The grass underneath her feet is wet from late night rain and around her lush green countryside spread over the world is a velvety blanket glittering in sunlight. Ha Jin draws in a breath and exhales hands cupped against her mouth. The cold dawn tingles against her skin and brushes across the back of her neck.

By her side the land slopes, dipping into the gray green of a vast lake, a lone tree stands in a patch of land rising right at the middle of it- a guardian of the transcendental beauty surrounding her.

It is timeless and reminds her of a life spent thousand years ago. Flashes of fluttering stolen moments grace her memory, whenever she takes a walk by the lakeside watching the wind writing invisible letters across the wast expense of silky water.

Here she has found Miss. Oh.

Ha Jin will not call it a coincidence for she had known the lady through her cousin and college work before. Their shared enthusiasm for herbal lore has brought them closer over the years. An open invitation to apprentice under her has been pending since long.  

Oh Soo Yeon is a physiotherapist and a herbalist who is more inclined to carry on her father’s legacy of herbal medicine instead of just opening up a clinic in the city. The woman is an ageless beauty, just like the place she has bound herself to, and prefers solitude over the glory and wealth her obvious skills should have earned at a more populated venue.

A whim and a bout of anger have brought her here. Battling with nerves Ha Jin had made her way to Miss Oh’s door for the woman she knew had tender eyes and a hardened heart. She was half certain that she would be turned around at the threshold itself.

Ha Jin acknowledges it, that she has brought trouble in her backpack to Miss Oh’s secluded heaven. But the woman had not pressed her for information. Their contact is something only Myung Hee knew, for she had been the one to introduce them having met with Miss Oh in one of the high end cultural exhibitions before. Ha Jin is sure, her adopted family would not come looking for her in these lush green fields. They’d rather comb the city under their shadow than venture into the untouched provinces.

She thrives to keep herself busy, her time divided between her practice and Miss Oh’s patients. Years she spent learning (with only a vague interest) herbal medicine finally coming to her aid. She had no knowledge on physiotherapy but Miss Oh is ever a good teacher and Ha Jin has all the time in the world.

She thinks of the heavy and dusty volumes of ancient scribbles the older woman made her read with distaste.

“I wonder how you graduated without perusing any of these texts!” Her tone is mild and lady like even with raised eyebrows and accusing expression.

“I was always more inclined towards makeup,” Ha Jin mutters to herself as the dust makes her nose crinkle.

But she reads and she learns and she follows Miss Oh and observes. All the while she tries to find answers.

I will not have you live a shackled life

The words are still tucked inside her pillow and she wonders if that is a self deceit. She is not trying to forget, she is trying to remember. Ha Jin doesn’t deny it, that she feels bitter inside.

You would give me wings, but not your heart She thinks resentfully until the memories old and ancient are pricking at her eyelashes. If she wakes up puffy eyed and mournful Miss Oh does not comment on that. However hard she tries, she cannot crib away her curiosity, it burns her heart with a need to know answers find the missing pieces of the story, the truth So tries to keep her shielded from. Who broke whose heart? She questions the night. Who threw whom away? The only man who could have answered has left for god knows where - So she takes up research on their past, borrows from the psychiatrist tenant in the upper floor and reads on history, reincarnation, delusions and every possible scenario.

She builds conclusions and tears them down - hypothesis that brings them together and drives them apart and new memories surfaces. She practices Chinese characters and marvels at how smoothly the brush dances across the parchment and how perfect is the script that she produces.

When water runs dry

Come watch the rising clouds…

She traces the poem again and again, like a message for her through ripples of time, giving her hope to grasp on to. She knows it from before. It is linked to him somehow. Linked to him and heart ache. The man with his name and his scar - and pain in his eyes. And her knees start to throb. But she has her own remedies at hand. She goes on, a little pain in exchange of a fragment of past. She tries to hold on to the slipping details keeping journals and maintaining notes until one day when Dr. Choi snaps.

“Will you tell me what this is all about Go Ha Jin Ssi?” The psychiatrist asks, taking off his large glasses and rubbing his eyes after catching her browsing through his books under the pretext of helping to sort them once again. They are in the process of emptying half his floor for a new tenant and the empty boxes scattered around the office seem to get on his nerves. “Perhaps I might be able to offer quicker help?”

She grins at him sheepishly, hands in her pockets and scraping the floor with her toe. She remembers him from that past life too - he was a man with a kind smile but no comfort to offer, a man who could decipher stars, who told her once she had no place in that story. She worries he will tell her the same again that his and hers are worlds apart. She does not wish to be advised to step away again.

“I’m waiting..” the man taps on his tabletop, his eyes twinkling with mirth. There is something inviting about his tone, that makes her resolve crack. Yo has turned out to be a good brother, perhaps this time around he will have different advice for her. “This has nothing to do with your apprenticeship with Miss Oh right?”

She inhales and takes a leap of faith.

“Dr. Choi?” Ha Jin tries not to sound so hopeful, but she does nevertheless. “Can you hypnotize me?”

If he is shocked Dr. Choi masks it well. Instead he gestures her to take a seat and leans across the table to better look into her eyes.

“Tell me everything…” he says encouragingly.

