Adventure
-ANONYMOUS

 

Reincarnation. The idea that the soul, after having left its dead body behind, will return to one day walk the earth in another form. A scary and yet, interesting thought don’t you think? And for anyone to believe, you’ll have to gamble away your life. Surely....the reward isn’t worth the risk. And then comes the question, where are “you” when you’re waiting for a new life? Is it like a void? Black and painless? Or as soon as you fade away, are you given a new life, with no memories of your past one?

My name is Kim Taeyeon, and I’m twenty two years old. At least in this life. I’ve seen more years than most at my age would care to think about.

I know what it is to experience joy, to feel sad, to feel completely and utterly alone, to feel scared, to love, feel loved and then to lose that love. I’ve seen more sunrises, and sunsets than a married couple. And the end?

The end is nothing like what you think it is.

There is no bright white light far off in the distance, there is no tunnel to go down, there is none of your life flashing before your eyes. It’s the best rollercoaster ride, one that can’t be beaten, as long as you remember it, up, down, left, right, and all the while the sound of metal grating against souls and the screams of the dead haunt your ears.


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I took a sneak peek at my watch under my lavender blue hanbok. It told me that it was four thirty, barely two minutes since I had sneaked the last peek.

God I just want to get out of here.

Sighing internally, I faked yet another smile at the family before me. I have no idea why my mother keeps dragging me to these marriage meetings, I mean really.

I would know if I met the right person.

And Park Jin Ho was most definitely not the right person. His face shined, a thick layer of oil covering his features as he smiled back, pushing up his thick rimmed glasses. My smile felt stuck on my face as I fought the urge to gag in front of him.

There was another half an hour of this torture my mother dragged me into, and my “twenty two” year old mind couldn’t take much more of this ridiculous charade. In all honesty, rather than a mother and daughter mindset, we were more friends than anything. But for the life of me, I could never understand the whole principle of how people would just fall in love with a complete stranger on sight.

“Please excuse me for a moment.”

I bowed in my seat at his parents apologetically and made my exit. Shutting the mahogany door behind me quietly, I breathed a sigh of relief, resting my head back against the wood. To tell you the truth, Park Jin Ho wasn’t that bad. A little oil on the face, that could easily be fixed, his dreadful haircut that screamed at me to destroy it from across the table with my bare hands, that could also be fixed, and then his fashion sense.

Well. That might take a little more than time and elbow grease than I could handle.

Patterned red socks and a bright yellow shirt? I’ll pass thank you.

But despite his somewhat shabby looks, his parents were certainly anything but. The hotel room that they had rented out had literally shined in the setting sun. The chairs and tables varnished and polished to perfection. Sweet smelling white lilies decorated the room as its centre piece and the food served was traditional Korean. Almost better than what my mother makes. Almost. It felt like this one had done some research on my palate. Nice of him to put some effort into impressing me at least.

But he wasn’t “the one” my heart was looking for.

Because that place was already taken.

Just by someone in a different life.




Darkness engulfed my vision, and I screamed as gravity decided to work its force on my entrails. There were random flashes of grey that stood out from the complete blackness as the sound of metal shrieking in protest grated against my ears. The wind whipped my hair about as I freefell into nothingness. My hands.....one of them gripped the handle in front of me in a death grip, whilst the other rested easily in another’s hold. The touch emanated a feeling of surety and confidence. Like I could do anything I wanted as long as I held on, like I didn’t have to be afraid of the impending death that I knew was coming. Unconsciously, my eyes followed down my arm, and then up the other’s.

All that greeted me was an empty space where the person’s face should have been.






“Haah......haah......”

My breaths came in prolonged gasps as I returned to reality. I shook my head left and right in an attempt to shake off the chilling experience. A thin sheen of sweat formed on my forehead and I wiped it with the back of my hand, throwing away the cold sweat of fear. Self-consciously, I touched at the two buns of hair tied on my head and readjusted my hanbok, all the while looking around if anyone had seen me zone out.


