The word "friend" echoed in Ha-rin's mind long after their walk home. It was a new, slightly unstable tile in the meticulously ordered mosaic of her life, one that glowed with a warmth she couldn't file away. The next morning, she found herself at the school gate five minutes earlier than her already-early schedule, a warm can of sikhye sweating gently in her hand.
Arjun arrived, his entrance marked by a slight stumble on the curb. His tie, she noted with a fond internal smile, was only mildly crooked today.
"For you," Ha-rin said, holding out the sweet rice drink before her courage could falter. "A… friend thing. To say thanks for yesterday."
He took it, his expression shifting from surprise to a soft, grateful smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Thank you, friend."
The word, repeated so naturally, sent a pleasant shiver down her spine.
The week settled into a new, comfortable rhythm. Mornings began with this drink exchange—one day sikhye, the next a mango juice box he produced with a shy flourish. Their after-school walks extended, becoming less about navigation and more about discovery. They detoured to a bench in a small neighborhood park to split a steaming bag of hoddeok, the sweet cinnamon filling a shared secret on the cool spring air. They revisited the music shop, where Arjun, his voice a hushed, reverent guide, would give her impromptu commentary on the complex rhythms of Tamil film scores.
"This part," he'd whisper, pointing at the speaker as a rapid sequence of beats played, "is for the hero's entrance. It says… he is coming, and everything will change."
Ha-rin would listen, hearing not just the music, but the pride and homesickness woven into his explanation. She was no longer just guiding him through Seoul; he was guiding her through the landscapes of his memory.
It was during a library study session that the depth of their new rhythm became undeniable. Hunched over a shared biology textbook, the silence between them was a focused, productive hum. Arjun pointed to a diagram of a cell, his finger resting on a familiar structure.
"Mitochondria is… powerhouse. Yes?" he whispered, his brow furrowed in the particular way it did when he was marshaling his hard-won Korean vocabulary.
"Yes," Ha-rin whispered back, a smile tugging at her lips. "The powerhouse of the cell. You remembered."
He grinned, a flash of unguarded pride. "Powerhouse." Then he tapped the next paragraph, his expression turning skeptical. "This word. 'Endoplasmic reticulum.' It is… very long. A… tongue-twister monster."
"It's a network," she said, rescuing a blank page in her notebook to draw a quick, elaborate sketch. "Like… a subway system inside the cell. For moving proteins. Like trains."
His eyes lit up with understanding, the abstract concept snapping into place via a metaphor he lived daily. "Ah! Like Line 2. The Circle Line. Always moving, connecting stations."
The analogy was so perfectly, uniquely them that Ha-rin let out a sharp, quiet laugh she immediately stifled, clapping a hand over her mouth. A stern shush came from a student across the table. They caught each other's eyes, their shoulders shaking with silent, helpless laughter, a secret joke vibrating in the space between them.
Later, as they packed their bags, the easy comfort of the moment still lingering, Ha-rin noticed Arjun staring at a colorful poster on the library bulletin board. It advertised the upcoming Spring Festival, adorned with painted cherry blossoms and bold, celebratory Hangul.
"Festival?" he asked, the English word soft in the quiet room.
"Yes. In two weeks," Ha-rin said, moving to stand beside him. "There are booths, performances, food from different clubs." An idea, sudden and unbidden, bloomed in her chest—not a planner's task, but a friend's impulse. "The Global Alley is for international students. You could… share something. About Chennai. If you want."
He looked from the vibrant poster back to her, a mixture of intrigue and palpable anxiety in his dark eyes. "Share? What I share?"
"Music?" she suggested gently, thinking of the hushed reverence in the shop. "Or you could teach people to write their name in Tamil. Or just show photos of places you love." She was brainstorming aloud now, her planner's instinct kicking in to scaffold the daunting idea. "It doesn't have to be big. And… I could help you. We could set it up together."
The "we" hung in the air, solid and tangible, defining the new territory they inhabited. This wasn't orientation. This was a collaboration. A project born from friendship.
Arjun was silent for a long moment, absorbing the idea, the offer, the weight of that simple pronoun. "We… could?" he finally said, the question laden with more meaning than its two words.
"We could," Ha-rin affirmed, her voice steady despite the hopeful flutter in her stomach.
He nodded slowly, a determined look settling on his features, smoothing away the anxiety. "Then… we will."
The planning began with a fervor that surprised even Ha-rin. They claimed a corner of the library after school, their table soon littered with Arjun's phone photos of bustling Chennai markets, serene temple gopurams, and vibrant Kolam designs drawn on his apartment doorstep with rice flour. Ha-rin translated captions, helped design a simple layout for a poster, and made lists. So many lists. Materials Needed. To-Do. Questions for the Festival Committee.
It was thrilling. It was theirs.
The thrill, however, ran headlong into the wall of Ha-rin's other responsibilities. On Thursday, the festival committee—of which she was the newly appointed logistics coordinator—held a marathon meeting that dragged an hour past the final bell. By the time it adjourned, her head was pounding with debates about electrical outlet allocations and rain contingency plans.
