where light exists (2/2)
where light exists
krystal/sulli, krystal/kai
“Whoa, you look even worse than yesterday.” Jongin peers into her face. Her elbows are on her desk, hands on either side of her face as if to block out the glare from the windows. He sets a cup on the surface and slides it towards her. She looks at it, then at him with equal suspicion. “It’s a herbal drink,” he says easily, leaning against the desk with one hand shoved in his pocket. “I got the recipe from my mum.”
“You sure it’s not poison?” she asks skeptically. Jongin scoffs and flicks his head to get a stray hair out of his face, taking a sip of coffee. “Stop trying to look cool, it doesn’t suit you.” She takes the cup and brings up to her face. Takes a grudging sip. It’s not as bad as she thinks, or at least it isn’t as bad as the elixirs her grandmother used to make her drink when she was a child. She tells Jongin this, and he grins, looking pleased.
“Don’t you have an assignment you need to get to?” asks a passing senior with a stack full of paper in his arms. He frowns at them, as if having a moment of reprieve before getting to work is a personal affront.
“Yeah, _ in an hour,” Jongin replies easily.
“Well, get going then,” he snaps back, and stalks off. A piece of paper breaks free from the stack, floating down to the floor with a soft, rhythmic rocking. It reminds her of stepping out of her body and floating back down to earth. Of her footsteps hovering just inches above the floor. Her breath catches in her throat.
“I went to another universe,” she whispers, just as Jongin mutters “You’ll all miss me when I’m gone, you idiots.” She’s immediately distracted.
“Are you leaving?” she asks, startled.
The easy look vanishes from his face, and he looks out of the window for a few beats before turning back to her. “I’m… looking,” he says quietly. “This place is choking me to death.” He aims at the waste basket behind her, and lops the empty coffee cup into it effortlessly. She’d seen him shoot hoops in the university basketball court with the same ease, 5 years ago.
“You can’t leave!” she hisses, grabbing the sleeve of his thin cotton jacket. “You can’t abandon me here. You’re the one who recommended me, remember?”
His laugh a little cynically and gets up as the boss enters the office. “Sometimes you have to know when to let go,” he shrugs. He looks down at her with a strange tenderness in his eyes, then presses a hand to her forehead. His fingers are uncharacteristically cool for such a warm morning, and she squirms slightly under his touch. “Well you’re not running a fever so you’ll be fine.”
“For today or the rest of my life?” she calls after him.
“If you go out with me you know you’re gonna have the best life in the world,” Jongin reverts to his usual sunny smile and a wink as he leaves. “And don’t forget to finish that tea!” he adds, before closing the door.
Soojung takes another sip, looking out the window.
Somehow it just doesn’t seem right.
“I’m serious, you don’t need to take me home,” Soojung frowns as somebody jostles past on the crowded train platform, shoving Jongin into her. She steps a little farther away from him. They haven’t taken the train together since their university days, Jongin always preferring to zoom around on his motorbike like he thinks he’s the coolest thing around. He’d always behaved like that.
“I’d be a bad friend if I didn’t make sure you get home safe.” He winces when somebody steps on his foot. “Is it always this bad?”
“Always,” Soojung replies. “You’re not fit for this battle,” she adds, sidestepping a particularly fierce looking woman dressed in a standard drab looking office suit. They’re always easy to spot, tired looking corporate men and women in their suits and polished shoes with expressions like the world could be ending and they would be glad to watch it burn. She used to think choosing a less formal, restricted career would save her from that same bitterness, but she isn’t so sure about that now.
The woman shoves past Jongin rudely and disappears into the crowd.
“You’re just lucky I’m here to take all the blows for you.” An express train rushes into the station, and Soojung freezes in her tracks. Jongin walks right into her. “Hey come on, this isn’t fair. Here I am being nice to you…”
She isn’t listening to him anymore. Because in the windows speeding past her, her reflection isn’t her own anymore. It’s Jinri.
Her head is cocked to one side, eyes trained on Soojung. And Soojung knows Jinri can see her, the exact same way she’s seeing her right now. Through the window of a moving train. The screech of the train wheels and the hubbub on the platform dies away as she takes a step closer, barely noticing the person in front of her as she pushes past him. Jinri’s mouth is moving as she raises a hand towards her, speaking words she can’t hear. Soojung’s own hand reaches out to touch her. She’s so close…
“Soojung!” Somebody grabs the back of her jacket and yanks her backwards violently. In the same instant the train rushes past her and exits the station, carrying Jinri away back into the unknown. She stares at its receding tail lights, then at the crowd staring back at her, some with concern and some with scathing looks in their eyes. Jongin’s grip on her arm is vicelike. “What the hell were you doing?” he whispers furiously into her ear as people begin to lose interest in them. “You could’ve gotten seriously hurt, you big idiot!”
“I… I saw…” Soojung’s teeth begin chattering again. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I don’t know anymore.” She can still feel the lightning speed of the train beneath her fingers, right before Jongin hauled her away. I could have lost my fingers, she realizes with chilling comprehension.
Jongin doesn’t let go of her even when they board their own train, squashed against each other and the strangers around them. Packed together like sheep going to slaughter, in a moving box of steel and kinetic energy. He doesn’t say another word, although his eyes on her tell another story altogether. It’s only when he loosens his grip on her slightly that Soojung realizes he’s shaking.
“Jjajangmyun’s here,” Soojung announces, closing the door behind her with her foot as she carefully juggles the plastic bag containing the two piping hot bowls of noodles in her hands. Jongin pours out two cups of cold green tea. They’d tried dragging out her desk in to the living space so they wouldn’t have to squash but it hadn’t worked so they now sit, a little awkwardly, knee-to-knee in the cramped confines under her bedroom ladder. William Shakespaw comes sniffing for food, then settles on the bookshelf above Soojung’s head.
“You know, the offer to be my flatmate still stands,” Jongin said earlier after bumping his head on the ladder, but Soojung likes the little pocket containing her life and the fact that everything she needs is within arm’s reach. Besides, she’d stayed over at Jongin’s with a bunch of friends before and she knew that he rarely - if ever - wiped the bathroom mirror.
“How much was it, by the way,” Jongin asks as he pulls open a lid and slides the bowl over to her. Soojung looks at the receipt, and does a double take at the scribble on the top of the page.
Out in the water.