You see, reincarnation had chosen to do something funny to me. Or maybe I did something to it when I “glitched” the system. Whatever the case was, the life I lived this time around was so much more colourful than the last. And I’m not speaking figuratively either. If you can think of a rainbow’s ethereal glow, with each of its seven colours glowing brightly in a clear blue sky, my eyes see all of it and more.

Every person, every soul had its own colour, if you will. There were colours that you’ve seen before, and there were colours that I would waste a lifetime trying to describe to you. One would think that a soul would emanate from the whole body right? But the only glow that I could see radiated from the centre of the person’s chest.

Their heart.

At first my parents thought I was going crazy when I told them I could see the colour of their hearts. A vibrant yellow honeysuckle for my mother and a warm maroon-red for my father. They told me to keep such things to myself, at first with a warm smile on their face, but with increasing force and embarrassment as I grew older and spoke without thinking.

Strangely enough, whenever I looked in the mirror or at myself, I was completely normal. Where normal was being abnormal considering my abnormal ability. Just skin, flesh and bone was all there was to see. No ethereal glow, no distinct colour, nothing.

I had begun to think perhaps I was the one going crazy, that these colours were just all part of my imagination, reincarnation’s way of administering its revenge for cheating a true death. Perhaps the colours were just how I perceived their thoughts and actions. And for a while I believed this, constantly trying to ignore the glowing hearts.

But as my world expanded, and more people I had never met entered my life, I discovered they had a soul colour too. Some that blazed with a burning red, others with a cool baby blue. I had learnt early enough that those with dark souls were to be avoided, and those with strangely coloured souls always had ulterior motives than the ones they presented.

Jin Ho’s had pulsated with a sickening green through the whole marriage meeting, and one glance was all I needed to take before deciding it was fruitless.



Preparing myself to just tough out the rest of the meeting, I grit my teeth and turned, grasping the door in one fluid motion. But before my shaking hand could even turn it a single degree, another soft click echoed around the quiet corridor.

‘Someone else is having a marriage meeting?’

Instinctively, I turned to take a look. Not at their face obviously, nor their body. But at their soul. My...ability...had given me more reason to distrust the view of only the sighted world. Pretty beings hid away their despicable selves, and distorted beings masked a loving character. Exceptions to the rule exist of course, but they were far and few in between. There are things, intangible things, that could only be felt, things that escaped the mundane world of ordinary vision.

The soul was amazing.

If I had never died and proved it impossible, I would have told you that it seemed like heaven had an earthly form. Unlike a pure white sheet of paper that spoke of a void of perfection, this white had a touch of imperfection that set it apart. It had a vague, sparkling, misty, mystical feel to it and it drew me in, tempting me to fall into another world that lurked behind its seeming shallowness.

“Can I help you?” asked an uncertain voice.

Blinking a couple of times to try and break away from the attractive light, I shifted my gaze to the face of the person whose soul had blinded me.

She was moderately tall, standing only a little taller than myself, also wearing a hanbok. And a pink one at that too. I noticed her hair first, tied in an elegant ribbon at the back of her head, the straight black strands falling down past her shoulders. Her cheeks were supple, not too full nor too gaunt and her lips were two perfect bows.

As I stared into her deep brown eyes, still speechless, a feeling of déjà vu came over me. Like a strange sensation of familiarity, a connection that sparked to life briefly before dying away into the dust, long forgotten.

I knew that face though.

A face I had never seen in this life.

I knew its every line.

Every curve.

Every groove, indent, every imperfection amongst the perfection, I knew.

The tenderness that I would feel if I ran the back of my hand down her pale face. I knew that too.


And yet here I was, standing silently, not understanding a thing while knowing everything. She stared back at me with questioning eyes, an eyebrow raised in confusion.


