one blind mouse (and two that can see) {yoona/hyoyeon/sooyoung}
Title: One Blind Mouse (and two that can see)
Fandoms: Girl's Generation with DBSK, Super Junior, CSJH and SHINee
Pairing: HyoSooNa
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of sex, death, murder, bad language
Genre: Cop!AU, Supernatural!AU
A/N: my big bang submission for troisbang!
Word Count: 11,416 words
Summary: Yoona can see when people will die, Hyoyeon can see how, and Sooyoung where. Haunted with this curse and gift, they all end up at the same place, solving the same crime.
Yoona wandered.
It had been the thing that she had started doing since she was young. Back when her parents were fighting and her grandmother was terribly sick. When the girls at school hated her because she was too skinny compared to their thick-boned composure. She wandered not because she liked to, but because wandering, to her, was fun, and it was a way to get away from everyone else. Everyone else that if she talked honestly to, would think she was insane. That would lock her up and deem her unstable.
She enjoyed wandering during the fall, when everything fell around her. When the plants lost their outer beauty, forcing people to look past the flowers and the leaves and wonder about what really lie inside the bark. She liked catching the red and yellow leaves as they fell, brushing her thumb over its veins, wondering what kind of heart it may have had. If it was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside-now soaked in blood by being stabbed and banished by the lack of sunlight.
Not only that, but Yoona could appreciate death this way. It was beautiful this way. It wasn’t a ticking clock above someone’s head, the big, bright, red figures constantly moving downwards, each day flipping change, all up until it flipped to zero. Trees didn’t do that. They were constantly killing, changing, and growing again, and there was no way to figure out exactly when they would die. They didn’t care. They weren’t at the edge, wondering when they would die.
Yoona enjoyed walking through the park that lead to her small house day in and day out when she was younger during late September and early October, appreciating the color change and the signals that the period of death, or winter, was drawing closer. It was a sign that Yoona appreciated as she picked up leaf after leaf, putting it in her bag delicately, making sure that it wouldn’t fold or rip in the process.
It was when she was seven that she resented autumn altogether. It was then when her grandmother became very ill in a very short amount of time. Her once-lively eyes grew dull and sunken from the loss of sleep and her coughs were loud and almost shook the whole house. Her skin grew clammy and the colour of dead fish, completely translucent, and Yoona could see the veins running from her shoulders down her arm and spreading out in her palm. She would watch her grandmother sit in her bed, knowing full-well that that was the last place she would like to be, praying that the next morning she would spring out of bed, all new and refreshed and filled with life.
But her grandmother had lived a strong, good life, and her parents had known for a while now that she was going to go soon. She had started losing her memory, up to the extent that she couldn’t even remember her daughter’s face or the year, and she couldn’t be left alone because she could easily trip and break one of many weak bones in her body. She was now eighty-three, a good life everyone said, but yet Yoona couldn’t help but frown every time she saw her grandmother’s withering face. It didn’t look normal.
Grandmother Im was a lady filled with joy and happiness, but above anything, superstition. She believed in Gods that no one else knew the names of, not to mention how to pronounce these deities’ names. She clutched to her cross like a stray dog holding onto its last meal, refusing to let it go. She was cursed, she said. The first was to have such terrible daughters-one left her after their father died, and the other, Yoona’s mother, was a “cruel bitch that was only in it for the inheritance money.” The second was to have her only grandchild born a mutant.
Yoona didn’t believe that she was a mutant, and even if her grandmother screamed that she was every day, Yoona still loved her. She as the first person to actually believe that she could have been more than just a little distant, like how the teachers had said she was. Her grandmother could look into her eyes and see something that her mother couldn’t see-her father couldn’t see. They didn’t believe her when she said that she had something so damned that she wanted to kill herself. They just patted her head and made another guidance appointment at her school.
“What you have is a gift and a curse at the same time,” she explained one day when her parents were at work and Yoona didn’t have school. “You’re a beautiful girl but you’ll always be damned by the fact that you have this awful sight. A thousand clocks per day. I bet it must be hard for you not to be staring at my clock right now, yes? And that’s all you’ll ever know. Just a few numbers, not their lives, or what’s going to be there, staring them in the face, when that clock hits zero.” She grabbed her face and rubbed her thumbs up and down Yoona’s face, watching her with pitied eyes. “I’m sorry for cursing you with this gift.”
Yoona’s parents don’t believe any of the idiotic things her grandmother throws out about her having this ‘gift and a curse’. They just shake their heads and make comments about how she’s off her rocker, how soon; she’ll be losing more than her memory, but her sanity. She just grips her cross even closer to her heart, mumbling more prayers in a tongue neither party knows how to decipher.
Her grandmother dies on November first (oddly enough) in a way that Yoona’s father would describe as “consisting of the grim reaper having to grab and drag her by the heels to hell.” They wear dark clothes, which Yoona has many, and they burn and throw her ashes into the river, letting the gray patches float in the water like dead, rotten logs. It’s a sad time for the family, but especially Yoona, having lost the only person that ever believed her.
And it was the first time that Yoona ever saw someone’s clock finally countdown to zero. She doesn’t have to check her grandmother’s vitals when it happens, she just knows. “Grandma’s dead,” she informs her parents blatantly when they get home that night, having spent thousands of dollars by then in hopes of keeping her alive an extra day. They pat her back; tell her that she should go start making dinner as they start calling some of the relatives.
Ever since then, Yoona hates autumn, hates the way things fall, but eventually, they’ll grow back. But that never works in life and death. She just watches people with a smirk, waiting for them to die. She wants to tell him of their near death, but instead finds it kind of hilarious, as they walk around like chickens with their heads cut-off, unknowing of their deaths.
Sooyeon is a great example. She’s beautiful and two years older than Yoona and after her grandmother dies, she’s been given the job of babysitting young Yoona. She had a younger sister that was in the same class as her, and dated a girl named Miyoung (though she never admitted it to anyone) that was in her grade. She had dyed her hair blonde and it was quite pretty as she walked up the steps to Yoona’s house, the sun making it glitter.
Sooyeon was a wonderful person. She was kind to Yoona like no one else was, and she was way more understanding of the world than a lot of people. When Yoona spoke, talking about how the cup was half-empty, Sooyeon would come back, talking with the glass half-full. She was optimistic and her smile could make any suicidal person rethink life.
