where light exists (1/2)
where light exists
krystal/sulli, krystal/kai
g, 10868w
soojung starts seeing cosmic ghosts on planet earth.
This fic was written for K-Pop Olymfics 2019 as part of Team Alternate Universe 2. Prompt: WJSN - Save Me, Save You. originally posted on ao3.
As the moon settles firmly into the night, Soojung releases the paper lantern with a gentle push. It hovers in the air for a fraction of a second, like a baby bird hesitating to take its first flight, then as a slight gust of wind flutters the ends of Soojung’s hair around her face, it wobbles its way upwards.
Soojung watches it go with a mixture of hope and regret, leaning against the frame of her window. Below her, streets loop and wind back on themselves, a kaleidoscope of orange streetlights and the red brakelights of lone cars. Above, a mess of stars twinkle back at her. Behind her, her parents watch carefully from her bedroom door. She inhales into the muffled silence, and exhales in a long cloud of vapour.
The lantern floats further away, camouflaged against the night sky as a yellow, unstable star. Then it blinks once, twice, and disappears.
There are exactly 3 missed phone calls, 2 message and 5 emails waiting for her when Soojung runs into work, dumps her bag on her desk and throws herself into her chair with a groan. She’d just had the worst morning, having her cat throw up on her by way of a good morning greeting, then breaking her favourite mug when she then tripped over said cat and spilled the last sachet of her instant coffee all over the kitchen floor. Which made her miss the bus and subsequently the train, which meant she’d been caught in the rush hour traffic and had to spend the next 45 minutes squashed up against somebody’s shoulder.
Instant recipe for bad mood.
“New assignment,” her boss grunts, walking past her desk with a newspaper tucked under his arm and a takeaway coffee cup from one of the trendier cafes in town in his hand. Soojung glares at it with some resentment. “I’ll see you for a briefing in 15.”
She smiles and nods. As soon as he closes the door to his office, she grabs her wallet and heads out the door. Trendy coffee might cost her a month’s supply of instant coffee and a cheap mug from the reject shop, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t get her caffeine fix on a day like this.
“Did you suddenly win the lottery?” asks a voice as she’s waiting for her order, and Jongin grins at her teasingly.
“No,” she shoots back, throwing her hair behind her shoulder in what she hopes is a haughty gesture. “I had no other choice.”
“You know, if you wanted to grab a coffee with me you could just say so. I’d be honoured to buy you a coffee any time,” he nudges her playfully, then goes to stand in the line. Soojung rolls her eyes and looks back at her phone. 3 missed phone calls, 2 message and 5 emails, and every single one is a blank dead end. She frowns, checking the sender’s details. [Private number] and [email] are the only words that greet her, and nothing else.
“Who’s that? Your boyfriend?” Jongin peers over her shoulder. Soojung thinks twice about swatting him away and shows him the screen instead.
“Look,” she points. “I’ve been getting stuff like this for a week now. Messages and emails with nothing in them and phone calls from nobody. I have no idea if I somebody’s trying to get a hold of me or if someone’s just playing a very elaborate prank.”
Jongin nods, eyebrows furrowing a little as he takes the phone from her and inspects her call log. “Either way, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of it. Who was this?” he points at a number that she’d picked up.
“Don’t know,” she shrugs. “All I heard was static on the other side.”
“Maybe it was them,” Jongin passes the phone back to her. “Did you try calling back?”
“I’m not the kind of person who calls strange numbers back.”
“Well, I’d better make sure you’ve saved my number then,” Jongin grins as the barista calls out Soojung’s name. She scoffs and heads towards the pick-up point as he calls after her, “Wanna grab lunch later? I’m dying for some Thai food.”
“Sorry, I might be out on the field,” she calls over her shoulder as she walks away. “I’m getting briefed in 3 minutes, maybe text me later?”
“Do you even have my number?” he calls back. She waves and heads for the lift. It’s an old building, too old for a newbie like her, and the lift creaks and shudders all the way up. If she wasn’t so preoccupied wondering what her new assignment would be, she’d have remembered that one really shouldn’t take old lifts on a terrible day.
“Nostalgia,” her boss booms as soon as she steps into his office, coffee cup in one hand and a journal tucked under her arm.
“Sorry, sir?” she asks as incredulously as she dares, taking a seat in one of the weathered leather and wood swivel chairs. It creaks almost as badly as the lift did and tips forwards slightly. Soojung plants her feet firmly on the ground and places her cup on the corner of her boss’ desk - the only available space amongst the spilling piles of paper and the enormous desk lamp in the other corner.
“Nostalgia,” he repeats, as if she hadn’t heard him the first time. He scribbles something on the notepad beside his laptop, then rips out the page. “People these days are robots. They’ve forgotten how to feel anything entirely. That’s what this month’s issue is going to be about, and you’re going to do the feature for it.” He gets up to pass her the slip of paper, leaning against the side of the desk as she reads it.
“A… video arcade?” Soojung tries to decipher the scribble. She looks up at her boss.
“Bingo!” he shoots finger guns at her and grins a large, gummy grin. “Go scout it today. I want people to read your article and sigh with sentimentality. I want them to feel like they’ve been there before even when they haven’t! Like longing for a lover they’ve never met! Get it?”
Soojung thinks, not for the first time, that she has no idea what he’s talking about but she nods with a well-practiced smile. “Good, good,” he pats her on the shoulder as she leaves. “Oh, and one more thing.” She turns and he drops a small, rectangular object into her hand. “To help get you into the mood.” He smiles at her again as he shuts the door in her face.
Soojung looks at the pager in her hand and half wishes the rickety old lift had plummeted to the ground with her in it. The universe really has it in for her today.
It’s warm, warmer than she expected, and she can already feel little beads of sweat forming along her hairline after the short walk from the station. “Well, here we go,” Soojung mutters to herself, looking at the derelict shopfront. She can barely make out the faded, peeling words on the sign as she cringes internally and puts her hand out to push the door open. A bell rings overhead, startling her with its unexpectedly loud, shrill jangle.
Inside is empty, as she expected. The smell of rusty metal and years of terrible ventilation hangs heavy around her head, and the lights look as though they haven’t been changed since the 80s (which, she suspects, they haven’t). Dozens of arcade cabinets line the walls and down the middle of the room, which is larger than she expected. She can barely make out the back of it; the whole room is bathed in a dim yellow light, and Soojung strains to see through the gloom.