‘Tiffany’


I almost jumped, completely startled by the soft whisper in my ear that had come from nowhere. The name had brought memories to my mind, both strangely old and new. They played in my mind like an old movie record with parchment coloured lenses covering the view but as long lost connections rekindled, the colour of the world settled in. And the record of my life I had left behind willingly played once more.







It was twenty two years ago that I had stepped on this road. It was the middle of spring as I recall, the sun had barely made it past the horizon, its shining rays lighting up the grassy plains that lined each side of the brick road.

I was a traveler back then, wandering the world, constantly looking for new wonders, and new things to experience. My trusty wide-brimmed straw hat that had reliably kept me away from the harsh sun, swayed gently in the lazy wind, clear blue skies above me. Early waking birds chirped merrily in the crisp spring air, flying from tree to tree as my feet walked a road only they knew.

In a bid to get more distance out of my average length legs, at least that’s what I told myself, I always travelled light with the clothes on my back, spare ones in my rucksack, non-perishable foods and a large can of water.

I didn’t know it yet, but today, I would experience more new things in a single day than in the few years I had been travelling. I would learn what a first love felt like, what a first rejection felt like and what death truly meant in the context of life.

The road was far from perfect as I walked, always with a spring in my step, with weeds sprouting up from in the dilapidated grey bricks. There goes a line that you don’t seek adventure, but instead adventure will come and find you. In my experience I tend to feel that the more energetic you are, the more adventure will want to bestow upon you its gifts. My boots clicked noisily against the road, with my brisk pace bringing me to the top of the hill.

As I stood there, I couldn’t help but think today was going to be a good day. The hill overlooked an expansive valley, filled with the lush greenery of forests as the sun kissed the top branches and the brick road that wound down to a single village situated at the very bottom in a snaking fashion.

It looked like it would take me a better part of the day to get down to the village where I could find a nice place to rest my weary legs and fill my empty stomach. Beginning the long hike, I started to make my way down, only to stop before I had taken my first step.

Underneath an impossibly large oak tree, was what I had first thought to be a white cloth, discarded by a fellow traveler. But as a light wind blew and picked up the fringes of the cloth, I realized it was not just some used material, but instead, a silk dress that ruffled around a person’s body.

As much as a traveler like myself seeked the thrills of the unknown, caution was always my priority. I slowly strode over, with the sound of my footsteps covered by the wind-rustled leaves. Letting my eyes appraise the mystery first, I almost leapt back in horror as they found a girl.

To say she was merely beautiful would be a crime, categorizing her with people far below her. Her night black hair was fanned out on the forest floor amongst the leaves, her pale porcelain face contrasting with the black. Her skin was unblemished, free of any earthly marks and even though it was the middle of spring, I would swear that she radiated a luminescent glow.

Surreptitiously, I crouched next to her, one knee on the ground as I took a closer look. Her lips, instead of being the cherry red of life, chilled with a deathly blue. Her eyes were closed and unmoving, her body completely still, as if a soul no longer inhabited this perfect vessel. Nervously, I touched the tips of her fingers, only to jerk my own away at the seemingly frozen digits.

I closed my eyes to whisper a quick prayer for the fallen girl. At least her passing was peaceful.

Setting down my rucksack next to her, I searched the area for a flat stone. It didn’t take long and once I found it, I returned to the body. Kneeling at her feet, I bowed once in respect before taking out my knife. It was easy to carve the words on the stone. My mind held a message, and through the blade, the stone seemed to understand my intentions and yielded to the scratch of steel.

I had never written an epitaph before and it certainly wasn’t the most enjoyable experience. As much as I loved life and the experiences it had to offer, death was an inevitable part of my travels, an unavoidable fact. One I had grown to learn to respect.

Quickly, I wrote whatever words I felt pour through me at the moment and even though I had never known the girl, something urged me to write more than just the simple R.I.P.

Satisfied, I got up and treaded carefully to gently place the stone just above where her head rested.

It read,
Here lies an unknown angel among men,
Who left this realm for true home.

