Memo on Starry Night

“Perhaps becoming close friends always carries a touch of love.”

The word “love” has perhaps been monopolized by romantic love for far too long—so much so that I sometimes forget the friendships of its past and the familial bonds that offer even longer-lasting companionship. As time flies by, we have been together for a year. Just like any ordinary people, like any couple, through the different stages of this past year, we have navigated all sorts of challenges that we brought upon ourselves. Yet unlike most people, we started off carrying differences in both culture and language.

At first, I wanted to use the word “barrier,” but upon closer reflection, I realized there was no so-called barrier at all. When two people decide to be together, they step into each other’s worlds. If falling in love requires putting on full armor, then perhaps there were no real feelings there to begin with.

To bridge these differences, we tried many things—including recommending our favorite songs, tasting each other’s food, and learning each other’s language. Yet most of these remained playful, surface-level attempts at getting to know one another. Conversely, we made no substantive progress on the most important part: learning each other’s language. Perhaps it was because neither of us wanted to waste our precious time together on “boring” things back then (and truth be told, we still don't).

Still, people in the honeymoon phase always find all sorts of ways to “understand each other,” or rather, simply enjoy their time together. His love language is “physical touch,” whereas I lean more toward the pragmatic and conscious side of things, like “quality time” and “acts of service.” So whenever we met up, he turned into the clingy one, and whenever we were apart, I became the clingy one.

Looking back now, this wasn't entirely mature—not in a good or bad way. We both wanted to have each other’s time and affection, but my way of getting it was much easier to ask for than his, which quietly set the stage for what happened later.

On ordinary days when we met, we tried finding different ways and places to take walks and pass the time. Once, we drove to a beach in another city, shared a bowl of sweet soup on a scorching afternoon, and did the kinds of things couples do. Other times, we wandered through every single mall without buying a thing, only to head back to our place exhausted and “melt into a puddle” on the bed together.

And on special occasions, we would show up at places thoughtfully prepared for each other, picking out outfits and capturing memories that belonged solely to us. I brought those memories back with me and placed them on the shelf in my room.

If we were already financially independent, these would have been carefree, chill days. In reality, however, we were both busy juggling life, family, status, and careers. We simply didn't have that much time to “waste.” So during the times we were apart, he couldn't get responses in a way that truly resonated with him, while the “quality time” I hoped for kept dwindling. Along with it dwindled our call time, the speed of our replies, and my expectations. Only the waiting and a lingering disappointment asking “why” continued to grow.

Then one day in June, right after a project of mine wrapped up, he sent me a six-page letter. In it, he laid out his confusion, his feelings, his expectations for our relationship, and a way forward that could bring us a healthier relationship. I read it carefully, and I carefully replied, “Okay.” I knew he was busy—even if he hadn't written it down, I already knew. I also knew I was compromising; I just didn't know if he knew.

The next time we met, we took a trip somewhere much farther away. The sky there was clear and the weather scorching, just like any ordinary summer day. While enjoying the leisure of being a tourist, I was also thinking about having an honest, heart-to-heart talk with him. Every night, I started organizing what I wanted to say, but because I didn't want to ruin the mood of the trip, I never found the right moment to send it. Once the trip ended, he became extraordinarily busy.

And so, on a night of pouring rain, I sent him my reply.

That letter landed right on top of the silent weight of his family and life pressures. He had never once mentioned his family’s debt issues to me before, which he was now forced to figure out a way to resolve. “We never truly knew each other”—perhaps that was the real difference between us. And because of all this, he simply had no bandwidth left for me.

His reply was blunt enough. Almost overnight, it felt as though we had become the most familiar of strangers. Having given so much and gathered so many wonderful memories, we still ended up bearing such bitter and spicy. He chose to take on more work and rely on the medication prescribed by his doctor to get through the immediate crisis. And I chose to give him his own time and space, because I had no other choice.

During that period, heartbreak was inevitable. A person cannot have two first loves, yet there are always people who pour first-love-level effort into every relationship. Nor can a person stay naive forever; if a decision is for the best of everyone involved, then following through with it is the right thing to do. I didn't know what would happen afterward, but I had prepared myself for the end. Even if the ticket I had bought three months prior could no longer deliver the trip I had hoped for, I was determined to let it serve as the final page before the chapter closed.

“People are able to become partners because they are friends, not enemies.”

I didn't want to see his life turn out this way; even if we were to part ways, as a friend I still hoped to offer him whatever help was appropriate. Perhaps it was the effect of the medication, or perhaps things were gradually taking a turn for the better. On the night before my departure, he set aside his pride and apologized to me for all the hurt caused over the past stretch of time.

Just like that, the page turned so effortlessly. Does it feel as if a novel you were following suddenly had a rushed, anticlimactic ending? That's because I can't fully describe the internal struggles we both went through during that stretch of silence, and life itself rarely follows such dramatic arcs. It was simply a matter of bracing for the worst and taking the leap, only to find ourselves caught and lifted by a passing breeze. I still can't tell whether I was overthinking it all along, or if we had genuinely just walked back from the brink.

After that, we met up as usual, and everything seemed to return to how it was before. Yet we both knew we had once lost each other, and losing only to find each other again taught us true maturity and empathy. We learned how to love someone else, and how to love ourselves. When I stopped fixating on staying in constant contact with him, the relationship ironically flowed much more smoothly. He gradually sorted out his life and stepped out from under the pressure I had unintentionally placed on him—reaching out to me with newfound ease as we crossed our first anniversary together.

There are plenty of people sharing their couple lives on TikTok; some are genuinely enviable, but they really aren't for us. We neither can nor should live our lives as copies of someone else. Our style is probably still just sprawling across the bed together on a mid-to-late-week evening, trying to figure out where to go for dinner.

Bye for now.