We pull up at a gas station. There is a convenience store attached to it.
Jaemin leans over, and wakes Dahee gently. He unbuckles her safety belt for her. I unbuckle mine myself, and she turns, and blinks at me; she has forgotten I was there in the backseat. Her bleary-eyed expression hardens, and she turns away. Whatever. I open the car door, and step out into the falling snow. I prance about a little, kicking my heels; he watches me, smiling a little, and I smile back, and I catch Dahee looking at me and at him; her mouth sets in a thin line, and she tugs on Jaemin's sleeve.
"I'm cold," she says, her voice plaintive. "Let's hurry, and get into the store."
"Coming?" he says, his eyes dark on mine, and her hand stills upon his sleeve.
I smirk at him, just for the hell of it, and he smirks back. I don't know what we're doing, but I'm having fun, and I think he is, too. Maybe I should build a snowman, just to see what Jaemin would do. He's looking at me like he can't take his eyes off me, and it's making me giddy and crazy and excited and alive. I haven't felt like this for a long, long time.
I walk past them, and step into the convenience store. Dahee disappears down an aisle. I walk to the aisle across.
"I might want some candy, though," I say aloud, for his benefit, because he has ambled up next to me. A smile slowly appears on his lips.
"I'll buy you some candy, then."
He turns and walks towards the candy aisle. I stop next to him and look at my options. We stare at the candy for a long, long time. I don't want any, but we both stare at it and pretend that we do.
How much he has changed, and yet how little. He was always tall, but the lanky slenderness has gone, and the man standing there now fills the narrow space with his shoulders, exuding, without even trying, a sense of lean, contained strength.
"Since when did you like candy?" His voice is quiet.
"I don't." I stare at the glass jar. "I've bought candy only once in my life." Why is it so hard to breathe suddenly? I swallow. "It was a long time ago."
I hear the sharp intake of his breath. Will it always be so hard? Will the pain be dulled one day?
"It was a pink lollipop, with a long stick." His voice is laced with pain; it floats between us like a sorrowful ghost.
"You remember?" My voice is barely above a whisper. I love you, I had said, as I gave it to him. I will always love you. Remember me, don't ever forget.
"I remember." His voice cracks a little.
We are an extension of each other; my pain is his pain, too.
His pain is endless. It falls off the ends of the world.
His pain is a dead sea.
His pain is for me, but I cannot bear it anymore.
"I remember everything. Everything." His voice is low and passionate. If I look up, he will see the tears in my eyes, so I keep my eyes fixed very carefully on the candy jar, staring at it blindly.
There is a silence. We stare at the candy a little bit longer.
"Do you even want any candy?" His voice is almost normal.
"Nope."
"Or maybe you'd like a cup of instant porridge? I remember you had a fondness for it."
"Oh, my God," I giggle. "I remember your face when you saw that bowl of porridge." His shoulders are shaking with laughter.
"That was one massive bowl, as I recall." He lowers his voice. "I was so hungry." His laughter dies, and his eyes are dangerous, all of a sudden. "It made me hungry, I had never been so hungry in my life." His voice is husky. "Do you remember, Mina... ," the blaze of heat in his eyes is turning my knees to jelly, "how hungry I was?"
Do you remember? Do you remember? Do you remember?
I thought I remembered everything, but now, as the memories sweep over me like floodwater, I realise that I didn't, not fully. In my memories, colours are muted, the edges duller, less defined.
But here, with him, his presence in front of me, the memories are no longer filmy or insubstantial. With him standing next to me, the reality of him, a tangible, living, breathing being, the memories are alive, vibrant, so vivid, that I can close my eyes, and be transported back through the misty cobwebs of time to that old farmhouse again, inhale the scent of him so sweet and heady and spicy on my breath, conjure up the white blur of his face in the dark, relive the betraying tremor of his hands as he swept me up in his arms, and sprinted up the rickety wooden staircase, kicking open the darkened room, and throwing me on the bed. I see his eyes wild with passion, his body poised above me, shimmering gold and silver and lithe in the moonshine filtering in through the blinds. I watch myself wake up in his arms, the morning sun a warm glow upon his pale skin, his eyes open, sated; his hands splayed possessively across me, branding me his. She is mine, she belongs to me.
"I remember you were starving," I say demurely, and turn away to hide my blushes.
"It's getting late, I guess we should get back to the car." I can hear the smile in his voice.
Neither of us moves. He reaches for my hand and touches it so softly, I think I'm imagining it, but then, he grips two of my fingers, and I feel the warmth of his hand radiate through my jacket, and down my veins, and I have a great urge to turn and cry into his shoulder.
"Oh, you guys are here." I had forgotten about Dahee. I think Jaemin has, too.
I step away from Jaemin, and his hand drops.
"I'm done. We should go." She stalks off to the counter without waiting for an answer.
Dahee climbs into the front seat and slams the door. Jaemin opens the car door for me this time. He waits for me to slide in, then he leans over me, and fastens my safety belt. His shape is silhouetted against the falling snow and the darkness in the car. He is invading my space and my entire being. His hands linger over mine, and I reach out blindly, like a dying person, and touch my hand to his. I want it – I want to be touched, so very much.
Once upon a time, I sat with his head on my lap, the heat of the sun on my back, I looked at his face, his eyes closed, and felt a longing with a heat so fierce that I thought it might consume me, longing for him to open his eyes, and reach out towards me. But he did not. He was fast asleep. And so, with my heart beating in my chest so hard that I thought he could surely hear it, I reached out and put my hand to his face, trailed my fingers down his cheek.
In the present, he looks into my eyes, and I know if we were alone now, he would pull me towards him, his fingers hard against my wrist, our foreheads pressed, warmth against warmth. I can feel us, his past so woven with mine that there is no way to separate us, either of us. I love you, I almost cry out, I never stopped. Do you love me still? And the unsaid words mingle with the words Young Mina spoke to him in the past, they choke me, but I can't tell, I can't tell where I end and her voice begins, where I begin and her voice ends.
Outside the snow has not stopped falling; if anything, it is coming down faster.
"Why are we taking this route?" Dahee says sharply. She has not spoken a word since we left the gas station.
"I'm dropping you off first."
"Shouldn't you drop Mina off first? I thought we - "
"I'm dropping you off first."
"I see." There is a wealth of meaning behind the two words.
She subsides into an angry silence.