He saw her in a shower of cherry blossoms; white and gentle like morning rays, the pink petals almost becoming of the faint flush in her cheeks and the delighted curve of her smile beckoning them. He stopped to watch; blatantly, curiously fascinated. Oblivious and unconscious of anything around her, there was something startlingly beautiful in the way she seemed so delighted with the falling blossoms. It made him want to be just as happy about them.
Tentatively, he took a step closer. He almost expected to see wings on her back, a celestial creature perhaps. But of course, there was nothing dramatic as such; she just had on a thin white, sweater. He allowed a smile at himself for momentarily being carried away, and at that instant, the creature chose to turn and look his way.
Myungsoo met her eyes. At that moment, it seemed the only thing to do; an ill-considered, reckless judgment, because the next moment, he didn’t know what to do. He felt himself freeze, felt her eyes searching, every facial muscle of his being set aflame under her gaze. Everything else seemed to freeze too, and Myungsoo waited for the world to end. Hastily gathering up his fascination, he began to stride past her when the creature opened .
“Isn’t it beautiful to live in spring,” she declared as a greeting. He stopped abruptly, a bit taken aback by her reaction. Her voice carried the same delight of her smile, and he turned slowly, realizing the world hadn’t ended after all. Despite being relieved and thankful, his brain, with a lot of effort, responded with a sigh-like chuckle.
“It’s like pink snowflakes,” she continued despite his discouraging response. “Instead of watching the first snow fall, I’d watch the last cherry blossom fall a thousand times over.” She held out her palm, catching a petal delicately, almost afraid as if it would melt.
“It’s beautiful,” Myungsoo exhaled, not sure which he was referring to.
“I know,” she replied, “everything is beautiful in spring.”
Myungsoo had a strange feeling that she was talking about herself as well.
“I often wish my parents had named me Bomi,” she said after a pause. “It’s such a pretty name. I was born in spring, you know.”
“Oh…” he said lamely. He could not think of anything further to say and she didn’t look like he expected any, so they both watched the wind shower them with pink snowflakes for a while. Glad to ease into that comfortable silence, he tried to see her fascination with the flowers. He told himself that it wasn’t because she was pretty, but because girls were not always as kind as her, were they? And that was why he lingered. Yes, that and something else. Something that made him want to see her fascination with something as commonplace as pink cherry blossoms. 
In a distant world, a bell went off jarringly and Myungsoo vaguely thought about how that noise was supposed to mean something to him.
“Kim Myungsoo,” said the girl suddenly and he gave a start.
She chuckled, her eyes disappearing into crescents. Myungsoo realized, with the world definitely coming to an end this time that he was wearing his student name tag.
“I think you’re late for class,” she said.
“Yes… yes, I am…” he fumbled, blushing furiously while self consciously adjusting the strap of his backpack. He had already been quite late when he started down this path, and now, he was unquestionably in trouble. Not that it bothered him then. He could sense the goodbye coming yet he didn’t have the faintest idea on how to ask her name.
“Well, you better run now,” said the girl. “I think you are dangerously late.”
“Um, yes…” he mumbled again, racking his brain for something clever to say. Random words flashed through his mind, none of them making sense. What was he doing? Hadn’t he already brought the world to an end? The wisest thing to do would have been to turn and walk away before the entire solar system came to an end too.
“Well, I’ll see you again, Kim Myungsoo,” he heard her say.
Not daring to believe what he had just heard, he looked up. She was smiling. Not condescending, not complacent. Just smiling. It naturally incited a smile from him.
“Goodbye then…”she bowed her head in a casual salutation, turned and began walking away.
Myungsoo too, turned away, the smile still lingering. As the path opened up to the clearing of the school campus, he turned to look. He could still see her, still walking slowly, almost disappearing into the white glare of the April sun.

                                                                                                                 ∞

She drifted in and out of his thoughts throughout the day. There were a million things he wanted to know about her, a thousand questions, but the most prominent thing on his mind was that image of her standing in a pink shower, delighted silly. She and the cherry blossoms. The Cherry Blossom girl. He smiled at the name.

The next day, he didn’t find her on the path. He lingered awhile amidst the milieu of students hurrying to class. He didn’t see her. The students soon dwindled and he was still waiting. It was extremely naïve, of course, he told himself, to have expected her to come. She barely knew him and he had barely attempted to make any conversations with her. What about their meeting would have inspired a complete stranger to come back to a lonely path that only led to a school, he reasoned. Yet, despite all his reasoning, he felt let down. He stood below the tree for a while, almost as if paying homage to the tomb of a martyr, and swallowing his disappointment, he walked to school.

It was just as the bell was being set off to mark the end of the first period when something struck him. Jumping up from his seat, he hastily mumbled something about throwing up and pelted out of the room before the teacher could respond.

