Thirty One Years Ago

He didn't see her until he had stumbled over her, landing face first in the rough grass.

"Omo, I-I'm so sorry. A-are you okay?" the new girl from his art history class stammered, jumping up from where she had been lying on the lawn in front of the art building. Over-sized round glasses swallowed up half of her face; the glasses fell to the tip of her nose as she leaned over him, her messy bangs plastered to her forehead in the cooling midnight summer heat.

Pushing himself from the ground, Hyun Sub brushed a few loose strands of grass from his face and stared indignantly at her as she leaned back on scrawny, scraped legs. Not bothering to answer, he demanded, "Why are you lying out here in the middle of the night? You're not homeless, are you?"

"Why were you running? You're not a criminal, are you?" She shot back, adjusting her peach-colored skirt as she awkwardly maneuvered herself to a standing position. Strands of grass clung to her stringy hair, which fell in a limp, tangled mess over her shoulders. Yellow smudges of what he supposed had been her dinner dotted the front of her white collared blouse. While he couldn't call her completely unattractive, she'd always struck him as the sort who never checked her appearance in a mirror. It seemed she would prove him right.

"I left something in the art building," he answered vaguely, ready to put an end to their unbidden conversation.

"Something?"

"Something." Avoiding her intense stare, he dusted off his dark blue dress pants. He could already see a grass stain forming on one cuff.

"You're So Hyun Sub, aren't you?"

"Yes," Hyun Sub muttered, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. True, they weren't exactly friends, but he thought surely she must know that. Everyone knew who he was, from the college president to the lowest-paid janitor.

When he looked up, though, she was still staring at him as though he'd come from another planet.

Oh, great.

He'd stumbled over one of his lovesick fan girls, though he'd never took her to be the type.

Sighing, he nearly launched into one of his oft-rehearsed suave apologies when she interrupted him.

"You did leave something in the art building."

"What?"

Reaching into the large tan satchel on the ground behind her, she pulled out a sketchbook.

"This. They're really very good."

Hyun Sub snatched the book out of her hands.

"They're also private," he snapped.

Unfazed, she pressed on. "You should show some of your designs to the professor."

"What I do with my drawings is my business."

"But you could really win some awards with those."

Oh, great.

An opinionated dimwit.

"In case you don't know, being a country girl and all, I'm already quite a successful artist, and if you'll excuse me, I'm also quite busy."

"Not those though." Grabbing her bag, she followed him to the steps of the art building, practically running to keep pace with his long strides. "I've seen your work. You haven't done anything like what's in those sketches."

Hyun Sub grunted and reached for the door, but she beat him to it, her long hair batting him in the face as she bounded inside the dark lobby. Only the emergency lights greeted them, leaving an eerie pall over the sterile white walls and the pale, dirt-tinged tile flooring. For a school that claimed to be a beacon of creative expression, the interior décor appealed to Hyun Sub's artistic senses about as much as a hospital wing.

"I saw a horror movie like this once," she mumbled, stopping under a light that filtered down to crown her tangled hair.

When she turned, wide-eyed and grinning nonsensically, she looked nearly angelic.

Or wraith-like.

He couldn't be sure.

He realized, rather abruptly, that he couldn't remember her name.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked instead, annoyed but curious.

"There's a meteor shower tonight. If you want, you can watch it with me. Should be here in about...twenty minutes." She squinted at her watch.

"Can't. My father's waiting for me, and I have to study."

"That's a shame." She frowned as though they were best friends and he had broken some long-laid plan. "It's supposed to be the largest one this year."

"If that's so, why didn't you drag one of your friends out here in the middle of the night?"

"Ah, that"—she toyed with one of her tangles—"to be honest, I don't have that many friends. But I think you're pretty popular. How come I never see you at any school events?"

"I don't have time," he answered, turning to the hallway on the right.

She giggled and skipped over to him.

"Time for what? Living?"

Passing by her, he replied, "No. I don't have time to continue this conversation. Excuse me."

"My father says a truly successful life is achieved through balance," she continued in a sing-song voice, following him down the hall.

"Did your father also teach you to follow strange boys into dark buildings at night?"

"But you're not—"

"Shhh!" Hyun Sub paused, and the girl halted beside him, cocking her head to the side. "Do you hear that?" he muttered under his breath.

A creaking noise trailed down to them from the stairwell opposite where they stood, several feet from each other, and as the noise grew louder, the girl edged closer to him.

"I told you I saw a horror film like this," she whispered.

A light shot through the tiny window of the door leading into the stairwell, and Hyun Sub snatched her out of the hallway and into a classroom.

"What are you—" she hissed, but Hyun Sub cut her off by placing a hand over her mouth.

He held her against the wall until the same shaft of light had passed over the room and the sound of footsteps retreating down the hall had disappeared altogether.

"Campus police," he muttered when he had released her mouth.

"What have you got to worry about? Why don't you just show them your name badge? I'm sure they'll escort you anywhere you want to go." She raised her arm dramatically.

Ignoring her comment, Hyun Sub released his grip on her wrist and started moving around the room, searching for the object of his late night excursion.

"What are you looking for?"

"Shhh! Can you talk any louder?"

