We aren’t ever given anything without being asked for something in return. Now, for a second, I wish for you to hold your breath and among nothingness, I wish for you to listen. Can you hear the melody of humanity’s favorite song? The penetrating sound of trumpets is smashing against your skull violently and in the back of your head, you hear the familiar soft thump of a pair of heavy boots. 

Thump. Thump. Thump. 

The door opens and a high pitched scream joins the melody. A click. A clack. A bang. The song ends and the curtains close. Don’t let the public see the red stained floor. The blind people clap and the stupid join, the cheers covering the sounds that follow. No, we won’t let you hear how the song continues. We won’t let you hear the vulgarity in their words and the howl of their guns. 

It’s July 1952. Korea is a deadly hollow end. What is given to you by life, is taken from you by war. 

Kim Taeyeon was in her late twenties, but the young features that were carved in her polyester skin were nothing more than a pleasant façade for your curiosity to be killed. If you looked into her eyes, you’d be terrified to see how shallow they were. Her upper lip would twitch whenever her petite frame was engaged into a fired up conversation. Her oversized, torn up shirts would barely cover her ripped elbows and her dead brother’s baggy trousers hang loosely on her bruised waist. In fact, her skin was so scarred, you’d have to mummify her to hide all the marks. 

There’s so much more about Kim Taeyeon than meets the eye. I would’ve wished to be such a fountain of mysteries, but at least I still have half of my soul ghosting inside my body. She’d lost it awhile back. I don’t know how I came to be the person I am today, but I do know how she came to be the person she isn’t. There’s one white scar she has on her left eyelid. You can’t see it unless you’re looking for it. You’d be surprised to know she gave it to herself, but then again, you don’t know how it feels like to want to rip your eyes off of your face, because then again, you weren’t the one who witnessed the death of your parents happening in front of you when you were only twelve. I wasn’t either. She was. 

I, myself, don’t remember much of anything. I’ve been told I lost my memory because of a bomb that erupted during the first few months of the civil war in Korea. The same bomb that brought death to the older Kim. It’s nothing but a black void inside my mind. I wonder if my scars would be as deep as the ones Kim Taeyeon has if I remembered, even a small glimpse, of what I used to be before everything. She often tells me I should be thankful for being oblivious. Seeing the people around me, hearing the screams of despair, I’ve learned to agree with the fact that indeed, ignorance is bliss. 

All I know is that my name is Yuri. Just Yuri. And while Kim Taeyeon walks around with her head high, not worrying that a bullet might blow her brains out in any moment, I walk with my head down, checking the ground for hidden landmines. That evening however, as the sun died down in the blood covered streets of Seoul, she seemed more lightheaded. I could hear her voice buzzing inside my head as she talked about the weather and the on-goings of the war, the cheap beer and this pretty, American-Korean woman. 

“That’s dangerous, Taeyeon,” I mumbled after a while, lifting my eyes from the ground and meeting her perplexed look. “This Stephanie Hwang,” I tried the foreign taste of the name as it rolled off of my lips, “she doesn’t sound like good news.” 

“Any kind of association with an American during war doesn’t sound like good news,” she chuckled bitterly and kicked a rock, making me flinch. 

She took out the pack of cigarettes and offered me one. It didn’t matter how many times I refused, she’d always do that before taking out a cigarette for herself. She didn’t light it up. We kept walking. The sun had already disappeared and slowly, so had the life in the street. 

It was rare to see Kim Taeyeon express other emotions than tiredness, even when she did, they would be filled with bitterness and a sense of darkness that dwelled inside your being, so you could say I was rather surprised at her cracked voice cutting through the empty night. 

“You know Yuri, that’s exactly what she told me the first time we met.” 

She had her vision locked with the sky as she spoke, the pale moonlight glimmering as it met her crystal eyes. I wondered if there were tears she was trying to hold back, but I never knew for sure. With Kim Taeyeon, you could never be sure. 

“She told me she was no good for me,” she chuckled, the bitterness covering up her words once again. “What a fool am I to feed a broken heart with hope, only because of a woman?!” 

