Chapter 008

The cold had made hands hurt and a discomfort so great set in the bones that there was a fleeting thought of paralysis. It might have stopped the blood from running and made the body structure and muscles atrophy in that position.

Everywhere around was a dull grey and it was so eerily silent that the passing of seconds told by the moving clock hands could be heard. The surrounding cement might have been cold and rough and it made muscles ache and skin chafe on its coarseness. But it didn't matter. What did it matter? Frozen hands shook violently.

By the side of the left one, a notebook with musical sheets laid open and the owner recited the notes over and over in her head. She was ten and knew Vivaldi's operas by heart already. What she didn't know was how much longer she should wait here.

She hadn't checked the clock, it was ever so annoying that it had been avoided, but far more than 3 hours had surely gone by. By the side of her right hand there was a small, proportional trophy of golden tones. In English, the beautiful cursive was carved as '1st place - Piano - Junior Category'.

The lights were dim and night had fallen already, in Vienna it was winter and cold and though the winter had always had, for the child, charming traits of whiteness and cold that pleased her and where she saw herself too, that was what she thought when she was by her fireplace at home or at the piano playing while sipping on hot coco.

It was cold, scary and uncomfortable, this place. But no matter how could, scared and uncomfortable the surroundings of now were, there were quite few things that were as scary as being left behind.

Her tear filled hooded eyes looked around.

There was no one.

Trying to get up from her sitting frozen position on the floor, and finding it quite difficult to accomplish, the child grabbed her trophy and notebook, staggering to her feet, clenching teeth and enduring the tingling pain that spread through her limbs.

Her mother's secretary had picked the dress for her. It was a very dark blue, chiffon and silk now tying behind her back. She had argued she wanted to use pink, perhaps pastel yellow but, of course, her voice was had been muted, trapped inside her own bubble.

Nothing hurt quite as bad, though, as being left behind.

At the end of the terrifying cement place a light flickered and turned off. Her breath stopped and she looked around panicky, her breath catching in , sad black eyes bulging out. Her leg was so affected by the cold that it gave out, making her fall in a slump.

Consecutively, the light just next to the previous one flickered out as well with a sounding flicker and snap. Then the other. Her leg had been sprained by the coarse cement ground.

She started crying only about three hours after being left behind.

The lights had all gone out but the last row of them, meters ahead of where she stood. In that little sliver of light, something was clearly seen.

A white rose appeared. It clearly meant...

Chanyeol?

His eyes appeared, as they had by the Han River and that night in her house. Today he just held the white rose as a sign of peace and irrelevancy, like giving up, resigning.

He opened his mouth to speak but before he could speak there was a rumble and her body shook as if an earthquake had opened a rift under her feet.

The lights went out.

“Excuse me, customer”

All of a sudden, even though her eyes were still closed, there was an ocean of light beyond her eyelids, far different from the set of darkness that Chanyeol’s white rose had been enshrouded in.

“Customer…! We’re at the destination.”

Blinking the sleep away rapidly, Ji Woo found herself apparently drifting off comfortably against the heated leather seats of the deluxe taxi that she had hailed on early. Immediately red heat made it to her cheeks and she stammered an apology while money was being handed out.

The taxi driver frowned and didn’t take the money. He was a forty something, skin a little darker as if he had spent the whole summer working in the fields and bulged out big eyes. His lips were thinned into a line and, seemingly, his patience was running out.

“Customer, you played with T-money on the beginning of the ride. We’ve arrived at our destination.” Touching some button in the dashboard avoiding her confused gaze, the taxi driver unlocked the back door on her side. Ji woo didn’t leave immediately, still unfocused due to her nightmare and the strange apparition towards the end and the busy man cleared his throat. “Agassi, you can leave now. And try not to fall asleep anywhere else while having those kinds of dreams.”

Coughing, taken aback, the young girl looked down to her fiddling fingers and clutched them, immediately nodding and apologizing again, grabbing her leather bag and exiting the flamboyant orange ride in a hustle. The taxi ahjussi didn’t spare her a glance, probably relieved she was finally leaving and rode off right away. Ji Woo wondered what had she done during the ride to make him look like that at her, with a gaze that spoke not of concern but of aggravation and disturbance.

The building was familiar enough that the doorman recognized her right away and even bowed a little, wishing her a fine morning while he read the newspaper.

Exiting the lift, the pianist got ready for getting a very much deserved scolding. But she disliked confrontations and what had happened the other day had been out of character enough already…and to even be her to start it…

Should I just… leave?

Looking down at her handphone a sigh came out. Wallowing in the misery of her own cowardice Ji Woo tried to find a plausible reason for not even having tried to call unnie. Leaving wasn’t an option.

She had to apologize. When her temper exploded or her dark side took the better of her Ji Woo always suffered the most with guilt and couldn’t sleep properly until she tried to fix things.

A svelte finger caressed the door until it arrived to the door bell and pressed the button down, trying to quiet down the churning stomach that unsettled her. That nightmare that she had had before, in the cab back seat, wasn’t helping with calming down her nerves either and she would have broken out in a sweat if the door hadn’t opened slightly, and then slowly a figure appeared behind it, eyes half closed and a cloth attached to the figure’s forehead with a groggy hand holding it up.