"Sorry."

Pacing to the back of the room, he rifled through a few books before finding the folder the first year student was supposed to have absconded for him. Opening it, he held its pages up to the moonlit window to make certain of the folder's contents. Her movement behind him startled him, and he slammed the file shut, but not before the girl could see what it was.

"Are those the answers to our mid-term?" she exclaimed, her eyes growing wide.

"No."

"You can't fool me."

"Fine. But you didn't see them. In fact, you were never here. Understand?" He glared at her, hoping to get his point across.

"And here I thought you were smarter than me this whole time. I may not have the highest grade in the class, but I least I earned mine." Crossing her arms, she knitted her eyebrows together sternly.

"You don't have to have the highest grade in the class."

"Well, maybe I, too, would like to be a self-absorbed fraud. Did you actually draw anything in that sketchbook I just gave you?" She feigned a gasp. "Are you really a potter?"

"Look, what do you want? The answers? I'll make you a copy."

"No. I want that copy." She pointed at the folder. "I want to see how smart you are without it. I don't actually believe you know anything about art."

"I know about art. I know how to make it, and I know how to judge it. But memorizing all these names and dates is pointless."

"I don't know. I like reading about artists' lives."

"Nobody cares about their lives, only what they left behind. People remember what you did, not how long you were married or how many kids you had."

"But people's lives inform their work. Are you saying it's not important to have people you love?"

"I'm saying it's late, and I need to go home so I can memorize this before tomorrow. Now. Do you want a copy? Money? What is it?"

"You really think I'm going to tell on you, don't you?"

"What. Do. You. Want?"

To his suprise, she smirked and laughed, a pleasant laugh that seemed to indicate she meant no harm.

At least he thought so until she stepped awkwardly close to him and leaned in.

"I'll let you know. I'm Baek So Ri, by the way."

He stared at her.

Up close she had nice features behind her glasses.

He batted that last thought away before it could take root.

When he didn't say anything, she bowed and stepped back.

"Well. I'll see you in class," she continued as though they had settled something, waving as she headed out of the room. "Good luck memorizing all of that."

"Wanna be partners?"

"Excuse me?"

Hyun Sub squinted up at the overeager girl who had become a bit of a nuisance to him, unwelcome or not, over the past few weeks since their late night meeting.

"I'm letting you know what I want," she replied, grinning as she sat down backwards in the desk in front of his. "I want to be your partner for the project. See how smart you actually are." She propped her head up with knobby elbows on his desk.

"Are you always this bossy?"

"Do you always let girls boss you around?"

"What are you—We're talking about you, not me."

"Are we?" She arched an eyebrow. "I think it depends on how you look at it. I'll never be the boss of you unless you let me."

Her? The boss of him? They were leagues apart, separated a vast system of social ties and allegiances.

Yet she didn't seem to be aware of her innate inferiority. Or maybe she simply ignored it. Either way, he thought he ought to set her straight before someone really—

"Oh look, it's So Ri," Seo Jin approached his desk and stood beside So Ri, hovering over him like a she-wolf laying claim to her territory. He knew Seo Jin had initiated their class's general antagonism toward So Ri, spreading a few absurdly dirty rumors about her before So Ri had even finished her first week at the school. Now Seo Jin inspected her sparkling pink nails in an attempt to look bored. "Do you know that in English So Ri means 'sorry'? Your entire existence is an apology. Don't even think about partnering with Hyun Sub Oppa. He's already partnering with—"

"Yes."

"What?" So Ri and Seo Jin both answered.

"Yes, I'm partners with So Ri. The professor put the two of us together, so I suggest you move along."

If his words hadn't convinced her, seeing as the professor hadn't put anyone together, his tone must have shut her up. Pouting, Seo Jin trounced off and left him with So Ri awkwardly staring at the top of his desk.

"So..." she began.

"Meet me at the front of the school at three o'clock. We can go back to my house to start on the project." Stuffing his notebook in his book bag, he stood up and made his way toward the door, not bothering to glance at her or Seo Jin.

He kicked himself all the way to the parking lot where his chauffeur already had his car idling at the front of the line.

He didn't know how it had happened. One day, he'd begrudgingly agreed to be her partner, and before long they had entered into a silent but mutual understanding of each other as sort-of, secret friends.

The girls he knew from school usually annoyed him with their idle, mindless chatter, but the way she thought and spoke about things intrigued him. She actually knew things worth knowing, and when she got excited she talked with her hands, sometimes accidentally knocking over a bottle of paint or a glass of water.

Even her clumsiness had a cuteness to it.

It didn't hurt that behind her glasses she had, he'd allowed himself to admit, quite pleasant features and eyes that sparkled when she laughed.

She laughed a lot, and that intrigued him, too. No one treated her decently enough for her to have anything to laugh about, but she'd find humor in any situation. They traded ridiculous anecdotes about famous artists and began a mutual prank war that went on for weeks.

Their original project came and went, but she continued coming to his house for study sessions when he knew his father wouldn't be home, an unexpected blot of passion in his tepid existence.

Sometimes he felt like he hadn't existed at all until he met her.