Her eyes got dark again, the moonlight unable to reach them. She had her unlit cigarette dancing between her lips and her moves were lazier than ever. She looked terrified and that made me realize, Kim Taeyeon had found something she didn’t want to lose, something bigger than herself. 

You see, Kim Taeyeon is the kind of person who would die for anyone. She would’ve died if that meant her parents would be safe, she would die for me, for a child on the street, for a stranger, for anyone, but never would she ever live for someone, not until now. There’s something about Stephanie Hwang though, something I don’t quite comprehend. However, I know for sure that before dying for this strange woman, Kim Taeyeon would fight to live for her. I believe that living for someone is way more significant than dying for them.

“Yuri?” she called for me, the unlit cigarette resting between her thin lips. “Did you hear what I said?” 

“Yes, of course, of course,” I brushed it off with a wave of a hand while she cracked open the wooden door of the tavern, but then she closed it again and looked at me, eyebrows a bit furrowed, the expression plastered in her face serious. 

“Oh, and don’t forget Yuri,” she flashed one of her lazy smiles that could strip away the tiredness from her features. “You can only touch with your eyes.” 

Living in the dust of a burning city, you would expect a tavern to be the definition of vulgarity, but this wasn’t the case. I felt a bit odd as I made myself comfortable in the wooden chairs and traced my eyes around the room. The colors were warm and the place smelled like burnt tobacco and cheap alcohol. The men in suits were lazily tuning their instruments in the corners of the stage, velvet curtains falling behind them. You could hear a broken note escape the saxophone here and there and you could also hear the murmur of people as they engaged themselves into meaningless conversations about their empty beliefs. It was nice to finally not hear screams and gunshots. It was peaceful and Kim Taeyeon was breathing in the air as if it was the cure to her shattered heart. She had her eyes closed and the unlit cigarette between her lips, head leaning back on the chair, making the messy brown hair fall carelessly on her shoulders. 

“Would you like me to light up your cigarette, miss?” 

I lifted my head to see a young man dressed in a soldier’s uniform. He ran a hand through his short maroon hair and grinned, his eyes focused on Kim Taeyeon’s emotionless expression. 

“ off Baekhyun,” she sighed, her empty eyes finally meeting his. 

That displeasing grin was quick replaced with a smudged smirk as the palm of his hand met Kim Taeyeon’s cheek, causing the cigarette to break in a half. Her head turned right, jaw clenched and eyes closed, then she straightened herself again, spitting out the broken cigarette in front of his combat boots. 

“Tsk,” she clicked her tongue annoyed, giving him half a smile, “you shouldn’t be wasting cigars at a time of crisis, officer. That’s the wrong thing to do.” 

He wrapped his hands around the collar of her loose shirt and pushed her against the wall. I could see her purple bruises appearing on her reddened cheek and I wondered if we’d get out alive of the tavern. I got up, making the chair fall in the process, but a pair of thin white fingers grabbed my arm and pushed me back. I got a glimpse of her porcelain features before she walked behind the young officer. 

We had already attracted a crowd. Everyone was quiet and staring. You could no longer hear the saxophone notes, nor the murmurs of the people. Amid the silence all that reached your ears were the heavy breaths. And then a click. A clack. I shut my eyes and waited for the bang that never came. 

“Officer Byun,” a raspy voice that was filled with amusement spoke, “I’d like for you to walk out of those doors and take exactly twenty steps without taking off the bandana from your eyes. After that, there’s a crosswalk. I don’t give a  which road you’ll take, but once you do, I don’t want the idea of walking back here cross your mind, otherwise there’d be more things than just thoughts crossing it.” 

I opened my eyes to see a crazy eyed Kim Taeyeon which was tying a pink bandana around the young man’s eyes, a new unlit cigarette dancing between her lips. He had his hands up as the girl from before kept the muzzle of the gun pressed tightly against the back of his head. 

“Understood?” she asked calmly, forcing him to spin and walk towards the door. He clenched his jaw and briefly moved his hand to take his gun out of the belt, but that only caused a chuckle to escape the girl’s lips. “Are you looking for this?” she asked, pressing the other gun on his back. I heard the click again. 