She folds up the receipt and stores it in her pocket. “Don’t worry about it. I owe you, remember?”
“Thanks, but I’m still holding out for that 5-course meal,” he grins and picks up his chopsticks.
“You might have to wait a while for that,” she grins back, picking up her own.
“For you,” he sighs, “I’d wait forever.”
16 October 200_.
We went fishing in the ocean, except the ocean was full of stars. It was really pretty. Jinri caught a little glowing fish. We skipped stars and I managed to make 6 skips. Jinri could only do 4. Out of all the places we’ve been I think this is the best by far.
Through her balcony door lies a great expanse, shimmering and pulsing as far as she can see. The sky is dark and so are the waves lapping at her feet, as if the whole world has just become one connected cosmic ocean. Several stones glow at her feet along the rocky shore, and she picks up a particularly smooth, flat one and tosses it into the water. It skips three times, then disappears.
She can’t see anything past the gloom, but the scene is mesmerising. She feels a strange sense of peace, and she almost wants to sit down and just sit there for the rest of eternity. But that’s not what she’s here to do.
She must have gotten it wrong. Maybe she’d had another dream before with water.
Then a voice, calling out from somewhere beyond the horizon. She turns, eyes scanning the area. She can see nothing. Then,
“Soojung!”
Her heart is pounding her chest, in time with the crashing of the waves on the shore. Is it her imagination, or does the water seem more unsettled now? Foamy remnants of shooting stars wash up against her feet, and she strains her eyes trying to find the owner of the voice. It calls her name again, the voice from a distant star, and a huge great moon swims into view underwater. It thrusts a faint gleam through the waves, and she can just make out the shadowy figure standing on the other side of the shore.
She wades in without even taking off her shoes, clothes clinging to her body. Still in the shallows, she plunges her hands into the water, cupping it and lifting it to her face. It feels slightly chilly, almost insubstantial, and drips through her solid palms back into the sea. Something must be happening, she concludes, that she can feel and touch things now. She must be getting closer.
“I’m coming for you, Jinri,” she whispers across the starry expanse. “Just hold on.” And she dives in to the waves.
She hadn’t expected it to be this hard, being only half solid, but with each stroke the waves seem even more hell bent on fighting her. She grits her teeth, struggling on, when with a huge lift and crash she’s pushed completely underwater. For a second she almost forgets that this a dream, and then her head breaks the surface and she heaves in big gulps of air, tasting ash on her tongue. The shore she’d left behind is blazing. She flails in the water with alarm, only to be pulled back in by another wave that breaks over her head.
She’ll drown here, in a cosmic ocean. Surrounded by stars. Poetic justice, she thinks. To be made from stardust and to return to it.
She opens her eyes, watching the bright orange glow from the safety of her underwater grave, no longer struggling against the tide. In return, the ocean stops thrashing around, stilling itself and keeping her suspended in its clutches. Just floating, watching. Waiting. Until a muffled call breaks the sudden stillness, and she twists around.
A hand breaks through the surface of the water, stretching itself out towards her. She kicks her legs furiously, but they’re dead weight to her now. Her hand reaches out, out, out - she’s so close to those long pale fingers - when something warm wraps itself around her ankles and pulls her down into a starry abyss.
Haunted, that’s how she describes it. She’s nothing but hollow feelings and empty expressions. Every night, she replays that exact moment before she was snatched away by some cosmic intervention. She was so close. As close as her fingers touching the window of a train speeding by. She hasn’t heard from Jinri since.
Jongin hands in his resignation a few weeks later. He doesn’t say anything to her, but she sees it in his expression when he emerges from their boss’ office, hands in his jacket pockets as if he’d just casually sauntered in and out for nothing more than a brief chat about the weather.
She returns to the arcade to do more research on her feature article. It has none of the menace she felt the last time she was there, as if whatever weird presence that had occupied it had simply vanished. A wizened old woman sits at the counter at the back of the room, a counter she easily spots the minute she enters it. Like before, not all of the machines are in working order. Unlike before, none of them send her messages.
Are you still out there? Can you hear me? she types out on her pager and sends out. It always bounces back to her in the form of an unsent message. She hurls the pager at the wall, where it leaves a small dent, buries her head in her hands. She should’ve known better than to think for a second that somebody - even somebody in another universe - could ever save her.
So she goes back to being just Jung Soojung, newbie journalist, working 9-5 on an article she never really cared about, stuck in a job she no longer believes in. Once, writing had been her escape. Now it holds her prisoner, caging her in with all the words she can’t say.
“Hey,” Jongin holds up a pizza box with a disarmingly friendly grin when she opens the door. “Thought you’d be home. Let’s hang.” She doesn’t say anything, just steps aside and lets him close the door behind him. “I brought some beer too so we can have a proper party,” he announces, setting a six-pack on the table.
“What are we celebrating?” Soojung asks almost scathingly, taking the pizza box from her and setting it on the floor. Jongin removes his jacket and seats himself, leaning against the open balcony door. He looks at her warily.
“Just having dinner with an old friend,” he says cautiously. It’s so not his style that Soojung’s irritation only grows, like black sludge spreading through her chest and coating her insides. “Isn’t that something to celebrate?”
“Hmm.” She cracks open a bottle and passes it to him. He doesn’t take it.
“Okay, seriously,” Jongin frowns and crosses his arms over his chest. “What’s going on with you? I know you’re the last person to be all sunshine and daisies and you can get a little weird when you’re stressed but what - did I do something to you? Are you mad at me because I quit? Is that it?”
She looks at him, properly looks at him, and she doesn’t recognise the person looking back. A small part of her is defiant, but another part whispers this is all your doing. And maybe she had it coming, keeping people at arms’ length all her life. Only letting them in when she felt like she needed them. Taking in their kindness and care and having nothing but grateful silence to give in return. Can she put this into words now?
They’re at the fork in the road now. If she wants she can veer right and put an end to all this… what she’s deemed as a shallow friendship from the beginning. She can choose to ignore the pleading look in Jongin’s eyes. She can choose to leave him behind, if it means she might be able to find Jinri. Or she can choose to keep going down the road of reality. To stay in the here and now.
“I’m not mad because you quit,” she says evenly, calmly. It’s unsettling how genuine the lie feels on her tongue. “I’m not mad at you. Really.”
“Then what is it?” His expression doesn’t change, arms still folded. “If it isn’t me then what is it?”