So she swallows and recounts whatever it is that she can offer. The resurrecting nightmares, the fragmented memories and her her own unexplained bouts of pain in knees.

“So you think this ache -” he waves a hand at loss of a better word. “Has a connection to being tortured in your previous life?”

“I’ve read that it is possible that some sensations and memories get linked together. I’ve read a great deal about it.” She runs a nervous hand combing her hair and steals a look at Dr. Choi, he looks mildly interested but not at all doubtful as she had imagined. “Medically it should go away by now - but it doesn’t. So I think -”

“If you remember it all it will?”

She shrugs, reflecting on her own thoughts. It is uncomfortable to talk about it for she has kept it all for herself too long. But there are problems that she can’t find answers to, herself and Ha Jin dares to trust the kindly old man.

“There is something about that past life, something that my subconscious believes I have to remember in order to correct it now - or something terribly wrong will happen this time around.”

“Are you sure you’ve not read too much and gotten it into your head?” The suggestion should have angered her, but the words are uttered in good humour and Ha Jin finds herself chuckling despite the situation.

“You wouldn’t say that if you know how long this had been going on. I’m serious Dr. Choi, I need to know.” 

“I don’t know Ha Jin Ssi,” the old man sounds doubtful, the look in his eyes weary. He stands up nevertheless and guides her to a different part in his office. “I don’t know how many answers and more problems you will encounter but since you are insisting -” He takes a pendulum from one of the drawers and smiles at her. “Let’s try this.”

He takes her through shifting shadows - she falls and floats and finds herself outdoor. The sun is blinding and her vision slides in and out of focus. There is pain creeping up her spine, coiling around her heart and squeezing. The wind feels like salt against her skin and her cracked lips taste like paper.

There is a song in the background. Its words are unclear and the tune haunts her. Ghosts of memories, of happiness and greed weigh on her heart. Pain, it cripples her.

“Do you love me still?” she asks no one. There is a void inside her, eating her up. She has been waiting, waiting and hoping. Her time was running - he doesn’t come. “Or have you finally thrown me away?”

“I want to forget it all…” she says out loud. Enough of waiting. Enough of hope. “I want to forget it all.”

With a gasp she opens her eyes and groans to find her knees burning with pain.

“Ah!”

Dr. Choi will not hear another word on it as he locks the pendulum away. His eyes are tender as he offers her water and silence to sort her thoughts and calm her nerves.

He doesn’t come… has he given up?

The hopelessness gnaws at her and she escapes outside. With cold nibbling at her toes and wind biting against her cheeks she stares at the lake and wonders…

What have I done to drive you away?

Tears prick at the corners of her eyes, a sadness that is void of reasons taking grip of her heart, Ha Jin stumbles forward her eyes on the lake staring ahead and focused on a memory.

“Let’s stop now -” he says in her memory. There is nothing shifting in his gaze as he meets her eye with bitter certainty. Her heart shrinks in silent agony.

“You are lying.” Please, please tell me this is a lie. She begs silently in the pause that follows.

“We promised not to lie to each other.”

Snap. He cuts her lifeline with razor sharp words. She knows there is unspoken reasons in between, but with her heart clenching in pain it is hard to grasp them. It is hard to breathe.

And she slips. The water calls her like a ghost of an old friend. Haunting and beckoning and she finds its call undeniable. Even when she has lost her balance and the gravity takes her down she doesn’t wake up. Instead she thinks of eclipses and eerie light bouncing off the surface of water.

A large hand splays across her back, an arm swathed around her waist, hoists her up and settles her on the solid ground - away from water, away from flickering past.

With a harsh gasp of air she blinks back to reality, hands pressed against the warmth of another body, a heart beating under her palm and the reality strikes back.

His eyes still belongs with starless nights, howling wolves that run wild and they stir a longing deep in the pit of her heart that pumps in her veins and seeps through her skin. A lone fringe of hair sweeps down his forehead, almost touching his lashes and reminding her of a mask that should have been there. The tide rises and sweeps away her reason. It feels like eons since she had seen him, concern floods her and with tentative tips of fingers she traces his face. Each touch with his skin warm against the pads of her fingers chases away the ghosts of his blood on her hands.

He holds her wrist and stops her hand from wandering.

His eyes rake her face and his breath fans over her. Hunger. Longing. Resentment. He gazes at her with all that and still speaks no words.

“You didn’t listen to me.” He says in the end. 

She appreciates the peace of silence just as it is stolen from her. The words with it bring all the bitterness she had stored away. You wanted to cast me away. She thinks in silence. You aren’t here looking for me. She thinks then.

Her eyes are still greedy, as she drinks his view and her heart turns heavier still.

He uses a cane. Oh the leg, what is wrong with his leg? Is that why he is here? Is he here to see Miss Oh? Does he limp? Will he never swim again?

The questions pile up but she presses her lips together. She had reached out once and he had pushed her away. If this is the cost of her persistence she would take a step back.

He watches her with a guarded expression and something flickers in his eyes. She knows she had done the wrong thing when that momentary vulnerability is masked and hardened.

“So…”

He turns away and limps off, leaving her gaping at her own words.

Mistakes pile up and she is drowning in them again.

**