“Understood,” he forced the words out of his mouth and started walking outside the tavern. 

“Like a dog,” Kim Taeyeon pressed back a laugh as she took her seat on the table, not caring that there was blood dripping from her nose. 

In my head I was counting his steps. I was counting and my heart was breaking my ribs from beating too hard, waiting for soldiers to fill up the place, but that didn’t happen. Kim Taeyeon had taken her previous position in her chair. She had her brother’s clothes, but her feminine features remained on her stone cold face. It was so natural you would’ve assumed she was cut off the pages of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’. 

The woman from before approached, her steps uneven. She leaned in and flickered the lighter for Kim Taeyeon, the flames swallowing the tip of the cigarette for a brief second before smoke built a wall between their faces. I realized something as Kim Taeyeon took the cigarette between her fingers and lazily exhaled the smoke. Her features had softened and her eyelids had fallen in a dream-like state. 

“Good evening,” the woman’s eyes smiled as she greeted Kim Taeyeon, not even bothering to notice my presence. “I would prefer no drama in my place TaeTae,” she chuckled, but there was something about the way the words rolled off of her lips, cold and firm, leaving no room for objections. 

Her moves were softer than her raspy voice, as she took out a napkin from her pocket and started cleaning Kim Taeyeon’s face, shaking fingers trailing along a bony face, strong jaw and popping cheekbones. Her eyes however, as they stood glued to the woman before her, weren’t as deeply dead and hollow as I’ve gotten used to seeing them. It was foreign for me to witness Kim Taeyeon be more than just shattered. 

It had me wondering. At what point do we lose our souls? How many people do we have to kill to get them back? 

I don’t know, but as I said, I’m blind to most things. What I do know is that bullets and bombs pour down as if they were snowflakes, gently at first, on narrow streets and particular buildings, then all at once, everywhere and towards everyone. You close your eyes and when you open them there’s an avalanche devouring anything standing on its way. 

What I realized however, is pretty abstract, foreign to a mind that has only been introduced to violence. To this woman, strange, unknown, misunderstood woman and to her lover, broken, empty, despaired lover, the bullets and bombs were nothing but a slight drizzle. God, they were dancing, today and tonight, leaping madly, whirling and screaming in the rain. You could see that in the way they lost themselves in each other’s vision. 

“Stephanie,” Kim Taeyeon smiled, trails of smoke dancing in the air, “this is my friend, Yuri.” 

“Pleased to finally meet you,” Stephanie greeted, her eyes lightning up like a thousand stars in a velvet sky. 

“The pleasure is all mine,” I bowed lightly, but it felt as if I was bowing down to the wall, the attention of Stephanie was long stolen by Kim Taeyeon’s tender fingers scratching along the woman’s stockings. 

Maybe I was the one in need for a cigarette, companionless as I was. 

Taeyeon leaned in for a kiss, but Stephanie chuckled delightfully and covered her lover’s mouth with her boney hand. She mumbled something in English that my brain couldn’t process. I must’ve had a deeply confused look, because a figure leaned in on my shoulder, caramel hair falling on my skin, warm breath hitting my neck as she spoke. 

“I’ll only kiss you when you taste less like smoke and more like me,” the honey dripping voice repeated Stephanie’s words and then translated them in Korean, her voice getting a different shade as she spoke in different languages and as its owner giggled, I could feel a smirk plastered on her face, even though I didn’t turn my head to look at her. 

Her fragrance, something between champagne and expensive tobacco filled my senses and stuck around me even when she walked away, her long blue dress wrapping around her curves perfectly. I was, the least to say, mesmerized. Her caramel hair was waving down her shoulders wildly, her heels clicking the hardboard floor. My fingers were drumming the wooden table in a stable rhythm, keeping me sane as my head was in overdrive, wishing to meet her eyes, look at her face and beyond it. 

