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Memories

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“We were in love, weren’t we?

All those days we spent together.”

I keep on forgetting, but everything turns into something that I can’t hold within my fingers. I thought without you here I would be okay, but the trace of you that remained behind leaving a deep hole that I failed to imbue with something equal but sorrow. In this empty room, your shadow is still so clear against the beam of the sunlight that filters through the leaves and passes down through my unopened window. I don’t know anymore.

What should I do?

Please tell me something.

I’m in mess without you here.

Didn’t you say that you loved me? But why did you leave me alone? You know better than anyone else that I’m hopeless without you. So, why did you leave me? I don’t know anymore, I can’t think of anything. The memories of you are filling every nook and cranny in my mind and they are driving me crazy. I’m overwhelmed and my head feels like it is going to burst. I’m dying.

“We shared our pain, didn’t we?

Even when we didn’t know what was wrong.”

You are so selfish.

I know that, but I can’t do anything. We shared everything, the pain and tears that both of us had endured for so long. You said, you would protect me and you did, but in a worst way that I have ever thought. Did you do that for my sake? Or for the sake of your selfishness only? Our personalities were never matched and I knew that since long before.

So, why did I stay? Why I always wanted to be with you when I knew our story would end anyway. Why I desperately wanted you? Why I loved you so much?

You said, you wanted to be with me but then you left me alone. Along with many regrets that I haven’t been able to convey. Even the word I love you stuck in my throat.

If only, I could turn back time.

If only, I could meet you one more time.

If only.

If only.

If only.

But I know it won’t be enough.

If only, I could change everything.

I just want you to be here.

“Where are you now?

Don’t you hear my voice?”

I’m tired to look for your empty figure, trying to grasp for your image that keeps on fading and withering away. I’m afraid if someday, I will forget your face completely. The face that has been engraved along with our memories that had passed. Will I forget you? I’m afraid of that, but as long as I live, I will always remember you… right?

I’m not sure. Even the sound of your voice becomes more and more faint and distant. So, please tell me. Where are you? Can’t you hear my voice? Weren’t you always being the one who always found me first wherever I got lost? Weren’t you the one who always approached me first in the darkness and offered a light to keep me warm?

So, where are you?

I was a forlorn before you came. And when I started to learn the happiness that you gave to me. For the first time in my life, I knew how it felt to be alive.

But when you are gone. I’m as good as dead and after learning how to be happy. I – once again become a forlorn. I don’t know, this feeling is so terrifying.

Where are you?

“My aching heart searches for you.

It calls out for you, it’s going to be crazy.”

The leaves are rustling in the breeze along with the night that almost comes. The portrait of the tangerine sky is shown through the polished hanji that is put in the doors and windows. The silhouette of the maple tree along with the falling leaves that dashed by the wind are so clear against the magnificence of the dusk.

I sigh.

You who love the dusk and me who keeps on remembering you when the dusk comes. My heart aches, you who make my heart beat like a tambourine, you who drift my feeling as if it’s like dust that’s being swayed by the wind, you whom I love but left me behind. I tried to destroy your existence from every part of my brain, but how many times I broke them all, the shattering pieces started to glue their own parts and it hurt me. Why?

Why I can’t erase you from my memories?

Why I can’t unravel your existence?

As if you mock at me, as if it’s my own punishment from never being honest with you. As if, you have foreseen everything before and my suffering is one of them.

My heart, it yearns for you.

Can’t you come back already? I’m tired.

“My heart, my tears, again the memory of you.

Drop by drop they fall onto my chest.”

I open the sliding door and the scenery of the ultramarine sky is spreading within my eyes. The autumn breeze is blowing chilly, and it pains the joints in my body. I’m sitting on the balcony while watching the pond that turns into a pinch of black with the moon that draws itself in the surface of it. The whirling shape is formed, caused by the falling leaves that choose to drown themselves in the deepest of the pond.

Autumn.

This is an elegy of the autumn. The only thing I can do to lament over your disappearance. This is for you who left me alone in this world, for me who needs to keep on living with the life that you entrust to me, for the destiny that cleaved us apart in a tragic way.

This tranquillity air kills me, the heartrending memories of you are flowing in my mind. Your figure, your face, your voice, and your name.

Your name.

Your name.

Kim Tae Hyung.

It hurts. My heart is going to explode. I don’t want to mourn, but every time your name is running in every part of the cabinets in my mind. I do nothing but crying. This darkness and loneliness consume me little by little, it gets bigger everyday as the number of the strip that carves on the rock continuously increase, but everything stays the same except this unsettled feeling. I wonder, until when I will be able to keep my sanity, before this misery completely eats the all of me.

