“Not sleeping?” I asked. 

I typed the words out onto a familiar screen. It was a familiar question, made familiar by years of repetition. The same activity. The same reasons. I thought he would say, “I’m working,” just like all the million rest of us, struggling not to drown in a pool of work. Or school. It was all the same, late nights spent in a dreary building, window-less with no end in sight. 

“Nah,” he replied. “Still trying to keep some semblance of time to myself,”

He was right, in the end. Strange because he was (is?) a workaholic, if there ever was one. Maybe it happens when you love what you do. But it wasn’t so long ago both of us were talking about Korean boys and dramas and girls and plastic surgery and who best to look at while doing stupid things on TV. He was superficial only because he was so deep. 

I wanted to write this down the other day, as I was driving home over the weekend. I can’t remember where I was, and when it was. I know that there was a stretch of expressway with the streetlights off (do you call them streetlights, if they’re on an expressway?) — everything was dark, except for the light in the horizon. City lights, of course. The same lights shone blurred through my windscreen another day, while it was raining. I couldn’t see anything, but it was enough.