Her steps were slow at first, but as they quickened towards the stage, so did my heartbeat behind my chest, and when she stopped, for a moment so did my heart, until she turned around, her gloved hands touching the microphone, her cat-like eyes meeting mine. Only then I released a breath I didn’t know I was holding, allowing my heart to start beating again, right before I choked on the marvelous voice that filled the tavern and went in an unconscious state, where between and around her and I, was nothing, no one. 

I once asked Kim Taeyeon why we always take the long way home, around the Cheonggyecheon river, instead of crossing the bridge. “I’m scared it would fall,” she said, giving me her signature wide grin. “You see Yuri, thousands of soldiers cross that river everyday, with their heavy boots and their loud steps. They walk in sync, a thousand left feet slamming against a wooden bridge. Then a thousand right feet, then left, then right…It’s so loud, when I heard it the first time I thought they were bombing the area,” she explained, her words quick and her eyes taking a shade of madness. “Let’s go cross it,” she then added. “Right now.” 

So we did. We were crossing the infamous bridge and as we walked, two light figures taking easy steps, the wood would crack and the bridge would wince in pain. Then I felt it shake lightly at the same time I felt a hand get wrapped around my wrist strongly, pulling me towards the edge of the bridge and making me jump in the river. I briefly saw a pack of soldiers walk towards the bridge, before my eyes were trapped with Kim Taeyeon’s. I couldn’t read them, not then, not now, but when I fell in the water, after the cutting feeling on my skin that gravity had caused went away, something else wrapped up my existence. 

Surreality. That’s exactly what I was feeling right now too. 

You’re underwater, everything else outside slowly dying down as you focus on the only sound that fills your ears, her dripping voice that sounds much like a waterfall crashing down on its pool. You enjoy it to the fullest, because it’s the only thing that makes you forget the loud thump of the soldier’s boots. 

You’re underwater and you open your eyes. They sting because her enchanting smile is like salt or chlorine, or even as bad as both of them combined. You could go blind at the mere sight of her, but you wouldn’t wish for anything else because it would be a blessing to stop seeing all the suffering on the streets. 

You’re underwater and you look up. There’s the sky. And beyond the sky, there are stars. And beyond the stars, there are galaxies. And beyond the galaxies there are universes. And beyond the universes, there’s everything. And beyond everything, there’s her. You feel so deep underwater as she looks at you, as she sings for you, as she makes it feel like there’s nothing, no one between her and you. You feel so deep, but you’ve barely scratched the surface. 

You realize that, because your lungs collapse and you shut your eyes. There’s darkness and you instinctively pull yourself up. You wonder what happened, but you never know. 

The whole tavern went dark, no sound being heard, except the soft piano notes. I don’t know why or how, but my fingers stopped gripping on the edge of the table and started drumming on it, following the foreign melody. A faint blue spotlight fell on her as Stephanie snapped, her fingers loud enough to bring me back to reality, a place where it wasn’t just I and her anymore. It went dark again, but I could hear the gentle shuffling of clothes and when the second snap was heard, the spotlight finding its own way towards the ice princess, what I presumed to be a dress was cut in a half, as the skirt flew away and left her dressed in a twinkling body wear. 

“Remember what I said Yuri-ah,” Kim Taeyeon called out and in my mind I could see her grin and Stephanie’s crescent eyes as she laughed to her lover’s words.

“You can only touch with your eyes.” I chuckled after repeating her words, because even as I spoke, my vision was burning down the porcelain skin of the performing woman. 

She must’ve noticed, because her lips curved into another simper smile. She finished the song with a giggle, Stephanie clapping the loudest, a wide smile dancing on her face, making her eyes shine brighter than billions of stars. Kim Taeyeon had her burnt down cigarette still between her lips, her arm hanging loosely on Stephanie’s waist, her whole being focused on the excited woman standing next to her. 

I, on the other hand, was frozen. It seemed awfully normal, the secret touches between the lovers, the men in suits playing other melodies, the drunks standing at the bar and yelling at each other about reasons even they couldn’t comprehend, the ice princess pulling up her velvet gloves and walking towards me as if the stars had crumbled and burned just to write our fate with their mystical dust, as if we had a chance. It seems awfully normal, but Kim Taeyeon still has scars, I still don’t remember why I keep the rhythm to melodies I’ve never heard and Stephanie is still holding a gun in her tender hands. 

