Caused by refraction of light in the atmosphere, a green flash appears above the sun that lasts very briefly before total sunset or after sunrise. 

Later that afternoon, Jongin went out for a run. It was a way for him to clear his mind and get back to his senses. After his exercise, he would always rush to his desk and try to study for as long as he could. With all the endorphins being released into his system, he could usually manage to study with a clear head for approximately half an hour before losing his concentration. It wasn’t much, he knew that, but it was better than not studying at all.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned today. No matter how fast he sprinted along the Han River, he just couldn’t get his thoughts straight. The events that had taken place in Kang Jinsil’s classroom had simply made too much of an impact on him. In the blink of an eye, he had been transported into another world. Jongin knew the world he had visited was a figment of his imagination, but the occurrence was far too vivid to ignore. The rain on his skin felt real. The stone bricks under his feet felt real. In those few seconds, Jongin’s soul had been transported out of the classroom – he was sure of it.

During the course of the day, the grey clouds had drifted off. The boy looked up at the blue sky above his head and felt a rush of envy surge through his veins. Despite the occasional hail, snow and thunder, the heavens seemed to keep a promise of always clearing up eventually, no matter what. Why couldn’t his mind work the same way?

Barely avoiding a sudden collision with a tree, Jongin decided it would probably be best to head back home.

He turned his key in the lock once, twice, thrice. Good. That meant his parents weren’t home.

Frankly, it was like that most of the time. His parents both were award-winning surgeons, based in the Geongang Hospital in Gangnam. They worked 48-hour shifts and regularly attended seminars and conferences across the continent. The times they would be home were usually spent asleep. Jongin didn’t really mind the fact that he hardly saw them or spoke to them. After all, his parents were out there saving lives and changing the medical world, which was way more important than looking after an average high school student. Naturally, he’d started taking care of himself at the age of fourteen and had grown used to it. Solitude was something he considered an important part of self-development. He wasn’t particularly unsociable – he had made some casual friends in school and usually had lunch with them – but being popular was overrated.

The boy entered his room and sat down with his back against the wall. He stared at his bookshelf and zoned out for a few minutes, before realizing he probably wouldn’t get any studying done today. Feeling restless and distracted, he got back up and walked towards the bathroom, stripping his clothes off on the way. He nearly tripped over the stupid mat on the floor, sighed deeply, and stepped through the glass doors of the shower cubicle. After adjusting the temperature to almost forty degrees Celsius, he the water and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he saw that he was back on the square made of grey bricks. As expected, it was raining heavily. Jongin gasped and looked down at his body. He was wearing his school uniform again, the wet fabric hugging him tightly. How did he get back here? He brushed a lock of dark brown hair out of his face. It wasn’t important how he got here. There were other things to focus on. It might be a good idea to check out his surroundings.

The student looked around. There was nothing here, absolutely nothing, except for the rain, the bricks and his own self. There were no borders around him, no walls, nothing. The floor seemed to go on forever, neatly curving at the end of the horizon. Apart from that, everything was empty.

Jongin hesitated for a moment, but decided to lie down flat on his back and close his eyes. He felt nothing, nothing but the sensation of cold rain splashing onto him.

Why do I feel so relaxed? I’m supposed to be freaking out right?

As if on cue, Jongin heard a loud rumble coming from the sky above. He instantly sat upright and opened his eyes. Where did that come from? Did he just hear… thunder?

Seconds later he laid eyes on a suspicious cloud drifting in his direction. Taking a better look, the boy noticed sparks of electricity surging through the particular cumulus, confirming his hypothesis. His pupils widened as he witnessed the dangerous scene before him. The lightning was moving closer, and there was nothing around him to hide under. In fact, the top of his head was the highest point in the area. Meaning that, if lightning struck, he would be hit. He was going to die.

Instinctively, Jongin dropped to the floor as close to the ground as possible and started to roll his body away as fast as he could. He realized that his chances of surviving this were next to nothing, but he couldn’t think of anything better to do. Desperate to get away, he tumbled over the bricks, bruising his body from top to bottom. It was no use. He was going to die here, and leave a battered corpse behind.

Then suddenly, he came to a halt. He must have bumped into something… something that couldn’t have been there before. In search of protection, he clasped his hand around the thing that had stopped him from getting away. He frowned when he realized it wasn’t simply a ‘thing’. It was somebody’s leg.

