I called him Tae Tae: a name that made me feel like I was nine again, a name that merely required two flicks of the tongue against the roof of my mouth. It was an accident at first; I had a natural tendency to shorten words I couldn’t pronounce: Taeyong. I pressed my lips together to keep from grinning like a fool. It kind of hurt. Twenty-one hours of travel had not humbled my racing heart, now beating in my throat as I found him amongst a sea of bobbing heads.
I met Tae Tae on two distinctive winter days—once in November and again in January. White snow glazing over the frozen streets, jagged bare trees stretching into a swollen grey sky; contrasting with the vibrant display of hibiscus in the shop window where I saw him. All of this couldn’t be forgotten if I tried.
In November, it had been a brief meeting. We happened to lean over the same mini-art installation at a café in southern Itaewon, fingers brushing against the cold railing. The spark that shot through me was overwhelmingly unique—not quite a chill, but hot goose bumps, if there were such a thing. I don’t remember the art, only the stranger’s hand pulling away from mine and a soft, low accented voice saying: “Sorry.”
I forced a polite smile and looked up: “My bad—” and stopped. We made eye contact for a second too long - you know that extra second where you think; we’re looking at each other for a really long time. Long enough for me to take in the boy’s dark hair and intense eyes, a few freckles dotting his honey skin. He was dressed cosily in a mint-coloured sweater and sandy slacks, and I couldn’t help but think of him as a little bear that had emerged from hibernation. He smiled back at me and we parted then. I didn’t forget him, but it was in a kind of fantasy that waned under the reality that I’d never see him again.
But I did. I came back to the same café in January, waiting to meet with my mother’s assistant, and spotted the boy I call Tae Tae by the window. White sunlight showered him - I banged my knee on a table in my reverie and he looked up. I selfishly assumed he remembered me. Not that many black people shuffle around the streets of Seoul, though they do exist. How embarrassing. I laughed at myself, perhaps making the entire ordeal even more awkward, and moved to order my coffee.
I kept sneaking glances at him. I guess people were bound to notice you if you stared at them. Tae Tae, in a lovely green and floral button-down, followed me with his eyes and eventually spoke, “I like your scarf.”
I acted like I hadn’t expected him to say anything and smiled softly. “Thank you.”
“You wore it last time.”
This situation seemed silly to me, but pleasant. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
The boy seemed to remember himself, clearing his throat. “Sorry. I just…I just knew I’d seen you before. And you were staring.”
“Was it that obvious?” I sighed, setting my coffee down on the free table next to his. “Geez, I’m really sorry.”
He shrugged, a loose strand of hair slipping over his eyes. “No need to be.”
He’s really cute. A lot of feelings flooded in and I stiffly bowed to brush away the awkwardness. “My name’s June.”
He bowed respectfully in return, but something more playful was in his gaze. “Taeyong.”
“Tae…” I tried it. My Korean was rough, even after so many visits to Seoul. “Tae…”
He chuckled a little, low and gentle, catching me off-guard. “Not Tae Tae. Taeyong. But that was close. My grandmother calls me that.”
And in that moment, I knew this was a rare meeting. I’m not sure if I believe in fate, but this was as close as it could be. This prince of winter, mysterious but open, a stranger… I knew at once I needed him in my life.

