The sun was slowly hiding itself behind the large walls of moist earth and tall cypresses when Minji landed on the last bus stop. She watched it disappear in the curve that opened up between the hills that surrounded the town, the sound of its engine turning into a distant noise little by little until it completely disappeared between the rustlings of the trees.

She took her phone out of her pocket, wandering her attention from the hour to the small “x” indicating the lack of signal. Minji sighed, putting the phone back while walking towards the small road of old pavement, a narrow alley squeezed amid the foliage that covered almost everything around.

Minji knew that the phone service there had become a far memory from the moment the bus crossed the bridge, as well as the radio stations, humming of the cars and the big city lights that once shined in her eyes.

She put her earphones on, the calm beat of the song overlaying the wind noise and sloshing of her boots against the pavement. While the trees slowly turned into houses along the way, a thought occurred Minji, silly and soaked with a sentimentalism that she knew that didn’t belong to her, causing the curves of her lips to arch into a smile without any consent.

The lights of the city had lost all of its shine in the moment that Minji set her feet on that town almost forgotten by the world, all the prejudices that filled her chest back then melting in the fluorescent lights of a smile.

Minji - or Jiu, like most people know her through the campus - had only three things she considered essential in her life: Music, black coffee and the big city. The black coffee would warm her body when the cold outside the window was too biting, while the music would warm her chest when the cold bounced off against the doors of her heart. The big city, on the other hand, were the lights that indicated her the way; a path that Minji still didn’t know for sure where it would lead her, but she was willing to find out.

She discovered this passion still in her childhood, when her eyes admired for the first time the colors of a Seoul illuminated by artificial lights at night. The constant noise of the traffic in harmony with a hundred voices made her feel small – more than that, it made her feel perfectly fit to that scenario. It was as if the city was always there waiting for the moment that she would arrive and find her place amid the crowd.

In a city as big as that, Minji didn’t had to care about being anything else but herself: A face in the crowd, without a name, with a history that belong only to her. Maybe it wasn’t enough for many people, but it was comfortable to her: like a hot cup of coffee in a cold morning.

While the world looked like it was searching for the right tuning of its lives in FM stations, the countryside girl didn’t seemed to care in being just a forgotten hiss in the constant AM static.

And just like that, her life had passed in a rush of opaque years without any exceptional story like the ones in the novels. She had a reasonable amount of friends and a not so laudable amount of love affairs, was able to graduate from high school with good enough grades that got her to college, even if it wasn’t the best one. If she was the main character of a story, she would think once in a while between a cup of coffee or two, Minji would be that character with low impact and small emotional engagement, probably causing the cancellation of whatever her writer was trying to write. Thinking again, Minji couldn’t imagine why someone would even care about making a character like her.

Three months and a project from Traditional Korean Music class later, she would find out why - but for the luck of you, reader, the reason behind that will be unveiled in the next paragraphs.

At first, Minji wished to be in anywhere else but there.

The project overall seemed much more complicated than what it should really be and much longer than her teacher made it look like. The idea was to travel to the oldest towns surrounding Seoul to start a small field research, the final essay containing short interviews with the oldest locals and the young ones as well, to establish a comparison between the two groups in a composition in the end – handwritten, Minji mended to the thoughts with a displeased groan.

Not that she didn’t like small towns - she lived for most of her life in a place like that - it was just that Minji didn’t feel comfortable on them. Everything seemed too tight, too intimate, too personal. In a place like that, where you could count the number of houses with desperate easiness, faces surely had a name and a history. That idea made Minji feel exposed and ashamed in a certain way. It was easier to be just a hiss when no one expected her to be anything more than that. Even if everything in that tiny town seemed immersed in the AM static as well.

In the first two days of the so called "field research", she limited herself to stop by to make small talk only a few times, more focused on exploring the area than collecting opinions from the locals. She walked through the small shopping street - that it had so few shops that it barely could be called as that. She counted a grocery store, two alternative medicine stores with local goods, a handicraft one, a dusty diner and a small bookstore, its entrance squeezed between the diner and the grocery store. It looks like an abandoned town, she thought while watching the few locals that walked around there, looking at her with curious eyes. Minji didn’t like that either: The attention that came with places like this one. But if she had luck and a bit of strength of mind, her essay would be done in less than two weeks. Then she would be able to spend the rest of the month laying down on her bed while listening to Yoohyeon – her roommate – whining about how the small barista from the coffee shop they both used to go after classes looked so annoyingly cute with the small apron of her uniform.

By the end of the third day she had also visited the oldest locations, among them an old shrine that, she discovered through the locals whom she had talked to, existed up the hills. The walking by the trail took most of the morning, but the view from the top surely rewarded the tiredness that she felt throbbing in her legs.