The owner of the leg pulled himself out of Jongin’s grasp. Astonished, the boy opened his eyes, to find that the only person on the bricks was himself. The leg had disappeared. Confused, he rolled onto his back. The cumulus was now hanging right above his head… ready to release its electricity and kill him. A tear escaped from Jongin’s eye and ran down his temple as a blinding flash met him. Is this what death looks like? Why is this happening now? Just a moment ago, I was taking a showe-

Jongin had trouble opening his eyes. He took note of a change in temperature, in textures and in scent, slowly coming to the realization that he had escaped. Blinded by fear, he slowly started scanning his new surroundings with his palms. It felt warm, and… wet. Everything around him was wet. He also heard the sound of flowing water. The shower. 

He had been taking a shower. He went running, took a shower and then this happened. And now he was back in the shower. No- wait…

When Jongin opened his eyes, he noticed that he was shriveled up in a corner of his bathroom, wet and . The glass doors of the shower cubicle were flung open, and the bathroom tiles were covered in pools of water. The bathroom mirror had shattered to pieces. The boy was too scared to control his shuddering, so he stayed in the corner for a while, taking in the scene around him bit by bit.

…Did he do this?

The following afternoon, Jongin reached the top of the spiral staircase once more. After lying awake all night and feeling restless all day, he had decided he had no choice but to ask Jinsil for advice; the method was supposed to calm him down, not to stress him out. Still, he felt a bit hesitant to talk about his surreal experience. Jongin was convinced that if he would confide even in his own mirror, his reflection would abandon its role of mirroring and just laugh right in his face. Even while walking up the stairs, he had turned around several times, reluctant to face his teacher.

The thumping of his heart disappeared when he picked up on a mellow piece of music with a distorted sample of classic jazz resonating from Jinsil’s classroom. While getting lost in his rambling thoughts, he’d almost forgot about his teacher’s cool personality. If there was one person he could confide in, it would be her.

When he opened the door, he was met by a cloud of vanilla-tobacco smoke. A phonograph had been placed on top of the desk, diligently spinning a record in circles. The classroom looked very homely and welcoming. Jongin sighed deeply and felt the earlier tension slowly dissolve from his muscles. But… wait, where i-

He laid eyes on his teacher standing next to the door he had just entered through. Luckily, she was facing the wall. Freaking out was one thing, but Jongin would probably have had a heart attack on the spot if he’d been able to see the front side of her exposed torso.

“I-I-I-I’m so so-s-orry! Sorry Ms. Ka-Kang I cou- didn’t see a-anything!” he awkwardly stammered, turning around and burying his bright red face with his palms. He could hear her turning around and walking in his direction, and felt like disappearing through a hole in the floor.

“Hi Jongin. Are you uncomfortable? I can cover up if you want.”

“P-P-P-Please!”

“Alright then. Give me a few seconds.”

The boy impatiently listened to his mentor opening one of the drawers in her desk and slipping something over her head.

“Alright. Coast clear.”

He cautiously turned around. To his great relief, the woman was now wearing a black, loose-fitted sweater on top of her straight white jeans. He noticed the green frame of make-up around her eyes before shyly looking away in an attempt to avoid eye contact. This was still too awkward for him.

Jinsil seated herself next to the record player on her desk. Jongin quietly sat down before her, not bothering to take out a mat. “I’m sorry. I came t-to talk to you about something but I… need a minute.”

The mentor lovingly smiled. “At your own pace,” she said while taking a new pack of cigarettes from her pocket.

The boy mirrored her behavior and retrieved a Marlboro Light from the inner pocket of his school blazer. Jinsil chuckled and passed him her green lighter. He gratefully took it from her and sparked up a flame, coloring the tip of the stick a bright orange.

They smoked in silence for a while, calmly listening to Beenzino’s deep voice being released out of the spinning record. Occasionally, Jongin would lean forward and flick his cigarette above the silver ashtray.

When it was about halfway through, the boy cleared his throat, still trying to avoid Jinsil’s glassy eyes as much as possible. “Do you, eh… like Beenzino?”

“Yeah, he’s tight,” she responded. “I mainly listen to jazz, but I love hip-hop as well… anything chill basically.”

 Jongin nodded. “Cool,” he remarked.

After a few moments of hesitation, he spoke up again. “So… eh… I came by to tell you about some of my… concerns. I’m sorry, this is a bit hard for me…”

“That’s okay. There’s plenty of time. Don’t sweat it.” The last song on the record slowly faded out, and the two of them listened to the silence for a bit. “Hey, how about this? I tell you some stuff about me, then you tell me some stuff about you. Would that make it easier?” Jinsil suggested.

Jongin nodded his head. He felt more like listening, anyway.

“Alright. Well, as you know, Principal Jung and I hate each other. Your clever mind has probably already figured out why: our takes on life are total opposites. He’s a total dweeb.”

The boy let out a whole-hearted laugh. “He totally is! I call him Principal Pimple when he’s not around.”