“Hello?” she calls out tentatively as she makes her way between the silent machines. Some screens flicker, others seem to be taunting her with their large, flashing STARTs. Some of them are completely blank, and Soojung wonders if machines have ghosts. She certainly feels as though she’s standing in a graveyard, marked by electronic headstones from an era long gone. Her phone buzzes in her jacket pocket.
How’s the assignment going?
Soojung imagines Jongin’s nudging grin as she types out Awful. She looks around at the wood panel clad walls and cheap terrazzo vinyl on the floor, peeling at the corners where phantom shoes once kicked them up. She wrinkles her nose. This place smells like the 80s and there’s no one around. How am I supposed to interview anyone around here?
As she sends the message the machine to her left lights up without warning. She jumps backwards with a muffled scream, colliding with the seat of the machine behind her and dropping her bag on to the ground. The game starts up in its usual fashion, with blinking lights and electronic music, then abruptly cuts into a glitchy blue screen. Soojung thinks the worst is over when the screen fizzles into being, wavy lines replaced by stark 8-bit letters on a fuzzy black background.
HELLO.
Soojung freezes, sprawled against an 80s arcade cabinet, a joystick digging into the small of her back. The words disappear. There’s a pause, and then:
DO YOU READ ME?
A blank.
SOOJUNG.
Soojung grabs her bag from the floor and bolts right out the door. She doesn’t stop running until she’s reached the station, cold sweat sliding down her nose and her blood freezing in her veins.
“Soojung.”
“Soojung.”
“Hey, Soojung!”
Soojung bolts upright, heart pounding. Jongin slides into the empty chair beside her and swivels her chair around to peer into her face. “You look awful,” he announces. “Like you’ve seen a ghost. What happened to you?”
“I feel sick,” Soojung mutters, bending forward over her knees, arms crossed over her chest. Her teeth keep chattering and she can’t stop shivering. Jongin touches one of her hands and draws back instantly.
“You’re freezing cold,” he takes her elbow and she looks up at him, feeling like she’s aged a thousand years since this morning. “Come on, I’m taking you home. You can’t stay here like this.”
“But… work…” she whispers, but doesn’t exactly resist. At that moment, her boss walks past. He looks genuinely concerned, and she wonders how bad she really does look to faze a man who usually doesn’t even notice when one of the journalists are snoozing at their desk. “Good God!” he exclaims. “You look terrible, Soojung. Are you feeling alright?”
“I was just going to tell you,” Jongin mentions, picking up Soojung’s bag and hoisting his own camera bag over his other shoulder. “I have to be at _ in an hour for an interview so I’ll just take a short detour and drop her home.”
“Yes, do that,” their boss says quickly. “I wonder what happened. She looked fine before she went out.”
“Maybe it was the space dust,” Soojung quips feebly. He looks relieved that she isn’t ill enough to still try to be funny and waves them off. Jongin offers his arm to her but she shakes her head. “I still know how to walk,” she manages, but she can’t deny that her legs feel like jelly.
“Just be thankful you’re not walking home,” Jongin replies, grabbing a hold of her elbow when she stumbles a little. He keeps a firm grip the whole lift journey down and doesn’t let go even when they step outside. “My bike’s just this way,” he tugs her towards the left.
“Come on Jongin, I’m not a child,” she snaps. They pass a glass shopfront, and she chances a glance at herself just to see how bad she really does look. For a second Soojung doesn’t notice much in the daylight, just that she seems to have darker circles than before. And then she blinks and suddenly her reflection isn’t of her anymore, but of a taller, paler girl with her hair piled in a topknot above her head. Then the girl turns to face her and their eyes meet.
Soojung feels the ground jolt beneath her, as if a shockwave just released from under her feet. It echoes through her body, from the soles of her shoes up to the top of her skull and back down. It lasts a split second before the glass abruptly turns into the naked brick wall of the shop beside it and the girl disappears.
“What’s up?” Jongin asks as she wrenches her arm out of his grip and takes several steps backwards. She holds her breath - but it’s only her, looking washed out and faded in the dirty shopfront of a shady-looking clinic. “Okay, be serious. Are you really seeing ghosts?”
Soojung takes one last look at her reflection. For now, she is the only ghost standing here.
Sitting on the floor of the slice of space she laughing calls her living room, Soojung closes her eyes. She doesn’t have to try very hard to imagine the shadows tracing across her ceiling, courtesy of passing cars’ windshields and an abundance of leafy plants out on the tiny shoebox of a balcony. She brings her nose up to inhale the soothing aroma of the green tea in her second favourite mug, pushing her feet up against the kitchen unit. She’s only been at her job for 3 months so she still has some ways to go before she can afford an apartment wider than her arm span, but she does find it cozy. Sometimes.
“Make sure you have a really good rest,” Jongin had said sternly as he put down the bag of things he’d bought from the convenience store around the corner on her dining table slash desk. “I got you some tea, no coffee for you. Hey, Screecher.” He fondled her cat under the neck, and it promptly hissed at him before running away.
“His name is William Shakespaw and you very well know that,” Soojung flicked the switch on her kettle. “It’s not like this is your first time meeting him.”
“Well if he didn’t screech at me every time I did I wouldn’t call him that,” Jongin shrugged. He looked at his watch. “I’ve gotta run but call me if you need anything okay? Or if you’ve fallen down this very precarious looking ladder and can’t feel your legs anymore.” He cast the ladder leading up to her bed a dubious look.
“It’s perfectly stable so I’ll be fine,” Soojung showed him out. “Hey, uhh, thanks... Jongin.”
He grinned and patted her rather heavily on the head. “What are friends for? I fully expect you to take me out for a 5-course meal after this, mind you.”
Now she takes a sip of tea and leans her head back against the wall, watching another shadow stretch across the ceiling. She can still see the girl in the shop window, as clearly as if she’d actually been standing right there in front of her. The little mole on her left cheek, the escaped tendrils of hair curling around her ears. The expression on her face when their eyes met. As if she’d finally found what she’d been looking for.
“Who are you?” she asks the shadow on her ceiling. It wavers and unfolds itself towards the ladder, stretching itself out of sight.
In the silence of her house, the tap running in the bathroom seems a little too loud. Water still dripping from her chin, Soojung looks at herself in the mirror. Since getting into the house she’d been too spooked to look into anything reflective but the tea has calmed down somewhat. Forget aging a thousand years, she thinks. She looks like an ancient being trapped in a 24 year old body with rapidly fading dyed red hair and huge dark circles under her eyes. She blinks, but she’s still there, expression wary. Waiting. “I was imagining it,” she says firmly. At the moment there are two Soojungs, but only one of them is speaking. “The arcade creeped me out so much that my mind started playing tricks on me.” But she can’t shake the thought that, deep down, she had the feeling that she’d been looking for that girl too.
