June 2023 — That Tried to Teach Me How to Hold On

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 remembered; the water was shy, the sky undecided. But I realized beauty is an arithmetic that changes with who stands beside you; with her there, even the grey had a pulse. At night we would have the takeout foods from local places with beers and soju to enjoy with them with Eris, which Raquel wasn’t so fond of, and me and Eris would laugh out of her reaction.

We came back to Seoul and Neil flew in from China with Ving, and Seoul shifted gears again, now the city was an itinerary, and I was the tour guide trying not to give away that every road still led back to her. I took them through our Hongdae circuit, the same alleys where her and I had laughed our way into a night we didn’t want to end, and each familiar storefront felt like a pressure point. I didn’t tell them that the sidewalk still remembered the weight of our first almost-handhold.

A night became one of those hinge days. I was out with Neil and Ving when I texted her, “come join?”, half invitation, half confession that any room without her in it felt underfurnished. She arrived, wind in her hair, and we ended up at that bizarre bar that makes cocktails like perfume: atomizers and dropper bottles, a bartender describing top notes and base notes as if we were choosing a memory rather than a drink. She lifted the glass to her wrist first, sniffed, laughed, and I thought: this is exactly how she moves through life, curious first, brave second, delighted third.

The next day I stole her for myself. I took her to what I swear is the best Vietnamese pho in the world, a humble corner in Gangnam where the broth tastes like someone simmered their patience all night. She leaned over the bowl, steam fogging the air, and said only, “Mmm,” the one-syllable verdict that means “I’m happy.” We rode that warmth out to Everland after, my childhood amusement park suddenly in manageable scale. Funny how places shrink while your feelings double. The zoo felt like a pocket atlas, the pandas an ink drawing that had come to life just to make her grin. When the parade came, its lights turning dusk into a carnival, I caught her face in the glitter and thought: I’ve been here before, but never like this. There are certain afternoons that reach up and tug her back into your own boyhood; that day, I was a kid again, except this time I got to hold her hand.

Paul’s wedding, the kind of day that brews nostalgia like tea. I watched him marry Gabby with the unsteady pride of someone realizing time runs both fast and deep. She couldn’t make the ceremony, but she came to the after party in Itaewon, and that’s where I got to put two timelines together: the boy I grew up with, and the woman I wanted to grow old with. I introduced her to Paul, and he read my eyes the way old friends do. We didn’t need to say much; the music took over, the city hummed, and for a few hours I believed in the fiction that June would never end.

But calendars are stubborn. The days after the wedding started to taste like countdown. We penciled in a promise I’d made the first night we met: a Gyeongbokgung date. On June 12th, the palace opened like a silk fan, courtyards breathing, eaves curved like calligraphy, and we slipped into hanbok. It was my first time; she moved like she’d been cast for this role. Seeing her there, framed by red pillars and sky, I understood why people write poems they never show anyone. Tourists took pictures, a breeze squared the edges of our sleeves, and time did that rare and generous thing, it walked more slowly.

Of course we ate Korean BBQ afterward, her favorite, because ritual is how we tell our hearts: remember this. Then we wandered Cheonggyecheon, letting the water read our silhouettes. The current wrote us a gentle warning, separate planes, separate countries, and we pretended not to hear it. She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I tried to memorize the weight. We talked about nothing and everything, city lights trembling in the stream like they were nervous to meet us.

June 13th came as if it had been waiting in the doorway the whole time. I rented a car so I could drive her to Incheon, the way people in love always try to extend a day by changing the mode of transportation. We stopped for lunch at an old-school Korean–Chinese spot, over a century of history written in thick sauce and proud signage. The plates were generous, the flavors less so; we laughed at how the prettiest stories sometimes have bland middles. Then we detoured to a nearby mudflat beach, the tide pulled back like a sheet. We walked across the wet earth, talking in low voices as if the horizon needed quiet.

She asked to see my photos, and I handed her my phone without thinking; I had tucked away so many of our pictures, the ones that would make my father look too closely, the ones that said “this is already serious” even when I was scared to say it out loud. She scrolled, paused, and the air thinned. “What am I to you?” she asked, not angry, worse, sad. And I couldn’t answer, not because I didn’t know, but because I knew too well: she was already the axis, and I didn’t know if the future would be kind to us. I was terrified of promising her a bridge I wasn’t sure I could keep standing from an ocean away. So I stood there, uselessly honest, and the mudflat stretched out like a runway with no plane.

The drive to the airport was both too long and not long enough. We made small talk the way people do when big feelings are crowding the back seat. At departures, we held each other like a last minute might be a lifetime if we counted correctly. I wanted to say the word that would keep you, bind you, carry you, girlfriend, future, be with me, but the hour was already calling her name and my throat chose silence over a promise spoken too late.

She walked toward security and turned, that quick sad smile she used to hide a storm. I waved and tried not to blink. After she disappeared, I sat in the car with both hands on the wheel and felt the impression your body had left in the passenger seat. It was as real as any map. The city lights came on as if nothing had happened.

June ended for me on the 13th, even though the calendar kept counting. There were still dinners, still jokes with friends, still the daily muscle memory of life, yet every hour had that empty chair next to it. Later in the month I would board my own flight back to Canada, but that’s another chapter. This one ends in the quiet after a question, on a beach where the tide would eventually return, smoothing over our footprints. If love is a lesson plan, June was the unit on distance: how to measure it, how to speak across it, and how to admit that sometimes the truest answer is the one I’m not brave enough to say out loud, yet.