From that spot, the small town looked even smaller, as if the tall hills and the green of the treed wrapped the houses and its owners between its protective arms. Even if everything seemed too quiet for her to like it, Minji couldn’t deny the subtle beauty that transpired from the calm streets, the rustling of the wind against the leaves replacing the constant noise of the cars.

She could learn to like a place like this, she admitted, while she allowed herself to admire the midday blue horizon a last time before getting ready to go back to the trail, making her way back. However, the 'can' and the 'do' were two different verbs and, for all purposes, quite distant.

Or maybe they weren’t that distant, she would find out.

On the fourth day, Minji had already get used to the annoyingly lack of phone signal in the area.

"It’s an old town and almost everyone around here is just as old, kid." an old man told her when she bringed out the topic, smiling in an apologetic way. And, in fact, all the people she crossed with until then – her presence being welcomed with friendly smiles and morning greetings – seemed considerable older than her, most of them being from 40 years old to the third age. However, that didn’t surprised her. "It isn’t a town with much to offer to young people like you, with your heads full of dreams about the future." The old man continued with his low and husky voice, as if he had read the young girl’s thoughts. Minji limited herself to smile, incapable of disagreeing.

On the fifth day, Minji found out that there was an exception to that statement.

She had already collected what she considered to be enough information containing the opinions of the oldest locals, but her notes about the young ones weren’t doing as well as she wished.

“You could simply make it up.” Yoohyeon suggested the past night, diverging her attention from the movie she was watching on her notebook. “You’ve been spending a long time there. Just make some notes based on your own opinions.”

“And what if my teacher asks for a list with all the people I interviewed?”

Yoohyeon just shrugged, getting back to the notebook’s screen on her lap.

Minji sighed in annoyance, staring at the papers filled up with her scrawled calligraphy. She didn’t know what to do.
 

She walked aimlessly through the almost disturbingly quiet streets, impressed with all the faces she was already able to recognize. She ended up stopping at the shopping street, in front of the small bookstore she noticed on the first day, almost completely hidden among the dusty windows of the other stores.

Minji felt the look of the locals weighting on her back in a mist of curiosity and amusement while she shortened the distance between her and its entrance, a handbell ringing when she opened the door.

Inside the bookstore, the first thing that called her attention was the smell of books mixed with the unmistakable scent of coffee, awakening her senses. There was also a softer and delicate scent, almost sweet, that Minji couldn’t recognize.

The second thing she noticed had long black hair and round glasses decorating her eyes, that looked up from the book she was reading to Minji’s direction.

"Finally, the so famous reporter decided to pay me a visit." the girl said, crossing her arms over the balcony. She watched Minji with the same curious look of the other locals, a mist of friendliness and sympathy which Minji wasn’t familiar with, but she surely could get used to. "I was starting to think that everyone in town was suffering from a mass hallucination."

Minji laughed sheepishly, feeling a little awkward. She looked around, unimpressed to confirm that the small bookstore wasn't any different from the other shops regarding the movement – everything around these hills seemed frozen in time.

The young girl in front of her, however, defied Minji to follow this train of thought.

"I’m not a reporter. Actually, I’m majoring in Music." she said, rubbing the back of her neck while her eyes wandered back to the other girl. "By the way, how…?"

"The stories run fast around here." she replied, straightening her glasses. Minji thought that the large and round lenses gave an even more unreal look to the girl in front of her, making her face looks ethereal. "Small town, everyone knows everyone. Also, things can get pretty boring after a while. We like to have something to chat over lunch, you know."

"Sure." Minji smiled, walking between the shelves. "So you take care of here?"

She hummed in agreement.

"Yes, like my father, his father and the father before him. It’s more of a family tradition than business at this point, though. I open every day at 8 AM during the week, and close at 5 PM. During this time being, there isn’t really much more to happen than what you already saw on the last few says" she answered in a tedious tone. Minji see the corner of the girl's lips quirk in a half-smile, her expression amused. "And from time to time, a mysterious music student shows up to break the tedious routine."

Minji felt her cheekbones get hot, suppressing a smile while her fingers wandered through the strands of her hair.

"Mysterious?"

The girl shrugged, nodding.

"All we know about you is your name, but what I ask myself is: what kind of person is called Jiu?" Minji laughed, feeling the hotness on her face crawling to her ears. That girl was really different from everything she had seem there until now.

"It’s a nickname I adopted when I moved to Seoul. There was another two Minjis in my class back then." Minji took a book from a random shelf, feeling the texture of the cover with her fingertips. At The Mountains of Madness, by Lovecraft. She turned to the balcony, smiling. "And despite you judging me as the mysterious one, you already know my name but I don’t know yours."

Like it was even possible, the blush that flourished on the girl’s face made her even prettier, leading Minji to ask herself about which reasons would lead someone like her to hide in a small bookstore like this; in a town like this.