“I cry and I cry, and with these memories that won’t be erased.

Today my empty heart is drenched again.”

The wind is blowing along with my black hair that dances with the same rhythm in the chill that autumn brings. The streak of the constellation is filling the limitless blue sky, rekindling the memory of a longing someone that belongs in one’s heart.

It’s you in my heart.

If people die, will they be reborn and become one of the stars in the sky? The flame of the light that can be seen, travelled through the difference time measurement. It’s so far, the distance that extends between the earth and the outer space object called stars, but for some reason my eyes get a chance to witness something as magnificent as the sparkled thing that shines amid the darkness in the night sky. Because, I’m alive so I can see many different things that exist in this world.

Because, I’m alive so I will keep on searching for you. Even though your image is getting blurred that my mind can’t visualize anymore. The memories that we have spent together are permanently embedded in the deepest of my heart. And once again, I’m overwhelmed, my heart is drenched, my memories of you are flooding my emotion, it brings tears that I try my hardest to withstand and I’m drowning, I’m suffocating, I lose my breath but I’m still alive with the pain of remembering you.

I’m still alive.

“We liked each other, didn’t we?

I used to make you laugh just by smiling.”

When you were here. I would wait for the winter, where the snows piled up everywhere and the air froze every joint in my body only to feel the heat of your skin. I would warm myself in those delicate hands that the touching itself brought me giddy and into your warm embrace that I was willing to trade this whole world to an eternal winter so I would stay in your embrace forever. 

I would wait for the spring where the buds started to bloom, where the petals fully blossomed. We would walk together under the freshness of the blooming cherry blossom trees. Or sitting in the field of the cosmos flowers, feeling the rustling of the petals that were blown away by the wind. And there, we could see the hope that kept on growing and growing as if it became a hunch that we could ensure our uncertain future.

I would wait for the summer so we could enjoy the hopping of our horses and spend our time lying on the summer grasses, listening to the singing cicadas that filled the whole field, seeing the movement of the fibrous whitish clouds that spread in the cerulean sky, and hearing the steady pace of your breath entered my eardrums.

And I would wait for the autumn for it came to be the season that you loved the most. The chill breeze, but it didn’t freeze you. You who enjoyed your time standing under the gingko trees, watching the yellowish leaves fell to the ground where the wind washed it away along with the movement of your po. Or you who liked collecting the reddish leaves of the maple trees, brewed it, and we would spend our evening watching the crimson colour stained the blue sky, along with the shard of the violet loomed on the horizon. And we were smiling, because we knew, each of us was happy. So we were laughing because I knew that you were with me and I was with you.

But now, I don’t wait for any season to come anymore.

“We cried together, didn’t we?

You would hurt too when you saw my tears.”

Our relationship was so complicated and is still complicated. We pretended not to notice the differences and the opposites that we had. We tried our hardest to keep our real intention down, to shut our eyes to the reality that waited ahead for the sake of our selfishness. We wanted to be happy – or perhaps we longed to be happy and when the fate entangled our souls, when our destiny was rewritten, we were able to see the Book of ourselves without any divination. Yet, we still chose the same destiny over and over. We had encountered many rendezvous, we had given many choice to turn our backs, we had so much chance to hide ourselves, but we still kept on choosing the same path, and that path brought us to meet.

I’m Jeon Jeong Guk, and my family is a warlord in this land and you, Kim Tae Hyung, your clan is our biggest enemy, the one who we made a pledge to divide this land. I don’t know anything, I don’t care about anything, the history that happened years before I met you, the history that said, we didn’t belong to each other and the saying about we were born to kill each other. Maybe it’s true, but maybe it’s not.

Our first meeting felt like a beautiful coincidence, but we both knew how much setting given by our sides to bring up that meeting. We got close for the sake of spying, we both knew, yet we didn’t say anything. But I have grown up with you, for the years that we have spent together, because I knew you better and you too knew me better. For us who got isolated by our families, for us who was getting used for political purpose, for us who needed someone and ended up relying on each other, for us who fell in love. The word love was a fancy and imaginary thing, the word that got banished from our dictionaries, but in the end, we both knew, the meaning of that stupid word. Because we were dumb, because we were stupid. We knew, once this sick relationship got exposed everything would end, but tomorrow wasn’t something that we thought because today seemed more important. We knew we would die and we weren’t afraid of dying. It sounds so cliché, so dramatic, and so cringy.