“I hate book reports,” Eleven-year old Yoona mumbles, looking through the pages of her new book. Sooyeon laughs, finishing some of her homework. Next year she’ll be off to high school but they both decided that they’ll still stay close, even if Yoona won’t need a babysitter anymore.
Yoona looks up from her book, her eyes catching the numbers above her head absent-mindedly. The curse that her grandmother gave her hasn’t disappeared yet. She doesn’t realize that she’s staring most of the time, because she likes seeing the changing numbers. She’s tried to stop looking at the numbers, but she’s found it extremely difficult, especially when they have a cute hairstyle that draws you to the top of their head.
“Think of it this way-you’re reading a book that you might not have read had you not done the book report,” Sooyeon says optimistically, a flirtatious smile to her lips. She brushes some of her blond locks from her hair and opens up her science textbook, writing down the answers. Sooyeon is kind of like Yoona’s tutor too, even if Sooyeon sucks at math, something that Yoona seems to be much better at.
“Did you like the book when your class read it?” Yoona asks, her black hair contrasting to the pallor of her moonlight skin. Sooyeon purses her lips, thinking it over for a second, before shaking her head fiercely, like a wet dog.
“Nah, I hated the book.”
They share a laugh, but Yoona stops when Sooyeon stars coughing suddenly. Her numbers flutter until there’s only maybe ten days left. Yoona’s eyes widen and she pulls at her arm, trying her best to get her the doctor’s. Sooyeon shakes her head, giving Yoona the best smile she possibly can. “It’s okay. It’s only a little cough.” She pats Yoona’s hand and smiles. “I’ll be fine, Yoong.”
But the numbers don’t change, and Yoona can’t pretend that she’s not worried sick. Sooyeon closes her book and grabs her purse. “Come on; let’s go get something to eat. How about ice cream? It’s a hot day and I bet it’ll taste delicious.” Yoona sighs and follows her, the books left stranded on her bed.
She doesn’t see Sooyeon again, because she dies of lung cancer because of serious second-hand smoking. Yoona doesn’t go to her funeral, even if her parents say that she should. Three months after, when most people have forgotten about the death (except Soojung, her little sister, and Miyoung) she goes to Jung Sooyeon’s grave and tries her best not to say “I told you so” as she fixes the flowers there.
Yoona grows up very distant from everyone else because she is very afraid. Anyone that she is close to she’s afraid that she’ll see them die. One time she tells her father when he’s going to die and he laughs at her, and he tells her to stop reading those teenage vampire novels. Her mother believes her to be a morbid, young girl, and every time she invites her friends over, she can’t “help but worry about what’s wrong with her.”
She doesn’t get many new friends. A girl named Seo Joohyun tries to get close to her, but Yoona pushes her away subconsciously. Joohyun is very determined, though, and Yoona has to give her points for that, so in time, with Joohyun’s rather distant attitude and philosophy on life, they decide to be friends. Yoong and Seo they’re called, keeping to themselves while everyone seems to have fun. While they both deny it in their adult lives, it was prom night with too much alcohol when they lost their virginities to each other.
She gets through school, though-excelling in mathematics and decides to become a forensic anthropologist and takes biology on the side. She moves away from her small town where she wandered to the big city of Seoul, where her field really calls her. There aren’t many big goodbyes, because Joohyun decides that she wants to be a newspaper journalist for Seoul’s finest newspaper.
Life is static and Yoona likes it that way. She wears sunglasses to keep herself from looking at people’s numbers, trying her best to not get attached to someone, trying her best not to look at someone’s number and tap them on the shoulder-telling them when they’re going to die. No one wants to know when they die. No one wants to.
“I can know when people die,” Yoona admits after sex, tucking herself into Joohyun’s body like she did every night. Yoona liked the warmth of Joohyun’s body much more than the sheets, and she always felt so safe in her arms.
Joohyun sighed, wrapping her arm around Yoona’s thin frame. “When am I going to die?”
Yoona looks up and looks into Joohyun’s deep, brown eyes, studying her for a minute, only to check the clock above her. It feels weird-most people don’t believe her when she tells them that she can see their death-date, so when Joohyun just asks, it takes her a minute to think. “The numbers are big, but that can change rapidly depending on sudden personality changes. But right now, you’ll live a strong life with whoever you settle down with.”
Joohyun smiles, “That’s reassuring, unnie. Now please go to sleep. You’ll have a big day tomorrow, just like you always do.” Yoona nods and falls asleep.
**
Sooyoung is born blind. Her parents believe that her birth is a blessing-she was born at least a month before schedule, and she was way too light as a baby. She was destined to die in the first week, and the doctors even asked if they would prefer the baby to be killed. But the Choi family were a strong family, with a good amount of money, so they decided that they could live with his blind, baby girl that they named Choi Sooyoung.
She was smart, even with her ailment. She easily grasped the ways of touch and hearing, and her older brother Siwon liked to call her ‘Daredevil’ after one of his favourite superheroes, who, like her, couldn’t see. They were closer than a lot of siblings were, and Siwon would be shown helping his sister walk or get to place to place because he “didn’t want her to be fat or dumb like everyone thought she was.”
Every time Siwon touches her sister’s hand or shoulder or hugs her from behind, Sooyoung pictures a lake. A beautiful, glittering lake with ducks and willow trees bending into the water. It’s never a different place, so Sooyoung gets used to it, and every time she thinks of Siwon, she thinks of a peaceful lake, one that will be able to hold so many kinds of life.
Because Siwon is a nice person. Sooyoung knows this every evening when he comes home from school-and when he promises her that he’ll take care of her until they’re old, even if he usually says this when she’s three and he’s six. But she believes him because she loves him. She loves his cute, naïve personalities and his curiosity that he’s shunned for. He’s kind but he’s smart, and Sooyoung enjoys the moments when she can just listen instead of doing anything else.
Sooyoung knows what he prays for every night. She can hear him through the wall that divides their rooms. “I want our family to be safe, and our lives to be long and prosperous. And I want Sooyoung to see. Please Lord; let her see this gorgeous world you have given us.” Sooyoung cries waterless tears each night to this prayer-wondering what God existed, which one would give such a religious family a sick, blind daughter.
