Windflowers

Jaehyun flicked the sweat off his forehead and covered his eyes using his hand before he stared at the blinding sun. The sunlight was burning his skin and his face was starting to feel like it was being grilled and it hurt so much. With a loud grunt, he darted his eyes back on the swimming pool floor and muttered curses as he brushed the algaes on the tiles. They were a disgusting mixture of black and green and they were so, so hard to be rubbed off. 

“ this ,” he said, throwing the brush across the swimming pool until it hit the floor and continued to slide until it struck the other side of the wall. He climbed up from the depth of the pool and headed to his backpack, grabbed his water bottle and chugged on it until there was barely any water left. He closed his eyes and tried to feel some imaginary wind. 

It was scorching hot, the temperature was probably more than thirty-two degree Celsius, and his shirt was drenched in sweat and it was sticking uncomfortably on his skin. 

He was beginning to feel sorry for himself. 

He tossed the water bottle on his backpack and walked towards the fence before he plopped down and rested his back against the rails. His head was pounding and his hands were sore from all the scrubbing—and he wasn’t even done yet. If it wasn’t because he would face some serious consequences if he refused to carry out the punishment that was arranged by the school administration, he would have long left this swimming pool alone and let the dirts reside there in peace. 

His eyes were closing slowly as he was beginning to feel the exhaustion and dizziness getting to him, and he let them be. Ten minutes, he told himself. Ten minutes of nap wouldn’t be counted as him slacking off, right? 

“Are you done?” 

His eyes fluttered open as he heard the voice, and he was met with a sight of a girl in a swimming suit, her skin tanned and hair pulled into a messy bun. She was staring at him with crooked brows, with a towel draped over shoulders and her arms crossed. 

“Not yet,” he replied, and then he got up and brushed the back of his pants. “I’m not done with the algaes yet.”

The girl chewed on her lower lip, her brows still knitted together. “How long is that going to take?” 

He glanced at the swimming pool and then back at her. “Not too long, but I still need to mop the whole thing.” 

She was now tapping her foot, and her fingers were pinching the skin of her wrist. opened to say something, but she shut it back, and then sighed. “Make it quick.” She drew each side of the towel closer towards her chest as she scuttled to the changing room, the sound of her flip-flops accompanying her as she went on her way.

Jaehyun had his eyes on her back until she disappeared behind the wall of the changing room, and then he let out a long, heavy sigh. He kicked a dead leaf on the ground before he grudgingly picked it up and shoved it into the mini dustbin that the janitor had provided. After setting the dustbin aside and praying (he didn’t do ‘praying’, but on this particularly hot day, that was the only way of his coping) that the rest of the algaes would be easy to be scrubbed. 

He sat on the edge of the pool before he jumped back into it, almost slipping as his slippers skidded on the pool floor. 

“This is gonna be the death of me,” he muttered to himself as he squatted and began scrubbing on the algaes, spitting out more curses while doing so. 

Finally, after cleaning a small area nearing the middle of the pool, he stood up and straightened his back. The sun was still shining on him, and he didn’t think that the burnt feeling on his face was getting any better. In fact, he thought that he would come out of the first day of his punishment looking like a meal—but not the good kind of meal. 

He looked down on the tiles and scrunched his nose as the blackish liquid from all the scrubbing spread out to other spots. He didn’t know how someone could have possibly swam in this pool, but she did, even with the thickening algaes. But then, there weren’t any other places that had a swimming pool in this area, and he doubted that a river would suffice. 

He heard footsteps coming, and he looked up to see her walking with a troubled expression on her face. 

“This is taking too long,” she said while her eyes wandered to the swimming pool. If she was grossed out by the dirt on the tiles, she didn’t show it. There was a look in her eyes that told him that she didn’t care; she just wanted to swim, and he had already taken off thirty minutes off her practice session. 

He shrugged. “It’s not easy to clean an entire pool in a few hours.” 

Her lips moved, like she was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it. Then, she turned to him and gave him a deep frown. Well, whatever she had been saying before, it didn’t seem like she was saying anything nice about him. 

Instead of going back to the changing room, she sat perched at the edge of the pool and stared blankly into space. Her bun was messier than it was before (he assumed that she must have taken a short nap before coming back outside) and the tendrils of her hair were continuously poking on her cheeks and occasionally her eyes as the hot breeze blew over. She wrapped her arms around her legs as she curled her body, her towel gone, and her shoulders exposed. Jaehyun shouldn’t be looking at her for too long, but coming face to face with Park Chaeyoung was a rarity itself, and he had never been able to take a good look on her apart from looking at her pictures on the local newspaper. 

