Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Author: .allbliss.

http://soshified.com/forums/topic/44337-somewhere-over-the-rainbow-finale-part-one/

How can you love a person everyone thinks doesn't exists?

Prologue:

I was… dying.

I was driving when I saw a flickering image that suddenly passed by. Of course, I have to dodge it but everything was a matter of seconds. After the scratching noise from the tires and a narrow turn that had bumped another vehicle, I just found myself in my car gyrating into the air like a tin can being flung into the sky. It was dark and the crash happened on one fleeting moment.

I couldn’t even find a second to scream.

It landed with a loud exploding crash that shattered the stillness I have few moments ago.

Every breath I inhaled was filled with dust and the smell of petrol. There were fires around me as if hell had sprung from the chasm where it thrives. The steering wheel pressed against my chest that forbids me to move a muscle. Every inch of my skin ached, and my emotions were hindered with shock. I’m trapped inside my car upside down, and shards of glass and scraps of metal rubbed against my face while I groaned and dangled, bent horizontally against the ceiling that now touched my head.

I was desperate.

I was dying…

So I just closed my eyes and bit my bloody lips, praying for the redemption of my soul from the sins I’ve committed all my life. On that moment, tears broke free, cascading over my smashed and charcoaled cheeks. My finger quivered in motion so I was then able to realize a fracture on my arms.

I can’t move a muscle.

I was so desperate.

I doubt that that precise second for a prayer had granted any salvation.

I was… dying already.

Until from the abrupt flash of light, I saw a figure crouching down without speaking. The person slipped an arm around my shoulder. With all its might, the heaven-sent benefactor had managed to slide my tattered body out of my car, or remains of what it used to be.

Then there was another loud explosion but I was safe already. I could feel my dizzy head resting on a warm lap, the cotton from my savior’s clothes brushing above my forehead as it stroked my hair: it was utter comfort.

Eyes quivering, light passed through my iris and before I passed out, I saw a pair of eye smile and flashlight beaming down towards my face.

Is this heaven?

Am I dead?

“Blood,” a woman muttered. The repulsion from her tone was decipherable. “Blood,” she repeated, her voice suddenly becoming mellifluous to my ear. Perhaps because she saved me…

… When I thought I was good as dead.

That short whim was disrupted by a loud siren and the ramping of feet upon the road. My savior quickly scurried to her feet and dropped my head from its comfortable pose. But I was so out of myself, I couldn’t even feel the pain when my head slightly smashed against the hard road.

And the next thing I felt was me being situated on a stretcher with a couple of faces staring down at me, talking to me, checking if I’m still breathing.

“Miss, are you alright?” A brisk voice, casual to my ear and insulting, asked me. I felt someone draping my neck with a supporter.

But I’m looking for my savior… the eye smile was gone.

…

…

…

I will find her, I promise.

Even if the search will lead to the end of the world or to the unfeasible task of treading over the rainbow…

I will find her…

Because the moment our eyes met…

I knew…

I loved her.

I, Jessica Jung, had fallen in love with the mysterious person who had snatched me from the fangs of death.

And now, my search has begun.

***********

Chapter One: Green

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The morning light was warm.

On that damp spring morning, the sight of beaming radiance was considered scarce. The rays squinted through the narrow holes of the treetops that roofed the mossy ground, Mother Nature’s verdant shade in the most cooling way. Mighty trunks and bodies of trees far-flung and scattered in intricate pillars had acted as though bases that supported the foliaceous ceiling that had kept the forest its comfortable nestle.

And a girl named Tiffany stood in the middle of it.

She smiled cheerily towards something that seemed to be non-existent though in her eyes, she knew she’s happy to it. And she believes to that simple happiness.

Zephyrs drifted by, carrying with them the scent of flora and susurration of the brushing foliages.

“The leaves were singing,” she said in a frisky tone. Her voice resonated across the yawning isolation thriving within this untouched mossy landscape.

She closed her eyes.

Softly…

Gently…

The wind damped her face with a gratifying touch.

And the grin she wore broadened…

More…

And more…

The wide smile bore her white teeth…

The hushed music of the leaves, mere rustling to others, a symphony to Tiffany, continued its surreal melodious euphony as though inviting everything to a playful etude: everything meant from the tweeting blue jays and peckers to the bombilation of the bugs in a synchronized ballad; the sound of nature… the sound that captivates everyone around the perimeter… an unbearable enticement.

Tiffany abided by the nature’s request…

Allured, she threw her shoes and divested her socks as she started to lift her now-bare left foot…

And she stepped onto the mossbed, the mushy ground felt pleasingly cold under her feet.

The affable concerto of the leaves, of the winds and of the trees mesmerized Tiffany that she swayed her body, hopping and twirling gracefully into the air as though her invisible waltzer had taken her soul, her trust… and it appeared she had already yielded her all to it.

Her chuckles echoed…

Her minor happiness was filled with innocence and of naivety…

But that tiny moment of simplicity spoke the purity of her soul…

She was untouched…

She was happy…

And she just saved the life of someone…

She wouldn’t understand how this work, but the bloodstained jeans were cogent evidence of the heroic feat she will never understand…

Because she’s special…

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Two hours ago, Jessica Jung’s eyes were pinned intently through her hospital room’s window where the view of the dawn in rosy waves of what looked like solar winds greeting the lethargic eyes of her’s. Despite the flyspeck shooting of pain from her strapped arms and bandaged legs, it wasn’t really a hamper to appreciate this morning spectacle.

It was quiet…

Calm…

So serene…

So idyllic…

The peace craved for a lifetime…

On one rosy morning…

One morning that was never appreciated before…

Had quenched the coveting.

…

The door opened.

A girl with big, round eyes and shoulder-length pleat glided her way towards Jessica, who wasn’t so keen with the bustle. Her half-opened eyes travelled from the girl, taking for a jiff a notice of the stylish red scarf and cream-white coat, then back to the blushing firmament.

“Ow, are you alright, Sica?” the girl asked in overinflated worrying. That type of voice somewhat annoyed Jessica in the morning.

The round-eyed woman leaned her arms on the bed as she situated on a stool wearing a dramatic expression that increased Jessica’s aggravation. Oh, how she wanted some more peace right now, and then this person butts in to her silent aesthetic about the sunup splendor. The disruption is a torture, she reckoned.

“I’m alright,” she responded passively, her eyes drifting towards the ceiling. “Yah, Choi Sooyoung, can’t you just give me a minute’s silence? I have enough of your pettifoggery about the job I don’t give a **** to.”

For a moment, Sooyoung looked incredulous. Then after a minute or two, her lips skewed, followed by an obvious mocking snicker.

“You just have been to an accident, for Pete’s sake! Anyways, you can have your tranquility when my interview is over,” said Sooyoung now exasperated. “And I don’t give a poop too about the position the president had entrusted to you instead of me. I always know you don’t deserve it.” Jessica scoffed sarcastically as Sooyoung continued, “Tell me what happened.”

Jessica raised her right eyebrow rebuffingly and rested her sight on the ceiling. Asking what happened had reeled back the event that took place on a curve to Incheon hours ago. Even though she despised the accident, something had made her want to stick to it, being that she should be forgetting such things as it might.

The eye smile in the fulgent light and the tone of the savior’s voice… she still can’t take that out of her head, and apparently, after that ephemeral encounter, she had been more aware of deep things that delimited her.

She had become more ethereal…

More than the stress-consumed office director, she once saw to herself.

On that incident…

She had been changed.

She pondered…

Is this what Buddhists called Second Life?

No, it can’t be.

She was still on the same physique, the same Jessica Jung… the same depressed Jessica Jung…

“Hello? Am I talking to a wall or an empty nutshell?” For the second time, Sooyoung had cut in annoyingly through Jessica’s contemplation. Not so pleased to this, Jessica’s eyes narrowed, and Sooyoung immediately sensed the keenness hence hastily casted an apologetic look. “I was talking to you, cold fish. You should be answering back.”

“I don’t feel ought to respond, in my own personal opinion.” Jessica resumed her above-the-earth pondering. Until it just hit her that Sooyoung might know something about the matter!

This time mustering an excusatory face, Jessica timidly stared at Sooyoung, who seemed to be muttering things under her breath. “Uhmm…”

Sooyoung’s eyes darted toward her’s. “What?”

“About the accident,” Jessica began, continuing her bipolar look in puppy eyes. “I was wondering if you have asked anyone about that. Coz apparently I was unconscious when the crash occurred, I want to really know what happened.” An awkward smile twitched on the thin lips of her’s.

“The medics told me a bit,” said Sooyoung, slightly perplexed at the grin Jessica sported. “But I tend to ask you what really happened coz you are there.”

“Well, I’m half-dead so that means the medics have a say about the matter. Say, Sooyoung-ah, did they mention something like they saw someone with me lying back at the tarmac?”

Sooyoung wracked her brains for a jiff. Beyond eager now, it was clear on Jessica’s face the excitement towards the answer from her furtively intimate inquisition. She prayed for a decent respond… or a terse hint that will lead her close to the stranger that she believed has saved her life.

“They just found you alone there. They even thought you died but had managed to creep out of your car. I dunno… that’s what they said, which I effing doubt coz you’re such a sturdy little nutshell.” She chuckled to herself, as Jessica gazed away, a little crestfallen.

Everything was still so vague…

She was nowhere near there…

Because her savior’s existence wasn’t still corroborated with a clear view of it.

Despising the shaken head of her’s moments ago, she frustratingly turn her back on Sooyoung (with a little wince from the stabbing pain from her arms she just flung to her left pillow due to the disappointment).

“Why, are you with someone when your car crashed?” asked Sooyoung, now with vivid signs of repugnant delving of things.

The meaning quickly registered onto Jessica’s brain, and with a little groan as she faced Sooyoung back, she threw a disgusted look. “What? As if…”

“You still haven’t got over it, have you?”

Her squabble met a halt with that question. Shrugging, she reverted back to her previous position, but now with fresh tears streaming from her eyes and running sideways on her temples and nose bridge.

“You were gone after the party because of it, weren’t you?”

The barrage inquiry about the ‘it’ she wanted to forget about was like relentless hammering of an iron nail through her flesh.

It was a different kind of pain…

And that agony is what brought forth the depressed Jessica Jung.

But no…

She wanted to forget about it…

She still has many things to cope with…

Things that were genuinely relevant to her life now…

“I… don’t wanna talk about it,” she told Sooyoung flatly, emotions suppressed into a stifled voice.

Sooyoung sighed.

“Then,” she began, after drawing herself a deep breath, “are there any questions you want to ask?”

Jessica pinned her gaze back onto the rosy empyrean, now epitomizing the break of the day. A flush of yellow and orange across the sky had literally cooed the morning in barely fledge. A desire to draw the curtains on and bustle the window open to, personally, greet the start of a new day with a new life; to let the beams dance onto the floor, had almost took her soul. Until the devoid glow of the imperfect morning had hark back the silhouette of the person with the flashlight responsible to why she admired and relished being alive on this point.

The smiling eyes… the soft cotton clothes… Can her savior be an angel to the fact that nobody has seen her?

But that’d be extremely surreal.

She knew…

She’s barely herself when the mysterious girl turned up…

But she was conscious.

She knew it was real… if it were not, then it would be the most realistic dream she had ever had.

But it is real…

“Sooyoung-ah,” Jessica called, fired up by the belief that the scene that had granted her the second life was tangible enough to be reckoned. She conversed to her converser without facing.

Sooyoung droned in respond. “Hm?”

“Who called the ambulance to rescue me?”

Stillness occupied the next minute. Then Sooyoung, after contemplating, answered, “The medics said a villager who was living nearby phoned for emergency.”

As Jessica smiled, she found a thin beam that had shone through the fogged existence of her savior.

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Chapter Two : Yellow

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“Tiffany…”

A deep, echoing voice had woken Tiffany from her slumber. The mossbed from where she lay rustled as she scurried up, searching for the voice. With a strand of fear tickling under her chest, she whirled around and sought the source.

“Tiffany…”

The darkness of the night made her all ears. The isolation bred void, and she sensed the chasm engulfing her with inestimable absolute pitch blackness. Her heart throbbed against her chest, a wild fidget from the creeping nullity living within the black fog her sight could not be able to perforate. The drama… the exaggeration… it scared her…

For she never woke up agnizing the twilight in an almost horrifying stare. She had never even opined such existence between the orange afternoon drawing the curtains of the day and an aurora-painted morning. Tonight, there’s neither moon nor stars. The elders of the forest whispered lowly, susurrus of the miscarried action to galvanize a comforting consolation. They just stood there, behind the darkness…

“Tiffany…”

The mentioning of Tiffany’s name in wraithlike resonation had made the hair on Tiffany’s back stood up. So then, she sobbed for she can’t see anything, which had spawn something grieving that had her recollecting the atrocities she suffered back in the town.

…

People laughed…

…

She passed by wearing a dogged eye smile even if it had somewhat made her look stupe.

…

And the mob will break into ripples of laughter…

Roughshod…

Immature…

It was cruelty beyond imaginable.

…

The voice beckoned her though everywhere her sight laid appeared a total barren. Fear crept on her veins, infusing with the oxygen her blood carries onto her heart. She continued sobbing.

“Tiffany, don’t be scared.”

As her moans reverberated, from what the voice had uttered, she found a silver lining. It was a guarantee that she miraculously empathized despite the origin devoid.

“Who’re you?” she asked nigh earnestly, trembling to her feet a trifle as she slumped back to the ground. Fright fluctuated deceleratingly down. A warm light ascended from the nothingness.

“I’m your father.”

In a fast-forward mode, fragments of the childhood memories she had never talked about played inside her head.

A smiling mustached man grinned down at her as she played on a swing…

A middle-aged woman, whose hair was raised in a bun, was busying over the Hanwoo (Korean beef) she’d been barbequing by the fire…

A tall juvenile, with a prominent resemblance of her eye smile, played over the frog who kept on croaking as he pored over it engrossedly, a scientist fledging…

Then amidst of these flickering images, was a small kid with a red-ribbon on her apple-cut hair, and wearing a polka dot dress flowing down on her vernal chassis. The kid crouched beside her brother as they both studied over the bullfrog, laughing at the grumpiness on its expression… a simple mirth over a down-to-earth actuality…

…

A gunshot reverberated.

The throng of people stampeded their small yard.

They were shouting things…

“Spy! Kill ‘em! They’re spy against our nation! Drive ‘em outta here!”

And they continued yelling the same things…

Cursing the Hwang’s… growling delusive speculations…

Until now, the gunshots and the vociferation reverberated at every corner of Tiffany’s skull… a bereft piece of recollection that had caused Tiffany to wrap her arms around her body and shudder… crying… a mournful weep… a desperate beseech for everything to cease…

Body in fervent tremor, she covered her ears with her palm as she continued writhing on the corner, the recollections acting as though a mind-boggling jigsaw puzzle that seemed to form nothing but an abstruse image of a small kid immobile within the depths of the forest, unable to beg her Mama to come back.

“Don’t! No more! Mama! No more! Stop! Please! Papa!”

Angst impregnated her every shout. Prayer was the perfect console, and so she mumbled one but impeded by dark thoughts that haunted her like shadows creeping in the dim, staring at its prey.

Her mama… her papa… her Ki Sun-oppa… they were in heaven now. They left her here, in the middle of the void. Her mama… her papa…. her Ki Sun-oppa… they were nowhere now. Ki Sun-oppa told Tiffany not to cry, but Ki Sun-oppa is nowhere. Ki Sun-oppa told Tiffany not to cry because Ki Sun-oppa will protect her. But Ki Sun-oppa is nowhere. Mama said she will always be with Tiffany, but Mama is in heaven now and Tiffany is alone. Mama said don’t leave the place and told Tiffany to wait, but Mama hadn’t came back yet. Papa said he will scold bullies and enemies that will make Tiffany cry, but Papa was nowhere as Tiffany cry.

None of them came back.

“Tiffany, don’t be scared,” the voice told her. However, fear and loneliness had already taken over her. Like the physical self consumed by forlornness, darkness swallowed her ego. There were only moans, hot tears and a prayer…

“Father, I’m scared,” she replied, infested by the dark past clear through the travailing between the verbalization.

“Father is here, Tiffany. Mother is here too, and Ki Sun-oppa…”

With immense exertion, she gathered herself together and goggled around. The same enshrouding blackness continued enveloping her. “I can’t see you. I missed you all.”

“We’re here. Look!”

And from the depths of the moss, a sight merged into sight, more spectacular than Tiffany had ever imagined. Hundreds of fireflies slowly hovered up, their lights twinkling and providing a different kind of light, an encouraging sort. They all whirled around, and as Tiffany gazed at this wonder, the tears stopped flowing. A grin replaced the sadness… as the benignant storm of glitters hovered around like stars reachable not just with sight but of hands too.

The evanescent void, in retarding finality, truly disappeared. The flamboyant green light drowned Tiffany…

As this undaunted sight relentlessly took place, Tiffany found a gape on the leafy ceiling that sheltered her within Gaea’s embrace. It allowed her to have a view of the night sky dotted with millions of stars. Felicitousness painted the one marvelous grin always stuck on Tiffany, but almost vanished moments ago.

Thanks to the fireflies… to Papa… to Mama… to Ki Sun-oppa… to the stars. She wasn’t alone after all.

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Sooyoung seemed exacerbated now, as Jessica relentlessly emphasized the fact that she was saved by an orphic girl wearing an eye smile and cotton casuals. While they sat on the hospital’s cafeteria, chatting over the two foaming cups of coffee that wisped pleasant fumes into their noses, Sooyoung looked especially subdued by Jessica’s rejoinder every time she disregarded everything that she says. She was just being realistic.

“So you’re saying that a girl like that had managed to pull you out from that car?” she said a bit tersely, ignoring Jessica’s glares and tired nods. “Tell me, Sica: how can a girl – let’s say slightly larger than you – but how can a female brought you off when you said you’re squashed to death and can’t move a limb?”

“I don’t know, Sooyoung. I don’t know,” said Jessica, clinging to what she believes persistently. “But I was effing dying there, and there’s no way in the world I could have escaped the accident. Unless,” there was a glint on her eyes that sent goosebumps over Sooyoung’s body, “unless someone had saved me.”

Sooyoung sniggered, still finding the scene ludicrous. “Yes, you were saved by the phone call from the villager who thrived nearby.”

Jessica scratched her forehead aggravatingly.

“You know what, this won’t lead us anywhere. We’ll know everything once we heard real sense from the accident’s informant.” She gazed down at the cup, and clasped it with both hands, playing the surface with her eyes. Her reflection rippled as it mirrored her face, and as she stared upon it, she felt a tiny flutter under her stomach.

It’s just true. She was really saved by a mysterious girl, who just suddenly scrambled away at the sight of the rescuers.

But why exactly?

Sooyoung had been making some points on their arguments because of this.

“But, Sica… how come she ran away when, let’s say she’s a typical villager: I knew she would love to see her face printed on the news for saving your life. She’s inches to that glory, but why would she scarper from the scene? BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T EXIST!”Infuriation emphasized the last words, and Jessica riveted back to Sooyoung.

“How many times should I repeat things to you? SHE EXISTS! SHE SAVED MY LIFE, FOR PETE’S SAKE!” she shot back, now wearier more than she could ever get. “There’s no way on earth that I could have survived the accident unless someone had saved me, Sooyoung. Someone saved me and I’m going to find her.”

Sooyoung shook her head. “I don’t find everything paradoxical. This doesn’t make any sense at all. It contradicts a lot, and it clashes to what? To nothing! Your so-called savior did not show up when she’s almost there to the limelight, beside the faces of the survivor on Gwang-ju liquidation that just ended last week.”

The Gwang-ju residents were liquidized for fighting against the martial law declared after President Park Chung-hee’s assassination. Students were battered to death by the soldiers while they just fought for justice over their colleagues’ death. A tussle that had sprang from a profound and mutual cause, and spawned the most brutal move that had splattered blood over the military crest. The revolution has failed. Last week, on May 23 1980, more or less 200 were killed and over 800 were injured.

“Shut up, Sooyoung-ah,” said Jessica, aghast when the event reeled back in her head.

“But don’t you see? If it’s someone from the mob, she could’ve demanded a reward for saving your life. Well… unless she was a perfect lunatic and dumb for letting the glory go.”

“I said SHUT THE **** UP!” Jessica slammed her uninjured right hand and stormed away, offended more than ever in her life. The people darted their focus on them that Sooyoung tiredly responded with a shook. Jessica flounced away, gritting her teeth frustratingly, and when she found a place by the hallway, she crouched down and sat on the floor, unmistakably sobbing.

If she was just able to show Sooyoung what she saw; if she was just able to let Sooyoung feel what she felt: she could’ve shouting different things. But Jessica can’t. The only evidences she have is the eye smile she can still vividly remember, the soft clothes she leaned against with when she’s extremely dizzy from the accident, and, ultimately, the wild feeling of compatibility that she sensed.

You exist I knew it. Just wait for me…

The eye smile merged from the nothingness enshrouding in her head.

I have the key that will lead me to where you are…

********

Chapter Three: Violet

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An old man in white trad bustled into the thicket of trees, a bolstering grin etched across his wrinkled face. It was an expression showing only the deepest contentment, and the things unnecessary were fulfilled with a nod and a grin towards the bright spring sky that has been glimpsing through the tiny gapes on the leafy tops of the trees. He was carrying a wooden picnic box enveloped in a red silk towel neatly and simply. A pleasant aroma the box emanated (refreshing odor of wheat cakes and honey-smelling rice cakes dipped on sweet syrup) pertained to only one thing: spring in a box.

The moss-blanketed forest soil greeted his feet with a pleasing cool sensation. Treading pass the pillars of the woodlands and caressing their trunks as though paying a profound respect, he still wore the same smile that seemed to be encouraging something. Perhaps towards the benignant zephyrs that mumbled rustling euphonies, or maybe to the forest that sheltered the girl, who at the sight of him, darted across the coppice towards him, as though she had been waiting for this moment for a long time.

“Ow!” gasped the old man as Tiffany flung her arms around his neck, an action that depicted a father-daughter bond clearly. “You stank like an old pipe, Fany-ah. You should take a bath, and oh, look at those bloodstains! Tsk tsk…”

A browning frame of blood blotted Tiffany’s jeans unappealingly as if it was already her period. Tiffany stared down to it for a moment but after sensing the dulcet scent from the box the old man has been clasping, her eyes broadened as it snapped to the package. The smell of wheat cakes made her stomach squirm, and the old man heard the growl. He chuckled.

“We have to deal with your tummy first, yeah,” he said brightly, settling down on a thick root and ensconcing the lunchbox on his lap. Tiffany sniggered at him and she flashed a pretty grin, difficult to take for it was so seraphic. The old man merely shook his head with a smile and he withdrew the box to his back playfully. At that instance, Tiffany’s brows met and her eyes drooped automatically, an aegyo attack that always worked. Sniggering loudly, he placed the box back and opened it, and it then caused Tiffany’s eyes to gape wide: there lay a laden assortment of wheat and rice cakes that will suffice any child’s dream and craving for spring. But Tiffany’s no child yet she acts like one. She’s that special.

“Hold your horses!” the old man cut in the moment Tiffany had already raised her hands in preparation of devouring the cakes. Her lunge was impeded as the old man heaved the food away from her grasp. She threw him a miffed look. He answered it with a very fatherly sort nod towards her hands begrimed by her early morning excursion that resulted to a feat she hadn’t fully understood. Nonetheless, on the other side of the world, the person she just saved was actually putting up a bridge that will lead her to Tiffany; to the place she considered as the end of a rainbow.

Yet, glancing around from where Tiffany had been scoffing the cakes, it wasn’t more of a paradisiacal place where there should be a falls, tons of butterflies, perfectly bloomed flowers, and tinkling laughs from supernatural beings with wings. In fact, the forest never felt so stark like this, even for the old man, who had expended his life within its foliaceous arms while tending a lonely child, who is now a lady in her twenties.

The trees looked down at him, but it remained frigid. Its leaves rustled and it was somewhat lucky that there were birds that seemed to offer voluntarily a peaceful lay. The tweets resonated, straightening the disarray of tunes encircling around him and Tiffany.

That moment, his eyes slowly fell to Tiffany, studying her. Pity clenched his innards as the events he totally despised flashbacked in his head. The girl he almost killed was now a full-fledged lady, with a beauty untouched and pure. For a moment, he thought she was still a small eight-year old, who was whining relentlessly at the edge of the forest, moaning her mother’s name repeatedly. The aftermath jab of the optical illusion was he found himself staring at the same girl’s face, but now awed upon the beauty that shone flamboyantly. The ribbon on her hair has vanished and replaced by a white headband that looked pretty. She retained the adolescent eye-smile, but her chin got a little prominent to that of her mother’s, as far as the old man could remember. Despite these, she was the living replica of a memory the old man had wanted to forget.

Sixteen years passed by. Did the Hwangs have absolved him from what he had done to them?

A tear silently flowed on his creased cheeks. His bloodshot eyes quivered. His heart accelerated pumping. Guilt bubbled at the pit of his stomach. A profound stare ensued within the next minute.

The loud munching made him to rivet his focus back to Tiffany, who was halfway to her fifth wheat cake. Cheeks bulging and noticing the gaze from the old man, Tiffany smiled. A warm feeling crept on every inch of his body.

Perhaps the smile on the girl he looked over like a real daughter is a vouch of salvation, or a mask that doesn’t convey the true coveting for truth about her family.

“You should drink some tea, or you’ll gonna choke yourself up.” He chuckled hoarsely, concealing the guilt apparent from his eyes that he shut as he laughed. Tiffany joined the mirth with her unique, tinkling chortle.

Laughter occupied the next minute. The trees gazed down in curiosity; they seemed to mutter under their breaths that appeared perceivable due to the sudden gush of cool zephyrs that produced a crackling sound from the nudging twigs and branches high above.

“Ahjussi,” Tiffany finally spoke. The old man displayed attention after taking a sip from the fuming red tea. “Is Mama coming back?” It was roughly the five thousandth time she had asked the same question, but the remorse secluded him from getting weary of it.

“Yes, she will. With your Papa and Ki Sun-ssi.” He had been telling the same lies too, but Tiffany is too naive to secern the difference between a lie and a truth. After the old man’s bogus assurance, Tiffany grinned more widely and poured herself another cup of tea. He couldn’t bear but to be sad while the regret engorged even more fatally within his soul.

He couldn’t see it, but there is a poignant part of Tiffany’s self that has been wailing for answer. That portion of her was impeded by the false promises he encouraged selfishly. Yet, he knew that the time would come when everything will reach its conclusion, and secrets and lies will meet its disclosure. Probably after the rain, he could tell Tiffany the truth about her family.

The Hwangs were killed because of speculations that allegedly pointed them as spies, which itself was a lie. In fact, they are one of the most prominent families from Gwang-ju who had to flee from their old place away from the intensity brought by pointless scuffles, unanswered protests, threats of rebellion, and, like the false supposition that resulted to numerous deaths including the Hwangs themselves, fictitious and haphazard accusations to anyone as traitors to the recuperating nation.

And just when they thought that this place was the perfect fortress, they had forgotten that they were still treading in the same country who was still nursing herself from the war; that delusions and illogical suspicions can sprang from anywhere, whenever and however. The prominence they potently emitted was sensed by hungry families who wanted to take them over. The old man’s kin was one of those egoistic animals. They told the army that the Hwangs were spies from the north, whose job is to record things occurring within the zone they allegedly were appointed. A lie that smoothly corroborated by Mr. Hwang’s occasional trip around the town, which is a routine for preparing himself to write. He was a writer, who hides under a pen name and was shrouded with enigma.

Three weeks after the Hwangs’ comfortable (as far as they know) settling, an order was proclaimed. The so-called spies were condemned with traitorousness. The old tenants were happy. The leader who pointed this accusation, the old man himself, was mirthful too. But it was proved ephemeral.

The conscience’s promised payback slapped him even from the night when the inhumane conviction furtively took place at the edge of this forest where the Hwangs’ probably last remaining bloodline was happily eating wheat cakes right now. His regrets tore him like a mighty force that ripped his soul apart, almost driving him crazy. This should not have happened because of him. This should not have happened to the Hwangs because of him. This should not have happened to himself because of his desire for glory. This is immatureness. This is selfishness. This should not have happened totally.