The Choi family is religious and Sooyoung loves God as much as everyone else. But she hates him, too. Because she never gets to see him, she never gets to see the paintings of him and his disciples; she never gets to see his son. She wants to see but she knows she can’t. She runs her hand over the solid oak of the pedestals and touches the paper of the Bible. She can only memorize the lines-she can never read.
Sooyoung enters a school for people like her-Special Education. She can write and she understands touch patterns and textures, so she isn’t the worst. She isn’t like some of them where they can’t even write or they can’t hear, or they walk around mindless without the help of the kind ladies that work in the classrooms. They leave her in the room as they work with the “worse ones”, and she spends the day listening to the world around her until Siwon comes and walks her home.
“Sooyoung-ah,” a woman that’s called Seoyun says, tapping her shoulder. Instantly, Sooyoung is brought to a busy highway, with cars buzzing past. Sooyoung hasn’t even seen a highway before but when she sees it there in her head, she knows what it is. She can almost hear the screaming of tires that she can sometimes hear outside her bedroom when she’s trying to fall asleep. “Your parents are here to pick you up.”
Three weeks later, when the kind ladies are talking and getting care of the “worse ones”, Sooyoung overhears them. It’s a habit. She can hear ten times better than most kids she knows, so sometimes, all she has to do is move her head a little, like an antenna moving for a better signal.
“Poor Seoyun… She was really the best worker here,” one woman (named Jiyeon) sighs, zipping up her coat, ready to take the kids on a walk, like they did every day, leaving Sooyoung behind because they were afraid of any cars hitting her.
Another, named Sungmi, hums in agreement. “Who would have thought that that would be the end of her? Her husband was a wicked man; I knew it from the beginning! Poor Seohyunnie, that must have been the worse way to die.”
Sooyoung learns later from her parents that Mrs. Jin Seoyun had gotten in a car accident, supposedly being run over by her husband on the highway after getting out of the car because of an accident. Automatically the picture of the overpass and highway jumps to Sooyoung’s head and she tries to get it out of her head, but she can’t find anything else to think about, so she runs to her brother’s arms and accepts the lake that jumps into her thoughts.
Her parents don’t give her any pictures, just a white, thick fog. She also gets this from her grandparents and from some of her teachers. It’s puzzling and Sooyoung wonders why she can’t see any pictures, like how she had with Siwon or Mrs. Jin. She wants to ask them, but she doesn’t want to be considered a “worse one”. She doesn’t want to be considered insane. So she sits in the darkness about it all, trying to look through the distant fog.
“It’s weird,” Sooyoung words when Siwon finishes his grade nine homework on the floor and she keeps him company. “Whenever you touch me, I can see a lake. It’s a beautiful lake, too. It reflects you perfectly, oppa. But when umma or appa touches me, I sense nothing. I don’t see anything. Just a heavy fog. And I can’t look through it.”
Siwon hums, because that’s how Sooyoung knows he’s alive, and he taps his pencil against the paper. “Maybe there’s something about these places. Am I the only one that you see places with? Or is everyone else a thick fog?” Sooyoung’s heart leaps because she loves it when her brother opens up to her and accepts her ideas.
“Soonkyu, with her I can see a mountain. Unlike yours, it’s creepy and dark and I hate it when she touches me because it’s ugly and horrific.” Soonkyu was their next-door neighbour, who had a tendency to believe that Sooyoung wasn’t competent enough to even cross her porch. The small touches sent shivers down her spine and she hated the gloomy mountain that would appear in her mind. She decided that she would keep Mrs. Jin a secret.
“I’ll keep her from touching you, Sooyoung-ah,” Siwon promised, “Now I suggest you sleep. Maybe it’s God giving you sight.” Siwon seems happy with his explanation so he helps her get up and back to her room, shutting off the light and letting Sooyoung listen to the music from outside and the honking of cars mixed with the laughter of children. She just accepts that it’s nighttime and falls asleep.
Sooyoung knows something is wrong when Soonkyu ends up missing. Donghae, her older brother, becomes worried sick, and starts looking everywhere for his sister, missing many school days, all up to when even the police believe that Soonkyu’s gone for good. Donghae cries in the Choi living room and Sooyoung listens to his tears from the staircase. From the back of her mind, she pulls the image of the mountain out.
She grabs a piece of paper and starts drawing the scene that she sees when she thinks hard. Thankfully, she’s a great artist, and Siwon recognizes the spot exactly. But he can’t drive yet, so he tries to get his parents to drive them there, but they ignore him while trying to soothe Donghae. Sooyoung hates the feeling that rushes through her that tells her that if they don’t get there now, Soonkyu’s going to die.
Siwon hugs her as the news comes out a few days later. Soonkyu was found in a mountain with multiple stab wounds and her eyes pulled straight out of the sockets. By the amount of blood, it also seemed that she had been raped. Sooyoung cried for days, even more than Donghae, because she knew that she could have helped her. She could have rescued her from whomever, if only they had listened. If they had done exactly what Sooyoung had been doing since she was born.
She doesn’t go to school much after that, even if her parents and Siwon believe that she could still get somewhere if she put in the time and the effort. She doesn’t want to. She knows that if she touches someone, if she even knows someone, if she bumps into someone, she’ll see how they die. Some have that fog that keeps her from knowing-but most have vivid settings that make her body temperature drop, because some are things like playgrounds. What if a kid saw that?
Seeing. She hates her brother for praying to God that she would be given such a terrible gift of sight. She would prefer to be deaf and blind instead of having this awful curse. She prays every night and every morning for this evil thing to be ripped from her body, but it never comes. Nothing comes, not even the warm hands that belong to her brother, because soon, when she’s sixteen, he goes off to university to become a doctor in the Seoul.
“Sooyoung,” Changmin whispers. Sooyoung knows his voice so she doesn’t scream out in terror-she just continues to sit in her chair on the veranda, where she would “watch” people go by. He’s supposed to go to school, but he doesn’t, instead spending his days next to her, admiring the beautiful blind girl that won’t be able to see her gorgeous reflection.
