60 Seconds

Seoul is painted in greys and blacks and whites today. The skies are crying and the birds are fleeing. Children run for shelter and all we can hear is the sound of rain, and its pitter pattering against the wooden bench beneath us. The smell of rain is bitter and burns my nose. I kick the pebbles from underneath my shoes and they scatter onto the asphalt a few distances away. I’m freezing. The ends of my hair are dripping rainwater onto my bare arms and my shoulders shiver.

“Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?” I stammer out, lips trembling from the cold. I wrap my arms around myself. “Didn’t you know that it was going to rain today?”

“Why didn’t you?” he shoots back. “Didn’t you know that it was going to rain today?”

I turn to look at him, and my lips are parted halfway, ready to say something, until they falter, and my hand slips from the edge of the bench.

“Are you okay?” he says, his eyebrows raised, as he sees me struggle to recover from the slight slip. I look away, my eyes widened, and cough. I wave my hand in the air and nod my head. I cover my cheeks with my pale hands and I can feel the sudden warmth.

“I’m good,” I say stiffly, but not really because in that one, small, stolen glance, my bones grew weak and my mind grew dizzy. He’s just as drenched as I am, with the rainwater pouring down on us with such heaviness. The red of his hair sticks to his skin and the front of his shirt is slipped down from the weight of the rain. His nose and cheeks are coloured a faint pink and I found the sight to be nothing short of breathtaking.

Suddenly, his arm is draped around my shoulder and my heart is racing because this is new, so, so new. The feeling is overwhelming because I like him – I really, really like him – and even with such a simple touch, my shoulders are on the verge of collapsing. I blink and breath in, trying to put my heart at ease but its no use because he pulls me in closer and our hips meet and his lips are so close to my ear.

He sighs, and I feel the heat graze against my neck. “Fine. I’m sorry about not bringing an umbrella, okay?”

I swallow, because this is not okay, this is not okay at all. My palms are clammy and my knees are weak. I don’t reply, I just stare out onto the road.

A laugh escapes his lips. “Fine, don’t talk to me.” And then he eases himself away from me, pulling away all of his warmth along with him.

“I- um, it’s fine.” I say. “I sort of… like the rain, anyways.”

“Really?” he smiles, curious. “And why’s that?”

I turn to him, and his eyes are focused on me, intent on listening to me.

“It’s quieter,” I say. “The city’s always so noisy, always so warm and busy with everything. But when it rains,” I continue, licking my lips, “it’s more peaceful. It doesn’t seem like time is passing by so quickly. It’s nice.”

He hums in agreement, before he says, “Y’know, someone once told me that you could fall in love in sixty seconds.”

I laugh, but my hands start to shake because he was talking about love. “What? That’s impossible.”

The red of his hair moves softly as he shakes his head. “No,” he protests, “it’s possible. It happened to me before.”

“O-Oh?” I stutter out, eyes blinking and heart suddenly heavy. “How… how’d it happen so quickly?”

“It’s easy,” he says, and I prepare myself for his response. “The first ten seconds is all about silence. You look at them, and nothing else really matters - or should matter – because it’s the first, the first time that you’ve ever set your eyes on them. It’s cheesy but, you just know it, you just know that she’s the one. And then after twenty seconds have passed, you start to know them. You’re no longer strangers with them. And all it takes is ten seconds – ten seconds – to ask them for their name.

“And then when you get to the thirty second mark, you really start to know them. Because you’re starting to go out with them more, starting to share memories with them. Like today,” he points out, but I’m too consumed in his words to realize that he flashes me a glance. “You’re with them today, on a cold day out, and it’s a memory that both of you can share together because it’s a really, really crappy day outside but at least, you have each other.” And then he laughs, because he was being cheesy.

“What’s next?” I ask, staring down at the pavement. I breathe in, wanting to stop listening but not being able to.

“Forty seconds have passed, and it’s sort of the rough patch. You fight a little, but once you stop, you realize it. You realize that she might just be with you for a long, long time because you’re able to make up with each other. So after that, you realize that she’s important. But not the one that you love, because that’s after fifty seconds: when you finally see them. Not looking, but seeing. Y’know, the moment in the relationship where nothing really does matter anymore, because you’re starting to love every single thing about them. The way their eyes crinkle when they laugh. The way their fingers shake in the cold. The way their hair falls when it’s wet from the rain.

“And then in those last, ten seconds, they finally realize it. In those last, ten seconds, they get closer, more intimate,” and when he says this, he slides up closer to me and his shoulder grazes mine once again. My eyes widen, because I’m starting to wonder. “And when it feels right, when it feels like no one else can make you feel like how they make you feel, then you know.”

I turn, and his eyes are on mine, searching for something. His pale, slender fingers slowly brush aside a stray hair stuck against my cheek from the rain. The wind is still cold, and the rain is still falling, but the air is warm and I don’t think that I can take this much longer because it’s all so real. He’s here, and he’s saying, “You know, that at this moment, at this sixty second mark, that this is love.”

And the city is quiet. And time passes by slowly. And his hands cup my cheeks gently. And his lips meet mine in a soft, sweet kiss. And the rain continues to fall.