a/n: LOTS OF FLASHBACKING I HOPE YOU GUYS DON'T GET TOO CONFUSED --'

❀   The wings of the aeroplane cut gently through the breeze, tipping about a cloud sitting just above the skyline before gently levelling themselves out onto gravity once more as the engine combated to secure itself into a more stable flight position…

At the window seat, Myungsoo stared out into the open blue sky that occupied his line of sight, wondrous and nostalgic thoughts oscillating through his mind. He watched quietly as the aeroplane continued to soar, and couldn’t help but imagine the paper crane in his hand, still meticulously folded and attached with a promise, doing the same. He continued to fiddle with it in the protection of his smooth fingers under the gentle rays of sunlight through the window pane, and waited impatiently as the memories in his head threatened to overtake his conscience completely.

As an only child and frequent bystander in the world, Myungsoo grew quite used to the dullness in life. Slowly, the silence became a part of him altogether, and he found nothing more convenient than to incorporate it into his everyday whenever he could, however he could. All he remembered of his childhood were his parents being distant family members who entertained themselves by travelling around the world, while he himself was left in the guidance of his caretaker back at home. They said he wasn’t allowed to go outside with them because he was ill, and as much as Myungsoo hated to admit it, it was true–for as long as he lived, achromatopsia had been with him.

He was born almost, just almost, blind to the world.

❀   Two years ago, morning, the city of Narita was in a parade. Passing the district fountain, Myungsoo lifted the camera up to one eye, shutting the other one to focus wholly on the spectacular stone structure in front of him. His head navigated from the sprout of water–

Snap.

–to the pond beneath–

Snap.

–to the children with balloons tied around their arms chasing around it.

Snap.

On ground level, he even found coins, which seemed to capture the glaze of the sun as its rays shimmered and bounced on the water. Only an ivory footbridge separated him from the lake that ran beneath, and within its boundary, despite everything through his eyes being coated in dull shades, Myungsoo felt that it was all still very extravagant.

In this perfectly soothing environment, Myungsoo continued to scan the vicinity through the comfort of his camera lenses, stopping only when it landed on a couple who were pointing in a single direction down the steps of the lone café, tucked away around a bend in the stone ledge. He followed their fingers, and at the end of the footbridge, he noticed a new outdoor art exhibition. Bringing himself closer to the venue, excited by the littlest of commotions, he felt an endless surge of unity as he blended in with the crowd. Another rush of people. Making sure his camera was ready in his hands, he positioned it yet again just above the tip of his nose and focused it on any artwork he found an interest in.

Myungsoo couldn’t see the colourful side of things, but he never let it stop him from pursuing his interests in photography. He smiled knowing nothing could ever escape his camera lenses.

❀   But that was all behind him now.

Finally able to be out of the home again, alone, it sounded like the ideal time for Myungsoo to have some freedom and colour to himself, and the best place to start was the city he was headed for on the plane now. Snuggling into his seat now, his eyebrows furrowed slightly at the thought of his sick parents at home, unable to make it on this trip with him. Who would have thought that so soon they would be caught in a reversal of situations? But when he remembered how lucky he had been to meet the person who had healed his illness and misery once and for all, the lines on his forehead smoothed out again. For the first time, it was as though destiny had finally decided to smile upon his existence. Although she was gone now, he still liked to think of her as a miracle, a gift from the heavens, rather than a painful memory. A grin found its way to his lips at the bittersweet memory of his saviour, his first love. Taking in the sound of the wings of the plane against the wind, he retired his senses to his thoughts and closed his eyes…

Some time later, Myungsoo woke only to realise that he had slept through lunch, and then an early dinner, on the plane, and now he was concentrated solely on rewinding the camera on his lap. A few splashes of colour knitted into vibrant images he had taken over the years loaded up onto the screen. Most of them had been from the archive he had saved from his last trip to Japan. Scrolling through a list of memories he could never bring himself to forget, Myungsoo pinpointed his favourite and clicked on the file. The screen dimmed into a transition, and eventually his eyes fell upon a youth, no older than himself, sitting on a wooden swing, dangling thick-roped from a branch of the cherry blossom tree at the old shrine place, captured in the midst of summer.  

