It wasn’t scary.

Jessica looks down, her hands around the tight ropes.

Within four seconds of jumping, the jumpers hit the water at around 75 mph or approximately 120 km/h. That’s fast, she notes and wonders how it feels like to hit the water, is the trauma death-inducing? If not, then you die from hypothermia or you drown. A slow painful death. The cold water slicing through every bits of your skin, cutting it, freezing it then it breaks down into solidified organs. It feels cold, so cold. She shivers, even with her parka on.

The rope feels coarse against her skin, breaking it but she’s immune to the pain. She turns back to the cars, as they become distant blurs, heading down the bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge stretches across the Pacific Ocean, from San Francisco to the Marin City. Some people don’t use the bridge for transportation, at least Jessica doesn’t. She uses it as a muse.

A hand grabs her wrist, it was affectionate not violent. She stares into gentle eyes, along with beautiful complexion. “There are other options, death isn’t one.” An accent laces his English, or rather Engrish.

“I wasn’t going to jump.” She looks down again and he pulls her back. She decides that he’s rude, even if he’s good looking, he’s rude. “That’s rude of you.”

He shrugs, “Why are you here then?”

She notices that he’s still holding her wrist; she pulls away, making him awkward. Call her sadistic, she enjoys the sight of him fluster and embarrass. “I can’t be here?”

“No, but people don’t usually stand here and watch the ocean.”

“Well, I like to do that.” With that, she zips the top of her parka and walks off. She sighs, no one told him to be a super hero.

Donghae watches her walk off, it was rude but he didn’t think she cares. She’s interesting but he couldn’t help but notice how her strides weren’t as confident as how she wanted them to be. They were fake and all the more heartbreaking to see. Donghae sees some white against the gray pavement and picks it up. A business card and it belongs to Jessica Jung.

She doesn’t know how it happens. She calls him a stalker at first, now he’s a leech. No matter how hard she shakes, he sticks on her. He surprises her when she sees him at the bridge again, the very next day. She snubs him, and almost walks past him when he calls out Jessica. On instinct, she turns and he does a little victorious gesture. He talks to her in Korean and says his name is Donghae. She gives his hand an awkward shake and responds in Korean. She thinks he’s just happy to find someone that speaks his mother tongue.

Now, her daily walks across the Golden Gate Bridge turns into an interrogation with Donghae. “I’m a writer,” she says one day. She looks from the corner of her eyes, to see Donghae nodding here and there.

One time she remembers him whispering: Did you want to suicide? She rolls her eyes. The way he lowers his voice and looks around makes it seem as if suicide was a bad thing, a sin. Well, it was according to the bible but she didn’t care.

“What do you write about?”

She contemplates whether she should tell him. “About myself mostly. The readers like it and the agency like money so I continue to write about myself. Experience is the best inspiration.”

“It’s the same with photography. Once you actually experience something, it’s like a sixth sense to capture it. Hearing it or seeing it from a screen isn’t the same as seeing it with your own eyes.”

She chuckles a bit at his comparison. He seems to be doing that often, trying to string the similarities between him and her. The only one she could think of is that they’re both born in Korea in the late 1980’s. She sees a flash and sees Donghae smiling. In the next second, she reaches for the camera. “Just like that, it’s rare to see you smiling so I have to capture it.” She glares, and Donghae says that he’ll delete the photo.

He lied.

At ungodly hours the next day, she sees an email from Donghae (she didn’t give it to him, it was on her business card), she blinks through the brightness of her computer screen. She closes the window immediately, the window with the picture from yesterday.

A few hours later, when she retrieves the newspaper from the door, she flips through a few pages and sees herself again or rather the picture from yesterday under the title, “Why Smile?” She contemplates whether she should write a complaint to Aiden Lee about using her picture without her consent. In the end, the only thing she writes is the prologue to her new story.

“You know, I could sue you, Aiden Lee.”

Donghae smiles, he knows she won’t. It’s too troublesome and she’s too lazy. “But I won’t.”

“Yeah, because you don’t really care.”

She feels the wind gyrating around her. The wind was always stronger, more seething on the bridge. She pulls the hood over her head. The fur frames her vision but the wind still blows.

“Let’s go to the cafe up ahead,” Donghae says and she agrees.

“Black coffee? Really?”

“You have to get use to the bitterness.”

If you can’t get use to the bitterness of coffee, then you can’t get use to the bitterness of life. She tells herself over and over again. Drowning in black coffee, she’s used to it but she can’t help but sometimes look for alternations like milk or just water.

