4336. I’m a logical person, so it always irritates me that we were such a cliched anomaly.

I met you for the first time the day I moved in. I’d bounced down the hall, tripping over myself, completely excited about the prospect of meeting new friends. Your mother opened the door. I, still filled with the kind of adrenaline one gets from moving across the world, introduced myself to your mom, tripping over my words. She invited me in, and called out your name. You looked up, eyes round and curious, setting down the cello you’d been tuning.

“Hi,” you said. “I’m ***, and I’m from Seoul!”

You got me started on a whole ramble about all the places I’d lived in, and somehow, I finished off with— “yeah, and before this I lived in Shanghai!”

Embarrassment suddenly flooded over me. Gosh, I’d done it again. I berated myself for rushing into a weird tangent— when introducing myself, no less. You laughed, however, and told me it was nice to meet me, and that I should show you pictures, sometime.

Your eyes crinkled in the prettiest way when you smiled. Sounds cheesy, but I knew you were gonna change my life at that moment.

I don’t know if it was that moment, or sometime during that year, but you became my best friend. You were blue skies, lazy afternoons and running through puddles. Laughing with you was like the taste of my favourite mango pudding. You asked me to move in, and I hugged you. Best hug ever.

Funny, the way in which love changes people. You always told me, that I was too logical, too rational, that not everything was a debate and that objectiveness is simply a subjective illusion. I’d always prided my ability to be objective and see the world for what it is. I always liked being free— nothing had stopped me from moving across the world on a whim, and nothing would tie me down. But when you were crying that night and I sat with you instead of studying for my exam, I found it surprisingly easy to let go of the independence I fiercely loved. I remembered thinking that I could die for you, and realising that such a thought did not scare me at all.

I remember I confessed to you in such a cliche way. I left a letter in your bag, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. When you said “yes”, you made my whole year.

I remember the two of us, being the kind of crazy rich brats with a liberal education we were, discussing the impact of westernisation on Confucian values and resulting shifts in class structure five minutes after scrolling through the Saint Laurent Fall Collection. I liked all of your ideas, and I was so impressed by your essays that I was mad at myself for being so impressed. I knew you were going places, and I’m still certain of that now. You got mad sometimes, but you know I only debate ideas I’m impressed by.

I remember exactly why we broke up. Actually, I wasn’t surprised at all. The fragility of our relationship continuously trailed behind me in the time we were together, lurking in corners and looming in the peripheral. We had problems that no one knew how to deal with, because what do you do with two lost kids with broken families and broken lives who were at once the silent oppressors at the top as well as the pitiful remains the system spat out. In a way, we only had each other. So when you told me we couldn’t be together anymore, I understood. Because the real reason, looming over the co-dependency, your anxiety, my depressive episodes and both of our family issues, was the fact that we would be forever outcasted from society for what we were.

I know you want to inherit assets. Who doesn’t? I’m in the same boat. You’d be thrown from the ruthless world of the upper class in a heartbeat if they knew about us. So would I. It bothers me too, but I know it bothered you more, even if you pretended that you were better than that. It’s human to be upset about that, because it isn’t right that we are forced to choose between love and our livelihoods.

We never talk about it— being in a gay relationship, that is. It’s too harrowing to think about what our worlds do to people like us.

There’s no way it could’ve worked. Sometimes, I ask God why I was born this way. Sometimes, I look to the universe, and think about how thirteen billion years after the Big Bang, on a tiny, damp rock floating in space, two kids held hands and had a love story. Sometimes, I think that the fact that we are of the same gender is such an inconsequential detail.

I’m a logical person, so I can break down love and define it as certain connections in our brains that cause the release of serotonin and causes psychosomatic reactions such as uncontrollable smiling and a warm feeling in the chest. I’m a logical person, and I’ve concluded that the only way love makes sense is if it makes no sense. I’m a logical person, but I have to admit that there was definitely some magic in everything lining up in such a cliched way to me leaning against you on the train and realising, suddenly, that I loved you.