The night went on, stuck in lazy conversations that suffocated the air around us, but maybe it was just me who felt that way. 

Her name was Jung Sooyeon, but everyone knew her as Jessica. It was simple, the name, but somehow, each time I tried to say it out loud, it would tangle inside my throat and make my whole existence burn as if I was showered in acid. Her icy cold eyes, caramel colored, sweetness deprived, could strike a match with their intensity as she looked at you and set you on fire. I didn’t feel myself burn, in contrary, it was warm and nice, like you were holding onto a memory you didn’t want to let go. It made me wonder, how could I see, so vividly, so dreamingly, a past of which I didn’t know of scribbled in a pair of eyes that showed no hope for the future? 

It was like those movies that I and Kim Taeyeon would watch from the roof of the cinema. You see, once in a month, they would show a film in the old cinema of Seoul. As Kim Taeyeon had told me, it had to go through all kinds of examinations from the people who supported our political system before it was shown to the public, to avoid in this way western influenced revolutionary acts from the population. Most of the people who could afford watching the film were intellectuals and privilege showered citizens, not people like me and Kim Taeyeon, but you'd be surprised to know how determined a person can get. 

When it came to art, Kim Taeyeon was drawn to it, violently pulled towards it. She would take the fire escape stairs from an old building that was three blocks away from the cinema and jump between buildings until she reached her destination. The first time I accompanied her, I thought I would simply fall and die, with no dignity left in me, but that didn’t happen. 

There was this small hole on the roof of the cinema from where you could see the cotton piece of clothing where black and white scenes of the films would play, endlessly. I could barely hear them, barely see them, barely understand them, but we wouldn’t leave until the last subtitle had disappeared and the lights had gone off. After that Kim Taeyeon would just lay down, facing the sky and thinking. I once asked her what was playing inside her mind. 

“These films,” she said, “they make me realize, that even if I could rip my eyes off, even if I was blind, inside my mind a picture of the horror this life is would creep in and disturb my sleep. They’re toxic, they beg for you to understand them, but they don’t let you. They brain wash you. You’re their slave.” 

I nodded back then, not exactly knowing what she said, but right now, as I say that Jessica’s eyes were like a never ending film roll that played in front of me, it’s easier to understand what the world is made of. I was never blind, but I was indeed oblivious. There was this wall built up between me and her, and I was trying my best to peek into her film, but I could barely hear her heart strings play, barely see her lungs collapse, barely understand her. It’s toxic, but I feel the need to stay and wait for the last subtitle to disappear, for the lights to go off. I believed that at that time, I was getting less oblivious, but still, little did I know that when the lights went off, you were left lying on the ground powerless and suffocated.

“Yuri,” Kim Taeyeon called, interrupting her fingers caressing her lover’s hair and my thoughts, interrupting Stephanie’s on going conversations and Jessica’s tired stare.

“Yes?” I answered and the Americans chuckled at my low, cracky voice. 

One of those chuckles was bright, but heavy, and the other one, the one that came from the golden voice that was singing with angels before, was quiet, almost teasing. 

“I will walk Stephanie home,” she said, getting up and fixing her baggy trousers.

“Jessi, will you too head home?” Stephanie asked, her head titled and her eyes trying to make sense out of her friend. 

Jessica looked at me. Only when our eyes met and I felt myself being set on fire again, I realized that I had been staring at her, letting myself become consumed by her existence. 

“I’ll walk you,” I mumbled, grabbing my jacket from the chair and taking a step back, leaving room for her to walk out first. 

The other two women laughed lightly, but my anxiety had made me deaf to their tones. You see, I didn’t know where I stood when it came to her. There was something about Jessica that made you want to always stay two feet away from her. 

Two feet ahead of her was risky, because she felt like smoke and at some point you believed you would stop hearing her heels clacking on the ground behind you. You’d turn around and you’d find nothing but darkness. 