Then one day she arrived an hour late to his house, her hands and arms scraped and bloody. She'd gotten into a fight, and some of the girls had pushed her down a flight of stairs in front of the school. It wasn't intentional, she'd said. The falling down the stairs part, not the pushing part.

He'd gotten angry at her. She ought to take better care of herself, he'd scolded. What good was a painter with injured hands?

Why he'd kissed her then, clutching her battered hands in his own powerless ones while cherry blossoms lazily nestled in the dust under their feet, he didn't completely understand, but after that day, he never let her walk home from school by herself again.

The amusement park had been temporarily closed due to an unfortunate fatality earlier in the week, so instead of losing his birthday cake in a waste bin next to So Ri's new favorite roller coaster, Hyun Sub ate the light confection on the fine china she'd stolen from her dad's pantry as they sat beside the lake.

"I'm so upset," So Ri commented, picking the icing off of her cake and transferring it to his plate. "I wanted to ride that new cylinder one that goes upside down while you're spinning."

"Wow, so exciting," Hyun Sub deadpanned. "My stomach's doing flips just thinking about it."

So Ri chuckled, and her shoulders shook.

"Who knew school's coolest chaebol had such a weak stomach?" She flung a piece of non-iced cake at him.

"You're been trying to kill me since you met me."

"Seriously? Where's the challenge in that? You're too easy to kill."

"You missed a spot." He pointed at the cake.

"Huh?" As soon as she looked down, he spotted his opening and smeared the remnants of her icing all over her cheek.

"Yah! Maybe I will kill you!"

Roaring with laughter, he pulled back as she tried to slap him, and she chased him all the way into the lake.

When they finally emerged, sopping wet and unsure of what to do except sit out in the cooling afternoon air until their clothes had dried enough to get back in his car, she took out a small glass bottle from her purse and handed it to him.

"What's this?" Hyun Sub asked, taking the bottle of brightly colored origami stars from her perpetually ink-stained fingers.

"It's part of your birthday present. I'm giving you your own bottle of stars, so even if you miss the shooting ones, you'll still have plenty wishes. I won't ask you for anything else, but you can ask me for lots of things now if you want."

In the light of the setting sun, her normally dark brown eyes took on a lighter chestnut color, and he thought that the sunset had nothing on her.

For his first wish, he wanted that moment to last forever.

"So Ri, we knew this was coming...So Ri?" Hyun Sub glanced at the girl sitting next to him on the park bench, her arms tense at her sides. She hadn't spoken since his long pronouncement about his impending engagement and the host of reasons why they needed to stop seeing each other. Instead, she stared at the geese pecking the ground a few feet away. Pecking, pecking though Hyun Sub didn't see any crumbs.

"I didn't mean for..." he began again, then trailed off. What hadn't he meant? The more he thought about them, the more pathetic his excuses sounded. He'd known about his engagement to Chung Ae since their high school days. Even if his father hadn't objected to So Ri because he thought her beneath Hyun Sub, no way would his father break trust with Chung Ae's father over something as trivial as 'puppy love,' as his father had termed it.

"So Ri," he tried again, "he'll ruin you if we try to go against him on this. He'll ruin your reputation, not mine. He'll make it so you never get any respect, as an artist or otherwise. Don't you see? I'm doing this for your own good."

So Ri turned to him then, unshed tears glistening in her eyes but her face hard and unforgiving.

"Me? You're doing this for me? What were you doing for the past three years?" Her voice shook. "Am I a toy you can use and throw away when you've grown up? When you've decided to take responsibility?" She spat out the last word like a poison.

"It wasn't like that."

"No? Then what was it like? You said it yourself. You know you were going to leave me the whole time."

"I didn't...I mean I did...It wouldn't work."

"Hyun Sub." She reached for his hand. He batted her away, but she only latched onto his arm instead. "Hyun Sub, we could leave here. We could go somewhere nobody knows us and start over, just the two of us."

Hyun Sub shook her off and stood up.

"And do what? Live in the woods? Work on a farm? Become a shame to our families? Neither of us has ever been on our own or even worked at a regular job." He had his back turned to her now. "We're ill-suited to be anything other than what we are."

He sensed her get up from the bench though he couldn't see her. A feather-weight touch on his shoulder confirmed it.

"The stars are really pretty out there. Remember?"

Stars.

The stars?!

"No. I don't remember, and after today I suggest you don't either." Straightening up, he stepped out of her reach again, feeling her hand slip away as she drew it back from his shoulder.

Longing to let it linger there.

He counted his breaths until she spoke again, low and dark.

"Oh go on then...Be what you are."

Lifting his leaden legs, he took a few more tentative steps away from her.

"Coward!" she called after him.

A group of old ladies hunched over their needlework appraised him critically as he passed, and he sped up.

"Hey!...Hyun Sub! Wait!"

Her voice followed him, carrying over the squabbling geese and the screaming children until he reached his car at the other end of the park.

Too quick for her, he kept running.

If he turned back, he would have to face her with his own tears.

If he faced her, he would have to face himself and, with that, the realization that the world was not so black and white as his father taught him. There were right decisions and wrong decisions and a whole host of deadly in-betweens where no one completely won.