“You never told me your name’s Aiden Lee,” she takes a sip of it and relishes in the bitterness.

He shrugs, “I never thought it was important, Jung Sooyeon.”

She enters nostalgia hearing her Korean name. Jung Sooyeon, Jessica Jung was basically her. Jessica made it easier for everyone in America to call her and it made her fit in, sort of. Like him, she never thought Sooyeon was a name worth naming, especially after five years of hearing the name Jessica and some frequent Sooyeon here and there.

“Your article was good though, so I’m less mad.”

“It was a spur of the moment kind of thing, but the response is good.”

“How can you tell?”

“You like it, don’t you?”

Jessica finds herself chuckling for the second time in the span of one week. A record. “You should start writing novels again, it’s been two years.”

She shrugs. She doesn’t know why she stopped writing them, it’s been two years and her editors are mad.

(“They’re rushing us, Jessica, the readers miss your work, where are you? Don’t think that you’re nickname ‘the ice princess’ actually means that you are.”

She responds, giving justice to her ice princess title. “I didn’t say I was the ice princess, they just gave it to me.” And hung up. She was surprise she wasn’t fired.)

She hit a block, and she can’t climb over it, can’t move it, can’t walk around it. She just stares at it, and when she wakes up, she stares at it again. For the past two years, she’s been staring at it. Though, she thinks she’s almost breaking it. She wrote a few hundred words last night.

“The inspiration’s just lost, you know.” She sips more of her coffee. She’s been surviving on newspaper articles, a short chapter squished into a bigger novel but she can’t write multiple chapters to form a novel. Just short drabbles, double drabbles. Vomits of her miniscule inspiration.

Her parents refuted her.

(“Sooyeon, what can you get out of America?”

The silence answered for her. Nothing. She just knows that she feels right here, that her thoughts have always been in English, even when she was in Korea for an interim 7 years.)

Donghae snaps his fingers, once then twice. Jessica comes back at the thrice. “Gain inspiration from experience?”

“That’s what I was doing, on the first day that we met.”

“You wanted to gain experience from suicide?”

“Not suicide but the feelings of it. The wind, the ropes, I need to feel it.”

“Your character’s going to suicide?”

Jessica wants to tape his mouth but that’s Donghae’s charm. Curiousity. “Maybe, I don’t know –” She shrugs and sips more of her coffee, “I can’t tell you much, it’s a secret.”

Jessica sees Donghae shiver a bit, at her idiosyncrasy or how mundane she was talking. “It’s not surprising though, the characters in your stories have a complex way of thinking.”

She quirks a brow. He smiles, rather cheekily. “I saw some of your brief work; they’re short but really well written.”

“Thanks.”

“When you start writing again, I’ll be your first reader.”

“Technically, my editors will be.”

Jessica watches Donghae in amusement, “You get the point.”

“I don’t,” she perches her chin on her palms, “Enlighten me.”

He resists the urge to flail his arms in frustration, instead he sighs. “You’re mean, do you know that?”

“Can’t help it.” Her face draws a blank, and he thinks the name ice princess suits her, too well.

Her phone rang at a derisive hour, at this time people were probably dreaming but Jessica was listening to her parents’ lecture. “Sooyeon, come home.”

She bites back an ‘I am home.’ “I’ll visit sometimes.”

“You said that you wanted to study in America, that you’ll be successful but we don’t see your accomplishment.” Harsh to the core, that’s her mother’s queer way of showing her longing for her. Jessica understands, sort of.

“Mom, when my first book came out, it was already an accomplishment.” Jessica’s truthful, to her every breath. When her first book hit the shelf, she took a detour to almost every book store she could think of. Marvelling at the sight of her books on the shelf and she would absentmindedly stand behind a few shelves, listening – not eavesdropping – on people’s comments about her book. She would giggle in glee when someone picked it off the shelf and headed for the counter. She was unlike herself but she couldn’t help but view the books as her babies. When they were bought, she felt like they found their home.

“You would have been better off in Korea,” her mom remarks bitterly. Jessica knows that if she stayed, her parents would scorn her dreams of being a writer; she would be wearing a lab coat or heading to court. She hears scratching sounds of the phone being transfer.

“Hey, you’re still alive?”

Jessica sighs in relief. Krystal was more lenient. “Hey loser, I’m still breathing. How’s school?” Breathing doesn’t mean she’s living though. She tries to live though but she deems her effort as futile.