Two feet behind her was dangerous. Follow her and you’d only get lost. You’d get lost and you’d never want to be found. She’d smoke you away. 

Two feet away to each of her sides was a death wish. You can’t ever take the same road as celestial beings. They’ll drag you down into the sick lives their minds create. 

But then she took my hand, her blue gloves soft against my skin, and she pulled me alongside her. Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe, you had to stand close enough to her for the world not to crumble down.

“Does your friend love Stephi?” she asked after a while, sighing and slowing down her steps. 

I kept staring at the darkness that had collapsed in front of us, the blue velvet sky in which stars had already died down had created a cupola for us to take shelter in, or so I’d like to believe at that time. She didn’t press on the question and I took my time to dwell into the meaning of the word ‘love’ to form the correct answer. The sky was closing in and the more we walked, the more intimate it felt to have her hand holding mine, to be sharing the same toxic air as her. 

“I’m sorry. All I want to know is that, if she loves her, how come she never gives in?” she spoke again after a while, her eyes looking at the side as she spoke, somewhere my vision couldn’t reach. 

“What are you looking at?” I asked, loosening my grip on her hand.

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t take her eyes off of the open road, not even when we took a turn and the lit up highway was hidden behind buildings. 

“How is it like there? In America?” 

“Different,” she answered, lazily turning her head and meeting her eyes with mine. “It’s quieter, scarier, louder. They talk too much, they do too little.” 

“Do they talk about love?” 

“I wish they talked about anything else other than love,” she chuckled, her quiet, emotion-forced chuckle. 

“I wish they talked about love here,” I sighed, trying to place the words at their right pattern. “They never do. It’s a foreign concept. We don’t give in to unknown things, like gramophones and wine, guns and love. But if you’d want to know, from my perspective, Taeyeon has fallen in love, in her own, strange, foolish way.” 

“You know Yuri,” she said after a while, when the streets started getting more narrowed and even the smallest light was slowly disappearing, “love and war are the only two things that can change a person. Stephi’s parents met during World War I. Her father was a soldier and her mother a nurse. He was shot at his thigh several times, which made them cut off his leg, leaving him forever paralyzed. She doesn’t talk much about them, or anything in fact. She was sent to America when she was twenty three, before World War II started. Her father told her that that was the only way to be safe, the only way she would become more than a slave, but as you said, we don’t give in to foreign concepts, we don’t let them get into us, so everyday there was slavery.” 

“I’m sorry,” I said, but deep down, I knew that what I felt wasn’t sympathy. It was anger, something that got all my five senses exploding. 

Her had was slipping away from mine, the tips of our fingers holding onto each other. I felt her ghosting away and I didn’t know what to do to keep her present. 

“Jessica?” She shook her head and let a teardrop roll on her face, her lips forming a downhearted smile. 

“It’s alright,” she said, intertwining our fingers and holding tighter onto my hand. “I met Stephanie during her second year there,” she continued the story. “She was insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. My parents had committed suicide during the Great Depression. Because of them, I was aware of what it was like to be insane, to scream and destroy, but Stephanie on the other hand, she enjoyed her insanity, she loved it, she laughed and danced along with it, but when reality hit her and she became aware of everything, she would spread terror like a thousand armed soldiers. I was more familiar with America, but she was more of a survivor. I wonder if I would be here if it wasn’t for her.” 

She stopped talking and so did her steps. Her story wasn’t making much sense, but I believed that inside her head it was different. Inside her head, she was taking all this different roads in the labyrinth of the past to reach her destination. 

We were standing in the empty street and listening to the wind which lazily travelled the city. She looked beautiful, pale, empty under the moonlight, but if you looked deep into her caramel eyes, she held the weight of the world in her, and the weight of the world is nothing but love. 

“Do you know why I told you all this?” she asked, her eyes begging to be understood. I shook my head, waiting for her to pour the last bit of herself to me. “Stephanie,” she spoke as she started walking again, “she came back to Korea to find out that her parents were dead because of gas asphyxiation. Murdered, to be more precise. She didn’t cry. She just shrugged and said that war changes people. I’ve seen her live those horrible fragments of sanity since then, as psychotic as they could get. I don’t know what she did, but she set a reputation around here and no one dared to step on it. Even I, at times, was terrified of her. Your friend has brought back insanity to her. Love changes people too, but I wonder how long this change would last.” 

