To Life, Romance, and Friendship

I was originally inspired to write short stories and content in a Parasite (movie)-themed parallel universe during 2020, when the global pandemic started and we were all locked inside and stuck playing Among Us. I spent a good two weeks during March and April 2020 on unpaid sick leave, watching the live-action Aladdin and Parasite movies at home while battling the novel coronavirus. While recovering my respiratory strength from the incident, my mind kept going back to how I could no longer see my classmates or friends in person, and how my plans of moving out of my parents' place that year would be postponed for the foreseeable future— at least until or unless work forced me to physically move to a different city.

Something about the friendship between Ki-woo and Min-hyuk in Parasite really resonated with me. It reminded me of the dynamic I had with my friend who I met in high school and really got to know from going to college together at UW Seattle, who I'll refer to as Min-hyuk. We were both quiet, goofy, sentimental, East Asian-presenting dudes trying to find our way in the world. We had our ups and downs that I won't get into here for privacy reasons, but he became a pivotal character in my Vocal Media fiction writing worldbuilding because I indirectly helped him meet the love of his life.

Back in 2018, I added the real Min-hyuk to a Seattle-based Facebook group after I moved back to Portland, since he'd been single for a while and was weary of being used for hookups from Tinder matches. (The real Min-hyuk is at least as photogenic as Park Seo-joon; everyone who's met him in person can back me up on this one). One day in August, I remember I was driving to my GRE testing site when I got a call from Min-hyuk saying he was going on a movie date with some girl called Yureum and her older sister. He had apparently met her through the Seattle-based Facebook group I added him to, and they were about to watch Jon M. Chu's adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians. I could hear the excitement in his voice, and his optimism really carried through the smartphone speakers. As the rest of the year went on, my friend Min-hyuk would call me on the phone from time to time to tell me how things were going with this chick Yureum. First time they slept with each other, first time they called each other boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.

At this point, I should mention the Portland-to-UW "Boyos" friend group that Min-hyuk and I were part of. The core members were me, Min-hyuk, Shishir, and Reginald. Shishir went to the same high school and me and Min-hyuk, while Reginald was in the same gifted middle school program as Min-hyuk and Shishir that I wasn't a part of. We were all quirky misfits in our own ways, and I really think the shared experience of being out-of-state students at a public Ivy really helped cement our friendship on a deeper level than was the case for many of the friends each of us had made independently at college. Shishir, Reginald, and I ended up moving back to Portland for various reasons and never ended up moving back to Seattle for work, while Min-hyuk ended up staying in Seattle after college and stayed there for work.

In February 2019, Min-hyuk decided to introduce his partner to me and the other "Boyos". From then on, every time we had our "Boyo" group hangouts, it wasn't just with Min-hyuk, but Min-hyuk and Yureum. Of the four of us, he was the only one in a steady relationship- I was perpetually on and off dating apps trying to get some (to little avail), while Shishir and Reginald never seemed to show much initiative on that front. This wasn't a good or bad thing, but it definitely set the tone for the pan-Boyo group hangouts that happened. I also visited Min-hyuk and Yureum in Min-hyuk's apartment in Seattle for the weekend from time to time. It was nice to be a guest at their place, and I'd like to think they both enjoyed being able to entertain guests as a cohabiting couple. I guess I was different from Shishir and Reginald in this regard; I proactively made efforts to hang out with Min-hyuk in person beyond our holiday-era in-person group hangouts in ways that they didn't.

When COVID-19 started, Min-hyuk began hosting semi-regular Google Meet video calls among all of the Boyos to play Among Us and catch up on life, since we couldn't physically hang out in person as often or as freely as would've been possible before. I was grateful for us keeping our Messenger group chat alive and the video calls, because it cemented the feeling that we'd be lifelong friends from high school to college and after, and that we'd all introduce each other to our future life partners, attend each other's weddings, and so on.

Another change that happened during this time was Min-hyuk and my high school friend who I'll call Pa-jung moving from the Bay Area to Seattle at the end of 2020. He also went out of state for college, but to a different school across the country, and got a job in the Bay Area after graduating. Pa-jung officially joined the Boyos group after letting me, Min-hyuk, and Shishir stay at his place in SF on a NorCal trip back in 2019. Min-hyuk probably proactively sought out a closer friendship with Pa-jung, since he was another Portland-raised AAPI dude who also worked in tech (like Min-hyuk) and was more likely to move to Seattle for work in the foreseeable future. So when I visited Seattle during the weekend in 2021 and 2022 (whether with other Boyos or just by myself), I was visiting both Min-hyuk and Pa-jung. And so I added a fictionalized version of Pa-jung as a character in my Vocal Media story universe, to add some depth to the fictional setting beyond Min-hyuk and Yureum's romantic relationship.

What originally prompted me to write this piece wasn't how envious I am of Min-hyuk and Yureum's love for each other, or how they modeled aspects of the relationship I want to have with my future forever person (like learning or re-learning each other's heritage languages), or even a mild resentment at them for getting me addicted to Pokemon GO back in June 2021. No, the true impetus for this piece was falling out with Min-hyuk earlier this year, around a year after he and Yureum tied the knot, and the epiphanies that came from it.

Without getting into all the details of why and how the fallout happened, the beef that Min-hyuk had with me was specific to me and didn't really involve any of our other friends. It was easy to rationalize why he wanted to gradually cut off me, Shishir, and Reginald after then. Yureum was easily the best thing that had ever happened to him, and the three of us were relics of his life from before he met her. All of the other people that I had met and hung out with, were people that Min-hyuk met because he got with Yureum, and were people that I had only met because I was friends with him. (Or for Pa-jung, someone he knew from before but only really became friends with as an adult after meeting his now-wife).

The more I thought about it however, the more I realized that my sense of discontent with the Boyos friend group wasn't as much with Min-hyuk drifting away. It also had to do with me being the only other person who ever posted anything in our group chat from 2022 onward. Min-hyuk becoming more distant wouldn't have been as big of a deal if Shishir and Reginald were as socially engaging or proactive as Min-hyuk had been before 2020, or if I felt like I could help Shishir or Reginald with dating like I'd done with Min-hyuk. In 2023, I introduced them to a Hinge match to see how they'd interact with a woman neither of them had met before, and the result made me realize I'm better off helping myself find my person before even thinking of helping either of them do the same. I really hoped that being able to do that for either of them would strengthen our friendship like what had happened with me and Min-hyuk. But accepting that this wasn't going to happen helped me come to terms with how my friendships with the rest of the Boyos have evolved.

The Boyos friend group of my early-to-mid 20s might be gone, but I have faith in the new friendships, old connections, lasting love, and lively laughter that might come my way. In the meantime- who's to say there won't be one last story featuring a future reunion between fictional Min-hyuk and a partnered Ki-woo?