Sooyoung cocks her head to the side to tell him that she’s listening. Changmin is interesting. He likes food, like her, and she usually brings a bunch of food that they can share. He can sing really well, too. He’s only touched her once, and when he did, it was a shocking experience, because it was a field covered with wheat. Changmin had a tendency to be invisible, and he’ll die invisible-unseen for days.
“I’ve heard bad things about your brother,” he continues, “I heard that he’s gotten missing after a few drinks or two. I only know this because the cops are going to come in soon and ask your parents about it. Probably you, too.” He sighed, and Sooyoung could imagine him shaking his head. “So many people disappear from here; it could make one worry about your safety.”
Sooyoung isn’t listening as Changmin goes on and on about the capacity for kidnapping these days. All she’s thinking about is that glistening lake, the one that she could describe without even thinking because she loved her brother’s touches, she enjoyed being next to him, and she couldn’t stand for him disappearing so easily because a few drinks.
The image of Soonkyu’s mountain makes her stand up, her chair falling down behind her. She turns in the general direction of Changmin and extends her hand. “You need to bring me to Seoul, Changmin-oppa. Please, I’ll pay you as much as you want. I just really need to get to Seoul,” she begs, and Changmin accepts. He drives her to the train station and they get the first train to Seoul that afternoon.
The news that Choi Siwon is missing hits the news that evening and Sooyoung listens to it as they sit in their hotel that evening. They’re both spent so they don’t feel like going anywhere and they’re poor so they have to share the same bed. But Sooyoung likes the heat that he gives off, the feeling of safety that he brings; so much that she’ll deal with the field image in her head the whole night.
They go to the police station the next morning looking like a couple because Changmin holds her hand dangerously tight. Sooyoung can’t see anything so she allows him to do everything for her, but she can’t stop her heart that’s about to break open her ribcage because it’s pounding so hard. She hears a girl’s voice and a hand-it’s a front yard with a white fence that she sees.
“I’m Im Yoona. I hear you might have a lead to your brother’s disappearance,” she says calmly, and Sooyoung settles down quickly because of the sound of the woman’s soft voice. She likes it, so she isn’t afraid when she asks for a piece of blank paper and a pen. On her lap she draws the image that she’s fallen in love with-the glistening lake that represents her brother so much. She draws everything she can see before handing it to Yoona.
The girl hums. “I know where this is. Get the group ready to leave and go investigate,” Yoona commands powerfully, and Sooyoung can hear footsteps. Yoona sighs and turns back to look at Sooyoung, and she smiles back at her.
“He’ll be fine,” Yoona promises.
**
Hyoyeon is born in South Korea, but when she was young, her family moved to China. Ryeowook, or Lixu as he would be called in their home in Beijing, wasn’t that close to her, even if they were siblings, seeing as Lixu was a distant, shy boy that got his homework done and listened to his parents. He was the little model child that could sit in your living room as you talked about everything under the sun with your girlfriends. It wasn’t that surprising when he admitted he was gay fourteen or so years later.
Xiaoyuan, or Hyoyeon, on the other hand, was completely the opposite. She enjoyed being outside and being with people and playing any sport until her arms were sore and red. Her muscles were larger than a lot of the boys’ at her school, who preferred to keep to themselves, much like Lixu did. She was very active as a kid, and got many names like ‘butch’ or ‘tomboy’, ones that in the end, didn’t bother her that much, because she rolled her own way.
She became head of the girls’ soccer and baseball team. She tried out for any sports team that she possibly could-even trying to dress up like a guy to get into teams that were restricted for boys. On weekends, instead of doing homework, she’d be in her backyard, working on her kick or shooting hoops with some of her neighbours. She ran after school on the red soiled track. She tried out for track and field and was happy when she saw that yes, she was able to run the 400m and the one mile run because of her endurance.
The first incident happens when she’s with Lixu, walking home after school. Thankfully it isn’t raining-but her day has already been ruined by the loss of her favourite pair of sunglasses, so she has to walk home the whole way looking into the sun. Ryeowook doesn’t seem to have this problem because of his glasses that change tints depending if you’re inside or outside-plus, she can see his arms and legs getting tanned as they walk.
Though she hates to admit it, Xiaoyuan acted very much like the bigger sister, even if Ryeowook was two years older than her. He was wimpy in her eyes, with his smaller body that could easily crumple to a larger boy’s punches. Since a familiar incident when Lixu came home crying, having been bullied because he was Korean, she has always had this feeling that she should protect him. Because he wasn’t able to protect himself. She knows that Lixu hates it when she worries, but it’s hard not to.
“Ryeowook-oppa,” Hyoyeon mumbles, fitting her hand into his. He cringes (he’s a germaphobe and he knows that Hyoyeon rolls around in mud) but smiles, trying his best not to loosen the grip too much. Hyoyeon watches the red hand, waiting patiently for it to switch over to the accepting and little white man that looks like he’s walking. She feels like resting her head on Ryeowook’s shoulder but she had track practice and she knows that she’s sweaty.
“It must have rained overnight.” He looks down at the grass, his lips forming into a smile. “We should swim one time this summer, dongsaeng,” he comments. Hyoyeon nods, opening her mouth to speak, when she feels a wave of emotion run over her, forcing her down onto the ground.
The first thing she smells is the strong smell of chlorine pushing into her nostrils. She feels this feather-light force moving around her and she doesn’t know what to do exactly. She opens her eyes completely and is welcomed by the sting. She can hear muffled voices. “Ryeowook! Oh my god, please, someone save him!” She doesn’t know what to do, but knows in the back of her mind that no one is going to jump in to save her. “Going to drown! Please, someone!” The woman, Hyoyeon notices, sounds a lot like her.
“Hyoyeon-ah?” Ryeowook asks, grabbing at her elbow. She opens her eyes and she’s brought back to the side of the road. People surround her, caving her in. “Get out of the way! Can’t you see that she’s stressed? Move!” Lixu helps her stand up and carries her home that, thankfully, isn’t that far away. Her head is spinning and she’s having trouble standing straight, so she crashed down onto the couch when they arrive home.
Lixu has always been good in these kinds of situations. He grabs her some water (though she’s sure that she doesn’t want to even see water, she still drinks it all up) and refills it whenever she hands it back, empty. He doesn’t talk about it and Hyoyeon finds an inner peace to that as she finishes another cup, walking the water at the bottom move as it swivels around.
