blue Wonho let out a cheery whistle and then I saw a white spotlight appearing, and starting to whirl all around us, and a piece of loud dance music started to blare in through the huge soundboxes surrounding us.

"Jooheon's really working it." Wonho laughed, holding me at arm's length now. My other hand was paralleled to my side in the air, making waves with the funky beats of the music.

Daft punk sang lose yourself to dance in the soundboxes and we really did. We glided around the rink, Wonho leading me by his hand, our fingers touching slightly. By then I was getting the hold of it.

"Do you want to try by yourself now?" His voice spoke louder against the music and I bobbed my head up and down eagerly.

We were already almost apart from each other, the gentle touch of his fingers moved away too as he slowly took his hand back. I ambled along on the roller skates, and he watched with a prideful smile on his face while running on his own feet.

It felt exactly like how I imagined it would feel. I was flying, freely and carelessly.

I saw him gliding past me and way beyond me, and then he smoothly turned back and skated backward, more like the shoes took him wherever he wanted to be.

He was ahead of me, and I was speeding up to him, and actually not on my own according. "I don't know to stop!" I said alarmingly and he shouted a what, but it was too late. Like an avalanche I found myself hurling towards him.

And we crashed hard, we both fell on the ground. It didn't hurt at all and then I realized my fall was cushioned by him. He was on his back and I was on top of his chest.

"I'm sorry, are you hurt?" I immediately sat up and pulled onto his hands. He sat up too, his hair a mope of mess and a broad grin on his face.

"I'm okay. Are you?"

"Yeah," I laughed and he joined with me, we were both sitting on the white floor, our feet adorning the roller skate shoes sprawled before us. The music was drawing on, some other funky song now. That very moment I realized how truly happy and carefree was, unlike I'd ever been in my life.

Wonho placed his hand on top of mine, his dark and smiling eyes arresting mine. "Can I kiss you?" he said. "It's okay if you say no," he immediately added.

"Yes." I shook my head in the affirmative as well as saying.

The next second, he placed his warm hand on my cheek and leaned in, placing a kiss on my lips. He moved his head back almost immediately and surveyed my reaction. I couldn't help but grin hard, so he again leaned in, and again we kissed.

It was different from the one before. Actually different from any kiss I'd ever shared in my life before. Maybe it really did matter who was the person, and how much you liked them.

We went on until the music abruptly stopped. And we broke apart when Jooheon came running in his pajamas, tee, barefooted, minus the flipflops and the blanket, his shrill voice ringing with his loud footsteps. His manager had texted and he was already inside the mall.

We sobered up just as fast and pulled out our skate shoes, handed them to him, and ran out of the rink. Jooheon suggested us to use the staff elevator in the back and we did so. Adrenaline rushing in our veins and blood pumping furiously. When we stepped outside of the elevator we found one of the exit backdoors opened, and we saw other employees were turning in lazily. We bolted out of there, no one really took interest on us.

I hadn't realized all this time that our hands were locked tightly, until when we were running fiercely on the lone backstreet, laughing and crashing onto each other. I didn't know why we were running. It just felt right for us at that moment.

When we finally came onto the main street and halted on the running, Wonho placed his index finger on his lips and turned to me, and laughed again. We then casually strolled hand in hand.

"Today we could pull two of the adventures you wanted," he beamed under the scorching sunlight, the rays reflecting on his pale skin.

I stared up at the tall man. My eyebrows quirking up in question.

"You said you wanted to skate, and you also said you wanted to run on an empty street early in the morning. Those were the things you wanted to do," he reminded me.

I didn't know why I didn't like the sound of it. A small yet sharp pang of pain bloomed inside my chest. "I thought I said skating on the ice in winter, if I remember well," I told him back hesitantly.

"This one is close to that right?"

"Yeah. But why? I mean, we could do that too when the lakes are frozen," I almost stuttered. Why was I panicking over this small issue?

"You never know how things turn out," he said.

And then he saw how I stopped abruptly, and I tried, I really tried hard to hide my crestfallen face but he saw through it anyway.

"I do want to be with you. I just thought, if somehow, something makes us unable to do that later... And I promised you too. Isn't it better to live the moment?" he stumbled on his words too, he deeply inspected my features.

"I made you sad, didn't I? Is there anything wrong?" he asked me.

I shook my head. "Nothing. Just, the future scares me too."