“Mom’s livid right now, what did you do?” Krystal or Soojung asks – her parents would glower at the mentions of Krystal.

“I was being myself but apparently that’s too much.”

Krystal chortles, “Don’t worry, it’s a phase.”

Jessica wonders if she sounds like Krystal, heartless with a strange nuance of care. She hopes not but they have the same genes running through them, she could only wish for so much. Jessica coughs into the silence. Krystal takes it as a sign. “School’s good. Your books translated into Korean are horrible to read by the way, but the American version is better, they’re your own words.”

She tries to stifle the laughter and hears a grin growing on Krystal’s face. “I wanted to shoot the translator.”

“You probably didn’t understand half of it.”

“Shut up.” She laughs a bit.

Jessica finds herself in front of her computer screen more often, the seconds increasing each day. Inspirations are her fingers and they keep typing and typing. Soon a page is filled with words, her words. A story comes to life, and she feels proud watching yet another child close to birth. Satisfied, she turns off her desk light and crawls into the comforts of her bed when an email comes in.

It reads, “You forgot about me T___T?” She laughs, too loudly. She covers and looks around, as if someone could see her, as if he’s watching her.

She responded with a, “No, I’ve been busy. Meet at the bridge then?”

He replies, almost immediately, his desperation shows but Jessica could only smile at it. “Sure, be there in 15 minutes.”

In 10 minutes, Jessica’s outside the bridge. She thought she was going to collapse into little bits from shivering. She pulls the hood over her unkempt hair, from hours of writing and living off water and crackers. She thinks she forgot her mind at home, it’s still sitting in front of the computer screen, typing and typing. Sometimes, she sees the words before her eyes but clenches her fingers in tight fists to stop them.

Two minutes later, Donghae awkwardly scratches his head and muffles a hello.

“I got inspiration,” she declares, walking through the park. They would settle for the Golden Gate Bridge but its close at night, let alone this time.

“Really?”

She looks at him earnestly, “No, I just said that for fun.”

Donghae laughs at her eccentric sense of humour, even if it was dry and sarcastic, he can’t deny that she’s trying. “Is the character suicidal?”

Jessica can’t help but feel that Donghae’s too attach to the character and her wellbeing. The story is within the palm of her hands, she controls everything. Life or death, minor or main, everything’s hers. But she can’t help but feel like this time, she doesn’t control her characters. She’s just a palette, blank and forgotten while her characters define themselves and she’s just writing according to their wishes.

“I don’t know, I’m still deciding.”

“Don’t, like I said, death isn’t an option.”

“What if it is though? What if it’s an escape from life, and not a tragedy as what other people perceive it as?”

Donghae stops and thinks. But he didn’t have to, death is never the answer, it shouldn’t be. It’s just a way for people to avoid their difficulties. It’s not a lily-livered act (one should be consider courageous for that conclusion) but one of desperation. Jessica isn’t desperate. She’s just lost.

“I’m not going to change my answer.”

“I wasn’t trying to.”

“Why Golden Gate Bridge though?”

“The character doesn’t have to suicide there; it’s just that the Golden Gate Bridge has the most suicide rates in the world. And it’s right here, so go figure.”

Donghae sighs; her laziness dominates her. “Then are you going Aokigahara then? That’s the place with the second most suicide rates.”

Donghae’s full of surprises, and he enjoys Jessica gaping in awe. “I was bored and researched about that.”

“Because researching about places with the most suicide rates are normal.”

“It is, when you’re friends with Jessica Jung, the one known for her psychological thrillers.”

“Friends?” Donghae stops talking, and looks at her. She smirks, “We’re closer than that.”

“Really? I only thought of you as a friend.”

Jessica stares at him, not a scowl or a smile, just a blank face of contempt. “I’m joking,” he smiles, apologetically. She doesn’t blink.

He breaks her into a smile when he wraps a scarf around her neck. “It’s cold and you’re shivering, might as well use it.”

She doesn’t thank him but smiles instead.

Donghae doesn’t think she’s an ice princess anymore, just an introvert angel.

Jessica bikes down the Golden Gate Bridge one night. Before she leaves, she checks to make sure she has her helmet, knee pads and elbow pads. It can’t help her if she ever topples off her bicycle and falls into the water but it’s good for the mind to pretend that you’re safe.

For some reason, she felt scared as her hands shook uncontrollably on the handle bars.

