Chasing Her

Prologue

Ah Reum wasn’t always a happy go lucky girl who welcomed everything life threw at her. Before it all, she was a mess that no one fancied to be near. They regarded her as an abomination because she didn’t have a father. She veered from the standard because of something she, herself could not control, but she didn’t care, at least she didn’t show that she did. Oh Sehun only became her friend because their mothers were friends. The boy himself did not even care about her.

Sehun approved of her, though. He didn’t reveal it, but he liked her, quite a lot too. No other girl had ever approached him before. Rather than withdrawn as others had described him, he was just utterly bashful. He, in truth, wanted to befriend Ah Reum for so long. He thought that Ah Reum would make a great friend, someone he could share his entire life with without it being too disturbing for the both of them.

Fatherless at the age of six, young Ah Reum struggled to discover even one friend who would listen to her desirous pleadings for help. That’s when Zhang Jiashuai literally fell into her life. Their initial encounter included him slipping off a tree trying to capture her blue jay, Yixing, who later died of old age.

Ah Reum didn’t like him when she first saw him face to face. He had a goofy grin on his face, and it felt as if he was ridiculing her. The boy had a loving family. What made it worse was that he decided that he wanted to be friends with her. When Jiashuai approached her, she thought not to get close to him because she supposed that he’d be like the rest, who befriended her only to ditch her.

She did everything in her capacities to get away from him, but man was he persistent. He could follow her to the ends of the earth if he needed to, and that was precisely what he did.

When Ah Reum finally gave in, she found out that he was surprisingly not that wicked. He made her laugh so often; he was like medicine: bitter but therapeutic. Whenever the other kids taunted her, Jiashuai would come to her rescue. He shielded her, made her feel secure, and assured her that he would stay there forever just to protect her. What exactly does a young kid mean when they say forever? Ah Reum didn’t know. She thought his forever meant exactly that, but wow was she wrong.

They both had nicknames for each other.

Ah Reum called him ‘xing’ because he reminded her of her bird. Jiashuai was a reckless kid. She often spotted him skulking in trees that he didn’t even know how to climb off. Just like when they met, he’d fall off, but each time was not as worse as the first time. He’d gotten a huge scar from that fall. Despite all of his appointments to the doctor, it never went away.

Jiashuai called her ‘Jien Yi’ utterly because she was so resolute to get away from him back when they weren’t friends. Not only that, but she never backed down from a dispute. Jiashuai often let her win because it was just so tiring to fire back at her arguments.

Ah Reum was a frowner for a kid so young. She didn’t understand why the sun never shone on her. She thought it was rather unfair that life was easy for others but not for her. Jiashuai simply told her that she didn’t try hard enough. He told her that the sun would eventually shine on her if she got through the day without thinking of herself in a negative light.

Of course, Ah Reum thought his words were strange, but she followed them nevertheless.

The two were close; they were like peanut butter and jelly. They’d often spend their days at one another’s house, but whenever Ah Reum’s grandmother came, she would often tell Jiashuai how much of a vexation he was for ‘ruining’ her granddaughter’s life. She saw Jiashuai’s family as an impediment that she can easily get rid of, and rid of she did. Mi Seok was a mighty old lady, for someone of small stature. Not many took her seriously, and those who didn’t suffered severe consequences.

Jiashuai’s dad was one of them.

He was laid off, so their main reason for having moved there had disappeared. He came to her house the day he had to leave, and yet she was not there. Ah Reum didn’t know of his plans. She’d fled her home in a fit of rage after her grandmother barged into her house and announced that she’d take Ah Reum with her to the states. Her grandmother had never been a huge fan of her mother, Jiyoung, but she never liked Ah Reum either. She often told her that she was a waste of space, and if it weren’t for her, Jaesop would’ve left Jiyoung earlier. Ah Reum abhorred her, but she disliked herself even more.

Luck wasn’t on her side that day. A landslide had occurred, and she was caught in the middle of it. Unfortunately, so was Jiashuai, who looked for her because he wanted to say goodbye.

Ah Reum didn’t wake up for two weeks, and without her knowing, Jiashuai had been announced diseased. Who ever thought that not saying goodbye was also a way of saying bye? It was her grandmother’s idea. She convinced Jiashuai’s doctor to relay the message to Ah Reum in hopes of her finally agreeing to go to the U.S. with her, but Ah Reum’s reaction was quite the opposite.

She couldn’t handle the guilt. She’d killed Jiashuai.

On the 17th of May, her birthday, Ah Reum jumped off the hospital building, and young Oh Sehun, after getting lost, had been the hapless witness.

He always understood that he should be nicer to her. His mother even told him so, but he thought that there were other times for that. He never k