He was undeniably a fool for not having thought of it before. Of course, he was. Because there she was, walking slowly down the path, pausing to look at something here, something there. For the second time, he almost expected to see wings on her back as she emerged from the sun rays filtering in through the leaves.
The smile came to him spontaneously, naturally, delightedly.
When she reached him, she didn’t seem surprised.
“I knew you’d come,” she smiled. He didn’t ask how. Instead, he asked her name. The cherry blossom girl’s name.
She laughed. “I like being called that better though.”
She laughed without covering , openly and happily. He liked the pale pink of her lips, the way her doe-like eyes disappeared into crescent moons, the way her black locks spilled over her shoulders in waves and the way her laugh made him think of her beneath the shower of cherry blossoms.
She swept a stray lock behind her ear, looked up at him, almost seeming bashful. “My name is Dasom.”

He turned the gentle rounding of her name on his tongue, the austere ‘D’ combined with the soft ‘s’,  a synthesis that perhaps defined her person as well.
“Do you want to walk with me?” he asked, thoughts of school all forgotten now.
She consented. Today, he felt calmer, more confident. Both all smiles, he led her away from the school.

They say that the most effective way to learn a new language is by listening to it as you fall asleep. In that manner, the words become ingrained in your sub-conscious; it becomes a part of what you think rather than what you conjure up with efforts. Lying awake at night, Myungsoo repeated all that he had learned about her- She was a year younger than him, the only child of her parents, she was on leave from school because of her health though she didn’t talk about what exactly she ailed from. She liked books but hated coffee. She liked lemon-grass tea. Though she was taught the piano since she was four, she wanted to learn the guitar. He offered to teach her. He replayed them over in his mind, turning each sentences, each implications like trying to deduce a mathematical formula.

Myungsoo missed school that entire week. She disliked big, crowded places, so they spent most of their time in the local library. An old, soft-spoken woman who had once been a teacher now retired looked after the place. The library had a lot of old books, classics bounded in hard-cover and yellowed pages perfumed with mustiness, but very little contemporary books. Hence, a lot of youths avoided it. Most afternoons, they had the entire place to themselves. Though he enjoyed reading, he hadn’t read a lot of classics, so she introduced him to The Little Prince and Kafka. In exchange, he made her read The Princess Bride, a “self-proclaimed classic” that she said was surprisingly quite amusing. In the evenings, he took her to his favorite café, an isolated tidy, little place painted in brown with just four tables. Potted flowers lined the window sills and a wind chime hung over the door. Over orange juice and coffee, she told him about how wind chimes made her want to be a novelist, that something about the way they made delicate, tinkling sounds inspired nostalgic feelings in her which she felt can only be expressed in a novel.

One day, he brought her a wind chime. She gushed over it and how pretty it was. Thanking him profusely, she packed it carefully back into the box. He thought he heard her mumble something about where to hang it, but the next moment, she asked brightly if he wanted ice cream. Dasom knew a spot across the field from her old school where she said she’d often go when she played hooky. She said it still hadn’t changed at all. He joked that fields didn’t change over a course of a few months. She lowered her eyes then, looking embarrassed. It made him want to pull her into a hug. Instead, he grabbed her hand and asked her to lead the way.
The place was a far-flung field that didn’t have any houses in view for miles. Wild cherry blossom trees grew in rows amidst rambling ryegrass and clover leaves. Settling beneath one, neither spoke for a while. The wind shook pink petals over them and birds chirped from the distant trees. Beside him, he could hear her breathing, her arm pressed up against his, caught the faint whiff of lemon-grass leaves and he could have sworn their hearts were in tandem. He snuck a glance at her. She had her eyes closed and with a sub-conscious smile slightly gracing her lips, she was a perfect picture of serenity.  In that moment, they felt like the only two people alive on earth. He felt an ache in his heart, a longing to freeze that moment forever.    
“Let’s not go back,” he said softly, almost afraid to shatter the serenity.
 “Alright,” she replied just as softly.

Their favorite place shifted from the library to that place underneath wild cherry blossom trees. Some days, Myungsoo bought along his guitar and they played the As, and Bs and Ds. She liked the song “Girl” by Lee Moon Sae and he taught her the chords for it. Though Dasom was an enthusiastic student, Myungsoo didn’t want to waste their time together with the guitar lessons. So some days, he deliberately left it behind. Dasom never asked but walking back, they would hum the song together. Myungsoo sometimes felt something like love rush through him as the poignant words of the song accompanied their walk in the deep, golden glow of the setting sun. In his heart, he meant every word of the song.