Myungsoo saw many faces during the span of his company with his camera–some painted with pain, others with deceptive happiness, but the girl in this photograph was neither. Despite her outward looks of being lost in space, it told a story sadder than most. The beautiful yet reserved smile on her face rendered into an almost perfect mask of her hidden sorrow on the photographic film, her carelessly plaited ponytail falling in line with the folds of her kimono silently despite the interference of the small winds that day... The sunken, pale spots along the rings of her fiery orbs became naturally the signs of her innocence, and Myungsoo couldn’t believe that he was never going to be able to see them again. Eyes carefully grazing over the every detail on the camera screen in his lap again, he still managed to smile specifically at the face that stared back at him.

Before he could entirely succumb to the memory though, the sidelines of his aisle dotted with tiny light bulbs flashed and the red seatbelt button above him pulsed. Understanding it as an indication that the plane was already preparing for landing, he slipped his camera away into his bag, zipping it up with the tiny paper crane piece in the innermost corners of the pocket. Staring out into the boundless sky through the window pane one last time as the plane reached ground zero at the airport in Narita, his tired eyes absorbed the first traces of orange light of the evening.

This was it, he thought.

Japan.

It wasn’t his hometown, but it was where he had met her.

Her, the girl in the photograph, who changed his life forever.

It had been two years, and like he promised, he was finally back.

❀   Stepping onto the pavement after getting off a taxi that delivered him through the lively night streets of Japan from the airport, Myungsoo felt relieved more than anything else. Glad that he had finally reached the quieter side of Narita with no drama, presented to the pebble path that led him to her that very same morning two years ago, Myungsoo relaxed and took in a deep, fresh breath of silence.

He didn’t know why, but when he took his first step, his mind drifted automatically back to the scenario marking his sixteenth birthday, when his parents had gifted him with a six-inch Polaroid camera. He remembered them telling him it was because they hoped that his dark thoughts would wash away with the beautiful photographs–and little did they know, it did its job wonderfully. Over the years, Myungsoo had grown much accustomed to the versatile handling of the device, and ever since then, he had always liked anything to do with photographs. He appreciated particularly how a picture conveyed more than words, how it could freeze a moment he didn’t ever want to forget onto something so much more permanent, accessible, realistic. For someone whose world was once dark and colourless, he thought being able to ‘capture and preserve’ was really important. Majority of the times, Myungsoo even truly believed that he was more fitting behind his camera lenses than in the world. For this reason, he would sometimes snap random photos of the things in his house, just so one day, maybe just one day, he could get better and see the world he was born into in a much more spectacular spectrum of colours.

And he did.

His mere dream became reality, because of her.

Smiling slyly to himself at the recollection of his thoughts, Myungsoo matched his confident strides with the shadows of the railing enforced upon the pebbles against the setting sun. The moonlight seemed to cast a sad shadow that hung over the usual stoic features of his face as he channelled his attention down the path to the old shrine, and for the second time that day, he pulled out his Canon D60 DSLR from his backpack. Flicking through the archive once more as he walked in the embrace of the night, footsteps so light and head so deep in thought he didn’t even realise it when the streetlamps had , Myungsoo found himself reminiscing the day he had met her for the first time.

❀   The day grew long, but the vibrant assortment of pinks and blues seemed to continue to play with the senses of the rest of the population. When Myungsoo got to the end of the path, although he could only see the array of gardens and bridges from a black and white perspective, the beautiful sceneries that unfolded before him made him feel glad that he had made it.