But the fact that we love each other, the fact that we will get hurt if one of us is hurt, the fact that we will trade our life with each are something real.

Because I love you.   

“Where are you now?

Don’t you see how exhausted I am?”

And the divine punishment awaited us.

Everything ends, in the way that my brain still can’t process it. I hate this world, I hate the fact that I lost you. I hate the fact that I lost you, forever.

Where are you?

I’m tired to repeat the same question again and again. I’m tired with being alone without you here. Why won’t you come back? I’m so exhausted that I want to die.

I want to die.

I want to die.

And be with you six feet under.

My body is shivering from the cold that the autumn’s night brings along. I’m still sitting in the balcony, watching the darkness of the night, but I know better that the darkness within me is still bigger, and it grows bigger than any other darkness. The ultramarine sky is so clear and the constellation is still there. The dawn is approaching and before the sun rises in this world once again, before the light shines in the darkness, before this cold and misery melt, everything turns into something darker and colder than before. And in this crepuscular time, where the sky becomes the darkest I mourn over your death. I sink my heart to the endless darkness, I drown my soul into oblivion, this nothingness tortures me, I better die than living like this.

The night before you were gone. I remembered watching you under the maple tree as you raised your head to see the moonlight that brightened our good-for-nothing lives. Your back was trembling as it tried to convey something in a language that I failed to understand. I wish I hugged you that time, to reassure your feeling that we could definitely survive together,  

“Won’t you come back to me?

Every day I call out your name.”

“Young Master.” The sound of the knocking door is being heard. I turn my head and the shadow of a woman wearing a hanbok can be seen through the hanji that wrapped the door.

“I’m here.” The woman opens the sliding door and her gaze meets mine. The worried expression is written clearly on her wrinkle face.

“You should close the door, Young Master.” She hurries to close the door and forces me to enter the room after that I realize how numb my body has become. The wind chime is ringing caused by the touching of the door before it fully closes. The sound of the wind chime echoes in the whole room and I’m mesmerized by the memory that it gives to me. Perhaps, everything in this house really belongs to you, every corner that has nothing but a piece part of yourself and it makes me crazy. It makes me crazy that I keep on living here, but it will be crazier when I’m not here.

“The Lord just came and he wishes to see you.” Lord? So he did really come. I guess I was too distracted that I didn’t even notice a troop has come to this house.

“I will go there.” I murmur. The thought of meeting him is so frightening, no, I’m not afraid of him. When I’m being near him, I can’t help myself but to remember the things that I don’t want to remember. For a man who chose to abandon me for the sake of his victory, for a man who kept away the happiness that I tried to grasp, and for the man who became the destiny executor – the one who forcefully cut our red string, because of him I lost you.

“You don’t need to force yourself, Young Master.” I give her a warm smile and the concerned look in her face gradually fades.

“It’s okay. I can’t run away forever.” She heartens me by giving a smile before leaving me alone again in this room. The clouds are streaked with orange, the darkness is gradually dissipating, and the tangerine sun rises from the horizon. Another day comes, another time I spend in this world without you increasing.

“I fulfill your call, My Lord.” I’m walking slowly while the fists of my hands join in front of my chest as I give a deep bow to show the gratitude toward a man I called ‘The Lord”. The man who is in his red hanbok with the embroidered of the dragon and phoenix on the chest and both of his shoulders -it shows how high ranking he is- replies to me with a smile that I don’t know the meaning behind it.

The silence tightens this awkward atmosphere. None of us tries to break this emptiness as it feels to be the best choice. We keep on examining each other, trying to find a suitable word that will reach our expectations. My gaze is looking at the Lotus pattern on the rim of my jeogori, a formal dress that I often wear. Even though I’m the son of the previous warlord, I’m rarely being seen because of the mission that my big brother entrusted to me. The mission that I know was the part of his tactics to dethrone my father and to prevent me to become a potential heir.

“It’s time for you to come back home. Father and mother wish for your returning.” The other man speaks up, but I let him wait for my respond. I know that I don’t have choice but to obey to what he says because his words are absolute. As absolute as the death sentence he declared to me last year.

“I will tell my men to burn this house so come back with me this afternoon.” I grip my hands, I try to keep my composure, but I just hate the fact that he always tries to control me. As if I’m only an eyesore that he needs to get rid any time.

“Your servant will come along, so don’t worry, just get ready before afternoon comes.” Servant? She is the one who stays with me this whole time, she is basically the one who raises me even before I went out from the castle six years ago, when I was only fourteen. And to hear the word servant coming from his mouth is pissed every nerve that I have.