“It’s pretty,” Donghae says. The primeval trees line their version. He looks at the curve path and his vision changes with the side of the cliff on his right, and the handrails and whispering ocean on his left. It was perfect. One of his photograph asylums. It gets colder and Donghae feels the wind slither through the glove’s crosshatch.

“It’s beautiful,” she slightly smiles, hands on the railing, leaning forward. At moments like this, Donghae felt like the title 'ice princess' matches her, not because of her frostiness but because she looks like one. Her golden locks settle on her shoulder, with her white earmuffs and white parka. She looked like a marshmallow, he had no problem telling her and she had no problem glaring at him.

She looks at him, and tries to filter out the orange parka. It’s not like she didn’t like his orange parka, but orange seems so vivid, something she wasn’t use to seeing. As a joke, she would tell him that the orange parka didn’t match with her white parka; he responded with a 'Life’s tough, Ice Princess.'

“How’s the story coming along?”

He expected the usual, “It’s a secret,” but Jessica’s known to be erratic. “I hit a block.”

Jessica was too confident before. The block isn’t that easy to break. Instead, she thinks it grows thicker. A thin layer of small thorns adds itself every day. She doesn’t notice it until she touches it and gets prick. Thorns turn into solid things, and sooner or later there are layers of blackness enveloping it.

“It’s not going so well then?”

She nods.

“Look at this picture.”

She looks at the picture and cringe a bit. “This picture again?” her manicure nails tap the screen.

“You look happy that day; let’s try keeping it that way.”

“That day was almost three months ago.”

“Happiness isn’t defined by time nor should happiness be limited by it.”

“You’re pretty smart,” she looks at him, and tries to decipher if he’s smart or just saying poetic drivel that comes to mind.

“You just realize that now?”

She thinks it’s the latter.

It would be weird to be seen on the edge of the bridge, legs dangling in midair, a laptop on her lap while she taps away. Not to mention, a single push could mean death or her escape. It would be death when her fingers fall off from the frostbites and her legs lose its swing. But it’s a myth. Sometimes the balcony, a bean bag and maybe coffee would be the perfect alternation but her coffee turns into ice coffee and its gross. So she decides to visit copious coffee shops, possibly away from the bridge to write.

Like the fresh breath of after rain and falling leaves, Donghae comes rushing in, filling her lungs with his brisk affections. Like the fresh breath of after rain and falling leaves, the rain dries up and the leaves find a comfortable spot on the ground to rot away. When winter came, strolls on the Golden Gate Bridge lessen, and Donghae finds beauty in the trees, the forest with its branches that swayed with the wind.

She drinks her hot chocolate, not black coffee. She doesn’t want life’s bitterness; she just wants to warm up. She burns her tongue and cringes a little. The frequent taps of her keyboard distracts her. The backspace is broken, so occasionally you would hear squeak squeak squeak instead of tap tap tap.

She hears light taps from the window and looks up to see a smiling Donghae. She doesn’t wave but she acknowledges him. That acknowledgement led him to sit across from her, ordering hot chocolate as well.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” he says, breathless. He peels off the scarf and mittens. Then his hideous parka reveals a nice black wool sweater.

“You haven’t been at the bridge,” she drinks more of her hot chocolate and he notices.

“You’re drinking hot chocolate, not black coffee?”

She nods and he nods. “So –” He pauses, “Does that mean you’ve been at the bridge?”

“Every now and then.”

Donghae smiles, too wide for her liking. She a brow and asks, “What?”

“Nothing,” he replies. His hot chocolate arrives; he drinks it but doesn’t burn his tongue. She’s secretly envious.

She starts typing a bit while he looks through his photos, the smile on his face growing wider and wider. Her frustration only grew. Donghae tries to see above the screen, and Jessica closes the laptop screen on him.

“You can’t see it yet.”

“I’m your first reader anyway,” he sits back on his seat.

“It’s a secret.”

“At least you know that I’m your first reader, you use to refute it.”

“I learn that it’s no use trying to rebut your self-proclaim title.”

“Cold.”

“It’s not the first time you’ve met me.”

Jessica doesn’t open her laptop for the rest of the day. Donghae offers his camera and she looks through effigies of his infatuation. Frequently, she’ll have raise brows at a certain picture – notably the one of her smiling.

“You still have it?”

He nods, “Don’t delete it though.”

“I won’t,” she chuckles.

Donghae’s photography mostly had people and landscape with the use of lighting. It’s strange but Jessica feels breathless looking at his photos. They’re lively, vivid in color, position and most definitely, effort. She feels like each picture are figments of Donghae, each picture a page in the story of his life. “You’re a good photographer.”

