RÜCKKEHRUNRUHE: THE FEELING OF RETURNING HOME AFTER AN IMMERSIVE TRIP ONLY TO FIND IT FADING RAPIDLY FROM YOUR AWARENESS

Evening approached like a snake slithering across the looming and gargantuan grasses to take over its prey. The days were getting shorter, the weather less warm than before. Time quickly slipping away like sand through my fingers yet I felt immobile. My legs were taking me through one of those brick roads of the campus, barely.

After a long day of attending class lectures and performing a group presentation, I was tired and my back was aching. I was alone. I wanted and needed to walk alone. Changkyun and Hanbyul were great support but even with them, my head was always filled with something completely different.

I felt disconnected from reality. The evening breeze hitting my face and tousling my hair which had grown a little longer than before— just above my shoulder, was barely registering. The blue sky too. The sun had dipped to the horizon some minutes ago.

That's why, when I saw Wonho I couldn't really fathom it as well. I was taking the route before the kendo club and then I saw him walking right towards me.

That's where I had seen him for the first time too, albeit inside that building. Now he was not wearing his kendo uniform but he was clad in a black sweatshirt and his head was a blazing orange.

Orange. He had dyed his hair again.

"I was really hoping to see you here today." The darkening sky couldn't hide his aflame hair, or his accentuated figure in black. He looked the same as before, but different, yes, different he was. It already felt like ages since I had seen him.

Maybe it was only a few days but to me it was ages.

I was so taken aback that I could only stand quietly. After that night, I couldn't but think that maybe I was not going to see him anymore. Maybe not ever again.

I didn't want to leave him alone, yet I didn't want to crowd around him and make him feel overwhelmed.

What if in those worlds paralleled to ours he died exactly for that reason? My heart went out of sync for a second.

"How have you been doing, Sunny?" he asked with a slight smile. Maybe he was really okay now, better at least.

"Good," I stammered a little on my tongue. All those hand holdings, breathing close to each other, walking side by side with him felt so distant as if those really didn't happen, did they ever?

He sort of felt like a stranger to me now, that name of mine in his tongue felt unfamiliar. Why was he already a fading memory? Or maybe I was trying to repress them?

"How are you?"

Why couldn't I just say 'I miss you like the earth misses rain after going through an everlasting drought for decades, that my heart beat less without you and it feels like I'm always somewhere else and not really here.'

And that I didn't want him to die.

"Good, actually," he said with a tiny exhale of breath and looked a little away. The campus was starting to illuminate under its street-lamps, the distant buildings glimmering in fluorescent lights.

"I think I needed— I need some time to myself. It's working out for me that way. I just need time." He almost looked like he was talking to himself. He then turned to me. "Do you want to sit somewhere over there on the bench?"

I nodded a yes. So it did work, him pushing me away and me obliging.

When I was in my hometown I had always felt like I needed more space to breath, that there just wasn't enough space. Even though I loved everyone there, my family, the little Nini. Yet sometimes love just could not be enough. I needed to get away. I knew this feeling well.

Even though Wonho's experience and feelings were completely different from mine, it could be that he couldn't breath when he was with me too. That made my heart go out of sync again.

I just don't want you to die.

We sat on the bench with a good few inches of distance between us. After some quiet time, he spoke first. "You don't have to go to your part-time today?"

"Hyungwon will take over. You know him, don't you?"

"He who's a child actor and lives below you." The dim sodium lights cast a yellow glow across his pale face and his tangerine hair.

I almost replied with a giggle but stopped myself, and I almost felt like it was the same as before with Wonho at that particular moment.

"Did you come here to practice kendo?" I asked him.

He shook his head a little to the sides, his eyes placed somewhere afar but nowhere really in particular. "I came here to quit. I think I'll take a break from here too. Need to focus on my master's exam."

Suddenly there was a glass wall between us again; it was different after all. I looked at the blue veins spreading across his translucent neck, and the red freckles dotted on his skin like constellations on the sky.

He brushed a tendril of orange hair across his forehead and then put a hand inside his front pocket. He pulled out a white paper neatly folded into four, tightly pressed.

With a hesitant face, he observed the piece of folded paper, but only for a second. Then he held it towards me. "Do you remember I said I was writing a song for you? I thought I should give it to you if we meet up by chance."

And so he kept it in his pocket.

I took it from him, and as soon as he handed the paper he heaved a very long sigh as if a heavy burden was lifted off his chest. He straightened up his shoulders. All this time he was slumped over, his back was hunched.

"Please don't read it in front of me. When I leave, okay?" he said with a soft and airy chuckle. I nodded at him.

He was so close at that moment but so very far away. I could touch him again, feel his pulse and breath right then, but I knew I couldn't. My hands were getting cold and I could feel no warmth radiating from him either. The spring boy was sleeping somewhere faraway, only winter in a black sweatshirt remained in his cloak.

He said he had to go and parted just like that. As if it was the easiest thing to do, as if I really was only a breeze that blew past him for while but now I was long gone. I was history.

I stayed on the bench though, and I watched his receding back until it went far and further away, until not even a dot of him remained.

Then I prepared myself for a few minutes and opened up the paper. The trees were swaying their heads in the chilled wind, a smell of some unrecognizable flower wafting around me. A bird let out its evening call somewhere, it sounded urgent yet deeply melancholic.

The lines were written in neat handwriting, there was not a smudge or a stain. It was carefully thought over and written. I skimmed over the lines very quickly, and then I read it from the start again but at a slower pace, and again, and again.

And again until my line of vision started to get blurry and a drop of water fell on the pristine white paper. I held it away so it wouldn't get ruined. Already so many things were.

"Hold me closer
Don't let me go over
Hold me closer
Lock it away

"Keep my heart at your place
Pull me closer

"Baby I would go to war for you
Build an army if you need me to
Cause losing me is better than losing you

"Don't you know that I would die for you
If I knew that you would make it through
Cause losing me is better than losing you"

How come his song didn't match the words that came out of his mouth? I folded the paper back into its creases and gently put it inside a secure pocket of my bag.

While doing that I saw someone's shoes on the grass, stilled before me. Hurriedly I wiped my face with my sleeves and looked up, thinking it was some student who was concerned seeing me here in this state, but really I was hoping it was Wonho and that the spring boy had woken up.

A familiar face stared at me with unreadable eyes. Not Wonho.

"How do you know this place? You've never visited my university before." Still wiping my eyes, I asked with a hoarse voice. Then I recalled it was Hyungwon and obviously he knew a lot more than he showed.

"Your room was leaking water. A pipe burst perhaps," Hyungwon said in a small whisper. His tall frame and impassive face adorned with spectacles still in shadows under the lights.

My jaw hung low. I wanted to ask why he hadn't called me but obviously, he did not have a cellphone.

"I thought I'd let you know before going to the library. I've been walking around this place for an hour. I didn't know your exact location," he said very nonchalantly. I noticed the luster of sweat on his face.

I got up and took my bag. My place was probably drowning by this hour but I couldn't really care much.

"Did you see him?" I asked.

"Who?"

"Wonho. He was here."

"No," he answered. We began walking together side by side. The smell of the strange flower was gone, the bird's melancholic voice long dead.

"If he dies this time again, what are you going to do?" Surprisingly my voice was flat when I asked him.

"Maybe I'll finally learn that I can't save him, and my promise was meant for someone else from the beginning."

I couldn't really understand but I didn't ask, because I knew he was not going to say more.

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A/n: are you okay?