“I think burning this house down is a bit too much, right, Orabeoni? You know better that this house feels more like my home than the castle and beside that, this house belongs to me entirely since father gave this as a gift when I started my mission that you suggested me to do.” I don’t want his title or his seat. I don’t want to be involved in any kind of his political tactics. I just want to be here, I’m tired with the life that is controlled by him.

“Ok. Let aside the burning this house part, but you need to come back with me oh dear God. Can’t you see how dangerous your situation is? The last time, the Dragon Blue Clan almost stabbed you to death! Yes, I acknowledge your sword and horse riding ability. But you would be dead if my men and I didn’t arrive here and save you!” he raises his voice as a reply to my sarcastic words earlier.

“I didn’t recall that I called you to save me though. Ah, if you can do me a favour, you can go back with her. I can’t let her risk her life to protect me,” My eyes are pointing at the woman who is sitting near the door but her expression shows a total disagreement. I stand up from my seat, I don’t give him a chance to reply to what I said before. I bow at him once before walking away.  

“I know that you loathe me to death for the thing that I have done before and the thing that happened to him. And I know that your relationship with him is not mere camaraderie but---“ he yells, but before he be able to finish his sentence I shout at him back. My composure drops to the zero point. I hate him for taking you away from me. But the truth is I hate myself even more for not be able to do something.

“Don’t you dare to talk about him with your own mouth! In the past, I never hated you even when you took everything away from me. But this time, you even stole the only candle that lit my life. You better burn this house together with me, so I can see more flame to light my sombre life.” Just blaze everything in fire. This house and every memory that lies within it. The trace of our joyful laugh, our tense argument, our little secret, our unspoken pain, and even our hidden tear. Let everything mingle into the fire along with the memories that solder in my brain. Maybe, it’s better this way.

“My love, my tears, my memories of you.

Drop by drop they fall onto my chest.”

You said before, if you were to be born once again, you wished to be a writer. I don’t have anything that I want to do without you here with me. But the life that I’m shouldered to carry, force me to keep on living. I lost everything once I knew that you left me behind.

But I make up my mind. This time, I want to fulfill the wish that you wanted.  

You said, you liked writing and it was true. I liked to see your silhouette while holding a pen against the fire lamp that you kept in the middle of the night. I liked your writings and I still like it, I don’t how many times I have re-read those all in the point where I can memorize everything.

So, I want to grieve you in a way that you may like.

So, I end up writing about you in the papers that you left behind.

This is the elegy of the autumn. The things that I write to portray your existence so I won’t forget you, so I will remember you forever.

In the season that both of us love the most, in the autumn when we first met each other, in the autumn when we accepted our honest feeling, in the autumn when you left behind, and in the more upcoming autumns where I spend alone this season without you.

[Epilogue]

“As I wait, exhausted, I wander and look for you.”

“You know better right? The choice is just your life or his life.” The words that Jeong Guk’s big brother mentioned to him lingering in his mind. The same words his father said to him since their relationship was exposed. The fact that, they gave up their own clans and chose to be together. It was stupid, Tae Hyung knew that, but he couldn’t help himself to deny his feeling any longer. The time he had spent with Jeong Guk let him experience many things he never dared to think. For him, who grew up with sword and blood, affection was not something that ever existed in his life. He may regret it, the time he pretended his feeling for him led him to a condition he was never able to escape. To a condition where he gave up in a name of love.

Dumb.

He wished he could fly and escape from the jail that was built for him. He wished he could leave this place and find a peaceful place where he could be together with Jeong Guk and no one would ever find them, both his clan and Jeong Guk’s clan. But he knew, it was impossible. So instead of sinking his brain to that useless thought, he came with the best choice. It was true, it was either his life or Jeong Guk’s life.

Tae Hyung touched a loosened lock of Jeong Guk’s hair, tucking it back behind his ear. He watched his peaceful sleep face and brought closer his head to land on his chest. The dawn was still long to come. He kissed Jeong Guk’s forehead and gazed at him longingly. As if, this time was the last time he could see his face. He touched the sleeping guy’s cheek and moved to his ear as he whispered something he never dared to say, before leaving the dark room.

I love you.

Tae Hyung kicked his horse as a sign for it to started running. The neigh of his horse could be heard along with the sound of a hoof striking a hard surface of the ground. The constellation of the stars was spreading above him, as if, it told a goodbye to someone who would never see them anymore.

