Love in Layers
“Even when the city changes, the feeling remains.” — Kowloon Generic Romance
Going into Kowloon Generic Romance blind meant wandering through the story as uncertain as the characters themselves. Staying with it until the end — and then rewatching it a few times after — revealed what makes it so moving: its perspective on grief and romance.
Grief isn’t always tragic. It’s not always about losing someone to death.
Grief is what’s no longer — the echo of what used to be.
It’s change. It’s transformation.
If grief is the disconnection of love, then romance is the connection of it.
And in that way, romance isn’t just between people.
I think about that when I remember my first apartment.
It was called a bachelor unit — basically a bedroom turned into a home, with an electric burner and a mini fridge. There was a standard closet and a tiny corner bathroom. I didn’t care. I was living in the city proper. Rent, internet, water, waste, and parking were all $450 a month.
That first summer night in 2012, the courtyard glowed — a small, two-story complex with twenty-two units. From the garage, the scent of jasmine kicked the nose. At the front gates stood a tall banana tree with its large, fanned leaves. The path split into two, circling a pool in the center. The air was balmy and warm; the porch lights cinematic.
It felt like Melrose Place.
It felt like arrival.
That building held a decade of my life. It watched me grow up.
I moved into a bigger unit with a full-range gas stove, an in-unit washer and dryer, and a porcelain bathtub. Degrees were completed. A dream internship became the long-imagined job at a Big Four company. The younger self’s vision realized.
Then came 2020 — a catalyst year.
My kind landlady had to sell the building, and in 2021, I said goodbye.
The building itself no longer exists; it was demolished.
As of now, it’s still an empty lot.
Maybe that building was a metaphor — a version of a self that no longer exists.
Like the city in Kowloon Generic Romance, life is a layered, shifting space.
Memories linger in the corners of buildings that no longer stand.
Love — in all its forms — threads quietly through the changes.
Grief, romance, and transformation coexist, shaping who we become.
Maybe that’s what Kowloon was showing us:
that love isn’t about what endures,
but what continues to connect us —
even after everything else has changed.
✨ Filed under: reflection, grief, transformation, romance
🎧 Soundtrack suggestion: “Please Don’t Change” — Jungkook
đź“Ť Written in memory of the courtyard, summer 2012