“It’s hard to talk about now.” She feigns a smile to cover up the spike of irritation in her throat. “I’ll tell you someday.”
“Come on, you can tell me now,” he cajoles. “We’re good friends, aren’t we?”
“Are we?” Soojung snaps without warning. The black sludge is pouring out of her mouth now, and she doesn’t even remotely feel like stopping it. “You mean like annoying the crap out of me with your flirting and pretending to help me but not really mean it? Because if that’s what friendship is to you, then you’re the greatest friend in the world, honestly.”
Jongin stares at her, looking totally bewildered. Then the bewilderment is replaced by a look of deep, deep hatred. “You really think you’re the saddest person out there, don’t you?” he sneers. “That you’re the only one who suffers and finds the world unbearable to live in. You don’t even know that the way you live is a choice.”
“Oh please, I would never recommend a friend to work at the hellhole you just abandoned me to,” she spits. “You knew it was a crap place to work in, didn’t you?”
“You needed a job!”
“I wasn’t that desperate!”
“Then maybe you should have thought about that before you signed the contract,” he says icily. He stalks to the chair and grabs his jacket. “Next time you have an existential crisis, leave me out of it. I just can’t watch you destroy yourself anymore.” He gathers up his shoes, then pauses with his hand on the door handle. “Hey, remember that time in uni when you got really drunk and told me about your sister?”
Soojung’s blood freezes.
“You’re not mad at me for quitting. You’re mad at her for leaving you behind. And you’re mad that you don’t know how to move on.” He wrenches open the door and slams it behind him.
Soojung picks up the small hand mirror on the bookshelf and hurls it at the closed door. It explodes into a million glittery fragments, all her hate and frustration and anger reflected in the shattered pieces on the ground. A breeze suddenly ripples through the still open balcony door, fluttering open the pages of the dream diary on the table before dying down as if it was never there.
She picks up the book cautiously, eyes tracing down the page.
6 April 200_.
I dreamt I was in a strange city. It was white and cold and there was nobody around. A girl suddenly appeared in the middle of the street. I thought it was my sister but when I got closer it wasn’t. She asked me if I was sad. She told me that if I was ever sad I only needed to call her and she’d come and save me. She was really nice and she had very pink cheeks. Her name was Jinri.
Soojung closes her eyes to steel herself, then flips the page backwards to what she knows is the very first entry of the book.
5 April 200_.
Sooyeon left us last night. Mum says she’s in a better place now. If I knew where she was I’d go and look for her. Even if it’s in another universe. I’d do anything.
P.S.: This is the worst day of my life.
Reaching for another bottle of beer, she comes to the dim realization that there aren’t any left. She pushes herself off the floor, and the room spins around her. It doesn’t matter. She needs more. Clumsily putting on her shoes, she stumbles out the door and into the night.
It’s cold. Stark white and cool greys, like a blank model of a city that someone forgot to add any sort of life to. A city as dead and despondent as she feels.
And above her head, a swirling expanse of deep indigo, dotted with red and yellow and purple sparkles. In the centre of it all, the biggest star just beginning to tear itself apart, burning a fierce blue.
Soojung looks around, not surprised that there is no one but her. She starts walking down the never-ending boulevard carving through the centre of the city, stopping when she passes the building she started from for the third time. If this place is a reflection of her psyche then she can think of nothing else that best represents her soul. She can keep wandering, searching, but she’ll always be going round in circles. Thinking she’s moving forwards when she’ll always be stuck in the same place.
Thunder cracks overhead, and she glances up at the exploding star. It’s even bigger now, waves of brilliant orange trimming the edges of the explosion. It won’t be long until it comes for her. She supposes it would be just like the other times, where she’ll feel nothing and wake up back in her body. So she doesn’t panic when a shockwave pulses through the city, making buildings sway around her. She doesn’t panic when the second one shatters windows, falling glass gleaming in the brilliant radiance of the supernova.
And in those glimmers of astral glass, a figure. A girl, taller than her. Hair up in a bun, strands curling at her cheeks.
When the last shards fall, Jinri stands at the corner of the next block.
Soojung holds her breath, wanting to believe. Jinri looks around, as if searching for her, and then yells out something, obscured by a sudden boom of thunder in the backdrop. A light wind begins whistling down the street, and Soojung looks up to see the whirlpool beginning to form around the axis of the star. She doesn’t think. She just runs. Across the street Jinri starts running too.
They meet in the middle of the street, breathless and unmoving, as if they’re both afraid that if they move any closer they might both just disappear. Jinri’s expression is a mixture of elation and sorrow. Soojung suddenly feels totally tongue-tied.
“It’s really you,” she breathes. “After all this time.”
“And I finally found you,” Jinri’s eyes curve into half-moons. She takes a step forward, and Soojung unconsciously mimics her.
“How did you know it was me? The first time we met?”
Jinri out a crumpled, folded wad of paper from her pocket with one hand. “I found this,” she explains. “Back then. That’s when I knew you needed someone.” The wind catches the sheet and it billows out into a worn looking paper lantern. Written on it in black permanent marker, the words I’ll look for you, even if I have to cross a thousand universes to find you. - Soojung.
“That was for my sister,” Soojung says sadly. “She never got it.”
“She never will,” Jinri replies softly. “But I did.”
With a sudden loud roar of wind, the world falls apart around them, streetlights narrowly missing Soojung as they come crashing down. The buildings break into pieces, falling to the ground in the form of mirror shards. Soojung’s foot slips on one and she tumbles, grazing her knee on the pavement. She barely registers that she can feel the pain when a gust of wind has her clinging to one of the few remaining lamp posts. Jinri is hanging on to the next one. She’s so close that Soojung can see both the joy and fear in her eyes.
“I’m sorry I forgot you!” she calls out, taking a step against the wind. Pieces of broken glass and mirrors streak past her, cutting her hands and face. “I didn’t mean to!”
“I’m sorry too!” Jinri pants, reaching out to her too. “For leaving you without saying goodbye. For dragging you back here without any warning.” Their fingers are inches apart, but neither of them seem to able to let go of their posts. Soojung’s hair feels like little blades whipping across her skin.
“I didn’t know how much I needed you,” Soojung cries. Sometimes you have to know when to let go, says Jongin’s disembodied voice in her ear. So as her feet begin lifting off the ground she lets go of her pole and lunges, fingers catching hold of Jinri’s.