A sudden loud beeping emits from somewhere in the living room. Soojung tears her eyes away from her reflection and exits the bathroom, trying not to imagine that her reflection is still there, waiting for her. The beeps seem to be coming from where she dumped her jacket and bag, but she can’t imagine what could be making the sound. She searches the bag thoroughly but finds nothing. Dropping it back on the ground, she picks up the jacket, shoves her hand into the left pocket, and pulls out something small and sleek.
She stares at the pager. It fits perfectly, innocently, in the palm of her hand, as if it doesn’t know that its sole purpose in life is to annoy the hell out of its owner with an unexpected - and unwanted - message. “What does he want now?” she mutters, thinking about her crazy boss, and sits down at the table to try and decipher the device. Her parents had never used pagers before, and the only time she’s seen them is in medical dramas. Even so, pagers in dramas never beeped for this long.
Soojung grunts as she hits various buttons, none of them working, until she finally manages to get the right one. (1) New Message disappears, replaced by a ARE YOU ALRIGHT?
She scoffs. Trust Jongin to pull this kind of thing. He probably asked their boss how to contact her. I’m fine. Thanks for the tea, she types back.
I'M SORRY I SCARED YOU.
Soojung stares hard at the message, pulse beginning to race under her skin. She puts down the pager and flexes her fingers, wondering what to do next. Should she call Jongin? He’d definitely know what to do. But something tells her that this is something she has to handle herself.
Was that you? Back at the arcade?
YES. I’M SO GLAD I FINALLY REACHED YOU.
Who are you?
The answer doesn’t come as fast as the previous one did. Soojung waits nervously, half of her impatient to find out just what the hell is going on and the other half not wanting to know at all.
DON’T YOU REMEMBER ME?
She swallows. How can I? I don’t even know what you look like.
WE SAW EACH OTHER, JUST NOW. IN A SHOP WINDOW.
Her breath hitches in her throat. The girl in the window, with her long, slim neck and curling strands of hair at her cheekbones, looks back at her as if she recognizes her from a time long ago. A time that Soojung remembers and doesn’t remember simultaneously.
WE MET BEFORE, A LONG TIME AGO. YOU’LL REMEMBER. IN TIME.
What do you want from me? Her fingers trip over the keyboard.
An immediate response: [Message failed to deliver. Try again?]
She leans back in her chair and releases a long, shaky breath. In that moment, if somebody had told her she was going mad she’d believe them in a heartbeat. Her thoughts keep tumbling over each other, jumping from questioning possibilities to struggling recollections and back. If I keep thinking this over, Soojung thinks, I’m going to lose my mind.
Drowsiness hits her like a truck. She crawls into bed at 2:30 in the afternoon on a sunny spring day, and promptly falls asleep.
Waking from a dreamless sleep, Soojung sits up groggily in bed. The apartment opposite her own is bathed in the vivid yet faded light that only comes with sunset, and streaks of a just passed shower slide down the balcony door. Her cat is pawing at her arm, meowing insistently. She must have passed out for 4 hours at least. “Alright, food’s on its way,” she mutters to William Shakespaw, pushing him to one side as she rolls off the mattress and shimmies down the ladder.
As she places the cat food on the floor, her stomach audibly grumbles. She hasn’t properly eaten anything since morning, with nothing but trendy coffee and convenience store green tea in between. It’s too late to cook anything, so neighbourhood pizza it is.
Came by but you didn’t answer the doorbell. I assume you’ve passed out. Text me back so I know you haven’t been abducted by aliens, says the message from Jongin, and Soojung grins as she pulls her hood over her ears. Since the rain the temperature has dropped somewhat, but the air feels bracing on her skin.
I’m alive. The aliens haven’t come for me. Yet.
“Large pepperoni pizza, no cheese, extra chilli. Soojung,” she tells the cashier. “Lactose intolerant,” she adds when the cashier’s eyebrow raises skeptically. Easy on the souls of the meek, whispers a voice beside her ear as she waits for her order. She turns, but as expected, she’s the only person in the pizza place. The sentence replays in her head. She has a strange feeling she’s heard somebody say it before. Once, a long time ago, in a far away place.
“Soojung,” says the cashier, holding out a pizza box. “Large pepperoni, no cheese, extra chilli, easy on the souls of the meek.”
I must be in a dream, Soojung thinks as she walks home, pizza box held aloft as if she’s afraid it might get wet. A very long and elaborate dream where arcade machines and pagers can receive messages from nobody, and pizza places can hear my thoughts. That must be it. That’s when she realizes there’s something written on the cover of the pizza box. She rotates it to face her and reads the hurried scrawl where her name should be:
You’ll find me in the middle of winter.
“That’s too far away,” she says to the sky. Unexpectedly, her breath mists in front of her face. “I need to find you now.”
She’s done after her 5th slice of pizza. Lying on the floor of the living room, belly full of pepperoni (no cheese, extra chilli), she feels suddenly, unbearably lonely. The radio plays muffled, jazzy music from some obscure channel in the background. It’s not as if she hasn’t done this a thousand times before, lying on the floor and staring up at the ceiling and wondering just how she managed to build such a miserable existence for herself, but tonight she can feel the collective gravity of the planets and the stars pressing down on her, pulling her down to the center of the earth. Leaving her there. She can never tell anyone about the strange situation she’s gotten into. They’d never understand. She doesn’t expect them to anyway. How can she ever get someone to understand what is happening to her when she doesn’t even know herself?
She’s a stray asteroid, floating around the infinite confines of space. Waiting for a solar storm to sweep her in the right direction.
“They can all burn,” she whispers to the ceiling, and hot tears prick her eyes. She hates everyone in the world in that moment; her boss with his crazy story ideas for a poky little publication nobody ever reads; Jongin for constantly annoying her with his flirting; her boss again for getting her into this mess in the first place. Soojung feels a scream rising within her. She’s 24 and working for peanuts for a company she doesn’t believe in. She doesn’t have a friend in the world who would have pizza with her on a whim. She has a mysterious person stalking her. Getting into her head. She’s 24 and the universe is going to pieces.
The cat takes the opportunity to jump on the bookshelf, upsetting a row of books, sending them tumbling to the floor. Soojung seizes the opportunity to clamber out of the sea of existential angst and gets to her feet. Getting to her feet has always been the hardest part.