The conclusion of the highly delusive indicant can be seen from the shadows on Tiffany’s face, which had remained as a mark of the ultimate loss that will forever linger but cloaked by her innocence. The atrocious event’s backwash was pure fraught, an existence that whispered anguish causing a mental disorder inevitable without direct treatment and extreme care.

And to this, came an idea of a consolation that may salvage him from his sin; that may pull him out from this pool of regret that seemed to drown him.

Thanks to him and his wife, Tiffany’s burden seemed to ease, though the lies were constantly told. They were afraid more than Tiffany did, knowing what really happened. No, they don’t fear soldiers, who ought to condemn them for their crude pretenses: they were more afraid that telling the truth would conjure a counterattack that will lead to more delusions and speculations. The country’s wounds were still fresh. The small village where he thrived was already tainted.

“Are you finished? Did you wipe it clean?” he asked after the pondering and noticing Tiffany’s binged gestures. “You always love Soo Rim’s wheat cakes, don’t you?” He stared at Tiffany fondly, who seemed more in to massaging her tummy. “You know what, you should come with me. You definitely should be changing your clothes. The stench is kinda getting into me, and I’m too old to stand such things.”

But Tiffany appeared to be not paying any attention at all. Her eyes were deeply closed as though she was listening to some kind of music: a particularly soothing one. The old man remained rooted on his place, empathizing to the expression with his gray eyes.

“Tiffany,” he called, but she was so immersed to what she was doing. The old man smiled broadly. “What is it?”

Tiffany gestured and shushed him stop. He obeyed, and so she resumed to her reverie, closing her eyes again. He did the same.

The wind flying above brushed the leaves, producing a susurration. There was a yawning sound from somewhere. The rustling waters from the nearby stream seemed to resonate clearly too, with the birds in unending tweeting of a lay that was composed by nature, arranged by how your heart will take the ballad. In this finical moment, the flute stashed in his front pocket always produces music that implies a response to this unique piece of tune. Drawing the wooden musical instrument, he displayed to himself an elating smile.

Then he started playing a clear tune Tiffany always loved. Guilt and imprecise salvation is set aside. There is only room for music, and a placid wave engulfed them. Tiffany looked beyond glad.

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Chapter Four: Pink

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(gosh, this is my favorite artwork so far! I never thought duplicating the image and applying Gaussian Blur to it and converting the duplicated layer into Black and White 8-bit mode, then overlaying it by setting "Lighten" on layering option would create a dreamy atmosphere to the image. Thanks, CS3 and Photoshop skills! Love ya!)

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(this song is my mood regulator. every time I listen to this, my heart soothes and I'm ready to write at least 1,500 words per session without knowing i've written that much. just sharin')

“You’ve definitely had loosened your screws.”

Sooyoung was never optimistic at everything she’s compelled to do right now, which is finding a certain girl and their only mark was Jessica’s vague descriptions. However, a force seemed to repress her aggravation, and let her drive smoothly outside Seoul, into the west: she just saw herself doing that.

Jessica rolled her eyes wearily as she rested her sight at the pane of trees blurring in motion as they pass. Her unscathed arm was leaning against the agape window, and it clenched to some extent, a sign of abrupt annoyance. She had been tired with the same argument. Especially when Sooyoung’s voice become vociferous, Jessica couldn’t help but to submit with a faux nod. She still believes in her savior though. Probably a stupid thing to do, but she doesn’t care. Her life was just saved, and her soul had already adhered with the mysterious girl. Now, she’s obligated to pay the deed she hadn’t asked for, and she would be happy doing that. Wherever this journey will lead her, she doesn’t truly care. The small gift must reach her savior’s hands. And she must deliver it personally.

“Okay, be that as it may, I’m still going to look for her. And besides, you wouldn’t be here if I can drive. My leg’s all screwed up, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she mumbled back, feeling the wind breathing in from the overt window, the breeze damping the left portion of her face with slight spring chill.

“That’s it. That’s why I’m all this infuriated: because of that damn leg of yours, and not to mention, your lame journey that will lead is nowhere.” Exacerbation punctuated every word Sooyoung had just told. But Jessica was too tired to bother.

“You shouldn’t go loopy because you don’t want to drive for me. I’m just as fagged as you because of that machinegun esque mouth of yours you couldn’t keep shut,” Jessica muttered coolly with a grin. Sooyoung caught a glimpse of the smile. She shook her head unbelievingly.

“Going to Incheon is as dangerous as eating rice cakes in front of a battalion of soldiers and offering them none,” Sooyoung changed the subject, with a voice refraining to any keenness that may cause more rattling. “You’re in a country suppressed by Martial Law, Miss Jessica Jung. I hope you’re a little considerate with what you wanted to –“

“I’m not planning a rebellion, or I’m not one of Chung Hee’s desperate supporters. I just want a little mutual requital done within the next month. Then you can live a happy life away from me.” Jessica’s tone indicate equanimity, though a little forced, it seemed to get along well with Sooyoung’s repressed state.

“But why do you want to meet this girl so badly? Why? Tell me and be incisive.”

Jessica’s eyes focused through the windshield, to the view of the spring sky on that balmy ten o’clock. A huge bundle of cumulus was gazing down majestically, and it looked like an island upside down. A view that if would take further impressing, you may realize a world beyond the fluff. An untouched world… a world that doesn’t spin, has firm and persistent four corners, and has an actual basis of the term called happiness, which Jessica frankly lacks these past few days. Until she met a girl, and it acted as though a shimmering candle amidst of a yawning void she’s in.

She loved her from the first time their bare flesh touched, is that enough for a reason for Sooyoung? The eye smile amidst of a chaos writhing in her mind but she had been unable to shed, is that enough purpose for this pursuit? The clinging protection as she rested her head on a warm lap, would that be sufficient that she’s more than obliged to repay the deed? The wild feeling that this girl would break through the depressive cage Jessica’s in at the mo, is that enough to stand for what she believes?

But an ethereal voice seemed to whisper something in her ear, and she nodded to that.

“I just want to get over you.”

Sooyoung looked a little shocked in a jiff at that answer. Slowly, it turned into a grin.

That simple, confessing statement had caused an awkward silence between them. Jessica rested her eyes smugly on the dashboard. Deep inside her, the pain was unleashed from its seclusion.

It’s true. She wanted to forget that she had ever met Sooyoung. She’s sad because she can’t seem to do that. She’s even sadder because a considerable fraction of herself still loved Sooyoung. Albeit Sooyoung’s wedding is imminent, that Jessica should be forgetting about her past, it was all still so far from that point of acceptance… so close, yet so far.

To Sooyoung, who felt a spurt of emotion within, this confession had conjured lucidity towards everything. It’s all clear now. And knowing that, sprang a gap between her and Jessica. That precise moment seemed as though a wall had materialized between them: that deteriorated into isolation.

It has been the bitterest part of Jessica’s adult life to watch someone you love from afar. The fact that Sooyoung was always surrounded by other girls had acted as a seclusion that deflected every possible chance Jessica has to tell Sooyoung what she feels.

Jessica had learned to stand furtively away from Sooyoung’s eyes, smiling to herself and believing that someday, she will be able to overcome her shyness and she would get the pluck of telling Sooyoung everything that was wriggling in the pit of her stomach like snakes every time she saw a smile spread on Sooyoung's face. Months flew by until she had made up herself a plan: she must first befriend her, and when they’re alone, she’d go for the kill. And so, she had tried talking to her, laughing with her, appreciating jokes with her. She had learned about her, she found out her secrets, her disappointments… and even plunging into her love life. And when the bond was sealed between them, that there was more than just solid light glimmering on the link that connected them, Jessica had told Sooyoung what she feels.

But waiting had been an ultimate betrayal to Jessica. And the aftermath was an equally ultimate regret. As much as learning everything about Sooyoung was the fact that Sooyoung was already in a romantic relationship with another girl, which kind of shocked Jessica at first since she always know everything about Sooyoung, and then suddenly, she will reveal a profile of a smiling girl which happened to be her girlfriend who was working overseas. So cliche. So bitter. So disappointing. And the worst part is that Jessica had found out about that the night of Sooyoung’s party, which turned out to be:

“So that’s why you walked off my engagement party? So you could escape the truth by being suicidal. All of it, just to forget about me? The reason why you are so desperate searching this girl is because of that?”

Jessica smiled against the immense struggle holding back emotions. “Partly, yeah. But not entirely, in case your head begin swelling again. I realized that I’m not my old self anymore. I think I'm able to move on now. The accident taught me many things, you see. Perhaps because my head was shaken and my sense went back. I dunno but here’s what I learned: one, cope with your disappointment because it’d be pointless succumbing to it especially when you had already made up your mind about killing yourself, which would be the last resort and your last sign of foolishness; two, there are many people in the world that I could love, not just you; three, everything won’t end just because someone you crazily loved turned her back on you because she told you she couldn’t feel the affection you were frankly showing; and finally and you should be taking a note of this final piece of wisdom, there’s a rainbow after the rain.”

Sooyoung was speechless for a moment. It seemed as though it was her fault Jessica was so heart-broken. It was insensible. But to prevent more argument, she took the pluck of changing the subject, “This journey would be futile, just by judging your description. And if there’s a rainbow waiting for us out there, look around you: it isn’t raining. When there’s no rain, there’s no rainbow. What does that mean, may I ask? I guess there really is nothing waiting for us!”

There was something that suddenly blow Jessica’s deterrent up against her true feelings. “You couldn’t get the metaphor, you narrow-minded Shikshin? I – forget metaphors. I didn’t ask you to interfere my purposes, I just want you to drive for me because I – can’t – ****ing – do – that!”

“In case you hadn’t smelled it, you just postponed my wedding!”

“I’m not interested to your wedding, I don’t give a damn about it on the off chance that you may think I’m doing this because I still effing love you when I know don’t!”

“You just told me that there’s a part of you that still feels the same.”

“But you don’t have the power over me anymore.”

“But I still believe that that girl you kept on ranting about does not exists in the real world.”

“You don’t know a single thing about her.”

“The same way you do, to her.” But Jessica disregarded this searing fact.

“I’m doing this so I could effing forget about you. And do you know why I wanted it that badly? Because I want to be somebody else! Did you get the picture? I want to be loved as I had loved equally!”

There were hot tears trickling from her eyes. She had yelled all those things without looking to Sooyoung. Jessica can’t bear looking at those glittering black eyes. She doesn’t want to see any faux empathy or forced emotions running down on Sooyoung’s cheeks. She just wants to recuperate from her depression… so badly.

“Then,” resentment towards starting a conversation like this was clear on Sooyoung’s face as she utter as though there’s a frog on her throat, “of all the people you knew that you could hop along with this crazy journey, why me? Specifically why?”

Jessica wiped the tears with her sleeve, and spoke with a muffled voice, “I want to show you that I don’t turn my back on reality. I face it.”

The smug eyes continued resting on the dashboard as if she was trying to penetrate the plastic with her gaze. She drew herself a deep breath, and there was a sudden comfort running down into her lungs. As much as she had been tired with the same argument, she was also tired of being understated. There were much more things exciting in her that she found out herself, than just a simple girl rooted with shyness and could just adore with her eyes. And this stranger… this certain human being… had awoken that adventurous side of her… and she was sure that in the end of this winding journey, she will be more than just someone who had been reborn. For sure, she would be someone who will fight for what she loves, for what she believes; she would withstand any coaxes that will drag her down, or will tell her she’s plunging into a surreal world. Heck, come what may, she will remain firm.

Her lips pursed, and there was a warm flow on her veins. Is it blood fidgeting with excitement or is it something far beyond? The askew lips turned into a grin.

“I’m sorry about what I said. I know I have no right shouting those things to you. It has been my entire fault. You hadn’t done anything wrong to me, except brightening me up with your optimistic words about my savior.” Although a little sarcastic on the last statement, her grin suggests easiness from what had been eating her these past few days – or weeks, more likely.

“Don’t worry. I don’t give a poop.” Sooyoung was grinning too, though there were some sparkling stuffs on her eyes. She thought she had apologized too much to her. Appendages to that would be overinflated. “Is this girl even pretty?” she asked.

“Let’s just say that when our eyes met, I felt the same mutual attraction like the first time I met you.”

Sooyoung snorted, as they take on a slight curve. They haven’t noticed where they are now. Jessica scrambled over the map.

“Damn, you talk too much,” said Sooyoung, pulling over for a while by the edge of a familiar forest.

“It’s because of you. You know how I hated being on sentimental mode.” Jessica flashed a reminiscing smile over the map, and pored back to it. They were driving for at least an hour. And judging the location where they were parking, they seemed close to their destination. Or, as Jessica scanned the trees and the moss-blanketed ground by the landscape beside the road and the asphalt reminder of her foolishness and of overcoming and of finding out something new: “I think we’re here.”

But a loud growl erupted, disrupting to the sudden spurt of excitement tingling on her chest. She riveted back to Sooyoung, who was sporting a goofy smug while kneading her tummy.

“Emergency situation,” Sooyoung grinned nervously. “Shikshin’s needed some filling up.”

Jessica sensed a hungry monster that will whine without being fed. She felt compelled to submit.

“Okay, we can drive into Incheon or to the nearest village so we can grab something to eat for your grouchy stomach. But we’ll be back here right after we’re done with the cakes, okay? Right after we’re done with the cakes! ”Jessica looked repressed dismissively in contrast of Sooyoung’s jovial gestures.

After giving the place a short, searching gaze, she turned back to the windshield, and there was a scratching of tires. As they left the place, Jessica knew: she’s inches close to the rainbow.

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Chapter Five: Beige

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(thanks to this song, it helped me breaking out of my procrastination. i don't usually have writer's block, and i don't get uninspired, but sometimes, i'm so lazy enough not to write, and to deflect its arrival, i listen to this, and i get pumped up. just sharin' again.)

It did not take them another hour looking for the nearest village just to grab something for lunch, as the sun valiantly glimmered amidst the outlying pale sky that was blotted with wispy cirrus. Moreover and to Jessica’s ultimate relief, there had been no arguments while they search the village with their eyes.

After a swerve, an abrupt gunning up through the asphalt itinerary, a slight curve and a mere five minutes, they found themselves plunging into a small village nestled near the outskirts of the forest and belting around the Hwaseong Fortress. Entering the peaceful hamlet felt as though running back in time. Captivated engrossedly, they drifted their eyes over the living accommodation that only depicted modest testifying of the tradition lingering from the oven-baked brick walls that ran along the sidewalk, from the ancient-looking cobblestone road, and to the thatched shelters. Upper class abodes have their roofs crafted in intricate tops, and more of its exterior was emphasized with sophisticated yards, artificial ponds and bare patios accentuating bliss towards this persistent architecture, which can be considered artistically ancient. In addition to the generally nostalgic ambience, villagers that brightly passed by were all wearing traditional clothes, adult women have their hair in buns, and males have beards and prominent goaties. Their manners showed ancient accustom as well that seemed inches to being so prissy. Yet, everything in this place spoke the history of Korea itself and the flamboyant influence of the dominant religion. For a moment with a slight glee, Sooyoung and Jessica felt alienated as though they’re urbanized dogs visiting a cage of well-mannered monkeys.

“I’ll be darned,” Sooyoung muttered under her breath, scanning the place with eyes broad open and mouth gaping wide. Hunger had been put aside for a while: right now, she’s in deep awe about the village’s persistent orthodox vivid from the infrastructures and domiciliation.

Jessica was equally stunned too. Perhaps this was caused by the culture shock brought by living through an urbanized (and disarray) city. She continued gawping around like a child in stark fascination.

“We’ll be lucky if we find a Chinese restaurant around,” said Sooyoung, pulling down some speed as she studied the village beguilingly. “No, it would be our biggest day if we ever find a restaurant! I think popped rice is the only thing edible that they sell here.” Jessica frowned. Sooyoung appeared more interested in getting her stomach filled than their real aim. Or rather Jessica’s aim. “Do you think we can barge in a luncheon and ask for a dduk (rice cake)?”

“Perhaps they could let you in, when you’re on your floral hanbok (traditional female suit). You said you’ve received one once back on your third grade. Some Yuri bloke handed one to you, right?” smirked Jessica. Sooyoung grinned childishly that Jessica responded with a wince. Sooyoung gloated, and she riveted back to the nostalgic view of the hamlet.

“But seriously, I have a vibe that this place was a refugee when Hwaseong Fortress had been attacked by barbarians. And the ancients retained, to this date, the tradition that bores me out and at the same time fascinates me,” said Sooyoung interestedly.

“If this was ever a refugee, think: why have they built one just outside the fortress? I assume it would be more prone, right?”

“You know how much I hated history and anything academically related.” Sooyoung sighed as Jessica stuck her tongue out. Then they refocused back to the view outside.

The village appeared rather a typical old one, probably one of those that insisted the modernization and persisted to the traditional Buddhismal orthodox of the tenth century. Settlements as such exist, especially on far county parts of the Hermit Kingdom. Yet, they find it somewhat odd to discover one in a location almost so near to a highly industrialized city. If it’d be based on the map, Incheon wasn’t that far from this place, and it would be highly unlikely for this place to evade the creeping industrial revolution that has been gripping the nation with both blessings and utter disarray. However, almost at once, after staring at the village’s nestling ground embraced by verdant trees and foliages, Jessica concluded that the place was perfectly concealed behind the arms of the forests. It appeared quite enough for an ideal sequester against the the complexity of modernization.

The denizens were eyeing them now as they pass. Their KIA 1980 Convertible, as it snailed along the road, seemed to draw surfeit attention that the passersby’s gazes were more like a glare.

“And they find the metal horse absolutely aggravating as it elapse their very road,” murmured Jessica in an ancient-ish accent. She tried to brandish a grin towards a haughty middle-aged man, and she withdrew apace after receiving a lour as a respond. She turned around to face Sooyoung. “For Pete’s sake, they’re glaring at us, Sooyoung-ah. Pay more attention to your life than rice cakes!”

She noticed Sooyoung fidgeting her head, squinting through the window for a restaurant. Annoyed, Jessica let out a loud nasal sound and cleared her throat. “Ehem.” Sooyoung drew her head back towards Jessica, who was pursing her lips to the villagers’ unpleased state. “I think we should park this thing up and excurse by foot.”

But Sooyoung appeared to be not paying attention to Jessica. She was gazing at something over Jessica’s shoulder. Then there was a sound of scratching tires, and Jessica jolted against the dashboard, her heart suddenly thumping fast as her chest banged to the plastic. Sooyoung’s eyes widened zealously towards the view at Jessica’s back. Highly annoyed, she turned around, gritting her teeth, and to her utter exasperation, she saw the sign that would definitely make Sooyoung frantic doubtlessly: Noodle Restaurant.

“Weee! Just when I thought they’re frozen forever in their hanboks, now they have something from the 20th century!” shrilled Sooyoung while Jessica frowned. “I bet their fish cakes would be something insanely traditional! And traditional is delicious!” Sooyoung punctuated the last statement with words suggesting insatiable hunger, and she scrambled out of the car, ignoring the belligerent gazes from the denizens. She hurried into the small wooden pub that emanated a slightly dingy ambience even just from staring at its exterior. But to Sooyoung, nothing could beat a huge bowl of Ramyun and soup.

“Aish,” sighed Jessica, pulling herself out of the car to follow Sooyoung’s fog of dust left from her unrestrained longing for her stomach to be filled up. She had already entered the saloon, as Jessica ambled in, keeping her aggravation to Sooyoung as she scanned the place.

“So it’s quite neater than I’ve expected,” she divulged to Sooyoung as she sat opposite to her. The same as its wooden exterior, the interior was somewhat neo-traditional that truly shattered Jessica’s expectations. From the low ceiling, gloomy orange lamps, to the calligraphic sketches etched on the paper wall. And to add to her bewilderment, was a set of menu listed on a cardboard laid in front of them. “Maybe this was a first-class restaurant to them.” She drifted her eyes around and saw only a couple of people minding their business silently but all wearing slightly elegant traditional clothing. “We’re dining with the royals, Sooyoung-ah.”

Brushing Jessica’s statement off, Sooyoung restlessly tapped her fingers over the table, unable to shed the exhilaration through what she ordered two bowls of noodles for herself. “And judging the price, eff, this is tad cheaper!” She started to lower her voice and head to Jessica as though she was about to say something serious. “Jess, the price was half, compare to any typical Ramyun stand in Seoul. Keep your mouth shut about that.”

Jessica lightly smacked Sooyoung’s face gallingly. “Shut up and just eat. We’re still going to look for the informant’s house.”

“Informant?”For a moment, Sooyoung had forgotten their real purpose.

Jessica rolled her eyes wearily. “The one who phoned the medics after the accident! That person lives around the area, right?”

Two steaming bowls of noodles disrupted to Jessica’s exasperation. Sooyoung’s eyes broadened even more as she sniffed the fumes the bowl delectably emitted. Jessica merely looked bowled over.

“We can search for that person in the afternoon. For a while, watch me eat these,” Sooyoung blurted, muffled between mouthfuls of soup. Just when Jessica had grabbed her chopsticks, Sooyoung had already heaved the two bowls to herself.

“Yah! You ordered two for yourself? What about me?” she asked, slightly tearful. Moments ago, she’s greatly annoyed to Sooyoung’s famished whines. But at the sight of these steaming bowls, Jessica’s stomach squirmed quite suddenly with hunger.

“Go and get yourself a fishcake. And don’t you dare touch my KIMCHI!”

Jessica’s chopsticks got broken by an abrupt jab as soon as she had prodded the tip to the fermented side dish.

“Why you… you… insatiable piece of cra –“

Every heads are riveting towards them now. Sooyoung was just busy slurping the soup and sipping the noodles, and at the same time, alert against the invading chopsticks when it starts touching even the surface of her food. With a final lour, Jessica said, “Imma go outside, you greedy a-hole. Don’t leave this place, okay? DON’T LEAVE THIS EFFING PLACE!”

Sooyoung nodded.

A little doubtful, Jessica flounced away, limping into the flank only to be surprised by the huge crowd laughing at something.

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“Get up you mangy idiot!”

“Yeah, before we give you some rice cake, show us some moves.”

“C’mon! DANCE!”

Then there was a ripple of laughter and derisive merriment. Jessica forced her way in, and to her dismay, she saw a girl sprawled on the ground, crying unmistakably as she covered her face as she moaned.

An elderly man in blue trad comes in with a pack of cakes wrapped in edible leaves, and he stooped down towards the center of attention, the sprawled girl.

“You want this, right, you little stink-spy?” He mocked as he waved the cake in front of the girl’s face. She took a lunge towards the cake but he was quick to dodge it, and he broke out into chuckles. It was followed by the jeerers’ cackles that surrounded them.

“I’m paying you money! Give me the cake!” the girl beseeched hopelessly, her voice stifled. She got up to her knees and shook the man’s silk pants.

“Geroff!”

As though she was some kind of a beggar, he kicked the girl’s arms away and she fell back on the ground, this time kissing the soil with her cheeks. But she quickly recovered and rose up, composed for some strange reason.

After shrugging off some dirt, she started doing a childish dance partnered with an uncouth singing. “Like the rose of Sharon in the spring… My love for you bloomed…”

The mob broke into laughter as the girl, who looked like she had truly loosened her screws, continued her ballad with matching moves. She doesn’t seem minding the cackles. She had her eyes only to the cake. “Until we meet again… under the shade of Hibiscus… and smiles of joy… my love for you bloomed… like the rose of Sharon in the spring…” She sang, and apparently, she enjoyed it, regardless of the idiotic notion anyone will come up the moment one laid eyes on her.

…

But this is cruelty…

As the girl fell back to the ground...

As the man sneered in front of her face...

As the crowd cackled...

Cruelty...

So inhumane...

And Jessica couldn’t take it anymore. She wasn’t as entertained as the people around. Utterly furious that she can’t raise her head, she tore through the mob into the midst. There was a moment’s stillness…

…

Jessica enveloped the girl with an embrace, to everybody’s utter bewilderment.

There was another moment’s silence…

…

“Is this your sense of entertainment?” whispered Jessica, hearable because of the atmosphere as though the air was held tight. Seething with anger, she pressed the girl closer to her chest, heaving her tenderly… putting up a promised and undaunted fortress and using her somewhat potent tone to fortify it.

The girl never felt so protected like this. Usually, she just got along with the jeers because after it, she can finally eat the cakes at peace inside the forest. Nobody had stood for her before. Except Ki Sun-oppa, Papa and Mama, but they’re all gone now to Heaven.

But this is heaven. A different kind of paradise… from just leaning against the arm of the stranger.

“IS THIS YOUR SENSE OF ENTERTAINMENT? MAKING FUN OF PEOPLE?” Jessica roared, with eyes resting on the ground and body in tremor as she impeded the spurt of wrath above her neck.

The mob appeared choked in the neck, speechless. Jessica erected from the genuflecting, disregarding the sudden stab of pain from her almost-healed ankle, and she gently released the girl’s arms. Still with head bent down, she strode towards the elderly man, who was cheerily mocking for people’s amusement.

“She wants a rice cake, why don’t you just give her one.”Jessica’s voice was dangerously repressed, and she seemed avoiding the man’s gaze.

“Because it’s for sale, dummy,” he sneered, turning towards the mob’s discomfited looks.

“How much is it, then?”

“Two thousand for four.”

Jessica darted her eyes to the store’s price board.

“But it says five hundred for four.”

The old man looked flustered. “Five hundred then.”

About the formalities Jessica witnessed and was amazed with in the past few minutes inside this village: with the people’s actions, it turned into an epic letdown. Jessica fumbled her fingers to her side pocket and extracted her wallet. From it, she drew a crispy five hundred bill, and she passed it over the man, who infuriately snatched the money.

“Kill joy,” he turned to his shop and packed the cakes. There was a minute’s silence until he faced Jessica back and handed a bag of cakes. “Here, and go away, will you? You don’t belong here, city girl.”

Still her head down, she turned her back on him and moseyed towards the girl who remained knelt down still sporting a shocked look. The rest of the mob walked away back to their businesses, but palpably muttering to themselves curses to Jessica.

Jessica bent down and handed the girl her cakes. “Here,” Jessica flashed a kind grin. The girl’s bangs were obstructing her eyes, but for sure, Jessica had noticed a sweet eye smile.

Slowly, the girl’s hands travelled from the ground, to Jessica’s front pocket. Then the girl brandished another grin as she slid a bill into Jessica’s pouch, and then she pulled herself up. After cleaning her jeans and gray cardigan from dusts, she walked off, hopping her every step and singing, “Like the rose of Sharon… My love for you bloomed… we met on a crowded place… and you have your smile addressed… only to me!”

The last, high-pitched note that the girl hadn’t carried through, made Jessica grinning to herself, as she arose, watching the girl from behind. Jessica’s hands crept into the pouch and pulled a very worn out five hundred bill. Her grin broadened…

Strangely, she could still feel the girl’s warmth on her arms as though the person had left a force to her… a clinging force… a might beyond imaginable. Dazed for a moment, her eyes travelled from the sky, to her palm. Then she took the second feeling her body: Her heart thudded frantically from its cage, and she could feel her face reddening. Her breath doesn’t just turn arduous, but it felt as though her exhalation’s byproduct was warmer air.

…

She riveted her focus back to the girl, who appeared to be rooted on her place, staring at Jessica, studying her…

She noticed Jessica’s gaze…

Even from this distance, Jessica knew she blushed…

Then the girl fixed her bangs to the back of her ears, revealing a pair of smiling eyes that made Jessica gawped like an idiot though deep inside her, something had just erupted.

The girl waved a hand, while wearing the eye smile, to the idled Jessica, who was still pulling herself together after a sudden slap of discovery.

“I… I…” Jessica blundered to Tiffany Hwang, as Tiffany hopped back to her pace.

*********

Chapter Six: Orange

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Unable to move an inch, Jessica just stood there, watching Tiffany as she hopped cheerily away, her image slowly diminishing. Some unknown force clamped Jessica’s feet on the ground, and she remained dazed for the next second.

Should I run after her?

No…

I should call Sooyoung!

