I still clearly remember the first day I met him. It was the last day of January, 2010, and it was also the first day I'd entered the dormitory of the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy, the most prestigious high school in this nation. With great pride, I was just enjoying my first moments as a freshman, full of ambitious hopes for an active school life enjoyed with like-minded peers. Upon entering room, however, these hopes were shattered.
On that day, I met the first roommate in my entire life I'd ever had in my entire life. His name was Jaehyuk. He was a short, chubby guy, and I could notice that he loved playing baseball, inferred from his baseball cap and gloves in his backpack.
" Hey, what's your name?" he asked.
" My name is SeungChan, and I'm from Jeju-do."
" Oooh, I came from Seoul. My name is Jaehyuk. Nice to meet you."
" Nice to meet you, too. I hope I can have a great semester with you."
" Don't worry....it will be very exciting!!"
Unfortunately, I couldn't catch what the word 'exciting' really meant. The next day, he started to enjoy this extremely 'exciting' life in the room without me. He played a lot of computer games - Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Maplestory, and even Tetris - during self-study period. I complained about his behaviors. I had to study math, memorize Word Smart vocabularies, and do my homework, but he distracted me a lot. Of course, he didn't seem to care about it.
" Jaehyuk, I think you should stop playing games."
" Would you like to join me?"
"Arrrrrr... we have to STUDY!! This is wrong...."
What was even more frustrating was that he always had conflicts with me over various issues. We have never had the same opinions about anything. I liked Rock music, while he thinks it is just a mere mixture of annoying noises. Instead, he listens to Hip Hop, which I regarded a very low-quality music genre. He also loves to talk about baseball, while I love Kim Yuna's figure skating video. I enjoy watching the Pirate of Carribean and the Dark Knight, but he does not like any Hollywood movies.
One day, he turned on hip hop music loudly in the room while I was studying for physics quiz. Being so upset, I urged him to either listen to the song with a earphone or just turn it off. He didn't reply to my anger. Next day, I decided to pay it back for him, so I watched an action movie right next to him so that he couldn't concentrate on memorizing TOEFL vocabularies. Next week, he even played baseball in the 'room', in front of me, while I was writing an essay with a laptop. His baseball hit my laptop, and the LCD monitor was cracked. Next day, I threw away his baseball into the trash bin. Paying back and forth, we kept so many troubles and conflicts each other.
This is how I lived with my first roommate in the first semester in KMLA. We ended up with a conclusion that we were not fitting roommates for each other: there were tremendous differences in lifestyle, hobbies, and interests.
But something unexplainable happened after I finished living with him. It was a weird emotion coming out from my deep heart. Even though I had many conflicts with him over various issues, I couldn't say I hated him. I was often irritated by his lifestyle, but I couldn't directly declare that I 'hated' him. Of course, I still complained about him, but at the time I realized that I also liked him for some undefinable reasons. I couldn't explain where this paradoxical feeling came from.
Even more weird was the fact that his absence made me feel more lonely and empty. Did I feel something was missing in my heart? Was I missing the life with my first roommate? My reason said 'no', but my emotion whispered to me 'yes'. It was very ironical that my bad feeling toward him disappeared after that. Yes. I think I was missing him so much. I didn't know why.
"...I think we should've been better to each other,..right?"
" I think so, too...I regret irritating you so much...I'm so sorry for that."
" That's okay..I think we're still good friends.. and I miss you so much these days...
Wasn't our first semester exciting and dramatic? "
" Yeah....it was dramatic.... I think we can have even a better time if we become roommates again..."
Now I realize that some hard times can be remembered as a valuable memory. Most often, what remains in people's heart for a long time is a very harsh and challenging memory, not an easy and smooth one. My numerous episodes, conflicts, and troubles with Jaehyuk made me keep a lot of memories about him. Whether these memories are good or bad? It does not matter. What matters is whether or not we have learned something valuable through experiencing each other.
I believe it was a valuable experience. I've learned this is how friendship can be even more intimate than before. We never said stuff like "I love you forever!" or even "You're my best friend until the end of the world!" to each other. We said stuff like "Hey you loser!! I'm much taller than you!" or "You don't know how to enjoy life. Let's play a game!!" We didn't even care about each others' birthdays. What's more, we frequently fought over trivial issues: whether we have to wake up at 6 or 6:10, or whether we have to clean up every Tuesday or Wednesday.
Yes. That's kind of weird friendship that we shared during the first semester in room 105. I can't describe this feeling neither in a concise manner nor with commonly used adjectives. It was a kind of vague feeling toward each other. When we had some fights, we often said "I hate you!", but I know that was not what we really intended. Although we didn't have same hobbies, interests and lifestyles, we knew we were good friends; we just didn't express it. That's how our friendship worked.