Picking up a book, she scrutinizes the cover. Parallel Worlds says the title. A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos. She vaguely remembers trying to read this as a child, but it feels like a far off memory. The book itself is battered, pages spotted with age and curling in the corners when she flicks through it. A sentence catches her eye and she stops at the page.
'The mind reels when we realize that, according to this interpretation of quantum mechanics, all possible worlds coexist with us. Although wormholes might be necessary to reach such alternate worlds, these quantum realities exist in the very same room that we live in. They coexist with us wherever we go.'
Soojung cocks her head to one side, suddenly remembering why she never attempted to read this book since her first flick through. She places it back on the shelf.
The notebook is just as she remembers when she picks it up off the floor, with its red ribbon bookmark and plain paper cover. My Dream Diary, it says on the front in a loopy, overly embellished hand. She wonders how she managed to forget that it was even on this bookshelf all this time. She flips it open to the bookmarked page and reads:
Jinri didn’t come today. I don’t think she’s ever coming back.
Jinri? Eyebrows furrowed, Soojung flips the page back to the second last entry. It’s dated 10 years ago, written in the childish version of her current handwriting. It sends her tumbling back into her 14 year old self.
23 January 200_.
Jinri and I found a house in the countryside. It was very cold and there was snow everywhere. We built a fire and made kimchi jjigae. I found a camera in the cupboard and we took photos. There was only me and Jinri on that world, but I didn’t mind. I think any time I can see Jinri is the best time. She always takes me to the best places.
P.S.: Jinri told me there might be a day when we can’t see each other again. She told me when that happens that I can’t come looking for her. But I told her I would always save her, if she needed help. She laughed at me. But I would. Hopefully that time will never come.
Soojung puts down the notebook, frowning as she tries to make sense of it all. A dream diary? A house on the countryside? A world with just two people on it? A girl named Jinri? The name calls out to her with its familiarity, and the feel of it on her tongue wants to make her burst into tears. It feels like loss. It feels like her cold hand in a wonderfully warm one.
And yet, with all the mystery, that vague memory of falling asleep. Of waking up in an entirely different universe.
“It’s our call-in contest!” a cheerful voice suddenly exclaims, and she jumps. She hadn’t even realized that the radio was still on. “5th caller through stands a chance to win two tickets to a destination of our choice! And we’ve just got them through!” Soojung moves to turn the radio off when a voice whispers through the airwaves and roots her to the spot.
“Soojung,” whispers a voice. Soft and scratchy, like it’s coming from a distant star. A ferocious crackling meets the voice and drowns it out for a fraction of a second before it returns. “It’s me. I’m giving one ticket to you, okay? So come find me. I need -,” and that’s when the connection fizzles out entirely.
Soojung picks up the radio and shakes it so hard that she hears something rattle inside it. The name comes so naturally to her that she can’t believe that she even forgot it in the first place. “Jinri? Jinri!” But, as is the norm for radios, it doesn’t answer.
Abandoning the radio, she grabs the notebook and flops back down on the floor. Clutching it to her chest like a lifeline, she closes her eyes.
Here, floating in the far reaches of space, she breathes deep. Inhales the scent of stardust. Feels her body sink into the floor, then deeper still. She’s falling. A pink-cheeked girl turns to face her, grins mischievously and holds out her hand. Soojung reaches out towards her, concentrating on that laughter in her eyes, and steps right out of her body.
There’s the same jolt as before, but she’s stopped falling. She feels almost weightless as she straightens, as if she isn’t tethered to anything anymore. Her feet feel feather light on the floor and she looks around. She’s simultaneously in and not in her apartment. Everything seems blurred around the edges, tinged with a pale hazy glow. Taking a few steps forward, she wrenches the front door open. And walks into the living room of an abandoned country house, a fine layer of dust covering the empty shelves. Through the window she can see the snow beginning to fall.
I’ve run out of time, says the note. I wanted to tell you everything but it’s too late. I’m sorry I had to leave you, Soojung. I hope you never have to return to this place. Thank you for everything. I will never forget you. - Always and forever, J…
The rest of the name ends in a violent scribble, as if the person who'd written was suddenly snatched away. Soojung reaches out a hand to touch the fallen pencil beside the dusty sheet paper on the table, but her fingers slip right through with zero resistance. Everything in this room seems even less substantial than the apartment she just left behind, and it makes her nervous. It unnerves her even more to know that she’s been here before.
There, on the faded row of cushions, she’d sat with a girl her age, features blurred and raven black hair wound in two buns on either side of her head. She can hear high, girlish laughter echoing through the walls when she tries to touch them, and aren’t those ashes left in the fireplace from the fire she had built with her own two hands?
She can’t even begin to fathom what’s going on. She tries to sit on the cushions and ends up falling on to bare floorboards. If they’re chilly she can’t feel them. “Why didn’t you want me to return?” she whispers up at the ceiling. Outside, the snow looks as though it’s falling even harder, and every now and then she can see little whirls where the wind spirals through the branches of bare trees. “What did you want to tell me?”
The silence is soft, muffled. Smothering her questions. As if the ghosts of a forgotten past have their hands clamped tight over her ears, trying to keep her from hearing the answers.
She gets up to leave, and that’s when she spots the photos propped up on the shelf. Three in total, polaroid shots. Unlike everything else in the room they seem almost sharp, their colour intense. She approaches them like she’s in a trance, already knowing what she’s about to see. She once took these photos with a camera in a cupboard.
There she is, thin-faced, large eyes. The terrible bangs that haunted her throughout her middle school years. And beside her, a pink-cheeked girl with her hair wound up into two buns on either side of her head. Her eyes laughing, clear as day.
“Jinri,” Soojung breathes. Instinctively she grabs at the photo, shocked to find her fingers clutching on to the smooth glossy print.
Almost immediately, the photo begins burning from under her fingers, a sudden intense orange burst of light in the dull surroundings. Soojung drops it on to the threadbare rug, where it immediately catches fire. “Wait!” she cries, feeling a force tugging her away from the shelf. She grabs at the two remaining photos, feeling them bursting into flame beneath her fingers. The fire begins licking up the walls of the room, and the laughter turns to panicked screams. The sound reverberates through the room amidst the roar of the blaze, barrelling right into Soojung. She feels the vibrations echoing through her, pulling her apart. “Jinri, wait!”
And she wakes up on the living room floor drenched in sweat, panting as if she’s just run a marathon and her heart banging away in her body. A notebook clutched so tightly in her hands that its pages are slightly bent. Gingerly, she unclenches her fingers and inspects the diary.
