{Warning: This story has a really REALLY sad ending! I just felt like writing a really dramatic story... ^^}

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I’m writing this story because I want to settle the memories of us in my diary and print them in my heart, so you and I, and our story, will never be forgotten.

My name is Chiyo, I’m Japanese. My parents are cosmopolitans. My father is a pilot and my mother a pressman, together they travel around the world for business. They rent apartments and continuously move from country to country. I used to join them; by the time I became a teenager I had visited over 50% of the countries in the world. However, it all stopped when they decided to give me an ordinary school life. So when I was fourteen, it meant goodbye to seeing all places on earth and the excitement in my life, and hello to high school!

Did I mention it was in South Korea? The place we were temporarily living at that time. My parents weren’t there when I was going to school for the first time. They were in Europe for business.
Every day a Korean maid came by to take care of me and the apartment. Luckily, I could understand her, because my mother was Korean originally and she often spoke in Korean to me.

“I’m Chiyo, and you?” I smiled at the boy sitting at the far end of the bench, looking away from me. I didn’t know his name but a woman paired us up to “discover” the mysteries of this school trip together. I studied the smudgy piece of paper she had given me.
First to be examined were the meaning of the cherry blossoms in the park, which we were sitting beneath that time. I thought I knew what it all meant back then. I thought I knew it all…

A little dumbfounded he looked up from his PSP when he realized someone was talking to him.

“You have a funny accent!” He laughed at me.

I was insulted. “Yah! Is that how you behave to someone you don’t know?!” I retorted, but he didn’t seem to take me seriously and continued playing.

“Cherry blossoms, sakura in Japanese, bloom for a very short period and represent the transience of life for the Japanese. All life is suffering and everything decays. Don’t get too attached to a particular outcome because everything will pass in time.” I read the first lines written on the paper and looked at the falling cherry blossom above me.

“How boring…” he murmured.

“Yah!” I slapped his hand and instantly regretted it. His PSP fell on the ground and shattered in pieces.
He stared with open eyes and mouth at the remainings of his favourite toy.

“You…” he pointed his little finger at me. “You’re going to pay for that!”

Before I could say anything back there was a really tall guy standing behind me. His shadow with a thin silhouette was visible on the grass.

“Watch out with what you say! You can’t touch girls! That’s what umma always tells me!” He defended me.

I looked around me to face my saving angel. A slim guy with straight thin hair and square glasses was glaring at the boy next to me. His clothing style was neat and sophisticated but old-fashioned. You could see it was several years old and definitely worn by someone else before. His hair was properly separated in the middle, combed to both sides and held in place with some wax; something most teens nowadays would despise.
He narrowed his eyes at the completely opposite looking guy next to me, although his sharp look didn’t come across well because the outer edges of his eyes naturally lifted a little which gave him an everlasting happy expression.

“Yah! What do you even care?! Who are you?!” The guy next to me retorted when I realized he himself hadn’t even told me his name.

The mysterious guy looked down at the little boy and wrinkled his nostrils.

“My name is Park. Jung. Soo…” he emphasized each word as he spoke. “I think you two are my group.”

“Lee. Hyuk. Jae…” The boy next to me followed as a reflex, although the intonation in his voice didn’t sound as threatening as Jung Soo’s.

“I’m Chiyo!” I said to Jung Soo, waved and gave him a soft smile.

“I already know…” Hyuk Jae said bluntly. I really didn’t like him.

No, more than that: I detested him.

“Hi, Chiyo…” Jung Soo flashed a mile-wide smile, exposing a perfect line of white teeth with braces and a deep dimple in his left cheek.

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© Irene. 2010 ; All rights reserved. Distribution of any kind is prohibited without the permission of Irene.