“oh! seonghwa, look at this one!” you exuberantly exclaim, holding up a shiny, serrated shell. it’s creamy white in complexion and holds little flecks of blue and orange gradience, and you hold it towards your boyfriend’s direction with a petulantly prideful beam. he darts a lazy thumb up from his position laid on your striped towel in response to your hard-worked finding. you’d practically begged him yesterday to start the day fresh and early; the forecast had wonderfully called for some morning sunshine, to which you couldn’t resist the temptation of.
soft and calm waves grazed the shore as you hopped around ecstatically. you aren’t quite sure where the random burst of energy crawled from but you weren’t exactly opposed to it; the haze of the morning wake helped clear your mind up, gaze growing sharper and a youthful glow appearing on your countenance. the rusted street lamps were still dimly lit and the world was asleep, but you frolicked joyfully upon the blocky sand, periodically shouting to your lazing boyfriend who insisted on catching up on sleep while you worked.
another seashell popped colourfully in your peripheral, making you skip over as seonghwa opened his bleary eyes, counting the dawn-set clouds. grasping a purple and red infused shell, you squealed at the combination of colours conjoining in the middle. seonghwa peered over in worry before adjusting his position to observe you. he enjoyed how you conducted your nuanced lifestyle; finding joy in the mundane normalcies that, to others, would seem like laborious tediousness. shell collecting is one of the oldest activities in the book, especially when you live by a beachside town, but the task seemed more and more interesting every time you did it.
“another one! seonghwa do you see this? they’re so pretty!” he can barely hear you over the gentle breeze and the ocean laps, but the foggy octave of your voice makes him conjure a smile. he clicks his tongue and sits up, dusting the towel before zipping up your bags and necessities. he deduced that he might as well join you on your little escapade—you’d already been chatting with him as if he was awake and kicking, so why not humour your inquisitiveness?
after leisurely padding his way over to you, he analytically scans the net-knitted bag that holds your innumerable amounts of seashells. each pattern is unique and individual to its own design, and seonghwa recalls fondly that you didn’t like repetitiveness—another quirk to your characterized habits. he finds it cute that you’d go to such lengths in order to collect something as basic as seashells. you could go online and buy a bag of genuine, polished and laminated seashells—maybe even some extra dried nautical cosmetic appliances for decorative needs, but for some reason you persisted with the concept of finding your own. something about ‘the experience having more meaning’, as you wisely phrased it.
“and what, pray tell, are you gonna do with all of these shells?” seonghwa chides, placing his large hands in the pocketed confines of his light brown khakis. the action is almost arrogant but you dismiss it with a blissed out sigh. you hadn’t thought about the aftermath of your crazed search, but so many possibilities filtered through your mind with reckless abandon all at once. you could make beaded necklaces, place the shells on your mantle, make a tacky but effort-filled picture frame of your sweet boyfriend—heck, there were so many ideas that you couldn’t even begin process it properly. seonghwa stood, waiting for a response as you paused mid collection.
there was an ear-to-ear grin on your face, possibly concerning if not for seonghwa’s prior experience with the expression. and this usually meant that you were satisfied with yourself or what you were thinking about. “seonghwa, there are so many possibilities,” you screech randomly, running a hand through your hair. seonghwa gulps as he see’s the strands frame your face in a way that makes his heart palpitate unfairly in his chest. the fact that you aren’t even aware of what you’re doing is the hammer on the stake for him.
“we could make vase fillers, give them to little kids, and oh! we could give them to our neighbour...” you trail off excitedly, bouncing forward while explaining your train of thought, a hand wildly flailing in the air. seonghwa can only respond with a simple and silent affectionate glisten in his eyes. the sun peaks from the horizon as seonghwa stands by the shore, damp sand tickling his toes and his mind wandering to how much he adores you.
seonghwa isn’t particularly used to inconsistency. and truthfully; he’d say that he loathes it. he loves continuous regularity and the comfort that it brings, as well as the affirmation of routine it promises—but somewhere along the line, he fell in love with your spontaneous and absurd quotes, your mismatched clothing and your need for solidarity in difference.
every moment is a new valuable memory and every day is another wanderlust-filled adventure. he quite adores it—but park seonghwa knows that he wouldn’t be able to tolerate it with anyone but you, his beautiful angel who loves collecting seashells at the crack of dawn.