There, sticking out from between the pages like a lost child. A blank Polaroid.
part two
krystal/sulli, krystal/kai
g, 10868w
soojung starts seeing cosmic ghosts on planet earth.
This fic was written for K-Pop Olymfics 2019 as part of Team Alternate Universe 2. Prompt: WJSN - Save Me, Save You. originally posted on ao3.
As the moon settles firmly into the night, Soojung releases the paper lantern with a gentle push. It hovers in the air for a fraction of a second, like a baby bird hesitating to take its first flight, then as a slight gust of wind flutters the ends of Soojung’s hair around her face, it wobbles its way upwards.
Soojung watches it go with a mixture of hope and regret, leaning against the frame of her window. Below her, streets loop and wind back on themselves, a kaleidoscope of orange streetlights and the red brakelights of lone cars. Above, a mess of stars twinkle back at her. Behind her, her parents watch carefully from her bedroom door. She inhales into the muffled silence, and exhales in a long cloud of vapour.
The lantern floats further away, camouflaged against the night sky as a yellow, unstable star. Then it blinks once, twice, and disappears.
There are exactly 3 missed phone calls, 2 message and 5 emails waiting for her when Soojung runs into work, dumps her bag on her desk and throws herself into her chair with a groan. She’d just had the worst morning, having her cat throw up on her by way of a good morning greeting, then breaking her favourite mug when she then tripped over said cat and spilled the last sachet of her instant coffee all over the kitchen floor. Which made her miss the bus and subsequently the train, which meant she’d been caught in the rush hour traffic and had to spend the next 45 minutes squashed up against somebody’s shoulder.
Instant recipe for bad mood.
“New assignment,” her boss grunts, walking past her desk with a newspaper tucked under his arm and a takeaway coffee cup from one of the trendier cafes in town in his hand. Soojung glares at it with some resentment. “I’ll see you for a briefing in 15.”
She smiles and nods. As soon as he closes the door to his office, she grabs her wallet and heads out the door. Trendy coffee might cost her a month’s supply of instant coffee and a cheap mug from the reject shop, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t get her caffeine fix on a day like this.
“Did you suddenly win the lottery?” asks a voice as she’s waiting for her order, and Jongin grins at her teasingly.
“No,” she shoots back, throwing her hair behind her shoulder in what she hopes is a haughty gesture. “I had no other choice.”
“You know, if you wanted to grab a coffee with me you could just say so. I’d be honoured to buy you a coffee any time,” he nudges her playfully, then goes to stand in the line. Soojung rolls her eyes and looks back at her phone. 3 missed phone calls, 2 message and 5 emails, and every single one is a blank dead end. She frowns, checking the sender’s details. [Private number] and [email] are the only words that greet her, and nothing else.
“Who’s that? Your boyfriend?” Jongin peers over her shoulder. Soojung thinks twice about swatting him away and shows him the screen instead.
“Look,” she points. “I’ve been getting stuff like this for a week now. Messages and emails with nothing in them and phone calls from nobody. I have no idea if I somebody’s trying to get a hold of me or if someone’s just playing a very elaborate prank.”
Jongin nods, eyebrows furrowing a little as he takes the phone from her and inspects her call log. “Either way, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of it. Who was this?” he points at a number that she’d picked up.
“Don’t know,” she shrugs. “All I heard was static on the other side.”
“Maybe it was them,” Jongin passes the phone back to her. “Did you try calling back?”
“I’m not the kind of person who calls strange numbers back.”
“Well, I’d better make sure you’ve saved my number then,” Jongin grins as the barista calls out Soojung’s name. She scoffs and heads towards the pick-up point as he calls after her, “Wanna grab lunch later? I’m dying for some Thai food.”
“Sorry, I might be out on the field,” she calls over her shoulder as she walks away. “I’m getting briefed in 3 minutes, maybe text me later?”
“Do you even have my number?” he calls back. She waves and heads for the lift. It’s an old building, too old for a newbie like her, and the lift creaks and shudders all the way up. If she wasn’t so preoccupied wondering what her new assignment would be, she’d have remembered that one really shouldn’t take old lifts on a terrible day.
“Nostalgia,” her boss booms as soon as she steps into his office, coffee cup in one hand and a journal tucked under her arm.
“Sorry, sir?” she asks as incredulously as she dares, taking a seat in one of the weathered leather and wood swivel chairs. It creaks almost as badly as the lift did and tips forwards slightly. Soojung plants her feet firmly on the ground and places her cup on the corner of her boss’ desk - the only available space amongst the spilling piles of paper and the enormous desk lamp in the other corner.
“Nostalgia,” he repeats, as if she hadn’t heard him the first time. He scribbles something on the notepad beside his laptop, then rips out the page. “People these days are robots. They’ve forgotten how to feel anything entirely. That’s what this month’s issue is going to be about, and you’re going to do the feature for it.” He gets up to pass her the slip of paper, leaning against the side of the desk as she reads it.
“A… video arcade?” Soojung tries to decipher the scribble. She looks up at her boss.
“Bingo!” he shoots finger guns at her and grins a large, gummy grin. “Go scout it today. I want people to read your article and sigh with sentimentality. I want them to feel like they’ve been there before even when they haven’t! Like longing for a lover they’ve never met! Get it?”
Soojung thinks, not for the first time, that she has no idea what he’s talking about but she nods with a well-practiced smile. “Good, good,” he pats her on the shoulder as she leaves. “Oh, and one more thing.” She turns and he drops a small, rectangular object into her hand. “To help get you into the mood.” He smiles at her again as he shuts the door in her face.
Soojung looks at the pager in her hand and half wishes the rickety old lift had plummeted to the ground with her in it. The universe really has it in for her today.
It’s warm, warmer than she expected, and she can already feel little beads of sweat forming along her hairline after the short walk from the station. “Well, here we go,” Soojung mutters to herself, looking at the derelict shopfront. She can barely make out the faded, peeling words on the sign as she cringes internally and puts her hand out to push the door open. A bell rings overhead, startling her with its unexpectedly loud, shrill jangle.
Inside is empty, as she expected. The smell of rusty metal and years of terrible ventilation hangs heavy around her head, and the lights look as though they haven’t been changed since the 80s (which, she suspects, they haven’t). Dozens of arcade cabinets line the walls and down the middle of the room, which is larger than she expected. She can barely make out the back of it; the whole room is bathed in a dim yellow light, and Soojung strains to see through the gloom.