Because I want her to know that the girl is real…

And she’s in front of my eyes right now… but gradually getting away… again…

I wouldn’t let that happen…

So… should I take it in a stride no matter what?

Yeah…

She raised her right leg with immense exertion as though the gravity was pulling her down, immobilizing her.

Blast, why am I acting like this?

Her heart stayed frantic. Her eyes were wide disbelievingly, as it rested on her thighs.

No, I should definitely call Sooyoung…

Her sight darted back to the diminutive silhouette of the girl, and she felt an abrupt longing to run after her… to fulfill the reunification her heart craved these past few weeks.

But can I stand a second looking at her eyes?

I don’t think I can do this without Sooyoung…

Frustrated at her legs’ behavior, she pummeled her thighs with a painful blow. But fixedness persisted.

Damn it, Jessica Jung, why can’t you lift a leg?

I need to fetch Sooyoung…

I want her to be my lips and voice…

Because I doubt I will be able to converse with the girl…

And alternatively, I wanted to see your face while eating your words…

That’s a sight unquestionably worth seeing!

Sooyoung…

Help…

I’m confused.

Should I run after her?

And leave you behind?

There was a rustling sound as a slightly humid zephyr brushed above her head. Passersby were cold towards her hence there was no noise of any kind, except of that of low and gibberish conversations from the people. No one was paying attention to her, and she doesn’t either. She was just gawking at the tiny silhouette of the girl as it strode away…

And there was a fulgent light in her brain that had her pondering about everything.

The girl who was running away from her is the present, and the other one who was busy scoffing noodles is her past. And in front of her was a crossroad: one that leads to something mysterious and exciting; the other, into a curb secluded by nightmares she doesn’t totally deserve. One path that may lead to eternal happiness and would enlighten her flustered soul, and another unclouded road to a lonely world imprecise of happiness.

The road to the present would still take a risk since the light maybe a glimmering lure to more suffering. However, the road back to the past… is craggy, solitary… a place intended to nurse wounds.

But between these two, she must choose.

Should she take the risk?

Or will she consider staying put from the realm of pain brought by occasional reminiscing of her stupidity and tactlessness?

There was yet another sweeping of an abrupt gush: this time it tore on her face. That air was warm, a seemingly close touch to a tender caress of an ethereal existence.

She closed her eyes…

A smile broadened on her face.

There was an abrupt lightness from her legs.

She could finally lift the right. And she could finally feel the backwash of the blow her left had received. However, on that precise moment, excitement had already engulfed her soul, leaving her physical self off to any palpable sensation.

Come hell or high water, she thought, after deciding to leave the past behind to run after her present or, to some any luck, her future.

++++++++++++

“The butterflies fluttered… deep in me I knew…”

Tiffany Hwang sang as she skipped her every steps while nibbling the soft and tasty rice cake enthusiastically. In her, she doesn’t care about anything, even though it suddenly became smelly because she stepped on something muddy on the road as she hopped. But to the bystanders, the reek was overpowering to disregard. She passed by a flanking of market stalls, and, following her with eyes, were people wincing from the stench.

“The rose of Sharon… in the meadows of everlasting verdant grassy bed… I met you –“

A particularly irritated ahjumma spun around after sniffing something fetid, and she found Tiffany walking pass her. “Aish… that idiot! You’ve stepped on a poop! Can’t you smell it?” the ahjumma yelled at Tiffany’s back.

Tiffany heard the annoyed utterance. She stopped on her tracks and faced the ahjumma, who was hindered from buying tangerines by the stinking interruption. “Why?” Tiffany asked naively to the ahjumma’s sudden vexation.

“Stupid,” she murmured through gritted teeth. But arguing to someone like her would definitely not make any sense. In final sort, she told Tiffany, “Just go home and wash your shoes. I think you’ve stepped on a particularly disgusting poop. The village chief won’t be pleased to you.” There was a small trace of sympathy on that statement.

But Tiffany doesn’t seem to catch what the mother had just told her. Head tilted, her look as she gazed at the mother’s face was still inquiring. “What?” She asked innocently, emphasized with her innocuous eye gaze.

The ahjumma groaned in finality. She just gestured Tiffany away and she resumed back to her business, with the fruit seller smirking at Tiffany. The mother couldn’t keep it to herself too: she chuckled. A definite sad type.

Befuddled, Tiffany scratched the back of her head and remained on her spot pondering until she noticed someone hiding from behind a wooden post near the spice stand. The person quickly withdrew her head as Tiffany, who looked puzzled for a while, slowly turned around. She returned to her pace, smiling at the rice cake and disregarding the stalker.

“Like the rose of Sharon… my love for you bloomed… under the –“

Walking only a few meters, she quickly spun around and, once again, finding someone scrambling back to the wooden post to conceal away from her gaze. There was just a sudden flash of blonde. Wondering who could that be, Tiffany went back to her tracks and this time, more alert.

But the person, whose strands of golden hair were obscuring her eyes, were more brisk and determined than her.

++++++++++++

Had she noticed me?

Astonished as a pair of smiling eyes darted towards the dark brown of her’s, Jessica hurriedly scurried back to her hidey-hole. The fleeting moment their eyes met made her legs trembling. Her heart stayed agitated as though a bird fighting its way out its cage. That fist-sized muscle thumped hard enough to exhaust her while blushing in deep crimson. The feeling of utter chagrin left her all flustered that she fanned her face with her hands, lightly flying her bangs up with thin breeze. She had already made up herself, but why can’t she behave casually?

Geez, why am I always like this towards the person I like?

I don’t think I’ve learned the ropes from my previous experiences!

You’re a not a damn high school anymore. You’re an adult! Act professionally!

But since when have I managed to stay calm in front of the person I so like?

God, help.

I seriously needed this girl…

And…

She remembered the atrociousness the girl had received in the arms of the villager, how everyone around this effing place considered her as a mere laughing stock. It stabbed Jessica like a dagger and at the same time, it tugged her heartstrings beyond tolerable that she had interfered to the scene.

She needs me…

The moment she had thrown her arms around the orphic girl, she had already sensed sadness in her that was masked blatantly with those innocent smiles that seemed stuck. She knew the pain because of the way she had cried and begged for something that could truly make her happy. Yes, given that her conduct is apparently immature, but there seemed to be a history behind it. That bitter side, which Jessica would definitely delve out to the surface, was a shadow she had caught a glimpse with amidst of the inhumane domineering the girl had to bear. That momentary second, it was like a million times expressive than beseeching.

What’s behind those smiles?

Are you molested or something?

Is something eating you? Nagging you? Torturing you?

Let me know, please…

And…

After heaving herself a deep breath that her chest puffed up twice the normal, she walked away from her shameless concealment with eyes dramatically closed.

I will ease your pain…

Heart in full rage and hysterical, her eyelids shook and gradually, the window opened but the girl was gone.

++++++++++++

Sooyoung stomped her right foot in frustration as she stood outside the noodle restaurant, checking her wristwatch from time to time. She felt so replete, it seemed as though the noodles in her tummy are writhing like snakes, imminent to bursting. Angrily grinding her teeth, she drifted around with her eyes for any signs of blonde.

Jessica had been away for half pass an hour. It’s already a quarter pass twelve, and they still don’t know where the informant’s house is. And due to the precious time expending uselessly like a lit candle in a bright place, she paced into the sidewalk, stomping her every steps exasperatedly.

While cursing Jessica with all her heart and soul, Sooyoung took a swerve on a paved path, walked pass a flank of stands and bumped a girl who was hopping on the sidewalk with eyes closed.

“Watch it,” she told the girl, who looked pretty with her pitch-black apple cut hair and happy eyes in curved slits. However, a fulminant reek wrinkled Sooyoung’s face as the girl continued addressing a rather childish but cute grin.

“Hehehe,” she sniggered. “You have really nice, big round eyes! I bet you can see in the dark! I wish I have eyes like yours, so I can see if Mama was in the dark. She just suddenly disappeared there.” Unaware of divulging something personal, she told Sooyoung the last words with slight sadness. “Oh, wait.” She groped in her jeans’ right pocket and extracted a piece of rice cake. “Want one?”

In repulsion to the stench still lingering but lightly, Sooyoung shook her head, swinging the food away. “No, thanks,” she gasped.

With a last unforgettable smile, the girl walked off. Greatly relieved, Sooyoung resumed pacing along the footpath, staring at the cobblestone as she thought, “Is she an idiot?” Leaving the subject well alone, she held her head straight and saw a limping image drawing nearer towards her.

As the golden pleat bounced, Jessica hysterically strode towards Sooyoung, as Sooyoung started making a face.

“The… the… girl… stop… her… come…” Jessica blurted out, halting in front of Sooyoung. She arched down arms on the numbed knees, panting. Her eyes darted back to the minuscule figure of the hopping girl slowly getting away, and with a final sheer to the right, she vanished. Jessica moaned in lassitude with a crumpled face. Sooyoung simply looked furious.

“Where in the world have you been?” burst Sooyoung irksomely. “You went away an hour and a half ago! Where have you been?”

Gasping enough, Jessica found a second to tell Sooyoung something that had widened Sooyoung’s eyes incredulously.

“The girl… who saved me,” Jessica puffed but with a really different grin on her face, “I think I found her.”

------------------

Chapter Seven: Gray

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(it's optional that while reading the chapter, you're listening to this. )

Tiffany’s gaze was straight. Her way of hopping was rigidifying, and abruptly, she felt a tingle of fear under her chest, a dreading sort. In one particular second, she caught a glimpse of the soldiers, who were resting under the shade from the resplendent afternoon luminosity engulfing the cozy village with light orange tinge. Slowly, her pace decelerated, and her legs trembled.

A flashback played in her head… the moment she caught the passive gazes of the army men.

The main entrance thundered forcefully from the angry banging that seemed to be coming from trolls in mad desire to break through. It roared across the house, perceivable anywhere within. The little girl pressed her palm to cover her ears as she threw the blanket around and hiding underneath it, as though it was a huge help keeping herself from the enormous fright that was slowly eating her up like a huge monster swallowing her. She closed her eyes, her body in fervent tremor… she could feel the loom like shadows with maniacal cackles creeping underneath gradually ambling towards her.

Then her room door slid open, and an appalled Mrs. Hwang stooped down towards her, seizing her arms with uncontrollable fear.

“Tiffany, get your coat. Hurry!” Mrs. Hwang’s voice was equally hysterical to her movement.

The innocent girl with an apple-cut hair and puzzled look on her face, quickly heeded with the request. She rose from her bed and darted towards her closet. The relentless banging continued to resonate below, and she saw her mother fidgeting with anxiety. Tiffany was still wondering what’s going on, though she knew there was something definitely wrong tonight.

“Hurry up, Tiffany! Your father is waiting for us downstairs!”

Tiffany delved deeper for a pretty coat, when the impatient Mrs. Hwang had restlessly strode towards her and just grabbed whatever. Tiffany sobbed.

“That’s ugly! I don’t want to wear that!” Tiffany moaned, her eyes drooping sadly. Mrs. Hwang glared at her potently and Tiffany merely groaned with eyes sparkling. Mrs. Hwang knelt down and with uneasy hands, she donned to Tiffany a thick winter coat that caused a considerable uncomfortableness. Then the mother faced her daughter, wearing a face marked with inexplicable fraught, and said, “Listen to me, Tiffany. Don’t cry, okay? No matter what happens, don’t cry. There are bad people outside. But don’t worry. Ki Sun-oppa and Papa will protect us. Just don’t cry.”

She was requesting her daughter to be mature in mere minutes. It was an irony of the saddening kind. Tiffany nodded.

They descended through the stairs and found an aggravated Mr. Hwang and a terrified Ki Sun. Mr. Hwang’s great wrinkled face that reflected only the deepest wisdom, was now twisted with anger. Ki Sun’s handsome visage was crumpled with anxiety. His matted hair was conspicuously obstructing an apparently troubled expression but he tried his best to look compose, amidst of the chaos swirling around like a heavy cloud.

“Tiffany, c’mere!” Ki Sun beckoned to Tiffany. The little sister flitted towards her brother, flinging her arms around him for comfort, and pressing her face to his clothed side to sob what her mother had wanted her to keep. She’s showing fear without basis, because to her everything is a blurry disarray. Why are there people roaring outside? Why are Papa and Mama look so frightened? Why’s everyone so angry? Why does her Mama wants her not cry?

Ki Sun stared down at her emphatically as her embrace tightened.

“We’re going into the forest. It’s dark. Their pursuit would be futile in the pitch-black nothingness.” Despite the seething wrath, his tone and words spoke with pride and art. Because he’s a writer… and right now, he’s staring at the darkest story of his life.

The banging was unending, until with a crashing finality, the door burst open. A throng of soldiers funneled in, with their barrels pointing menacingly with cold murder held by people with sneering faces. Mr. Hwang quickly grabbed his wife’s arms and the fraught-struck family slewed into the kitchen. After arriving at the backdoor’s step, there was an echoing gunfire. It would be the last time Tiffany had a clear view of her brother’s enlightened face, as he gradually fell down like a pathetic doll, and thudded against the floor, sprawled.

"Run, Tiffany!" he gasped, as the blood spurted from his graying lips.

“Oppa!” Tiffany murmured, trying to have a touch of his brother's soft cheeks, until someone had heaved her away. Another gunshot reverberated, but Tiffany saw herself running away. Her father had carried her, and the three were striding into the clawing foliages to the forest.

“Oppa,” the present Tiffany had finally escaped from her haunting reverie. She was talking to herself again, as she paced along the cobblestone sidewalk while staring at the ground, pondering more…

The wound remained fresh, a forever mark of the pain, of the loss. The agony, it was as bitter as loosing the will to live. How many times has she denied the fact? Argh, too many times, she thought.

Fear tingled on her spine… that night - that cold winter night - the little girl saw her oppa fall. The pool of blood mirrored the little girl’s dazed face… the reflection was coaxing her to more sufferings. Sufferings…. How many times has she denied the fact that she’s suffering?

++++++++++++++++++++++

“I think I’d rather stay in the car,” Sooyoung told Jessica, the moment they’ve arrived at their rendezvous after three hours of fruitless searching. Jessica, though there’s a trace of tiredness on her face, remained determined as she frowned to Sooyoung.

“Good,” she began with sarcasm, “that would be one burden down for me.”

Sooyoung lethargically glowered. “Nice. It would be one less of a burden to me as well.” She still wasn’t convinced with Jessica’s statement, but she thought it would be much more helpful if she would keep it to herself. She just nodded.

“I’ll be back before nightfall,” Jessica promised to Sooyoung, then looking down at her amber-rimmed wristwatch. “I still have two hours. I’ll start searching on the outskirts near the forest. We still haven’t checked that place out.”

Sooyoung can’t hide the fact that she was annoyed about the things going on around Jessica, but she couldn’t also conceal the fact that she was amazed on how driven Jessica is right now.

What had made Jessica to be so determined like this? It was so beautiful, looking at her face in spite of the lethargy and trickles of sweat. She seemed enjoying it, searching for the girl. A glint on her eyes says everything would meet no matter what, if she would just stand firm to what she believes. It was so beautiful, the determination… oh how Sooyoung wished she can convince herself fully and help her.

She stared at Jessica with eyes sparkling fondly and nodded.

Then Jessica set off, her determination would be the feet, her heart would be the path to the place where she believed she would be truly happy. That shimmering place under the rainbow… she would definitely get there for she had fought and conquered reality just to stand unwaveringly towards it. It was a motivation more worth pursuing than moving on. Because once she got what she wanted, there would be a prized eternity sufficient for an everlasting smile to linger on her face…

++++++++++++++++++++++

The mighty sun glared down, a last demonstration of his might before signing off to the west. A tsunami of orange hue had splashed down sepia upon the cozy village (Jessica still hadn’t found out the hamlet’s name yet, and she thought it was unnecessary at the mo). Jessica stared up to the sky, again, munching the majesty sweetened by her newly discovered aesthetic towards the resplendent actualities delimiting her little world. It was a scene scarce from her mundane lifestyle. She let the glow to submerge her with inestimable luminosity, she felt herself glittering for a jiff as though she was some kind of a supernatural being. She could sense the light penetrating her skin with such euphoric warmness; she couldn’t bear but to grin.

“I’ll find you,” she told herself, eyes shut and body in elated mode. Everything is feasible for her, for she believed that it was feasible. Everything is going to be all right, for she reckoned everything would be all right. The power of the mind… she could’ve thought about it long ago so she wouldn’t be as depressed as she was days ago… how dumb has she acted, she realized.

She sought every corners of the village’s fringe. She drifted the place with her eyes, and bearing a grin as though she was already there. With the sky in pale pink glorious state, with the sun so comforting and so warm, perhaps she was right. She was already there… beyond the rainbow.

After the futile minutes that ticked by, there seemed to have no choice but to plunge into the forest. After making up her mind that there would be no crazy beasts inside, she entered the foliaceous gate into a barren world yawning with isolation and thriven with mighty trees, their trunks pillaring across the mossy starkness and supporting the leafy ceiling. Somewhat pointless, she casted herself around for the next minutes – or possibly hours – she doesn’t really know. She was much more focused to finding the girl than knowing that the sun was waving glimmering rays goodbye.

Out of blue, a noise rustled.

Dramatically, Jessica whirled around; alert that it could be a beast or beast-like man.

Another susurration resonated. It was approaching closer…

No…

She was approaching it closer…

She trembled at her feet, fighting the wild covet to flee. But another clinging force had pulled her down, fixing her on her spot. Again, she felt heavy in the inside. Her breath turned operose.

There was something creeping, she knew it.

Behind the thicket?

Yes…

The rustling sound seemed to emanate behind the bushes…

Exerting her legs on, she faltered towards the source of the sound…

Slightly tottering…

Slowly…

Gently, she squinted through the holes earnestly.

…

…

And she found what she had been looking for.

She tore herself across the copse, and found the girl standing with her back on. Then Jessica’s usual freaking out had caused her to be stock-still as though her body had solidified like wax. There was yet another wild fidgeting throbbing against her chest, and gradually, her face turned into a deep shade of crimson. It felt hot, as she stared at the back of the mysterious girl, who moments ago appeared to be walking away but came into halt after hearing Jessica’s noise.

The girl did not turn her back off. Instead, she gazed at Jessica through the corner of her eyes, looking over her shoulder and head bowed down. She wasn’t smiling, nor there're traces of happiness around. Everywhere turned sober, the passive trees droned, and there was no wind. The two just stood there, one rooted with shyness and the other immobile because of the disruption from her reverie.

“Please,” Jessica gasped, now sensing the oppressiveness in the air. “Don’t run away again.”

The girl withdrew her gaze and faced straight, holding her head up now. She clenched her hands tight, as the spurt of sadness made her legs quivering. Then she fell to her knees, with a muffled thud from the mossy spring soil. A sob resonated; a shuddering scene, that epitomized sad sentiment being unleashed, can be seen.

Jessica doesn’t have the energy to walk to her. She could feel an aura of immeasurable pain emanating from the girl, like steam that burns. It acted like a force, deflecting her when she tried walking closer. Therefore, she just stood there, with eyes glittering with emotion. The excitement that surged on inside her was now hanging up, bedazed to the sight in front of her right now. The atmosphere was heavy. It felt as though a large veil was cloaked upon them.

“Hey,” Jessica mustered everything she had to utter those words. The girl stayed with her lamentation, not paying any attention at all. “Are you scared?” she asked in purposive bolstering.

The girl heard the question. The eye smile glimmered; the cheeks were wetted with thin layers of tears. Hiccupping slightly, she slowly spun around to face Jessica.

Jessica stared back at her sympathetically.

They gazed at each other, as the glimpsing rays tripping the light fantastically around them waltzed with the gale high above. For a moment, it hit their heads that they could just gawp there for a considerable period... knowing each other through instinct and mere impressions. Heck, what can be more unusually romantic than knowing a person you don’t even knew by staring at her for hours, as she also stared back at you. At first, it looked boring and emotionless, but to them, it was like unraveling their innermost ego and x-raying each other in an inquiring sort.

Until the girl took the pluck of rising up and walking towards Jessica. The mushy ground resounded cutely as the girl moseyed. She wanted a more intimate and closer to look to the blonde girl who appeared wishing she was able to comfort her, and voluntarily.

“Are you scared?” Jessica asked again, her thin lips skewing at the corner. The girl walked closer… Jessica could see the glitters from her eyes twinkling…

She motioned even more closely that Jessica could clearly see the black tinge of sadness on her eyes…

Then before the full knowledge of her conscious self, Jessica heaved the girl to her in a mingle of two bodies pressing against each other. The birds started playing a symphony of rejoice as they witness the reunification as spectacular as the kissing of the indigo portion of the sky and the sunset’s orange. A warm flow ran down in every inch of Jessica’s veins, and Tiffany felt as though oxygen was breathed into her lungs after the pressure brought up by her dreadful recollection. Somehow, she could sense that Jessica is the person who can alleviate her from her misery… from the grief she doesn’t deserve.

“Take me with you,” Tiffany sobbed as she tightened her embrace like implying the desire she had failed to voice out. Jessica ran her free hand over her hair, and she patted her back, solacing her with everything she can gather.

Then she faced Tiffany and said, “You’re already there.”

-----

Chapter Eight: Brown

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A tall private officer strode in toward the Captain, who was behind his desk and busy sniffing the steam puffing up from the cup of black coffee he’d been holding. The private automatically saluted, and the Captain’s wrinkled face, which appeared a lucid proof of the battles he had fought, stared up to him and said, “At ease.”

The private almost robotically straightened, and began, “Intelligence report, sir.”

The tranquility over the cup of hot beverage turned evanescent as he shifted his sight from the drink, to the private’s yellowish face, noticing the thick eyebrows and deadpan slits for eyes. The captain’s mustached lips twitched into a smile. “Fire, Private Kang.”

“Sir, based on our latest intelligence report, an informant from the village near Hwaseong told our insiders about the existence of a spy currently dwelling within the town’s parameter. The informant also told us that the said sleuth was living inside for years, without our knowledge, sir. Because the village chief is keeping her,” he expressionlessly told the captain, in his deep, unexpected tone.

“Ah yes, that village… I can remember it very well,” said the Captain calmly, and he took a sip from his coffee. His eyes travelled from the wooden desk, to the stacks of files in a messy pile; then back to his coffee, and then darting through lucid windowpane where the April’s crescent moon was in smiling glimmer amidst of the star-dotted pool of dark blue across the night sky.

Through the captain’s eyes replayed scenes of screams and moans that day… back in the days when he was still a carefree private objected to hunt down a family alleged of espionage. Though he always doubted the accusation’s footing, (the idea seemed wavering and rather personal) the high-ranking officer’s order was the only thing that must matter. Half-heartedly, he, with the band of soldiers, some fresh from the civil wars and furtive battles between the south and the north, stepped into the same village, with their barrels drawn and hearts reluctantly ruthless. He could still remember their cries, the nineteen-year-old boy’s expressionless gaze, as he lay spread-eagled across the floor his pool of blood reflecting the moonlight that was traversing from the window. Even he, the Captain, couldn’t deny the cruelty from the cause without such basis. It haunted him, as though a coax from the devil sneering over the stillness he occasionally had for himself. But he already got over it, and he always considered it as a road he had long since passed through. He’s now a full-fledged soldier, with a rank.

“So she’s alive, eh? The Hwangs’ little girl, and the village chief was keeping her?” The Captain said those in such icy tone, and with eyes shut while placing down the cup. There was a slight sneer on his face as he continued, “The old loony. He told the soldiers he would deal with the girl himself. Never thought he would backstab us after the guarantee we were forced to agree with. Such betrayal to the country.”

Private Kang’s stare remained unexpressive, as he stood next to the table, waiting for either the dismissal or an order. Minutes of reflecting ticked away, as the Captain sat in his comfortable squashy chair while staring coldly upon the nothingness. In his head, there were only reverberating sounds of roaring gunfire and lacrimation partnered with relentless beseech for life, for freedom, for justice.

At long last, the Captain break into the stillness and told the next move. “Organize a party. I want, by tomorrow afternoon, the platoon already assembled outside. We have another tick to squash. That won’t take us all day. We’ll do it ruthlessly quick.”

The private automatically nodded and prompted at once in a salute. “Yes, sir.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(listen to this. you'll feel the gist of the chapter. )

The thirty seconds Jessica have Tiffany in her arms was like a whole day of bliss. To her, it was like that but to Tiffany, it was as though an hour of extensive relief from her almost lifetime wretchedness. An hour, she thought. No, she wanted this to last forever. She didn’t like the feeling of being left out. She had enough of it for a lifetime. She wanted this forlornness to be over now.

Jessica tightened her embrace, fortifying the protection she wanted to bestow to Tiffany.

Tiffany never been hugged like that after so many years.

Leaning against Jessica’s body, she knew that the cringing days are over. An assurance... yeah...

She didn’t know Jessica’s name, but it looked as though they had known each other enough. The trust, the vulnerability, it all come out so natural to them, as if it was more than fated to happen. It was as if they had already met somewhere; more like their souls were already twisted together by God’s hands: a soul-like adhesive have them stuck, strengthened by serendipity, brought forth by destiny.

However, at this moment, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they have each other for themselves, and the dimming world they’re in at that one mere moment was being lit by the fire they emit deep within.

Jessica let go of Tiffany, and Tiffany gave her a smile, a grin that simply resembled a token of gratitude for easing her pain. But to Jessica, everything that’s happening was an acquittal that grew into something more like a blossom of a fiery sensation inside. And she’s touching the petals, as she ran a finger over Tiffany’s cheeks, studying her, feeling her actuality… feeling every breath Tiffany exhales, the warmth she gives off, everything that would affirm the existence of the savior: the person that saved her from the brink of death and taught her that every story must end with a happy ending. That there was hope, and all she, Jessica, must do is to let herself go, like spreading her wings and attempting to fly. Because for sure, someone, somewhere and somehow, when she’s about to fall… a person would catch her no matter what.

“You saved me,” she muttered, her lips slightly moving for she wants the smile to stay stuck. Tiffany remained gazing at her eyes, equally observing Jessica. “Do you remember that?”

Tiffany’s puffy eyes suddenly curved into a distinct eye smile. She ignored the question and quickly seized Jessica’s arms, pulling her as they both launched deeper into the forest. Bewildered to some extent, Jessica merely followed Tiffany, despite the growing blackness from the veils of the night and the verdant leafy shade above.

They tore across every thicket, and run pass every tree, both gigantic and thin. The mossy bed under their feet cushioned Jessica’s tired pedes, allowing the flow of more vigor. It was more like flying, as they both glided on, with Jessica having no idea where their destination would be and with Tiffany who looked pointless. But Jessica’s complete faith to this lovely, yet eccentric girl is sufficient for the feeling of security, regardless of the shadow crawling in the middle of the seemingly endless blackness. She would be more than glad to plunge into the chasm with a grin etched blatantly and flauntingly.

All of a sudden, Tiffany halted. Jessica, who had her eyes engrossedly pinned to Tiffany, wobbled at the abrupt halt and took some second to catch her breath. Then she drifted her sight around, realizing that they’ve just gone out of the forest, and was now standing by the highway, the fresh blue of the night contoured the darkening surrounding. The ambience felt frozenly eerie.

What’s in Tiffany’s mind?

Jessica, who sported a puzzled look, ran an eye over Tiffany, who was fidgeting from where she stood.

Why’s Tiffany acting like this? Is this her own very special way of implying elation? Where are they?

The trees were murmuring, breathing toward them a slightly chilly breeze. The asphalt road that ran sideways, the fern that covered the side, the sky that looked as though in a preparation for a mournful weep, all spoke of the morning when the accident happened. It do because they’re standing at the same location at this point.

“Hey,” Jessica’s voice was stifled as she called from Tiffany’s back. Tiffany spun toward her, bearing a smile as though there was something sparkling somewhere near. “What’re we doing here?”

Tiffany motioned closer to Jessica, her lips held straight as it travelled slowly. Jessica, who looked stunned, had her eyes wide, and as Tiffany moved closer, Jessica’s insides were in the verge of blissful bedlam. She could feel her heart tardily becoming uneasy, an embarrassing growth deep within. They were just the two of them there. With Tiffany in a journey moving toward Jessica, and with Jessica, fixed on her spot, her lungs skipping two breaths at a time.