Jeong Guk’s right hand was searching around to find a body who usually slept there. He fully opened his eyes when someone who was supposed to stay there wasn’t there. He gasped, an uneasy feeling crawled within his heart.

“Kim Tae Hyung!” he shouted. But the guy was nowhere to be found. He ran to the stable and Tae Hyung’s horse wasn’t there.

“That bastard!” he went back to his room and changed his clothes. His heartbeat wildered, he exactly knew where the other guy went. He galloped through the chilly weather in the mid of the autumn as the same constellation was still there. He could hear a faint song that the wind whispered to him, a song about a dead lover. He was frightened.

The dawn was approaching. The orange sky was little by little eating the darkness that the night left. The constellation of the stars slowly disappeared as it lost in the magnitude that the sun had. The rotating of the earth kept it away for a moment just until the sun set once again. The figure of a familiar castle soared in front of him as he gently kicked his horse’s belly to fasten its speed. He was being recognized by the gate guards and allowed to enter without any trouble. 

The wind blew the rainclouds into the sky and a downpour began letting the uncompleted crimson sky gave up its appearance for today. He let his horse behind and heaped it to a random tree. He could hear the noise coming from the main courtyard as he headed there, as he could see many people dressed in formal hanboks, to show the ranking they had earned in politics. The rain didn’t stop them from being excited inside the shelter that prevent them to be damped. In the middle of the courtyard, Jeong Guk could see a drenching figure holding a cup. In front of him, a man -he also knew- stretched out an umbrella to keep the cup save from the rain.

“KIM TAE HYUNG.” He yelled. His hoarse voice echoed along with the sound of the raindrop that heavily fell on the ground. He ran in his direction, but a few guards stopped him and bent him down as he saw Tae Hyung gulped everything in the cup that he knew contained something lethal. Tae Hyung gave him a faint smile before his body fell and the foams could be seen coming from his mouth. The man who was standing in front of him bent his body and checked the pulse in his wrist and neck.

“Kim Tae Hyung, the youngest heir of the Blue Dragon clan is dead.” The shouting voice filled Jeong Guk’s eardrums as that man finished his words. The man with the highest ranking nodded his head, the shouted man bowed and escaped from the rain. The men who held him before letting him free and he desperately ran to the lying Tae Hyung in ten feet ahead. His hands were trembling, his body was shivering as he held the breathless Tae Hyung in his arms. His face emanated with the sadness, anger, and frustration, but the soaked guy didn’t know, all the feeling drove him crazy that he didn’t know which one he should express at that moment. He couldn’t cry even though he wanted to sob. He couldn’t mourn even though he wanted to scream. The heavy rain was still falling as it understood how much grief his heart felt and the raindrops were rolling down to his cheeks in the places of his tears.

It wasn’t a death sentence. It was a suicide to clear his name. There were only two choices that they had – for him to die in the name of Tae Hyung in front of the Dragon Blue Clan or for Tae Hyung to die in his name in front of his clan. The victory now was being held by his own clan and he played an important rule to get rid one of their enemy heirs. But, this emptiness already killed him.

It wasn’t fair for Jeong Guk and Tae Hyung knew that. The fact that he protected him by giving his life to him. He knew, it didn’t mean protecting him, he didn’t protect him. Because a life wouldn’t give another life, losing one life only meant grieving for the other. And it wasn’t happiness.

It wasn’t happiness for the party that was getting left behind. It was death itself for Jeon Jeong Guk and Tae Hyung knew that.

“Dear, the stepped fading leaves on my way home please tell me.

Which ones are the trace that his horse left?

Dear, the gingko trees that have nothing but yellowish leaves.

How does it feel to lose the ones that you hold so dearly?

Tell me.

How do you mourn when your companions wilt?

When the leaves you protect from the storm leave you one by one?

With your body that doesn’t carry words.

How do you convey your love?

With no language.

Is there a way to cry?

Or to understand the reason why your leaves leave you?

The rain falls.

And you are shivering alone.

From the inevitable pain and the indelible memory.

Please tell me.

How to survive?

Oh, autumn.

Tell me why did he leave?

In you, I know he whispered his anguish.

A depressing overcast autumn stays.

Dear, the gingko trees.

If I trade my life and let your leaves live.

Will you ask the autumn his last word?

Or the place where he goes?

Or just keep on singing.

Even after I die.

I want you to embellish my memories of him.

Please, keep on singing.

This autumn elegy.

A proof of life that once existed.”

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Memories

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