“Hello?” she calls out tentatively as she makes her way between the silent machines. Some screens flicker, others seem to be taunting her with their large, flashing STARTs. Some of them are completely blank, and Soojung wonders if machines have ghosts. She certainly feels as though she’s standing in a graveyard, marked by electronic headstones from an era long gone. Her phone buzzes in her jacket pocket.
How’s the assignment going?
Soojung imagines Jongin’s nudging grin as she types out Awful. She looks around at the wood panel clad walls and cheap terrazzo vinyl on the floor, peeling at the corners where phantom shoes once kicked them up. She wrinkles her nose. This place smells like the 80s and there’s no one around. How am I supposed to interview anyone around here?
As she sends the message the machine to her left lights up without warning. She jumps backwards with a muffled scream, colliding with the seat of the machine behind her and dropping her bag on to the ground. The game starts up in its usual fashion, with blinking lights and electronic music, then abruptly cuts into a glitchy blue screen. Soojung thinks the worst is over when the screen fizzles into being, wavy lines replaced by stark 8-bit letters on a fuzzy black background.
HELLO.
Soojung freezes, sprawled against an 80s arcade cabinet, a joystick digging into the small of her back. The words disappear. There’s a pause, and then:
DO YOU READ ME?
A blank.
SOOJUNG.
Soojung grabs her bag from the floor and bolts right out the door. She doesn’t stop running until she’s reached the station, cold sweat sliding down her nose and her blood freezing in her veins.
“Soojung.”
“Soojung.”
“Hey, Soojung!”
Soojung bolts upright, heart pounding. Jongin slides into the empty chair beside her and swivels her chair around to peer into her face. “You look awful,” he announces. “Like you’ve seen a ghost. What happened to you?”
“I feel sick,” Soojung mutters, bending forward over her knees, arms crossed over her chest. Her teeth keep chattering and she can’t stop shivering. Jongin touches one of her hands and draws back instantly.
“You’re freezing cold,” he takes her elbow and she looks up at him, feeling like she’s aged a thousand years since this morning. “Come on, I’m taking you home. You can’t stay here like this.”
“But… work…” she whispers, but doesn’t exactly resist. At that moment, her boss walks past. He looks genuinely concerned, and she wonders how bad she really does look to faze a man who usually doesn’t even notice when one of the journalists are snoozing at their desk. “Good God!” he exclaims. “You look terrible, Soojung. Are you feeling alright?”
“I was just going to tell you,” Jongin mentions, picking up Soojung’s bag and hoisting his own camera bag over his other shoulder. “I have to be at _ in an hour for an interview so I’ll just take a short detour and drop her home.”
“Yes, do that,” their boss says quickly. “I wonder what happened. She looked fine before she went out.”
“Maybe it was the space dust,” Soojung quips feebly. He looks relieved that she isn’t ill enough to still try to be funny and waves them off. Jongin offers his arm to her but she shakes her head. “I still know how to walk,” she manages, but she can’t deny that her legs feel like jelly.
“Just be thankful you’re not walking home,” Jongin replies, grabbing a hold of her elbow when she stumbles a little. He keeps a firm grip the whole lift journey down and doesn’t let go even when they step outside. “My bike’s just this way,” he tugs her towards the left.
“Come on Jongin, I’m not a child,” she snaps. They pass a glass shopfront, and she chances a glance at herself just to see how bad she really does look. For a second Soojung doesn’t notice much in the daylight, just that she seems to have darker circles than before. And then she blinks and suddenly her reflection isn’t of her anymore, but of a taller, paler girl with her hair piled in a topknot above her head. Then the girl turns to face her and their eyes meet.
Soojung feels the ground jolt beneath her, as if a shockwave just released from under her feet. It echoes through her body, from the soles of her shoes up to the top of her skull and back down. It lasts a split second before the glass abruptly turns into the naked brick wall of the shop beside it and the girl disappears.
“What’s up?” Jongin asks as she wrenches her arm out of his grip and takes several steps backwards. She holds her breath - but it’s only her, looking washed out and faded in the dirty shopfront of a shady-looking clinic. “Okay, be serious. Are you really seeing ghosts?”
Soojung takes one last look at her reflection. For now, she is the only ghost standing here.
Sitting on the floor of the slice of space she laughing calls her living room, Soojung closes her eyes. She doesn’t have to try very hard to imagine the shadows tracing across her ceiling, courtesy of passing cars’ windshields and an abundance of leafy plants out on the tiny shoebox of a balcony. She brings her nose up to inhale the soothing aroma of the green tea in her second favourite mug, pushing her feet up against the kitchen unit. She’s only been at her job for 3 months so she still has some ways to go before she can afford an apartment wider than her arm span, but she does find it cozy. Sometimes.
“Make sure you have a really good rest,” Jongin had said sternly as he put down the bag of things he’d bought from the convenience store around the corner on her dining table slash desk. “I got you some tea, no coffee for you. Hey, Screecher.” He fondled her cat under the neck, and it promptly hissed at him before running away.
“His name is William Shakespaw and you very well know that,” Soojung flicked the switch on her kettle. “It’s not like this is your first time meeting him.”
“Well if he didn’t screech at me every time I did I wouldn’t call him that,” Jongin shrugged. He looked at his watch. “I’ve gotta run but call me if you need anything okay? Or if you’ve fallen down this very precarious looking ladder and can’t feel your legs anymore.” He cast the ladder leading up to her bed a dubious look.
“It’s perfectly stable so I’ll be fine,” Soojung showed him out. “Hey, uhh, thanks... Jongin.”
He grinned and patted her rather heavily on the head. “What are friends for? I fully expect you to take me out for a 5-course meal after this, mind you.”
Now she takes a sip of tea and leans her head back against the wall, watching another shadow stretch across the ceiling. She can still see the girl in the shop window, as clearly as if she’d actually been standing right there in front of her. The little mole on her left cheek, the escaped tendrils of hair curling around her ears. The expression on her face when their eyes met. As if she’d finally found what she’d been looking for.
“Who are you?” she asks the shadow on her ceiling. It wavers and unfolds itself towards the ladder, stretching itself out of sight.
In the silence of her house, the tap running in the bathroom seems a little too loud. Water still dripping from her chin, Soojung looks at herself in the mirror. Since getting into the house she’d been too spooked to look into anything reflective but the tea has calmed down somewhat. Forget aging a thousand years, she thinks. She looks like an ancient being trapped in a 24 year old body with rapidly fading dyed red hair and huge dark circles under her eyes. She blinks, but she’s still there, expression wary. Waiting. “I was imagining it,” she says firmly. At the moment there are two Soojungs, but only one of them is speaking. “The arcade creeped me out so much that my mind started playing tricks on me.” But she can’t shake the thought that, deep down, she had the feeling that she’d been looking for that girl too.