"You can call me Handong." she said, taking the book from Minji’s hands and writing a small handwritten note on it. When she smiled, Minji could swear she saw the sun make her way inside the room.

By the end of the fifth day, while Minji was going back home, she watched as the artificial lights replaced the sun, that was now hiding behind the already luminous skyscrapers. A little surprised, Minji caught herself realizing that she didn’t thought that those lights were that brightest anymore.

Minji went back to the bookstore on the sixth day. And on the seventh. And on the eighth.

To find Handong in that quiet town was like finding a treasure map: Everything was unexpected, funny and strangely exciting. She would never grow tired of the never-ending stories Handong knew about the town and was so good at telling it.  Like she mentioned briefly in their first meeting, the younger had always lived there - like her parents, her parent’s parents and the parents before them.

"I can’t imagine anything out there that could offer me something that I don’t already have here." she said when Minji asked her about her decision of never go to the big city like everyone else. Her dark eyes seemed to shine with a thousand constellations when she talked about this town - her town -, an honest devotion slipping through her voice. Maybe those green hills meant to her what the artificial lights meant to Minji, after all. "It’s not much, but I think I never needed the 'something more'. And I never got curious enough to find out the opposite, either."

Everything that came out from younger’s lips sounded like poetry to Minji’s ears; As if every word had a stronger meaning than its own. That peculiarity in Handong – and Minji would tell herself that it had nothing to do with the way she always straightened her glasses when she blushed, or the way her long hair fell like curtains in front of her eyes when she leaned to read a book – made her go back to the bookstore, day after day, trying to unveil the map that the other girl was.

For the first time in her life, Minji felt perfectly comfortable in the static that embraced not only her but Handong as well.

On the twenty-fifth day and a dozen of cup of coffees in the bookstore later, they left the store for the first time.

They walked in silence through the also silent streets, the morning fog slowly dissipating as the sun spread itself on the sky, painting itself in different shades of orange.

The trail that lead to the hidden shrine between the hills was narrow and tortuous in some points, what made their shoulders collide with a higher frequency than it was actually necessary – even though that contact, always followed by shy smiles, didn’t bother Minji at all.

Both of them were breathless when they finally saw the opening among the trees, the dark stone monument rising up in between the underbrush.

They shortened the distance between them and the small glade in a few steps, the sound of the wind chimes becoming louder.

"My mom used to bring me here very often when I was a child." Handong whispered, a nostalgic smile filling up her lips. She bent down on one knee, caressing the white petals of a flower that grown close to the massive stones of the shrine’s structure. "People used to come up here some time ago, but the years brought the weight of the age to most locals." she sighed, the nostalgia on her face slowly diluting in something that looked like sadness and longing. "You should have seen it back then. Dozens of people would climb those hills everyday looking forward to make their wishes."

Minji walked around the big monument, trying to imagine those days that Handong seemed to cherish with so much love. Days in which the moss didn’t covered partially the base of the columns and leaves weren't spread everywhere, where tons of people would leave their offerings looking for some divine answer. Being in there, among the centennial trees and in company of Handong, almost as mystic as the place, Minji could nearly understand the reasons that she questioned before about some writer to actually write about her.

For the first time in a long time, she was eager for the next chapters of her own story.

"What would be your wish?" she said, feeling her heart pounding against her chest like a hammer when their eyes met; The cold morning wind messed up her hair, but the warmth that came from Handong's eyes warmed Minji inside out. "I mean, now." She smiled, her eyes wandering from the shrine to the other girl. "It would be a waste to come all the way up here and not make a wish."

Handong nodded, looking thoughtful while staring at the stone monument. She got up from the wet grass, walking until Minji’s side with her hands on the pockets of her dark jacket.

"I would wish that time stopped right now." she said after a few seconds considering. Her eyes were still staring at the shrine, but now Handong looked like she had lost herself in a place far away from there, where Minji couldn’t reach her. She wanted to reach her.

She let her shoulder rub softly against Handong's, trying to bring her back to the present - to her.

"Why?" Minji whispered when Handong’s eyes found hers once again, now with a shine full of a meaning that she couldn’t quite understand, but it made her ears get red in the tips.

"I’ve been thinking non-stop about last moments for a while. It seems weird, right? Most people would say that the first moments are the most important ones, but I never thought that way. Only the endings give us the power of choice: if they are good or bad, or if they will have some meaning or not." she sighed, her eyes getting lost in the empty for a moment. "I would want that my last moment had a meaning."

"So you want your last moment to be right now?" Minji asked, unsure.

Handong smiled, her eyes shining more than the sun over the hills.

"I want my last moment to be with you."

On the fortieth day (and ten days past since the presentation of Minji's Traditional Korean Music essay), it rained torrentially.