“Thanks.”

She watches as he grows wings and burst through the ceiling. Donghae could easily be satisfied.

He looks at her, she seems alive today. He can’t pinpoint why. “What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing.”

She stops at a certain photo, and tilts her head. It wasn’t the photography dexterity that struck her, it was the content. She repeats the word in her head, over and over again. The block is slowly starting to dissipate.

Jessica tried to stifle the yawn, but they went unnoticed by Krystal’s vigilant eyes. “You know, if you’re tired, you could go.”

Jessica doesn’t understand why Krystal says that but her eyes tell her otherwise. They’re telling her to stay, to talk to her but is saying, leave, go to bed. “If you want me to stay, then I can.”

Krystal shrugs, if her words had mattered, Jessica wouldn’t have left Korea.

“I’ve been hearing a lot more squeak squeak squeak then tap tap tap.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

“You’re erasing your words more than actually writing it. I’m surprise if you have more than two paragraphs on the screen right now.”

Krystal was right, Jessica only had a paragraph on the screen and she could feel the urge to just hover the backspace and hear the squeak squeak squeak again. “My muse jumped off the bridge and is lost at sea.”

“I hope your muse could swim.”

“I think it’s suffering a slow and painful death right now.”

“That’s not good.” Of course it isn’t.

Video calls weren’t prevalent. Texts were, phone calls were but video calls weren’t. When it felt miffed by the phone calls then a video call was needed. Today Jessica was online and coincidently, Krystal was on too. So they talked and eventually, one of them got too lazy to type so video calling was easier.

Jessica looks past Krystal’s shoulder to the rows of trophies, medals and recognition. They were from contests, her classes, or from eminent people. Below the shelf was her grand piano and she wonders if it’s still the same one with her name engraved in gold cursive letters. Krystal was always the one with the talent, the effortless talent. The ‘piano prodigy,’ what their piano teacher would tell them when Jessica was eleven and when Krystal was five. She didn’t like playing the piano afterwards so she took refugee to the literature world. Curled up in a ball, just reading books – poetry, fiction, non-fiction, anything she could get her hands on.

No one called Jessica a prodigy when her poem was first published in a poetry book. She remembered reading the poetry at the gathering of the new book, she remembers her parents saying, “That’s my girl up there.” She doesn’t remember them saying that afterwards, just, “Why don’t you study more on Math? Science? Things that matter in life.”

She also remembers retorting, “Literature matters, how could you read the complicated formulas and useless numbers then?” She got sent to her room afterwards, but she didn’t care, she had protected the thing that made her happy.

“How are your studies?” A useless question but its purpose wasn’t to be propitious, just to fill in the gaps of silence.

“I got accepted at the Royal College,” she shrugs. Yeah, no big deal.

“The one in London?”

She nods, “Yup, I’ll play a piece.” Krystal got up and sat on her piano bench, expressing a sophisticated side profile. Jessica closes her eyes and tilted her head to the side, her head resting on her shoulder. Soft melody started to play, they were refine for someone her age, but not quite refine as professionals but soon, she will be, very soon.

There were high notes, lonely high notes then silence. Then contrasting low notes came thundering in, it sounded like a discourse between the high and low notes. A discourse turns into an argument, and quieter high note murmurs were heard, sulking, all alone...again. Another argument with the clashing notes, then silence.

“I thought you were going to play Debussy’s Noctune or Arabesque or George Winston’s Carol of the Bells.”

“Change is good, especially for you. The song’s called ‘Love Me’ by Yiruma.”

Jessica nods. She doesn’t have any musical sense – not like Krystal at least – so she couldn’t appreciate good music when she hears it. “Jessica, your writing usually flows, like a river, never-ending. You should continue that but you’re hesitating, and that’s not how rivers work.”

She stares at Krystal, not quite understanding. “Hear, listen to this piece, it’s called, “River Flows in You,’ also by Yiruma.”

Jessica listens, an increasing tempo while maintaining its slow melody. A soft but nice, pleasant piece. Jessica felt the warmth – like fireworks – explode. Boom boom boom. Somewhere between the notes, the bittersweet feeling lingers on her tongue.

“Just letting you know, I’m sure people would enjoy your work.”

“I know they would, it’s just,” she pauses, “Weird, being so...confuse about your writing.”

“Don’t stress over it.”

(That night, Jessica hears the squeak squeak squeak, but a lot more tap tap tap of her keyboards.)