--
end of part one
part two
Fandoms: Girl's Generation with DBSK, Super Junior, CSJH and SHINee
Pairing: HyoSooNa
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of sex, death, murder, bad language
Genre: Cop!AU, Supernatural!AU
A/N: my big bang submission for troisbang!
Word Count: 11,416 words
Summary: Yoona can see when people will die, Hyoyeon can see how, and Sooyoung where. Haunted with this curse and gift, they all end up at the same place, solving the same crime.
Yoona wandered.
It had been the thing that she had started doing since she was young. Back when her parents were fighting and her grandmother was terribly sick. When the girls at school hated her because she was too skinny compared to their thick-boned composure. She wandered not because she liked to, but because wandering, to her, was fun, and it was a way to get away from everyone else. Everyone else that if she talked honestly to, would think she was insane. That would lock her up and deem her unstable.
She enjoyed wandering during the fall, when everything fell around her. When the plants lost their outer beauty, forcing people to look past the flowers and the leaves and wonder about what really lie inside the bark. She liked catching the red and yellow leaves as they fell, brushing her thumb over its veins, wondering what kind of heart it may have had. If it was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside-now soaked in blood by being stabbed and banished by the lack of sunlight.
Not only that, but Yoona could appreciate death this way. It was beautiful this way. It wasn’t a ticking clock above someone’s head, the big, bright, red figures constantly moving downwards, each day flipping change, all up until it flipped to zero. Trees didn’t do that. They were constantly killing, changing, and growing again, and there was no way to figure out exactly when they would die. They didn’t care. They weren’t at the edge, wondering when they would die.
Yoona enjoyed walking through the park that lead to her small house day in and day out when she was younger during late September and early October, appreciating the color change and the signals that the period of death, or winter, was drawing closer. It was a sign that Yoona appreciated as she picked up leaf after leaf, putting it in her bag delicately, making sure that it wouldn’t fold or rip in the process.
It was when she was seven that she resented autumn altogether. It was then when her grandmother became very ill in a very short amount of time. Her once-lively eyes grew dull and sunken from the loss of sleep and her coughs were loud and almost shook the whole house. Her skin grew clammy and the colour of dead fish, completely translucent, and Yoona could see the veins running from her shoulders down her arm and spreading out in her palm. She would watch her grandmother sit in her bed, knowing full-well that that was the last place she would like to be, praying that the next morning she would spring out of bed, all new and refreshed and filled with life.
But her grandmother had lived a strong, good life, and her parents had known for a while now that she was going to go soon. She had started losing her memory, up to the extent that she couldn’t even remember her daughter’s face or the year, and she couldn’t be left alone because she could easily trip and break one of many weak bones in her body. She was now eighty-three, a good life everyone said, but yet Yoona couldn’t help but frown every time she saw her grandmother’s withering face. It didn’t look normal.
Grandmother Im was a lady filled with joy and happiness, but above anything, superstition. She believed in Gods that no one else knew the names of, not to mention how to pronounce these deities’ names. She clutched to her cross like a stray dog holding onto its last meal, refusing to let it go. She was cursed, she said. The first was to have such terrible daughters-one left her after their father died, and the other, Yoona’s mother, was a “cruel bitch that was only in it for the inheritance money.” The second was to have her only grandchild born a mutant.
Yoona didn’t believe that she was a mutant, and even if her grandmother screamed that she was every day, Yoona still loved her. She as the first person to actually believe that she could have been more than just a little distant, like how the teachers had said she was. Her grandmother could look into her eyes and see something that her mother couldn’t see-her father couldn’t see. They didn’t believe her when she said that she had something so damned that she wanted to kill herself. They just patted her head and made another guidance appointment at her school.
“What you have is a gift and a curse at the same time,” she explained one day when her parents were at work and Yoona didn’t have school. “You’re a beautiful girl but you’ll always be damned by the fact that you have this awful sight. A thousand clocks per day. I bet it must be hard for you not to be staring at my clock right now, yes? And that’s all you’ll ever know. Just a few numbers, not their lives, or what’s going to be there, staring them in the face, when that clock hits zero.” She grabbed her face and rubbed her thumbs up and down Yoona’s face, watching her with pitied eyes. “I’m sorry for cursing you with this gift.”
Yoona’s parents don’t believe any of the idiotic things her grandmother throws out about her having this ‘gift and a curse’. They just shake their heads and make comments about how she’s off her rocker, how soon; she’ll be losing more than her memory, but her sanity. She just grips her cross even closer to her heart, mumbling more prayers in a tongue neither party knows how to decipher.
Her grandmother dies on November first (oddly enough) in a way that Yoona’s father would describe as “consisting of the grim reaper having to grab and drag her by the heels to hell.” They wear dark clothes, which Yoona has many, and they burn and throw her ashes into the river, letting the gray patches float in the water like dead, rotten logs. It’s a sad time for the family, but especially Yoona, having lost the only person that ever believed her.
And it was the first time that Yoona ever saw someone’s clock finally countdown to zero. She doesn’t have to check her grandmother’s vitals when it happens, she just knows. “Grandma’s dead,” she informs her parents blatantly when they get home that night, having spent thousands of dollars by then in hopes of keeping her alive an extra day. They pat her back; tell her that she should go start making dinner as they start calling some of the relatives.
Ever since then, Yoona hates autumn, hates the way things fall, but eventually, they’ll grow back. But that never works in life and death. She just watches people with a smirk, waiting for them to die. She wants to tell him of their near death, but instead finds it kind of hilarious, as they walk around like chickens with their heads cut-off, unknowing of their deaths.
Sooyeon is a great example. She’s beautiful and two years older than Yoona and after her grandmother dies, she’s been given the job of babysitting young Yoona. She had a younger sister that was in the same class as her, and dated a girl named Miyoung (though she never admitted it to anyone) that was in her grade. She had dyed her hair blonde and it was quite pretty as she walked up the steps to Yoona’s house, the sun making it glitter.
Sooyeon was a wonderful person. She was kind to Yoona like no one else was, and she was way more understanding of the world than a lot of people. When Yoona spoke, talking about how the cup was half-empty, Sooyeon would come back, talking with the glass half-full. She was optimistic and her smile could make any suicidal person rethink life.