                                                                                                              ∞

Myungsoo had never realized that almost a month had passed by until a notice arrived from school. Thankfully, his father was away on a business trip, and his mother was very soft hearted. He admitted that he had been missing classes to go to the local library instead. His mother, aware of his reclusive nature and his love for books, simply made him promise that he wouldn’t do it again.
The next day, he arrived late for class one more time. He told her how he would not be able to meet her regularly for a while. She said she understood, apologizing for having made him missed his classes and said it was supposed to happen sooner or later anyway as she was to leave for a while because of her health.
“When will you be back?” he asked.
She couldn’t say, but he need not worry; she was never going to forget him.
He said he would come and find her. He only knew that she stayed up on Paran hills. He asked where exactly.
She hesitated a bit.
“Dot worry,” he interjected, “I won’t cause any problems with your parents.”
She chuckled. “Its not because of that.” She seemed to contemplate briefly before telling him that her house was beyond the pine groves.
In the distance, the bell went off again like the first day. He saw the worried frown on her forehead.
He knew he had to go. Reaching into his pocket, he fished out his i-pod with the headphones still attached. 
“I recorded an acoustic version of myself covering our favorite song,” he said rather shyly. “Listen to it when you’re feeling down.”
She smiled. “Thank you, I already love it.”
“I’ll see you again, Dasom.”
“Of course,” she said.      
    
A week passed by without hearing anything from her. Myungsoo tried to make up for all the classes he had missed and kept himself busy. In the second week, he felt he had to see her. That Saturday morning, right after breakfast, he set off to Paran hills. It was quite a bit of a trek and he wondered how Dasom could always come so far. He crossed the foothills, the small cluster of houses scattered up the slope, passed a few summer houses and small cemeteries dotting the landscape like tiny cottages. Eventually, he came to the pine grove, the final obstacle. However, walking beyond the pine groves, he could see nothing but more trees for miles and miles. Wondering if he was in the wrong direction, he retraced his steps, remembering an old man he had seen outside one of the summer houses.
The old man was chopping woods when Myungsoo called to ask for directions.
“Beyond the pine groves?” said the old man quizzically. “There are no houses beyond the pine groves. They all fell to ruins after the owners left for the cities.”
“But there are indeed houses there right?” asked Myungsoo hopefully.
“No, you idiot,” replied the old man. “There is nothing there now.”
With that, he turned back to swinging his axe.
Myungsoo stood there, trying to figure out what to do when the old man turned again.
“What is it that you’re looking for?” he asked.
“No, actually, I’m looking for a friend. She said she lived beyond the pine groves.”
The old man shook his head as someone would roll their eyes and said, “I’ve lived here for years son. I saw them when they thrived, when they left and when the place fell to ruins. There’s nothing there now.”
Myungsoo wondered if Dasom had been playing a prank on him. “She definitely said that though,” Myungsoo said, more to himself now. “That Kim Dasom…”
 At the mention of her name, the old man paused his axe mid air, dropped it and turned to look at him.
“Did you say Kim Dasom, son?”
“Yes.”
Myungsoo saw a myriad of expressions cross his face. He seemed to be having conflicting thoughts and Myungsoo wanted to ask if he knew her.
Finally, having appeared to have decided on something, the old man stepped closer. “She doesn’t live there anymore, son.”
“Do you know her, ahjusshi?”
“I used to,” he replied. He pointed down a pathway. “If you go down this road, you’ll come to an un-fenced cemetery. If you walk to the other end, you’ll find a cherry blossom tree and then you’ll see where she lives.”
Despite being a bit confused by this new direction, Myungsoo followed anyway. He found the cemetery as instructed, and at the end he saw a cherry blossom tree beside a crumbling brick wall. Beyond the brick wall, he could glimpse a narrow dirt track. He thought about how Dasom had to cross the cemetery everyday while going back home. He suddenly felt bad.

Approaching the tree, he saw a curious object placed on the nearest tombstone. With a shock, he realized it was the box in which he had given Dasom the wind chime. With a million questions racing through his mind,  he picked it up, and as he did, his eyes fell on the name engraved:
                                                  Kim Dasom
                                                 Born: April,1968
                                                 Died: April, 1986

Placed carefully beside his wind chime was his i-pod and headphones and one pink cherry blossom.

                                                                                                                       ∞

The following year, the cherry blossoms returned in spring. On his way to school, he stopped to watch them fall- pink snowflakes carpeting the concrete. In the far distance, he heard the school bell go off. Soft footsteps approached him and he caught a whiff of lemon-grass leaves.
“Isn’t it beautiful to live in spring,” his cherry blossom girl declared.
Myungsoo turned to meet her eyes. “Yes, it is.”


 

Author's note: Here's a rendition of Lee Moon Sae's "Girl" (which was released in 1985) by Hyukoh- A little girl 
                        And the reason as to why I chose this song, here's a the english translated lyrics of it- lyrics