“Good one. I might start using that nickname too. Anyway.” She reached out to the ashtray and placed the black stump in it. “You must wonder why he would hire me, or why I would even stick around in a place like this. I’ll be honest with you. Fourteen years ago, I used to be a student here. We’re actually in pretty similar situations.”

Jongin’s eyes widened at these words. They indicated that this woman might be able to help him in a way he would never have expected.

“Yeah. I had really bad problems with my concentration, and my grades were really low. We’re not talking bottom fifteen here – we’re talking bottom. Absolute bottom. Last place.” The woman smirked. “The Principal wanted to kick me out, but he couldn’t. So instead of helping me, he forced me to help myself. I came across this book about the Method of Loci. It’s a method that helps people memorize things and sort information by visualizing it. I gave it a try, and it worked. Over the years, I built a grand mind palace with a huge library in it. That’s where I stored everything I observed. I managed to graduate with a rank somewhere in the top 20. Jung was amazed, but he didn’t want to admit it. He told me I had been lazy this whole time, and should have ‘disciplined’ myself earlier. Years later, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, something I’ve been walking around with for years. However, I’ve managed to work around the symptoms pretty well, thanks to this unconventional system of organization.”

The student listened intently and nodded his head. “So… you have Attention Deficit Disorder?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re capable of living with it? Despite it disrupting your pattern of everyday thinking? …I might be assuming things, sorry about that. I read some stuff online about it.”

“You’re right. That’s all correct,” Jinsil nodded.

“So… if you hate him so much, why did you come back to work here? Once I graduate, I don’t plan on ever seeing that man again.”

The woman gazed out of one of the windows. “This might sound arrogant, but I feel like every school needs someone specialized in the psyche. Mental health is very important, especially amongst teenagers, and often overlooked. The Principal would never hire anyone like me, since he doesn’t believe in things like that, but he didn’t really have a choice. You don’t just fire your own step-daughter.”

“Excuse me?” Jongin nearly choked on his own saliva.

Jinsil started laughing. “I knew you would react that way, ha! I don’t really want people here to know, but I’ll tell you. My biological father left my mother when I was just a baby. She was very lonely for many years. As a child, it was a difficult thing to witness. Loneliness can do horrible things to people, Jongin, you don’t want to know. Years later, she met Principal Jung during a parent-teacher meeting. They fell in love and married. We moved into his house. I used to argue with him non-stop. Seeing him both at school and at home was terrible. The day I graduated was the day I moved out.” She paused for a second. “Bettering the system of this school isn’t my only mission, you know. I also just really enjoy pissing him off. He can’t fire me: my mom would skin him alive if he did. So yeah. I can basically get away with whatever the I want. It’s kind of great.”

The student grinned and shook his head. “Unbelievable. You’re unbelievable, you know that?”

“Oh I know.”

After chatting on for the time span of two more cigarettes, Jongin finally managed to get to the topic of last evening. He told her about stepping into the shower, the brick square, the rain storm that turned into thunder, the way he rolled over the floor, the way he was on the verge of being electrocuted and finally about the position he found himself in when he snapped out of his thoughts. All the while, Jinsil had kept her eyes fixed on Jongin’s. He felt pretty exposed when he finished – it seemed like she was staring right into his soul.

After pondering his words for a moment, she responded with an educated explanation. “In the early stages of mind palace building, strange things can happen. I often tell students that find it hard to imagine a starting point to literally walk around in their rooms. It often helps. You probably tumbled out of the shower cubicle and through the bathroom, only to snap out of it and regain conscious on the bathroom floor, . It must have been quite an interesting sight.”

The boy’s cheeks flushed a bright shade of pink, but before he could determine whether that statement qualified as flirting, Jinsil placidly went on with her analysis. “You’ll learn to eliminate physical movement as you go along, don’t worry too much about that. Now, as for the thunderstorm. It seems only logical that the shower triggered you to go back to the place you came up with in my first class. The feeling of being in the rain was simulated and caused your mind to travel back. This only happened because you’ve started to relate that place to rain. As I said, you can always build a roof or send the rain away. It’s your palace, you’re the boss. Since you decided to accept the rain with open arms (and an open mouth – yes, I noticed) the weather probably deteriorated to the extreme. Remember that you can’t die in your mind palace. I mean… you could, maybe, but you won’t die in real-life. You’re not in danger. Just go back sometime and change it.”

Jongin nodded as he took in her words. There seemed to be a logical explanation for everything, this calmed him down immensely.

“Now… I was just wondering about this one detail,” Jinsil stated. “You mentioned that you were uncontrollably rolling over the floor, but suddenly bumped into something. You also explained that there was absolutely nothing there, nothing at all. So what did you bump into? Do you remember?”