They were in the small cottage Handong lived in, at the bottom of the hill. Minji was holding a mug of coffee between her hands, in a failed attempt of ignoring her trembling fingers.

Said trembling was caused by the thought that kept her sleep deprived for the past few days - more specifically, in the last ten days after the presentation of her essay.

She had not reason to be there anymore. No more college projects, no more interviews, any that she could use as an excuse to keep walking up those hills, day after day. And yet, there she was.

And Handong was also there, of course; With her feet resting on Minji’s lap, all her attention to the book on her hands.

Sometimes Minji asked herself when did she fell in love for the younger. Maybe during the countless afternoons on the bookstore, where the time seemed frozen in time while they talked about everything and nothing. Maybe in the silence in which their relationship flourished until it got them there, so close and comfortable even in the absence of words. Or maybe, a tiny voice blown to her ears, making her heart beat unsteady, and maybe only, she had fall in love still on the first day she saw Handong, her smile shining more than all the city lights that Minji once loved.

Lights that now seemed opaque compared to the brightness in Handong’s eyes.

She frees one of her hands from the mug to let it rest over the younger’s legs, that raised her eyes and looked in her direction, curious.

"I finished my essay." she said, breathing deeply while her free hand drawn patterns against the fabric of Handong’s pants. – For ten days, actually. 

Handong arched her eyebrows, a mist of surprise and amusement flashing on her expression.

"And yet, here you are." she said closing the book and getting closer to Minji, a trace of a smile growing on her lips.

She just nodded, eyes locked on Handong.

"And here I am."

"Why?" she asked, but the way she smiled made clear that she already knew the answer. Handong always knew.

Minji shortened the distance between them, resting the mug in the coffee table. She slipped her fingers through Handong's hair, reaching the base of her neck. Her heart beated unsteady against her ribcage as she watched how Handong leant to her touches.

"You know why." she whispered, their mouths so close that she could feel her breathe brushing her lips when she laughed.

"I think I know." she said simply, leaning against the Minji and touching their lips.

On the fortieth day, Minji and Handong kissed for the first time.

On the fortieth day, too, Minji didn’t went back to the dorm she shared with Yoohyeon.

On the fifty-second day, Handong closed the bookstore earlier, so they could spend the afternoon at her place, entangled on the couch as if they were one person.

"You never told me what you would wish on the shrine." Handong suddenly said, breaking the silence. She watched their hands interlaced under the light that came from the window, the beams of light making their arms shine in yellow hues.

Minji just laughed, tightening the arm wrapped around the other’s waist.

"I would wish these good days to last foverer." she answered, her eyes staring at the trees rustling through the stained glass while Handong sank her face on the bend of Minji’s neck. "The gods have attended my wish. I'm thankful."

On the seventy-fifth day, everyone in town already knew her and greeted her by her name. Minji would stop in a few days to talk with the owner of the grocery store, and in another few ones would climb the hills with Handong by her side to take the offerings from some locals that didn’t have the energy the walking required.

Without noticing it, little by little Jiu became another local with a name and a history and, to her surprise, she enjoyed that more than what she thought she was capable of.

On the ninetieth day, Handong said four words that have been around her thoughts since it became solid as those lands that Minji was hers and she was Minji's; and the two together were something that Handong could never find in any of the thousand books she had read in her life.

"Come live with me."

And smiling, with that smile she reserved just for Handong, Minji said the only possible answer she could give.

On the hundredth first day, two things happened.

The first thing was that when Minji put her feet on the town, she was carrying boxes along with Yoohyeon, that came to help her.

"Who will pay for my macchiatos now?" she whimpered, Handong laughing as Minji rolled her eyes, already used to Yoohyeon's dramas.

"Stop complaining, it’s not like I’m going to the other side of the world. Besides, now that you finally asked Gahyeon out, I’m pretty sure she will give you some discounts. Or maybe you can pay with-"

Minji was interrupted by a slap on her shoulder, Yoohyeon cursing at her while her face turned into different shades of pink.

Handong just smiled, too happy to do anything besides that.

The second thing, however, is something that only Minji and you, reader, will know.

More than moving together, the hundredth first day – or the first day, like Handong preferred to call it – was also the day that Minji realized a small changing on the way she saw.

Maybe it was because of that town, which with its fictional aura have bewitched her amid its hills of old land and tall trees. Maybe it was because of its static, so similar to the one where Minji lived in, but at the same time felt so welcoming and personal.

One day, she believed that there were only three essential things to her life: black coffee, music and the big city lights. Those things, however, now seemed too distant from the other side of the bridge, left behind along with the phone signals and FM radio stations.

Because there, hiding among these hills and this forgotten town, was the only thing that Minji discovered she really need: Handong.