Tiffany’s lips were inches to Jessica…

She could feel Tiffany’s breath, a warm sort… a gentle, warm sort…

Then she could sense a repressed giggle and a tickle of goosebumps all over her body like her blood circulates twenty times faster than normal…

She just shut her eyes, biting her lip anxiously and with mind already made up on what would happen next…

“I saved you here,” breathed Tiffany directly right into Jessica’s ear, causing a mild tickling all over. Gradually, her eyes opened, and sparkling.

“Yeah, I met you here…” Her voice faded. And so was the vigor to stand up.

And Tiffany’s face flashed suddenly in front of her, and she felt a light peck on her lips.

++++++++++++++++++++++

They both just stood at the side of the road. Jessica merely studied Tiffany with her eyes, and Tiffany appeared as though waiting for something. They had just kissed, and of course, this meant only one thing: they’re now sealed. Jessica must now stand for their sake; she must do whatever it takes to help Tiffany. And that if she wanted to have an eternity with her, which she undoubtedly planned all along, right from the moment she laid eyes on her. This had become a responsibility: a sparkling obligation she ought to fulfill with an immeasurable love and utmost sincerity.

“May I know your name?” All this time, Jessica has been extremely curious of who really is Tiffany from the inside that she had forgotten to ask the first thing the two strangers must inquire.

Tiffany, who was gazing at the graying sky above, riveted to Jessica. It was a one romantic moment. Despite the bitter breeze, there was an adequate source of heat for them. A fire that cannot be perceived but them, and right at this moment: it was gleaming as the sun on a fiery summer afternoon.

“Miyoung.” Tiffany answered, a little friskily.

Jessica chuckled. “Miyoung?”

“Uhm.” Tiffany nodded, refocusing back to the not-so-resplendent night sky. Jessica gazed at her for a moment, and then she decided to stare up as well. She couldn’t find anything interesting than the emptiness of gray outlying across the empyrean. Perhaps ‘Miyoung’ have this amazing eyes that let her traverse her sight pass the thick, fog-like gray clouds.

“There’re no stars tonight.” Jessica told ‘Miyoung’ with a hint of inquisition.

“What?” Tiffany asked more naively than ever. Jessica merely smiled.

“There’re no twinkling stars in the sky, right?”

There was a rustling noise, and Jessica darted her sight back to Tiffany. Tiffany had flitted in back to the forest, and had left Jessica, who looked bowled over for a moment. Until not long after a minute, Tiffany’s silhouette drew itself from the dim, waiting for either Jessica to run after her or just stand there to watch her.

“Twinkling? Twinkles appear down and up,” Tiffany did a rising gesture. Jessica smirked. Tiffany’s image vanished, and there was a brushing sound inside the dim. The susurration did not last for another minute…

And right before her eyes, the small second that Tiffany had jumped toward her, the sparkles Tiffany was talking about merged into a wave of twinkling fireflies. “See?” Tiffany said to Jessica, their smile paralleled, only Jessica’s was more awed.

From the darkness, came a flood of light. They rose up, in an encircling motion ever so elegantly. Scenes like this never appeared in the city, and right now, right at this amazing moment, Jessica had the chance to cherish it. Like the way she treasured every second with her savior, ‘Miyoung’…

They slumped against the bed of grass, still by the asphalt road. Watching the fireflies is more than enough of accommodation, than the stiff benches in front of a giant like Seoul girls apparently enjoy. This is more spectacular, Jessica thought. Because she had the love of her life leaning against her shoulder, resting her head… resting her tired physique…

“I will protect you…”

She had said that but only in her mind. It was too cliché mentioning that guarantee: she’d rather put it into her actions. Creeping from behind, her arms travelled from Tiffany’s back, then around her shoulder.

They were now a fortress against any enemies.

They have found now the peace they’ve craved always.

Now, and perhaps until eternity…

Without the prospect of tomorrow, or the next day. What matters is ‘right now’. Right now that they have each other; now that they have their arms around each other; right now that their hearts are burning with tall flames of affection; right now with the fireflies sparkling around despite the twilight that enveloped them.

“I want to be with you forever,” Tiffany whispered, in a tone way too mature than Jessica had heard and saw of her. “They left me in the dark. I cry so much but they never came back. I’m sad.”

Is this the right moment for the inquisition? Jessica nodded to herself. “Who left you, Miyoung?”

Tiffany pressed her face to Jessica’s arms, sobbing unashamedly, sobbing blatantly… sobbing so grievingly. “They left me in the dark. They never came back. Mama… they never came back. I call her. She did not look back. People in green jackets. Walking with their sticks. Pointed it to Papa. Loud. So loud. Mama cried. People laughed. They pointed their stick again. Loud. So very loud. I want it over. So loud. I want it to be gone. Mama. So loud. I’m scared. You told me not to cry. I’m scared. People… with their sticks… pointed to Mama. Mama cried… so loud. Mama didn’t want me to see. But I see. Mama didn’t want me to hear. But so loud. Mama… help me. You.” From the darkness, Jessica saw a deeply shattered face, contorted by the agony bounded deep within. Then eye smile had vanished. After saying those confessions, there are no laughing matters anymore. Pain… Jessica could see it from the Miyoung’s eyes glittering with tears.

“Don’t worry. I will... I will…” Jessica now fully understood that taking Tiffany was not an easy task. The amount of pain she give forth, it was monstrous… atrocious… so difficult to take… so damn huge beyond anyone’s agnizing.

She just wrapped her arms around Tiffany, the only consolation she could give at the moment. “Don’t worry, Miyoung. Don’t worry. I’ll get you out of here. No one will hurt you anymore.”

“Help me, please.” Tiffany continuously murmured the same plea. Jessica couldn’t help but to sob against Tiffany’s arms too. Happiness… what is happiness? Why’re there tears? Why does everyone have to cry? Have to leave? Have to stay put?

After crying everything inside her, Tiffany went to her trance, still around Jessica’s arms. For leaning against it, was protection, understanding… warmth.

“Tiffany.”

A hoarse voice from a male resonated, disrupting their moment. Jessica looked around, but Tiffany remained angling against her shoulder.

“Tiffany?”

It was coming from behind. Jessica gently raised Tiffany’s head, and rose from her nestle.

“Who are you?” asked the voice.

Jessica spun toward the source, and found an old man in blue trad, holding a lamp that lit his not very pleased look on his face.

---------------

Chapter Nine: White

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Who the hell are you?”

The old man’s voice deteriorated with anger, suspicion and shock, seeing Tiffany with a complete stranger in an intimate leaning. Jessica scurried up, causing Tiffany’s head to slide down, and her eyes quivered open, dazed at the darkness.

“I… don’t come near to us,” warned Jessica, shielding Tiffany as though the old man was a vulture, hovering at the scent of a desperate prey. Tiffany rubbed her eyes and glanced around, and saw Jessica’s back on her. With curiosity, she crept up and stared over Jessica’s shoulder. Immediately at the sight, her eyes broadened followed by a shriek.

“Ahjussi!” Tiffany tore towards the old man and threw her arms around him. Jessica looked floored at once at the sight of this, but recovered in the next second, sensing the fact that she knew a lilliputian quantity about ‘Miyoung’.

Tiffany playfully hanged her arms around the old man’s neck, but his stare addressed precisely to Jessica was cold. “Who’re you and why are you with her?” There was something repressed in his tone. Perhaps he scrupulously avoid venting rage in front of the girl, who was dangling around him, a gesture only a daughter does to her father.

“I’m… I was just,” stammered Jessica. She broke the eye contact and gazed at the ground, her mind in whirl of juggling thoughts whether she would say anything to him or just walk out. But then if she chose the latter, it was like turning her back to what she had fought and believed that brought her to where she is right at this point. “I… I saw her… at the town. The villagers are making fun of her…”

“Why are you with her?” The emphasis of the question had sent a chilly stab as a bitter lash of wind came tearing towards them. The darkness was being penetrated by the lamp, but her face was barely visible upon the tiny source. The old man didn’t have any idea of who she is and what she looks like. He was scrutinizing her about why she was with Tiffany, disregarding who she is.

“Because I want to be with her.” She carefully picked the words that surely wouldn’t pique the old man but complying with her true emotions. Honesty might save her, because right now, she was like stepping at thin ice, and she didn’t have a single hair of knowledge whether the old man’s in belligerent state or not. But her trust on her words and its lucidity would surely do the trick, she thought. She held her head straight and found a pluck of confidence within. “I saved her from the mob because I like her.”

The old man brushed it off obnoxiously. “Stay away, from now on.” It didn’t sound a request at all; more like a dictation uttered through a potent and prideful tone.

“No,” Jessica countered in a driven sort. The old man’s cold gaze above the little glimmer suddenly stiffened.

“Then Tiffany shall be the one who would gonna keep the distance, if you persist.” The old man turned his back around, and gently seized Tiffany by the shoulder, walking away.

“I would just follow her wherever.”

The testimony echoed across the stillness; a pertinacious prerogative from someone who would especially withstand whatever: it timbered into the old man’s ears in form of dogged words. “You don’t know Tiffany.”

For sure, the ‘Tiffany’ he was talking about is Miyoung, Jessica reckoned. “Then I will know her, if you would just let me.” Is he her father? She watched Tiffany rocking the old man’s arms while humming a tune. He looked over his right shoulder, his back slumping.

“Is it enough that she had once saved your life for you to stop nagging her?” he asked, to Jessica’s enlightenment about the fact that he was the informant, and apparently, he saw everything that had happened back at the accident. Including Tiffany’s feat of pulling Jessica from the Reaper’s gnawing.

“No.” The short words were becoming irritating to him. But there seemed to be sincerity in it albeit annoying.

As he faced straight, he said, “C’mon, Tiffany.”

But walking only three steps, he halted to see Tiffany had stopped moving and was gazing at Jessica, her face in a display of deep longing. “What is it, Tiffany?”

“Her,” she directed a long finger to Jessica. “She… wants to save me, ahjussi.” Jessica’s face was emotionally passive. She wanted to show him the pride of being real.

His eyes journeyed from Tiffany, to Jessica’s fuzzy silhouette enveloped with twilight.

“What do you know about her? Did Tiffany mention something about her life? Who do you think you are, basketting to yourself what you think is bearable?” He clicked his tongue as a sign of botheration. “You don’t know a single thing about Tiffany, and you certainly have nothing to do with it either. The best thing you can do is to stay away and live your life going into movies like a normal, brash city girl as you definitely are.” What he said was highly judgmental, though part of it was real, especially about the burden she wanted to take over for Tiffany. “Tiffany, let’s go. Soo Rim’s had cooked some pork today. You should… be…”

His statement faded into void, as he watched Tiffany gliding toward Jessica. He also almost crumbled the moment she seized the arms of the stranger, dragging her… wanting her to be with her…

He could not do anything but to just gawk at what appeared like fledged mutual connection in a gleaming ostentation. Words could not seem fit for them.

Tiffany pulled Jessica closer to her, and dragged her gently to the dazed old man. “Take her with us, ahjussi. I promise I would wash my hair tonight, in exchange, okay?”

The grin that flashed from her face… it was scarce for him. Something sparkled from her eyes, and her cheeks were in faint pink. No, not because it was cold, with bitter winds giving forth chill into their midst. It appeared there’s something fiery emanating from her, although he can be a little overinflated today, but for sure, there is something different with Tiffany today. Something like… she had fallen in love.

A little skeptic towards to what he was seeing, he bowed his head and faced Jessica, who looked eager. Had she brainwashed Tiffany? No. He had fully taught Tiffany how to distrust strangers.

“When a stranger asked your name, you shall tell them Miyoung, okay?” He stooped down to face the little girl’s deeply shattered face, and he pinched the cheeks, an act of solace. “The world is full of strangers. The green men didn’t know who you are, or your family, but they did that because you’re strangers to them. Strangers are people who should not be trusted at once. Impress their eyes. It would let you know whether a person’s trustworthy or not. If not, sing them a song. If they beamed, it’s okay. If they do not, walk away.” The little girl deprived herself a moment to wail to digest what he just told. Her hiccups were vivid signs of the struggles. But there’s a second’s easiness, though the cold, impassive stares of green men with their sticks continued to play in her head, the beaming sun and moss bed from where she stood, all looked compassionate for her. Is this her new home? The old man rose, cracked his back as he stretched and arched back down, wrapping his tender arms around the groggy, little girl, and carried her.

“Ahjussi, I should not trust you. You’re a stranger.” The little girl told him in a stifled voice, as she rested her chin over his shoulder. He started walking, and, mildly surprised, casted a smile at the girl’s intellect. About to answer, his words were hindered at his lips when a high-pitched yet lovely song started to resonate. “Like the Rose of Sharon in the spring… my love for you bloomed~”

Palpably, the old man beamed.

…

At this moment, he was watching the same little girl, arm-to-arm to a stranger she felt compatible with. I guess I should take this one a one-step up. A smile drew itself across his face but rather dismissively.

“Well then,” he said finally, rendering himself convincible with his toothed smile. “I guess I could put up another chair in front of the ample. I won’t be selfish, especially if Tiffany wants to share our minimal bliss. She has that power to persuade me, even if I turn pertinacious despite my old age. Sorry…” He casted an inquiring look, that Jessica answered with her name. “Jessica-ssi. Nice name. Yet, forgive me. I get fussy over remembering English names, with an exception of this…” Tiffany flung her arms around him intimately, and he laughed in such fatherly sort. “This sweet, sweet girl’s.”

Jessica merely smiled, and the three of them, regardless of the embracing darkness and the mere lamp, they walked on, all bearing different kinds of smiles. One from disbelief and amazement, the other from luck and the last one from the enthusiasm.

The sizzling sound and smell of the roasting pork emanating from the pan placed over the stove opposite to her, made Jessica’s stomach roar with hunger. She hadn’t had any lunch, thanks to Sooyoung, and right now, the fat glimmering from the frying strips is as good as indulging her to such frenzy. Tiffany eyed it absorbingly, though not as childish as Jessica does at this moment. Jessica seemed in the brink of drooling.

“Here’re the greens,” a plump and kindly old lady situated bowls of lettuces and spinaches over the ssang (small table Koreans used while eating) then walking back into the kitchen. The old man turned up in front of them too, and sank comfortably on a sitting pillow.

Jessica started prodding the meat with her chopstick, and as she did, she couldn’t keep her mouth from watering. Awkwardness is settled aside, providing an embarrassing way for famishing.

“So you’ve healed already?” the old man began the conversation, staring at Jessica with slightly knowing eyes.

“Medicine’s advancement is astounding, you see,” smiled Jessica, dunking into her mouth a piece of meat. Her answer is a downright lie. Actually, her eagerness of meeting Tiffany had helped her recuperation astonishingly. Yet, things like that should not be verbalized, she thought. She just smiled at Tiffany, who was busy stuffing pork in a lettuce.

“I see,” he replied, looking down at the food and grinning. “You cannot deny the huge step the nation had taken these past few years after the war. Yet, they seem more immerse to it, and had forgotten some North Korean refugees who remained in deep coveting for their families.”

After filling herself another mouthful and munching it, Jessica decided to turn the atmosphere more seriously. “About Tiffany,” she began, and at once, he darted his eyes to her. She was about to resume, when he interrupted.

“Soo Rim-ah, bring me a bottle of rice wine and my box,” he called, and received an agreeing reply from the kitchen, where Soo Rim had just strode in. “What about Tiffany?” he asked soberly, not minding that Tiffany might be listening to their conversation. But she was busy scoffing more pork and was more into it than eavesdropping.

Jessica inhaled a warm air emanating from the pot, and began, “She kinda told me something about her parents. I mean, when I should be protecting her, should it be quite a prerogative to learn something about her?”

Silence ensued after the question. He shut his eyes that formed creases of the time that visually withered him. Noiselessness occupied the next minute, until Soo Rim surfaced above her husband’s shoulder and nudged him. He grunted in reply, and she handed him a box made of something rough and thatched material. For a moment, he ensconced it on the table.

“Firstly, I would like you to know that Tiffany,” he cast a sympathetic look at Tiffany, who was scoffing her rice noisily, obviously clueless that the two were talking about her, “that Tiffany was nothing but an empty space absorbed by her bereaved past she always refuses to accept.”

Jessica’s eyes focused to him thirstily, eager for more information. “Bereaved past?”

He nodded. “Yes. Apparently, the reason why she acts like this is because she dourly denies the fact that the time had already flown by. That her parents were already gone, and the past she ignores was nothing but a nightmare. It’s already been years. She thinks that she was still a little girl left in the heart of the forest by her mother, and was in persistent hoping she would still fetch for her.”

“Something… bad happened to them, right?” she followed on him, remembering what Tiffany had told her back in the highway. “They left me in the dark. They never came back. Mama…” The pain started to visualize slowly from its blur.

He nodded again. “You see, they were cruelly accused for espionage fifteen years ago. The army, of course, had decided to put justice on their own hands, as they usually does, right? Thought Tiffany’s family was something to be fussy about, but at the same time, shouldn’t be that hard to deal with. The basis was actually crude, they even doubted it at first, but when the old tenants started paying the army, pretenses have been set aside and the soldiers have become all ears. The family was shot to death, and Tiffany was lucky enough to escape from the soldiers.”

Jessica looked dumbfounded. “S-seriously?”

“Yeah, yeah, so inhumane, I know. But the murder in Gwang-ju had already taught you that, it’s not new. The government was so eager of recuperating, that they even fear small ticks, which are basically harmless. Or perhaps, they’re benignant since they weren’t really one of those who bite.”

The Gwang-ju residents were alleged of rebellion, closely similar to what happened to Tiffany’s family. Two hundred innocent citizens, who merely fought for their rights and for justice, were murdered on May 20, 1980, nearly a month ago. And knowing these things the old man had been divulging to her, meant that there were already cruel hypothesis occuring many years before the massacre at the south. Jessica gulped a mouthful of air, and tentatively glanced at the old man’s wrinkled face that remained nonchalant.

“Tiffany escaped them?” She further inquired, going in for more details.

“Well, it’s more likely to be that I saved Tiffany. I brought her here and raised her within my reach, though most of the time, she’s in the forest, for she thought her parents would come back to her when they won’t. Ever.”

Pity sprung up deep within her stomach, causing a writhing sensation in the pit of her intestine and a sudden wrenching of her heart. Tiffany truly had been through a LOT. No wonder why she was all dog eyed in desperate plea for understanding. “You said they’re accused of espionage: Does it mean Tiffany’s family wasn’t really from the north and have worked for the government?”

The old man hesitated for a while, until he took the pluck of answering the barrage of inquisition with honesty, though it felt as though he was being smashed down by a hammer deeper from his seat. “I f-forced and underpinned the accusation, even though it was totally false. The Hwangs – Tiffany’s family – have never worked or even contacted with the north. I must say they were nothing but a plain, happy family.” His heart banged against its cage, as his face turned into a sickly yellow.

“YOU supported the accusation?” shot Jessica incredulously, “and you looked over Tiffany and saved her? Wait, it doesn’t make any sense at all…”

“I repented the corroboration, that’s why. Right after I did it, I instantly regretted doing it. I despised it all my life. But that’s it! It’s already done. But to some luck, I have managed to save Tiffany, which means I get the chance to console both she and myself. Did you get it now?”

“You’re unbelievable,” said Jessica, weak for words. Something fiery was surfacing in her. “What made you DO that? That’s… that’s…”

The old man felt the old pain impaling him directly in the chest. “I have no choice.” Jessica’s uneasy eyes refocused upon hearing a soft thud, as the old man pulled the box’s lid open. She caught a glimpse of something that glimmered upon reflecting the orange light from the lamp. “The soldiers have already scented spies. I’m not ready to die that time. Therefore, I created a story, which the majority of the villagers believed true. I passed something to the Hwangs what was meant for me.”

He extracted a black and white photograph, and showed it to Jessica, who gasped at once at the sight of the stationary waving flag. He just sighed at Jessica’s horrified face, and went on, “I affirmed my own taradiddle with false accusation that diverted the army’s focus from me to the Hwangs. I was actually the spy.”

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Chapter Ten: Still White

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The photograph showed a military clad men in very 60’s haircuts and very 60’s expressions. The backdrop landscape was a tarmac delimited with far-flung trees, and the sky was obviously white, with vivid tints of what surely would be clouds. Found on the left side would probably be the hangar of some kind, its side barely peering behind the line of stationary soldiers. On the right was a slim pole of a frozen waving flag. Nonetheless, the photo had sent an uncanny chill above Jessica’s neck.

“I was the spy from the start,” the old man’s confession made Jessica riveting towards him, wearing a clearly punctuated expression and gasping.

“W-what?” The advent of information was almost slapping her, causing a stupefying second.

“I told the soldiers a highly convincing premise and sold the Hwangs so I could save my own neck.” Despite the evilness in the statement, there was bitterness echoing from his voice as he utter. That decipherable pain was similar to Tiffany’s, though may not be or never would be as bitter and cruel but it certainly concludes, in someway, they were both on the same boat and sharing the same burden from the same cause. Tiffany in tenacious denial, him in the deepest regret. All because of what he had done.

Jessica was lost for words. Dissension about it would be useless since it had already happened: there was nothing she could possibly do for them. Even bellowing to the old man to emphasize the diabolical things he had bestowed upon the innocent girl sitting beside her right now would prove senseless. And also, his face was already contorted with unseen pain from an unseen torture.

She merely stared around, wishing she could divert her focus from the confession to the house’s interior. Despite the size, the ambience was cozy; the exhausted lamp was warm. They entered the place pushing the heavy oaken gate open that creaked in a sound of its age and the stories of the old. The first step on the crumbly and sanded yard was benign and the first breeze was a whisper of safety and comfort. However, right now, as she took notice of the low sturdy ceiling, highly Japanese-inspired paper dividers and slide door and floor, and calligraphic sketches etched on the wooden wall: the guarding sensation shifted into cold, spine-chilling feeling of being cloistered inside the enemies’ perimeter.

What would happen next? Is she going to be gunned down for good?

But the evilly-suspected old man’s expression turned more uneasy. Penance reflected from his eyes in forms of glimmer of sadness. Tears started to well… that ensued into a stifled sob, into a moan, and ultimately, mutterings of things he thought he should forget.

“I used to see t-this little girl playing with her brother by the stream. I would peer over the bridge to take a look of the two, w-who was busy collecting rocks, and they were both happy. The little girl would look up at me, and she would greet me… with a smile… Ahjussi… good afternoon… she would say that to me…”

His shoulders slumped; he rested his trembling arms on the edge of the table; his watering eyes restlessly gazed down and sideways, back and forth as though looking for something. Understanding? Redemption? Whatever it is, he still hasn’t found it.

Jessica glanced at the piteous state, dazed at the confusion whether she would loath him just a little more for what he had done to Tiffany or exempt him for looking after her all these years. No. She should be angry. She should be shouting things to him, to add more pain… to cause more pain… to let him feel how painful the conclusion of his selfish actions.

But his loud whimpering and trembling gestures hindered the surfacing magma that has been itching to erupt. Utmost regret reflected from his expression, a watering existence running down on his cheek and glittering on his eyes, but was it enough? Would it salvage him for killing a family to save his own skin?

“Why would you do that to a… to a… family?” She caught a glimpse of the regret searing from his face, a painful sign of remorse, of the curbing to keep it furtive after all these years.

In the middle of this, the floor thudded. Tiffany stood up, and without speaking, walked out of the dining area, her footsteps billowing oddly across the silence. The stillness rang. A suffocating atmosphere of the utmost chagrin, it was hovering perceivably around them. One was seething with immeasurable anger and undeniable shock, as the other whimpered shamelessly, admitting the transgression full in the face.

Then the cloister of the enemy had become the room of more sadness. The invisible torment was like electrifying him, he could feel the burn running up in his very veins, a creeping static of burning agony… burning him from the inside… the pain… expressed through his tears and child-like whimpers.

“I… I… I was afraid-d… I was… selfish… I could’ve… stopped it… I was… afraid… more than… more than you could possibly… more than… I could’ve,” he continuously murmured, the shadows of the deceased Hwangs ascending from the nothingness, and he felt it as though they were glaring at him. More lashes of regret lathered him emotionally, mentally and to the soul.

Jessica’s eyes were broad. The anger lowered to some extent, and an uprising of ruth welled in her. Does this man deserve pity? Her quivering fingers travelled from the hard and smooth surface of the table, to his trembling arms. But when her bare skin touched his’, he abruptly seized her hands and looked at her straight in the eye saying, “They will forgive me, right? T-they will… they w-will… right? Ow!”

And he broke out into more sobbing. Jessica couldn’t feel any skepticism to what his reactions’ had been displaying. The infliction is like an aura giving forth a cold atmosphere around: a cold, sad and imploring sort as though asking for forgiveness regardless of the fact that what he had committed was clearly inexcusable.

He withdrew himself and wrapped his arms around him, more signs of struggles against the pain, the torment, the torture: the fifteen years of torture. In his mind, he doubted any forgiveness. In his heart, he doubted any kindness. For he had done so many pain to so many people, including himself. This is not fleeing from what was fated for him, fifteen years ago. For him, this was the backwash of what he had done: a personal hell, a doubtlessly endless fraught. And what makes it more agonizing is the fact that he deserved it.

“Why… why do you have to do that?” Jessica’s smothering anger implied in that question was minimal. She had seen so much pain. She wished no more. “Pull yourself together and I demand a reason. Why would you do that to Tiffany? A retribution? That sucks. Round yourself up and tell me the story. But I will drop the formalities as a complimentary. Coz I don’t think I would forgive you after this.” The statement was critical. And he thought he couldn’t get any justifiable than that.

Hiccupping a bit and rocking his body uneasily, he sniffed loudly and gathered himself together to resume his story. Voice muffled, wound more open than ever, he went on, this time, ready to answer Jessica’s inquisition.

“I’m sorry about… the shedding,” he whiffed and repressed a hiccup, “It has been e-eating me all these time. Couldn’t seem able to release it, but thanks to you, I managed everything.” His teary smile was ambiguous, but Jessica immersed herself urging him on his story. “Okay…” He sniffed loudly again. “Where do I begin?”

There was a moment of tranquility; the mild rustles of the whooshing winds outside was hearable; the distant fire from what seemed like from the kitchen was crackling perceivably likewise the old man’s heavy breath, arduous and exerting. His expression displayed nostalgic pain as he wracked and mentally fumbled a recollection; in spite of how much more regret it would bring him. Being selfish won’t make sense now, he thought.

He exhaled loudly, and Jessica gulped, gathering herself in preparation for a story that would surely blow her away, by both its evilness and certain shocker and knowing.

“The Hwangs,” he begun lowly, his heart starting to churn, “stepped into the village so gentle… so gallant… so ostensibly easy-going… so… mysterious.” His wrinkled temple stretched as he rested his widened and deadpan sight on the table – or more likely into the nothingness. Scenes reeled back in twinkles on his iris. And those remnants were ignominy to him. “They barely converse to anyone. They chose to seclude themselves from the noisy outer layer of life to peacefulness. I mustn’t say they lived the last days of their lives as a loner, because I talked to them once, and one thing, I must mention though,” a different shadow came into shade from his face, “they were such a happy a family.”

This conversation had made Jessica all ears, but in her heart, she was in an uneasy readying for a tall wave of truth that, without a doubt, would swallow her with the horrifying knowing of the things.

He went on, “I assume that the privacy they intended to put up on entering this place was due to their atrocious experience back from where they used to live.” His expressionless gaze deepened, and so was the painful wound agape in his heart. “I have managed to converse to them one day, and one thing that always amazed me is how close they are to each other, a perfect family to be exact. But the father… Mr. Hwang, was a highly skeptic person.”

In his head, there was a scene of a blurry-faced, middle-aged woman placing a laden of fruits in front of the two middle-aged men, one in proud posture, and the other in a naïve expression. From afar, was a distant laughs of a little girl chasing a zebra butterfly while her nerdy-looking brother was busy collecting pollens from the flowerbed. A scene of tranquility… shattered by a supposition they don’t deserve, ever.

“They’re… from Gwang-ju,” he told, goading himself on with his story. “They fled from the imminent dissenting between the government and a majority of civilians, mostly university students. It smoothly affirmed the reason of my astonishment about the perfectness of the family due to the peace around. They don’t want conflict. They consider themselves a free citizen. They do what they want.”

