Still Unwritten

Through Our Years

The earliest memory I had of him was sitting together on the first row in our school classroom. He was a transfer student from another school, quiet and reserved, picking at his uniform as he waited for our teacher to start the lesson.

Immediately wanting to make him feel welcomed in a foreign environment, I nudged him.

"What's your name?" I glanced over to him and smiled.

He looked up and stared. I could tell that he was taken aback. He probably did not expect people to talk to him.

"Yook Sungjae," he replied, tentative and unsmiling, but his eyes reflected a gratefulness.

"I'm Park Sooyoung, but my friends also call me Joy. You can take your pick! Welcome to our school!"

He simply nodded and turned back without trying to make conversation.

I never noticed him back then - he was scrawny and soft-spoken, never speaking out of turn, always hunched over his desk, always working with great fervour and seriousness, as if the world would fall apart if he did not hand in his best work.

Little did I know how significant that moment was - that initiative I took to know him opened a lot of doors that lead us down a long and winding road - on hindsight, in the grander scheme of things, how it was the beginning. How that moment lead to the start of our friendship and how important a person he was going to mean to me.

It was curious if you sat back and thought about it - how we just pass by our lives every day and breeze past all these strangers and unknown faces, not knowing and never really seeing. Yet each of them were living their own intricate web of a life just as vibrant and colourful as ours, fighting the unseen battles within their walls.

Like how I got to know his - battle, I mean - the demons he was facing.

It was halfway through term and he had made some friends. For some reason, the soccer jocks took him under their wing. It was odd because Sungjae was not sporty at all. He always sat back to watch them play and cheered them on, talking animatedly about the game after. But I have never seen him join in. People just assumed he was bad with hand-eye coordination, and since his soccer friends were the school's "Untouchables", no one questioned him. In a way, he was protected.

One day after school, I was just about to head home, when from afar, I saw him sitting alone on the field benches looking forlorn, longingly gazing at his friends sweating it out in the middle of an intense match. He looked so lonely that I felt empathy pricking at my chest, egging me to take action. Before I knew it, my feet carried me to him. I sat next to him, silent and unsure how to broach the topic.

"Why do you never join in the games?" I blurted out, mentally knocking my head for being so tactless, hoping against hope that I had not offended him or scared him away - he seemed like the type to clamp up if you pushed too hard - he just seemed so... impenetrable. It felt like his defences were build so high with wrought iron-enforced gates that the only way in was if he dropped the drawbridge that led across the alligator-filled moat to the castle of his heart.

A beat passed and still he said nothing. I clenched my jaw as I forced down the stifling need to say something else - to take back what I said, or to stutter my apology.

I shouldn't have come.

A gentle breeze picked up and autumn leaves from the shedding trees nearby fluttered down. It was a beautiful sight, the browns and reds of the withering leaves accentuated by the golden rays of the setting sun as they drifted towards the ground. Sungjae reached out and caught one that landed on his thigh, twirling it around in his fingers.