Tae Tae didn’t like coffee, even though we kept meeting at that café in Itaewon. I learned that slowly, watching him gingerly take sips from his steaming espresso and wince a little each time. When I finally told him that we could go get bubble tea, or food, or literally anything else, his face broke into a shy grin and introduced me to the lucid dream that was Seoul’s nightlife.
Tae Tae took me to twenty-eight restaurants over a year and a half. We dove into scorching hot smells of ramen, bimbimbop, vegetables, bulgogi, and fish sauce; busy streets filled with cacophonous, beaming people, and music. I was overwhelmed by my senses. Summer in Seoul was a totally different vibe than the winter. It’s where I thrived. Winter was Tae Tae’s time.
“I’m not from the city.” He had told me on one of our later dates. “I act like I am.”
“I’m not from this side of the planet.” I replied.
“Really?” He teased.
“My Korean is awful, if you couldn’t tell.”
“You tend to keep all the ‘e’ vowels in your nose.”
“Like an American?”
“Like an American.”
I sighed, gazing at him over our empty bowls and watery soda. Tae Tae rolled his neck back, thick eyebrows raised amusingly but still in a kind way. I was getting used to his habits, loving them more and more.
“How many languages do you speak again?”
Tae Tae contemplated. “Four. One of them not well.”
“Which one?” I asked, twirling my straw between my fingers.
“Chinese. It’s hard.”
“So is Korean.”
“So is English.”
“Touché.”
Tae Tae was watching me. “You tired?”
I checked my phone. It read 11:46pm. We had been talking for hours in this dimly lit speakeasy. “No. What do you have in mind?”
“There’s a rooftop bar a few blocks from here…” He leaned forward; face cut in half by a slanted angle of yellow light. “The drinks are whatever; there are better bars - but the view is unbeatable. You have to see it before you fly back.”
I was sold. “Let’s go.”
A funny feeling settled in my stomach on the walk over to the rooftop bar and made itself known as soon as I took in the view with Tae Tae. I denied it then, but I begrudgingly took ownership of it the next day: that I was totally, unmistakably smitten with this boy. I was in love with him. I didn’t use that word lightly - my life back home had seen enough normal teenage heartbreak. Visiting my mom in South Korea had been a much-needed break. But there I was, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tae Tae on the rooftop, face aglow with the electric cityscape, my heart pounding with that realisation.
We held hands, too. Silently. I felt his pulse against my skin. He smelled heavy but comforting, like the fresh musk of woods after rain.
We fell asleep watching a bad movie—I don’t even remember putting it on. When I awoke with my drool on his shoulder, reality kicked in:
June, you really like this guy.
This was a dilemma for multiple reasons. One, the obvious reason: I did not live in this country. I was a very American, very black, very inexperienced twenty-year-old whose only chance of spending time with this boy was when I flew to see my mom but I couldn’t depend on that. I still was not as well versed in the atmosphere of Seoul as I wanted to be. My college roommate thought it was the same as living in England for a couple weeks. I should stop expecting so much from Western ideals of traveling abroad.
Two: Tae Tae and I had become really good friends. Really, really good friends. I was scared to disrupt that kind of relationship. We liked the same music, we loved talking about art, and even when we disputed on things, it was with a calm sense of understanding and curiosity. He cared about me. He listened to me rant over Facetime. He was the most stable thing in my life right now.
Three: I was on a clock. Every time I flew back from Seoul, I feared that it would be the last time we’d meet. The company could call my mom back to the States; I could have exams during my next trip… so many things could get in the way. My four to five days in South Korea were just that: four to five days. You could do a lot and yet so little in that time. So, if I wanted to tell him, I had to do it now.

“What’s up?” I cradled my phone in the crook of my neck, my hands busy unwrapping the wax paper that had practically swallowed my turkey sandwich. I snuck a look at my converses, which were not white anymore; the tips browned by puddles. The bodega awning was leaking on my shoulder, speckling my denim jacket in dark spots.
There was quiet on the other side of the phone, allowing for the blare of a siren to fill in the gap between Brooklyn and Seoul. I crinkled the sandwich paper in my fist. “You okay?”
“Just wanted to hear your voice,” replied Tae Tae softly.
“Oh, nice.” I chuckled half-heartedly. “Does it sound lower over the phone? My mom always says I sound like my brother—”
“June-ah.”
I stopped, having caught that something was off. He rarely called me that. “Yeah?”
“I really miss you right now.”
Oh God. My stupid heart swelled with excitement and worry. I hugged my sandwich to my chest and squat in the echoing alley. “I miss you too, Tae Tae. Is everything okay? It has to be, like, three in the morning over there.”
“It is.” He was being monosyllabic.
“Talk to me.” I whispered.
“I was just thinking…” Tae Tae sighed heavily. “…I was just thinking about this long-distance thing. It’s kinda lonely.”
I felt so deeply for him, but I tried to be playful. I wasn’t very good at talking. “They say you shouldn’t think too much about things after midnight. It gets dangerous.”
“Well, here I am.”
“You should try sleeping.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I know, I’m just… I’m trying to help. I’m here now, right?”
“Sure.”
I raked a hand through my damp curls, looking out at the street where the carousel of the world passed me by. Blinding teeth glared out from full brown lips, brown and black skin, broad shoulders, crinkled coats, all in a wash of blue and orange and worn green. Women’s purses as loud as the speakers in the car shop across the way, snapping footsteps, and the smell of hemp and soul food. Girls twirled headphones between their fingers, popping gum. Boys with picks in their flattops, sticking up like antenna. This was my world; vastly different from the world Tae Tae had immersed me in. And by God, I wanted him to see it.
So I described it to him. Every detail, everything I was seeing and hearing. How the old man on the corner tipped his hat to me every morning, how fast the clouds moved in the wind, how one of his sweaters was forming a penny-sized hole in the sleeve because I had worn it so much.
All the while, I hoped somehow this would make him feel less alone. It had worked for me plenty of times.
“Moving to Seoul was weird. You’d think a city is pretty loud compared to the countryside.” Tae Tae explained.
“But it’s not after a while.” I agreed.
“I guess it’s because I literally knew no one. Until you.”
“Me, of all people.”
“I’m glad it was, though.”
“I wish you were here, Tae Tae. Being eight-thousand miles from you sucks.”
“Gosh, is it really eight-thousand miles?”
I laughed, despite myself. “I have no clue.”
I could hear him laugh too. “One day, I’ll come. I’ll surprise you.”
“Aw, now I’ll be expecting you.’
“Even better.” His smile burned itself beneath my eyelids, warm and wonderful. “Even better.”

