Because curiosity killed the cat.

Maybe it was because she didn’t know, was because she had hurried off to find Suzy – whom she had bumped into – she too who was looking for Jieun who had wandered off without a word. The initial confusion on her friend’s face eventually converts into worry as she observes Jieun’s fretful behavior. “Did something happen?”

“No ah – It’s just.” Jieun stammers on her words, immediately regretting it as Suzy’s expression turns more worried by the second. “It’s just that –“ Jieun says again, in a more composed tone that had fortunately calmed Suzy down at the least. “I forgot to send this paper to my professor and it’s due in for the next hour.” Jieun lies and feels a tinge of regret in the pits of her stomach, though it does not in the slightest way overpower the confusion she was feeling that time.

“Ohhhh, then you should get going then.” Naïve Suzy buys it instantly and bids her farewell and the ever so important, “Take care.” The overlying that everyone was trying to portray was within those lines.

Though Jieun’s grown numb and shrugs it off with an “I will.” And rushes out of the building, it was a good choice on her that she had decided to wear her sneakers today, if not she bets that her feet must have been sore. She doesn’t stop when she reaches the complex, in fact she passes by it, not one speck of hesitation as she treads towards the park.

She spends half an hour on a bench, staring into the same scenery she had seen at the exhibit.. The picture had been taken in this park. No. All the photos were taken in the exact same park. The rocky pathway that was in between a row of cherry blossoms, the graying skies and even the bench she was sitting on was in those photos. But unlike that in the picture, the trees weren’t in bloom, but rather they were wilting and dried up, preparing for the ever so close winter to fall upon them.

Like her memories, that were dried up and wilted but not a chance to see the next spring.

“So they weren’t  mine after all.” She says dejectedly, stupid for actually thinking she had gotten a piece of herself back through the photos.

She returns after her mind was cleared, to their flat empty and dull. Not that she minds this, it would have been more burdensome on her if otherwise.

She enters her room dejectedly and sulks for a good few hours. Maybe because she had gone to know that sulking was one of the very few things she remembered how to do. Though even this tires her out with sullen eyes and a blocked nose, but lest she doesn’t sleep. It was too good of a day to sulk and sleep the whole day. Even Jieun knows this much.

Jieun gets herself together and forces herself from the hard marble floor to her comfy cotton bed. Just under it was the box of the photographs she had hidden the week before. But she doesn’t want to look at it, for they have already been etched into her memory, like a tattoo of a fluttering butterfly. It would be nice to look at for a while but it all goes downhill afterwards.

And Jieun just hit rock bottom a few moments ago.

And maybe it was because she didn’t know what to do besides sulking was why she had her laptop and decided to log in to her email.  Maybe it was because she had suddenly felt bad for lying was why she logged in. A reassurance of some sort perhaps?

Jieun doesn’t know. Jieun never knows.

She doesn’t remember her password nor her e-mail, but that doesn’t matter much for her mother had “graciously” saved all her information in the computer’s memory.

How was she even supposes to react? She doesn’t remember. Maybe there was a time – a month ago perhaps? - where she had shook her head or felt the rushing disappointment through her veins.

But all she wants is to drown herself in nostalgia.  

She skims through e-mails varying from days to years of date.  She’s amaze by the amount of it all actually.  “How popular was I back then?” she asks no one as she skims through the mail of the most recent curt file sharings and through the belated nonsensical exchange of topics between her and the multiple anonymous people.

Nostalgia doesn’t seem to strike her. Though the  humor does set off a sneer from her, oddly enough.

 But it wasn’t any of those that had caught her attention. It wasn’t because she had once told Suzy that she had liked a guy named Seungho. Nor was it how a lot of her conversations with Suzy and the others had gone from fleetingly casual to stifling formal over the span of a month.

Maybe it was because she had only just now scanned through the list of unknown uncertainties and spams was why she had only found out the treasure under all of this.

TS

Topic : Trust me – I’m not a stalker.

And for some reason, a sincere smile breaks out, a shaking finger drags the mouse towards the name and hesitantly clicks on it.

... but I was wondering whether you could be my muse for my next project?
BTW: I was that guy you mistook for as Romeo.

But satisfaction brought it back