As Time Goes By

[taemun]

Title: As Time Goes By
Pairing: YunJae
Length: One-shot
Genre: Future-AU, Romance
Rating: PG
A/N: Written from a stranger’s point of view, but don’t be afraid, it’s YunJae all the way ;)

Summary: Love, as explained to me by an older gentleman.



I spent a lot of time pondering on it afterwards. The next day, a Monday, I sat in a café, and most of the hours that were supposed to go into preparing my assignment for a mandatory Speech Communication and Rhetoric class, actually went into thinking about what he had said. Even though my last verdict was that his approach might have been a little too simplified, even surprisingly naïve considering his advanced age, his words had surely made a lasting impression on me.

My grandmother had always made sure I would listen to old people’s stories and take them to heart. It wasn’t only once or twice that her advice had turned out crucial, redeeming my shortcomings and saving my day, proving her right. I guess I had her to thank that I accepted the elderly man’s friendliness in the first place. I know a few friends who would have just brushed the man off, glancing at him and deeming him a senile, annoying old man, probably just lonely and desperately in need of people to chat with. Some would have sneered at him, others might have even said something rude, telling him to mind his own business. They would have plugged in their earphones and returned to their smart phones to play some mindless game, or alternatively to watch one of those pointless dramas I loved with just as much passion as my friends did.

However, I had the advantage of having grown up under the care of my grandmother. So when the old man sitting opposite of me smiled at me kindly, his teeth perfectly aligned and white, looking considerably younger than his gracefully aged face, and pushed his lunch box closer to me, I bowed my head and politely accepted the pair of wooden chopsticks he offered me.

“I bought it at the station so it won’t be as good as my usual, you see, the lunch my spouse prepares for me. But at the very least, it should be better than that,” he said, nodding towards the half-eaten bun that was resting on the narrow table in front of me. Its plastic smell was quite off-putting, and even though I had always loved red bean filled pastries, I had hardly enjoyed biting into the synthetic-tasting bun.

I tried to smile at the man but the events of the weekend were hardly accommodating to my act, and I failed quite miserably at feigning a bright mood. For some reason, the man looked at me gently, like he could see right through me. Slightly uneasy, I concentrated on my disposable chopsticks, ripping off the paper cover and splitting the pair. In line with the general flow of the weekend, anything hardly went according to plan, and the wood cracked unevenly. Irritated, I placed the mismatched pair between my palms, rubbing the chopsticks together furiously. I wouldn’t have put it past the day of misfortunes to get my hands full of splinters.

The old gentleman in front of me chuckled at my frustration, opening a bottle of cold rice drink and taking a long sip. The crow’s feet decorating the corners of his eyes wizened pleasantly as he smiled pushing the lunch box closer to me again. He waited until I picked up a slice of squash and put it in my mouth, looking visibly pleased with himself as he watched me chew.

“So, young lady, I couldn’t help but to notice your quite profound sighs earlier… Care to tell this old geezer what’s wrong? You might not believe it but I have always been quite good at comforting people,” he announced, picking up some food himself as well.

This time, the man’s words made me smile genuinely. Even my uncultured friends could have hardly called the man a “geezer”; his refined face was quite the opposite of such a crude expression. He was dressed classily, a dark grey Homburg hat resting on the empty seat next to his. He had taken off his long overcoat and hung it on a hook on the wall of the train, careful of wrinkles. His inner jacket was just as impeccable, the lapels well ironed and his necktie straight and neatly tucked in.

“I’m sorry to have worried you, sir, but I’m quite alright,” I said, trying to sound as cheerful as possible, despite the frown on my boyfriend’s face being all I could think of.

“Trouble in paradise?” the elderly man guessed then, mischief twinkling in the corners of his eyes as he saw my surprised face. I blinked at him, thinking back to Seongjun’s irritated expression as we parted and the way his defiant silence had made me grow even angrier.

“Umm…” I answered, knowing I’d be unable to lie about it. My grandmother had always told me it was one of my best features; the way my face would spill my guiltiness the moment I attempted to fool someone, even if it was a total stranger. It would prevent me from living an insincere life, she had said.

The old man chuckled again, his kind, small eyes crinkling as he leaned backwards and patted his upper stomach.

