Behind You, Always

Chapter One: Two Small Shadows

Da-eun was six years old the first time Joon-ho stepped on the hem of her dress and made her cry in front of the whole kindergarten class.

He didn't apologize. Not really. Instead, he took off his own jacket, still warm from his body, and draped it clumsily over her shoulders like that would fix the torn hem, like a jacket could undo embarrassment. "Stop crying," he mumbled, cheeks red. "You look prettier when you're not crying."

It was, by every objective measure, a terrible apology.

It was also, somehow, the beginning of everything.

They became inseparable after that -- the kind of inseparable only small children can be, where one kid simply attaches to another and nobody, not even their parents, questions why. They lived two houses apart on the same quiet street. Da-eun's mother ran a small flower shop; Joon-ho's father fixed bicycles in a shop with a rusted sign. Neither family had much, but what they had, they shared freely -- rice, side dishes, the walk to school, secrets whispered under blankets during sleepovers that weren't technically allowed.

"When we grow up," Da-eun announced one afternoon, age eight, swinging her legs off the edge of the rooftop where they weren't supposed to be sitting, "I'm going to be a florist like my mom, and you're going to fix bicycles like your dad, and we'll live on this same street forever."

Joon-ho considered this with the seriousness only an eight-year-old could summon. "Deal," he said. "But I'm also going to learn how to fix the flying kind of bicycles. In case you ever need to escape somewhere fast."

"Escape from what?"

He shrugged. "I don't know yet. But I'll be ready."

She laughed so hard she nearly fell off the roof, and he grabbed the back of her shirt without even thinking about it, an instinct that would follow him for the rest of his life -- always half a step behind her, always ready to catch what fell.

Chapter Two: Growing Up, Growing Strange

By fourteen, something had shifted between them, though neither would admit it out loud.

It happened in small, humiliating ways. Da-eun noticed she cared, suddenly and intensely, whether Joon-ho thought her new haircut looked stupid. Joon-ho noticed he could no longer look directly at her when she laughed without something in his chest twisting uncomfortably, like his ribs had gotten too small for whatever was growing inside them.

They didn't talk about it. Instead, they got worse at talking altogether -- stammering over sentences that used to come easy, going quiet in moments that used to be filled with easy noise.

"You're acting weird," Da-eun accused one day, poking his arm as they walked home from school.

"You're acting weird," he shot back, which was, admittedly, not a very strong comeback.

"That's not an argument, that's just repeating what I said."

"Well, it's still true."

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, the kind of smile she only ever gave him, soft at the edges in a way she didn't notice and he definitely did.

Their friend group teased them mercilessly. "Just get married already," their classmate Yuri said once, and Da-eun had thrown a rolled-up worksheet at her head while Joon-ho suddenly became very interested in his shoelaces, ears burning red.

It was during that same year, spring of their second year of middle school, that Joon-ho almost said something. They were sitting on their rooftop again -- older now, legs longer, but the same spot, the same view of the street below. He'd practiced the words in his head so many times they'd worn smooth, like river stones.

"Da-eun, I think --"

"Wait, look!" she interrupted, pointing at a stray cat sneaking across a neighbor's fence. "It's the one from last week! I named her Bori!"

The moment slid away, easy as that, and Joon-ho let it go, telling himself there would be another chance. He was sixteen. He had time. He didn't know yet how wrong that assumption would turn out to be.

Chapter Three: The Announcement

The news came on an ordinary Tuesday, delivered the way most life-altering things are -- quietly, over dinner, disguised as something almost mundane.

Joon-ho's father had been offered a permanent position at a bicycle manufacturing company in Busan. A real job, stable income, benefits -- everything a struggling repair shop owner dreams about. It meant moving. It meant moving in three weeks, right before the start of their final year of high school.

Joon-ho told Da-eun on the rooftop, unable to look at her while he said it, staring instead at the darkening sky like it might offer him better words than the ones he had.

She was quiet for a long moment. Then, in a voice trying very hard to sound normal: "Busan's not that far. We can visit."

"Yeah," he agreed, though they both understood, in the way teenagers understand things they aren't ready to say aloud, that distance had a way of becoming permanent even when nobody intended it to.

The three weeks that followed were strange and heavy, full of moments neither of them knew how to hold. They spent every possible afternoon together, filling the days with something that felt like they were trying to bottle time itself -- walking the same streets they'd walked a thousand times, visiting the ice cream stall by the flower shop, sitting on the rooftop until their parents called them in for dinner.

They talked about everything except the thing that mattered most.

"Promise you won't forget me," Da-eun said one night, only half joking, staring up at the stars instead of at him.

"Like I could," Joon-ho said. "You're the most annoying person I've ever met. Impossible to forget."

She hit his arm, laughing, but her eyes were wet, and he noticed, and didn't say anything, because saying something felt like it would break whatever fragile thing was holding them together in that moment.

Chapter Four: The Mistake

The night before he left, they had their first real fight.

It started small -- Da-eun upset that Joon-ho had spent his last afternoon helping his father pack instead of coming to see her, Joon-ho exhausted and overwhelmed and saying something he didn't mean.

"Maybe it's better this way," he snapped, frustration boiling over into words he'd regret almost instantly. "Maybe it's easier if we just -- stop. Being whatever we are. Save ourselves the trouble."

Da-eun went very still. "Is that actually what you want?"

He should have said no. He should have told her the truth -- that he was terrified, that leaving felt like being cut in half, that the thought of losing whatever they were becoming was the only thing keeping him up at night. Instead, sixteen and scared and unable to find the right words in time, he said nothing at all.

