one out of seven billion
One out of Seven Billion
Kai/Krystal
Slice of life, romance | 3215 words
-- based on this quote
He meets her for the first time when their world revolves around milk and diapers and toys. He is eight months and thirteen days old and stumbles on his feet every day as he attempts to walk and she is three days old and only warming up to the new world.
“Look, Jongin,” his mother points out at the third bed from left in the second row from the window. The newborn in the bed is still asleep peacefully, while the baby in her arms coos in response. “It’s Soojung. Isn’t she pretty?”
He coos again, and, taking that as a yes, his mother smiles.
Their mothers are the best of friends who have each other’s back. Having known each other for almost their entire life, they hope for the same for their children, and eventually have their wish fulfilled when the kids do grow close together.
They become inseparable― Jongin and Soojung. They play together, fight together, mumble some incoherent things in their own alien language together, and grow together. Soojung watches as Jongin learns to walk, crawling behind him wherever he goes, and he applauds when she takes her first baby steps. He laughs when she laughs, and she cries when he cries.
Jongin is never mentioned without Soojung in the same sentence, until one particular winter when they are six. Mr. Jung announces that he’s transferring to a place called San Francisco neither Jongin nor Soojung have heard of before, and that he’s taking his family with him.
(“It’s not in Korea,” Mrs Jung says.
“Is it far away?” Soojung asks.
“It’s far away.”
“Can I still see Jongin?”
A shake of head, followed by buckets of tears.)
Her departure leaves a hole in Jongin’s heart. He falls sick, refuses to eat and play and practically everything because “It’s no fun without Soojung”, and asks for her every day. She is a part of him, almost like an organ he cannot live without, the missing piece of puzzle of his heart, and when she leaves a part of him is gone too. The weather suddenly gets chillier and his room feels bigger.
But a week later Jongin comes home from school all smiles and giddy and there’s a bounce in his every step again.
“Did something good happen?” Mrs. Kim asks as she helps to take his bag and removes his jacket.
He nods, his eyes big and glistening. “I met a new friend today. His name is Sehun.”
It is during recess when Jongin meets Sehun for the first time. He is sitting under the slides, drawing something on the sand using a stick he found earlier. When he glances at the field where the other boys in his class are chasing after a ball (which he thinks is a silly thing to do), one particular boy catches his sight. The boy, unlike the others, is chasing after a butterfly.
Sehun is a friend Jongin never thought he would find. In fact, Sehun is someone he never thought existed in the world. For someone who never cares much about sports and cars and doesn’t understand why making girls cry by pulling their hairs and stuff would give satisfaction, meeting someone like Sehun is sort of a blessing.
Soon the name ‘Soojung’ stops lingering on his lips. Her scent fades away from his room, her face gets blurry, and the memories of her are forgotten. Winter changes to spring, where there are fresh leaves emerging from the branches, flowers blooming, new buds of friendship growing, and hopes refilling the once empty heart.
Jongin is sixteen when Mrs Kim receives a phone call when he is upstairs playing with the game console with Sehun. It is autumn and it’s getting chillier each passing day. Despite the heater in his room not functioning, Jongin pulls up his sleeves as he concentrates on the game. Sehun gives him a smug smirk, and mumbles, “You’ll never beat me.”
“Watch me,” he grins back, before elbowing his friend on the arm, causing the latter to lose his grip for a split second.
“Hey, that’s chea―”
The door opens just in time and there stands Mrs Kim, one hand on the knob and the other still clutching the telephone.
“Look auntie, he’s cheating,” Sehun says.
“I thought you said you were going to do your homework?”
Both boys look away, already giving up on the game. “Um.”
“Who called?” Jongin asks, attempting to change the topic.
“Ah, good question. The Jungs are coming back. Do you remember Soojung?”
He blinks, once, twice. He turns to look at Sehun but the boy is just as lost. “Soojung who?”
A week later, Jongin finds himself sitting face to face with a girl with big bright eyes and raven coloured hair at the dinner table. Soojung. He was informed that they’re supposed to be the best of friends, something like inseparable twins except that they are not twins and he doesn’t exactly recognize her and she doesn’t seem to have any memory of him either.
Somehow after dinner the two of them get chased off to his room by their parents. “Spend some quality time together,” they say. “Do some catching up,” they say. Jongin’s mother hands him an old photo album which has collected quite an amount of dusts, containing his (their) baby pictures. He thinks his mother expects the photo album will do some sort of a magic that will bring back their memories from childhood.
The two of them sit awkwardly across each other on the rug next to his bed, the album on his lap as he flips each page slowly. He licks his bottom lip out of habit although it wasn’t dry and steals a glance at Soojung. “Um, do you remember when―”
“No,” she responds.
Jongin looks down at the rug. All of a sudden picking up the tiniest dirt and counting the thread appear interesting and fun. He scratches his temple and tilts his head to a side. “Yeah, me neither.”