“You know, jumping off the bridge is easier than plunging a knife into yourself.” Jessica says.

“How?” Donghae doesn’t understand; death is death. Whether you stab yourself or jump off a bridge, it’s still death.

“You can get the knife out, and you can drive it into yourself but at the last second, you could stop and realize, ‘this is death, this is how I’m going to die.’ Standing on the bridge is like getting the knife out, jumping off is like driving it into yourself but there’s no last second when you jump. You just see the water getting closer and closer until,” she pauses, “Boom, you become one with it.”

Donghae shivers, “You’re kind of weird.”

“All writers are.”

Jessica almost sees her baby forming, the hair, the eyes, everything. She smiles, she’s almost there, she’s almost at the end. But she can’t shake off the daubing feeling of uncertainty lurking. Every day, it left a bigger mark. And every day, it was harder to ignore.

Jessica’s lips curve to form something – not a smile. Satisfied with her work – something she hasn’t felt in a while – she grabs her coat and heads out.

Her steps felt lighter as if she could fly, but even with that ability, she wouldn’t know where to fly too. Soon, she’s at the bridge again, but she’s hesitant. Her footsteps are light, so light it felt like she could be taken with the wind, blown to strange exotic places.

She looks down at the water, it looks welcoming. If she jumped, she’ll be like the fireworks, boom then dead. Death, the word never scared her. There’s nothing to be scared of, you’re just scared of not seeing your beloved ones afterwards. But it doesn’t matter because you can’t feel anything when you’re dead; you’re just a mannequin with blood once pumping. It’s like she’s immune to it, death just another word in the dictionary. You can’t be afraid of something you’ve never experienced before.

“Are you going to jump?”

She turns and sees a frail woman, a little bit older than herself. She shook her head, her face felt awkward with the little curve.

Silence as the girl stared at Jessica.

“You look a lot like my sister. It may sound weird and uncomfortable but can I hug you? I miss her so much.”

It didn’t take long for Jessica to add two and two together, but it wasn’t long enough for Jessica to formulate articulate sentences. “She jumped?” She didn’t mean to sound surprise, rude even but it just came, the surprise just burst.

Her face crumpled, she broke down, she cried. Like the river, it was never-ending. Jessica – out of pity, empathy, whatever it is – hugged her, tight. Her sobs slowly died as Jessica muttered a low, “I’m sorry.”

Jessica felt breakable at this moment. She felt scared even, not because of death but just scared. The awful feeling – like a snake – slithered inside of her body, leaving heated remnants behind. She felt like her bones would all be disjointed and she would just break into a mess.

“I’m sorry; those were her last words to me.”

When the girl left, Jessica looked back down. She just stared and the tears slowly form, streaming down. She didn’t know why, but the tears didn’t stop, even when she begged it to stop. Her efforts didn’t work; she just wanted to break so she doesn’t feel like this. She realizes how easy it is to jump, just five steps and she would be feeling the needles of the wind prickling her skin, and she would hit the water. She realize how easy it is, and how she actually wanted to do it. She wanted to jump, so much.

She feels an arm on her shoulder and she turns and inherently, cries on his shoulder. She doesn’t know why but she just cries, like that girl. She wasn’t as strong as she thought she was.

Donghae runs his fingers through her blond locks. He saw her talking to the girl, how Jessica comforted the girl, but he didn’t notice the lost look on her face. The perplexity finally hitting her, like the water would if she jumped and she broke down at the realization at how scary death can be.

(She hears more squeak squeak squeak, and words disappear from her page.)

“I don’t think I can do it,” Jessica tells Krystal over the phone.

Krystal holds her breath, one second, two seconds, three seconds and she sighs. “Can I ask why?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Is it because you don’t want to or because you don’t want to write about yourself entirely?”

Jessica stops thinking, stops breathing, and hangs up. After a minute, she calls back and says sorry, her line got disconnected. It was all a lie, to Krystal and to herself. But the saddest thing is that she forces herself to believe it.

(She wanted to escape, so badly.)

They don’t speak of that day again. Jessica, too embarrassed and Donghae, being the good friend. It felt like time stop in their friendship. Before he knows it, a month goes by, two months. Jessica seems to have gotten thinner, and more delicate. He handles her with care but she seems lost. He also notices that she’s back to black coffee.

As he tries, his resistance strains. He was fighting a losing battle, but against what? He would ask himself that question every day and every day, there would be speculations but no answer, just a headache – or rather, heartache.

“My muse is dead,” she pronounces one day.

