genre: angst/fluff/something in between??
a/n: **Trigger Warning** This does mention death, so please read with caution.
I always liked watching the clouds turn in their slow orbit around the world. This one must have been over California a few hours ago, I thought. And I liked the sweet smell of summer flowers that got caught in the wind and swept over the small, lush field I found myself in most afternoons. I liked the way new books gave off a fresh feeling that captivated and pulled you in to its fiction adventure.
But, most of all, I liked the way he pulled me in to be apart of his adventure. I was hesitant at first, but he didn’t fail. He knew he wouldn’t. Wonwoo always told me, “One day, you’ll know I was right."
Right about what, you might be asking? Well, I’ll tell you.
There I was, one freezing winter night in the middle of December, watching the thrashing, cold river race right before me. Feeling my tears turn from hot to cold immediately after they felt the crisp air. Feeling my shattered heart fill with grief inside of me – I lost my dad early that morning, around two or so. He was battling for so long. One of the strongest men I knew, taken over by sickness. A hole was carved out of me when they told us, "We’re sorry. We did everything we could.”
I remember I had walked to the edge of the overlook. Staring down at the dark, splashing water, I cried. I cried harder than I ever had and felt my tears become one with the river. But I wanted to become one with it, too. I screamed into the inky night. Curses and sobs mixed with the empty air and were ultimately drowned out by the silent of the night. My coat was thrown onto the ground, shivering commenced up and down my body, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t notice. I didn’t want to notice. I didn’t want to become cold like the daring winter months. I wanted to be warm and I wanted to be free from this deadly, terrifying world I found myself in. I wanted to jump.
Until I heard a voice behind me, that would change everything. “Stop,” it said, and I stood, with my arms out to my side, ready to be carried by gravity and away from this place, still. “I don’t know who you are. And I don’t know why you want to do this. But let me tell you right now that there are so many things in this world to be happy about. The small, dots of stars in the sky above you. That’s something. The way the moon is smiling down at you right now. You don’t want to disappoint it by jumping, do you?"
I glanced up. The crescent of the moon shined directly over me. Two stars were placed gently above it, a sure sign that my father was smiling down. "Maybe it would smile harder if I jumped,” I said, being irrational. My father wouldn’t smile, no, but I would – knowing I would be with him.
“No,” he said. “It would frown because you would be gone.”
Wonwoo, as I later came to find out was his name, was a friend of the world. He was someone who constantly wanted to uncover the graces the earth left us with and I had somehow become his partner. He would drive us tens, sometimes hundreds, of miles across the country just to go to one waterfall for thirty minutes. Then, shortly after, we would leave to travel to an old bridge that he found scrolling through the depths of the Internet. “It has a long history,” he would say. “Ancient soldiers used to march back and forth to see their families in the small village next to it.” I would nod as he talked.
I never really understood why he took me on all of these conquests, although I often had to take photos of him in front of his so called “discoveries”. Occasionally, he would take one of me, too, if it was a spot I particularly liked that time. The next time he saw me, I would be handed a small envelope of one of the photographs I took. “To remember,” Wonwoo would say. My room was filled with them. They were taped to the wall and threaded with string across the ceiling. He was right. I remembered. When looking at the picture of him almost slipping off a rock, I remember when I told him it was dangerous. “No it’s not,” he said, then took it back when his foot slid off the slick surface. I remember the koi pond we stumbled upon when I looked at the picture of his profile. He bent down towards the fish, eyes glistening, and I hurried to take a photo. The most spontaneous moments were the best ones with him. Every moment was a good one with him.
We stood by the river a year later, hand in hand. It was dark. It was cold, just like you’d expect it to be in December, but it wasn’t too cold with him by my side. We walked for a bit, on the anniversary of my father’s death. I didn’t want to be at home.
He never asked me about my dad, for he knew it was a touchy subject. But tonight, I told him everything. I told him about the way my dad would throw me in the air when I was small and I would feel like I could touch the sky. I told him about how his favorite color was blue because it was the color of loyalty.
Later on, we sat down. My hands were red from the cold air that bit at them and his nose was pink from the chill. He opened his bag and sorted through it, looking for something he said he had for me. When he had found it, he told me to close my eyes. Placed in my hands was a book. A book of all the memories he had given me. I opened it, and the first picture I saw left me breathless. It was dark, of course, but I could make it out. It was me, standing with my arms out to my side, frozen in time, ready to jump. The next was, again, of me with a brokenness that had not yet healed. I stood on a park swing, my head rested on the chain.
My demeanor through the book changed, however, as the photos went on. Mixed in with the ones of me were the ones I had taken of him. The memories that he had granted me. The places he had taken me. The things that he told me were to live for. Wonwoo told me the moon would frown if I was gone. And he was right. Because when I looked up at the murky sky that night, the moon smiled down brighter than I had ever seen before.