The ground splits open, but Jinri is grasping both her hands in hers as the wind spirals them both up to the sky. “Why didn’t you come looking for me earlier?” Soojung asks as one of her hands slips out of Jinri’s. She fights against the force pulling them apart, grabbing a hold of her wrist.
“I didn’t know how much you needed saving,” Jinri smiles, and in that smile Soojung feels all her own heartache and her loneliness, the grief at always losing everyone she loves rushing back in to her. Reclaiming feelings that she’d somehow lost somewhere along the way. For the first time since her sister passed, she wants to keep Jinri safe. To take all of her sadness and make it her own. But try as she might, she can’t get the words out.
An almighty crack fills the air, and the sky itself begins to split in two. The wind screams in Soojung’s ear, and her fingers begin to slip from Jinri’s. “What do you mean I needed saving? You saved me once, a long time ago. I came here to save you, and I’m sorry I’m so bad at it,” she says mournfully.
“But you’re here now, and that’s all that matters.” Jinri’s eyes are bright, despite the sadness written on her eyebrows. “You have saved me, Soojung, and now you need to save yourself.”
“Wait, tell me where to find you!” Soojung cries out as the force grows stronger. They’re clinging to each other’s hands with every ounce of strength they have, but it just isn’t enough. The world flashes in one hot, blistering blast, and then all is silent. When the flash disappears, microseconds later, they’re suspended in space, with nothing beyond them except the stars.
“When you don’t need me anymore,” Jinri whispers into the void, her eyes as deep and glittery and wonderful as the deepest part of the galaxy, “that’s when you’ll find me.”
Soojung’s hand slides right out of hers, feeling herself barrelling backwards through the confines of space and time, passing icy planets and lonely asteroids and bustling galaxies until she slams back into her own body, safe and sound on planet Earth.
She awakens in an unfamiliar room, with an unfamiliar blanket over her and an unfamiliar (and slightly lumpy) couch underneath her. It smells oddly comforting as she looks around, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun streaming in through the window. It hurts her eyes, and she lifts a hand to shield them. A hand that, only minutes before, held Jinri's in it. If she concentrates hard enough she can still feel her warmth encircling it. Keeping her safe.
“Good, you’re awake,” says Jongin, entering the room with a steaming mug in his hands. His eyes are worried where the corners of his mouth are not. “Here, drink this.” He shoves the cup into her hands and takes a seat on the floor. “Seriously, what are you playing at?”
“What am I doing here?” Soojung groans, head throbbing as she pulls herself up and takes a sip of some very hot, very strong coffee. She chokes.
“I found you passed out on a bench in the park,” Jongin explains. His tone could freeze ice. “You couldn’t wake up and obviously I couldn’t let you sleep out there because even if I’m a shit friend at least I still have some semblance of a decent human being.”
Soojung feels the sting of his words, and sets the cup down. They might have passed the fork in the road but she still has time to reverse and turn down the other lane. Swinging her legs on to the floor, she turns to him. “Jongin. I’m…” she blinks, and steels herself to look at him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all those things last night. I… I was having a hard time and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. You’re… you’re a good friend. Better than I deserve.”
“You’re damn right I am,” Jongin says vehemently. Then he catches her wince and his expression softens. “You’re right, maybe I shouldn’t have told you to take that job when I knew how bad it was and that I wasn’t going to stay there any longer. But you needed help and that was the only way I knew how to help you. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry I signed that contract,” Soojung laughs, and sudden tears begin to flow down her cheeks. She wipes them with the cuff of her sleeve, looking at them in wonder. She hasn’t properly cried since her sister’s funeral.
Jongin takes a tentative seat beside her, keeping a little distance. “Seriously, what happened? I feel like I lost you these last couple of months.”
“I was looking for someone,” she confesses. “Someone very important.”
“Did you find them?”
The infinite galaxies in Jinri’s eyes. The warmth of her hand as they floated amongst the stars. Now you have to save yourself. Soojung realizes now that the person she’s been looking for the most, all this time, has been herself.
“I did,” she nods. “But I had to let them go.” Her face crumples. Jongin only hesitates for a fraction of a second before putting an arm around her in silence. The sun streaming through the window feels warm on her back as she buries her face in his shoulder and holds on tight.
23 May 201_.
Dear Jinri,
I will never forget you again. I’ll look for you, even if I have to cross a hundred universes to find you. I’ll definitely find you. So wait for me.
Soojung.
Soojung releases a sigh of relief as she snags an empty seat on the platform. Some days she’s lucky and some days she has to stand, but she’s beginning to learn that it’s all just part and parcel of life. Setting her bag on her lap, she pulls out Parallel Worlds and opens the page at her bookmark. It’s her second time reading through it, and she doesn’t mind that sometimes she still doesn’t quite understand some of the more science-y bits. She once felt the effect of an exploding star, in a maybe dream. Reading the book is a way for her to keep that memory alive.
She never astral projected again, even though she tried multiple times. Because that’s what it was called, as she found out later. So maybe they were dreams, but maybe they really were all the times her soul left her body and went on its own intergalactic adventure. So she called them maybe dreams.
She finished her article and promptly quit the next day. Strangely enough, the article made the rounds and she now, a year later, has a new job at a major magazine publication, writing opinion pieces on actual issues and interesting topics and not on abandoned suburban game arcades. She and Jongin meet up every other week to catch up and gossip about their respective workplaces. And next week he’ll be helping her move into her new apartment.
So she’s happy. Mostly. Except for the small nagging fact that she’s still looking for Jinri. And maybe she’ll never stop.
The train arrives and she gets up, the wind blowing her hair off her shoulders. She still likes to look for herself in the windows. Of course, it’s always her looking back. The doors open and she gets on, sitting down with her bag tucked between her legs. She resumes her reading, only tearing her eyes away from the page when the train stops at the next station and someone bumps into her foot. She spots a pair of pale looking legs seat themselves opposite her, and looks up.
Short auburn hair and bright red lipstick. She has a tiny mole on the end of her nose, and her cheeks are as smooth and perfect as a peach. Her eyes are as wonderfully bright and dark as the far reaches of space.
They stare at each other for a minute of dazed silence. Then Jinri’s face lights up like a thousand twinkling stars, and Soojung can’t help but smile back.