A typical ethics, Jessica thought, especially for an anti-supporter of Gen. Chun’s dictatorship. That’s why they were accused because of that, I guess. But she kept that one in her, and just pepped him up with a nod.

“Whatever they had believed, I did not further inquire about that. I must think I’m the luckiest person to have stepped on their yard, and have been received somewhat warmly by them. Either Mrs. Hwang’s delicious cooking the family had munched or Mr. Hwang’s enthusiasm on anagrams that had uncannily entertained the kids, they had displayed to me a picture of an ideal family. No doubt.” His tongue felt as though rolling back to his throat as he utter, but he kept a composed look to mask the uneasiness that’s slowly looming at the imminent climax of his tale.

“But amongst the family in this village,” Jessica began, her voice repressed and kind of gritting, “why the Hwangs? Did you receive an upset stomach after drinking their soju or something that made you do that horrible stuff to them? And they trusted you? Tiffany’s dad trusted you?”

“I’m a spy remember?” The words were evil but he verbalized it as though he’s sick of it. “I-I’m… good at… p-playing with people’s trust a-and… backstab-bing t-hem.” He felt his right hand rattling, as the wave of emotion, regret and desire for atonement filled him like cold, stabbing water splashing down all over his naked self. “And why them? Look around you, Jessica-ssi.”

Jessica gazed at the corner of her eyes but did not whirl her head. The enemy’s cloister remained seductively warm and friendly, yet a seemingly façade. “What about it?”

The old man closed his eyes as he resumed, “This village is swarmed with old families. My wife, for example.” The clutters and clanging in the kitchen was decipherable because Tiffany had left the door open. “Her family owned this place for like hundreds of years now. Ever since the time of the Japanese.”

This affirmed the nostalgic – ancient – ambience upon the first step on its ground. “But why the new comers?”

“I would stand odd in front of the soldiers if I pinpoint a kin, who had thrived in this place even before my existence, wouldn’t I? I was a trained spy. I-I’m an expert of choosing a p-perfect scapegoat. Though personally, I never knew the aftermath of it, but when I’ve realized it, I saw myself licking the wounds of my deceit instead of enjoying myself because of the freedom.”

“So you chose the Hwangs and accused them as spies, and got yourself escaped? And the villagers believed and helped you with the supposition?” Her voice was becoming a little vociferous, not minding that his wife or Tiffany would hear her obnoxiousness.

“The villagers have personal hate on them. The one detail I’ve kept in mind choosing the right scapegoat. The newcomers… they would call them the mysterious family of witches and shamans. “

Even before, Jessica thought, outraged, the villagers had always thought of such things about the Hwangs! Flames had hit the furnace now, for Jessica. “They called them what?!!!”

“They loathed the Hwangs for being rich and mysterious. As I had said earlier, the Hwangs’ purpose of starting a new life here is for the privacy. They thought they had enough of the muddling in back at their old place. Mr. Hwang’s a political writer, and he loves putting his words in allusions, conundrums. Allusions and conundrums that lead to misunderstanding.”

Jessica got a hold of herself, and shut her eyes, her face crumpling and displaying utter subjection of the rage building up deep within. Her cheeks went scarlet, and her lips barely moved as she said, “And you, being such a stupid and selfish spy, had taken advantage from this.”

As though he had torn himself from a gale, he nodded and swallowed. “I-I… told the villagers that I have talked to the Hwangs, and that Mr. Hwang’s accidental parapraxis had divulged his plans and mission against the nation. They believed me. At once. They found an open space I’ve dug and attacked the Hwangs. They called the army for assistance.”

Then he broke out. He pressed his devastated face onto his palm, despising every second that passed by, the silence that reverberated the folly he utterly regretted. Jessica seemed lost for words. Anger thundered at the back of her neck, and she wanted to hurt the old man so badly. She knew he won’t fight back and would just take every slap she will throw at him openly. But she also knew that doing that won’t undo the things that are done. And that searing fact pissed her as the clock ticked by, as the earth revolved… as the cruel world revolved in her own selfish gyration and damned hypothesis.

“They will forgive me, won’t they? The Hwangs? I’ve… repented my sins, I’ve taken care of his daughter… of the little girl from their family… they will forgive me for that, right?” he asked to the nothingness in existence of haunted images exacerbated by his angst. The shame on his skin seared hotter into his flesh, and the mad desire to yell out the agony and knock himself down had almost hit his mind.

Until Jessica had stood up and smacked him hard in the face, dropping any formalities about he’s a grandfather and she was a mere twenty-five year old. The old man fell down sideways and sprawled on the floor, and dazed.

“Do you think fifteen years of dreaming atonement – yes, dreaming, coz you don’t look like you’re suffering or something – do you think it’s sufficient to even match a hair with Tiffany’s deprivation for her Mama and Papa? Tell me, have you seen her cry before?” It were like dagger impaling the old man’s ego as he rubbed his face, feeling the spat of words as blood splattering to his face. An innocent blood.

“H-her… h-her tears are the r-reality I always avoid-d,” he whimpered, getting up, not trying to forge an eye contact to her.

“Then tell me how can you be forgiven if you keep on running away?” The old man’s eyes widened. Silence ringed. Echoed. Teasing. Jessica’s footsteps clumped but his focus remained to the nothingness, to the question she just fired. “If I were you, I would think of something more relevant and bold than that. Is that what you’ve learned? Let me tell you this one thing: there are things you won’t ever escape from. Even retribution won’t let you. Because as long as you’re alive, you’re at its debt. Forever. Caged.”

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Chapter Eleven: Rose

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Jessica stepped out, fuming with invisible steam caused by geysers of hot emotion gushing up epitomized from the scarlet shade across her cheeks. Her fist clenched as she stood rooted at the walking path, the sand under her bare feet crumbly and tickly. And to add to those sensations, was the fear of the growing responsibility she would plunge into taking care of Tiffany.

The old man’s desire to save his own neck had wreaked havoc through Tiffany’s life, leaving her in utter disarray and denial. Behind the bright smile and gestures was a dark past Jessica never thought had existed. She may have reckoned it, but it went too far as she thought it would be. Too far enough to leave her bedeviled from the unpleasant concoction of confusion, anger and shock, the aftermath of its knowing, its realization... its spat of a realization. The truth about the past, a persistent past Tiffany couldn’t seem able to forget, which Jessica never wondered why, considering its cruelty, everything… were byproducts of selfishness, of fear, of cowardice.

She loathed the old man so bad, but at the same time, couldn’t bear but to feel the waves of pathos every time the poignant face of what appeared like the most utter suffering (she had to lie back in the room to show herself totally pissed off) backwashed her shore. But when Tiffany’s supplication for her Mama and Papa bobbed up into her head, a fiery feeling ascends, springing up discomfort and profound antipathy against his plea for forgiveness. Even if she repeatedly thinks about what he had done and considering all the years of guardianship when, as a trained spy, he could’ve just brushed it off and leave Tiffany emotionally busted up as she obviously is even at the moment, it always concludes the same thing: he doesn’t deserve any sort of amnesty.

And as for Tiffany now…

Jessica gazed at the gray roof of thick clouds in full obstruction of the outlying space, sensing that anytime, it might rain. An ominous feeling was creeping in her: a developing discomfort and restlessness. Perhaps because she was building up courage inside to be able to tell Tiffany what truly happened. If the old man can’t, Jessica would.

A dubious second highlighted as she stared at the depths of the sand, into an abyss of possibilities.

Can Tiffany take the fact?

Can Jessica keep her composure Tiffany shaking her head vehemently in as rejects the truth and continuously murmur her Mama, who won’t be coming back anymore?

In general, can she, Jessica, do anything for Tiffany?

On its own accord, her sight fell to her palm, where the old man’s cheeks had landed squarely. Then on its own too, it crumpled into a fist and she found herself in the predicament of doubt. There was skepticism about what she can do, or more likely, whether she can even do a thing. For that palm of her's were connected to a frail thin arms that can't do anything useful.

But the moment Tiffany’s fake eye smile turn up suddenly in her mind, there was an onrush of confidence, courage she had never shown to anyone, even to Sooyoung.

I can do this. I can withstand everything.

Then there was a promise of turning the bogus smile true, wiping tears with warm hanky, adequate supply of attention and surfeit of love.

Out of blue to burst her bubble, a stricken tune coming from a woodwind sort instrument came into her midst carrying with it a melodious angst and dancing distress. It oddly allured her ears, dragging her body gently to the source as though asking her either she could put up a stop of this grief or just to stand there listening to its distressing harmony.

It appeared coming from the side of the house.

She scuttled onto her shoes, her head fixed to where the music is coming from. And without further ado, she dashed into the dimmed side, where Tiffany’s crouched figure was leaning against the wooden wall while sitting on a crock with tears silently rivering on her cheeks.

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Tiffany looked unsuprised, apparently undaunted with Jessica’s presence. She blew the flute more to express the angst and sadness and everything she had failed to verbalize. Her hands were in slight tremor as she fingered in accord to the melody the flute’s air holes. A dreadful aura emanated from her, an imperceptible black smoke… a furtive sadness, a hidden lamenting.

Jessica stood watching her, also in trembling legs and in the verge of tears. Tiffany’s image drowned with twilight was heart wrenching, she could feel this scene tugging her heartstrings.

“Why don’t you shout it out?” she began, holding back the fervent emotion in wild spouting in her eyes. Tiffany continued playing her instrument but more solitarily.

Was it frustration or mad desire to shake the Tiffany’s head back to sanity that suddenly ascended deep within Jessica’s chest?

But she quenched neither. She glided toward Tiffany and threw her arms around her, and there was stillness. Tiffany, stunned, gawped over Jessica’s shoulder, as Jessica rested her chin above Tiffany’s.

“If you’re sad, say so. If there is something eating you, tell me, don’t be afraid to yell it out,” Jessica murmured, pity literally drowning her heart with tears. The aura Tiffany emits, it was cold and alone and saddening. Jessica wanted to her to shed it, right now, right at this twilit moment. She would do that by providing warmth, because she would do anything for the girl who saved her from verge of death. This is not the least thing she could do: instead, this is what she always wanted to give her savior, the ultimate gift…

But Tiffany slid Jessica’s arms away, and she rose from her both forlorn and dimmed situation against the wooden wall. Jessica watched her as she walked away, with her back on the befuddled Jessica.

Then there was a mad desire to flee again in Tiffany. She prepared a sprint to run away again… away from this pain… away from reality back into her own little world of hoping.

Her feet sank on the sandy yard and she kicked off but abruptly halted when a pair of warm arms slipped around her waist, clinging on her to stay... wanting her not to go away.

On that one precious moment, Tiffany’s pain was overtaken by a burning feeling of what appeared like affection. There were still fear and denial, but it was deliberately sheathed by a protection unseen but perceivable, invisible but reachable, seemingly non-existent but was there.

Jessica pressed Tiffany closer to her. Can you feel my heart? She asked Tiffany mentally, exhorting the stunned Tiffany to her chest more intimately close that they appeared like a stick with the vine entangling around elegantly.

Then Jessica conjured flowers as she said the words to strengthen the fortification of love, of affection. “I won’t leave you, Tiffany.”The promise rang an echoing resounding. Its mellifluous message sunk deeper into her ear onto her brain, where she digested it and cried afterwards.

Tiffany was in the dark; clammed inside a nightmare of the past. They all left her in that forsaken location. The fireflies, she thought, were the only source of light, the only thing that makes her smile inside the nothingness. Because they all left her.

“Mama… Papa… oppa…” she whispered, hot tears trickling her cheeks. She shut her eyes forcibly and thought of things about Mama and Papa and Ki Sun-oppa. And the more she did, the more the pain extinguishes the fire Jessica was putting up. She couldn’t bear but to feel sad. Even against Jessica’s arms.

But Jessica’s feelings and driven self was persistent. The hug tightened. Jessica rested her head on Tiffany’s back gently; Tiffany could feel Jessica’s head brushing against her.

“They left me,” she told Jessica in so much exertion as though she had fought a war just to achieve the confessing sort. She bit her lip so hard that she felt it almost painfully tearing, all just to keep the tears.

The smile… she wanted it forever. At this moment, her face exhibited an awkward feat that displays the corner of her lips curved barely in a smile while tears poured her face.

Irony?

No, it was denial…

She could feel Jessica’s soft sob, a compassionate sort, and the shudders against her back, all epitomizing the deepest of the sympathy conveyed as though calling her, asking her to pay attention to it. It was profound in the sense that Jessica had nothing to do with anything about Tiffany and yet the willingness is palpable enough to be awed with… the willingness to provide a hug when she feel lonely, companion when she feel alone, warmth when she feel so cold and scared. All so natural… all so fated… all so precious.

Every so slowly against the impeding of more emotions being unleashed, her hands crept onto Jessica’s, and seized it tight, in a chain that was unbreakable. The stick and the vine had mingled into being: a strong tree.

As soundless as the night, Jessica sniffed softly and walked to the front, their hands still locked. She was gazing down as she halted opposite Tiffany.

And she stared up, her eyes sparkling with emotion, and yet…

Just yet…

With a grin etched more than blatantly – no, it was more than flaunting: it was shining very proudly – across her face. The wild feeling of compassion grew, an extremely warm development, and it damped Tiffany’s face with sublimity, of inexplicable love, of affection, of awe.

“People might have left you,” Jessica began gently, and softly, and more gently as she raised their connected limbs and pulled it closer… pulling Tiffany closer to her. “People might have left you unconditionally sometimes. But you gotta know, Tiffany…”

Tiffany saw the glitters on her eyes and the shade of pink blooming more apparent on her cheeks. The tears were wiped; the sadness was thrown away: the moment is furnishing a bridge for those who can’t cross, light for those who can’t see, love for those who felt the seclusion of the nightmares by the bygones that can’t let be bygones. But right now, regardless of how dark it is, of how feeble the exhausted light from the open door in the far corner: they could see each other, feel each other; see the suffering and offering a hand for help, feel the pain and doing something to ease it.

“But you gotta know, Tiffany,” she motioned closer and they got meshed by their own compassion and affection: Their flesh rubbing against each other was heavenly, “there are still some who would be more than willing to come for you. You know… I can’t put it in nice words but… imagine after being left, someone would suddenly turn up in front of you with flowers and say, ‘Come to me, you don’t need to be alone’. Stuff like that.” She sniggered and wondered if Tiffany got what she meant. Tiffany did not reply at once.

Overcome your misery, Tiffany. That’s her point. You’re not always alone.

“Warm,” Tiffany replied at long last. “What is this warm… feeling?” It was so hot, so hot in a really good way, she thought.

Jessica’s grin broadened. “Love.”

“Love?” Tiffany asked in an undertone.

“Uh-hm,” breathed Jessica, enthusiastically patting Tiffany’s back with her right hand and stroking her butt with the left. “This is love.”

Tiffany withdrew herself with her face in unclouded bashfulness and apparent rosiness. Jessica looked perplexed until she saw Tiffany fondling her lower back. “But…”

“Hahaha," Jessica chuckled, hitting her forehead with her palm. "I mean… the warm feeling. That’s love. It is from the… the… powerful likeness… your powerful likeness to me,” stammered Jessica, finding the right words to explain things tersely as though she was teaching a little kid how to read and understanding it. Tiffany whiffed and wiped the tears, and sniggered suddenly. Jessica pouted dubiously.

It appeared dark, gray and soundless but there was something triumphant in the air, a symphony sung by the winds in spite of its frigidity. It was somewhat from the joy of reunification, and of the requital met. Tiffany might’ve not entirely accepted the things but this, her bright grin as she playfully faltered toward Jessica, was doubtlessly a first step to recovery, to acceptance, to more happiness. Her smiles aren’t bogus anymore and a spark is burning between them.

Then all of a sudden, she kissed the girl that she had just met. She kissed her full in the lips, in an explosion of heavenly oblivion. The tinkling laughs halted. The winds stopped bellowing. The twilight focused. The time has stopped.

Their bodies amalgamated once more in blissful and enthusiastic motions, as Tiffany swayed Jessica so happily, so cherishingly, so full of love. They broke off and Jessica, being swung by Tiffany in the air and her bangs and hair flying and screening her chagrined face, chortled in high-pitch and repressed dolphin-like sounds, and Tiffany was so happy. The warm feeling from the powerful likeness: Tiffany could feel it penetrating her chest with a ray of light, of hope, of more and more hope as times goes by with Jessica. Jessica was absolutely right: people go but unless you don’t sequester yourself, there would still more to come. At least that’s what Tiffany understood for now.

Mama and Papa are in heaven with Ki Sun-oppa. And they were happy. They sacrificed themselves in the last minute to keep their precious little girl in earth, where she could be truly happy and where she could enjoy the powerful likeness to someone called love and its ecstatic upshot.

They have still thought about me, they haven’t just left out of blue. They have considered my happiness and my future happiness. And this girl, who was in sickly pale but with a look as though she had the moment of her life though a little nauseated, she was my happiness.

The two of them, Jessica and Tiffany, sauntered arm-to-arm toward the porch and sat on the edge of the wooden level. They closed their eyes and listened to the distant cicada’s monotonous droning, to the wind’s whispers, and to the sound of their beating hearts. Tiffany’s smile widened and the sense of affection and protection turned more palpable than ever as Jessica slid her right hand around Tiffany’s waist and rested her head over her shoulder.

Despite the gray and cold night, there was fire.

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“The clouds look awfully heavy today,” said Soo Rim staring over the left window agape behind her husband. She, then, took a sip on a fuming ginger tea and sighed. “I guess the spring’s weeping is to be expected tomorrow morning.”

The old man grunted with his arms tucked in his armpits and Jessica’s words in wraithlike reverberation inside his brain. “It’s the spring’s lament and I always hated it.”

“Lament? Are you sensing something ominous?” Soo Rim inquired after another sip. Her calmness was the window dressing of the sudden struck of cold sensation on her spine.

“I was thinking that Tiffany might leave us tomorrow.” He told her, and she felt an immediate relief. Her husband’s instincts about these kinds of stuff were getting worrisome as he gets older; she sometimes turned quite a pessimist in his every dreadful single word he haphazardly fires.

“Ah… that.”

“She will definitely go with Jessica-ssi without hesitation.”

Soo Rim’s small eyes were blinking deceleratingly through weariness. “You’ve told everything about Tiffany’s past and your part with it, haven’t you?”

He grunted again and with a nod. Soo Rim let out a deep sigh as she went on, “That meant you won’t stand against them, isn’t it? A wise choice.”

“If I can’t accept and face what I have done, I guess I have to release it.”

Happiness shadowed the wrinkles of Soo Rim’s face as her head tilted down, glancing over the emptied cup and wishing there was more. Her husband’s decision was critical due to his age, and for some strange reason, it sounded final and it was relieving.

“Yet,” the old man began again, “I can feel that the sky’s weeping’s going to be extremely sad.” Thunder grumbled lowly and mightily and obviously audible. The old man’s expression deepened. “That’s the soldiers’ grumble.”

Soo Rim sighed sadly. “They’re coming?”

“I saw a band of them at the outskirts and a few privates in the market. They’re talking about something with Park Soo Kyung, the old rice cake seller near the alley. And I don’t like his face when he saw me eavesdropping.” There appeared to be no room for fear anymore. But if there’s something to be frightened about, it’s Jessica’s and Tiffany’s eloping. “I fear they would go after Tiffany and Jessica-ssi.”

It was brushed off, the last part. “Do you want me to incinerate the evidences, the photos and the badges?”

There was a soundless pondering after the question. Soo Rim’s eyes travelled over her husband’s shoulders onto the darkened outside. Though his answer is already predictable, she wanted her husband to affirm the plan. A senseless action, to be honest.

“Don’t. Just let them be. I told you, I fear they would pursue Tiffany and I would do my best to impede it. I’m kind of interested on what nirvana would look like,” he cooed but very prissily. Soo Rim smiled.

“A wise choice.” She felt like submitting to the trance and sleeping in sitting posture after hearing his words. Of course, with her husband.

“What about you? You can leave me here and save yourself,” he droned on, to her scanty attention. She smiled again.

“I won’t do things that I would regret later on. Besides, I’ve already tied with you. I won’t leave my husband to save my own skin.”

The old man’s eyes sparkled with tears, and he pulled himself up. He hugged his wife tightly, and perhaps, by tomorrow, they could both strew themselves a raft to set sail onto nirvana.

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Interlude

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“I’m going to kill that *******, seriously,” said a particularly pugnacious veteran private after the orders were announced across the damp locker room, where soldiers were busy doing their own businesses, either checking something or merely chitchatting. They all just finished doing a watch at the fifth district in Incheon. Nothing actually fiery happened, except beating up mobsters who think the army was infiltrated with stupid officials. The supposition always calls for a beating. Talking trash about the General and his ordinance is more than just a crime. It was perfidy.

“Who?” Asked the young, clean-cut fat private busy donning pajamas.

“Who else? ‘Course the old geezer! Imagine turning your back on your own country and nursing a spy: ain’t that a *****?” the veteran private told the other private in conspicuous disgust. His superiority in both age and experience always put up an entertaining scene, and right now, as the veteran stood up in such sedated manner, the other soldiers couldn’t help but to smile and be all ears. “Screw the truce; I ain’t going to be easy on him when I met him. I don’t usually do things slow but –”

“You always do it in a hard way, there really is no contradictory,” butted in an able and tall private in thick-rimmed glasses who had just came out of the showers. He splattered water as he strode, making the soldiers scowling at him to his back. But at that punchline, the fat private that had just finished sliding into his PJs sniggered. Contrary, the veteran looked solemn.

“My ethical views vanish when I heard betrayal. I’ve been in too many wars for this country, and it’s just a spat to what I’ve been fighting for to hear one of my kinfolks helping a Northern bloke,” he conversed in his deep, gravelly voice. He plopped back to his seat and threw his boots off.

“The Northern bloke ain’t a bloke. She’s a girl. Daughter of a sleuth.” The tall private said, as he placed his newly shined leather shoes into the locker.

“****?” the fat private prompted at once. He, then, received a sharp blow on the head.

“Side-effect of breaking off with a girl to join the army,” the tall private said in furtive disdain to his comrade as he coldly brushed off the fat private’s frowns. New recruits like this one were disturbingly low-class, the tall private thought.

“Geez, no girl would ever try going out with you. Every time I look on your face, I always get an impression of a person who wrestles with a gorilla as a past time,” the veteran said to his own amusement. The tall private laughed hard as the offended one slumped back against his seat, muttering things he can’t vociferate to the seniors. He fumbled for his toothbrush and walked off with the rest, leaving the tall and the veteran privates alone.

The atmosphere turned serious.

“Our subject is an old man and a young girl?” the tall private began, sitting beside his comrade, who was feeling the sober ambience ensuing with the conversation.

“More likely to be stains. A duo of craps that needs to be exterminated,” the veteran said roughly, resting his eyes on the whitewash floor clearly in the sentimental mode now, connoted physically on his sudden tightening of his grip with the toothbrush he had just produced out of his locker.

“You hated the North so much, don’t you?” The tall private asked eagerly, thinking of any possible serious conversation. This is the first time they were left alone to talk about anything, and the tall private would take this chance to garner knowledge about war and its in depth nature the veteran could indulge him.

A soft, distant sounds of explosion, of cries, of roaring guns, of more and more and more cries resonated in the veteran private’s ears. An invisible hand clenched his heart as he reminisced the years of battles he had fought, lost and won over. He, then, ruffled his graying hair, which actually wasn’t caused with old age but of anxiety, of occasional bringing up of his experience that he personally considered hell. Images of soldiers flying in the air lifeless after a hellish blowup played repeatedly and more hunting everyday. And that caused for his body to wither unusually fast.

“I hated that ****ing country to death.” In his eyes reflected pictures of brotherhood shattered, lives terminated and moans of pain and endless groaning over the deceased comrade and leaders. That was his hell. “I’ve been serving the nation for almost thirty years. I was eighteen when I began to hold the stupid gun, and on twenty, started killing with it. I saw my friends’ fall, saw buildings of my homes being bombed down, and saw ****ing Caucasians and Chinese emissaries fighting their own asses off for money and glory, while we were being set aside to moan over the dead. I saw too many deaths, Private Seung, and truce, my ass. There would be more deaths even if they agreed cease-fire. It won’t stop unless either of the two countries was mere splinters of wood.”

The tall private felt the bond between the veteran private and his deceased friends, and it was so strong that it basically brought the veteran into tears. His anger and distraught were devastating and pure belligerence in the eyes as if nothing can stop him on his revenge and consoling words won’t fill half a cup compared to his dam-like hatred and grief. “When I get hold of the geezer, I would probably press his nose to my ass and tell him it got burned by the war started by the *****’s country he had looked over,” he rambled through gritted teeth. The tall private glanced down to him sensing the oppressiveness on his words.

“Ever think of retirement?” he said.

“What?”

“You’ve been in service for years. Does it ever cross your mind that you wanted to lie low?” he asked, appearing like an interviewer interviewing one of the hard-bitten survivors of the war.

“Lie low, my ass. I’m going to bring as much North Korean cusses as possible with me to my grave. Double-crosser *****es count as well,” he smiled menacingly.

Perhaps this private would love to die in a battle, based on his dogged statements, the tall private thought. “I personally think this is nonsense.” He said those gently, evading the possibility of an argument. The veteran private sniggered nasally and roughly.

“The true nonsensical thing is how a sept in the skin countryman of ours got the idea of helping out a ***** from the North,” he said matter-of-factly. The tall private’s jaw fixed, speechless. “That traitorousness shan’t be forgiven.”

After a minute’s silence, the tall private said, “The nonsensical thing I’m talking is about how these suppositions we’ve just heard have no basis at all. I mean, the villagers said the little girl was a daughter of the spy and all, but they did not present any cogent evidence that would prove the accusation. And also, calling a battalion just for her? Is the nation truly that determined to crack the nut?”

The tall private’s point was piercing to the veteran private after his staid statements. “It’s all bullshit,” he just said.

“But don’t you see: the nation’s cracking a nut with a sledgehammer by rushing things as though it was already the conclusion. It was a fifteen-year old case, for Pete’s sake, can’t the government just let this off. I mean, what could possibly be frightening about a young girl and an old man? Geez, that’s what you call bullshit.” The last swear painted an impressed grin across the veteran’s face.

“You do have a point there,” he admitted. “But you’ve never seen things as much as I did. Spies appeared like harmless tick but they bite from the inside like a greedy leech. Whether that old geezer or the ***** was spy or not, I don’t care. Our objective is to obey the order from the above persons. I don’t give a **** about their speculation’s crude and devoid basis or whatever. For me, it was betrayal, and I just said moments ago, my ethical sense vanishes when I heard that cursed word.”

“What if the old man was innocent? And the girl? Can you take it? That your own countryman died in your own hands?”

Even if the argument would not falter the dogged expression the veteran sports, and the non-comical and frigid face the tall private has won’t contort into something more convincing, the tall private continued firing counterarguments.

“Then I’m just doing my duty,” the veteran said in final sort. But the tall private was in full throttle to persuade him with keen words.

“They’ve said it already: the girl was the daughter of a spy. Meaning she wasn’t the spy. Her father was! So this pursuit is nonsense, right? They’ve already killed the father, right? Don’t tell me they would go far more inhumane by murdering the whole family? For Pete’s sake, that’s so bullshit.” He was carried away. He saw himself wearing an exasperated expression as the veteran ran an eye over him in an appraising way. “I’m sorry. What I’ve said are just mere opinions and facts I’ve heard. You’re going to lead us tomorrow, so perhaps you –“

“You wanted me to go soft on them? Soft on them, my ass,” he cut in more harshly as if the justice is on his hand. The tall private’s expression looked crestfallen, his jaws loosened and he let off a sigh.

“I was hoping you would be considerable and humane and judgmental tomorrow.”

There was an ephemeral silence, which could sound like a whole hour of suffocating reflection as the veteran laid his eyes into the nullity, thinking of what to say.