“I hate book reports,” Eleven-year old Yoona mumbles, looking through the pages of her new book. Sooyeon laughs, finishing some of her homework. Next year she’ll be off to high school but they both decided that they’ll still stay close, even if Yoona won’t need a babysitter anymore.
Yoona looks up from her book, her eyes catching the numbers above her head absent-mindedly. The curse that her grandmother gave her hasn’t disappeared yet. She doesn’t realize that she’s staring most of the time, because she likes seeing the changing numbers. She’s tried to stop looking at the numbers, but she’s found it extremely difficult, especially when they have a cute hairstyle that draws you to the top of their head.
“Think of it this way-you’re reading a book that you might not have read had you not done the book report,” Sooyeon says optimistically, a flirtatious smile to her lips. She brushes some of her blond locks from her hair and opens up her science textbook, writing down the answers. Sooyeon is kind of like Yoona’s tutor too, even if Sooyeon sucks at math, something that Yoona seems to be much better at.
“Did you like the book when your class read it?” Yoona asks, her black hair contrasting to the pallor of her moonlight skin. Sooyeon purses her lips, thinking it over for a second, before shaking her head fiercely, like a wet dog.
“Nah, I hated the book.”
They share a laugh, but Yoona stops when Sooyeon stars coughing suddenly. Her numbers flutter until there’s only maybe ten days left. Yoona’s eyes widen and she pulls at her arm, trying her best to get her the doctor’s. Sooyeon shakes her head, giving Yoona the best smile she possibly can. “It’s okay. It’s only a little cough.” She pats Yoona’s hand and smiles. “I’ll be fine, Yoong.”
But the numbers don’t change, and Yoona can’t pretend that she’s not worried sick. Sooyeon closes her book and grabs her purse. “Come on; let’s go get something to eat. How about ice cream? It’s a hot day and I bet it’ll taste delicious.” Yoona sighs and follows her, the books left stranded on her bed.
She doesn’t see Sooyeon again, because she dies of lung cancer because of serious second-hand smoking. Yoona doesn’t go to her funeral, even if her parents say that she should. Three months after, when most people have forgotten about the death (except Soojung, her little sister, and Miyoung) she goes to Jung Sooyeon’s grave and tries her best not to say “I told you so” as she fixes the flowers there.
Yoona grows up very distant from everyone else because she is very afraid. Anyone that she is close to she’s afraid that she’ll see them die. One time she tells her father when he’s going to die and he laughs at her, and he tells her to stop reading those teenage vampire novels. Her mother believes her to be a morbid, young girl, and every time she invites her friends over, she can’t “help but worry about what’s wrong with her.”
She doesn’t get many new friends. A girl named Seo Joohyun tries to get close to her, but Yoona pushes her away subconsciously. Joohyun is very determined, though, and Yoona has to give her points for that, so in time, with Joohyun’s rather distant attitude and philosophy on life, they decide to be friends. Yoong and Seo they’re called, keeping to themselves while everyone seems to have fun. While they both deny it in their adult lives, it was prom night with too much alcohol when they lost their virginities to each other.
She gets through school, though-excelling in mathematics and decides to become a forensic anthropologist and takes biology on the side. She moves away from her small town where she wandered to the big city of Seoul, where her field really calls her. There aren’t many big goodbyes, because Joohyun decides that she wants to be a newspaper journalist for Seoul’s finest newspaper.
Life is static and Yoona likes it that way. She wears sunglasses to keep herself from looking at people’s numbers, trying her best to not get attached to someone, trying her best not to look at someone’s number and tap them on the shoulder-telling them when they’re going to die. No one wants to know when they die. No one wants to.
“I can know when people die,” Yoona admits after sex, tucking herself into Joohyun’s body like she did every night. Yoona liked the warmth of Joohyun’s body much more than the sheets, and she always felt so safe in her arms.
Joohyun sighed, wrapping her arm around Yoona’s thin frame. “When am I going to die?”
Yoona looks up and looks into Joohyun’s deep, brown eyes, studying her for a minute, only to check the clock above her. It feels weird-most people don’t believe her when she tells them that she can see their death-date, so when Joohyun just asks, it takes her a minute to think. “The numbers are big, but that can change rapidly depending on sudden personality changes. But right now, you’ll live a strong life with whoever you settle down with.”
Joohyun smiles, “That’s reassuring, unnie. Now please go to sleep. You’ll have a big day tomorrow, just like you always do.” Yoona nods and falls asleep.
**
Sooyoung is born blind. Her parents believe that her birth is a blessing-she was born at least a month before schedule, and she was way too light as a baby. She was destined to die in the first week, and the doctors even asked if they would prefer the baby to be killed. But the Choi family were a strong family, with a good amount of money, so they decided that they could live with his blind, baby girl that they named Choi Sooyoung.
She was smart, even with her ailment. She easily grasped the ways of touch and hearing, and her older brother Siwon liked to call her ‘Daredevil’ after one of his favourite superheroes, who, like her, couldn’t see. They were closer than a lot of siblings were, and Siwon would be shown helping his sister walk or get to place to place because he “didn’t want her to be fat or dumb like everyone thought she was.”
Every time Siwon touches her sister’s hand or shoulder or hugs her from behind, Sooyoung pictures a lake. A beautiful, glittering lake with ducks and willow trees bending into the water. It’s never a different place, so Sooyoung gets used to it, and every time she thinks of Siwon, she thinks of a peaceful lake, one that will be able to hold so many kinds of life.
Because Siwon is a nice person. Sooyoung knows this every evening when he comes home from school-and when he promises her that he’ll take care of her until they’re old, even if he usually says this when she’s three and he’s six. But she believes him because she loves him. She loves his cute, naïve personalities and his curiosity that he’s shunned for. He’s kind but he’s smart, and Sooyoung enjoys the moments when she can just listen instead of doing anything else.
Sooyoung knows what he prays for every night. She can hear him through the wall that divides their rooms. “I want our family to be safe, and our lives to be long and prosperous. And I want Sooyoung to see. Please Lord; let her see this gorgeous world you have given us.” Sooyoung cries waterless tears each night to this prayer-wondering what God existed, which one would give such a religious family a sick, blind daughter.