*
krystal/sulli, krystal/kai
“Whoa, you look even worse than yesterday.” Jongin peers into her face. Her elbows are on her desk, hands on either side of her face as if to block out the glare from the windows. He sets a cup on the surface and slides it towards her. She looks at it, then at him with equal suspicion. “It’s a herbal drink,” he says easily, leaning against the desk with one hand shoved in his pocket. “I got the recipe from my mum.”
“You sure it’s not poison?” she asks skeptically. Jongin scoffs and flicks his head to get a stray hair out of his face, taking a sip of coffee. “Stop trying to look cool, it doesn’t suit you.” She takes the cup and brings up to her face. Takes a grudging sip. It’s not as bad as she thinks, or at least it isn’t as bad as the elixirs her grandmother used to make her drink when she was a child. She tells Jongin this, and he grins, looking pleased.
“Don’t you have an assignment you need to get to?” asks a passing senior with a stack full of paper in his arms. He frowns at them, as if having a moment of reprieve before getting to work is a personal affront.
“Yeah, _ in an hour,” Jongin replies easily.
“Well, get going then,” he snaps back, and stalks off. A piece of paper breaks free from the stack, floating down to the floor with a soft, rhythmic rocking. It reminds her of stepping out of her body and floating back down to earth. Of her footsteps hovering just inches above the floor. Her breath catches in her throat.
“I went to another universe,” she whispers, just as Jongin mutters “You’ll all miss me when I’m gone, you idiots.” She’s immediately distracted.
“Are you leaving?” she asks, startled.
The easy look vanishes from his face, and he looks out of the window for a few beats before turning back to her. “I’m… looking,” he says quietly. “This place is choking me to death.” He aims at the waste basket behind her, and lops the empty coffee cup into it effortlessly. She’d seen him shoot hoops in the university basketball court with the same ease, 5 years ago.
“You can’t leave!” she hisses, grabbing the sleeve of his thin cotton jacket. “You can’t abandon me here. You’re the one who recommended me, remember?”
His laugh a little cynically and gets up as the boss enters the office. “Sometimes you have to know when to let go,” he shrugs. He looks down at her with a strange tenderness in his eyes, then presses a hand to her forehead. His fingers are uncharacteristically cool for such a warm morning, and she squirms slightly under his touch. “Well you’re not running a fever so you’ll be fine.”
“For today or the rest of my life?” she calls after him.
“If you go out with me you know you’re gonna have the best life in the world,” Jongin reverts to his usual sunny smile and a wink as he leaves. “And don’t forget to finish that tea!” he adds, before closing the door.
Soojung takes another sip, looking out the window.
Somehow it just doesn’t seem right.
“I’m serious, you don’t need to take me home,” Soojung frowns as somebody jostles past on the crowded train platform, shoving Jongin into her. She steps a little farther away from him. They haven’t taken the train together since their university days, Jongin always preferring to zoom around on his motorbike like he thinks he’s the coolest thing around. He’d always behaved like that.
“I’d be a bad friend if I didn’t make sure you get home safe.” He winces when somebody steps on his foot. “Is it always this bad?”
“Always,” Soojung replies. “You’re not fit for this battle,” she adds, sidestepping a particularly fierce looking woman dressed in a standard drab looking office suit. They’re always easy to spot, tired looking corporate men and women in their suits and polished shoes with expressions like the world could be ending and they would be glad to watch it burn. She used to think choosing a less formal, restricted career would save her from that same bitterness, but she isn’t so sure about that now.
The woman shoves past Jongin rudely and disappears into the crowd.
“You’re just lucky I’m here to take all the blows for you.” An express train rushes into the station, and Soojung freezes in her tracks. Jongin walks right into her. “Hey come on, this isn’t fair. Here I am being nice to you…”
She isn’t listening to him anymore. Because in the windows speeding past her, her reflection isn’t her own anymore. It’s Jinri.
Her head is cocked to one side, eyes trained on Soojung. And Soojung knows Jinri can see her, the exact same way she’s seeing her right now. Through the window of a moving train. The screech of the train wheels and the hubbub on the platform dies away as she takes a step closer, barely noticing the person in front of her as she pushes past him. Jinri’s mouth is moving as she raises a hand towards her, speaking words she can’t hear. Soojung’s own hand reaches out to touch her. She’s so close…
“Soojung!” Somebody grabs the back of her jacket and yanks her backwards violently. In the same instant the train rushes past her and exits the station, carrying Jinri away back into the unknown. She stares at its receding tail lights, then at the crowd staring back at her, some with concern and some with scathing looks in their eyes. Jongin’s grip on her arm is vicelike. “What the hell were you doing?” he whispers furiously into her ear as people begin to lose interest in them. “You could’ve gotten seriously hurt, you big idiot!”
“I… I saw…” Soojung’s teeth begin chattering again. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I don’t know anymore.” She can still feel the lightning speed of the train beneath her fingers, right before Jongin hauled her away. I could have lost my fingers, she realizes with chilling comprehension.
Jongin doesn’t let go of her even when they board their own train, squashed against each other and the strangers around them. Packed together like sheep going to slaughter, in a moving box of steel and kinetic energy. He doesn’t say another word, although his eyes on her tell another story altogether. It’s only when he loosens his grip on her slightly that Soojung realizes he’s shaking.
“Jjajangmyun’s here,” Soojung announces, closing the door behind her with her foot as she carefully juggles the plastic bag containing the two piping hot bowls of noodles in her hands. Jongin pours out two cups of cold green tea. They’d tried dragging out her desk in to the living space so they wouldn’t have to squash but it hadn’t worked so they now sit, a little awkwardly, knee-to-knee in the cramped confines under her bedroom ladder. William Shakespaw comes sniffing for food, then settles on the bookshelf above Soojung’s head.
“You know, the offer to be my flatmate still stands,” Jongin said earlier after bumping his head on the ladder, but Soojung likes the little pocket containing her life and the fact that everything she needs is within arm’s reach. Besides, she’d stayed over at Jongin’s with a bunch of friends before and she knew that he rarely - if ever - wiped the bathroom mirror.
“How much was it, by the way,” Jongin asks as he pulls open a lid and slides the bowl over to her. Soojung looks at the receipt, and does a double take at the scribble on the top of the page.
Out in the water.