“Does that mean the story’s gone?”

She nods, “It’s like the death of a child, it hurts but I don’t think it can be saved.”

“I don’t think you tried.”

“You wouldn’t know.”

“I know Jessica, I see you right now. Before, you were aloof but full of self-confidence – not real confident, just a fabricated one – at least you had something. Now you’re just...” he thinks, but can’t find it, “I don’t know but it’s like you’re not here. You’re here but you’re not, at least you don’t want to be.” He’s tired, from work, from trying.

He leaves her, without a word, in front of the sign. Jessica looks at it, and remembers the words. She saw it on Donghae’s camera once, the day they coincidently met at the coffee shop. The sign reads, “There is hope, make a call.” She repeats it to herself and she remembers herself doing the same thing two months ago.

She sees Donghae leaving, him disappearing. For some reason, she didn’t want him to go.

She opens the document of her unborn baby, the words still hanging, waiting to be completed. She starts typing, and her room’s filled with tap tap tap. She continues like that, for one day, two days, a week goes by. Time moves on but not in her house, it stops entirely for this one ethereal moment.

Donghae doesn’t hear from Jessica in a week and wonders if he was too harsh. Maybe a sincere apology would mend the decay threads of friendship. He picks up the phone and dials some numbers, he waits and waits and no one picks up.

He’s worried.

He’s worried so he pulls on his parka and dashes out the door. He stomps on the acceleration and his car’s racing down San Francisco. He doesn’t think she’ll do anything dumb, stupid but secretly, he wants to see that she’s okay. Even if she screams at him, as long as she’s okay, he’s okay.

He bangs, thumps, and no one answers, like her phone calls. Her neighbour tells him that she saw Jessica dragging her luggage and didn’t come back.

Another month goes by, no words from Jessica. Donghae thinks she forgot or just simply ran away. He regrets it, so much.

Jessica’s in Korea. Wherever she turns, she sees Hangeul, the curves, the symbols, not English, the stern lines, the letters. She wonders if coming here was the right thing, but she felt like the strain years of solitariness with her parents is killing them.

Krystal’s surprise to see Jessica at the door but never the less pulls her in for a hug. Jessica says that she’s on vacation and decided to visit out of the blue. Krystal tries to see through her facade but only gets chastise. At dinner, Krystal sees her parents trying to suppress the urge to bombard Jessica with questions. She doesn’t know why they hold back, especially when Jessica – or Sooyeon – is trying.

Krystal sees them laughing with one another, freely now. With Jessica occasionally helping Mom out in the kitchen or just driving Dad to the bookstore. They seem strict and demanding but they’re parents and daughter, what loathe could they keep? Krystal counts down, and Jessica only has two weeks left.

“Mom, Dad, here are my work,” Jessica hands them her novel and some books with her one chapter stories.

At first, they stared at them. They say that they don’t have time to read them but accept them anyway.

That night, Jessica walks by their room and hears her mom ask her dad what a particular term in her novel meant. Jessica stands there, smiling. Krystal stands at her doorway, watching Jessica smile while looking at their parents' close doors. She can’t help but feel...envious? Is that the right word?

Krystal sees less of Jessica, well, less as of now but more than before. Jessica’s out with her friends from high school, the soshi(s). She comes back gleaming, filled with new and old memories. It feels like she’s traveling backwards into time.

“You know, you’ve been looking at your phone but you don’t do anything, you just stare.” Krystal says, her head against the rough tiles of the roof. She’s trying to find the stars but they’re buried beneath the layers of vaporized water and ice crystals.

“I’ve been thinking, if, or should I call this person.”

A sly grin knitted itself on her face, “Is it a boy?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

It’s a boy.

“So you’re leaving, in a week...”

“Yeah, it’s been three weeks already.”

“Mom and Dad are happy to see you, I heard them bragging to the neighbours about their oldest daughter being a novelist and even recommended some books.”

“That’s a change, they’re always bragging about their youngest daughter being the pianist prodigy.”

Krystal laughs, bitterly. Pianist prodigy – her second name; first being Jung Soojung; third being Krystal Jung. She wonders how she keeps track of all these names.

“You know, they’re proud of you for being the pianist prodigy.”

“I know.”

“If you’re tired, you can visit me in San Francisco.”

Krystal sometimes forgets that Jessica’s leaving to San Francisco. Is she going to come back in a year? Two years? Or maybe five years like this time? “You’re leaving because of that guy, right?”

