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November didn’t begin with fireworks. It began quietly, with plans, grocery lists, and little domestic promises. I remember telling her I was going shopping to buy ramen for her, real Korean ramen, and something brutally spicy for Pablo. We laughed about tuna eggs, salmon roe, and the small misunderstandings that somehow always felt cute instead of annoying. Even before I got on the plane, November already felt different. Softer. More real. On November 8, I was standing at To

September felt like a month of contrast. It started with us together, walking side by side through New York, and slowly shifted back into distance, routines, and screens; but the closeness we built never really left. In the very first days of September, New York felt like ours. One night, after everything had quieted down, we went for a late walk through the city. It was early morning already, that soft in-between hour when the streets feel calmer and more honest. We stood lo

August didn’t arrive quietly. It rolled in with heat, exhaustion, sickness, longing, and a kind of emotional gravity that made everything heavier and more tender at the same time. I had started the month covered in rashes, my body giving up on me in dramatic and creative new ways. She told me she felt sorry for me, that she wished she could help, that September had to be kinder to me than all the months before. She always found a way to make me feel less alone, sometimes by m

July felt different even before it began. She told me, "I'm going to Canada". Honestly, it was a third happy moment, third surprising, and third dumbfounded. I knew we would meet again, but not this soon. Every day leading up to her arrival carried a kind of quiet electricity. She was coming to Canada, to me. I still remember that night on 401, the sky a smear of indigo above the headlights, Chopin humming low, my thoughts already racing ahead to the terminal gates. I drove a

We stayed in Jeju for couple more days, moving through soft rain and temple courtyards like we were learning a quieter language together. Mornings smelled like pine and sea, and the island felt like a third companion who kept nodding, as if to say: yes, keep going. We visited a couple of Buddhist temples, stone guardians with moss shoulders, and I watched you press your palms together, eyes closed, a little rain collecting in your lashes. Beaches in Jeju weren’t the postcard

I didn’t plan any of it. I only flew to Korea because family pulled me back in, first for Wontaek’s wedding, and then, like an unexpected bonus track, for Jeff, my “baby” cousin I hadn’t seen in a decade. He’d grown up in the meantime, England had rounded his vowels and sharpened his humor-and he was buzzing to “see the real Seoul.” That’s how I ended up in Hongdae on a neon-washed night, playing big cousin and wingman while Jeff, with cheerful shamelessness, admitted he was