It was the salt of his tears that he remembered more than anything.
He could recall the nearly painful grip on his jacket and the soft mutters that some would say fell on deaf ears but not to Alfred.
The American could recall the bitterness of those tears and how the salt seemed to almost intensify on his tongue from where they fell onto his lips with the tight grasp he held back onto the other man.
He remembered feeling the burn of his knuckles turning white and the aching in his chest that grew stronger with each tear.
There was something so devastating about seeing a man break down like this, seeing fate leave him nearly crippled by his own pain.
Yet Alfred found that there was something moving in the willingness and the bond of another admitting of their own pain to someone they felt would understand.
Alfred remembered crippling pain, splitting pain, as if he'd become someone else, half of the person that he remembered; every time he thought of Yong Soo and that day reminded him of his own pain several years before when he was still young enough to be considered naive, too trusting, and he thought of her, the girl that never lasted.
He remembers even now how it felt to hold someone who felt for the first time like half of a whole; he'd held his friend as if life had lost all control of them and remembered tasting so much salt that day that he found himself puking for quite a while afterwards as if it had depleted every last bit of water in his system and was working on killing him through his inside out to his outside.
Alfred remembers the sounds of half-choked sobs that barely rose high enough to catch anyone's attention and recalls how it felt to be held by a man that had been made broken then, still was broken in fact.
He remembers the feel of nearly too dry material that rubbed against him with every sob no matter how small and how the crust should break off and fall and how important that seemed though how it never happened; it always seemed to grow rougher with each passing second.
The American recalled the almost fear he'd felt in his veins; a what if this was still him kind of fear.
He realized even now how foolish that all was and how he could not or would not from sheer stubbornness go back to his old broken self.
Alfred remembered the ripping pain that pealed through his heart and ate up any desire of ever moving from that spot as his ankles and his legs felt asleep from that pain, the pain of being immobile and trying to deal with the world through the little hits and blows that it left that never seemed simple enough to just leave bruises.
He remembers the steel of a gun's barrel later on when he fought for 'his' sake and remembers the pain of exhaustion and how it ate up people's inner beings.
That taste of salt though seemed to sum up the encounter, rise above his almost joy at being seen as a good enough friend to lean back on even when it seemed so soon.
He remembered the warmth of a half-cold body against his as if it was both warm and almost soothing in the way physical contact often was yet cool almost death cool in the way it contrasted with how body heat should be.
It did not help the image when small crystals, vivid little things, fell down upon his cheeks and down his clothes, drying them in a bitter way, and leaving his skin feeling far too cold, too bitter to be real.
The room found itself nearly smelling of death in the far too cruel way that war brought; he could remember the scent of the drying clothes and how it seemed bitter and far too salty and the smell of a body that truly had enough, the exhaustion almost grew physical in those moments, the smell of a body so beaten down, the small of dirt.
It had clung to the Korean that clung to him and reminded Alfred far too much of pain that never seemed to end.
He stared at his hands and remembered cool blue that like the salt became embedded in his mind in the way that only visuals could; he saw cool blue clothes wrapped tightly around a body crumbling from a lack of hunger.
Alfred could see Yong Soo, hungry, beaten down, in his mind; he saw traditional clothes that fit too largely on his for once nearly anorexic frame and saw the dull of his eyes: dark and nearly emotionless outside of the haunting pain that still resonated in Alfred's heart to this day.
He never could get that out of his head though he'd seen his friend more recently and how he'd survived, pushed on in a strong act of near defiance, and saw the way his clothes were only a little loose now.
Alfred had never gotten over the image nor did he forget the sounds that often brought him back to soft sobs; he couldn't eat salt as much anymore, not when it meant pain and tears to his best friend in the past.
The tearing apart of a nation threw pain into a pot that never refused to boil it; it only refused to let it go.