One of my final assignments for class before the summer was to write a ghazal about something we could never say in person.
I was not a poet. I didn’t like poetry. I didn’t find it at all polarising to view the world from descriptions that seemed so far removed from the world itself. It always made me feel like the author was supposed to be smarter than me; looking down at me with fists full of flowery language and a title that had nothing to do with its subject. I challenged myself by formatting my complicated thoughts into a ghazal: ten syllables, duplet structure, with one main point.
“Look, I’ll never be as grateful as I
should be when I gaze into your brown eyes.

You are too forgiving, too much like ice
on a burn I gave myself from your eyes.

Can I sleep a little bit more? Can I
drown in the sheets; see stars dance in my eyes

until you move like sunlight to the next
flower? She’ll gladly do more for your eyes—

but you somehow find me of value, and
are convinced you can wipe my teary eyes.

My heart, for you, does not break but beat as
a drum does for listening ears, leering eyes

and meanwhile I wasn’t preparing to
fall so hard, so fast like two blinking eyes.

Hoping to miss you, craving to have you.
Loving and hating your wonderful eyes.

I’ll try, but I promise I couldn’t be
less deserving—me, ‘June-ah’—of your eyes.”
I stared at my writing, having smeared half the page with the lead markings on my palm. I hated how I understood it, how woven it was in my heartstrings - of course, I was the one who wrote it - but could I ever show this to Tae Tae?
But I couldn’t wait any longer. Those hot goose bumps rose on my arms again, rising to tickle the back of my neck. This was nothing if not a step in the right direction. The poem itself was not enough.

My last night in Seoul, Tae Tae took me to a concert. He had introduced me to K-Pop and had now enveloped me in it full-force. The bass was throbbing in every part of my body, shaking the whole stadium and the sky with it. I had dashed holographic glitter over my eyelids and cheekbones, and occasionally found remnants of it on my arms or in Tae Tae’s hair. We’d laugh, loudly and without care. He was a better dancer than I was, but I played along. Tae Tae would shout the Korean lyrics in his low voice—growing husky as it competed with mine.
Fireworks erupted into the night’s unflinching presence, startling me because it reminded me that this was real, I was actually living this loud, perfect moment with this incredible human; thousands of miles away from the home I knew. It had to be now. My heart was racing and almost as if Tae Tae had noticed, his movements slowed. Being looked at by him was one of the most fulfilling things I’d ever experienced.
The music quieted to a ballad and everyone around us started swaying. For some reason, I could not see Tae Tae’s eyes clearly in this light, the way the neon shined cast a harsh halo over his raven-coloured hair, burning into my mind, and I could think of nothing else. The yellow sunflowers on his black shirt shouted the sweet words that couldn’t escape from his lips.
I had practiced in the mirror before we left for the concert. The Korean word fluttered, ready for its debut.
Butterflies swirled in my stomach, up to my throat, nearly ready to burst from my mouth, but I was frozen with the fear of love, the illusion of love, the love of love. Why did he have to look this radiant in the suffocating darkness, the sparkling crowd swaying like an ocean of stars around us?
He smiled, a turned-up square smile—and shining brighter than the neon was the pure, child-like glee in his eyes—as the word emerged from us both,
“Salanghae.”

“I love you.”

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