And then she laughs, and eventually he joins in. They laugh without knowing what exactly is funny about they said, and they laugh until they forget the reason why they began laughing. He watches as she wipes her tears with the back of her finger after the laughter finally dies down, and she notices it. “Let’s begin again,” she tells him before extending a hand. “My name is Jung Soojung.”
He stares at her hand for a while, thousand thoughts running through his mind but he doesn’t really know what he is thinking about. At last he gets back to his senses and accepts her hand. He smiles when she shakes it almost business-like. “I’m Kim Jongin.” She smiles back.
Maybe it’s not that hard after all, he thinks.
Eventually Jongin and Soojung grow close again. He lets her follow him around like she did when they were younger. He lets her walk with him to school and from school. He lets her sit with him and Sehun during lunch. He lets her make fun of him when he tells her he doesn’t do sports after she asks him to join the football team with her. And he lets her make fun of Sehun when she plans to ask him instead.
“There’s a reason why Sehun and me get along, Soojung. He prefers butterflies to balls.”
Soojung groans and rolls her eyes. “What happened to your Y chromosome?”
Things take a turn when Sehun tells Jongin about his crush on Soojung and asks if Jongin is okay about that. Jongin is surprised, the genuine kind of surprise because he did not see this coming, because Sehun is his best friend and Soojung is, too, and he never expected to see them together. But he nods anyway and gives Sehun a supportive pat on the shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“Of course.”
And so, on Valentine’s Day Soojung finds a stalk of rose with a card under her table and says yes to Sehun when he finally gathers his courage to ask her out. Jongin even helps her prepare for her first date and laughs at her for being nervous because “it’s just Sehun”.
But then Jongin finds himself feeling lonely when he sees his best friends’ interlacing fingers and the way they share quiet jokes when the three of them are studying together but convinces himself that he isn’t bitter about it.
He learns to get over his feelings and decides to date a quirky girl who spoke to him in a strange Busan dialect because she thought he’s from there named Bae Suji. He introduces her to Soojung and Sehun, and they accept her with open arms and raised eyebrows when she speaks to them in her strange Busan dialect.
“She’s a bit queer in the head,” he tells them in a hushed tone.
“I see. No wonder she likes you,” Soojung grins, and he smacks her on the arm while Sehun only chuckles when she threatens to report Jongin to the police for hitting a girl.
Jongin and Soojung spend Chrismas together because besides it being the tradition of their families, Sehun is away on a vacation with his parents while Suji is back in her hometown for several days.
He thinks she looks pretty that night, prettier than she normally looks in t-shirt and jeans. Her mother made her wear a red sleeveless dress that falls just above her knees. Despite her constant complaints about not being comfortable and not being able to move around that freely and the cold, he compliments her, convinces her that she looks fine, and lets her have his jacket when she still complains about the cold.
After dinner is over, they sit in front of the fireplace and exchange their presents. He gives her a Korean-English dictionary because she did miserably in her last test (“I’m not that hopeless!”) while she gives him a pair of football boots (“Are you mocking me here?”). Then they talk about things in school and she tells him how she suspects her teacher hates her thus her F grade and he tells her about a boy from his class who sleeps through all the classes but still manages to get higher marks than he does. She tells him about how they celebrated Chrismas back in San Francisco and he tells her how he first met Sehun. Eventually they run out of things to say, and enjoy the comfortable silence that falls naturally between them. There is the soft music from her father’s favourite record which he puts on at times like this.
Jongin glances at Soojung and, seeing how her face seems to shimmer with the glow from the fire reflected on her skin and how she’s wearing his jacket and how her long raven hair falls gorgeously over her shoulder, he realizes how beautiful she is. His heart starts to race, beating so hard he is almost sure it will burst anytime soon.
And then she turns to gaze at him, and there is a spark between them that he knows they both feel down in the deepest corner of their heart. He stares at her carefully, taking in every detail of her that he has missed before. She purses her lips. The action is unexpected, but then again at the same time it is not. His lips press against hers, and to his surprise she kisses back.
His phone vibrates in the pocket of the jacket she’s wearing and she pulls back to look at the screen.
Sehun.
Jongin welcomes the new year with a black eye since he decides to come clean with Sehun.
Suji, on the other hand, only smiles and gives him a pat on the shoulder when he tells her. “Thank you for being honest,” she says.
Graduation comes without him realizing it. Jongin remembers the buzzes and the noises, people celebrating all around him, the laughter, the joy, the tears. He remembers standing at one side and only witnesses everything with his hands shoved into the pocket, half his face buried behind his woollen scarf.
He hasn’t really been talking to Sehun, and Soojung has been avoiding him ever since. Though he feels regretful, he doesn’t blame them.
Jongin feels a snowflake on the bridge of his nose. It melts and turns into mere liquid in a matter of seconds, and the chillness from it is just momentary. He looks up and sees hundreds, thousands more falling from the sky, drifting slowly and gently. He closes his eyes and inhales the scent, wanting to etch this memory in his mind.
