PART 2

(Mina’s POV)

I find it beautiful, how the red leaves swing into the air and fall to the ground, making an orange carpet covering the usually colourless floor. I love fall. It reminds me of many memories with my brother Mark who I am not very close to anymore…

Flashback

“Mittang! Mittang!”

A little boy grabs leaves from the floor and makes a ball with his hands closed around the cold and fresh leaves from the morning dew. When the younger girl turns around, expectant, he throws at her the ball of leaves.

Music of giggles and small laughs…Orange and soft red drizzle over the child’s heads… Dancing in the coloured rain like the ancient tribes. Innocent games and carefree smiles...

Flashback end

I sigh and get up abruptly, so I don’t fall asleep again in the tempting soft and warm sheets. I rush to the bathroom to wash my teeth. “This is a big day.”  I tell myself. But my encouraging statements don’t seem to lessen my nerves.

Once I’m ready, I go out of the apartment and, quickly head to the elevator, but there’s already an old woman waiting; I don’t want to have some lame conversation about the weather, so I run downstairs but some steps recently cleaned are a bit slippery and I almost fall. I thank my good reflexes since I immediately grip my hand around the stair railing.

After that little incident, I resume my run but slowing down my pace and letting my hand slide on the handrail in case I slip up again.

***

Nayeon’s POV

The cold air burns my skin. I feel my throat and lungs on fire while I wander in the streets of Seoul. Different smells of fast food and cinnamon assault my senses, but I don’t realise how quickly I’m walking neither where I am or where I am heading to. Some pinkish and orangeish clouds hang in the beautiful morning sky, but I don’t notice them. My head straight and hard, it feels as if my chin leads my body forward, I stare into nothing, an invisible horizon that my mind cannot identify, my eyes dull and lifeless, my body automatically walking along and avoiding colliding against the crowd who seems to dissolve at my path. I feel cold tears running down my cheeks, but I don’t feel the pain. The only thing I think about is the cold engulfing me and the fire burning inside of me.

Maybe I took a cab, perhaps a bus. I don’t know how I got here.

I am standing. Endless grey rows suddenly unfold before me. Same size, same colour, over and over again. Stones and stones. Each one representing a box and a life under it. As if life wasn’t enough, after their death for “resting in peace” they were still boxed, classified, labelled. Nothing was peaceful in that all-too bright, colourful and ordered place. Every inch of grass seems cut, arranged, under control... As if after unsuccessfully trying to control life, we still had a little power over death, as if we could handle it. But it was all semblance, illusion, for relieving, for making it seem as if all was under control. But nothing is. Death the least.

Stones and stones, endless numbers, till the horizon. I look at my left, I look at my right. There’s no end to it: a stone, and a small bouquet of flowers beside it, and another and another and another.

My breath hitches, I don’t feel my hands anymore, and my throat gets raspy. I know this place. My feet feel cold. I slowly lower my head, and I see the fresh grass. Golf-like cut. Perfect. Ordered. Like everything in this place. Each stone of the same exact length, same size, the same distance between each one of them. Everything is in order here. Except for my mind. Except me. I’m once again, not in place. A little dirt in a respectable place