“Lovers’ spats, yes… Those, I do indeed know a thing or two about,” he said, “and I could spot an irritated sweetheart from a kilometre’s distance if it was the last thing I could see with these cataract-ridden eyes of mine.”

He leaned closer again, and winked his still intense, in no way clouded eye at me.

“Believe me or not, my spouse had quite the temper back when we were still young and able. This gaffer has had his fair share of appeasing a particularly enraged lover.”

The man sat up again and picked up some rice, giving me time to organise my thoughts. It was needed, too; to be quite honest, I didn’t even really know what had passed between us. In the train, I had been practically bouncing from excitement; on the platform, I had been clinging onto his sweater, arms around his middle inside his fluffy down jacket; on the street he had been holding my hand inside his pocket, his slim fingers damp and chilly, but so familiar against mine.

The happy beginning of our weekend didn’t change the fact that we had parted in hardly friendly terms, eyes not meeting when he kissed my forehead out of habit and hauled my small suitcase onto the shelf a little too forcefully.

Neither did it change the fact that I had told him off for it, or the fact that he hadn’t answered me before he had walked out of the train door.

The man sitting in front of me raised his eyebrows, showing me he was waiting for an answer. To hell with it, I thought. Telling this old man my relationship problems couldn’t make them any worse, at the very least. Maybe it was worth giving a shot.

“I don’t know… It’s just, one second I’m holding his hand and the next, he angers me so much. He just, he never pays attention… I don’t know, it’s hard now that he’s living in another city. He moved from Seoul to Kwangju some time ago, you see.” I fiddled with my chopsticks, tapping them against the edge of the table. “I just feel like… like he… I don’t even know.”

The man gave me a thoughtful look, his eyes half clouded as if he was thinking back to something.

“Let me guess; he just doesn’t get you?”

I nodded. After Seongjun had moved away, we’d only seen each other once or twice a month. But even before that, we’d always been busy, so the infrequency of our meets couldn’t have been the problem. I was unable to pinpoint what exactly it was; but every time we saw, I ended up annoyed, and so did he.

The man smiled at me once again, revealing his overly youthful-looking teeth once again.

“Young lady, I do not know your special friend but let me tell you this one thing; he probably feels the exact same. Maybe it’s you who doesn’t get him? There are always two sides to an argument… There are always two sides to love as well.”

The man could see that he had me interested, and he leaned forward a little secretly, visibly pleased to have found someone to share his life wisdom with.

“From my own personal experience,” he started, “the reason for trouble in love is always the same. You see; it’s the fact that people don’t get each other. They are not on the same wavelength, so to say.”

I tilted my head, wondering where he was going with this. Wasn’t it obvious that we couldn’t understand each other? That was exactly why we were always arguing.

“But there’s a twist there, young lady,” the old gentleman said when he saw my dubious look. “The problem isn’t that he doesn’t love you anymore, or that you no longer love him. It’s they way you love each other, my dear.”

I was slightly taken aback, almost ready to feel offended in case he didn’t explain himself. No matter how poorly Seongjun and me were doing, I didn’t think anyone had the right to criticise the way we loved.

“Ah, ah, young lady, let’s not get upset yet,” he smiled at the displeased face I had made. “It’s the same for every couple out there… It was the same for me and my beloved spouse as well.”

The man adjusted his position on his seat, evidently preparing telling me something he considered a great piece of knowledge, something almost secretive.

“There are four ways to love in this world, young lady. There are the people who just need to say it aloud no matter what; and the people who only wish for the presence of their loved one. There are the people who act their love out through affectionate touches, the cuddly ones if you wish; and the people who want to do something, little things to show their feelings; buy presents and those sorts of things, you see.”

The man leaned back against the backrest of his seat, letting the words sink in for a while. Almost automatically, I started wondering about myself. What category would I fit? Not the one to say it out loud, at the very least. I had never told anyone I loved them, not even my parents, or my grandmother; let alone Seongjun.

I didn’t really fit the active one either. I’d never even cooked him a meal, even though I actually really enjoyed cooking. It had just always felt like too far a stretch.

Seeing as we lived in different cities, the presence couldn’t be my thing either. I would have moved to Kwangju long ago if that was what I needed.