She trudged to the subway, the vibrant plans for the Chennai booth feeling distant under a layer of mental fog. The station was in its quiet, post-rush hour lull. She boarded her train, sank into a seat by the window, and leaned her forehead against the cool glass, closing her eyes. She just needed the world to be still.
The train slowed for the next station. As it hissed to a halt, her weary eyes drifted across the platform opposite. They passed over a man reading a newspaper, a couple sharing headphones, and then—
Stopped.
There, leaning against a tiled pillar with an ease she'd never seen, was Arjun.
He was on his phone. One hand was in his pocket, his school bag slung carelessly over one shoulder. His posture was different—relaxed, confident. The familiar aura of careful uncertainty was gone. A small, private smile played on his lips.
Ha-rin's own tired smile started to form. She raised a hand to tap the glass.
Then the doors on her side slid open, and a slice of the outside world intruded. Through her own open door and across the tracks, a fragment of his conversation cut through the station's hum.
It was his voice. But it was wrong.
This wasn't the careful, deliberate English of their study sessions, each word a conscious choice. This was a cascade—fluid, rapid, and laced with a casual, intellectual confidence that stole the air from her lungs.
"…because the protagonist's flaw isn't arrogance, it's narrative irony," he was saying, his tone light, debating. "He's trapped by the story's own structure. You're conflating the character's failure with the writer's intent." He listened for a beat, then laughed—a full, easy, unselfconscious sound that was entirely new to her. "Okay, fine. We can dissect your objectively wrong take over Parcheesi this weekend. Yeah. Tell your mum I'll bring the murukku. Bye."
He hung up, slipped the phone into his pocket, and sighed. As he did, she saw the transformation in real-time. The easy confidence seemed to drain from his shoulders. He straightened his bag, ran a hand through his hair in that familiar gesture of minor frustration, and looked up at the station signs with a slight, searching frown.
On Ha-rin's train, the warning chime sounded. The doors slid shut with a final hiss.
The last thing she saw, as the train jerked forward, was Arjun Kumar—the boy who needed her to explain the lunch line procedure—square his shoulders with a weariness that now looked like a performance and walk towards the exit.
The walk home was a blur. The comforting neon glow of the convenience stores felt garish. The static in her mind was deafening.
Narrative irony. Objectively wrong. Conflating.
The words, in that voice, played on a loop. The boy in her mind—the one who struggled with "endoplasmic reticulum," who beamed when he remembered "powerhouse"—fractured. In his place stood a stranger who debated film theory with fluent, biting wit.
Was it all an act? The thought was a cold knife. She recalled her patient explanations, her gentle corrections, the glow she felt when he understood something. Had it been patronizing? Had he been laughing at her?
But no. The memory of his genuine, flustered panic in the school's maze-like administration wing was real. The sweat on his temple at the vending machine was real. His frustration was real. His struggle with Korean was absolute.
The realization dawned, cold and clear. His struggle with her world was genuine. But his mind, his command of their bridge language, was a vast, hidden country he had deliberately chosen not to show her. He had simplified himself. Edited his complexity into a digestible outline for her benefit.
The warmth she'd carried for him curdled into a sour mix of betrayal and foolishness, then slowly reshaped into something more complex—a aching pang of inadequacy, a thrilling, terrifying curiosity, and a strange, protective hurt. He must be so tired, she thought, to translate not just your words, but your entire self, into something smaller.
Her phone vibrated on her desk, shattering the heavy silence of her room. The screen illuminated a message.
Arjun: Hope your committee meeting was not too painful. I finished my family thing. Was thinking about the Kolam design for the booth – what if we used a sapphire blue, not sky blue? For depth, like the sea at Marina Beach at dusk.
She stared at the message. The old Ha-rin, the one from three hours ago, would have seen a collaborator offering a thoughtful aesthetic suggestion. The new Ha-rin saw the careful poetry of the description, the specific cultural reference, the confident visual opinion. This was not a question from someone who needed guidance. This was a partner in dialogue.
Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard. The cursor blinked, a tiny, relentless heartbeat.
She could play the game. She could reply as if the earth hadn't tilted. "Sapphire is a good contrast. I'll find paper samples tomorrow."
Or.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She typed, deleted, and retyped, the words feeling both dangerous and necessary.
Ha-rin: Meeting was endless. Took the subway home. You hear the most interesting conversations on platforms sometimes. People debating film theory, of all things. And yes, sapphire blue. For depth.
She hit send. The message flew into the digital space between them, which was no longer just a space between languages, but a new, uncharted space between the person she knew and the one she had glimpsed.
Placing the phone face down, she sat in the quiet of her room, the unknown suddenly vast and humming around her. The festival booth, their project, their friendship—it all remained. But the blueprint had changed. Now, she was waiting to see which version of Arjun would text back, and who she would need to become to meet him there.