She folds up the receipt and stores it in her pocket. “Don’t worry about it. I owe you, remember?”
“Thanks, but I’m still holding out for that 5-course meal,” he grins and picks up his chopsticks.
“You might have to wait a while for that,” she grins back, picking up her own.
“For you,” he sighs, “I’d wait forever.”
16 October 200_.
We went fishing in the ocean, except the ocean was full of stars. It was really pretty. Jinri caught a little glowing fish. We skipped stars and I managed to make 6 skips. Jinri could only do 4. Out of all the places we’ve been I think this is the best by far.
Through her balcony door lies a great expanse, shimmering and pulsing as far as she can see. The sky is dark and so are the waves lapping at her feet, as if the whole world has just become one connected cosmic ocean. Several stones glow at her feet along the rocky shore, and she picks up a particularly smooth, flat one and tosses it into the water. It skips three times, then disappears.
She can’t see anything past the gloom, but the scene is mesmerising. She feels a strange sense of peace, and she almost wants to sit down and just sit there for the rest of eternity. But that’s not what she’s here to do.
She must have gotten it wrong. Maybe she’d had another dream before with water.
Then a voice, calling out from somewhere beyond the horizon. She turns, eyes scanning the area. She can see nothing. Then,
“Soojung!”
Her heart is pounding her chest, in time with the crashing of the waves on the shore. Is it her imagination, or does the water seem more unsettled now? Foamy remnants of shooting stars wash up against her feet, and she strains her eyes trying to find the owner of the voice. It calls her name again, the voice from a distant star, and a huge great moon swims into view underwater. It thrusts a faint gleam through the waves, and she can just make out the shadowy figure standing on the other side of the shore.
She wades in without even taking off her shoes, clothes clinging to her body. Still in the shallows, she plunges her hands into the water, cupping it and lifting it to her face. It feels slightly chilly, almost insubstantial, and drips through her solid palms back into the sea. Something must be happening, she concludes, that she can feel and touch things now. She must be getting closer.
“I’m coming for you, Jinri,” she whispers across the starry expanse. “Just hold on.” And she dives in to the waves.
She hadn’t expected it to be this hard, being only half solid, but with each stroke the waves seem even more hell bent on fighting her. She grits her teeth, struggling on, when with a huge lift and crash she’s pushed completely underwater. For a second she almost forgets that this a dream, and then her head breaks the surface and she heaves in big gulps of air, tasting ash on her tongue. The shore she’d left behind is blazing. She flails in the water with alarm, only to be pulled back in by another wave that breaks over her head.
She’ll drown here, in a cosmic ocean. Surrounded by stars. Poetic justice, she thinks. To be made from stardust and to return to it.
She opens her eyes, watching the bright orange glow from the safety of her underwater grave, no longer struggling against the tide. In return, the ocean stops thrashing around, stilling itself and keeping her suspended in its clutches. Just floating, watching. Waiting. Until a muffled call breaks the sudden stillness, and she twists around.
A hand breaks through the surface of the water, stretching itself out towards her. She kicks her legs furiously, but they’re dead weight to her now. Her hand reaches out, out, out - she’s so close to those long pale fingers - when something warm wraps itself around her ankles and pulls her down into a starry abyss.
Haunted, that’s how she describes it. She’s nothing but hollow feelings and empty expressions. Every night, she replays that exact moment before she was snatched away by some cosmic intervention. She was so close. As close as her fingers touching the window of a train speeding by. She hasn’t heard from Jinri since.
Jongin hands in his resignation a few weeks later. He doesn’t say anything to her, but she sees it in his expression when he emerges from their boss’ office, hands in his jacket pockets as if he’d just casually sauntered in and out for nothing more than a brief chat about the weather.
She returns to the arcade to do more research on her feature article. It has none of the menace she felt the last time she was there, as if whatever weird presence that had occupied it had simply vanished. A wizened old woman sits at the counter at the back of the room, a counter she easily spots the minute she enters it. Like before, not all of the machines are in working order. Unlike before, none of them send her messages.
Are you still out there? Can you hear me? she types out on her pager and sends out. It always bounces back to her in the form of an unsent message. She hurls the pager at the wall, where it leaves a small dent, buries her head in her hands. She should’ve known better than to think for a second that somebody - even somebody in another universe - could ever save her.
So she goes back to being just Jung Soojung, newbie journalist, working 9-5 on an article she never really cared about, stuck in a job she no longer believes in. Once, writing had been her escape. Now it holds her prisoner, caging her in with all the words she can’t say.
“Hey,” Jongin holds up a pizza box with a disarmingly friendly grin when she opens the door. “Thought you’d be home. Let’s hang.” She doesn’t say anything, just steps aside and lets him close the door behind him. “I brought some beer too so we can have a proper party,” he announces, setting a six-pack on the table.
“What are we celebrating?” Soojung asks almost scathingly, taking the pizza box from her and setting it on the floor. Jongin removes his jacket and seats himself, leaning against the open balcony door. He looks at her warily.
“Just having dinner with an old friend,” he says cautiously. It’s so not his style that Soojung’s irritation only grows, like black sludge spreading through her chest and coating her insides. “Isn’t that something to celebrate?”
“Hmm.” She cracks open a bottle and passes it to him. He doesn’t take it.
“Okay, seriously,” Jongin frowns and crosses his arms over his chest. “What’s going on with you? I know you’re the last person to be all sunshine and daisies and you can get a little weird when you’re stressed but what - did I do something to you? Are you mad at me because I quit? Is that it?”
She looks at him, properly looks at him, and she doesn’t recognise the person looking back. A small part of her is defiant, but another part whispers this is all your doing. And maybe she had it coming, keeping people at arms’ length all her life. Only letting them in when she felt like she needed them. Taking in their kindness and care and having nothing but grateful silence to give in return. Can she put this into words now?
They’re at the fork in the road now. If she wants she can veer right and put an end to all this… what she’s deemed as a shallow friendship from the beginning. She can choose to ignore the pleading look in Jongin’s eyes. She can choose to leave him behind, if it means she might be able to find Jinri. Or she can choose to keep going down the road of reality. To stay in the here and now.
“I’m not mad because you quit,” she says evenly, calmly. It’s unsettling how genuine the lie feels on her tongue. “I’m not mad at you. Really.”
“Then what is it?” His expression doesn’t change, arms still folded. “If it isn’t me then what is it?”