“No –” Jessica spares her the glare, “My agent’s hassling me to come back.”

Krystal knows Jessica well enough to know that no one – maybe her or her parents – can hassle Jessica into anything.

Albeit Jessica’s busy trying to tie up old corrode relationships, she still has time to write. She never forgets to write. Even if she’s walking down a corner store, she’ll pull out a notebook to jot down the surges of inspiration. Even if they’ll be left on that page, unlooked at, forgotten, the fact that inspiration is there is enough to intrigue her.

“You don’t have to go,” her Mom tries to casually put out.

Jessica likes it in Korea, but not as a home. She already has one. “I’ll always visit.”

“Stay healthy and tell us about your new releases.”

“Thanks Dad, I will.”

She turns to Krystal, “Take care of Thistlebell and get ready to go to London.”

“Who names a cat Thistlebell?” Krystal rolls her eyes. Jessica is indeed a writer – from her novels, to strange peculiar ideas to cat names.

“If Thistlebell’s not doing well, I’m coming back.”

“Don’t worry; Thistlebell’s going to be healthy under Mom and Dad’s care –” Krystal pauses and breaks into a smirk, “ You’re such a softie.”

Jessica wipes the skin under her eyes, “As if you’re not holding it in.”

Krystal smiles, a small one. “Remember to come back.”

“I will,” and she pulls Krystal in for a hug.

Krystal breaks down, her baby sister finally living up to the title. Jessica smiles, then breaks down and so does their parents. They hug, they say their farewells (again), and it’s time for Jessica to leave with promises to come back. Sincere promises, not the half-hearted ones from five years ago.

Before leaving, she remembers to smile and wave.

Jessica isn’t surprise to hear her agent’s voice when she comes back, though she was disappointed. “The trip was worthwhile; I’ve finally got the inspiration.”

She nods at the agent’s nagging and lectures, “Yes, yes. I’m not done yet but it’s close, just missing a little bit of polishing.”

She hangs up with happy remarks from the agent, a first. She felt confident.

Donghae’s surprise to see the familiar figure (he thought he would never see her again) especially at one of his photography sanctuaries. He counts down and he remembers that it’s been a month and two weeks since she left. He notices how she stands, tall with confidence, not fabricated, not a pretext of her underlying fear but true confidence. He felt happy to know that she’s been doing well – without him – she’s even growing and venturing the world – yet again, without him – but this feeling of bitterness doesn’t leave and the taste only grows more acrid as the seconds go by.

She’s staring at the barks, studying the patterns, pondering. He sees a small fire flicker here and there. A different smile, one burning with true confidence. What surprises him even more is the moment when she turns around and says a harmless hi.

“Where have you been?! Why are you here?” He tries not to sound desperate, it’s not like he’s been worried for her. Donghae’s a horrible liar.

“Korea, mending relationships, securing old ties. I remember this scene in your pictures so I took a shot and came here.” To find you.

He nods, a little bit happy. “How was Korea?” He expected it to be awkward but it was their every day chatter to fill in the voids of silence.

“It was fun, but it didn’t feel right.” She shrugs, her fingertips still tracing the intricate human-made etches of hearts and anniversaries on the bark.

“You could have told me you were leaving.”

“It was obvious, wasn’t it?” She tilts her head, and he sighs. She notes that it’s one of his defeated sighs.

“But you’re back.”

“I know, my muse’s alive. I found out that it can swim, extremely well against the crashing waves and thundering storms.” Donghae wonders if she missed him, but her erupt departure told him the answer. He knows now that high hopes result in devastation.

(As if his hopes in the past six months didn’t teach him that.)

“That’s good to hear.” She fishes a pile of paper out of her shoulder bag, all connected with a string running through the hole punch space, and brings it to Donghae’s face, much to his curiosity.

“Finite in Infinite.” He reads the one line in the center of the page; follow by a, “By Jessica Jung.”

“It’s not finished yet, but true to your self-proclaim title, none of the editors saw it, so you’re the first reader.”

He smiles, a big one. She smiles, his smiles were contagious but she doesn’t tell him that. “What’s the storyline?” He expected her to say ‘it’s a secret’ or a ‘you’ll find out.’ It was neither of them.

“It’s about a girl who goes to a bridge to escape from her life but ends up falling in love with a naïve idiot.”


*~*


a/n: Any comments? Criticism? This is probably my favourite work so far. Not only story-line wise but also psychologically. It was interesting writing Jessica's personality and I guess from past experience, it makes the story all the more special to me :)