HOMEMADE DYNAMITE { ft. @sneunsol }
isolation in today’s world is a funny thing. with how invasive social media is and how much of a social butterfly (an addict, really) he’s always been, nam yoonsu never thought it’d be possible to feel so isolated. but turns out people stop calling and texting when there’s nothing they can take from you, and you have little that you want to share. when ‘catching up’ requires real commitment; not just some coincidental overlap in one’s day. and when 'staying in touch’ means sacrificing sleep to accommodate time zones and slugging through with text conversations riddled with days-long pauses. turns out conversations die and relationships fizzle, and eventually nobody cares enough to pick up the pieces.
yoonsu knows all this all too well because it’s what happens to him in the mere span of a year (he could’ve sworn it felt ten times longer). but he can’t be bitter about it. his ‘friends’ stop calling and so does he. it’s tiring and fruitless. he doesn’t want to field the difficult questions (e.g. ’what happened to you?’) and never has an interesting answer to the simple questions anymore.
‘how was your day?’ fed the dog, grabbed canned coffee from the convenience store around the corner, fetched some green onions from the farmers market for his aunt, and tried dearly not to run into or talk to anyone along the way. come back ‘home’ and be roped up to help with menial tasks and household chores, fuck up, then get an earful about how ‘incapable kids are these days’ and ‘the issue when kids grow up without their parents around much.’ stay up at night staring at the ceiling, wondering where it all started to go wrong. the sun rises, the sun sets; and his reply to the question is hit copy and paste. nobody needs to hear that, he thinks. and so he spares his friends and the world of his presence.
but just as quickly as life’s unexpected circumstances land him into social isolation, it also lands him back into the frenzy. it’s exhausting trying to play catch-up after having his life clock set back a year. but being in seoul is better than being stuck in the rural isolation. being somebody, no matter how stretched-thin, feels better than being nobody. and seeing a friend from back home again – no, seeing olivia again — is better than not.
he arrives at the bar, and it doesn’t take him very long to find her. spotting olivia jang in a room of people isn’t about searching, as much as it’s an exercise of merely having eyes or ears. simply put, it’s infinitely harder to fail than to succeed. “hey.” he sneaks up on her from behind, making his presence known with a light squeeze of her shoulders. “sorry i’m a bit late,” he says, though the nonchalance in his voice might suggest otherwise. really, he’s just hoping to brush over the fact that he’d gone radio silent on even her too. he takes a seat besides her, now finally offering an apologetic grin. “it’s been too long, i know. just don’t ask me how i've been.”