Jisoo bumped into her at a train station one sun soaked evening. It was golden hour, a faint breeze was blowing from the east. Dappled sunlight meandered through the trees and fell in odd rays here and there on the concrete. The tops of the high rises stood tall and gilded and the world held that crispness only the sun could give.

Jisoo had just finished up the last of her homework at her university and was on her way back to apartment for the night. Her backpack was heavy on her shoulders and her eyelids were drooping from the warmth of the air surrounding her. It had been a long day and she couldn’t wait to just take her shoes off and slump into bed.

It happened when she had been getting in while another woman wearing all black and large sunglasses was getting off, and in some way or another, their shoulders ended up colliding in the process.Luckily for them, neither one of them ended up on the pavement. It wasn’t a particularly hard impact, either, the woman in all black was petite. Yet the moment Jisoo feels the woman’s hand wrap around her arm to steady herself, it felt as if she’d been barrelled over by one of the train cars.

A wave of memories that didn’t seem to belong to her but were hers, came crashing over her. First, she saw herself standing in the middle of what looked like New York City in the early 70’s. She was twenty-five years old and she had long, black locks and was wearing designer clothing she could only have dreamt to afford now. The woman, Jennie, was standing next to her and holding her hand with a bright smile on her face.

They were pushing through the crowd of people on the sidewalk, headed towards the Empire State building. Excitement was bursting through their veins. They were love birds in the middle of The Big Apple on a trip after graduating from university in Seoul. Diamond engagement rings glittered on their ring fingers, illuminated by the sunlight. When they finally reached the tourist attraction, Jisoo couldn’t help but press a chaste kiss to Jennie’s cheek in the elevator up to the top floor. They were young and happy, carefree to the world around them.

In the next flash of memory, she and Jennie were thirty and were celebrating Jennie’s birthday in a fancy sushi restaurant in Seoul. There was a ring of their friends sitting with them from their college years. As Jisoo’s eyes swept over each face, she felt her heart begin to pound harder within her chest. A weight was beginning to settle over her, the knowledge that she had lived a life she’d never known, had f