PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ZERO

Flight– somewhat believed to be synonymous to freedom, one of the things in this world we all desire the most.

Everyone longs for freedom, though each have different interpretations of the word, as they want to be released from different things.

All of us have things which tie us down. These things are like chains laced around our legs, preventing us from moving; and once we think we've travelled far enough, they pull us back– the pain of the recoil reminding us of our place, of the power they hold over us. These things that prevent us from moving forward, how exactly do we move past them? 

There are things like these that are easy to wiggle out of, and then things that hold you under their shadow for the rest of your life. I had always hoped for the former, but I don't think I'll ever acquire that kind of peace.

Even as I have run away, I still feel the pull of the cuffs my father have around my wrists. They're more like ropes to me, stretching as far as I go but tightening as I do. And though I have strayed far from his immediate reach, I still feel as though I have not truly found any escape. Someday, he will come to take me back. Someday he will find me.

And so I have decided to learn as much as I can about the rest of the world as I attempt to find real freedom. I try to forget that he is indeed on my tail, chasing me, and relax as I try to live out a normal life. I also dream to find the rest of myself, to uncover more about myself than what the confines of my "home" have allowed myself to. 

I have gone on a journey to find myself, a different truth. I have hopes (not very high ones, I’m afraid) to be able to piece together a part of the puzzle that is my sad excuse for a life. And here in Seoul, I wish to find the rest of me.

* * *

When I was eight, I lost my mother. The reason for her passing is unknown to me, because my father didn’t have the seconds to spare to explain to me what the hell happened to her. I don’t even remember seeing him crying at the funeral. All he did– and probably still does– was sit on his desk all day, every day, and run our stupid airline company and his various businesses that I don’t know– and don’t care enough to know– about.

For that, I hated– hate– him.

But I tried to understand him, and I loved him all the same.

Keywords: Tried. Loved.

And believe me, I really did.

I don’t know what I feel about him now. I didn’t know from the time I left home. He’s a prick. But, as the famous words go, “he’s still my father, he’s still family”. And I would like to believe that there’s this miniscule part of him (however microscopic it may be) that loves and cares for me.

How I long for the day when he would express his affection for me not in the form of fake kisses on the forehead that he does just because the cameras are rolling. I can’t even remember the last time he told me he loved me.

Maybe because he never did.

He didn’t even bother to chase after me when I left. By now, he’s probably found a replacement for me– probably a child from one of his . I feel sorry for the unlucky kid who is going to take my place. Living under father’s roof was never easy.

* * *

I left home when I had grown enough of a brain to know that he had no intention of being my father. Why didn’t I realize it earlier? Before he even began training me to predict stocks and order people around. God, I was so freaking stupid.

I was in tenth grade when I found a letter my mother wrote me, stuck near the end of a book she gave me before she died. I don’t know why I never noticed that letter before. I kind of wish I did, because maybe If I did, I wouldn’t have needed to experience what seemed like daily mandatory hell in the form of my sad excuse for a father.

The day I read that letter, I packed my things up and found a bank account waiting for me under the name Wu Cheng Lin (my mother’s, albeit made-up, Chinese name. Not an inch of her, however, is Chinese) with more money I could ever dream of earning if I became Oprah. My mother also left me three plane tickets for Japan, Washington, and any flight with a stop-over in Seoul. (I don’t even know how she pulled that off.)

So I packed my things up and left Beijing (because that’s where I had to live most of my life, due to my dad being based in China.), and followed her instructions, using a payphone to call one of her “friends” and I lived in Japan for a year. I paid extra care not to get attached, because the year after I flew to the States, staying with one of her other friends. I studied and worked (because staying with people for free is kind of against my principles) in both countries for a year each (Congratulations to me for being multi-lingual) under two different names and appearances– for fear that my father would try and take me back to prison–, before flying to Seoul for college.

It’s amazing how my late mother was able to care for me, despite her not being here.

Unlike my father who, despite having been there all sixteen years of my life before I bolted, has done nothing but look at me as his ‘successor’. To him, I was anything but a daughter.

Not that all the years of my life have been easy, but it’s way better than getting stuck in that hellhole masquerading as a home living with the devil masquerading as my dad. I learned from contacts that he never did try to look for me. I guess that does say something.

So here am I, going by the name of Haneul Jung (this one’s a name I made up for myself this time). I live on the second floor of the Wu family’s café, working part-time as whatever position is available downstairs. The mom of the family, Wu Li Yin, was apparently my mother’s best friend. I am part of their family now, despite the fact the I don’t live in their house. Mr. Wu would be the dad I never had, and their son Kris would be the big brother I always wanted.

And maybe here, I would find all the missing pieces– the friends I was never allowed to have, the home that was more than just a house, and the freedom to choose what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be.

I am well-versed in the art of deception, in fact I am so good at tricking the people around me and the only one who I can’t seem to convince is myself. Is it because I know that this is not the person I am, despite my efforts to brainwash myself, thinking that if I try hard enough to be these people I will eventually settle for one of them and decide that this is me.

But this wasn’t like picking clothes off the rack and putting them on, or maybe it was. Because at the end of the day the clothes wear out and you have to take them off. If you don’t, eventually time will tear them off of you, and after all that you’re left bare– , like a newborn child whom the world knows nothing about, and in turn knows nothing about the world.

Years and years of searching, of being different people and doing different things, and I still haven’t found who I am. What am I looking for? Am I searching in the right place, looking too far? Maybe I need not look and the treasure was something I’ve already had all along. Maybe I’m blind.

So I take out a small notebook, and grab a pen. It feels good to look at a new notepad. I run my fingers down the page, tracing the spine and then smoothing the clean, unstained paper with my hands. It’s completely blank, analogous to starting anew– which is perfect, because that is the exact theme I want my life to follow.

Day One, I write.

“Lost,” I mutter to myself as I write the word down at the top of the first page.

And there is some truth to that. I am lost. Like a balloon left to float into the sky. I am lost like a paper airplane, thrown in a random direction hoping I was made strong enough to be able to fly a great distance. Hoping the paper I was build on won't tear easily, that I was made correctly and my corners and edges are sharp enough. I am a paper airplane, destination: nowhere. I went wherever the wind took me. 

I am just a paper airplane girl.

And so as I write down my day one word, I keep in mind all the hopes and inspirations I have for myself. I take with me the dreams, waiting to be fulfilled; the words waiting to be transformed into actions. 

And by day one hundred, or whatever, I hope to be able to write the antonym of my day one word.

 

a/n: just a little background before I start the real story :----) thanks to you people who've already subbed, and my old readers who remembered pap. i'm so sorry for drafting it without notice. i'll defs finish it this time! kisses you call. c: 
( pstd. 150602 | edtd. 150605. 150616. )