The Choi family is religious and Sooyoung loves God as much as everyone else. But she hates him, too. Because she never gets to see him, she never gets to see the paintings of him and his disciples; she never gets to see his son. She wants to see but she knows she can’t. She runs her hand over the solid oak of the pedestals and touches the paper of the Bible. She can only memorize the lines-she can never read.
Sooyoung enters a school for people like her-Special Education. She can write and she understands touch patterns and textures, so she isn’t the worst. She isn’t like some of them where they can’t even write or they can’t hear, or they walk around mindless without the help of the kind ladies that work in the classrooms. They leave her in the room as they work with the “worse ones”, and she spends the day listening to the world around her until Siwon comes and walks her home.
“Sooyoung-ah,” a woman that’s called Seoyun says, tapping her shoulder. Instantly, Sooyoung is brought to a busy highway, with cars buzzing past. Sooyoung hasn’t even seen a highway before but when she sees it there in her head, she knows what it is. She can almost hear the screaming of tires that she can sometimes hear outside her bedroom when she’s trying to fall asleep. “Your parents are here to pick you up.”
Three weeks later, when the kind ladies are talking and getting care of the “worse ones”, Sooyoung overhears them. It’s a habit. She can hear ten times better than most kids she knows, so sometimes, all she has to do is move her head a little, like an antenna moving for a better signal.
“Poor Seoyun… She was really the best worker here,” one woman (named Jiyeon) sighs, zipping up her coat, ready to take the kids on a walk, like they did every day, leaving Sooyoung behind because they were afraid of any cars hitting her.
Another, named Sungmi, hums in agreement. “Who would have thought that that would be the end of her? Her husband was a wicked man; I knew it from the beginning! Poor Seohyunnie, that must have been the worse way to die.”
Sooyoung learns later from her parents that Mrs. Jin Seoyun had gotten in a car accident, supposedly being run over by her husband on the highway after getting out of the car because of an accident. Automatically the picture of the overpass and highway jumps to Sooyoung’s head and she tries to get it out of her head, but she can’t find anything else to think about, so she runs to her brother’s arms and accepts the lake that jumps into her thoughts.
Her parents don’t give her any pictures, just a white, thick fog. She also gets this from her grandparents and from some of her teachers. It’s puzzling and Sooyoung wonders why she can’t see any pictures, like how she had with Siwon or Mrs. Jin. She wants to ask them, but she doesn’t want to be considered a “worse one”. She doesn’t want to be considered insane. So she sits in the darkness about it all, trying to look through the distant fog.
“It’s weird,” Sooyoung words when Siwon finishes his grade nine homework on the floor and she keeps him company. “Whenever you touch me, I can see a lake. It’s a beautiful lake, too. It reflects you perfectly, oppa. But when umma or appa touches me, I sense nothing. I don’t see anything. Just a heavy fog. And I can’t look through it.”
Siwon hums, because that’s how Sooyoung knows he’s alive, and he taps his pencil against the paper. “Maybe there’s something about these places. Am I the only one that you see places with? Or is everyone else a thick fog?” Sooyoung’s heart leaps because she loves it when her brother opens up to her and accepts her ideas.
“Soonkyu, with her I can see a mountain. Unlike yours, it’s creepy and dark and I hate it when she touches me because it’s ugly and horrific.” Soonkyu was their next-door neighbour, who had a tendency to believe that Sooyoung wasn’t competent enough to even cross her porch. The small touches sent shivers down her spine and she hated the gloomy mountain that would appear in her mind. She decided that she would keep Mrs. Jin a secret.
“I’ll keep her from touching you, Sooyoung-ah,” Siwon promised, “Now I suggest you sleep. Maybe it’s God giving you sight.” Siwon seems happy with his explanation so he helps her get up and back to her room, shutting off the light and letting Sooyoung listen to the music from outside and the honking of cars mixed with the laughter of children. She just accepts that it’s nighttime and falls asleep.
Sooyoung knows something is wrong when Soonkyu ends up missing. Donghae, her older brother, becomes worried sick, and starts looking everywhere for his sister, missing many school days, all up to when even the police believe that Soonkyu’s gone for good. Donghae cries in the Choi living room and Sooyoung listens to his tears from the staircase. From the back of her mind, she pulls the image of the mountain out.
She grabs a piece of paper and starts drawing the scene that she sees when she thinks hard. Thankfully, she’s a great artist, and Siwon recognizes the spot exactly. But he can’t drive yet, so he tries to get his parents to drive them there, but they ignore him while trying to soothe Donghae. Sooyoung hates the feeling that rushes through her that tells her that if they don’t get there now, Soonkyu’s going to die.
Siwon hugs her as the news comes out a few days later. Soonkyu was found in a mountain with multiple stab wounds and her eyes pulled straight out of the sockets. By the amount of blood, it also seemed that she had been raped. Sooyoung cried for days, even more than Donghae, because she knew that she could have helped her. She could have rescued her from whomever, if only they had listened. If they had done exactly what Sooyoung had been doing since she was born.
She doesn’t go to school much after that, even if her parents and Siwon believe that she could still get somewhere if she put in the time and the effort. She doesn’t want to. She knows that if she touches someone, if she even knows someone, if she bumps into someone, she’ll see how they die. Some have that fog that keeps her from knowing-but most have vivid settings that make her body temperature drop, because some are things like playgrounds. What if a kid saw that?
Seeing. She hates her brother for praying to God that she would be given such a terrible gift of sight. She would prefer to be deaf and blind instead of having this awful curse. She prays every night and every morning for this evil thing to be ripped from her body, but it never comes. Nothing comes, not even the warm hands that belong to her brother, because soon, when she’s sixteen, he goes off to university to become a doctor in the Seoul.
“Sooyoung,” Changmin whispers. Sooyoung knows his voice so she doesn’t scream out in terror-she just continues to sit in her chair on the veranda, where she would “watch” people go by. He’s supposed to go to school, but he doesn’t, instead spending his days next to her, admiring the beautiful blind girl that won’t be able to see her gorgeous reflection.
Sooyoung cocks her head to the side to tell him that she’s listening. Changmin is interesting. He likes food, like her, and she usually brings a bunch of food that they can share. He can sing really well, too. He’s only touched her once, and when he did, it was a shocking experience, because it was a field covered with wheat. Changmin had a tendency to be invisible, and he’ll die invisible-unseen for days.
