“Who are you?”

No answer, just a gentle smile. Bright eyes, blonde hair, light pink lips -  a flash of color in the midst of white-laden trees.

“Come with me,” is all she says. 

Wonwoo follows, thick gloved hands grasping her un-gloved ones.

Doesn’t know where they go, just knows that the snow melts beneath their feet until he can no longer see his puffs of breath in front of him.

“Where am I?”

Her dress flutters in the breeze, which doesn’t bite his skin quite like he’s used to. He can barely open his eyes - her figure painted against a backdrop of a beautiful cerulean blue, almost too vibrant.

Beads of sweat are dripping from his temples. He shrugs off his stifling fur coat. Pleasant warmth of air. The relaxation of his bones; a soft sigh escapes his lips.

“What is the light that shines so brightly in the sky?” he asks, marvelling at how the canvas of blues swirls into an artwork of purples and oranges and pinks before his very eyes.

“The sun,” she answers, intertwining their fingers, toes squishing into the shimmery sand along the beach. Her exposed shoulder, peeking out of her dress, rubs against his own. Her skin has a slightly tanner hue - he now understands: sunkissed.

His new favorite thing, the sun, gets swallowed by the sea. Tears start sliding down his cheeks but she dries them with her handkerchief that smells like salt and lavender. “Don’t be sad, it will come back tomorrow.”

The sky is black, but closely, it seems more like the darkest shade of violet. Stars twinkle in the expanse above them, two figures huddled under a blanket on the roof of a 2-room house. 

He knows this. He knows the cycle of day and night and the phenomenon of the moon and stars. 

It reminds him of home.

“My name is Sana.”

Sana. It rolls off the tip of his tongue. 

He awakens to find himself sleeping on a bed; he finds Sana sitting up on the ground, disheveled hair and mess of blankets tumbling from her shoulders.

“You’re still here,” she mumbles, more to herself than to him. A relieved smile. 

He wants to ask what “here” really means, but he knows Sana doesn’t divulge information easily. Instead, “Tomorrow, we can share the bed.”

The days and nights pass in blur. T-shirts and sandals, barefoot more often than not. S’mores with dark chocolate, barbecued chicken, the scent of her (their) freshly laundered bed sheets. His favorites.

“Where is this? Why am I here?”

Whenever he asks, the irises in her eyes glass over, avoiding his gaze.

A tangle of limbs and sea-dampened hair, crackle of bonfire as background music. 

“Summer,” she finally breathes against his lips, raw and chaste. Presses another kiss into him. Repeat.

“Summer?” he murmurs against her skin. He doesn’t know what it means.

He wakes up to her crying in her sleep.

“Why are you crying?”

And thus, he discovers another question that she won’t answer.

Slowly they come back from their daily excursions earlier and earlier in the evening. He swears her arms are skinnier. She takes more labored breaths.

“Don’t mind me,” she tells him, but her voice is strained.

And just as the sun sets earlier each day, so does the familiar chill that sets in his bones.

“Why are you slipping away?” he whispers, in denial, vision blurred by tears. A crisp wind blows through their 2-room house, and she shivers. 

He lets her borrow his fur coat, dug up from the back of the closet.

He begins to understand.

One day, she’s in front of him, sitting on the rocks facing the ocean. 

For one second, he swears that she’s not even there anymore. He reaches - and is greeted with nothing.

At night, she returns. 

He holds her hand tighter, for fear that she’ll disappear altogether.

“Sana.”

“Wonwoo,” she replies, smiling. A strong embrace: clumsy, desperate.

The last thing he remembers of Sana: the scent of salt and lavender, hushed whispers in his ear of I love you’s that he never got to return, hiss and sizzle of the fire.

The last bonfire of the summer.

He realizes that the questions “who are you” and “where am I” are synonymous:

Summer is a place, time - everything.

Sana is summer. Summer is Sana.

He thinks of the sun, his (second) favorite thing (for Sana is the first): how it sank into the ocean, how the strength of its rays felt against his pale skin. 

Only memories, now.

Breaths visible in the frigid air. Branches heavy with snow. The return of the fur coat and gloves.

“Why am I here?”

He still doesn’t know the answer to that question.

All he knows is that he wishes he’d properly said goodbye.