CHAPTER ONE

            There was a separate peace.

            It felt as if the entire apartment was placed inside a snow globe, because every sound came muffled, almost inaudible. Cars honked as if they were miles away, and the only thing I can recognize was the impatient tapping of my foot—consistently, like the ticks from a clock, dividing this waiting game into short segments called minutes. Shorter, called seconds. They keep saying that time was merely a social construct, but believing that would render this impatience as a self-inflicted dilemma. Waiting became unbearable, because the doormat that I was sitting on had its tiny plastic fibers poking through my jeans. Prickly.

            Neighbors who passed by would send judgmental stares; most of which came with furrowed eyebrows. When a black van parked across the road in front of me, I noticed my reflection on that glossed surface, and I immediately understood what they were thinking. Sitting miserably on the steps outside my apartment, it appeared as if I was kicked out.

            "Piss off," I murmured to myself while avoiding their glances.

            Several times, a tiny dog came around to urinate on the stack of luggage beside me, so I kept throwing piece of cheese crackers nearby. My best friend, Kim Da Hyun, would become hysterical if she learns that someone's Pomeranian peed on her peed on her pink carry-on; but Dahyun was too busy finishing all the paperwork at the landlord's office. Only after she pays the down-payment would Mrs. Sperling give us the keys to the apartment; however, I find it irritating that she was taking more than thirty-minutes, especially if the landlord's office was only a two-minute walking distance. Once in a while, I thought of running after her, but I ran out of Ritz crackers and the damned Pomeranian wouldn't stop rounding our luggage for the perfect spot.

            "You don't want an eagle to come at you." I warned, throwing my last cracker.

            I couldn't really complain that she was taking this long, because Dahyun waited longer. She suffered for a year by going on a 2-hour commute—from her house to the university—while I was still finishing my senior year. Even if it was a great inconvenience, she waited for me to graduate from high school before Dahyun allowed herself to rent an apartment out-campus. Usually, renting a double room costs around $2,700 per semester, but after Dahyun commuted for a year, she managed to save up for the $400 down-payment. We decided to live outside campus because three weeks before the semester begins, Dahyun and I thought of securing a part-time job to pay the rest. The city was too noisy for my liking, because I grew up in a small town in the neighboring province. Dahyun was more acquainted with the city-life. Her family used to live here before she moved to my town four years ago.

            By the time Dahyun arrived, the Pomeranian was already sniffing at her pink carry-on but she didn't notice it because of the large paper bag that was covering her face. I stood up, feeling betrayed for some reason, "I thought we'll take care of the grocery together? Just like you promised yesterday." I groaned while Dahyun lazily peeks from one side of the bag, smiling as if she couldn't decipher how much I was getting impatient with her. "Relax, we can do that later. Look! I bought us a treat." She pulled out a bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer and waved it to my face. The liquor inside swished softly.

            "You bought alcohol?" I crossed my arms, "I bet you stole that."

            "Son Chae Young, do you think I would do such thing?"

            "Maybe not." I mused, "But I didn't wait for half an hour just to see you planning to get wasted later."

            Dahyun rolled her eyes and opened the door, but I noticed that she kept her hand on the doorknob—about to close the damned thing and shut me out, so before she could do that, I inserted my foot at the narrowing gap. "Watch it!" I yelled, while Dahyun winked at me cheekily. She grabbed my arm and hauled me inside. The bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer was shoved into my arms. Eventually, I found myself being dragged in front of the large mirror on the living room wall. Beside me, Dahyun was pointing to our reflection.

            "Do you know what you're looking at?" She asked eagerly.

            I saw myself decaying from exhaustion: two baggy eyes squinting at the frame, while strands of brown hair started poking out from the outline of my head as if I just woke up—what a mess. Dahyun was nodding keenly as if she was still waiting for me to answer.

            "A very elegant-looking bottle held by two awkward-looking college students as if they have no capability to look luxurious with anything. Not even a wine bottle." I blinked at her; each word conveyed monotonously to complement the fatigue. But Dahyun narrowed her eyes at me through her reflection. I shrugged. "We look better with ping-pong balls and shot glasses."

            "Hush, you." Dahyun placed a finger on my lips before she returned to the mirror, taking the wine bottle from me and posing lavishly with it. "Well, I see two inexperienced college students who—" Before she could continue, a loud honk surprised us. The last thing I saw in the mirror was her sulky expression when I walked to the window, peeking through the curtains.  My brother, Son Jeong Hun, was getting out of the mom's sedan. He was a carrying a large black wooden box.