A sudden loud beeping emits from somewhere in the living room. Soojung tears her eyes away from her reflection and exits the bathroom, trying not to imagine that her reflection is still there, waiting for her. The beeps seem to be coming from where she dumped her jacket and bag, but she can’t imagine what could be making the sound. She searches the bag thoroughly but finds nothing. Dropping it back on the ground, she picks up the jacket, shoves her hand into the left pocket, and pulls out something small and sleek.
She stares at the pager. It fits perfectly, innocently, in the palm of her hand, as if it doesn’t know that its sole purpose in life is to annoy the hell out of its owner with an unexpected - and unwanted - message. “What does he want now?” she mutters, thinking about her crazy boss, and sits down at the table to try and decipher the device. Her parents had never used pagers before, and the only time she’s seen them is in medical dramas. Even so, pagers in dramas never beeped for this long.
Soojung grunts as she hits various buttons, none of them working, until she finally manages to get the right one. (1) New Message disappears, replaced by a ARE YOU ALRIGHT?
She scoffs. Trust Jongin to pull this kind of thing. He probably asked their boss how to contact her. I’m fine. Thanks for the tea, she types back.
I'M SORRY I SCARED YOU.
Soojung stares hard at the message, pulse beginning to race under her skin. She puts down the pager and flexes her fingers, wondering what to do next. Should she call Jongin? He’d definitely know what to do. But something tells her that this is something she has to handle herself.
Was that you? Back at the arcade?
YES. I’M SO GLAD I FINALLY REACHED YOU.
Who are you?
The answer doesn’t come as fast as the previous one did. Soojung waits nervously, half of her impatient to find out just what the hell is going on and the other half not wanting to know at all.
DON’T YOU REMEMBER ME?
She swallows. How can I? I don’t even know what you look like.
WE SAW EACH OTHER, JUST NOW. IN A SHOP WINDOW.
Her breath hitches in her throat. The girl in the window, with her long, slim neck and curling strands of hair at her cheekbones, looks back at her as if she recognizes her from a time long ago. A time that Soojung remembers and doesn’t remember simultaneously.
WE MET BEFORE, A LONG TIME AGO. YOU’LL REMEMBER. IN TIME.
What do you want from me? Her fingers trip over the keyboard.
An immediate response: [Message failed to deliver. Try again?]
She leans back in her chair and releases a long, shaky breath. In that moment, if somebody had told her she was going mad she’d believe them in a heartbeat. Her thoughts keep tumbling over each other, jumping from questioning possibilities to struggling recollections and back. If I keep thinking this over, Soojung thinks, I’m going to lose my mind.
Drowsiness hits her like a truck. She crawls into bed at 2:30 in the afternoon on a sunny spring day, and promptly falls asleep.
Waking from a dreamless sleep, Soojung sits up groggily in bed. The apartment opposite her own is bathed in the vivid yet faded light that only comes with sunset, and streaks of a just passed shower slide down the balcony door. Her cat is pawing at her arm, meowing insistently. She must have passed out for 4 hours at least. “Alright, food’s on its way,” she mutters to William Shakespaw, pushing him to one side as she rolls off the mattress and shimmies down the ladder.
As she places the cat food on the floor, her stomach audibly grumbles. She hasn’t properly eaten anything since morning, with nothing but trendy coffee and convenience store green tea in between. It’s too late to cook anything, so neighbourhood pizza it is.
Came by but you didn’t answer the doorbell. I assume you’ve passed out. Text me back so I know you haven’t been abducted by aliens, says the message from Jongin, and Soojung grins as she pulls her hood over her ears. Since the rain the temperature has dropped somewhat, but the air feels bracing on her skin.
I’m alive. The aliens haven’t come for me. Yet.
“Large pepperoni pizza, no cheese, extra chilli. Soojung,” she tells the cashier. “Lactose intolerant,” she adds when the cashier’s eyebrow raises skeptically. Easy on the souls of the meek, whispers a voice beside her ear as she waits for her order. She turns, but as expected, she’s the only person in the pizza place. The sentence replays in her head. She has a strange feeling she’s heard somebody say it before. Once, a long time ago, in a far away place.
“Soojung,” says the cashier, holding out a pizza box. “Large pepperoni, no cheese, extra chilli, easy on the souls of the meek.”
I must be in a dream, Soojung thinks as she walks home, pizza box held aloft as if she’s afraid it might get wet. A very long and elaborate dream where arcade machines and pagers can receive messages from nobody, and pizza places can hear my thoughts. That must be it. That’s when she realizes there’s something written on the cover of the pizza box. She rotates it to face her and reads the hurried scrawl where her name should be:
You’ll find me in the middle of winter.
“That’s too far away,” she says to the sky. Unexpectedly, her breath mists in front of her face. “I need to find you now.”
She’s done after her 5th slice of pizza. Lying on the floor of the living room, belly full of pepperoni (no cheese, extra chilli), she feels suddenly, unbearably lonely. The radio plays muffled, jazzy music from some obscure channel in the background. It’s not as if she hasn’t done this a thousand times before, lying on the floor and staring up at the ceiling and wondering just how she managed to build such a miserable existence for herself, but tonight she can feel the collective gravity of the planets and the stars pressing down on her, pulling her down to the center of the earth. Leaving her there. She can never tell anyone about the strange situation she’s gotten into. They’d never understand. She doesn’t expect them to anyway. How can she ever get someone to understand what is happening to her when she doesn’t even know herself?
She’s a stray asteroid, floating around the infinite confines of space. Waiting for a solar storm to sweep her in the right direction.
“They can all burn,” she whispers to the ceiling, and hot tears prick her eyes. She hates everyone in the world in that moment; her boss with his crazy story ideas for a poky little publication nobody ever reads; Jongin for constantly annoying her with his flirting; her boss again for getting her into this mess in the first place. Soojung feels a scream rising within her. She’s 24 and working for peanuts for a company she doesn’t believe in. She doesn’t have a friend in the world who would have pizza with her on a whim. She has a mysterious person stalking her. Getting into her head. She’s 24 and the universe is going to pieces.
The cat takes the opportunity to jump on the bookshelf, upsetting a row of books, sending them tumbling to the floor. Soojung seizes the opportunity to clamber out of the sea of existential angst and gets to her feet. Getting to her feet has always been the hardest part.