“Why is it always women who suffer?” I sighed and she gave me a chuckle, more natural than the previous ones. 

“Women are the reason suffering exist,” she simply replied, before slowing down her steps, until she stopped in front of an iron door. 

We stood at those three broken stairs that led inside her flat for a while, not talking, not even breathing. I heard a dull echo coming from the city, something like a gunshot, but it felt so far away from us. It felt like Seoul was this nightmare from which we had woken up. 

“You’re shaking,” I said, my eyes looking at our hands that still stood together. 

“It’s nothing,” she brushed it off, taking a step back and touching the door knob, her left hand still holding onto mine. 

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered, but she tightened the grip on my hand.

“Do you want me to stay?” 

“Yes.” 

“You say yes to every question. It’s vacuous.” 

“Yes,” she chuckled, before opening the door and pulling us inside. 

“Jessica,” I mumbled as we were going up the stairs. She turned around to let me know she was listening before she kept walking. “Has Stephanie…” I hesitated, trying to find the right words. “Since you said that war changes people, I was wondering…”

“Has she ever killed anyone?” Jessica simply stated, turning around and meeting her icy eyes with mine. “That’s not my question to answer.” 

Her reply was cold, but the sigh she released after was deep, lost, longing for a memory that wasn’t as dark and scary as it felt and I believed that I already had the answer. They say that you should fight fire with fire, so perhaps that was what Stephanie and Taeyeon were doing, healing each other, a victim and her criminal, trying to opiate each other’s hazy heads. 

“Is this where you live?” I asked when I saw Jessica stop, knocking three times on the door in front of her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes without answering my question. I looked at her and then at the door, waiting for it to be opened. It didn’t.

“…seven, eight,” I heard her count in half a whisper, “nine, ten,” she released the breath she was holding and took the key out of her left glove, unlocking the door. 

“Were you waiting for someone?” 

“My sister,” she smiled, but the curve on her lips was fake, forcefully plastered in her features. “She’s never home lately, but before, we had decided that I should count to ten after knocking before opening the door.” 

We entered the apartment and I found myself walking towards the corner of the room, my fingers brushing past the piano tiles. The raw wood scratched my fingertips as I subconsciously started playing a foreign melody. 

“You didn’t tell me you could play the piano,” she said while looking at me with her broken smile. 

“I didn’t know,” I shrugged. “I don’t have any memories from before the war started.” 

She looked at me puzzled, perhaps waiting for me to keep talking, while I tried my best to avoid her eyes. I didn’t have anything to say, even if I wanted to. 

“I understand,” she said after a while, sitting as far away from the piano as she could. 

That’s when I realized how dusty the object was compared to everything else in the room, as if time stood still around it.

“Why isn’t she home anymore,” I asked, “your sister?” but as another fake smile danced in her lips, I felt like I was pressing too hard on a matter that Jessica was trying to forget. I’d never understand how people believed they would find ease at forgetting, but maybe that’s because I don’t know how to remember. 

“She’s home,” she chuckled, “I’m the one who isn’t. When my parents committed suicide it was only me and Krystal for a while. She came with me and Stephi to Korea, played the piano for me whenever I wasn’t feeling well. One time, her fingers started bleeding from the unpolished wood of the instrument, but she didn’t stop. The piano kept her sane and she kept me sane. One day she stopped playing, at once, in the middle of a piece, grabbed her jacket and looked at me. ‘I’ll go for a walk,’ she said. ‘The sun’s about to set and I don’t want to forget how to breathe inside these four walls.’ 

Jessica turned towards me, locking her eyes with mine before trailing them to the piano at the corner of the room. 

“I don’t know if those were her last words, but if they are, they’re beautiful.” 

We stood silent. She didn’t cry. I did. I realized later that she had held me in her arms the entire time and I wondered if it should’ve been the other way around. 