Time will not grace upon her features,
And she will be forever immune to its ravages.

May her soul find eternal slumber.


I whispered the lines to myself quietly, the wind snatching the words from my mouth. Clasping my hands together, I bowed to my knees before her. The world went completely silent all of a sudden, the wind had died, the leaves stilled and the birds quiet. It chilled me to the bone. It was as if the whole world stood behind me in a respectful silence, to mourn the passing of a mystery.


After a minute of silence, the leaves rustled once again, the wind returning to end the vigil. Stiffly, I got to my feet and took one last look at the girl. Or so I had thought.

I brushed the soil from my legs and continued making my way down the winding path. My shoulders, at first strong and confident felt burdened as I trudged on, my feet dragging. She seemed no older than I, and yet life set us on such different courses. Different roads with different ends. Why did it have to be that way? Did God have to take her back so soon? I could have done with a companion, but this was nothing about my own selfish desires. Would it be me next? Was my ‘time’ up?

No. I didn’t want to think about that. I still have so much to learn, so much to explore, so much to...experience.

So deep in contemplation as I thudded along morosely, I didn’t notice the sound of faint, but closing footsteps.

“Hey, you there!”

I stopped in my tracks as the voice rang out clearly, my face one of confusion. I was sure there had been no-one here. Save for myself and the fallen angel. I heard the footsteps clearly now, counting down to myself when I would turn and surprise the person following me. As a female traveler exploring by myself, I learnt early on that acting feminine and coy would only result in, at best, a slight misunderstanding, or at worse, unwanted physical advances.

I could only rely on myself and the somewhat over-sized letter knife concealed in my right boot.

Three.

Two.

One.

Zero.


I spun quickly, my hands balled up into small fists in front of me, ready to spring forward. But I found myself skittering backwards in fear.

The same ghostly white angel stood in front of me, her thin plain white dress fluttering in the wind. She had a look of surprise on her face, one hand held up as a shield while the other dangled by her side, holding the stone I had written an epitaph on. My heart pumped wildly out of sheer shock and I could feel the beat of my pulse thudding from my fingers.

Frozen, I just stood there, unable to take my eyes off her. Realising that I wasn’t about to jump at her again, she lowered her hand warily and took a step closer, a sly smile appearing on her face.

Still fearful, I took a step back from her advance.

Her smile faded away and she frowned at me as she took a step forward again.

We danced an odd tandem step, to the sound of music only we could hear. But on my fourth step back, she reached out for my shoulder impatiently. I flinched and shied my head away from her hand, eyes closed, without any idea what a touch from the world beyond felt like.

Would it feel cold like a melting ice cube slipping between my fingers?

Or perhaps an odd warmth, like an internal flame?

I jolted as her hand touched me on my shoulder. It was neither cold, nor warm. Nor was it any part ethereal.

It was very.

Very.

Much real.

“This is the first time someone has tried a pickup line on me with an epitaph you know?”

Slowly, I unwillingly opened my eyes to see her standing in front of me, pools of deep brown swallowing me. I shivered under her touch, resisting the urge to squirm away but instead took the hand that was on my shoulder. It was warm and gentle, b with the vitality of life.

“You’re....not dead?”

She scoffed in amazement at my seemingly preposterous statement. “Of course I’m not dead, I’m talking to you aren’t I?” She burst out in laughter spontaneously, falling against me helpless to her spasms of amusement, “But you can call me your guardian angel if you wish.”

My arms moved automatically to support her body as she fell against me in a shaking heap. I don’t know how to describe the emotions that ran through me at the time. Confusion would be the closest word, with a dash of relief and as I looked at myself a little closer, a tiny, tiny, touch of happiness.

After resting in my arms for a few moments, the girl – yes I decided to call her a girl, since an angel wasn’t exactly appropriate given my embarrassing moment – struggled free from my awkwardly placed arms.