Picking up a book, she scrutinizes the cover. Parallel Worlds says the title. A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos. She vaguely remembers trying to read this as a child, but it feels like a far off memory. The book itself is battered, pages spotted with age and curling in the corners when she flicks through it. A sentence catches her eye and she stops at the page.
'The mind reels when we realize that, according to this interpretation of quantum mechanics, all possible worlds coexist with us. Although wormholes might be necessary to reach such alternate worlds, these quantum realities exist in the very same room that we live in. They coexist with us wherever we go.'
Soojung cocks her head to one side, suddenly remembering why she never attempted to read this book since her first flick through. She places it back on the shelf.
The notebook is just as she remembers when she picks it up off the floor, with its red ribbon bookmark and plain paper cover. My Dream Diary, it says on the front in a loopy, overly embellished hand. She wonders how she managed to forget that it was even on this bookshelf all this time. She flips it open to the bookmarked page and reads:
Jinri didn’t come today. I don’t think she’s ever coming back.
Jinri? Eyebrows furrowed, Soojung flips the page back to the second last entry. It’s dated 10 years ago, written in the childish version of her current handwriting. It sends her tumbling back into her 14 year old self.
23 January 200_.
Jinri and I found a house in the countryside. It was very cold and there was snow everywhere. We built a fire and made kimchi jjigae. I found a camera in the cupboard and we took photos. There was only me and Jinri on that world, but I didn’t mind. I think any time I can see Jinri is the best time. She always takes me to the best places.
P.S.: Jinri told me there might be a day when we can’t see each other again. She told me when that happens that I can’t come looking for her. But I told her I would always save her, if she needed help. She laughed at me. But I would. Hopefully that time will never come.
Soojung puts down the notebook, frowning as she tries to make sense of it all. A dream diary? A house on the countryside? A world with just two people on it? A girl named Jinri? The name calls out to her with its familiarity, and the feel of it on her tongue wants to make her burst into tears. It feels like loss. It feels like her cold hand in a wonderfully warm one.
And yet, with all the mystery, that vague memory of falling asleep. Of waking up in an entirely different universe.
“It’s our call-in contest!” a cheerful voice suddenly exclaims, and she jumps. She hadn’t even realized that the radio was still on. “5th caller through stands a chance to win two tickets to a destination of our choice! And we’ve just got them through!” Soojung moves to turn the radio off when a voice whispers through the airwaves and roots her to the spot.
“Soojung,” whispers a voice. Soft and scratchy, like it’s coming from a distant star. A ferocious crackling meets the voice and drowns it out for a fraction of a second before it returns. “It’s me. I’m giving one ticket to you, okay? So come find me. I need -,” and that’s when the connection fizzles out entirely.
Soojung picks up the radio and shakes it so hard that she hears something rattle inside it. The name comes so naturally to her that she can’t believe that she even forgot it in the first place. “Jinri? Jinri!” But, as is the norm for radios, it doesn’t answer.
Abandoning the radio, she grabs the notebook and flops back down on the floor. Clutching it to her chest like a lifeline, she closes her eyes.
Here, floating in the far reaches of space, she breathes deep. Inhales the scent of stardust. Feels her body sink into the floor, then deeper still. She’s falling. A pink-cheeked girl turns to face her, grins mischievously and holds out her hand. Soojung reaches out towards her, concentrating on that laughter in her eyes, and steps right out of her body.
There’s the same jolt as before, but she’s stopped falling. She feels almost weightless as she straightens, as if she isn’t tethered to anything anymore. Her feet feel feather light on the floor and she looks around. She’s simultaneously in and not in her apartment. Everything seems blurred around the edges, tinged with a pale hazy glow. Taking a few steps forward, she wrenches the front door open. And walks into the living room of an abandoned country house, a fine layer of dust covering the empty shelves. Through the window she can see the snow beginning to fall.
I’ve run out of time, says the note. I wanted to tell you everything but it’s too late. I’m sorry I had to leave you, Soojung. I hope you never have to return to this place. Thank you for everything. I will never forget you. - Always and forever, J…
The rest of the name ends in a violent scribble, as if the person who'd written was suddenly snatched away. Soojung reaches out a hand to touch the fallen pencil beside the dusty sheet paper on the table, but her fingers slip right through with zero resistance. Everything in this room seems even less substantial than the apartment she just left behind, and it makes her nervous. It unnerves her even more to know that she’s been here before.
There, on the faded row of cushions, she’d sat with a girl her age, features blurred and raven black hair wound in two buns on either side of her head. She can hear high, girlish laughter echoing through the walls when she tries to touch them, and aren’t those ashes left in the fireplace from the fire she had built with her own two hands?
She can’t even begin to fathom what’s going on. She tries to sit on the cushions and ends up falling on to bare floorboards. If they’re chilly she can’t feel them. “Why didn’t you want me to return?” she whispers up at the ceiling. Outside, the snow looks as though it’s falling even harder, and every now and then she can see little whirls where the wind spirals through the branches of bare trees. “What did you want to tell me?”
The silence is soft, muffled. Smothering her questions. As if the ghosts of a forgotten past have their hands clamped tight over her ears, trying to keep her from hearing the answers.
She gets up to leave, and that’s when she spots the photos propped up on the shelf. Three in total, polaroid shots. Unlike everything else in the room they seem almost sharp, their colour intense. She approaches them like she’s in a trance, already knowing what she’s about to see. She once took these photos with a camera in a cupboard.
There she is, thin-faced, large eyes. The terrible bangs that haunted her throughout her middle school years. And beside her, a pink-cheeked girl with her hair wound up into two buns on either side of her head. Her eyes laughing, clear as day.
“Jinri,” Soojung breathes. Instinctively she grabs at the photo, shocked to find her fingers clutching on to the smooth glossy print.
Almost immediately, the photo begins burning from under her fingers, a sudden intense orange burst of light in the dull surroundings. Soojung drops it on to the threadbare rug, where it immediately catches fire. “Wait!” she cries, feeling a force tugging her away from the shelf. She grabs at the two remaining photos, feeling them bursting into flame beneath her fingers. The fire begins licking up the walls of the room, and the laughter turns to panicked screams. The sound reverberates through the room amidst the roar of the blaze, barrelling right into Soojung. She feels the vibrations echoing through her, pulling her apart. “Jinri, wait!”
And she wakes up on the living room floor drenched in sweat, panting as if she’s just run a marathon and her heart banging away in her body. A notebook clutched so tightly in her hands that its pages are slightly bent. Gingerly, she unclenches her fingers and inspects the diary.
There, sticking out from between the pages like a lost child. A blank Polaroid.
part two