To You, Whom I Loved
When I first saw you through the sterile glass of my screen, the distance felt like a physical weight, a hollow ache in my chest that only a crushing embrace could heal. Jaein-ah, I am haunted by the space you occupy—a space I crave to collapse until our atoms blur.
When you gaze at me, your eyes don’t just sparkle; they collide with mine, a silent supernova that tremors straight through to my soul. I have become a cartographer of a life that doesn’t exist yet, mapping out every narrative where you are the gravity. I can feel the phantom ghost of it now: the tension in my biceps as I draw your slender shoulders against me, the heat radiating from your neck, and the way your head fits perfectly into the hollow of my collarbone.
I pull back just enough to frame your face, my thumbs tracing the map of your features like a traveler finally finding home. Your cheeks are velvet under my touch, warming from pale peach to a feverish crimson. I trace the delicate, paper-thin creases beneath your eyes—reservoirs for the tears you’ve held back—and as the gap between us narrows to a finger’s breadth, the world falls away. I see the crystalline depth of your iris and the individual fan of your lashes.
Then, you smile. I feel the shift in your muscles, the sudden release of tension as your lips part to reveal the porcelain white of your teeth. Your hair, those silken black strands, spills over my hands like cool water, brought to life by the frantic rhythm of our hearts melting into a single beat.
When I lean in, the world narrows to the point of contact. First, the soft, electric pressure against my upper lip, then the answering heat against the lower. The air between us vanishes. As you open to me, I taste the sharp, cool sting of mint and the sweetness of your breath, a frantic exchange of life and longing. Our eyes close, and the night sighs around us, the streetlamp casting a heavy, molten gold shroud over the moment, as if the light itself is trying to hold us together.
The spring of Haneulwa has arrived with a cruel, early bloom. It is nearly midnight. The rain doesn’t just fall; it rhythmically stutters against my roof, sliding down the glass in jagged silver veins that pool into the dark earth below. The lamp beside my window illuminates their journey, mimicking the way my thoughts inevitably find their way back to you.
I have an exam tomorrow. My desk is cluttered with notes, but the silence of the room is too loud, replaying that night like a film reel caught in a jagged loop. I can still feel the static electricity on my skin, that sudden, sharp jolt of adrenaline that makes my hands tremble. It wasn’t just a kiss; it was a reclamation. I look at the door and hope—with a desperation that burns—that tomorrow, you will be the one waiting on the other side.
I am drowning in stress, Jaein-ah. I ache for the simple permission to exist in the same air as you, without it feeling like a quiet crime against the world. Every day I tell myself this intensity is nonsensical, a fever dream I should wake from. But I don’t care. I want you with a ferocity that terrifies me.
Am I a bird clinging to a savior, terrified of the very sky I was meant to fly in? Maybe. I wonder why the most exquisite moments are engineered to be fleeting, leaving us to starve on the memory of a feast for months at a time. I have stopped caring about logic or pride. I have made a sanctuary of you—a place where I gravity-center all my desire, my worship, and my need. I am terrified that if I loosen my grip, you will dissolve into the mist.
I don’t need a grand destiny. I just want the quiet, everyday miracle of being wherever you are.
The reality is a different architecture.
I want to come to you. I want you to hold me so tightly that the keys I use to lock away my innermost self finally snap in the lock. I am a prisoner in a fortress of my own architectural design, waiting for a savior to scale the walls of this damp, lonely season and drag me back to the light.
It is late December, and the world is beginning to pulse with the rhythmic glow of Christmas lights. Everywhere I look, the city is draped in "light season," but all I see is the shadow of us. I close my eyes and I am back under the trees in Paris, reimagining the silhouette we cast against the cobblestones. It was a fragment of time—a microscopic sliver—and I am haunted by the fact that I didn’t know it was fleeting. If I had known how little oxygen was left in that moment, I would have breathed you in until my lungs burned.
Now, miles of static and geography lie between us. Even in an age where we can bridge the world in a second, no invention can withstand the storm of misalignment. I ache just to hear the vibration of your voice, to feel that low-frequency comfort of knowing you are listening, that you are curious, that I exist in your mind as more than a notification on a screen. Are we connected across the void, or am I just screaming into a vacuum? All I know for sure is that you feel like my soulmate—the only person who makes the act of existing feel like something other than a chore.
I remember the way you used to walk beside me to the university. You were a master of silence, a quiet force that moved through the chaos of trams, shouting passersby, and the sharp ring of bicycle bells. Every time a bike forced us apart, I felt a momentary spike of panic until the space recoiled and you were back at my shoulder.
You’d ask me to sit with you, but you always remembered my obsession with the front row. To me, being "closer to the board" meant I wouldn’t miss a single detail. I wanted to see the grain of the wood, the dust in the air—I wanted a deep, scholarly intimacy with the world. And after class, you would always wait. You would find me in the crowd, share a snack, and press your hand into mine for a handshake before vanishing. You were an ethereal mystique I couldn’t shake. Was it just your face? Or was it the terrifying realization that our personalities mirrored each other so perfectly that silence said more than words ever could?
Or perhaps, I was the only one hearing the music.
I am drowning in your contradictions. Why did you hunt for my number just to ask if I was lonely? Why did you insist on seeing me every time you arrived or left a room? You told me you missed me. You double-tapped every message I sent with a heart—a tiny, digital pulse that felt like a lifeline. You’d text me just to say I was in your thoughts, every sentence a flirtatious brush against the skin of my heart.
And then, the diagnostic truth: you have a lover. You have someone else who occupies the space I’ve been mapping out for myself.
The realization hit like a cold clinical finding. Your attraction isn’t like mine. You are just… affectionate. You are a person who lives in a state of constant, casual warmth, extending the same heart-shaped likes to me as you would to a neighbor three blocks away. If this is how you treat a friend, I can’t even fathom the sun-bright intensity of your love.
I’ve realized I was reading patterns in the static. I was forming narratives, casting you as a lead in a film that only plays in my head. It’s a defense mechanism, isn't it? A way to feel loved and embraced in a world where this form of affection is a "forbidden territory." I live in the throat of a constant fear—the fear of being "found out," of being judged by the very people I respect, of being told I don't belong.
So, I quench the fire. I lock the desire in a vault and wait for the rain to stop threatening my life. I wait for the streetlamps to stop being spotlights and start being witnesses. I hold onto this ache because if I let the fire fizzle out, I fear I’ll go numb. Even though this longing is an annoyance, a parasite, I cling to it. At least it means I have a heart. At least it means I’m still alive, waiting for the day I cross paths with you again—or perhaps, a version of you that is finally allowed to love me back.
