Waiting for yesterday UPDATED 이미 이루어졌다

Before the reunion

The reunion is to be held at a function centre not far from here. In the car, Matt and I are quiet. I'd told him that he didn't need to help me pretend to be a psychiatrist, I was fine with being a private tutor. I'd be an author far into the future anyway. I think sometimes we forget life often ends at eighty, not forty.

When he'd asked me what had changed my mind, I'd said that it was because it turned out that private tutoring wasn't a meaningless job. I ask him how his day has been.

"Hard," he says. "I've remembered most things from medical school but a lot of things I don't remember. What about you, have your memories arrived?"

Just as he says that, memories do start flooding in. I'm suddenly reminded of how Matt and I reconnected. I was outside hospital, having a cigarette. I was an inpatient at the hospital, having a stay for rest and relaxation in a mental health ward. Suddenly Matt came past.

"Matt Kim?" I asked

He stopped in his scrubs. He looked uncomfortable to be fraternising with a patient. But he also looked like he'd been thinking about me too. He turned around and looked at me. "Have you read Ethans book?" Straight to the point.

"Yeah, pretty shocking he's been full Asian this whole time."

"How do you think he feels?" Said Matt. "He must feel devastated."

"Should we visit him?" I asked.

"I think he'd like that," said Matt.

We visited him and he was in the middle of spending time with his adoptees family. His mother came out with glasses of wine.

"We're all adults."

"I remember Ethan mentioning you a lot, Matt," she says. "You know, we just got back from holiday in Korea."

She brings over a photo.

In it Ethan is in a little train carriage in the sky.

"Busan," she explains.

"Wow," says Matt. "You know, there's something I really want to know about the future." He's looking at me and Ethan. "If you're going to be my in law..."

"Matt," I say, pleading. "We have to leave some things as mysteries."

"I like Ethan," I tell Matt now. "I like that he made a mistake but he regrets it. I mean, I never said my parents weren't Asian but I wished it often enough."

"Wait a minute," says Matt. "Doesn't it say in the Bible that if two or more gather in his name, there he will be.."

"Are you saying if we pray together?"

"What if it works?" Says Matt. "What if we really go back to the past, but Im too scared still to ask you out?"

"Do you think I'm not scared too? I'm terrified. I don't know what it is about you, but I'm scared. Now that I know how you turn out, I feel inadequate."

"You shouldn't," he says.

"How-how do you pray? Emphasis on the you. My church is different to yours."

"Lord Jesus, I say, we give ourselves to you. You say that if we ask we receive and that if two pray together in your name our lord listens. We're asking to— to return to the past."

Matt opens one eye. I catch him doing it and laugh. "I'm sorry," he says. "I find this prayer thing funny. And— and now I know you like me, not Ethan."

"We-we make a mistake too," says Lydia. "Judging Ethan like that?"

"That's true. Lydia, you need to read your dad's book."