The boy’s eyes widened at the question. Should he tell her about the leg? The leg that obviously belonged to another person… Hadn’t she warned her pupils about other characters in their minds?

Deciding that this was something he should keep to himself for now, he stated that he didn’t remember.

“Okay,” Jinsil simply answered, not looking fully convinced. Thereupon, she hopped off the table and loosened up her arms. “Let’s do a simple exercise okay? I wanted to do this in class next week, but you’re a remarkable student with immense capability, so I’ll give you an extra class. Please stand up.”

“I want you to go back there. Close your eyes, concentrate, and listen to my voice if you can. I’ll guide you through it and help you develop the area a little. Ideally, we’d be able to create something in it. Do you feel comfortable? Do you trust me enough to do this?”

“I’m ready.” Jongin shook his limbs around to rid himself from any unnecessary tension in his body.

“Alright. Close your eyes.”

Maybe five minutes later, Jongin was standing in the rain once more. The clouds above his head were coloured a dark grey. He watched them drift at an incredible speed.

“Jongin? It’s me, Jinsil. I hope you can hear me, there’s not really a way for me to check.”

The student was having a hard time focusing on both his mentor’s voice and his surroundings at the same time. Her husky voice sounded faint and echolike, but it was there.

“ I’m going to give you some instructions. You’re looking up at the sky, what does it look like? Ask yourself: why does it look like that? Remember, you made it that way and you can change it at any time.”

Jongin liked bad weather, that’s why his sky looked like that. But he knew that as much as liked listening to falling raindrops, he had to do something about it. Being killed by a storm was not on his bucket list.

“Try waving them away… wave the clouds away…”

He brought his palms up and started rhythmically swaying his hands around. Would it work if he moved himself like that?

“I know you can’t answer me in this state… but I hope your skies are calm now, Jongin.”

They weren’t! She was going to fast! The clouds simply stirred around! He had to do something. He had to try harder. He brought his fingers to his temples and forced himself to hyper focus on the heaven above his head. It wasn’t working. He started to panic.

“Regardless of the current weather, let’s try to move on. There’s a lot of empty space around you. Fill it up. Imagine anything you want… perhaps something with a roof?

The boy frowned as he tried to force something out of his mind. He was miserably failing at these exercises. As he felt his heart sink to the bottom of his stomach, he rubbed his eyes in frustration.

“Don’t be scared, Jongin.”

When he reopened his eyes, a gasp made its way through his lips. He slowly looked up at the urban flat that towered many stories above his head. It was the highest building he’d ever seen, the top soaring right through the clouds. The architecture reminded him of the Chrysler Building in New York, it had the same art deco features embedded into its design. No lights were on inside. Jongin could feel that nobody worked there, lived there, or occupied it in any sort of way.

“This might be hard. Try to focus on something, anything. Just wait for it to appear. I can’t check on your progress, but I hope that you will manage to calm the storm and create something in the little time we have.”

That’s right: he was supposed to stop the storm from raging above his head. How come he had managed to create such a solid-looking building in the blink of an eye, but couldn’t get the sky under control? He felt his entire body tingling at the sense of helplessness. He was supposed to fix this as soon as possible; if he failed, he would be killed.

“Concentrate, Jongin.”

Out of nowhere, he heard a warm melodic voice reverberating over the square, echoing against the side of the large building. Jongin didn’t understand what was going on. Most of the words flew past his ears because of the lack of proper acoustics, but there were a few lines that perfectly hit his ear drums.

When I open my eyes, I'm all alone again... in a very dark night.
Leaving me alone, you've gone. Take me with you.
When I open my eyes, you disappear again
I would rather go blind
When I get closer, you drift away... I miss you so much
 

All of a sudden, a miraculous thing happened.

The rain had frozen into position. Motionlessly, the drops hung in mid-air. Had time stopped? Did gravity disappear? What was going on? He tried touching one of the suspending raindrops with his fingertip. It still felt wet, that was for sure, but his finger couldn’t penetrate through it. Despite still being touchable, the rain had become… untouchable.

Jongin knew this could never be his doing. Who would even imagine such a surreal occurrence?

The voice, he said to himself. That voice did it.

“Jongin? Jongin?”

The student nearly lost his balance as he snapped out of his alternate world. He was back in the round classroom that smelt like vanilla and cigarettes. He was looking into the cat-shaped eyes enhanced with green eyeliner. He swiftly retracted the tip of his finger once he noticed it had landed on Jinsil’s symmetrical nose. “S-Sorry… I-”

“What voice did you hear, Jongin?”

A/N: Hi dear readers! I hope you're all enjoying the story so far :) If you want to read more fantasy stuff, make sure to check out Eosophobia as well! 

♥ pominizz ♥