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“I only remember her eating. When I see someone enjoying their food, it’s hard for me to forget it,” I admitted. “What can I do?”
“Well, well, well. What if I tell you … I brought jajangmyeon with me?” She unzipped her backpack and pulled out a cube-shaped doggy bag. “It’s udon noodles topped with two sunny-side-up eggs, smothered in a tangy black bean paste with black pepper and chili, onions, and cucumber. And don’t forget the beef cooked to perfection. It tastes just like home and childhood with a mixture of sweet and spicy, salty and bitter all at the same time,” she said as she opened the container and tempted my wolf nose. “What? Aren’t you going to take it?”
I blinked at her, chuckling. “You’re so cute,” I said before taking the well-described jajangmyeon from her hands. “Thank you.”
Aera maintained eye contact as she handed me a pair of chopsticks.
While eating, she watched me with a broad grin plastered on her face and talked more about K-dramas, books, the songs she loved, and life. I listened to every single word, not wanting her to stop, even though I couldn’t relate half the time. I just knew I didn’t need solitude any more. I needed her. Her voice was like music to my ears, and her eyes, which sparkled every time she spoke, was all I needed to feel alive again.
She made jajangmyeon taste better and made me love her innocence. Her authenticity. Aera reminded me that even the smallest things can make people happy. A simple hello, a good show with a relatable theme, a song with meaningful lyrics, a book with a happy ending, a birthday greeting, someone we can talk to when we feel alone, and a shoulder to cry on when it feels like the world is ending.
She reminded me of the beautiful memories I once shared with the people I’d lost. How they should be treasured and not forgotten in spite of the grief preventing us from moving on to happiness. All those sleepless nights and the heart-to-heart talks, getting stuck in detention, skipping classes, the sleepovers in some random cave, the long hikes accompanied by silly jokes that would make us laugh until we were crying in the middle of nowhere, brawling with the other students and laughing at each other’s black eyes, fighting over the same girl with your best friend and later realizing it was stupid.
It may not be one of those grand moments every teenager wishes would stay forever, we may not even remember every detail, but somehow, we know it left a mark in our hearts. Aera helped me realize it.
“Our memories will lead us to the right path,” she said. “They’re like a compass. As long as we don’t forget who we are and where we came from, we’ll be okay.”
She was right. She’d always been.
And I loved that about her.
I loved Aera Song.
But the timing wasn’t right.
* * *
The daysthat followed flew by in a blink of an eye. While it had already been a week since Valentine’s Day, I wasn’t quite back to normal. Not emotionally anyway.
Early that morning, instead of taking the math exam, I snuck out of the classroom and went to the rooftop. With my back lying flat on the ground, I daydreamed about eating steak with jajangmyeon.
All was well until Cole’s battered face popped in my line of view.
“Bro,” he greeted. “What are you moping about?”
I scanned his bruises, from his eyes to his jaw and back to his bleeding lip. “You said you’d kill whoever hurt me,” I said, sitting up and offering him a handkerchief. “Why are you the one who’s injured?”
He rubbed the back of his nape. “I still don’t know where Rainer is,” he said, his tone regretful. He took the hanky in his hand and pressed it on his lip. “And this? Keith ambushed me.”
“Does he know what you are?” I asked, unimpressed.
“Yeah,” he replied. “He actually figured everything out about two weeks ago, before I brought you to Dr. Loya, but I didn’t have the guts to tell you. He knows I didn’t kill his mother, and he knows we’re both werewolves.”
“Should I strangle you now?” I deadpanned.
“But that’s not why he ambushed me,” he confessed, his eyes darting everywhere but on mine. “I snuck into his room last night.”
My eyes were now about to pop out of their sockets. “No shit? Are you Edward Cullen?”
“I was just trying to drop off some werewolf traps for his house!” he retorted, leaning against the fence behind him.
“Why didn’t you just give it to his dad, since he’s the sheriff? Or even better, why didn’t you knock? I’m sure he’d like that,” I teased him until he shot me a glare and forced me to change course. “Forget I said anything. Now, what do you want to do?”
“Protect Keith,” he replied. “I still have a bad feeling that someone out there wants to kill him.”
Here we go again.
“I already fixed his house a bit to keep it werewolf proof,” he continued, “but it might not be enough.”