The only thing left was the cuddling… And to be quite honest, it fit me a little too well. I had always been shy to touch when it came to public places; but there was nothing I enjoyed more than curling up on a sofa with someone. I did it even with my mother. She’d long given up on trying to convince me I was too old to slip my eternally cold feet under her thighs and lay my head on her breast. However, regardless of the loud sigh she released every time, she’d always wrap her arm around my shoulders and pull me closer to her body.

If there was one good thing about not growing up taller than my mother, which all my friends had done, it was being able to snuggle up to her and let her call me her baby - even when I was slowly reaching the age of graduating university.

The cuddler couldn’t be too far off indeed; not when Seongjun would sometimes call me Snuggly when he tried to appease me, especially after I’d gotten mad about some forgetful antics of his.

“Have you completed you self-reflection yet?” the gentleman asked, making me snap out of my thoughts, back to the present. He chuckled at my disoriented expression.

“Oh, well, yes, I guess,” I answered, still slightly stunned.

“Chances are that your significant other belongs to another category, you see. It’s what always causes the misunderstandings and the friction: the misinterpretation. You have a certain idea how a person is supposed to express their love… And your boyfriend has another. If they don’t meet; well, there you have it.”

The next day, in that café, I really thought about it, trying to apply the old man’s theory into reality and went over numerous scenarios in my mind. I recalled many of our previous fights and especially the one we’d had the same weekend. Even though I finally concluded that things weren’t as simple as he might have made them out to be, the man did have a point. At the time, sitting in the train after having been dropped off at the train station like a sack of potatoes ready to be loaded into the next freight train, it truly sounded like an excellent thought, a simple reason to our problems.

The man could see my musings, a thoughtful expression taking over my face. He studied me for a moment before taking in a long breath and releasing it slowly, as if he was about to say something.

“Let me tell you a story,” he started. I shifted, placing my elbow on the edge of the table and resting my cheek on my palm. The man had turned his head a little, looking out of the window, pulling his overcoat out of the way with his other hand. His hand was slim and large, and even with the protruding veins of an old man, it looked refined, just like his face.

His eyes were searching for something, pupils jumping back and forth as railside lamps whished past.

“There was a time of what felt like infinite misunderstandings, between me and my spouse,” he said, his expression quite serious for the first time during our rather one-sided conversation. “In fact, at that time I firmly believed he no longer loved me… Despite the fact that we’d been together for nine years already.”

The man rested his temple against the window, his eyes peering upwards as if he was trying to recall something. Slowly, his face started to change as a languid smile melted his grim features.

“We were very young back then,” he explained, “very young and too inexperienced. We thought we were such adults already, just because of a few hardships and adversities we had had to face. Just because our parents didn’t exactly support us, we thought we were independent.”

I watched him close his eyes, and for a long moment I thought the old man had sunk deep into his memories and fallen asleep. Just when I was going to prop myself back against my seat, he opened his mouth and spoke again.

“It was quick, so very quick for me and him. I wouldn’t even call it love at first sight… To be honest, it felt like it had been there already, all that time before I’d even met him. Can you imagine? I can hardly even recollect our first meeting, because he felt like my best friend already. Like he’d always been there, when in reality I had just told him my name for the first time only a few minutes earlier. Someone told us we should try to get along well, because there was a high chance of us working together... And oh boy, did we get along!”

The man’s lips quirked upwards into an easy grin, exposing his perfect teeth once again. It was easy to see he was remembering something from the past, and I could even tell what sort of thing he was thinking about; the smirk was all too familiar.

“We slipped into a familiarity, a self-repeating routine. It was too easy, we lived in a false but secure bubble we had created around ourselves. We were just too young to understand what was around us back then wasn’t the whole world… We grew up fast in some regards, but in some regards… we were still spoiled, little brats, hardly out of our diapers.”

The man scrunched his eyebrows, a slightly painful frown appearing on his face as he strolled along his personal memory lane.

“Our life wasn’t the easiest, but every day was so similar to the preceding one… We learnt to get by. We had other friends, too; important, dear friends whose presence helped us succumb further into that small world of our own. We were each other’s whole lives… And that’s where the hardships started. When we slowly noticed we couldn’t be everything to each other. That there is more to life than what we knew.”