The candle light started fading during the same time the first rays of the sun hit the newspaper covered windows. As we cried, as we laughed, as we talked about nothing and everything, the city outside turning to dust, we created a bigger apocalypse happening within the walls of her apartment than the one the war had made. I had this strange feeling in my body for the whole time we spent together, even the next morning when I had to leave. This feeling, I believe it was love, helpless, dangerous and unexpected love.

You see, unlike Jessica, I didn’t know much about love, but I’ve felt it, randomly, at the way Kim Taeyeon took care of strangers, at the way a mother sacrificed herself for her child, at the way a soldier held his gun. I think soldiers are more scared than us, because they have no choices to make. I often ask myself, if I were a soldier, would I be any different than I am now? I got an answer later that month as me and Kim Taeyeon engaged into a conversation with the two Americans. 

Stephanie laughed aloud, her eyes turning into crescent moons and then, within a second, she slammed the beer bottle at the wall and collapsed into a dark abyss that no one could reach. 

“Right in this moment,” she spoke, her raspy voice cutting the tension in the room, “here and now, we are free, but we have done nothing to deserve this freedom.” 

She chuckled, bitterly, like a maniac, making me understand what Jessica meant when she said that the other woman has terrible intervals of sanity. 

“Stephanie…” 

“You see,” Jessica’s words were interrupted by Stephanie’s scratchy voice, “I like to believe that I have dyed my hands in blood to save my friends and family, to do something noble,” she clicked her tongue sarcastically, “for this dear country, but maybe I just did it for myself.”

“Steph-“ 

“Not now Jess! You know the truth. I’m such a ing coward,” she chuckled again, falling on Kim Taeyeon’s arms. “How did you ever fall in love with a coward?” She then laughed again, but her eyes were filled with unstoppable tears. 

I turned my head to look at Jessica, but her eyes had fallen on her lap, where her hands had turned into fists and her velvet dress had dots of salty water formed by her own silently falling tears.

That’s the night when I first kissed her. We learned to fall in love in the following nights. She’d touch me with her gloved hands and for a while we’d forget there’s blood being shed outside. 

“Can I see your hands?” I asked the first time when she had slipped me off of all my clothes, leaving me vulnerable in front of her crystal eyes that cut sharper than blades. 

She shook her head, but stretched her arms out and turned her head to the left. I hesitated, but then I started to pull down the left glove, and then the right, taking my time to free each one of her fingers from the velvet material. She stood still the whole time, her breathing unsteady.

They were scarred, her wrists, like she had been cuffed for days and weeks, helplessly trying to move and set herself free, but with no result. Under the dim light, I noticed a mark climbing up her left shoulder, which I assumed went down her back, circling right at her ribs where my left hand was standing. Smaller scars were drawn in her porcelain skin and I wondered how blind are we to the people that surround us? 

“You were tortured,” I muttered, the words stuck in my throat as I let her body tangle with mine in a desperate embrace. 

“What has happened,” she spoke, her voice muffled in my shoulder, “that’s not my story to tell.” 

It’s funny how once again she wasn’t the one to cry, I was. That night, she kissed it all away, she loved it all away and I understood that unlike everyone else sitting on that table in that sinful tavern, Jessica had lost everything to this war, had given everything to this deranged world and she deserved the freedom, but that didn’t mean everyone else didn’t. We’re scared, pathetic, cowards, but freedom is supposed to be something we are given. 

Today, right now, in the terror filled streets of Seoul, we had to earn it, and I had done nothing to earn it, not yet at least. 

It’s January 1953. Korea is still a deadly hollow end. What is given to you by life, is taken from you by war. 

The last time I saw you, you had the locket that I gave you clutched in your fist. You kissed me and said: “I think I love you in ways that no one ever talks about.” 

Then the soldiers entered your apartment and between my screams and the heavy sounds of their boots, you disappeared. All Americans were reported back to their country the next morning. 

I don’t know if those were your last words, but if they are, they’re beautiful and they’re something I’d never forget, even if another bomb exploded right under my feet.