“Heard the epithet called ‘Chinese New Year’s Offensive’? My family had lived where it happened and had missed the evacuation because the adversaries were itching for busting our guts; they’ve made a surprise attack. I was there, a soldier, and did nothing to save them. What’s worst, my best of friends, colleagues and brothers have fallen in the battlefield after telling me to go and get my family to the safe zone. I did as they told me to do, but when I came back, there’s only thick fog and hundreds of bodies scattered the road, whether decapitated or still moving, it got all sorts of horrors you wouldn’t want to miss, especially if you’re someone like me, to be honest. And the worstest, by far, was when I got back to the said safe zone, it was already spifflicated: bombed by Communists bullshit. My father and mother died. Everyone died. Except me,” the veteran opened, as the tall private riveted more intently.

Every word that the veteran had unleashed tore his heart, literally slashing him every period of every sentence he uttered. The carefree and lucid scene of a lone private charging into an infinite fog that smelled of gunpowder spun back in his memories. Buildings were toppled down, roads smashed, lands cratered by explosions… and stillness: The piercing stillness of death; those were the days of the war he hated and loathed and the source of his relentless detesting to the North. They started everything. They should be punished.

“I… I’m sorry to hear,” the tall private apologized, visualizing in his mind events that should never be visualized, imagining resonations of the sound that should never be imagined… focusing on things that should be left behind.

“Was it my fault I ****ing dislike these *****es?” He threw in like a spear toward the disbelieved tall private. “Without foundation or not, be that as it may, I don’t ****ing care anymore. I’d rather do things my countrymen had told me to do, instead of listening to your analytical nonsense, which is so wearing in the face. Don’t you dare overtake and egg me on about what I’m supposed to do. You’re still a juvenile. You haven’t experienced what I’ve been through.”

Then the veteran flounced away, even more grave and critical in the sense. The tall private sighed more profoundly and muttered to himself, “This is bullshit.”

But the thought of war, of countless deaths and its backwash: The tall private couldn’t bear but to feel the anxiety as he profoundly stared at the darkened tile floor, delving deeper into millions of purposes and thousands of causes of the agony, of the future agony…

He smiled but sadly.

+++++++++++++++++++

“Don’t look at me that way,” Sooyoung told the picture sitting above the sack of popped rice situated left the driver’s seat where she was on at the mo. The car remained immobile in front of the noodle restaurant, where moments ago, Jessica had gone away from, had met with her, and had promised return before nightfall. In pissing addition, as the curtains of the night engulfed the sidewalk and the parking space with bluish dim, Sooyoung couldn’t be more hacked off by sitting alone inside the stuck car, talking to her fiancee’s stationary wallet picture and seething with annoyance while waiting for Jessica’s return.

“You know I love you, honey,” she said in voice trembling with anger. She was dreaming up an alibi that can possibly muddle her though out of this mess that resulted to her wedding’s epic hitch. “Jessica pulled me into this, and I can’t do anything against it. She said she would finance our honeymoon and you know how broke I am these days. You know how I’m being nourished with fast food and Ramyun chemicals, don’t you? Jessica said she would make up from this by treating us in a cruise trip: So I have no choice but to agree. That’s why I’m apologizing to you, honey. It’s not my fault. It’s that blond nutshell!”

She could already envision the dark hair falling down in front of her fiancee’s face concealing a trembling face in the verge of eruption. She always evades that sight critically, for their relation means everything to her. And she couldn’t possibly afford breaking the engagement for Jessica’s vibe that has nothing to do with her.

“Please, I’m really sorry. Don’t get mad at me, I’ll cope up with you… I’ll do anything. If you want, I can bring you that blond nutshell’s head just don’t cancel our wedding please?”

But the stationary picture remained stationary. When sense hit her, she said, “Oh crap, this is crazy.” She snatched the photo and slid it back into her notecase delicately. “I’m going to kill the nutshell when I met her, and I’ll get through of this, don’t worry, honey.” With a one consoling look, she kissed the photo and hived the wallet away, her brows furrowing with anger. Then she dunked her hand into the sack of popped rice and shoved a handful into her mouth, munching noisily as she played her sight through the windshield, into a twilit panorama way too calm and peaceful for someone like her who was used to living in a city, where nighttime was as active as daytime. Right now, there’re scarcely people venturing on the eerily lit cobbled road, and the more spine-chilling part is some would stop to look at the curious metal thing posed suspiciously on the sidewalk.

Because of this, the prospect of Jessica being beaten up by someone taller than her was getting imminent. “I’m so going to kill her,” she muttered under breath after gesturing a pack of kids ogling over the car’s back. She sighed.

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Chapter Twelve: Ash

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++++++++++++++++++++

Jessica heard a gentle snore resonating across the cozy and warm room she had laid herself in together with the sprawled girl, which happened to be Tiffany, in her most comfortable sleeping position. Fighting the drowsiness, Jessica’s eyes slowly opened, blinking rapidly, insisting for another hour of sleep. However, she had forced herself to sit up, and as she did, the splattering sound from outside came hearable.

I was right, she thought. I knew it’s going to rain.

For a moment, she stared at the crumpled blankets, at the warm paper floor; at the nothingness shortly, to ponder yesterday’s events.

It seems like everything had went well, and her months of careful planning, empowered by her astounding and crazily persisting serendipity, the tree had bore a fruit from the single seed she had sowed and sprinkled with affection and faith.

A furtive tingle of joy lurched from her insides as she glanced at Tiffany’s face. She chuckled at the agape mouth and snores Tiffany had been bringing about. Then on its accord, she remembered her conversation with the old man about Tiffany’s dreadful past. Flashes of a small girl crying at the forest’s fringe, calling for her family who won’t be coming back anymore ran back in feeble diorama of crushed emotions at the thought of it. Her smile vanished for a while, but regained at once at the abrupt thought that after breakfast, they would depart to Seoul. Tiffany would finally be free. There would be no more struggles and fake smiles.

Closing her eyes curtly while pondering more, a sudden breath of bitter zephyr barged in from the opened window at the far side of the room, and it brought a slight chill to Jessica as it passed by wraithlikely. Her sight travelled through the window and dreamily focused there, partly to view the drizzle raining down needles of melted icicles, considering the frigidity of the winds that chimed in. The trees were soaked up in ghostly morning azure and the rain’s plunking song was as eerily sad as the view outside. She couldn’t bear but to be slightly deflated through the ambience.

At that precise and chilly instance, she thought of Sooyoung. She could not help but to smirk at the scene when Sooyoung would be scowling at her for not keeping her promises and everything. In her mind, she could already hear her wild shout outs and pettifoggeries rattling out of her machinegun esque mouth. “I’m sorry, Sooyoung-ah. I’m just following my heart, and honestly speaking,” she reached for Tiffany and tucked her into her blanket, which Tiffany replied with a gratified, but drowsy, smile. “Honestly speaking, Sooyoung-ah, I’m pleased with the path I’ve chosen into.”

With that one last mental statement, she rose from her sitting position, folded her blankets and sheets, and grabbed her jacket that kind of smelled like old pipe. Oh, how she wanted a nice hot bath after this.

After combing her hair in front of an old mirror hung at the far corner, she bustled out of the sliding door, still yawning a bit but almost wide-awake. And the moment she stepped out, she found herself watching a scene drizzled saddeningly by thin raindrops, and the once sandy yard turned into a pool of mud. There seemed to be oppressiveness somewhere, and that baleful feeling made her brows furrowing together with a pout. She heaved a fuming sigh followed by an amplified shivering.

Soo Rim turned up, her shoulders drooped and her hands at her back, nevertheless, the kind expression remained vivid in spite of the heavy weather.

“Good morning, Jessica-ssi,” she said in a voice as though she had been tired all night and had been forced to wake and smile, complying to the contrary of that morning’s ambience but with exertion.

Jessica merely bowed her head.

“Would you like some tea? I’m pretty sure our Tiffany will get up in the next hour, and I’m certain she will going to whine for a soup or porridge. Let’s circumvent the loom for a while. You don’t want to see her whining,” Soo Rim gently said, beckoning Jessica to follow her.

Jessica abided, and they both ambled towards the dining area, with the plunking as the only sound and the muffled clumping of their footsteps against the wooden floor.

The old man was already sitting in Indian position, his eyes deeply closed as if he was in the profoundest pondering. A laden of side dishes and four bowls of rice simply placed on the ssang opposite to him.

Jessica felt somewhat awkward into joining the luncheon. After what she said and emphasized last night, she felt kind of thick to be even turn up facing him. However, as the old man’s eyes started blinking, opened, and saw Jessica sitting down, his expression showed delight as if nothing had happened yesterday.

“Jessica-ssi,” he muttered, bowing at her. Jessica densely bowed back. He went on, “Have some of Soo Rim’s pickled radish. And the sweetfish caught from the fresh waters in the river near the forest. It has been my hobby since…” He balked for a while. “Well, since… since I’ve arrived here. Help yourself.”

He passed the platter of grilled sweetfish to Jessica that Jessica received rather gratefully. For the old man, whatever he had divulged and whatever he had done was now part of the past. And a person vehement emotionally caused by the past would forever stay stuck hampered moving on. To him, this is the first time he would start taking a step forward, and the outburst of the first step was, in any measure, immeasurably pleasing.

Jessica chopsticked her rice soundlessly, as the couple did as well. It seemed inhumane for traditional people to converse over a meal. Straight-laced would be the exact adjective to describe the scene, similar to classic western movies about royals. Jessica casted timid glances over each mouthful, but the two elderly were simply engulfed relishing the dish. She merely looked down.

Before they even know it, Tiffany turned up over Jessica’s shoulder, plopping down onto the empty with a bloated and expressionless face. Jessica caught a glimpse of her, and she smiled brightly, again, the distinct eye smile merged into sight causing a blissful restlessness from Jessica’s intestine.

The old man chuckled. “I really know what you felt right now after seeing that smile,” he heartily laughed. “Tiffany’s eye smile has that kind of persuading power that can simply turn the tables or it can make your sad day bright.” Soo Rim joined the merriment, as Jessica smiled rather uneasily whilst Tiffany merely chomped herself to some more rice and kimchi.

The rain splattered, roaring annoyingly, as breakfast ended, with Tiffany massaging her tummy and declining onto the planked floor, clearly stuffed to bursting. Jessica sat at the edge of the level raised on the planked patio just outside the room, feeling the plashes of cold water on her legs as she playfully dangled it back and forth.

She gazed at the gray sky, onto the drenched trees and to the yard in front of her, apparently wanting to expend time for a while as she waits for the rain to subside. Yet… in the depths of her heart, something’s troubling her. It caused the muscle to thump seriously hard against her ribcage, a sign of somewhat minacious notion looming.

“You’re planning to leave, aren’t you, Jessica-ssi?”

The old man turned up suddenly and sat next to her, his face straight and abstruse. Jessica glanced sideways to him but immediately turned back to the sight she’d been empathizing, still troubled deep within. “Yeah, we will.”

“After the rain?”

She nodded and he smiled afterwards. “If I would suggest, you should make it sooner, Jessica-ssi. I can feel a definite mark of disturbance brooding since yesterday. It won’t do well if you would let the weather hamper your departure. Especially in these troubled days, Jessica-ssi.”

She knowingly looked at him, but he stayed fixed to one direction, yet the rigid expression seemed to soften. “You want us to leave as soon as possible?”

Tardily, the old man glinted with a smile, so deep, so unfathomable… so willing. “Take care of Tiffany-ssi, as the contrary to the fiasco I did for her.”

Jessica’s stare centered.

All had been calm and peaceful in the next minute until an ear shattering shrill irrupted inside the house. Jessica hastily spun around, rising from her seat, and she tore into the room only to find out a hysteric Tiffany shaking her head in shocking delirium while Soo Rim agitatedly consoling her by patting her back.

“W-what happened?” Jessica agitatedly asked, looking blank.

“No. I don’t want to go. Mama… pack up? It’s noisy outside… please… I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go away. Mama… I don’t want to pack up! I don’t want to! Mama! Papa! I don’t want to leave! Mama!” Tiffany vehemently writhed around, slumping back to the floor as though there was something brooding coming after her. Soo Rim stooped down to hug her, but Tiffany rejected it, still muttering insistence from not leaving.

Jessica dashed toward the scene and arched down, grabbing Tiffany’s wrist and pulling her up. Then she threw her arms around the shuddering partner, who, unbelievably, responded to the gesture, resting her chin over Jessica’s shoulder while murmuring ‘No, I don’t want to pack up. There are many people outside. I don’t want to go.’ Jessica threw to the old man a questioning look, and he replied it with an irritating blankness.

“I don’t… I…”

‘It was probably part of Tiffany’s trauma’ he thought but failed to verbalize due to the nimbleness and shock. Jessica tightened her hug and glanced at Soo Rim, who said, “I just told her to pack her clothes up because you’re leaving. I never… I don’t have an idea… I’m… sorry if…” Her wrinkled face glistened with tears as she knelt up, looking toward Jessica with a face as though asking for understanding, as though she did something seriously wrong.

Jessica assured her ‘okay’ by staring back wearing an understanding look. Tiffany continuously moaned to some extent in the next minute, until like a child, she fell asleep on Jessica’s arms as Jessica stroked Tiffany’s back delicately. The old man and his wife sat back on the floor, their horrified face settling evanescently.

“I’ll do the packing for her,” Soo Rim said tearing into the noise of the splattering rain outside and plunking drops against the roof. She exerted herself up and walked out of the room, leaving her husband with hands pompously tucked in at both side of his armpits and Tiffany unconsciously resting against Jessica’s body as Jessica looked down at her pitifully.

“It seems departing is quite a hectic job, isn’t it, Jessica-ssi? Especially if you’re planning to leave with someone like Tiffany, who had atrocious experience from the way of leaving.” He was talking about how Tiffany’s family fled from Gwang-ju in fear of being part of people’s pertinacious dissension. And about how the Hwangs escaped from the soldiers in fiasco.

The old man suspired. In the depths of him, a feeling of dread is getting imminent. He could hear the soldiers’ audible and robotic march, and the sound of the guns: all in distant echoes but getting nearer and nearer, and clearer and clearer.

But he would do anything to impede it. That was his obligation as he promised to himself: A vow to straighten the mess he did. Even if it would cost him his life.

--------------------

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Laugh... Away! Spoiler:

The backwashing waves from the billowing sea created a majestic splashing sound as it brushed the shoreline, spraying water, washing the white sand, creating dulcet foams. Mirroring from the waters was the outlying sky in pale veil of mid-summer blue blotted with drifting cirrus. It was gazing down at its reflection, admiring itself with an air of gratification expressed through benign salty breeze that was tearing itself toward Yuri’s face, as she sat on a lone bench ensconced meters from the shore, bearing an incomprehensible grin.

In her eyes, there was a scene, a beautiful panorama, of two kids running across the sandy shore, laughing their heart out… laughing away. One of the kids fell down rather seriously, but as the other jumped down over another, they were both consumed by laughing again: Even if it hurts a lot falling down.

Perhaps because they are with each other. They were just plain happy.

And the scene was beautiful because of that.

Yuri’s long, dark strands of hair screened her smiling face as another gush of cool zephyrs came sweeping toward her. At that precise moment, a girl with doe-like eyes and unique grin turned up upon her shoulders, bustling as she prodded Yuri energetically.

“Yo, Yuri,” Yoona brightly greeted, taking the space next to Yuri, who looked up on her with a grin and went back to her day-dream. Yoona glanced at the peaceful seascape for a while and riveted back to Yuri, who was still engrossed by her surrealistic reverie. “Yo.”

Yuri’s focus snapped to Yoona. She immediately casted an apologetic look. “Sorry. I’m just…”

“Day-drooling, by the looks of it,” Yoona smiled. Her shoulder-length pleat was continuously being blown by incoming winds, blocking her face, as she constantly fixed it to the back of her ears.

“No,” Yuri dreamily beamed, not looking at Yoona, but remained fixed to her phantasmagoric air castle. “I missed this place a lot.”

“The old nurses from the lobby mentioned you to me a while ago,” Yoona told Yuri.

Nestled near the edge of a bluff meters away from where they sat was an overlooking hospital. Yuri shortly glanced at it and bore a toothed smile. “Really? I suppose they told you something about the two mischievous kids I used to hang out with.” Then she chuckled, in her head, suddenly recalling scowls from the nurses that seemed to be chasing something.

“No, actually,” said Yoona truthfully, slumping her back against the bench and stretching her legs, yawning. “Why’re we here, anyway?”

Yuri closed her eyes.

Her heart was drowned with warmth, as she digested the distant words that out of blue reeled back: she heard it echoing aloofly. It was a conversation of three kids planning to set sail across the sea in search for the famed Bearded Wizard. But the contrivance were composed mainly of chuckles and teasing.

She was so happy back then.

She was so happy being back here again.

---------------------

Chapter Thirteen: Black

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The relentless torrent poured the village, chilling it with frigid winds and damping it with a rain flow that won’t seem to end until eternity. It was a total hitch for the villagers to wander and shop around, and the closed markets as byproducts made the hamlet seemingly peaceful in any view. The thatched shelters and eccentric houses appeared drowsy, visually snoring with silence. The spring rain continued to fall.

Sooyoung’s back ached as she looked for a space to straighten her phenomenally long legs that suddenly cramped painfully. She had been sleeping in a tightly closed backseat of her convertible all through the night, and there’s no one she could blame her pitiful emplacement but to the blond nutshell who hadn’t returned yet. Grudgingly and with a little groan, she cracked her knuckles, stretched her arms, and felt her spine cracking sorely. After a wince and a swearword, it was followed by heave of comfort, and the only thing that she minded right now was how to fill her empty stomach.

Rain splashed against the windshields as she looked through the closed Noodle stand, which was probably not expecting any costumers that day due to bad weather. Grinding her teeth furiously, she grumpily turned to face the sack of popped rice she bought yesterday, and stewingly unfastened it. She, then, dumped an angry hand into it, grabbed a handful, and she piteously gazed at herself at the windshield mirror as the fistful of popped rice travelled onto her mouth. She saw her untidy reflection and snarled at herself, grudging Jessica with a promise of breaking her neck and drowning her alive.

“Okay, I’m tired of these games, Jessica,” she told herself, jumping to the driver’s seat. She rummaged for the keys in a minute, and she quickly started the engine. It rumbled to life as she tightened clasping the steering wheel, hesitating for a moment but very briefly. “Sorry, dork. I’m totally leaving. I’m truly leaving now. I’m leaving now, you son of a pig. I’m going to be beaten up when I get back to Seoul, and the more I stay here, the painful the beating would get. Goodbye, nutshell. Tired of your games and delusions.”

Though she apparently knew she would regret what she did, still, she continued snaking the cobbled road out of the town to Incheon, as planned.

++++++++++++++++++++

Exactly an hour ago just after the sunrise, the third platoon was lined neatly on the covered court in their Incheon camp. All of the faces, in spite of the chilly weather, remained passive, looking straight, looking bored. All but the tall private, who seemed anxious at the corner, while constantly gulping and nasally breathing.

Out of blue, a very North Korean-looking official turned up, and at once, they all prompted into a salute.

“At ease,” the official said, taking a halt in front of them. “Today, we have an important mission.”

More likely an evil nonsense mission, the tall private thought, grinding his teeth, fighting his self not to protest.

“You must’ve known about it since yesterday, that our subject is an old man and a girl, who would probably at her twenties,” the official robotically told them, staring at each and everyone’s face with cold satisfaction. “General Chun became concern of the subject, that he appended a little something on our mission today.”

The tall private felt dread creeping on his veins up to her face, draining the color out. The official resumed, “We are to incinerate the village.”

Those words ringed to the tall private’s ears like a whipped up din promising chaos. Actually, it does promises chaos. He found himself in his most unbearable predicament; he couldn’t keep the gush of protest ascending up like a geyser. “I-incinerate the village?”

The official darted his sight to the tall private. Usually, soldiers don’t react or even move an inch when an official is speaking. Yet, this pawn sure has some guts to prove, tad considerable for cutting in his speech. “Yes. Destroy the village. That’s what General Chun ordered us.”

“But… why?” The tall private kept his voice as unemotional as possible, but deep inside, he couldn’t bear but to feel utterly disappointed. The thought of killing an innocent old man and young girl was devastating enough, but to destroy the whole village as well! His eyes uneasily focused to his comrade’s shoulder.

Of course, they need an explanation, the official told his self. He ambled with his arms knotted at his back and gazing down, his vivid official’s hat bowing. The rain outside the shaded portion splattered noisily but their voices echoed incredibly clear probably from the high ceilings of the covered court. This assured the official for a clear emphasizing of their objective.

“It has come to our General’s attention that spies can easily infiltrate into our boundaries. And he believed that one of the biggest and critical factors is that someone, someone amongst us, is aiding them. Do you get it? The General wanted to spifflicate the entire hamlet so as to show what happens to everyone who does such traitorousness.”

“But why the whole village, sir?”

The official cackled as though he wasn’t expecting that reaction. “Oh you don’t know? The whole village betrayed the nation.”

An incredulous look spread across the tall private’s face but he still avoided eye contact. “How did a village betray the nation, sir?” he said blankly and in a voice muttered between his lips that were itching for a protest.

“Simple: how come no one from the village until now, had told us anything that a spy is residing within their boundaries? That must mean they’re helping the aider upon aiding the sleuth!” He emphasized the last words with a cross between a spat and loftiness.

Ignorance was the first word that had come into the tall private’s mind. He merely shut his eyes and nodded, feeling now the inevitable fate of the villagers’ lives in the army’s hands. He gazed down, fighting back the sadness brought by the letdown he couldn’t possibly believe. More than three hundred South Korean citizens would die or would leave homeless by the mission he utterly despises. But he had no choice but to abide by it, and as his eyes opened again, there was an ephemeral image of his nation’s flag being burned down by the flames started by its inhabitants and the patriotism he thought exists was now mere prevarication being laughed about by the North Korean denizens, who would probably think the South was totally over-reacting. This is part of their plan. And it bore fruit that seemed delicious on the outside, but was rotten from the inside.

“Do this in the name of our nation,” he felt the official’s hands patting his cheeks. Those hands felt so rough.

The official turned his back on him and walked back to the center, reverting to his expressionless and treacherous façade. “Do this mission for our nation! Help Her recuperate from the war!”

The soldiers shouted concordantly whilst the tall private remained set, his eyes resting on the landscape drenched by rain, furtively cringing to the atmosphere embittered by ignorance and incredible devoid of basis of things. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of the veteran private and for sure, he was as sad as he was.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Exactly an hour and a half after, Jessica had been donning her jacket and putting on her shoes as Tiffany stonily stared at the depths of the muddy yard, apparently in the looks as though she was wasting time but she was already in full attire, prepared to leave. Jessica glanced at her for a few seconds and smiled fondly. Deep inside, she hoped this is the end of the real suffering for Tiffany.

“Be careful on your way,” said Soo Rim lovingly, stroking Jessica’s blond hair with a wrinkled but kindly smile. Jessica lifted the rucksack of Tiffany’s things; mostly consisting of old photographs of her shattered family and a few clothes. It wasn’t that heavy and the sack wasn’t that big and so uncomfortable to carry, Jessica thought, as she slid the strap around her shoulders and waved a hand goodbye to Soo Rim.

She walked toward Tiffany and whispered her, “C’mon.” She had said those in such gentle manner, it seemed the most warming whisper Tiffany had ever heard of. Smile twitching at the corner of the lips, Tiffany gazed up to Jessica, as she allowed the connection of their limbs helped her rise up. Jessica smiled even more fondly.

The old man was waiting for them at the gateway carrying an umbrella that seemed will fit two people. Yet, Jessica had already made up her mind and was ready to get wet for Tiffany. She and Tiffany tore across the rain, brows furrowed and hands shielding their faces. Tiffany has her unused one clasping Jessica’s right arm.

They halted at the shaded part of the gateway splattering the old man’s pants with mud. He gazed at it for a moment and just riveted to Jessica. “Ready now?”

He has to come with them since he knew the way back to the town, where Sooyoung, please God, must be waiting for them. He advised them to hurry up and gun around to Seoul, opposing Jessica’s plan of stopping by to Incheon for refueling. He had opposed it so very urgently as though there’s something bound to happen. She was forced to comply with it, considering her own feeling of bothersome dread that seemed to send her heart banging against its cage with unseen cause of fright even yesterday until now.

She nodded.

They were walking along the empty, vertical misty road for just a few minutes when suddenly emerged a lilliputian image of a man faltering across the asphalt as if running away from something chasing him. The old man gasped for a moment and handed Jessica the umbrella, then he dashed up. He also signaled Jessica and Tiffany to stay back.

The foggy road was lamenting. They heard sounds of gunshots from somewhere near: echoing in every corner, ascending from the world caused by pains and supposition. Jessica stood in the middle of the haze, with the unaware girl clinging on her arms, and with the horror and dread coming into existence from the blur and nullity of ignored prospects.

A bang reverberated, making Tiffany’s heavy expression alert at once at the sound of something familiar… something painful. Her grasp tightened, and Jessica felt it, the fear. As the old man came into view from the downpour thinly obscuring the road, the bloodied hands and clothes spoke the horror waiting for them somewhere near… and the face told of immeasurable affright that caused Jessica to tremble at her feet, Tiffany to cringe unmistakably.

“Soldiers,” the old man blurted out, arriving in front of them shivering from both coldness and fear etched bleakly across his face. Tiffany focused on the scarlet stains from his clothes and couldn’t bear but to writhe to motion, backing behind Jessica with eyes wide open as though she saw something dreadful, something terrible… something that brought the memories she long wanted to forget to reel back clearly and detailed.

“Why would they…?”

Jessica looked blank from her place. Her right hand was trembling with anxiety and her motions were decelerating. She felt Tiffany pressing her face against her shoulders, sobbing. But Jessica, too, wanted to sob. She knew there are things brooding inevitably today. The only thing that bothered her at the moment is how can a frail, feeble, thin and a female twenty five year old can withstand the adversaries, who could be tall, able soldiers burning with murder.

“They knew… they knew that a spy was in the village. And I just don’t… don’t… understand…” He faded as the senses walloped him in the face like a painful slap. “The village is getting destroyed because of me. Someone had told on me to the army. Someone said I’ve been taking care of Tiffany, the spy the villagers knew. ****.”

As the rain pour down a relentless torrent, as Tiffany remained shuddering with fear at Jessica’s back, as Jessica stood in front of her wearing a horrified face, as the old man turned his back on them and facing the road, the dread uprose from the thin fog into a shape of a rumbling huge army truck.

“T-the army,” Jessica whispered, horror-struck. The truck came into halt meters away, and a platoon assembled in front, their M-16 guns drawn out and their faces passive.

As serenely as possible, the old man spun again to face Jessica and Tiffany. He sported a very sad smile and his bloodshot eyes quivered and, possibly, pouring down tears masked by the rain.

“Jessica-ssi,” he said gently in spite of the noise coming from the full-clipped arsenals being pushed into their rightful places with clunking sounds, ramping of boots against the hard road, and the mighty downpour heavily sprinkling everything their sight could possibly lie at.

“A-ahjussi,” was the only word Jessica had managed to utter.

“As I have said earlier today, take care of Tiffany, as I could have done if I have told the truth sooner.” There was still a trace of guilt in his voice, but yet, it was minimal. Mostly, it consisted of triumph. For the moment he walked himself toward the soldiers and told them the truth, he would be truly free. And he has no regret doing it.

“I… I will,” maundered Jessica, gulping.

“Then,” the reminiscing smile he sport was so too good to be true, “I could’ve ask nothing more.”

With a final stroke on her cheeks, the old man in his white traditional dress faced around toward the adversaries with such dignity, with such immeasurable pride. Perhaps because he, as Jessica did to Tiffany, could finally see a requital done. Requital with the ill-fated Hwangs from the horrors he had bestowed upon them.

Jessica looked upon his shoulders with tears streaming her eyes but barely visible due to the drenched state of her face. Tiffany hiccupped for a while and, again, tightened her clasp on Jessica’s arms. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and then they strode back into the forest.

--------------

Chapter Fourteen: Red

+++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++

The landscape blurred with both rainfall and Sooyoung’s garnering of speed, as she sped up on a familiar path they, she and Jessica, took before arriving in the cursed village. Sooyoung groaned every once and a while, frowning to herself, nasally breathing, yet in the middle of this, she was streaked slightly with anxiety.