He sighed.

“We grew up, I guess.”

After another short, silent pause, the man suddenly opened his eyes and sat back up straight.

“You are wondering where this is going now, aren’t you? What this silly old man is trying to say, getting lost in the past,” he chuckled at himself jovially, cutting off my polite protests. Even though I’d only heard the very surface of his story, it was truly intriguing. The man was looking at me with a soft smile on his bow-shaped lips, the corners of his mouth curling upwards as he regarded my face again.

“You look so young,” he then told me. “Just like we were back then… Children.”

Before he could get lost in his thoughts again, he cleared his throat and picked up a small piece of egg roll, chewing on it pensively.

“You see, young lady,” he started when he had finished, swallowing the food down, ”I have always been the touchy kind. That’s what my friends always told me… That’s what all the people around me always told me. But my spouse on the other hand, he needs to hear it. He has always been more independent than me… I’m a conservative man,” he said, “the best thing about being aged and infirm is that I can just act as cranky about new things as I want, and no-one can tell me otherwise.”

The man snickered a little again.

“But even when I was young… All I longed for was a secure future with the person I love. Where as my spouse, he’s…adventurous. Don’t misunderstand me, young lady, I’m a man of ambition as well… But I only wanted to go far. He wanted to go somewhere where others had never been before.”

The elderly man shifted again, and I couldn’t help but to lean a little closer. Not even knowing his name, or the name of his spouse, he had managed to enthral me with his life story. He hadn’t even given away any details, but I desperately wanted to know how they’d come to understand each other. They had been together so long before the rift in their relationship. I had always had trouble understanding why couples who’d been married for years would suddenly divorce; you would think they had already settled all their differences long ago.

“When we were separated for the first time, nearly a decade after our first meeting… The first meeting after which we had been practically joined at the hip… it hit me harder than ever. All our differences, our different values, our different ambitions, our different wants and needs… I thought he’d abandoned me for something new and shiny, something that was false and fake and even a little dishonourable in my opinion. Just because he wasn’t next to me all the time anymore… Just because he wasn’t there to confirm his love for me with his gentle touches all the time… I thought it meant he didn’t want me anymore. I thought he’d rather give me up than give up his adventure, his exploration of new.”

The old man sighed again, deeper this time. I could see a fragment of sadness lingering in his sharp, dark eyes as he reached a hand up to comb a few fingers through his still thick, silver hair.

“But he’d never meant anything like that. Here’s the point in question, young lady; it was all inside my own head. It was all words I had put into his mouth, not words he’d actually said. I have to admit he tried; but to me his words, his calls and his texts were meaningless. I could imagine him thinking, ‘oh, I have to send Yunho that daily text to keep him happy’… To me they were empty words, just a quick and easy way to keep me at bay. I couldn’t believe them, believe him. If he had chosen to be away from me rather than be close to me… If he wasn’t there next to me, tangible… How could he really mean it? But to him those messages meant everything. They were the proof of his love.”

The man had closed his eyes again, resting his head against the cool glassy surface of the train’s window. I watched him impatiently, waiting for him to finally reveal the information about how they’d made up. But when his breath started slowing down, an occasional wheeze breaking the steady pattern, I realised he had fallen asleep. Defeated, I sighed, leaning back. The secret key to repairing my relationship with Seongjun had been right there, but now it slipped away with the man’s gradually falling consciousness.

The man slept soundly for the whole way, his eyes slightly cracked open in a funny manner as he snored away. Only when we arrived at Seoul station, he jolted awake, shaking his head to clear his sleepy thoughts, when his eyes met mine. He stopped his movement, narrowing his eyes as if he was trying to remember something.

“Why do I feel like I owe you something, my young companion?” he enquired as he carefully unhooked his overcoat from the wall and slid it around his broad shoulders. When he stood up, I could see that he was tall, his posture still impeccably straight despite his old age. Before I realised, he had moved next to my seat and was reaching for my suitcase on the shelf.

I sprang up, trying to deter the man from picking up my bag, but he brushed me off, scoffing at my apologetic behaviour.