Continuing his walk, determined not to waste even a second of his time, Myungsoo ventured to a quieter side of the city now. Red torii gates and a winding pebble path guided him through, and he wondered what the place would look like covered in snow in the winter. Though Myungsoo hadn’t visited it before, the silence seemed to have successfully attracted him. The outdoor art exhibition had been a nice experience, but he thought this was even better. His legs brought him past the parks unconsciously, and didn’t halt to think until they had placed him in front of a worn-out edifice, and a deserted front yard. Myungsoo closed in on the wilting gates that sealed the area off in amazement and stepped forward to take a closer look.

It was an old shrine, and like nothing he had ever seen before. A visible veranda area jutted out of the main building, and the floor space in front of it was littered in what seemed like cherry blossom petals. Everything seemed quite normal at first–normal in a sense that Myungsoo had seen them before in tourist magazines–but it was ultimately the strings of paper cranes that hung against the bark of a beautiful, fully grown though half-bloomed cherry blossom tree that incited his curiosity most. Surely, the view had to be dazzling, and all Myungsoo could do then was just wish that he could see the origami and nature offered in front of him in colour.

Not forgetting about his camera, he reeled it forward once more. Locking it in onto the scene with as much precision as his last six years of experience allowed, Myungsoo admired in his imagination the pinks, whites, and even crimsons, that the normal eye would be able to see. As though on instinct, all the while he even hoped to steady his grasp so that he could obtain the best outcome possible, but when the screen dimmed and the little red light in the corner of his camera border went out, he was transported back to reality.

His battery had depleted.

Myungsoo cussed under his breath at the bad timing, and moved off the path to rummage through his bag pockets for a spare battery pack, when a young, fragile girl entered herself into his periphery vision. One glance, and that was all it took to impede him in his tracks. There was a kind of sorrow radiating from her eyes capable of drawing his breath away.

Surprised by her sudden appearance, Myungsoo hid behind the withering tree beside him and watched intently through the shades of grey of his vision at a distance as she made her way to the swing in the middle of the shrine grounds. Although he couldn’t discern much with his inability to see in colour at the time, the way her nose stood high on her petite face and the way her eyelids fluttered like the wings of a butterfly when she diverted her gaze in the opposite direction hinted to him how elegant and delicate she must have been. She kicked off on the swing and brought herself into the air a few times, but remained motionless for most of the occasion he was watching, and for a second Myungsoo pondered whether she was on the look out for someone, something. Shouldn’t she be at school right now like the rest of the student population? It was unusual for him, or for anyone else for that matter, to see someone his age at this time of day.

The minutes dragged on, and she was still just sitting there, seemingly admiring the cherry blossom flowers on the tree beside her. Myungsoo didn’t want to get caught on his act so he cleverly stayed put in his spot. Although her actions were timid–if they could even be called actions at all, for her movements were so little and so weak–for some reason the girl still managed to keep his attention at his peak, and to the extent that, if it was possible at all, looking at her seemed to have had brought him a little… closer to colour. Then, she pulled a paper crane from the dangling sleeve of her kimono and clasped it in her hands, and for a very long time there was a suffocating silence. Her pitiful appearance was as good as dead now, but still, Myungsoo felt compelled to watch her.

Then he realised, she was waiting for nothing.

She was... praying?

“Kumiko-chan!”

The serenity enveloping them shattered without a warning at the voice of an ahjumma whose head was now popped out of the paper screen door. As startled as Myungsoo was, the girl scrambled from the swings and ran back into the covers of the shrine. For minutes no one else stepped out onto the veranda, and only then had Myungsoo dared to retreat from his hiding position. The warmth touched his skin the moment he stepped out of the shade, and instantly he felt better. Replacing the batteries in his camera, he took a single snap of the shrine grounds before hurrying down the track, all the while not being able to keep his mind off the photograph now in his possession and the girl who lived there.

Kumiko.

Myungsoo didn’t know who she was yet, but whatever her secret, she didn’t seem like she would, or could, leave beyond the boundaries of the shrine. And for the first time in his life, he actually felt more pity for someone other than himself.