“Now, I’m dead meat,” she told her self, biting her right finger whilst the other hand grasped the steering wheel rather clumsily. With brows furrowing, she gazed at the windshield mirror, and saw again a clearly lacking-of-sleep state of her face. The shadows underneath her eyes were prominent, her hair smelled like stale shampoo, and what’s worst, she stank like pus. “I’m so going to kill that ugly, yellow nutshell.”

Her eyes travelled outside the windshield, and saw through the thin mist was a traffic cone, and half a dozen soldiers signaling her stop. She pulled over few feet from them, and opened her side window. A soaked face in full battle gear and helmet gazed down at her with such icy expression. There was a slight fright in her.

“W-what?”

“License, please,” asked the soldier in an expressionless voice. While fumbling for her driver’s license, automatically through the grumbling sound, her sight ventured and followed a passing truck packed with soldiers with their guns out and uniform as though there’s a war.

Aloofly, she heard another soldier calling another. “The captain called for assistance! The villagers are fighting back! The second platoon must be sent!”

The soldier, who was asking for Sooyoung’s license, prompted right away, leaving Sooyoung confused. It took her a few minutes to digest the words she just heard.

“The villagers are fighting back? Assistance?”

She gasped, as her innards suddenly stiffened as though an unknown force clenched it, making her feel sickly. With trembling hands and agape mouth and widened eyes, she thought of Jessica, who was probably sandwiched back in the village.

After hysterically showing the soldier, who came back for a jiff, her piece of document, she immediately took a turn around and, without hesitation but with yawning anxiety, gunned back into the familiar path, back to the village.

+++++++++++

Even if the old man’s footsteps were heavy, yet his straight gaze was ennobled enough to show his gratefulness upon walking himself to the soldiers, who ought to shoot him, first thing. And that’s what he feared, as he ventured on a slightly slippery tarmac onto the line of privates, their guns drawn out and protruding.

He must tell them the truth before everything. So that a period will mark the end of this madness. The so-called kink, which the rootage was obviously deficient, will be straightened today. No matter what, he has to keep his promise to Tiffany, to Jessica… to Soo Rim… to himself.

“I am the village chief, Captain,” he said purposely gratifying. The apparent official, who was the only one facing the line, looked at the corner of his eyes upon his shoulders with a grin twitching in his lips, half-visible to the old man’s position.

“You betrayed the nation, old man. You helped the spy,” said the Captain casually, facing around toward the old man.

The old man halted to his tracks, apparently unfrightened by the barrels itching for a roar. “You got it wrong, I’m afraid. I was helping myself.”

The Captain did not get it at once, but merely thought it was a joke. “Hahaha, it wasn’t funny old man. Where’s the girl? Did you let her off? Or did you make sense for the last time and finished her off for us?” The voice, marked with blithe unconcern, was almost deadly to everyone’s ear. It sounded like a mere coax, upon which it simply point to the question asking whether you wanted to be shot through or to be shot through.

“The latter was pretty unlikely, Captain. No human being would have the guts to kill an innocent young girl for the sake of peculiar speculations about a family who merely came into their new home and the villagers just told them on the army and said they were spies without something that would support the foundation,” the old man spoke as though murder was non-existent, and the hand gun the Captain clasps was a toy. “What I meant is that will the great country of Gogeoryou send a family to have their lives at stake when they cherish their love ones as much as their patriotism?”

The Captain’s nonchalant face contorted into a tormenting queer. His mustached lips vibrated as though he was purposely blowing off the irritating brambles of whiting hair above his lips. His eyes narrowed dangerously. “What are you trying to say, old man?”

“Don’t you feel sad, Captain? That blood has to spill in order to achieve recuperation,” said the old man dramatically, shutting his eyes as though he was prepared to be shot any moment now. “And that blood… from your own brothers and sisters in the nation…”

“WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?” the Captain roared, offended to the point that spit flew off his lips that was trembling with rage.

“I’m trying to say is that I am the spy,” the old man said gently, fighting the desire to bow down in deference. He would, in spades, look like a flaunting machine with an annoying creased face if he did. He just forced a smile.

An echoing laugh of ludicrousness reverberated even amidst of the noisy downpour. The soldier’s helmeted heads and soaked faces remained as it were: statue-like or, more likely, as robots waiting for their master’s configuration for them to move.

“Hahaha,” the Captain laughed, stomping his foot and placing a hand on his stomach. “Son of a *****.”

He hurled his fist into the air and it landed on the old man’s face, breaking his nose and causing him to fall on the ground unconscious. Then he spun to face the soldiers and said, “Do you know where this ****er lives?”

Stillness responded the stupid question. “Scumbags,” he muttered to the soldiers. “Take him to the truck. It’s not far from here, right. Let’s go.”

+++++++++++++++

The fog went through Jessica’s nostrils as they ran with all their might deeper into the forest. The brambles were cut through as they jumped across, tore into and fought their way rather pointlessly.

Tiffany was silently sobbing, stifled in between her arduous breaths. She was tightening her grip, wanting not to let go of Jessica in fear of being alone again once she does. But the girl she was running along won’t let it happen: it was Jessica’s promise, a blissful oath she will fulfill until eternity, to keep Tiffany, in any danger that can possibly come for her, with everything she can. Her body might belong to a frail and flimsy twenty year old, but her love is a force to be reckoned with. It was a tsunami of unending affection: she would die with it.

“I’m tired,” Jessica heard Tiffany called, and right away, they balked down onto the mossy forest bed, kneeling and breathing deeply. Tiffany’s shoulder slumping was gradual, as though something tight was clasping her pharynx. Jessica noticed it and stroked Tiffany’s back, massaging it. Immediate comfort was the initial sensation for Tiffany.

“You don’t have to worry, Tiffany,” said Jessica solemnly, gulping down a mouthful of air and shuddering in both coldness and fatigue. “I will protect you.” She couldn’t imagine how a girl like her could mutter such promise, such enormous responsibility in a willing tone; let alone thinking about how she turned into someone as solemn as the girl wearing clothes like her’s, stroking Tiffany’s back, and smiling amidst of the harsh rain: It all appeared ludicrous and oddly unbelievable:. That is until she just saw herself doing it without a trace of regret.

“Do not leave me here,” begged Tiffany.

“I won’t. Ever. I will protect you,” Jessica replied sedately. Tiffany felt those words penetrating her chest, sending warmth into her, like an embrace of a mother, like a kiss of a lover… like God’s touch of hope.

“I love you.”

Jessica’s focused centered on the abysmal face Tiffany sport. Surely, the tone that just resonated is not the same as that from the person who had just begged her not to leave. It was mature: far more solemn, far more serious than the bubbly girl who eats like a truck, who sleeps like a log, who laughs like happiness won’t end, who believed in her protection and everything. Jessica was in definite sublimity, that the grin vanished and it exalted into the profoundest expression of tenderness.

She blundered for words, for beautiful phrases to respond such powerful statement. Her search led her to this: “I love you too, Tiffany.”

And they hugged each other as they’ve never hugged before, and they appeared like the mixture of colors kissing in between the afternoon light bidding farewell and incoming night at sunset. They expressed themselves in a frenzy of fastening each other in furtive hope they won’t be separated again… in hope that their already synchronized heartbeat would physically amalgamate into a single existence.

“Don’t leave me, please,” said Tiffany right into Jessica’s ear: her breath was somewhat tickling.

“I won’t. I promise. I will not leave you, ever,” Jessica punctuated the words so gently, so full of love.

Then they backed off, stared at each other, consumed each other with fiery looks as though, in their head, sketching each other’s faces to linger forever in their memories.

After seemingly to have recuperate pretty much of their energy, they rose from their intimate engrossment with hands knotted together.

“We need to get back to Soo Rim ahjummunim and tell her about ahjussi,” Jessica told Tiffany, who nodded in response. “I’ll follow you.”

Jessica let her lead the way in a muddy trail back into the old man’s house.

+++++++++++++++

The mighty downpour that can be considered second to the storm that drowned the world back on Noah’s time, relentlessly sprayed rain compounded by the equally mighty gale. Jessica and Tiffany tore through the deluge, holding each other’s hands as though the wind would blow them off the ground. But the purpose of the tied knot was in order to remain inseparable as seemingly as they are right now.

Their drenched and caked feet plashed mud the moment they arrived at the oaken gate of Tiffany’s old home, and they pushed the ingress open, wincing to some extent due to the coldness that appeared pressing their lungs with so much moist, Tiffany started coughing and Jessica started to feel a little sneezy.

“Soo Rim-ahjummunim!” Jessica called in hope that her tiny voice would penetrate the spattering din of the weather. They directly strode toward the wooden level, forgot to remove their shoes and quickly slid the doors open, fervently searching for the kind old woman who, just this morning, had served them with the most delicious pickled radish and grilled sweetfish Jessica had ever tasted her all whole life.

“Grandma!” Tiffany murmured, poring into the second room on the far hallway.

It took them a mere five minutes to find out that the house was isolated. Tiffany declined onto the planked floor and heaved a fuming sigh. Jessica turned upon her shoulders and sat beside her, equally exhausted.

“Don’t worry, Tiffany,” again, Jessica promised, as she intimately pinched Tiffany’s hand that was leaning against the floor.

Tiffany answered it with an odd look Jessica could not comprehend at the bursting sound as though something exploded. They both scrambled up and instinctively ran into one of the rooms, with the door half-closed. Both of them peered on it, and what they saw shocked them as they tightened their clasping hands.

“I’m going to repeat it again, old man,” said the Captain in a frustrated voice as he potently went into the yard, admiring for a moment the ancient-looking house and then reverting to his potent stance. One of the five soldiers kicked the tied old man onto the ground, where he fell kneeling and groaning with bleeding mouth and forehead.

The scene’s effect was immediate to Tiffany: her hands began trembling vehemently, and her breathing turned twice the normal speed. Jessica hastily glanced at her, and covered her eyes, but it was no use. The enclosing yard had kept the noise outside down, and had made the scene’s conversation incredibly audible.

There was another plashing noise, and another soldier pushed, this time, an old woman to kneel beside her husband, with her mouth stuffed and her hands tied at her back as well. The couple gazed piteously to the captain while facing the most critical moment of their lives.

“I told you, I am the spy,” the old man had told the Captain over and over again, but the Captain remained insisting that he was hiding the spy.

Closing his eyes and letting the rain drenched his uniform, the Captain let out a deep sigh of disappointment, and yanked his handgun off its pouch. “On the count of three, old man. One…”

But he did not finish counting: a powerful roar from a gun bellowed. The old man saw himself gasping blankly as his wife, Soo Rim, fell down kissing the mud with blood blooming on her upper back part.

“S-Soo Rim-ah!” He murmured, and then tears fought out of his wrinkled eyelids, brimming with emotions, cascading with a million cries of pain, of agony…

The Captain stared at the flinching body with cold eyes. “So where is the spy?” He persisted.

But the old man was busy mourning over his wife. “Soo Rim-ah! Soo Rim-ah! W-what have they done to you? S-Soo Rim-ah!”

He was kneeling beside the byproduct of what he did for himself and for everyone around him, and he couldn’t possibly think of a reason to despise this moment because of the fact that he deserved it. Yet, the transition between getting the salvation and fighting to live appeared like a sword that slashed him but did not kill him. He found himself bleeding in soul, and crying his heart out.

“Soo Rim-ah!” he continuously moaned, wishing he could touch the muddied cheeks of his wife for the last time before her departure to Nirvana. However, the knot on his arms did not let him, and he just knelt there, groaning with pain that cannot be expressed fully. No implication is sufficient. But the physical outcome was destruction.

“Where is the spy, goddammit! One… two…”

“Soo Rim…”

A bang echoed, followed by a groan and a splashing sound. Jessica gasped at once whilst Tiffany let out muffled shriek that spoke of her feelings and pain running back again. She could feel the agony again, on her veins, like blood… blood…

“Please, believe us, we are not spies!” Mr. Hwang begged, with his hands held up and his face crumpled with horror. The darkness of the night made it less visible, but his trembling voice made the direness clear in echoes of desperation. The clawing twigs from the nearby forest crackled as the trees poked each other, urged by the bitter wind that came into their midst like the breath of promised death. So cold… so damn cold, thought Mrs. Hwang, as she lay sprawled on the mossy and wet soil, with her chest drowned with blood. Slowly, her body was falling down as she desperately held it up.

The soldiers encircling around them remained passive.

“We’re not spies,” Mrs. Hwang muttered with all her might, causing Mr. Hwang to dart his sight to his almost lifeless wife.

“Honey, don’t talk,” Mr. Hwang whispered. He rose up and tried to reach his wife until a bang resonated across the stillness of the forest. The little kid hiding behind the thickets saw his father fell over her mother, in an embracing farewell. The night’s focus centered quietly. The winds halted blowing. The little girl backed off and plummeted against the damp ground, shaking her head fervidly… this is not happening…

The present Tiffany cried against Jessica’s arm, as she had moaned against her Ki Sun’s, and she pressed her face onto Jessica’s bosom, as she had pressed her face onto Ki Sun’s arms. Words whirled around in her but she failed to voice it out; it was just so painful, she couldn’t find a second to mutter things and tell how painful it is.

Jessica saw the torture, and with teary eyes, pitifully glanced at Tiffany’s cringing state. She wished she could do something to ease it, or perhaps somehow, she could transfer the burden onto her own shoulders. But she just found herself only locking Tiffany against her arms, as intimately as possible, as comforting as possible. The horror they had just witnessed would definitely linger to her. Yet, to Tiffany’s case, what she saw would exacerbate into the most excruciating reminiscing of what happened to her and what is happening to her.

“Don’t worry, Tiffany,” Jessica sobbed. “I won’t leave you, I promise.”

------------

Chapter Fifteen: Red

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What Sooyoung saw made her mouth hanging with horror as she pulled over at the very entrance of the village, by the wooden arch. Aghast, she stepped out: ambient dread suffocated her as the thick haze caused by the nearby burning houses. But with everything she could possibly gather, albeit how terrifying the show in front of her: she ventured into the world of chaos.

“You creatures of the filth! Who are you to… burn down the house of my fathers?” roared a particular noble-looking father, with his family slumped against the muddy ground moaning. Scenes like this greeted Sooyoung as she embarked into the main street where pandemonium ascended like the eye of a hurricane.

“No!” begged an old man, sprawled helpless on the wet road. His son turned upon his shoulder, saw his father, and then irately lunged into an attack toward a hefty-looking soldier. But like mincing garlic, the soldier smacked the old man’s son in the face with the butt of his gun, and, as the son tried to stand up and manage to pick a stick to counter smash, a bang resonated. The old man strode toward his son and cried. The soldier stared at the sad panorama but with cold murder spelled like a lyrics of a heavy metal song on his face. Frigidly, he gazed for a moment. Then with a roaring finality, he gunned the old man as well.

Sooyoung saw this and a quick fright struck her like thunder, immobilizing her on his situation. Rooted from head to toe, she watched the soldier lighting up a torch under the shade and flinging it into the old man’s thatched roof. Fire crackled. Hell has never been this perceivable.

She wanted to fight back, wanted herself a gun and kill these *******s, and as this mad desire took over her, an explosion echoed nearby; the noodle restaurant that had served her with six bowls of ramen yesterday was toppled down by a war tank.

She cringed to her place, as another explosion banged. Splinters of wood flew toward her, and she gazed up, staring clearly through the haze the thick fog emanating from a burning flank of houses. With fervent fear, she reverted to the hefty soldier.

He was grinning maliciously.

He was ambling closer to her.

Aquiver like crazy, she backed a few steps, but he walked more closely.

The demon stalks to his prey. Anytime, he’s ready for an attack. As Sooyoung stared back at him, the noise ceased; a piercing silence of dread came out from the depths of the earth. There was only fear… more and more fear…

“No,” she shook her head. A moving ridge of fright swallowed her as she withdrew hysterically.

Then the soldier lurched toward her like a lion on momentum.

“NOOOO!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. The rabbit scurried away, tearing into the rain but there’s nowhere safe. She could hear the soldier’ ramping pace gradually getting imminent…

Explosions here and there, moans of pain, of beseech, of mercy caused her eyes to be clouded with tears of fright. Her lips quivered, as the muscle shut inside her ribcage seemed being clenched by an unknown hand. An onrush of adrenaline made her already fervid legs tramping in a crazy, pointless mode. She was frenzied. She didn’t know what to do.

“Come to me, you ***** cat!” the soldier growled from behind, as she took a sheer into an alleyway deeper into the fogged part of the town. Huffing like a tired deer with fumes puffing out of her unmoistured lips, she tried to ran as fast as she could… or rather as directive as possible, as displaying an aim as possible.

But delirium is a dome of emotional disarray. It has no place for direction… no definite place for finish line.

Out of the blue, a trashcan bumped against her feet painfully and she fell down onto the puddle against the cobbled road, kissing the road with her cheeks.

Stifled by the pressure and delirium, she moaned as continued she writhing like a newly born child lay abandoned. “No, please…”

“THERE YOU ARE, ***** CAT!”

A grumble rang into the concealment of haze. Instantaneously, her eyes widened and she tried, with all her might, to hoist up. As she does, a silhouette of a demon was coming into view, bringing forth a silent type of chaos... an emotional one. Knelt up, fear rooted her like a wax figure glistening not of the smooth material one comes from but of rain and tears flowing down her face.

The tightening space of the alleyway appeared as if a ribcage of a monstrous skeleton, and she was trapped inside already. Echoing cackles held her breath as though she was clasped by the neck. She didn’t know what to do. The silhouette is getting closer.

“Please, no,” she begged to the blurred figure. The fog remained impossible to penetrate. It was as she was in a misty dome, where noise from the outside was kept down, and the only sound was her harsh breaths and the demonic cackle.

“I’ll be easy on you, my dear. Like shooting down stuffs,” said the soldier, and finally emerging into view. Shadows covered his face, but the smile was etched blatantly. Sooyoung looked up at it with trembling lips and begging gestures.

“No, please, no…”

Her hands groped blindly on the ground she lay at, and contacted with the toppled trashcan. She hastily lifted herself up and as the soldier took a lunge toward her, with all her might, she managed to smash the trashcan to his face.

“Argh!”

It was a perfect diversion. Empowered by her hysteria, she slid pass the cringing soldier back in the spotlight of more horrors.

++++++++++++++++++++

The Captain looked bored at his stance, as the echelon remained on their spots, deadpan and cold. The rain thinned for a moment. There’s silence. No one’s talking that they all seemed half-heartedly lamenting. And the cause of this pain, the Captain that should be damned, broke into the stillness with a soft and evil chuckle. It was followed by a nasty grin.

“Where do you think is the spy?” he, then, muttered as he faced the line with destructive potent sufficient to kill innocent people, like what he just did.

“In the forest, I think, sir,” said the veteran private, not looking at the Captain. It was the first time he saw the Captain as murderous as this, and he, who should be happy about this, somewhat felt sick of it.

“Not in the town, eh?” the Captain said expressionlessly. He walked toward the gate and halted few meters before. “Search the house.” The command was crystal clear.

And Jessica heard it and gasped at once. With Tiffany trembling against her arms, there was a moment’s confusion and brain-wracking upon which she must choose wisely. There’re lives at stake. Innocent lives.

The five seconds of chaos, she came up with one: to go back into the forest, stealthily walk back to town, find Sooyoung and get off this place. Like aiding in this crucial moment, Jessica’s eyes, on its own accord, fell on the window in the right corner of the room. Gateway hewn by the old man unexpectedly. Yet she hesitated for a while, reluctant to millions of possibilities (ninety percent were bad) waiting for them outside.

Then the doors banged from somewhere near.

Almost tiptoeing and emotionally mangled with fraught, they walked to the small window that seemed fit for Jessica but not to Tiffany.

“Climb up, Tiffany.”

Tiffany obeyed. With a slight groan, she pulled herself through the mouth and slid off to the other side with a plash. Jessica, on the other hand, heaved a deep breath and as soundlessly as possible, hoisted onto the edge.

Halfway there –

“I found them!”

Just when Jessica had managed to slip out, she heard audible tramping of foot. Shuddering and loudly breathing nasally, she clung onto Tiffany and both of them tore into the coppice, back to the woodland where they found each other yesterday. The entrance appeared, before, like a warm, open arms. But right now, it looked back like a cave where shadows like mountain lions or cave bears might pang them with their powerful and merciless jaws. Under the lowlight, they plodded into the forest’s clawing midst.

“RUN!” Jessica shrieked to Tiffany, who was already gasping for air. “Faster, Miyoung-ah!”

She, Jessica, took a glimpse at the back and saw four soldiers tailing them, apparently keeping themselves shooting the two. They seemed enthusiastic upon playing the food before swallowing it.

The muddy trail led them to another yawning chaos of utter silence. Jessica wanted to shriek, wanted this to be over now. Shrieking, though, would loose considerable amount of energy, and Jessica was quick thinking enough to refrain to it. Tiffany, meanwhile, sprinted as she’d been told to do so.

Tramp.

Tramp.

Plod.

Tramp.

Plod.

All seemed composed of endless running. Fatigue pressed their lungs like suffocating pillows. Moist made the atmosphere so very uncomfortable. The longer they trod the soft, damp and muddy ground, the thicker their shoes were caked causing their bunking’s deceleration. The drama… the exaggeration of their feelings… the fervent fear… it made as though this would take forever, the suffering. They just want this to be over right now. So they could pay attention to each other, take care of each other… in a slow, normal world away from this chaos.

“Don’t stop,” faltered Jessica amidst of the skipping of breaths. Tiffany glanced at her and nodded, resuming running with all her might.

They passed the elders of the forests rooted on their spots undauntedly, passed the thick shrubs, and got themselves more mud-covered when they halted in front of river, where the current promised death when one was to be swallowed in. Its mighty roars of caution made them stop to their tracks, reckoning its force.

Breathing arduously, they eyed around. The wetted leafy pillars gazed back at them, in a focus centered from the stillness. The two of them found total isolation. There’re no soldiers but there’s the relentless rain in this particular spot unshaded by the foliaceous roofs of the forest.

Again, Tiffany knelt on the flat, smooth and slippery sedimentary rock. Jessica gazed at her whilst breathing operosely, and said, “They’re gone, Tiffany.”

Tiffany gazed toward her and grinned. And then she begged. “Can we go home?” she asked tiredly. She had enough of this. She had seen SO many of this. She just wanted this to end now. With no more bloodshed, crying… no more crying, please.

“We will. After this,” assured Jessica with a smile, tottering to Tiffany and slumping beside her. Tiffany gazed to her in sublimity. “Don’t worry.” She had said those words for like a million times now, but Tiffany was never weary of it even if it was being repeated over and over again. Just as long as no leaves her tonight… and she’s quite sure Jessica won’t, with those words she always repeats.

After a few minute’s rest, they hoisted up and, with Tiffany guiding, they sought back to the main road.

++++++++++++++++++++

To their utmost relief, the asphalt was a soldier-free tarmac. Yet, distant bangs and, as Jessica glanced at the sky and saw smoke rising up, probably more screams awaits them. They really need to get back to the town, get Sooyoung and leave this place as fleeting as possible.

The two of them ventured along the road noiselessly and not talking at all. They held each other’s hands and caught a few glances, answering with grins. It seemed as though bedlam’s a mere, unperceivable shadow at that glimmering moment. They’re contented now together.

The vertical road was a straight line that seemed would lead to nowhere. Whether something’s waiting for them out there, whether it’s someone’s doom or their deaths, they don’t know. They seriously circumvent thinking about it. Even with the lamenting weather, they force themselves to be as positive as possible, as optimistic as they could get.

For there would be a rainbow after the rain, they knew it. And its shimmering beauty would promise a lifetime’s peace with each other… a vouch of moments waiting to be shared happily.

At that particular minute, Jessica thought of the old man. Is he absolved from the sins he committed? To die mouthing the truth yet no one believed him must be an unconditional way of salvation. His intentions of putting a stop of this were brushed off by evil plans and ignorance: An unnerving truth enough to splatter dirt upon the army’s crest. Despite all of this, though, she, Jessica, knew that the old man had gotten what he had always wanted for nearly all his erstwhile life. The only down is that his wife has to be taken as well. But Jessica reckoned how crucial the moment is. And she, Soo Rim, being a loving wife would definitely be happy to die with her husband rather than to spend the remaining years waiting for death to come. This way, she had salvaged herself years of lonesome years. She was now venturing the river onto Nirvana… with her cleansed husband.

The town’s entrance emerged suddenly through the mist. Dear God, please… don’t make Sooyoung leave this place, she prayed fervently, brushing her wrinkled fingers (due to hours of wetness) together. I know that Sooyoung’s the kind of person who was always impatient to things, but please… this moment’s decisive.

Then as they got closer onto the town’s entranceway, Jessica saw the car parked under the wooden arch by the mouth of the village. Ecstatically, she grabbed Tiffany’s arms and they both strode toward the closed top convertible.

“SOOYOUNG-AH!” she shrieked. But when they arrived there, the car was empty as she glanced through the window. She opened the door and said to Tiffany, “Stay here for a moment. I’ll be off to find Sooyoung.”

Tiffany prompted at once, protesting. “NO! Don’t leave me! Please! You will never come back! Please, no!” Her face distorted at once into purporting fear. She clung onto Jessica and tightened her body against hers.

Jessica sadly smiled. “I told you, I won’t leave you. I made a promise to ahjussi and to you. I promise,” she withdrew against Tiffany’s arms and looked straight into her eyes, “I’ll be back.”

Tiffany backed a few steps, wiped her tears off, and half-heartedly went inside the car. For some reason, she believed Jessica was sincere about the promise. And she, Tiffany, has to do is to trust on her.

Waving farewell, Jessica vanished into silhouette from the mist, into the village.

------------

Chapter Sixteen: Blacker

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The private irately kicked the obstructing ssang, and it flew into the wall, where it crashed and turned into splinters of wood. “This place stank like pipe.”

“You’re not just used to getting inside an enemy’s house,” said the tall private conversationally. Only three soldiers remained. The other vanished to the main street, where the main focus now is the obliteration of the town. While the chaos spatter mud and ash, and emanate smoke and haze, the veteran, the tall, and one, savage-looking, highly impatient private were left behind to, as the savage private basically suggested, fumble the garbage for more evidence.

“****,” said the veteran, as he accidentally stooped down toward a thatch-sewn chest. Meanwhile, the savage-looking private look, as always, impatient, as he restlessly gazed around, his clasp on his gun getting tighter to every susurration and tiny rustles. The tall private, on the other hand, slid into the kitchen, where the smell of burnt wood was still fresh. He casted his sight around, admiring the old frame and oaken stature of the interior that supported and gave such a large and old house its shape and ambience.

As the two do their own stuffs, the veteran’s sight fell down to the papers inside the chest he was poring at. In it, was an old black and white stationary picture of an echelon wearing prissy faces. Staring away on its accord, his eyes then travelled onto the stack of files, when at the sight of a familiar North Korean crest, quickly fingered each and gasped. “I’ll be darned.”

The tall private ventured on the dusty, untiled kitchen floor toward the dimly part. There, he found an unlocked small door, which he pulled open. It led him to a dingy compartment with low ceilings sewed with cobwebs, air filled with more dust, and crammed with wooden boxes that towered higgledy-piggledy from their bases along the planked wall that smelled ungratifying of olden wood. It appeared as though it remained close for considerable years, considering the thickness of filth splotching everything inside.

Breathing heavily, he pored over a particularly open box.

Gasping, he found rusted pieced parts of probably a 1945 rifle. Suspicious, he searched through the disarray and found more arms and, to his surprise, explosives.

“Look what I found, shithead,” a booming voice resounded suddenly, and the tall soldier darted to it. Clasping papers and befuddled in the head head, the veteran tottered toward the tall private, staring at the exposed box he’d been riveting these past few seconds. “What’s that?”

“The old man’s right after all. He’s the spy,” grunted the tall private, exhaling through his nose, and brushing dust off his irritated nostrils.

“Yeah, saw this,” the veteran motioned the clasped papers and waved it like a flag. “That means the girl’s innocent, right?” His face wrinkled with unforeseen softness.

