NEFELIBATA: ONE WHO LIVES IN THE CLOUD OF THEIR OWN IMAGINATIONS AND DREAMS

"Wonho is coming here in about fifteen minutes!" The words flew out of my mouth like a splutter of cough as if I was holding back the fit until now. I paced around Hyungwon's apartment frantically, the inside of my palms were clammy with sweat.

"Whatever you do friend, do not get pregnant," I could almost hear Hanbyul's deadly serious voice, and Changkyun's teasing little snicker as if they were right here in this room.

However, Hyungwon remained as nonchalant as he had ever been. He was seated on a wooden stool, a new furniture added to his place. He was fiddling with the watch. He stopped for a second when he heard me but didn't move a muscle.

"Alright, here's the thing, I was the one who invited him by text what it feels like a trillion years ago, which he didn't respond to and acted like it never happened. But here we are now," I quickly explained to Hyungwon, and then I showed him the lit up screen on my phone.

A message from Wonho that said, "can I be at your place in thirty minutes?"

"It's a weekday on top," I added, as if that was supposed to solve something.

Hyungwon was wearing his glasses and his long hair was hanging loosely around his features, hence I could barely see his face. He stirred a little on the stool. "You don't want him to come?"

"I do." Obviously I did. "I'm just losing my mind a little now, sorry."

Suddenly I wondered why I had even barged inside Hyungwon's place the second after I recieved the text from Wonho. Shouldn't have I been cleaning my room?

"I like him a lot but I'm just lost with him. I don't understand him, at all, and I figured that neither do you. Nor do any of his friends, really," I mumbled aloud, still ambling back and forth in the space between Hyungwon's bed to the door.

"Maybe you should use this opportunity today," he said and I saw him taking out a packet from the front pocket of his jeans and lighting up a cigarette after fumbling around in his messy table for the matchbox.

"I thought you quit," I uttered in surprise, watching him blow the smoke out and clear his throat a little after, as if he wasn't fully used to this. Though the way he held the cigarette between his long fingers, and dragged the nicotine inside his lungs after taking it in his mouth told me he knew exactly how to smoke.

The putrid smell had already started to poison the air.

"I need it today, sorry," he said. His voice sounded distant, or maybe because of the miasma hanging around his frail and slumped figure that I felt like that. "Shouldn't you clean your room?"

His fingers were shaking. Maybe he needed some alone time. He seemed perfectly fine when I had first entered.

I let the boy be and actually tried to make my room a little more decent. The worst enemy was the unclean outfits piled around the entire space for the next laundry day, meaning the weekend. After somewhat tidying them up (which meant hurling the clothes in plastic bags and hiding them in the closet) I realized it already looked way better than before.

The rooftop was quieter than usual. It was nine thirty already and the night sky was clear. Little patches of grey clouds did hang around, but the stars were shining and so was the luminescent moon. Cicadas chirped away along with my own unsettling heartbeat, although, they sounded more serene and sane.

I wondered what got to him to today.

Wonho came around ten. The second I saw him, I knew something was wrong.

He was wearing a worn out pair of tennis shoes without socks, a pair of baggy black sweatpants and a very plain blue t-shirt. He seemed as if he had just walked out of his place without thinking, as if he had sleepwalked to here. But that wasn't what caught me off guard.

Wonho's dark hair was disheveled. His complexion so pale it looked like he was glowing, as if he was the counterpart of the moon herself that hung above us. The corners of his eyes were bright red and when he looked at me, I wasn't sure if he was actually looking at me.

Something struck me inside when I saw him like that, I couldn't help but think that it was right, I really didn't know him at all. He had never seemed so distant in that very second he did to me.

But then the corners of his mouth lifted up, only a little. "hey," he said in a low voice. "Sorry for coming here unannounced."

"You did text me," I said. Now he was looking at me. Relief surged through my whole body and this time I couldn't help but think that I had overreacted a little before, that I was overthinking again.

"Come here." I took his hand and led him to the benches on the rooftop. The wind was gently blowing from the west, and a musty smell of a distant and long awaited rain came from somewhere. His hair danced with the light breeze.

He looked surreal. Even though he had often walked me to the building, he never came up to my place. Having him here made me feel like this was an out of the body experience, or he wasn't really here but a fragment of my imagination of his were.

"Did you have dinner?"

"Yeah. Did you?" He asked in soft and low voice, as if all the nocturnal creatures were peering their ears at us and he had to talk low.

"Yeah." I couldn't help but smile at him. Maybe his eyes were red because he couldn't sleep, he had told that to me before. "Then do you want anything for snacks? Ramen? Sandwich? Coffee? Or something cold?"

As if me inviting him to ramen wasn't strange enough. I just knew he had an undenying adoration for ramen, all his friends knew that.

"As much as I like ramen, I'll take only coffee now," he said with a chuckle now, again whispering.

Only then did I realize I hadn't let go off his hand all this time.

Our hands departed, only for a short while when I ventured inside to make coffee. When I let go off his hand I realized he hadn't too fathomed that I was holding onto him, or when I let go finally. His posture was a little slouched. From behind his broad back looked like a lonely skyscraper in the middle of a desert.

I needed to use this opportunity.

When I came back with the coffee mugs he was still sitting just like before. He took the coffee uttering a small thank you and then went back to staring ahead at the city and the sky where they enveloped each other, merging into a big black canvas with twinkling lights.

The part of the city from here didn't have looming buildings, or extravagant malls, and big streets. It only showed the lonelier corners of the city. The vicinity below had narrow streets with lights illuminating the and the sky had the moon, the only thing missing from eachother, yet they somehow completed the whole canvas.

I didn't know how to really ask him anything, or where to start. Asking him why he had suddenly changed his mind and came here would be a good start but I couldn't find myself breaking the ambient silence between us.

The cicadas kept crying in harmony in the background. Surprising how they were here when it hadn't really been raining properly. I sipped on my coffee, Wonho's mug stayed still between his palms.

"I keep running away from you," he suddenly said, his voice clearer than before. He didn't turn to me and he was still staring ahead.

"Why do you do that?" I asked. I couldn't deny his statement because he did almost always leave me in the dark. Even now a thick air of uncertainty was hanging between us.

"Nothing good in my life lasts. Whenever I'm happy something really terrible happens right after. I'm tired of going through the same thing," he said and his voice went low again.

There wasn't a change of expression in his face, only that he seemed like he was dreaming.

"I won't go away. I'm right here." For some reasons, my voice came out as low too, barely audible even to myself. The cicadas stopped because of us. Silence.

He tipped his head back a little and watched the sky above for a certain period of time. I watched how his skin radiated the moon light, and how his neck looked like a canvas waiting to be painted upon.

"Ever wondered how your name has both the sun and the moon in it? Moon Sunny." He turned to me with a full smile on his face, as if he had completely forgotten what he told me right before this.

Bewildered a little, I nodded at him. "Yes. I think you've said this to me before."

"I think about it a lot. It's a beautiful name." He sipped in his coffee for the first time. It was probably cold by then.

"I like your name too. What does wonho mean?"

"To protect."

"That sounds just like you. You're a savior," I said. A grey patch of cloud gathered around the moon, shrouding his face in the meantime.

"You're the sun and moon. I'm just a distant star," his soft voice whirled away in the cold breeze that rushed past us.