“Jongin ah!”
Hearing his name, he opens his eyes again and looks ahead. Suji emerges from the crowd holding a bouquet of sunflowers, breathless and all smiles. He thinks the flower reflects her smile perfectly.
She pulls out a stalk and hands it to him. “Smile. It suits you more.”
“Thank you, Suji.”
“You won’t forget about me, right?”
Jongin shakes his head and says no, and he knows she knows he means it.
He finds it ironic that out of over 200 male students from the intake of this semester, and out of the millions of people living in Seoul and millions more outside, the one who ends up sharing a room with him is none other than Sehun.
“I forgot we applied for the same university.”
Jongin could only laugh and eventually the two make up and find their way back to friendship.
Jongin tries hard not to bump into Soojung. He goes back home either a day earlier or later for holidays and important dates like Chuseok and anniversaries, always making up excuses so that he doesn’t have to face her. Still, he pays attention and listens when his parents talk about her and asks about her from their old friends when he sees them.
He is not avoiding her, or at least that’s what he’s been telling himself. And he has been doing a rather good job, but fate always has its own funny way to intervene with people’s life.
It is September when he meets her for the first time in seven years. He is twenty-five now and she is nearing it, and he’s looking for shelter from the sudden downpour when he decides perhaps a warm cup of coffee while waiting for the rain to halt would be a good idea. Apparently he is not the only one with that idea, because Soojung enters the very same café just as he’s taking his seat. When their eyes meet he knows he can’t run away from her any further.
“How long has it been?” she exclaims, eyes glistening enthusiastically.
Seven years and six months, he answers in his head right away but doesn’t say it out loud. “Let’s see… a while?” is what he replies instead.
“Have you been well?” she asks as she takes a proper look at him. He’s in suit now, in the middle of going back to his office after a meeting with a certain client when the weather suddenly decides to cool down with the rain. His hair is shorter and he definitely seems more like an adult now despite a tinge of youth and innocence still lingers in his eyes. He nods and returns the question, to which she only responds with a smile. “I’m engaged now,” she tells him so softly he almost didn’t catch her voice.
His mind wanders back in time, wondering if he’s ever missed his mother telling him about Soojung meeting someone and getting married, or even Sehun, because he still keeps in touch unlike Jongin. But he remembers none, and his gaze falls on the silver ring on her fourth finger. “Congratulations. Who’s the lucky guy?”
It’s Minho, she explains, her senior from the football team back in school. They never realized they like each other until they met again when she becomes an intern for the company he works for. It’s a small world, she says, and Jongin only nods along as he sips his mocha. She asks him later if he’s seeing anyone right now, and he smiles before shaking his head.
“Jongin?”
“Hm?”
“You’ll be there, will you? At the wedding?”
The rain has stopped now. Gazing into her brown eyes, he realizes now how much he misses her. He smiles again at her question. “Of course.”
The soon he reaches his office, he goes straight to Joonmyun’s room and asks if the offer for the position in the China branch has been filled. Jongin packs up his bags and leaves for Beijing a week before the wedding.
“Is that Jongin?”
He turns immediately at the mention of his name, at the same time wondering who could it be calling for him in Korean on the streets of Beijing. Jongin comes face to face with Suji who is still all smiles and lovely as ever.
She jumps in excitement, oblivious to the fact that they are no longer seventeen-year-olds, but twenty seven and are in the middle of a crowd where people are staring and giving them weird stares. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here. You?”
“I work here too, as a travel guide.”
He lets her drag him to a nearby bubble tea store and do all the talking while he plays with the straw. Some of the things she say don’t really make sense but her company matters more to him, because she is after all a good friend of his, and just having met her makes him happy.
“Thank you,” she tells him when they’re about to part ways later.
“For what?”
“For keeping your promise.”
Jongin stays in touch with Suji after that, at first as good friends but eventually rekindles their romance.
Not too long later he hears about Soojung’s divorce and thinks after all these years, fate still never fails to amaze him.
But then perhaps Jongin and Suji are never really meant to be. At the age of 29 he gets transferred back to Seoul while she stays in the foreign country. They swapped nothing more than e-mails, and somehow they drift apart almost too naturally.
It is not until the leaves are beginning to change colours again, when the weather slowly gets chillier and the city is turning pale, that Jongin stumbles into Soojung once again. He is older now, already thirty and she is nearly there. Gone are the traces of innocence in their eyes but replaced by maturity and various experiences. Yet he thinks she looks as beautiful as ever.
Sparks fly the moment their eyes meet, but this time they both are aware of it at last. The loud beatings of their hearts are no longer ignored, as well as the butterflies fluttering inside their stomach. He recalls all the years they spent together and all the years they’ve lost. He recalls all the people they’ve encountered and all the people they needed to meet to realize that all they need is each other. This time they get it right.
Because sometimes you need to travel so far just to realize that home is where the heart is.
"It took us long enough."
Thirty years and thirty thousand people, and finally we got it right.