when she’s twelve, her father tells hyein her cowardice is her downfall. well, her cowardice and her misfortune being born a girl rather than a boy.
in any sense, her gutlessness lends to her demise.
she never quite believes him⏤ it’s hard to take anything much of what he says as credence anymore⏤ but when she hears jeongbin’s voice in the forest and her legs take off from underneath her, clumsily leading her through the thicket of trees, all the while tripping every some odd steps scraping her knees and hands on the forest floor in the attempt of a great escape. she’s almost giddy with terror, even though her heart is pounding and her hands grip the steering wheel so tightly she can feel the way the leather burns against freshly cut skin.
park jeongbin has not sat at the front of her mind in years; a sort of defense mechanism on the part of hyein to preserve what little sanity she managed to keep in the aftermath of august 2012 but now he sits at the forefront almost mocking hyein to dare and try and forget about him once again. in the end, thanks in large part to joengbin, it’s autopilot that sees her home.
even then, her hands don’t unclench from the wheel and she listens to the way the motor hums and looks at the way the headlights illuminate the siding of her home, all the while her eyes dart to-and-fro looking for a sign of life in the otherwise bleak backdrop.
surely, jeongbin is still out there somewhere. he was a lot of things, but a quitter was never quite one of them.
hyein however is not like jeongbin, and after an hour of sitting in the car she gives up the ghost and carefully exists her car, still glancing around her as she enters her home on unsteady feet. it’s only when she gets inside does she get a good look at herself, and sees the twig in her hair and the bits of dirt marring her face. her hands too, are coated in earth and blood and she’s sure her knees⏤ though maybe bar the clods of dirt⏤ no doubt look to be in a similar state.
she hasn’t looked quite this bad since that august, nor has she felt this same level of fear since then. but then maybe that’s the appeal of jeongbin, gone but never truly forgotten; a boy capable of always eliciting a reaction.
even still, the tension leaves her somewhat when she gets in the shower and hyein overstays her welcome as burning hot water fades into lukewarm temperatures before finally emptying the water heater until she’s left with nothing but water that feels nearly frozen to wash over her.
her eyes are red-rimmed and nose red, though she refuses to say they’re tears because she’s nearly thirty years old and deluded enough to convince herself that maybe it wasn’t the voice of a dead boy she’s heard but just exhaustion seeping through her body; and at nearly thirty, she’s far too old to be crying over imagined creatures in the night.
she tells herself she’ll make herself a drink after she gets dressed. she’ll make a drink, she’ll go to bed, and she’ll go back to the funeral in the morning and pretend nothing’s off. if someone asks about her hands or her knees she’ll tell them she slipped on a patch of ice because she never went in the woods and she never heard park jeongbin because he’s dead and god and the dead do not speak.
only, when she does get dressed and makes her way into her kitchen she sees park jeongbin standing there in the low-light, body resting against the kitchen island and yang hyein lets out a scream of such terror she’s sure that her father can stepmother can hear her from their home.
she fumbles her way over to the wall, hands haphazardly slapping at it until finally she comes in contact with the light switch. the light is all to bright, but the revelation that it brings sets her mind at some ease. the face before her is thinner than the one she remembers jeongbin having and signs of age are upon it as well⏤ park jeonghwan stands before her with a glass in hand and exhaustion written into his frame.
“jesus, fuck me!” she doesn’t mean to exclaim it especially not at the volume it leaves her throat but hyein’s been through enough in the last two and a half hours to last her a lifetime and she sags against the counter as her heart rate begins to slow again. “jeonghwan what the fuck are you doing here?”
there are nicer ways to express concern, she’s sure, but they all escape her in the moment and fear gives way to irritation as she looks over him, “have you even been home yet? you look like you walked here straight from the forest.”
LA JAVANAISE ft. @dayfires