Min Jung unnie was elegant, kind and always very poised and although they professed very different kind of styles (with unnie being the very feminine one and she being the neutral, practical one) they were somehow alike in what came to presentation and politeness towards others. But unnie’s image right now, hair disheveled and baggy clothes askew told almost everything of her major hangover.

Though the oldest didn’t open , she did step backwards to allow the visitor enough space to enter through the small gap between the hallway and the door that she had widened to urge Ji Woo’s entry.

“Unnie…”

The words that would have come out would have been contemptible ones, begging for mercy and their friendship to remain intact, spewing apologies. They would have had they not clogged instead of letting her say how sorry she was.

But the long haired beautiful woman inside was, apparently, not bothered with her lack of apologies and her reticence and hesitant stance that came out instead. The inside of the apartment was darker than she had ever seen the night. A very dark pitch pewter darkened the edges of the furniture inside.

Unnie had apparently out any source of light from the apartment, but it might have something to do with her very hangover appearance, dragging a cloud of rain and thunder behind her like a child dragging their favorite toy around.

A hand pointedly signaled for entrance and the older woman decided to offer the visitor her back as she turned around and somberly hauled her unenthusiastic form inside.

Imprisoning her bottom lip between her straight pearly teeth as she got inside following silently, Ji Woo mustered a way behind the somber sunbae that was becoming as shadowy as the inside of her house as she reached for the living room door ahead.

Suddenly assaulted by a heavy social and cultural conscience that should have come sooner her cheeks darkened to an embarrassing pink and she her lips nervously. The inside of the small living room was also somber, the TV was turned off and there were pages scattered around, on top of the small table by the sofa, on the floor. She should have brought something. Haejangguk.

If unnie really forgave her this one, she would so owe her.

Shaking, fragile small hands reached for the papers sprinkled around the dark room. When she tried to help too, the older girl shooed her in a distinct motherly tone grabbing the residual spots of white paper off of the pewter background and put them on top of the small table.

Min Jung unnie was usually poised and chic, but her appearance right now was disheartening and the cruel strings of guilt tugged at her heart again. When she spoke her voice was grave as if she had either just woken up or hadn’t spoken ever since she had awaken.

“Hi, Woo-yah”

The host had finally sat down and was looking at her awkwardly standing figure, by the TV set.

“Unnie. I’m sorry”

She hadn’t had a plan, exactly. Instead she had been admiring the strange shady poetry that unnie’s house comported. But when forced to look at her hooded, sunken eyes, Ji Woo found herself choking the words out with no reigns whatsoever. Even using embarrassing banmal. What was wrong with her, using this kind of language to which she had never been accustomed to? First with who had been a complete stranger and now with Unnie with whom she had never ever accepted to lower her speech. Coughing up her mortification, she took a step forward.

But Min Jung unnie stopped her with an extended hand, silently ordering her to stop right there. The young pianist fought the urge to raise a sarcastic eyebrow, daring her to explain the commanding gesture.

“For what?”

“W-What? What do you mean?”

“What are you sorry for,” pinching the bridge of her nose and scrunching her eyes closed, tiredly, unnie indicated for her to sit by her side, on the mangy couch. “What are you sorry for, Ji Woo-yah?”

A breath airily left her chest and the younger of the two sat down as well. She felt intimidated and exhausted facing this old friend and wisps of ridiculousness at her dignity. She felt unsteady and hated it. She had learned to be the best, act like the best and don’t worry too much of what others thought. Uncertainty had never been a constant in her life but lately it thrummed like an opening ridge across the walls of her confidence.

“I’m sorry for speaking out of turn” her voice quieted down, a breeze against the dark. “For making you and Oppa get in a fight.”

“To be honest” the singer almost interrupted her, her hand falling into the couch, snuggling on it. “I don’t even have the energy to be mad about it. He left about two hours ago. We’re better now. Not ok, but better. Your little stunt actually helped me.”

“It…helped you?”

Min Jung sighed, reaching for a tall glass of tea that Ji Woo hadn’t yet seen until then; steam curled over its rim as she got it closer to and took a deep whiff.  But unnie didn’t respond immediately, instead took a sip of said beverage, struggled a little with its temperature, swallowed down, looked at her with inscrutable eyes and closed them again, a very exhausted expression contorting her facial muscles. As her voice returned, the environment around them had become strangely stale.

“How much do you like Woo Jin?”

Ji Woo furrowed her eyebrows immediately, disliking the question and the subject. A flash of Chanyeol Oppa’s eyes last night, forsaken with carton cups of noodles in his arms and a distraught frown of his lips blurred her vision and she gulped down the feelings it evoked to which there were still no words to describe.

“Please, unnie.  I know I did wrong and I’m here to apologize to you because I know I shouldn’t have talked about what I don’t know but please,”

“Listen to you. You’re afraid. You don’t want to speak about it because it will eventually lead to Chanyeol… because you’re afraid.”

The pianist shook her head, but there was no fight and there were no arguments coming out of to shut her up. To an extent she was right, but his hurt gaze flashed again behind her eyelids and avoidance was better to deal with it. She knew she liked Woo Jin Oppa. No matter how superficial or unrequited it was. She liked him.

Even though she didn’t want to anymore.

About Chanyeol, though, there was certainly something. Ji Woo just didn’t know w