            "You forgot!" Jeonghun shouted.

            "Oh ." I stared at the stack of luggage blocking the doorway. Apart from three duffel bags, and one large wheeled-case, I realized that I didn't bring my complete set of Faber-Castell coloring materials. "Thanks!" I said. My brother even carried with him several wooden canvases that Dahyun gave me for Christmas. After Jeongjun left them on the table and bidding me goodbye, I started going through the unfinished paintings. The most underdeveloped painting had a woman's side-profile, which reminded me of the sorceress in the movie, Kirikou et La Sorcière. I thought of selling them once I'm through with the details—paintings inspired by my favorite movies: Laokoon (1970), Destino (2003), and even the underrated O Menino e o Mundo (2013).

            But the last canvas changed my mind. I named it, "Lake Mulberry" because the woman in the painting had dark red hair.

            "Want me to pick a place to hang that?" Dahyun spoke from behind.

            "I don't know if I want to." I choked, because it was a painting of someone I knew. She was biting on her hair-tie, while soft fragile hands bunched up her long red locks. Even though she wasn't looking at me directly, her smiled implied that she knew I was painting her. But recently, it pained me to look at this painting, or any visual representation of her.

            Because she disappeared for almost a year.

            Dahyun knew this girl because we all went to the same high school until she left a year before Dahyun graduated, but they were classmates in one of her general electives in college, so it was through Dahyun when I found out that she disappeared. It was already a year since the last time I heard from her: I can even remember how Dahyun broke the news.

            That time Dahyun invited me to a sleepover at her house, which was unsual for a school night. She even insisted that I pick the movies, but when I chose Gone Girl and The Lovely Bones, she reacted strongly against it. "I want something cheery, like a light-hearted comedy of sorts." And so, I took my father's DVD of Forrest Gump and Mrs. Doubtfire—all those feel good American movies that I had been saving. Dahyun was extremely pleased with Forrest Gump, but she wasn't paying as much attention to the movie.

            There was empty laughter, and side-glances that I dismissed as her usual weirdness, but during the Forrest Gump end-credits, Dahyun paused the movie and asked me something strange. The song title, "Running On Empty", was frozen on the screen.

            "You know, I heard this rumor going around campus that I've been willing to tell you."

            "Yeah? What about it?" I asked; more interested in picking the crumbs off my pillow. But then I felt the sheets slipping off my back, while Dahyun lay on her side, taking a bundle of them. She started caressing my hair—the same way whenever I went to her house during weeknights to cry and complain about high school. Her gaze was vacant of joy, which was uncommon for someone like her because most of the time, Dahyun's gaze (regardless of the emotions it carried) came with a smile.

            "You have to promise me that we would watch—no, we would finish this movie again."

            "Why? It gets stale watching it twice."

            "Not this time." She looked away.

            I set my popcorn aside, "I'll find out about it anyways. Maybe not from you, but I will, eventually." But Dahyun wouldn't stop caressing my head, even playing with tiny strands of my baby hair. Her behavior started getting strange, so I decided, "But if you really want to watch it again, then that's not a problem. Let's see—I'll just hit this button right?"

            "It's not me who needs to watch it again." Dahyun murmured softly, tucking a loose strand behind my ear before she replayed the movie. The soft instrumental music was playing in the beginning when she said, "They couldn't find her. It's been three days and they couldn't find her."

            "Who?"

            "Mina."

* * *

            I winced at the thought of her name, but whenever I gaze at that painting of hers—I feel at loss. The painting had Mina smiling, which comes rarely because most students find her unapproachable and cold. Her smile was embedded in my mind, I managed to create a painting of her, worthy to adorn the grey walls of the apartment, but I didn't want to be reminded of her disappearance.

           "Usually, I paint to express, and I'm proud to look at what I did. But when a photo or a picture conveys a different feeling from the time you were painting it, I don't think I could look at this again." I turned the painting over. My signature was at the back.

            Dahyun patted my shoulder, "I'll get the wine."

Author's note:

I hope you don't mind that I'm leaving messages here.
The whole story will be narrated in Chaeyoung's POV, but MiChaeng will not be the only Mina-couple.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

Photo Credits: All-twice.com by blessing

Story Copyright © 2017 by The-Boot
Published in Asianfanfics