Strawberry Wine

seven

Chae Young was in a pale pink hanbok and was standing in the middle of their daisy field. She was always pretty, but she looked more ethereal than ever. He wanted to run and get closer, but his legs felt heavy and sluggish.

"Chae Young-ah," he shouted, but no sound came out of his mouth. She smiled sadly at him.

Desperately, he grabbed at the plants around him, trying to propel himself, but his body would not move. He realized that she was getting further and further away.

"Chae Young-ah!" he cried again.

She didn't seem to hear him and simply stood smiling at him.

"Wait," he cried, "wait for me!"

She was now getting very far that he could barely make out her features. He tried to make a run but his legs failed him. Out of desperation and frustration, he began to cry.

Jung Kook woke up, and felt a tear roll down the side of his face. He lay there awhile, wondering about the dream. Suddenly, something struck him. Kicking off the covers and scrambling to his feet, he bolted out of the room. The morning sun was already high in the sky and he had to stand and blink for a moment to adjust his eyes. Jumping over the low wall, he didn't bother to knock as he barged into Chae Young's room.

The sight that met him made his heart drop. The room had been cleared. Chae Young's trunk was gone from its usual space, there were no clothes stacked by the closet and the towel usually hanging by the door was also gone.

Jung Kook stood there unable to react. Maybe this was still a dream. He looked at his hands and flexed them; no, this was real. He was not dreaming. He began to search the room, looking for a sign, a note explaining that she had gone to visit her father for a week or something. He shifted through the books, pulled the closet open, and pulled out the rolled-up bed. There was no note, no letter, no nothing. He stood there breathless, not believing.

The door slid opened and Chae Young's grandmother came in.

"Kook-ah," she said gently. "I'm sorry that she left that way."

The words cut him. If he had been hoping for something otherwise, her words confirmed that Chae Young had left. That Park Chae Young really had left him.
Something heavy dropped on his heart, and his insides hurt like something sharp had slashed it. Just standing there tired him out just then.

"Where?" he managed to ask.

"Ah well I can't recall the name. Here's an address that her father left with me."

She handed him a notepad on which an address had been scribbled. His heart sank even lower on seeing a street name in Melbourne, Australia. He held the notepad and sank against the wall.

"Come out and have some sweet corn later." She said, and left the room, leaving him staring blankly at the paper.

Had he missed any signs? Had she hinted at anything? She had mentioned only in passing of an aunt in Australia who she remembers only from photographs. She had instead talked about applying for colleges in Seoul and asking if he would come. No, it had been deliberate. Her not telling him had been deliberate.

He sank to the ground, something wet and warm blurring his vision. He flung the note pad across the room.

"This had to be a dream," he told himself. He would wake up, climb over the wall and Chae Young would be standing there waiting for him, reprimanding him for waking up late. It had to be a dream.

After Chae Young left, the world suddenly went very quiet. He had taken to entering her room for no reason except to lie there staring at the ceiling. He was sure that her grandparents knew of this, but they never said a word.

What infuriated him most was how she had left with absolutely no words.

"Chae Young-ah," he whispered to her ceiling, "I miss you so much."

He looked around the room, thinking of how unfamiliar it looked without her things. He remembered the corner where her bed was usually spread. He could still picture her sitting on the futon, her skin glowing orange in the candle light, her long black tresses cascading down her front.His eyes fell on the bookcase which was once disorganized with books stacked one on top of the other. Now, they were all neatly arranged, and untouched.

Standing up, he ran his fingers across the spines, stopping on seeing the familiar title of Wuthering Heights. He remembered that he had never gotten around to finishing it. Pulling it out, he was pleasantly surprised to see another familiar sight sticking out from the between the pages- a large brown feather with black and white streaks speckling it. He wondered if it had been left behind or she had just forgotten to take it. Opening it to the page it was stuck in, he held it up, smiling sadly at the memory. He was about to put it back in when his eyes fell on something on the page. A red ink encricled a sentence. What was more, just above the sentence, squeezed in between the gaps were his initials in the same red ink: JK.

The sentence read "they forgot everything the minute they were together again". His heart began beating fast. This couldn't have been a coincidence. She had had to leave it behind for him. Heart hammering, he sat down and read the page, trying to recall the context of those words. It was about how Catherine and Heathcliff were punished according to the whims of the adults, but they would forget everything the moment they were together again.

He wondered what Chae Young meant. What did the lines have to do with him? Was she perhaps talking about the trouble that was going on around them at the moment, and how she forgot them all when they were together? He stared at the words, at the tiny initials of his name. He remembered their first kiss in the daisy field, the way they had been singing The Land of Happiness. For the first time in days, he found the corner of his lips curling into a smile.

She liked the familiar feel of his lean, wiry arms. In the dark, in the safe confines of their space, she was braver. She liked to feel his lips on her neck, the feel of his hard, sinewy body against her soft skin. She liked to hear his ragged breathing in her ear, she liked to savor what she made him feel.
Jung Kook's arms were loosening around her. His heat was drawing away.

"Tokki-ah," she whispered, trying to make him stay longer. She was afraid to speak louder because her grandparents were sleeping. The air felt cooler around her as he withdrew. Slowly, her mind began to wake.

When she opened her eyes, she was not in her grandparent's house. She was in a strange room. Dawn was breaking and a faint bluish tint was creeping in through the blinds. There was a sleeping figure beside her. Her name was Ye Bin and she was her aunt's daughter. Chae Young was no longer in South Korea.

Closing her eyes, she curled up under her cover. Burying her face in the pillow, she cried silently.