Park Chaeyoung; the rising star of the town; the one who made the townspeople proud for her achievement. She was akin to the poster girl of her hometown, but for some reason, as he was searching her features, he couldn’t find the shining girl who had received a gold medal in the regional swimming competition. 

“How was it to win the regionals?” he asked as he walked towards the edge and rested his arms there, eyes studying the profile of her face. Her expression remained still, and she didn't turn to him. For a moment, he thought that she was going to let question pass.

“It was a good experience,” she replied and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I learnt a lot of things.” 

Jaehyun hummed while nodding his head. “Meet some cute guy?” A grin spread across his face when Chaeyoung finally turned her head to him, but it faded as soon as he noticed the gloomy look she sent to him. 

“I don’t know, it’s not as if I went there specifically to make friends,” she replied. Her voice was low and still, and he wouldn’t be able to tell that she was a tad bit upset by his question if it wasn’t for her eyes; her eyes told him a lot of story that couldn’t bear to speak of. 

Jaehyun nestled his chin on his arm and stared at the dried leaves getting whisked away by the breeze, and they landed scattered on the outside perimeter of the pool. 

“Why?” she asked, and at that, Jaehyun craned his neck slightly to her direction. “Do you want to swim?” 

Him? Swimming? He chuckled and patted away a dry leaf that ended up on his head. “Never. I’m in for the girlfriend part, though,” he said with a smirk. Chaeyoung gave him a blank stare and her expression remained stoic, but her eyes lingered a bit too long on him. Perhaps she thought that he was an idiot. Maybe, she even thought that he was funny.

She jumped into the pool and landed with a soft thud. “Let’s get this over with,” she said, grabbing a scrubbing broom and a bottle of sanitizer. 

“Even if we finish by today we still need to fill it with water before you can actually, you know, swim in it.” 

She stopped brushing the algae stains and looked at him with a deep frown. “What?” 

“The water pump is not efficient enough. Based on its flow rate it’s probably gonna take a while to fill in the pool with water, and I’m not sure how open you are with the idea of swimming alone at night.” He wiggled his brows. “There are monsters in there.” 

The look on her face told him that she was considering that idea as she was slowly brushing on the tiles, her chin tilted upwards as she was nibbling on her lips. To him, it looked like she was in a daze. 

“If you’re considering it, don’t,” he said. He approached her and took the broom from her and wrapped his hand around the broomstick. She was looking at him as if he had just told her to stop swimming, which was totally not the case. “Heat pump’s broken too, and you know how the temperature decreases at night.” He sighed, his knees bending a little so that he could reach for the sanitizer bottle. “You’ll get hypothermia before the monsters even get you.”

“Monsters are not real,” she grumbled under her breath, but Jaehyun heard her. “So…” she trailed off, and her eyes went between the brush in Jaehyun’s hand and the dirty tiles. “I can’t swim today?” 

He chuckled and then shook his head. “No, you can come back tomorrow.” His eyes looked over the areas that he hadn’t covered yet, and then he sighed while shaking his head. “Maybe.” 

She nodded. “Okay, thanks.” She went to the stairs and climbed up before she disappeared into the changing room. 

Jaehyun was using a hose to clean the remnants of the dirt when he heard the sound of something falling against the tiles. When he turned around, he saw a brush with a broken stick strewn across the floor and a pail that had half of its content on the floor and half inside it. Then, he heard a huff as somebody jumped in, and he saw her again. This time, with a loose shirt over her swimming suit, but her bun was still all the same. 

She didn’t say anything as she helped him brush the dirt into one of the drains at the swimming pool. 

“Nice shirt,” was all he said, and she didn’t even stop to acknowledge his comment. She continued on with her job, sprinting, and screeching when she almost slipped. Jaehyun glanced over his shoulder to see her putting a hand above her chest, her eyes widened as she was taking in a slow and light breath. “You might be wearing the Flash’s shirt, but that doesn’t mean that it’s safe to run across a slippery surface,” he commented. 

She narrowed her eyes at him before she looked away—rather with hostility—and went on her job again. 

“Thanks,” she mumbled. 

Jaehyun laughed, forgetting for a moment that this was how he was going to spend his evening for half of the semester.