“I’m absolutely beyond more than sure of it,” said the tall private, leaning back against the pile boxes. The unpleasant smell of sulfur from an opened box of explosives travelled the ambience causing the tall private’s brow to furrow vexedly.

“So we’re pursuing an innocent girl? And that’s what the general wants us to do?” the veteran private uttered in a spat, feeling now the bash of truth he pertinaciously denied since yesterday. “We’re killing each other now?” A definite trace of patriotism resounded from that statement.

“Yeah,” the tall private gazed up on him. “Ain’t that a *****?”

While they talked down at the government, the savage-looking private remained uneasy in his post. Cursing under his breath, he finally made a decision. He’ll plunge into the action scene and kill the supposed spy himself.

+++++++++++++++

Jessica saw herself plunging into a brooding labyrinth of pain and grief. The town looked as though it has been a tarmac for a passing hurricane. Everything was spifflicated, houses were burned, if not, torn apart. And what’s worst: Bodies scatter the road like bloodied dolls as emotionless… as lifeless.

Gasping as though oxygen was drained off her lungs, she ran, a tottering sort, deeper into the thin mist, and only saw more horrors. Puddles of water were a concoction of mud and blood. The air was a mixture of smoke, gunpowder and humidity. The sound… consisted of upstage bangs, tiny voices of beseech unheard… and more and more bangs.

Swerving into the pathway where she remembered following a naïve Tiffany like a stalker, she now found isolation. The ghostly mist swirled as she went darting through the fog that smelled like burnt meat… or perhaps burned bodies. She circumvented terrifying thoughts for composure. To stay detailed and aimed is a necessity during this moment. Panicking would not do anything good, and would hinder everything when it has reached this point... she was so close there.

There’s not a shadow of Sooyoung as she slid into the main road. There’re no more soldiers or bodies. Or perhaps they’re through to this section and had moved into the next. There were still faint roaring somewhere nearby, murmurs and crying that tore through the splattering noise of the rain like a penetrating poignant message. Fire crackled from the flank of houses as she whirled her head around, searching… and searching…

“SOOYOUNG-AH!” Even if it wasn’t a really good idea to shout things out, she thought it would be futile if she do things without mouthing anything. One clear example is her fruitless admiration to Sooyoung, which can be considered an epic fail of her life. But good thing she’d already moved on.

Another minute ticked by and those desperate seconds were as dramatic as getting tortured. Fumes that reek of gunpowder went into her nostrils, causing an uncomfortable sensation of inflamed sinus. She just passed a suffocating frame of black haze coming from a reed house and it felt like pillows pressed against her face as she tore out, coughing. The rain continued to fall, a roaring tsunami in success of drowning everything, soaking everything to their skins. Jessica’s clothes were now soggy and flapping while running. Her hair wetted together and flowed down burdensomely as though yellow octopus legs dangled from her scalps.

But she kept her calm. She kept her tears, albeit since yesterday, she had always wanted to cry.

She kept on running, disregarding the emotions for a while as she make way for imminent happiness she was certain. It was like building a bridge now. The arduous labor of putting it up would be equivalent to the reward she was certain has been waiting for her, and for Tiffany. She should just trust on her, as Tiffany does. Everything will be all right albeit so vaguely… every dark cloud has a silver lining. And amidst of it, she saw from afar a tall, thin girl in fashionable coat and was supporting a bloodied young girl, and they both were faltering the sidewalk. Jessica, brightened at the sight of this and the flashing image of Tiffany’s smile, rushed on to fetch Sooyoung.

+++++++++++++++

Tiffany rocked her body anxiously inside the sheltering cloister provided by the wheeled thing she once saw when she was just a little girl. She eyed through the dashboard into the mist, wishing please Jessica would merge into sight. But that’s just plain hope for now: pessimistic prospects crept up like maniacal beings ascending with flapping their bat-like wings threateningly.

She would be back, I don’t have to worry, she told herself, as her head twitched uncomfortably, like a mentally ill person under pressure. One… two… three…!

But the mist remained as it has been. A seemingly endless chasm in a brood of prospected doom. Her breathing turned into shudder, her shuddering turned into gasping… her gasping turned into tears.

She kicked the door but it won’t open. She pushed it with all her might but it persisted close. She cried… and cried… crying for Jessica… she won’t be back… no one goes back for Tiffany… they always leave her alone and sad… alone.

I’m so scared! Why do they always leave me?

Then the sobbing turned into heavy breathing… her eyes focused through the dashboard… through the mist.

Fifteen minutes…

Half an hour…

It’s getting so desperate…

There’s no light…

Please…

…

Out of the blue, a silhouette started to visualize.

No, it was two shadows.

It tore itself through the misty walls.

Green men with sticks?

No…

One was short, and the other’s tall. They were walking closer to her…

Would they kill her?

No…

They look harmless…

They were heading now to where she is…

A grin broadened from her lips…

There was a flash of blonde-haired person.

And then Jessica was smiling through the dashboard, followed by a panting girl with big, round eyes. Elatedly, Tiffany let out a hysteric shriek, followed by triumphant gestures, as Jessica pored over the window and, after a clicking noise, pulled the car’s door open.

“Missed me?” she asked.

Tiffany answered it with a hug so tight that Jessica saw herself gasping. “Ow!” Tiffany whined shamelessly, as she tightened her hug, wanting not to let go of Jessica again… never again, she begged.

“Who’s she?” Sooyoung suddenly inquired, running around to the driver’s side. The moment was somewhat secluding to her.

Tiffany jumped over to the backseat, and Jessica motioned into the car, parking beside the driver. She threw an assuring smile to Tiffany, which Tiffany answered back with the loveliest smile she could muster. She was just so happy being with Jessica again. It felt like forever, the moment’s emptiness without her.

“Who’s she?” Sooyoung impatiently asked, starting the engine to rumble to life. “Yah.”

“She’s Tiffany,” answered Jessica right away, in fear of Sooyoung’s lion-like and machinegun-esque mouth. “She’s the one.”

Sooyoung stared at Tiffany’s reflection through the dashboard mirror, and ran an appraising look that seemed at first intimidating. Until she grinned kindly. “She’s kinda neat for you.” At least you would be happy now, Jessica.

“Kinda neat? Yeah, you’re always grimy,” Jessica quipped to Sooyoung’s ironical amusement. Sooyoung, with a thud, stepped into the clutch and hastily turned the car around, hitting back to the road with fresh zeal for a nice cup of coffee in a worm sofa.

+++++++++++++++

Somewhere near, the loom approached the road with the same zeal except it was for murder. The savage-looking private found the empty asphalt, and he placed himself in the most calmed in the middle of the road. He closed his eyes. The myriad of drops splatter his already glistened face. The plashing was never been this audible. It was always like this, when there’s war and there’s rain.

One must die today. The spy… she should die.

A distant swishing of tires resounded. Intuitively, his head fell to the source of the noise. The metal instrument in his arms, supported by a strap around his shoulder, reacted as instinctive as the owner. The barrel dramatically rose from its silent vigil and faced the road, as flaunting as the owner’s face, as taunting as the owner…

The KIA convertible merged into sight. A sound of gunshot would definitely startle the driver. And so he made one.

Bang.

A scratching noise ensued. The car quickly pulled over. A tall, thin girl came out from the driver’s side, followed by a familiar blond, flabbergasted friend, which must be the one they were pursuing back in the woods. They gazed back at the soldier’s brutal face. Immediate horror crumpled their visages.

“Welcome to Incheon,” the soldier greeted in a voice deadly gratifying. He spread his right arm and did a welcoming gesture. But the gun protruded threateningly, contradicting the welcoming implication with a promise of murder.

“S-Sooyoung-ah,” Jessica stuttered, fear creeping above her neck like cold water running on her back. “Go back in!”

But the devil had their moment’s numbness taken for a diversion. He lunged toward them, a mighty and aggressive lunge, and by the time Sooyoung had gotten in, the rifle’s mouth had mouthed halt. The bullet went through the glass, narrowly missing Jessica’s cheek and Tiffany by the shoulder. The soldier was standing in front of the car; not considering it might suddenly ran him over. He was a trained soldier. And he knew fear is enough statement for halting actions.

“If you could just get out of the car, please. So we could” he said, falsely and dreadfully sweet, and appended,"talk easily." He ambled casually to the side and, with the gun drawn, asked to open the door, which Jessica obeyed. Meanwhile, Tiffany was shivering in fear. The green man was asking them out… with his stick pointed out. This was just like before… when green men asked her father to come out because they got her mother. And the precise moment when Mr. Hwang turned up, Mrs. Hwang was gunned down.

Jessica trudged out of the car, and stood beside Sooyoung, with their hands held up. Tiffany followed, avoiding the soldier’s murderous glance, and strode beside Jessica, grasping her elbow tight… very, very tight.

“Put your hands in the air, will you?” the soldier told Tiffany. But fear had muddled her senses. Body in fervent tremor, she closed her eyes and let a thin river of tears run down her face. An irritated bellow roared like a mighty lion. “I SAID, PUT YOUR GODDAMN HANDS UP!”

Tiffany flinched at the yelling. She shot her hands up immediately.

The three were in line as the soldier sauntered in front of them, looking at the grounds pondering the best torture. “Okay, I am going to ask a simple question and I want a straight ****ing forward answer, do you understand?”

Jessica mumbled ‘Yes’ but inaudible; Sooyoung nodded and Tiffany responded nothing at all. The soldier looked pissed. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

“Y-yes,” the three stuttered. The soldier motioned pleasingly.

“Good,” he said. “Now, the question.” He faced the three with a homicidal look, with an unfounded grudge. “WHO IS THE SPY?” He yelled those words like spat.

The three remained rigid, rather rooted, with an exception of Jessica, who knew by now how she would be going to defend when the going gets tough. There’s only one thing a frail, blond, useless girl could do for the one she loves.

“I am the spy.”

The words echoed: a piercing sort to Sooyoung, a sound of triumph to the soldier. Jessica caught a glimpse of an infuriated Sooyoung, who kept on mouthing, “WHAT THE HECK?”

But Jessica gazed straight, as though she’s proud of what she had just said, albeit a complete lie. The soldier walked toward her and gazed straight at the brown, decisive tint in her eyes. The expression was convincing. She had been practicing it.

“You’re the spy?” the soldier repeated, still in apparent façade of monstrous intent.

“Are you deaf?” Jessica answered his question with a question, causing a tempestuous emotion to engulf the soldier’s twisting face. But he held it back, the fervency; he wanted to play her game.

“So you’re the spy,” he muttered, circling around Jessica. Tiffany, in the corner, naïve and clueless over what Jessica said, stared at him in suppressed frenzy deep inside. Though clueless, one couldn’t bear but to feel the loom that seemed imminent in every second ticking by… in every step the soldier took. Sooyoung, who had held Tiffany by the shoulder, looked incredulous, possibly enraged upon what Jessica had been acting. The hell she’s doing? She’ll gonna get herself killed.

“You’re there, aren’t you? In the village chief’s house? With this *****, right?” He threw Tiffany an ugly, twisted look, which Tiffany answered with a cringe.

“Yeah.”

“So you’re the spy.”

“I am the spy,” Jessica punctuated in intended mockery.

“I got it, don’t worry,” said the soldier, taking a sudden, critical halt behind her. “Why’re you here? Why’re you in our country?”

“For a mission.”

The short words struck the soldier with ire. “What is your mission?” He had let those words slip out his tightly closed lips.

“To help the South recuperating by setting up mission camps and feeding station,” Jessica had said nonchalantly.

The soldier now visibly looked kicked in the face at that statement. He appeared as though he was choked in the neck.

“A spy? Helping… us? Wait…?”

“I am not a spy, ‘mind. That’s just a misinterpretation,” Jessica gulped. “I am part of the truce, secretly sent to help you people standing up again. It’s just that our general was kinda prideful, and he tends to do things under concealment.” This time, it was impromptu. The adlib sounded convincing enough, yet Jessica tried hard not to falter. She knew one simple mistake, one sudden break of the chain would lead to everyone’s doom… to Tiffany’s doom.

“Part of… Part of… the truce? H-helping us stand… stand? BWAHAHAHAHA!” Apparently, he was choking with laughter. “Kiss my reddened ass. No northern shithead would do that, for god’s sake. And besides, we don't need *******s like yourself. Na-ah. Who’re they, by the way?” He pointed with his lips the cringing Tiffany and immobilized Sooyoung.

“Friends. They’re from Seoul.”

“Do you know that helping a Northern ******* like you is traitorous? Therefore…”

His boots tramped loudly. He ventured threateningly.

…

A bang roared.

Before Jessica could turn to face the two, there was a thud and a soft plash. The tall figure of Sooyoung fell on the hard road, slumping back where human once came from. Blood blossomed from her shoulder part, near the lungs, and the expression Sooyoung wears was shock. It was nimble.

“SOOYOUNG-AH!” Jessica shrieked gunning toward the marionette slumped on the ground, numb. Rain continued to fall. As the tears on Jessica’s eyes.

Deliria truly sucked the sanity off Tiffany as she stared down at the wincing creature bleeding in dark crimson. Jessica arched down toward Sooyoung. Tiffany remained rooted in her spot when a sudden spark flashed in her iris, an ephemeral moment as fleeting as the second when fireworks blossom its beauty.

Whether that sudden feeling is non-existent or not, she couldn’t let the green man take anyone away from her. It was just more than a torture seeing Jessica crying… it was the first time… and the first time, like cardiac arrests, was always deadly.

With body fervidly shaking not with fear but of anger, she lurched toward the green man, whose face in blatant display of mockery. He flinched for a moment and the second the thought that Tiffany was just a simple girl came: He looked back smugly. Almost effortlessly, he kicked the enraged rabbit in the stomach.

“Argh,” she whimpered.

She fell back. Jessica noticed this and she was torn apart. The gun was pointed maliciously to Tiffany when Jessica keeled toward the green man, the taker of happiness, the ender of life as if that’s a gloriously entertaining to do. The soldier saw the lunge and flashed a demonic grin, so damn devilish it looked almost like a flash of hell.

Don’t you dare touch Tiffany! Jessica roared mentally, a pandemonium whipped up from her desperation; a frenzy no one could stop, even death.

The soldier gathered some force in the thigh, pressed hard against the road and sent his leg flying into the air, to Jessica. With a force almost comparable with an ostrich’s kick, the thick heel of his boots thudded against Jessica’s frail stomach, and she fell back, clutching the kicked part that felt as though it was shotgunned.

She couldn’t breathe. She rolled on the road pathetically. The pain was hell. But her pursuit of bringing the one she loves, the one she will forever admire, to safety caused the fulminant and draining attack to vanish unexpectedly. Then with a mighty pull as though she pulled her body through the chasm where she fell, she hoisted up and took another lunge.

Bang.

Tiffany recovered through the noise. She saw the person who promised her protection lagged back to the ground after a roar from the soldier’s rifle. The sound was torture. The scene was real hell. The atmosphere was pure pain.

She tore across this jumble of bereft things to the spread-eagled Jessica. The moment was too nimble. She did not react at once… though impending tears warmed the corners of her eyes.

Blood blossomed at Jessica’s torso; a numbed expression was etched on her face; the feeling of fulfillment spread like wings in her deepest. But to Tiffany, it was utter losing.

In a trembling status, she stooped down toward Jessica, clasped the wound, felt the warm flesh cascading out, ran an eye over her and then she cried aloud.

“NO! D-don’t! Don’t! NOOOO! Don’t… please… you’re… no.”

Tiffany’s inside was a concoction of powerfully grieving emotions. It muddled her so much that she didn’t know whether to shout, to stay crying… to just kneel there and watch her loved one die.

But Jessica won’t die. She made a promise to Tiffany. That no matter what, she won’t ever leave her until the end. To the end where they can be very happy together… in a distant place where bangs and green men don’t exist. In the end of the rainbow, where they can bathe in different colors… where they can be very happy.

Jessica’s eyes were expressionless as it rested toward the lamenting sky. Needle-size drizzles plashed against her whitening cheeks, moistening her graying lips.

What happened? She asked herself amidst of this. Why’s the world turning around so slow? No… it’s stopping. I could feel the rain… so cold. I knew I was shot… but I felt no pain. What’s this? Am I… dying?

A terrified Tiffany shook Jessica’s body, nudging her face, waking her up. But it felt so distant to Jessica… she’s flying away: she knew it. Her soul… it was ripping off her earthly avatar…

“Jessica…”

Someone muttered her name: in a voice so devastated, it was barely hearable, for it was muffled with the pain impossible to imply. This time, she felt it… followed it… slowly leaning toward the face, the drenched and grief-etched face of her love.

Tiffany’s face was glazed with hot tears, invisible through her soaked state. The crumpled expression spoke of something more… something more like an imploration… Yeah, thought Jessica, Tiffany’s asking something… But what is it?

“D-don’t l-leave me-e, please.” Tiffany croaked.

The time had really stopped. I am with Tiffany… I am with my love. Don’t worry, honey… I won’t leave you.

Jessica reached for those soft cheeks. A finger prodded the chin. Tiffany’s existence exploded with utter love in corroboration of it and the flames, it burned against Jessica’s draining face like flames splashing against the furnace, emitting warmth hotter than volcano.

I’ve searched for you. And then fate wove a way for me. It gave me a chance to meet you, my savior… my savior, yeah. I won’t leave you… don’t worry…

Their eyes met. A long, searching stare. Tiffany held Jessica’s palm and pressed it against her cheeks, rubbing against it. Tears welled upon her eyes, an impossible-to-barricade flow… a roaring river of emotion… of warm emotion.

“Stay with me… until the very end… J-Jessica.”

There is something pleasing to hear from Tiffany uttering Jessica’s name. It was not the fact that this is the only moment she had said Jessica’s name, but it was as if a million words compacted together to express an imploration desired. And that is, wanting her not to leave just yet.

Jessica sadly smiled.

“Don’t worry… we’ll both wait for the rainbow to come,” she whispered so softly, so tenderly.

And the earth revolved again in its usual pace. The soldier cut into the drama with an evil sneer, “Enough of this. It wasn’t as if you wouldn’t meet again in heaven. Coz you’re next, *****.”

The rifle’s mouth was pointed down. He yanked in its side pouch a silver handgun, and he aimed the barrel to the back of Tiffany’s head.

But she was as numbed as Jessica was. She did not sense the metal mouth prodding at the back of her head. Pain engulfed her enough to become senseless. She just wanted to stay beside Jessica until the rainbow turns up after the rain.

Click.

The handgun’s barrel pressed deeper to her scalp. The devil decided to turn this small moment into a sneering corner.

“Spies. They think I would bite into one of their games, tsk…”

Click.

His finger was in the brink of pulling the trigger. Only seconds… the last smile was a message he wanted the two to remember… The ugly, stupid smile as a memento? Tiffany won’t bother. To stay beside Jessica is the only thing that seemed to matter now. Dying? Tiffany won’t bother herself fussing over it. To lie beside Jessica would be the last and only thing she would wish for and nothing more.

The water drenched her body. A pure enveloping of cold fluid flowed in every inch of her skin, dredging her clothes to twice the mass.

Love?

It was like gravity pulling her from where she stood. Like Jessica, when she knew she should be off by now.

“Go to he –”

“STOP!”

There was a rustling sound and two soldiers tore out of the bushes, muddied and wearing angry faces. They threw the savage-looking soldier with a disgusted look, so dangerously threatening that it made him pull the barrel off its aim.

“Son of *****!” The veteran hurled his fist into the air, smashing against the savage-looking private in the nose, knocking him down. “I’m ****ing ashamed of you.”

Amidst of this, Tiffany remained undaunted.

------

Chapter Seventeen

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

There has been no far greater emotions than the one that was overwhelming Tiffany with such warm tide, it had painfully burned her deeper to her skin. Coveted things planned after this was set aside: lovelornness made its way in form of tears as Moses cut the Red Sea.

As the time, all of a sudden, lacrimation came into a halt. As the time, and all of the sudden as well, the rain froze in midair. The only living thing that can move is those who was about to die… one from being shot, the other from the imminent lost in almost exacerbation that will cause her to her own doom.

The cruel world where they lived, loved and now…

…

Anxiety was expressed in straight gaze, apparently still from the shock that left Tiffany numbed worsened by her soaked state as the chill literally fused her skin to utter gelidity.

The warm tide drowned her ribcage with immeasurable misery… a very hot and searing tide… a tide caused by imminent lost and the fact that she was not doing anything right now except to look at Jessica, as she looked back at her.

…

The wind was whispering in their ear a grieving song. The rain refused to move. The world refused to revolve. Now, it seems as though it was letting the two to have a moment for themselves. Away. Alone. Just them.

Jessica smiled. The hole in her lower thorax spoke the feelings she’d been muttering and verbalizing yesterday. It spoke of the sacrifice she would do… everything that would meet the requital Tiffany bravely (yet unknowingly) did to her. But was it all a repayment? That has been her purpose why she pursued this unknown road. Though she had to admit that she was mesmerized at first, the largest fraction of the whole pursuit is all about something she owes that needs to be repaid. But was it really about her desire for requital that took her from her where she is now? The answer in that question was a big no.

Tiffany murmured. She was not asking for the repayment. In fact, what Jessica did was more than just paying back the deed. Jessica showed her courage facing the unknown. That people don’t leave you. That sometimes you have to accept things as part of the past, to let bygones be bygones. And she showed her that she needed to step forward. For there might be parting, but for sure, it would open a door for a reunification, as the light to the earth after a harsh rain.

Jessica’s smiled widened. Love twinkled in her eyes. An unuttered statement brought forth in an everlasting existence marked on Tiffany’s memories…

A minute or two, everything may shatter between them. But that single emotional actuality will remain undaunted… as endless as a circle… an infinity with it.

Their eyes, Jessica and Tiffany’s, locked so intently as though one waver would blow them away from each other. No fleeting second has gone by for them without thinking of each other, and right at this moment, at this damp, hopeless and grieving panorama they saw themselves, the world paced in slow gyration.

Every second was a million years…

And as it went by, so was the fall of the million-worth tears.

Jessica leaned her head on Tiffany’s lap, a scene not so new, for it happened before, when Tiffany saved Jessica’s life in the brink of death. It was somewhat wryly, somewhat intentionally mocking because it was as though fate made fun of them, making them meet for a few minutes in the middle of the crackling fires and exploding engines, and making them meet again for a day, yet sandwiched in a conflict they have nothing to do with. And then it was threatening them with separation.

Was it all a joke? An obviously intended prank?

It was ironic. It was cruel. It was so darn fleeting.[/center]

The bloody hands, placed moments ago on the fresh wound still searing Jessica’s flesh to utter numbness, ventured tremblingly toward the face of the hiccupping Tiffany. The index finger touched the soft cheeks. The smile was addressed only to Tiffany. How she can do that in the middle of this, she doesn’t know. Perhaps it was her desire to fly off assuring Tiffany that everything would be all right, made her grinning…

Albeit a little forced…

Albeit a little stupidly…

…

And then it came...

I don’t want to die, Tiffany, she thought in the last minute as time fades, as her energy fades. The words mentally merged as though a child reluctantly confessed something trepidly. Tears, after an hour of battle fighting not to burst out, then, ran sideways her temple from her quivering eyes. She started cringing now, started showing the human nature of facing death… showing something what was normal, what was damn scary, what was the truth. I’m scared, Tiffany… I’m so scared. I’m… I don’t want to die. I want… I want to spend time with you. Please…

“H-hold my hand tight, Tiffany,” Jessica croaked, feebler than ever, followed by a thought. I’m flying away… but I don’t want to. Cling on me… I don’t want to leave you. To stay perched in the ground. To expend every second with the one she loves. To show how much she loves Tiffany. To make every second as loving as how much she loves Tiffany… she just wanted to stay there… to do these coveted things… to fulfill what she has been promising… what she has taken by the river Styx.

A painful sensation, which the source was definitely not from the wound, run through her in a pang sufficient for a wince and a moan. She cried against Tiffany’s arms. She cried like a child.

The hushed torment from Tiffany was implied in a soft mumble of, “Don’t leave me, please.”

…

The earth revolved so very slowly.

…

So damn slow…

Jessica’s breathing was turning arduous… as though she did some exhausting exercise.

There was a blinding light…

…

And then sudden blackness flashed in front of Tiffany’s gaze, disrupting her trepid vigil. The tall private strode passed her and kneeled opposite down beside Jessica, and hastily put the middle and index fingers on the feebly beating artery under her jaw.

“She’s still alive,” said the tall private in a hushed voice. But Tiffany only heard distant sounds. So was Jessica. “The pulse rate is not as low as I’m expecting, considering that the bullet might’ve went through her torso out.” It seems like the bullet didn’t go out; it stayed, he thought, glimpsing over the bleeding lower chest. Apply pressure to ease the blood flow; he remembered some medical procedures necessary in this kind of situation. Momentarily forgetting Jessica’s a girl, he placed his palm over the wound, and that distracted Tiffany, who quickly retorted with wussily thumping her fist against the face of the tall private.

“You killed her! You killed her!” The green men killed her! Don’t touch Jessica! But it went out of her mouth as sobs and gibberishes.

Meanwhile, the savage-looking soldier was gaining consciousness. His groan reached the veteran’s experienced and alert ears, and quickly riveted. “**** you,” swore the veteran. With the realization of the cruelty of killing innocent people haphazardly that were alleged by morons of a leader, there is no mercy in the veteran’s heart, for the room was taken by anger and shame. There’s a sudden blankness in his eyes and he send his right foot flying toward the one savage private’s stomach

“Argh,” the savage private choked, rolling back on the ground from the force that landed his stomach like a heavyweight boxer’s pummel. Blood spurted from his lips. “Y-you… y-you’d going-g… t-to be in t-t-trouble, *******s.” He mocked with a grin.

“What, the *****es from the high court would kick me outta their room? Slit my throat? Hang me? Kill me for doing something for the sake of my brethren?” the veteran sneered, a courageous defiance against, he knew, would really lead him to his unconditional jeopardy. “**** them, I don’t care. As far as I know, I’m doing the right thing. And those ****heads out there killing innocent people, they’re the most ignorant sons of a ***** alive, like you. Don’t you *******s get it? WE’RE ****ING KILLING EACH OTHER NOW! And it’s because of dickheads like you. Now,” he hoicked his own .45 caliber handgun with a swishing sound, “Burn in hell.”

But a gentle hand clasped his arm. He turned around and saw the tall private’s soaked but uncannily determined face. “Don’t.”

At the sound of that request, the veteran gritted through his teeth, followed by an irate glare. “Lemme shoot this ******* off so he could see how awesome hell is, okay?”

“You’re a freakin’ soldier, not someone who woks in a slaughterhouse or something. You’re a professional. Leave that ******* be and help me with these people. The two girls are still alive,” said the tall private, brushing off the murderous purport with a calm, low voice. He pointed the back, where Sooyoung, who’d been miraculously okay, and has been sitting up, with hands on her shoulder wounds; Jessica, who’d been lying alone on the wet road, cringing every once and a while. The tall private’s eyes widened. “Where’s the other?”

The veteran looked around and saw a small image slid pass through him toward the cowering savage private. Immobilized, the tall private did not react at once as he watched Tiffany stooped toward the body. With a clicking sound and with the savage private saying ‘H-hey!’, Tiffany arose clasping a gun in her quivery fingers.

This thing killed Mama, Papa, Oppa and Jessica, she thought in spite of the disarray and chaos of jumbled thoughts in her head, Jessica… Her face crumpled. The three soldiers looked tensed. This is a serious situation. A devastated girl has a gun. Jessica… Take me with you!

And she aimed the barrel to her own head.

Bang.

It was an echo perceivable everywhere around each boundaries of this yawning place. Tiffany fell on the ground, with eyes closed and wondering what’d just happened. The hard asphalt thudded painfully against her shoulder as she declined sideways. For a fleeting second, she saw the two soldiers, the old and the tall privates, running toward her… but she continued wondering what’d just happened.

She lightly bounced as her body hit the ground, and it felt painful, the landing. The gun was on her hand. Her eyes slowly travelled to it. All, in a very decelerating manner…

And the feeling of reunification engulfed her in sublimity… there’re no greater feeling than this, she thought. To die… to die after being protected?

Her eyes forced open.