"Fine," Da-eun said quietly, and walked away, and Joon-ho let her, telling himself he'd fix it in the morning.

But in the morning, the moving truck came early, and there wasn't time, and he left with the fight still sitting unresolved between them like a wound neither had bothered to clean.

Chapter Five: Silence

They didn't talk for almost a year.

Pride, in the way only teenagers can manage pride, kept them both silent long after the anger had faded into something softer and sadder. Da-eun typed messages she never sent. Joon-ho drafted apologies he deleted before hitting send, certain each attempt sounded wrong, too small for what he actually needed to say.

Life filled the space where the other used to be. Da-eun threw herself into school, into helping her mother at the flower shop, into a life that looked full from the outside and felt strangely hollow from within. Joon-ho adjusted to Busan slowly, made new friends, learned the rhythms of a new city, but found himself, more nights than he'd admit, standing on whatever rooftop or balcony was nearest, looking at a sky that felt wrong somehow, missing a specific kind of laughter he couldn't replace.

Neither of them dated anyone else. Neither of them could quite explain why, when their friends asked.

Chapter Six: The Letter

It was Da-eun who broke first, in the end.

She wrote it by hand, the old-fashioned way, because typing felt too easy to delete, too easy to overthink into nothing. She wrote about Bori the cat, who still visited the flower shop sometimes. She wrote about the rooftop, which she still sat on sometimes, even though it felt strange to sit there alone. She wrote, finally, near the bottom of the page, the thing she'd been unable to say the night he left.

I wasn't upset because you wanted to stop being friends. I was upset because I didn't want to stop being whatever we were becoming. I still don't. I don't know what that makes us, or what it should make us, but I know I'd rather figure it out with you than pretend I don't miss you every single day.

She almost didn't send it. She stood at the mailbox for ten full minutes, envelope in hand, heart hammering like she was about to jump off something high. Then she thought about rooftops, and jackets draped over small shoulders, and a boy who once promised to learn how to fix flying bicycles just in case she ever needed to escape somewhere fast.

She dropped it in the mailbox before she could talk herself out of it.

Chapter Seven: Behind You, Always

Joon-ho showed up three days later, having taken the first train back the moment the letter arrived, not bothering to call ahead, not trusting himself to explain over the phone what he needed to say in person.

He found her at the flower shop, arranging a bucket of white chrysanthemums, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all, the year of silence sitting heavy and awkward between them.

"You could have called," Da-eun said finally, voice unsteady.

"I could have," Joon-ho agreed. "But I figured I owed you an apology I couldn't mess up over the phone. I'm better at apologizing in person. Apparently I need visual aids."

Despite everything, she laughed -- a real laugh, the kind he'd been missing for a year, and something in his chest finally loosened.

"I was scared," he admitted, stepping closer. "That night, I wasn't upset with you. I was upset that I was leaving, and terrified that if I said what I actually felt, and then we were apart, it would just make everything hurt worse. So I said something stupid instead. I've regretted it every day since."

"What did you actually feel?" Da-eun asked quietly, setting down the flowers, giving him her full attention the way she used to when they were small and the world was simpler.

Joon-ho took a breath, the words he'd practiced a hundred times over a hundred nights finally steady in his mouth. "That I've been in love with you since we were kids and too stupid to know what to call it. That I've spent an entire year in a new city surrounded by new people and still felt like the most important person in my life was three hundred kilometers away arranging flowers. That I don't want to just be your friend from childhood anymore, Da-eun. I want to be the person standing behind you, always, the way I promised when we were eight years old, except now I actually mean it the way it deserves to be meant."

Da-eun's eyes filled, but she was smiling too, both things at once the way only real emotion allows. "That's a much better apology than the jacket."

"I've had a year to practice."

She crossed the small space between them and hugged him, tight, the kind of hug that says everything words couldn't quite manage. "I missed you," she whispered against his shoulder. "So much it was embarrassing."

"I missed you more," he said. "I have the train ticket receipts to prove it. I've visited Seoul four times this year and told my mom it was for 'friend stuff.'"

"That's pathetic."

"I know."

"I love you anyway."

"Good," Joon-ho said, finally pulling back just enough to look at her properly, "because I fully intend to keep being pathetic about you for the rest of my life, if you'll let me."

Epilogue: The Same Rooftop

They ended up on the old rooftop again that evening, the same spot from childhood, though now there were two sets of longer legs instead of two small ones, and eight years of history folded quietly between them.

"Remember when you promised to learn how to fix flying bicycles?" Da-eun asked, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"I looked into it," Joon-ho said seriously. "Turns out that's not really a thing yet. I'm working on regular ones for now. Figured I'd start smaller."

"Very responsible of you."

"I try." He wrapped an arm around her, careful, like she might still be something fragile enough to lose. "For what it's worth, I don't think I ever needed the flying bicycle anyway."

"No?"

"No," he said quietly, watching the same street they'd grown up on stretch out below them, familiar and changed all at once. "Turns out the only escape I ever wanted was toward you, not away from anything. I just took the long way getting there."

Above them, the sky was the same sky it had always been, patient in the way skies tend to be, having watched two small shadows become something steadier, something chosen, something that had survived distance and silence and a year of stubborn, foolish pride to finally land exactly where it always should have.

Behind her, always -- not because he promised it at eight years old, but because, at seventeen, he'd finally learned how to mean it.

© Rehan Azam,'The Colour of Waiting' An Short story by Rehan Azam , All Rights Reserved.