Nineteen | SeulMin FF

-17-

If she were to choose a favorite color, it'd be black. She's always loved black. Black is elegant, classy and ever so accessible. Black offers everything a cloud of mystery, covering part of the truth. Black manifests what is inside of her mind through the funerary clothing she wears.

Looking around the crowd, all she sees is black clothes and sickly white, painted faces. Clouds gather above their heads and the wind starts to blow. Soon, it will rain.

What a joke, she mentally laughs out at the possibility of even the sky mourning his death.

Why can't they see the truth?

Hyorin and Seulgi have come to a communal accord on cremating the body.

"For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." The priest says, and Seulgi feels like sneering again.

How pathetic.

He's turned to ashes without a holy prayer or a service. The body was burned in a proportion of sixty percent. Though everyone still says it has been Park Jimin. But then, why does she feel like she's biding goodbye to another, to a complete stranger?

Should she move on? Is that it? Should she forget that she ever loved Park Jimin, and that, at a point in her small and insignificant life, she considered him The One? If yes, then how? She could cut open her chest and pull out her heart, though that won't help much.

Hyorin is the first one to step away from the crowd, to walk towards the vase sealed behind the glass, and place one bouquet of bloody red roses in front of the small shrine, decorated with candles and pictures.

Jaemin is precisely one month old. He has surprised everyone by showing his strength, despite being a premature infant. In most cases, newborns coming to life before the due date tend to be weaker, so they need monitoring and whatnot. But looks like Jaemin's organs have developed correctly, him turning into a healthy, though slightly anemic child.

He was born on the twenty-third of August, last month.

It took a while for Jimin's supposed body to be handed over, because the doctors had to run lots of tests on the corpse, making sure it was him and whatnot.

After Hyorin, it's Seulgi's turn to step over to the vase and place down her own bouquet, consisting of orchids. Honestly, orchids are her favorite flowers, and their strong scents is believed to cross the worlds, so maybe, if he is indeed over there, he might feel her scent and be reminded of her.

Seulgi will do anything, as long as he won't forget about her, about Jaemin.

The siblings' relatives have come to the service. Again, Seulgi feels like throwing up. Those are the sick people who have turned their backs at the siblings, when they needed help. But then again, tragedy tends to make people curious. Especially when death doesn't knock at their door.

As the service ends, the crowd disintegrates, everyone going back home. Honestly, Seulgi, nor Hyorin have been in the mood to hold dinner for the so-called mourning people, so that was it.

"Are you alright?" Seulgi asks the older woman, who is wiping her tears with a handkerchief.

"I'm not." She then confesses.

Indeed, how can someone be fine under such circumstances? The clouds are getting thicker with rain.

Just as the two walk towards Hyorin's car, with their arms linked, a familiar figure comes closer to them. What used to be a gorgeous sex-symbol is replaced with a skinny and sickly looking woman. The long hair which used to be cared for is now simply tied in a tail by the nape, and the simple black dress seems to be too loose on her. Her long legs are only bones, and even her cheeks seem hollow.