“It’s hard to talk about now.” She feigns a smile to cover up the spike of irritation in her throat. “I’ll tell you someday.”
“Come on, you can tell me now,” he cajoles. “We’re good friends, aren’t we?”
“Are we?” Soojung snaps without warning. The black sludge is pouring out of her mouth now, and she doesn’t even remotely feel like stopping it. “You mean like annoying the crap out of me with your flirting and pretending to help me but not really mean it? Because if that’s what friendship is to you, then you’re the greatest friend in the world, honestly.”
Jongin stares at her, looking totally bewildered. Then the bewilderment is replaced by a look of deep, deep hatred. “You really think you’re the saddest person out there, don’t you?” he sneers. “That you’re the only one who suffers and finds the world unbearable to live in. You don’t even know that the way you live is a choice.”
“Oh please, I would never recommend a friend to work at the hellhole you just abandoned me to,” she spits. “You knew it was a crap place to work in, didn’t you?”
“You needed a job!”
“I wasn’t that desperate!”
“Then maybe you should have thought about that before you signed the contract,” he says icily. He stalks to the chair and grabs his jacket. “Next time you have an existential crisis, leave me out of it. I just can’t watch you destroy yourself anymore.” He gathers up his shoes, then pauses with his hand on the door handle. “Hey, remember that time in uni when you got really drunk and told me about your sister?”
Soojung’s blood freezes.
“You’re not mad at me for quitting. You’re mad at her for leaving you behind. And you’re mad that you don’t know how to move on.” He wrenches open the door and slams it behind him.
Soojung picks up the small hand mirror on the bookshelf and hurls it at the closed door. It explodes into a million glittery fragments, all her hate and frustration and anger reflected in the shattered pieces on the ground. A breeze suddenly ripples through the still open balcony door, fluttering open the pages of the dream diary on the table before dying down as if it was never there.
She picks up the book cautiously, eyes tracing down the page.
6 April 200_.
I dreamt I was in a strange city. It was white and cold and there was nobody around. A girl suddenly appeared in the middle of the street. I thought it was my sister but when I got closer it wasn’t. She asked me if I was sad. She told me that if I was ever sad I only needed to call her and she’d come and save me. She was really nice and she had very pink cheeks. Her name was Jinri.
Soojung closes her eyes to steel herself, then flips the page backwards to what she knows is the very first entry of the book.
5 April 200_.
Sooyeon left us last night. Mum says she’s in a better place now. If I knew where she was I’d go and look for her. Even if it’s in another universe. I’d do anything.
P.S.: This is the worst day of my life.
Reaching for another bottle of beer, she comes to the dim realization that there aren’t any left. She pushes herself off the floor, and the room spins around her. It doesn’t matter. She needs more. Clumsily putting on her shoes, she stumbles out the door and into the night.
It’s cold. Stark white and cool greys, like a blank model of a city that someone forgot to add any sort of life to. A city as dead and despondent as she feels.
And above her head, a swirling expanse of deep indigo, dotted with red and yellow and purple sparkles. In the centre of it all, the biggest star just beginning to tear itself apart, burning a fierce blue.
Soojung looks around, not surprised that there is no one but her. She starts walking down the never-ending boulevard carving through the centre of the city, stopping when she passes the building she started from for the third time. If this place is a reflection of her psyche then she can think of nothing else that best represents her soul. She can keep wandering, searching, but she’ll always be going round in circles. Thinking she’s moving forwards when she’ll always be stuck in the same place.
Thunder cracks overhead, and she glances up at the exploding star. It’s even bigger now, waves of brilliant orange trimming the edges of the explosion. It won’t be long until it comes for her. She supposes it would be just like the other times, where she’ll feel nothing and wake up back in her body. So she doesn’t panic when a shockwave pulses through the city, making buildings sway around her. She doesn’t panic when the second one shatters windows, falling glass gleaming in the brilliant radiance of the supernova.
And in those glimmers of astral glass, a figure. A girl, taller than her. Hair up in a bun, strands curling at her cheeks.
When the last shards fall, Jinri stands at the corner of the next block.
Soojung holds her breath, wanting to believe. Jinri looks around, as if searching for her, and then yells out something, obscured by a sudden boom of thunder in the backdrop. A light wind begins whistling down the street, and Soojung looks up to see the whirlpool beginning to form around the axis of the star. She doesn’t think. She just runs. Across the street Jinri starts running too.
They meet in the middle of the street, breathless and unmoving, as if they’re both afraid that if they move any closer they might both just disappear. Jinri’s expression is a mixture of elation and sorrow. Soojung suddenly feels totally tongue-tied.
“It’s really you,” she breathes. “After all this time.”
“And I finally found you,” Jinri’s eyes curve into half-moons. She takes a step forward, and Soojung unconsciously mimics her.
“How did you know it was me? The first time we met?”
Jinri out a crumpled, folded wad of paper from her pocket with one hand. “I found this,” she explains. “Back then. That’s when I knew you needed someone.” The wind catches the sheet and it billows out into a worn looking paper lantern. Written on it in black permanent marker, the words I’ll look for you, even if I have to cross a thousand universes to find you. - Soojung.
“That was for my sister,” Soojung says sadly. “She never got it.”
“She never will,” Jinri replies softly. “But I did.”
With a sudden loud roar of wind, the world falls apart around them, streetlights narrowly missing Soojung as they come crashing down. The buildings break into pieces, falling to the ground in the form of mirror shards. Soojung’s foot slips on one and she tumbles, grazing her knee on the pavement. She barely registers that she can feel the pain when a gust of wind has her clinging to one of the few remaining lamp posts. Jinri is hanging on to the next one. She’s so close that Soojung can see both the joy and fear in her eyes.
“I’m sorry I forgot you!” she calls out, taking a step against the wind. Pieces of broken glass and mirrors streak past her, cutting her hands and face. “I didn’t mean to!”
“I’m sorry too!” Jinri pants, reaching out to her too. “For leaving you without saying goodbye. For dragging you back here without any warning.” Their fingers are inches apart, but neither of them seem to able to let go of their posts. Soojung’s hair feels like little blades whipping across her skin.
“I didn’t know how much I needed you,” Soojung cries. Sometimes you have to know when to let go, says Jongin’s disembodied voice in her ear. So as her feet begin lifting off the ground she lets go of her pole and lunges, fingers catching hold of Jinri’s.