“So what’s your name? I’d like to know the name of the person who called me an angel.” She stifled another laugh and smiled at me.

“The name’s Taeyeon,” we shook hands and I added, “And that was definitely NOT an attempt to use a pickup line.”

“I’m Tiffany, and you can keep on denying it as much as you want. But it won’t change my memory of it.” She stuck her tongue out at me and laughed. “So what brings you out here in the middle of nowhere?”

I grumbled nonsensically to myself at her playful response but I couldn’t help letting a small smile appear on my face. “I’m a traveler, my own two feet brought me here.” I paused to watch her roving eyes. She was judging me already. I had seen that stare countless of times.

A lone female? Travelling?

Naïve.Foolish.

I attempted to direct the attention away from myself, “But what about you? Why are you so - ”

“You’re a traveler? Really? Have you had any adventures? Experience something new everyday?” She instantly became animated and peppered me with questions. The sincerity in her tone surprised me and I couldn’t help but be infected by her cheery expression.

“Haven’t had one yet,” I admitted, “but always searching for one! Which brings me back to the question, what about you? Why are you so far away from everything?”

She gave me a wry smile in return and didn’t speak for a few moments, preferring instead to look down at her feet and sway our wrists together with the wind. “I......just wanted to get away from my town for awhile.”

Tiffany’s hesitance made me think that there was more of a story behind her but I held back on questioning further.

“So.....you live down there?” I asked in an attempt to shift the topic to something more comfortable.

Tiffany nodded twice. “I think I should go back now, I’ve been away for far too long already.”

Far too long? My curious mind attempted to understand the hidden meaning behind her words. Did she have someone waiting for her back at home?

“Well, I’m headed down that way too. So if you don’t mind, would you become my travelling companion for a day?”

Her face lit up instantly, her voice going from a dreary, somber tone to one bright and excited. Honestly, it was rather disconcerting to have met such a stranger like Tiffany. First she was an angel, then a girl who had defied the nature by coming back to life, and then just a normal girl. A normal girl with normal fears. She was either as transparent as a sheet of glass, easily displaying her emotions for all to see or as impossible to read as well....my own handwriting. Trust me, it’s pretty shoddy.

Either way she intrigued me, her somewhat quirky behavior capturing my interest.

“Your companion? Sure!” Tiffany hurried to my side and looped her arm around mine tightly. Pointing out at the general direction of the town she yelled, “Let’s go! Adventure!”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing as she dragged me along the downwards winding path, my feet lagging behind. Whatever she was, whoever she was, Tiffany was definitely a character I wouldn’t mind standing next to me, to share an adventure with.




Thirty minutes down the trail and the town still seemed as far away as ever, small smoke trails from the houses fading into nothing in the distance. Tiffany’s initial outburst of excitement seemed to have slowly vanished into silence as the monotonous sound of my boots and her flats against the worn brick road drummed into our heads, the seeming never-ending path lined with greenery becoming sleep inducing. Still though, she clung to me tightly, fitting her pace to suit my own.

“Where’s.....the adventure?” Tiffany asked me timidly, breaking the silence.

I laughed to myself at her expectations, “Did you expect one to come charging out of the bushes at us?” I gave her a playful nudge and stumbled as she dragged me along.

Recovering herself, Tiffany spoke with a defiant tone. “No.” But then she lowered her voice until I could barely hear it, “Well....yes.”

And that did it for me. I burst out in laughter, bent double wheezing, trying to get a gasp of air into myself as my abdominal muscles seared in pain.

“What’s so funny?!” she whined, watching me double up, laughing like a madman.

I was struggling for breath, only managing a few words at a time. “I’ve been........searching for........adventure........all my life....and you think.....you can find it...........in minutes!”

I gave up then and fell to the floor with a shriek of laughter whilst Tiffany, still holding onto my arm, squatted next to me.

“You’ll see. With the two of us here, adventure will find its way to us before the next day.”