“I may have seen better days, young lady, but I’m still a gentleman! I lived my life healthily, and if that will help me to carry a few more bags for a few more ladies, I will regret nothing I have done!”

The man’s voice was defiant, his strong stance almost adorable. I knew my grandmother would have acted just the same; she hated it from the bottom of her heart when old people were treated like lesser people.

As the man lifted my suitcase down and set it on the floor before reaching for his own, I decided to be bold and ask the question that had refused to leave me alone, plaguing my mind for the whole time the man had been sleeping.

“Sir… How did you remedy everything in the end?” I asked carefully.

“Huh?” the old man said, scratching at a stain on his blue suitcase absentmindedly, trying to rid it of the dirt.

“You and your spouse…” I clarified, fiddling with the chopsticks resting on the table in front of me, next to the half-eaten lunch box and my long-forgotten sweet bun.

The man looked around the carriage for a moment before a sudden realisation flashed through his face.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. He turned to look at me, with a pleased smile on his face.

“Communication, young lady, communication,” he said, and chuckled as he saw the disappointed face I pulled. He reached his hand forward, and then, very unexpectedly, pinched my nose. Before I could recover from my surprise, he had placed his hat on his head and was carrying his suitcase outside.

“There is no one right answer that applies to everyone, young lady,” he stopped to explain at the doorway. “We talked it out… Worked it out… More owing to him than to me. Sadly, I had all but given up; thank dear Lord my spouse is the most persistent man I know. And he believed in me more than I believed in him. I didn’t answer his love confessions… But even though that’s the way he loves… He could understand my way of loving was different. He was capable of putting himself in my shoes, something I was unable to do.”

He smiled at me for one last time, a smile that was remorseful and utterly happy at the same time. His eyes were glimmering with emotion, even the familiar smirk from thinking back to his youthful days returning for a short moment.

“I sincerely hope you will be the more understanding one, young lady,” he said before turning around.

“Sir, your food!” I noticed the abandoned lunch box suddenly, taking a quick step towards the gentleman.

“You can keep it, young lady,” his muffled voice came as he disappeared behind the wall, ”I’ll be getting something much better soon.”

I watched the automatic door of the carriage slide close behind him, bowing after the man even though he could no longer see me. I stood there for a second, pondering and a little dazed, before turning towards the seat to gather my belongings. When I picked up my beanie, I happened to glance out of the window, stilling as I watched a moment unfolding outside.

The gentleman from before was right there, walking towards a statuesque figure donning a long, elegant coat. The person’s face was partly hidden behind black hair and a voluminous scarf, but I could make out large eyes, crinkling into attractive crescents as he smiled widely at the man approaching him. The gentleman stopped right in front of him, putting his suitcase down slightly clumsily before reaching both of his hands up to pull the other person’s scarf down. The waiting man was slightly shorter than the gentleman, and he nudged his smiling face upwards, his hands buried deep inside his pockets.

The gentleman’s hands remained on the other man’s face for a short while, caressing his cheeks softly before he leaned down, pressing a kiss on the other’s expectant lips.

When I blinked, the moment was already gone. The old man picked up his suitcase, the smaller one winding his arm around the taller one’s waist as they started walking towards the gate. Their tall figures fit next to each other perfectly, and I could only feel inexplicably happy that they had once managed to work over their problems.

As the men disappeared from my sight, my eyes met the unfinished lunch laid out on the table. Breathing in and out once, deeply, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and searched for a very familiar phone number before pressing the call button.

He picked up shortly, only after three rings.

“Hey,” he answered the phone, sounding indifferent. I wanted to assure myself the forced manner it had come out wasn’t only my imagination.

“Oppa,” I breathed out. “How are you?”

A/N: I wanted to try writing in first person, but I have no idea what goes on inside the heads of men, especially older gentlemen… So I had to make the “I” a girl xD This fic is based on a column I read in a big Finnish newspaper. However, when I tried to find the column in order to read it again before writing this, I couldn’t, so this might differ from it a lot… I have no idea cause I cannot remember.

I hate it that in English there are different pronouns for males and females… I wanted to write it so that the girl would have been real surprised in the end when she finds out the spouse is a man as well ;-; In Finnish we only have one pronoun for both sexes so it’s easy :< But it was too hard to do in English.