KEYFRAME:  A MOMENT THAT SEEMED INNOCUOUS AT THE TIME BUT ENDED UP MARKING A DIVERSION INTO A STRANGE NEW ERA OF YOUR LIFE

"Yerum died," Wonho told me as we sat outside. It had stopped raining. For some reason, Wonho didn't want to go inside, even after being drenched from head to toe.

He felt like he was somewhere away from here and I could understand why. My heart broke into pieces and I couldn't say anything in reply as he talked.

"That day..., we were supposed to meet that day. In the morning I woke up to find him laying still on the floor. I thought he was sleeping. But he was dead. I buried Yerum at the mountain behind our place."

His voice was rough and didn't contain any emotion, I searched for his face and he looked so tired but at the same time, nonchalant.

"I'm sorry Wonho... I didn't know. I am so sorry I—" My throat enclosed on its own remembering how harshly I had talked to him that day, tears started to well up in my eyes.

He shook his head a little to the sides. "I should've told you over the phone. But I just— I just felt so numbed. To me that is the worst feeling of all. To feel numb. I used to be a crybaby, I would cry at the smallest things. And now it's like— it's like I can't even cry anymore. My eyes are dry but there's so much pain."

I tried to reach out to him, my fingers trembling a little as I tried to put a hand on his back but he gave a slight flinch. I didn't know if it was for the cold outside or because of me. I pulled my hand back.

"Everyone keeps leaving me. My dad. My brother. My mom is drunk all day. That's why we remain in separate apartments even though we are family. I can't adapt with her, nor can I change her. I understand her pain well. I wish I died instead of my younger brother too."

"Wonho, please don't say that!" I wanted to scream but my voice was meek, though it had a gravity in it. He remained silent for a minute or two.

"That night when I came here late I couldn't bear it at home anymore. My mother threw a drunk tantrum and went out. She came back at dawn and couldn't go in because she had lost the key to her place so she called me. And then I left your apartment."

Wonho looked like a robot talking in his mechanical voice, it was as if the key to his music box was turned and he was just spilling it out like the way he should. His hairtips were no longer turquoise like when we had dyed it in his apartment, but as pale as his skin and slightly shaking lips.

I wanted to embrace him, hug him tighter than ever but something stopped me. He looked so fragile, as if was made of thin glass and would crumble beneath my touch.

"All my life, I can never be certain of anything. Disasters just keep being thrown at me. Whenever I think it's okay from here on, it's actually not. And I can't do this anymore. Everyday I try hard to go by but I can't."

There was no change on the timber of his voice and that made me more terrified than ever.

"You have me. I like you... I think I even love you. And I want to be with you. You are not alone, Wonho," I said, searching for the right words desperately inside of me.

"You can't promise me that you'll be here until the end of time, Sunny." He looked at my way for the first time and his eyes were almost transparent, it was if I could see through him.

"I'll be here with you as long as I'm alive," I tried again. He looked away.

"People die all the time. And look at me, Sunny, I'm alive but I don't even feel like I'm here. I always feel like I'm somewhere far away."

It was hard to almost breath at the point, I realized that tears were running down my face for some time. I couldn't say anything, no, because I had always felt that too. I had always felt empty, hollowed, chewed out, as if something vital was missing from my life, until I'd met him.

As if he could read my mind he spoke his next words slowly, "I've always felt myself being faraway. As if I'm only watching myself from another's eyes. Maybe, not always I've felt that, but for a very long time. And since I met you I've often found myself here, like really here. Somehow that makes me more afraid because I know this will not last and when it won't that will be more painful."

"I... I want to last. I want us to last, Wonho."

"I want to too but being with you, I'm always frightened. Every time something good happens I'm scared out of my wits because something worse follows. I'm so sorry, I know I don't really sound rational. How come I've always had trouble voicing this out but after my cat dies everything just becomes clear to me?" He mumbled on his own, loud enough for me to hear.

"I'm always here to listen to you, Wonho. I am here..." I said but he didn't really look like he was listening to me. He was just thinking to himself.

"The thing is... Maybe I don't want you to be here for me," he finally said. "I am scared of being scared all the time, Sunny. I really can't."

He really wasn't here anymore.