“I’ve heard bad things about your brother,” he continues, “I heard that he’s gotten missing after a few drinks or two. I only know this because the cops are going to come in soon and ask your parents about it. Probably you, too.” He sighed, and Sooyoung could imagine him shaking his head. “So many people disappear from here; it could make one worry about your safety.”
Sooyoung isn’t listening as Changmin goes on and on about the capacity for kidnapping these days. All she’s thinking about is that glistening lake, the one that she could describe without even thinking because she loved her brother’s touches, she enjoyed being next to him, and she couldn’t stand for him disappearing so easily because a few drinks.
The image of Soonkyu’s mountain makes her stand up, her chair falling down behind her. She turns in the general direction of Changmin and extends her hand. “You need to bring me to Seoul, Changmin-oppa. Please, I’ll pay you as much as you want. I just really need to get to Seoul,” she begs, and Changmin accepts. He drives her to the train station and they get the first train to Seoul that afternoon.
The news that Choi Siwon is missing hits the news that evening and Sooyoung listens to it as they sit in their hotel that evening. They’re both spent so they don’t feel like going anywhere and they’re poor so they have to share the same bed. But Sooyoung likes the heat that he gives off, the feeling of safety that he brings; so much that she’ll deal with the field image in her head the whole night.
They go to the police station the next morning looking like a couple because Changmin holds her hand dangerously tight. Sooyoung can’t see anything so she allows him to do everything for her, but she can’t stop her heart that’s about to break open her ribcage because it’s pounding so hard. She hears a girl’s voice and a hand-it’s a front yard with a white fence that she sees.
“I’m Im Yoona. I hear you might have a lead to your brother’s disappearance,” she says calmly, and Sooyoung settles down quickly because of the sound of the woman’s soft voice. She likes it, so she isn’t afraid when she asks for a piece of blank paper and a pen. On her lap she draws the image that she’s fallen in love with-the glistening lake that represents her brother so much. She draws everything she can see before handing it to Yoona.
The girl hums. “I know where this is. Get the group ready to leave and go investigate,” Yoona commands powerfully, and Sooyoung can hear footsteps. Yoona sighs and turns back to look at Sooyoung, and she smiles back at her.
“He’ll be fine,” Yoona promises.
**
Hyoyeon is born in South Korea, but when she was young, her family moved to China. Ryeowook, or Lixu as he would be called in their home in Beijing, wasn’t that close to her, even if they were siblings, seeing as Lixu was a distant, shy boy that got his homework done and listened to his parents. He was the little model child that could sit in your living room as you talked about everything under the sun with your girlfriends. It wasn’t that surprising when he admitted he was gay fourteen or so years later.
Xiaoyuan, or Hyoyeon, on the other hand, was completely the opposite. She enjoyed being outside and being with people and playing any sport until her arms were sore and red. Her muscles were larger than a lot of the boys’ at her school, who preferred to keep to themselves, much like Lixu did. She was very active as a kid, and got many names like ‘butch’ or ‘tomboy’, ones that in the end, didn’t bother her that much, because she rolled her own way.
She became head of the girls’ soccer and baseball team. She tried out for any sports team that she possibly could-even trying to dress up like a guy to get into teams that were restricted for boys. On weekends, instead of doing homework, she’d be in her backyard, working on her kick or shooting hoops with some of her neighbours. She ran after school on the red soiled track. She tried out for track and field and was happy when she saw that yes, she was able to run the 400m and the one mile run because of her endurance.
The first incident happens when she’s with Lixu, walking home after school. Thankfully it isn’t raining-but her day has already been ruined by the loss of her favourite pair of sunglasses, so she has to walk home the whole way looking into the sun. Ryeowook doesn’t seem to have this problem because of his glasses that change tints depending if you’re inside or outside-plus, she can see his arms and legs getting tanned as they walk.
Though she hates to admit it, Xiaoyuan acted very much like the bigger sister, even if Ryeowook was two years older than her. He was wimpy in her eyes, with his smaller body that could easily crumple to a larger boy’s punches. Since a familiar incident when Lixu came home crying, having been bullied because he was Korean, she has always had this feeling that she should protect him. Because he wasn’t able to protect himself. She knows that Lixu hates it when she worries, but it’s hard not to.
“Ryeowook-oppa,” Hyoyeon mumbles, fitting her hand into his. He cringes (he’s a germaphobe and he knows that Hyoyeon rolls around in mud) but smiles, trying his best not to loosen the grip too much. Hyoyeon watches the red hand, waiting patiently for it to switch over to the accepting and little white man that looks like he’s walking. She feels like resting her head on Ryeowook’s shoulder but she had track practice and she knows that she’s sweaty.
“It must have rained overnight.” He looks down at the grass, his lips forming into a smile. “We should swim one time this summer, dongsaeng,” he comments. Hyoyeon nods, opening her mouth to speak, when she feels a wave of emotion run over her, forcing her down onto the ground.
The first thing she smells is the strong smell of chlorine pushing into her nostrils. She feels this feather-light force moving around her and she doesn’t know what to do exactly. She opens her eyes completely and is welcomed by the sting. She can hear muffled voices. “Ryeowook! Oh my god, please, someone save him!” She doesn’t know what to do, but knows in the back of her mind that no one is going to jump in to save her. “Going to drown! Please, someone!” The woman, Hyoyeon notices, sounds a lot like her.
“Hyoyeon-ah?” Ryeowook asks, grabbing at her elbow. She opens her eyes and she’s brought back to the side of the road. People surround her, caving her in. “Get out of the way! Can’t you see that she’s stressed? Move!” Lixu helps her stand up and carries her home that, thankfully, isn’t that far away. Her head is spinning and she’s having trouble standing straight, so she crashed down onto the couch when they arrive home.
Lixu has always been good in these kinds of situations. He grabs her some water (though she’s sure that she doesn’t want to even see water, she still drinks it all up) and refills it whenever she hands it back, empty. He doesn’t talk about it and Hyoyeon finds an inner peace to that as she finishes another cup, walking the water at the bottom move as it swivels around.
--
end of part one
part two