The ground splits open, but Jinri is grasping both her hands in hers as the wind spirals them both up to the sky. “Why didn’t you come looking for me earlier?” Soojung asks as one of her hands slips out of Jinri’s. She fights against the force pulling them apart, grabbing a hold of her wrist.
“I didn’t know how much you needed saving,” Jinri smiles, and in that smile Soojung feels all her own heartache and her loneliness, the grief at always losing everyone she loves rushing back in to her. Reclaiming feelings that she’d somehow lost somewhere along the way. For the first time since her sister passed, she wants to keep Jinri safe. To take all of her sadness and make it her own. But try as she might, she can’t get the words out.
An almighty crack fills the air, and the sky itself begins to split in two. The wind screams in Soojung’s ear, and her fingers begin to slip from Jinri’s. “What do you mean I needed saving? You saved me once, a long time ago. I came here to save you, and I’m sorry I’m so bad at it,” she says mournfully.
“But you’re here now, and that’s all that matters.” Jinri’s eyes are bright, despite the sadness written on her eyebrows. “You have saved me, Soojung, and now you need to save yourself.”
“Wait, tell me where to find you!” Soojung cries out as the force grows stronger. They’re clinging to each other’s hands with every ounce of strength they have, but it just isn’t enough. The world flashes in one hot, blistering blast, and then all is silent. When the flash disappears, microseconds later, they’re suspended in space, with nothing beyond them except the stars.
“When you don’t need me anymore,” Jinri whispers into the void, her eyes as deep and glittery and wonderful as the deepest part of the galaxy, “that’s when you’ll find me.”
Soojung’s hand slides right out of hers, feeling herself barrelling backwards through the confines of space and time, passing icy planets and lonely asteroids and bustling galaxies until she slams back into her own body, safe and sound on planet Earth.
She awakens in an unfamiliar room, with an unfamiliar blanket over her and an unfamiliar (and slightly lumpy) couch underneath her. It smells oddly comforting as she looks around, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun streaming in through the window. It hurts her eyes, and she lifts a hand to shield them. A hand that, only minutes before, held Jinri's in it. If she concentrates hard enough she can still feel her warmth encircling it. Keeping her safe.
“Good, you’re awake,” says Jongin, entering the room with a steaming mug in his hands. His eyes are worried where the corners of his mouth are not. “Here, drink this.” He shoves the cup into her hands and takes a seat on the floor. “Seriously, what are you playing at?”
“What am I doing here?” Soojung groans, head throbbing as she pulls herself up and takes a sip of some very hot, very strong coffee. She chokes.
“I found you passed out on a bench in the park,” Jongin explains. His tone could freeze ice. “You couldn’t wake up and obviously I couldn’t let you sleep out there because even if I’m a shit friend at least I still have some semblance of a decent human being.”
Soojung feels the sting of his words, and sets the cup down. They might have passed the fork in the road but she still has time to reverse and turn down the other lane. Swinging her legs on to the floor, she turns to him. “Jongin. I’m…” she blinks, and steels herself to look at him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all those things last night. I… I was having a hard time and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. You’re… you’re a good friend. Better than I deserve.”
“You’re damn right I am,” Jongin says vehemently. Then he catches her wince and his expression softens. “You’re right, maybe I shouldn’t have told you to take that job when I knew how bad it was and that I wasn’t going to stay there any longer. But you needed help and that was the only way I knew how to help you. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry I signed that contract,” Soojung laughs, and sudden tears begin to flow down her cheeks. She wipes them with the cuff of her sleeve, looking at them in wonder. She hasn’t properly cried since her sister’s funeral.
Jongin takes a tentative seat beside her, keeping a little distance. “Seriously, what happened? I feel like I lost you these last couple of months.”
“I was looking for someone,” she confesses. “Someone very important.”
“Did you find them?”
The infinite galaxies in Jinri’s eyes. The warmth of her hand as they floated amongst the stars. Now you have to save yourself. Soojung realizes now that the person she’s been looking for the most, all this time, has been herself.
“I did,” she nods. “But I had to let them go.” Her face crumples. Jongin only hesitates for a fraction of a second before putting an arm around her in silence. The sun streaming through the window feels warm on her back as she buries her face in his shoulder and holds on tight.
23 May 201_.
Dear Jinri,
I will never forget you again. I’ll look for you, even if I have to cross a hundred universes to find you. I’ll definitely find you. So wait for me.
Soojung.
Soojung releases a sigh of relief as she snags an empty seat on the platform. Some days she’s lucky and some days she has to stand, but she’s beginning to learn that it’s all just part and parcel of life. Setting her bag on her lap, she pulls out Parallel Worlds and opens the page at her bookmark. It’s her second time reading through it, and she doesn’t mind that sometimes she still doesn’t quite understand some of the more science-y bits. She once felt the effect of an exploding star, in a maybe dream. Reading the book is a way for her to keep that memory alive.
She never astral projected again, even though she tried multiple times. Because that’s what it was called, as she found out later. So maybe they were dreams, but maybe they really were all the times her soul left her body and went on its own intergalactic adventure. So she called them maybe dreams.
She finished her article and promptly quit the next day. Strangely enough, the article made the rounds and she now, a year later, has a new job at a major magazine publication, writing opinion pieces on actual issues and interesting topics and not on abandoned suburban game arcades. She and Jongin meet up every other week to catch up and gossip about their respective workplaces. And next week he’ll be helping her move into her new apartment.
So she’s happy. Mostly. Except for the small nagging fact that she’s still looking for Jinri. And maybe she’ll never stop.
The train arrives and she gets up, the wind blowing her hair off her shoulders. She still likes to look for herself in the windows. Of course, it’s always her looking back. The doors open and she gets on, sitting down with her bag tucked between her legs. She resumes her reading, only tearing her eyes away from the page when the train stops at the next station and someone bumps into her foot. She spots a pair of pale looking legs seat themselves opposite her, and looks up.
Short auburn hair and bright red lipstick. She has a tiny mole on the end of her nose, and her cheeks are as smooth and perfect as a peach. Her eyes are as wonderfully bright and dark as the far reaches of space.
They stare at each other for a minute of dazed silence. Then Jinri’s face lights up like a thousand twinkling stars, and Soojung can’t help but smile back.
*