LEAVE OUT ALL THE REST

I dreamed I was missing.
You were so scared,
But no one would listen
'Cause no one else care.

2012, December 24^th – 9:00

“I’m so excited for Christmas!”, Lee Chaerin, a simple costumer at Absolute Quality bakery, heard a little girl saying.

“You know Santa doesn’t exist, right?”, she turned around and whispered to the little girl, receiving a glare from its mother.

“Sorry for that.”, one of the workers rushed to where Chaerin was, giving her a death look.

“Santa exists and I’m sure on the Nice’s list. This lady here on the other hand...”, he eyed ­Chaerin, expressing his disapproval, and bowed to the kid, giving it a Santa Claus’ shaped cookie, earning an small smile from the shy little girl.

“CL! Stop it!”, he scolded Chaerin in a whisper. “You’re gonna scare the kids away!”, he continued, walking away from her, going back to the balcony.

Chaerin followed.

“Come on, Thunder. That was just a joke.”, she shrugged. “Anyway, it’s just Christmas.”, she concluded, playing with the little container of sugar on the balcony.

Thunder touched her hand, stopping her moves before she could break the poor container.

“It’s not just Christmas.”, he said in a serious tune. “It’s a time when people love more, forgive more and even are more... well, human.”, he explained, getting slightly annoyed by Chaerin’s behavior.

“Whatever.”, she ignored.

Time passed and Chaerin hadn’t even changed her sit.  She didn’t talk nor did anything. She just waited for the time the bakery would close so she could go home, to pretend she had many things to do when she actually didn’t.

“I’ll drive you home.”, she happily exclaimed, jumping out of her chair and stretching her arms, when Thunder came back from the inside of the bakery wearing something different from his uniform. It was time to go home.

CL drove around for more than necessary to arrive at his house. She liked enjoying his presence. Having him close made her feel slightly glad.

“Christmas here, Christmas there, Christmas everywhere. Damn it!”, she complained when they had to stop at the traffic light behind a car carrying a huge Christmas tree with orange adornments.

“Come on, CL!”, Thunder laughed at her attitude. “Christmas is a time to be nice to people.”, he tapped her arm lightly.

“People are hypocrites!”, she replied, blowing the horn because the lights were green but the other driver wasn’t moving once inch.

“You’re like the Grinch!”, Thunder crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked  outside of the car. “Not enjoying Christmas and trying to stop people from enjoying it too...”, he turned back to her, puffing his cheeks.

CL looked at him. That was not true. She wasn’t like that.

“Oh! If it’s because of that little girl... I was just helping her!”. She defended herself, finally getting to drive again when the other car moved.

“Helping her?!”, Thunder exclaimed. He couldn’t believe that.

“Yes! I was saving her from future disappointments.”, CL shrugged.

All she got was a disapproval look from Thunder.

2012, December 24^th - 18:00

CL parked her car in front of a very well decorated house. There was a Santa Claus hanging on the door and many lights of all colors.

She was ready to leave after concluding her mission of watching Thunder entering his warm home.

“Come in.”, Thunder invited, opening the car’s door and getting out of the vehicle.

Chaerin took some minutes pondering if she should accept that or just drive away without a word.

“Won’t you come?”, she heard him saying and made up her mind.

She left the car and they walked to the house, entering together.

“Hey, CL!”, Dara, Thunder’s older sister greeted. “You came to help us with the adornments?”, she asked. “Baby brother, take the cookies for her.”, she greeted Thunder too. The latter taking his coat off and running to the kitchen.

“Oh, Bom and Minzy are helping too.”, Thunder’s mother said, entering the room with a box full of things for the tree in hands.

CL didn’t say anything, she just nodded, looking around. That family was really into Christmas.

“We’re preparing a small Christmas party here.”, she heard Thunder’s voice coming from the kitchen. He came from there holding a tray with some cookies he had prepared earlier that day.

“Are you coming?”, he asked, a smile full of expectation, handing her a cup with warm milk.

At that moment, CL watched her past Christmases in front of her. All those voices in her head were telling her not to go, that she should stay home during the holiday.

 It felt like hours but she had thought for only three seconds before giving Thunder and everybody in that room an answer.

CL felt pressured. They wouldn’t accept a “no”. There was one only solution to that whole situation: to tell a lie. 

“Sure!”, she smiled.

“Yay!!”, Dara  exclaimed. “GD is coming too! It’s our first Christmas together!”, she cheered, hugging CL’s arm in the couch, speaking about her new boyfriend and how they had first met.

It was at a fast food, when she had taken Thunder and their mother to eat out and the cashier had mistaken their order. Dara had had an argument with that distracted guy and it ended up that he asked her out.

During their date, the guy seemed to be a jerk and she met her current boyfriend when she was running away from him, entering the male’s toilet by mistake.

“Perhaps you could introduce me to that friend of yours you told me about.”, CL heard Bom suggest, her hands together as in a pray. “You said you would…please?”, she insisted.

CL looked at all the others, they had approving smiles on their faces.

“Sure!”, she said. “You bet I will!”, she smiled along, showing her thumb up to her friend.

It’s been more than two years Park Bom hadn’t been in a decent relationship and nearly seven months CL had said she would introduce her to a nice male friend of hers. A good man, who wouldn’t take Bom to his bed and forget her name in the morning.

Perhaps she would help Bom to finally find a nice boyfriend and have herself a good time instead of suffocating herself in loneliness, as she had said.   

“I have to go now…”, Minzy had a disappointed look.

“ There will be a Christmas party at my home too. They’ll bring some cousins for me to meet.”, She slowly got up from the floor, she didn’t want to meet her distant relatives at all. She was a good nineteen years old girl and she loved her family, but there was something making her uneasy about this meeting.

“Oh, CL could take you on her way here.”, Thunder suggested, excitedly looking from Minzy to CL, his cute smile showing.

He could have asked Chaerin to bring him a piece of the moon until midnight. As long as he smiled like that, CL would do anything he’d ask her.

“Sure!”, she repeated the word for the third time in less than one hour now, drowning herself in more lies.

Minzy brightened up. She didn’t know why, but that was such a relief. She left in a hurry, her mom was calling non-stop and she didn’t want to get scolded.

“Wow! I better go now.”, CL looked at her cell phone, checking the time.

“ It’s getting late and I have to prepare some stuff.”, she got up from the Park’s couch, putting her empty milk cup on the table.

“Sanghyun will walk you to the car.”, Mrs. Park said, tapping her son on the shoulder, giving him a look.

Thunder got up from the floor, leaving the adornments he had in hands, walking closer to Chaerin to guide her outside.

“So, see you later, right?”, he spoke as soon as they left his house, his hands in his pockets to protect his fingers from the cold.

“Sure…yeah, I’m coming.”, she confirmed, smiling at him. We could ask her to give him one of her lungs, as long as the possibility of him wanting to see her was there, she would always say “yes”.

“Well, see you later then.”, Thunder held the car’s door open. He wanted to give her a peck on the cheek but maybe she wouldn’t accept that very well.

They waved goodbye to each other. Sanghyun smiling as he watched CL slowly driving away.