She said it with such force and such surety in her tone that I believed her. If only for a moment. Her eyes burned with the hot steel of willingness and determination that I was captivated, lying still on the floor. And then she blinked and her warm brown eyes were back.

It was in this exact moment that I felt Tiffany was exactly the person she showed the world. No masks, no mirrors, no haze. The world grew increasingly vicious to people like her and as such, coming across such people became more and more of a rarity than a common appearance. I tried to imagine if she had grown up in a city instead of an isolated town and shuddered at the thought. No, it was better that she was who she was.

After all, it was her transparency that pulled my interest closer and closer. A strange urge to both protect and just observe her. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it back then. My best guess was being like a parent who stood at the school gates with their child’s hand in their grasp on the very first day of school, knowing that you needed to let go, but not wanting to at the same time.


Before I knew it, midday was upon us and despite the lush greenery that lined both sides of the road, the sun still beat down mercilessly on our backs. We had wiled the hours away since the early morning, past all barriers of awkwardness now, with simple talk as we got to know each other and the occasional bout of lively banter. I always gave in to her though, I don’t know why. She cheated a lot, or so I felt, flashing that shining smile of hers before she would rebut.

I learnt a lot about her as we walked. Her full name was Tiffany Hwang and she was the same age as I was at twenty two. She has a family, or at least, had whole family. They were gone now she told me simply. To both beyond and just out of the village. She lived by herself in the house they left behind but it was lonely for her. But not once did she curse her circumstances. She just accepted them, that this was the way her life was and made the most of it. Tiffany worked at the general store for a livelihood, although she was never really satisfied with it. To her it was something to pass the time with, while she searched for anything else that would grasp her interest. She never got around to it though she admitted with a pout and all adventurous desires dried up into nothing.

Whenever it all got too much, the loneliness, the boredom and the all too mundane work, she would leave the town for a day or two to spend the nights underneath the stars. “And just forget it all.” She would let the cold darkness be her blanket, the stars her bolster and nature her pillow and sleep.



Tearing my eyes away from her face, I took a glance ahead far below in the valley and sighed. It was like we had barely moved at all and my feet were already feeling weary from the beating of the road.

“How about we rest for a bit?”

Tiffany laughed and grasped my wrist, “I thought you’d never ask.” We fled from the sun’s rays as if they were the bane of our lives, finding solace under the shade of the trees. Despite the small distance we had run, Tiffany was sweating profusely and her hair was messily splayed across her eyes. She paid no attention to this however, with her hands on her knees, bent over trying to regain her breath. Reaching over tentatively, I touched her forehead with the tips of my fingers and brushed away the loose tendrils that hung over her milky brown eyes.

Catching my hand before I could move it away, she said, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I grinned back and moved to sit down next to her.

We groaned like two old women, muscles aching, joints in pain as we thudded onto the cool grass, letting our heads rest against the bark of the aspen tree and just sat there with our hands splayed out by our sides. In the silence, I thought of a question I hadn’t yet got around to.

“Hey Tiffany, do you...have someone?”

“Hmm? What do you mean, ‘have someone’?”

“Like...you know...an....exceptionally close friend? Someone you like to spend a lot of time with?”

Her usual instant replies faded into nothing and even though I wasn’t looking at her, I could feel the tension that emanated from behind and through the tree. I pat the ground blindly behind me until my hands found hers.

“No...I don’t...have anyone like that,” she said with a low tone, “I don’t know...if I want anyone like that. I don’t want to lose someone....like that.”

Wordlessly, I gave her fingers a light squeeze and smiled to myself. That strange urge to protect came over me again. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve to live a life of fear in losing those close to her.

“But what about you?” she asked, her voice changing, “Do you have someone like that?”

Her hand became unnaturally still under my touch and I could feel it slowly clenching into a fist, either in nerves, jealousy or a lingering memory, I didn’t know.

“Love is....an adventure that hasn’t found me just yet.”

I c