Those words were so empty they felt like the cold wind blowing after a long rain, yet they cut deep.

Just how could I hang on to him when it was his life and he wanted to be by himself?

He left soon after.

The next day I was attending to the library alone. It was as if I was suddenly back to my life without Wonho, where no place for him remained. And it had only been a day.

I couldn't stop repeating yesterday's conversation with him again and again in my mind, it felt like a fever dream, did that really happen? Did he really knocked on my door at night or was it just a hologram of his past self? Was I really giving up on him? Or was I choosing myself. Though, didn't choosing myself meant also him? Maybe I wasn't a whole without him.

I thought how he wanted me to let go, and the idea that I couldn't be whole without him. The sky outside was cloudy, the air sodden with rain, my mind was under a nebula of darkened thoughts itself.

I was here, but I couldn't really find myself here. I understood what he had meant last night, maybe not in his exact way but on my own way I did.

"Hey, uh—" a little knock on the counter made me focus on the hand which was carrying out the act. I followed it to find a young male in his twenties, staring at me with a pair of blue eyes.

"Can I help you?" I took in the stephen Hawking book in his hand, and immediately I remembered Wonho reading that once because he couldn't sleep at night. I gave my head a small shake, it was hard to repress the sigh wanting to come out.

"Actually I don't need help." He shut the open book in his other hand with a small thud. His piercing blue eyes under his blond locks bored into me. He was gazing down at me from at least over a foot tall.

"I wanted to ask if you're alright," he said next.

I was taken aback for a second. The library was lone other than this man before me. I gulped down the truth and gave him a curt nod. "Yes?"

"I noticed you the other day here. You don't remember me, do you?" he asked, book now on the counter before him. The rain fell softly on the glass door of the library.

He had a face worth remembering. He was tall and thin but with a lithe build, dirty blond hair and crystal blue eyes that arrested me the first thing. I couldn't tell if he was a foreigner or a Korean, he had a slight accent in his way of speaking too.

I couldn't tell too where I had seen him before. Albeit now that his full face under the woollen brown pullover had registered in my face, I realized I did have a very slight memory of him from somewhere. Where? I just stared at him, raking my brain upside down.

He had an amusing look on his face. With a slight smile he turned his face away, his hands now reaching to his jeans pocket. The blond male pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.

"I'm sorry, you can't smoke here," I blurted out quickly.

He shot me a look that really didn't have a meaning. Then he sighed and pushed them back inside his pockets. "Force of habit. I crave for a smoke when it rains."

I didn't say anything in reply, and so after a moment he spoke again, "the other day I came to this library for the first time, it was closed though. I saw you outside crying that day."

Suddenly it clicked in— he was the guy I had almost mixed up with Wonho. Blood rushed to my cheeks, I couldn't keep looking at him anymore.

"I'm Alex," he told me as if his previous remark wasn't quoted at all.

I only gave him a nod. "Aren't you going to ask me if I'm Korean or American?" he said in a suggestive manner, and the next second, he chuckled and answered by himself. "I'm half. My dad was Korean."

I slowly bobbed my head up and down.

"You have a coffee machine there. Mind if I use it?" he asked in his accented tone.

"Go ahead."

"Do you want a cup too? The weather sure is calling for caffeine if not a smoke," his manner of speaking was still playful but there was a gentle glint to it. He was probably a little older than me. 

"Yes, thank you," I told him. I watched as his fingers tapped on the counter instead, as if he was pondering over something before moving towards the coffee machine on the other side of the library. 

"I am actually liking this place a lot, I think," he told me in a hushed voice as if it was the most important statement to be told. I nodded again.

I wasn't keen on talking but realising it was rude to just stand around and not speak when he was trying to make a decent conversation I tried.

"Thanks. And I'm Moon Sun hee."

"Pleasure to meet you, Sun Hee." He flashed me a bright smile. Suddenly, Sunny felt like a distant past of mine, a memory to quickly fade away.

No longer did I feel like a Sunny. I didn't miss her but I missed Wonho.

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A/n: it's extremely hard to fast for Ramadan and write this book. That's why I've been taking some time. After Eid, I'm hoping to update regularly until this story is completed. Thank you so much for being patient.