2.

 

It’s black. Everything is. Rather than it being from lack of light, Sooyoung thinks it’s because there’s nothing to see. 

Sooyoung is confused as to where she is. How she got there. Where she was before.

Time feels funny, it moves sideways and backwards, but never forwards. Sometimes it doesn’t move at all.

Memories flash through her mind.

A battle. An arrow. A cry. It wasn’t hers. The chest was, though.

There’s someone with her. Something? A presence.

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

The sound of her voice is odd accompanied by silence. As if it’s just a thought, but not quite. She can feel it's resonance, it leaves a buzzing behing that dances on her skin. Teases her. The silence breaks under it. It's pieces fall on Sooyoung and feel like sharp glass. It doesn't hurt. Nothing does, actually.

She feels like she’s floating. Nothing to see, hear, or sense. She’s terrified of what hides around her, she’d do anything to see it.

Sooyoung closes her eyes. It changes nothing; darkness is darkness no matter how you look at it.

She resorts to the only thing she seems to know; herself. She runs her hands through her own body.

Yeah, it’s still there, of course it is, what was I expecting.

She goes on to feel what’s under her and comes in contact with something solid. For the first time since the darkness came, the feeling of floating disappears.

It’s disconcerting.

She becomes self-aware of her surroundings and of the buzzing noise that is both, nothing but a faint whisper and incredibly deafening at the same time- has it always been there? 

In a second long eternity everything she knows becomes nothing. A void is replaced by visions so vibrant that it makes her miss the dark. First it’s red. Then it’s golden. Then it’s every color.

It’s too much to bear at once, but what else is there to do.

Another explosion. There’s no bang. There are more colors this time. She’s floating again. It’s within hand’s reach, the universe. She can see it. Close to everything, surrounded by nothing.

Just like she is.

Sooyoung closes her eyes and that’s when she appears. Emerges from the colors in a fraction of a second. For the first time in her life, the word beautiful makes sense to Sooyoung.

A figure stands now in front of her. It looks like a girl, but Sooyoung knows it’s much more than that. She shines under the nonexistent sunlight. She is sunlight herself. Nothing’s ever felt farther away. 

Her hair is golden. Actual gold. Everything in her is.

A smile so bright it hurts. Sooyoung wouldn’t mind dying at the hands of it.

“You already did,” comes a whisper. The girl’s mouth does not move, but Sooyoung knows it comes from her.

“I’m dead?”

“Barely alive.”

Her voice is a symphony. It hides entire odes and a thousand orchestras. Only one would be deafening enough. Sooyoung understands why remains closed.

The world ends and begins with this girl. Her eyes hold entire galaxies; Sooyoung can see the starlight that exudes from them and the loneliness that hides behind it. It falls onto Sooyoung and becomes dust. 

A single blink from the girl would ensure destruction. She probably has already done so a thousand times by now.

“Your eyes hold other people’s forevers. Don’t they?”

The girl smiles. And it hurts. It hurts because she doesn’t smile at Sooyoung.

Sooyoung wants to be something the girl sees. Wants to be locked into her eyes. Is that where she was before? If only she could wish to go back.

“Do you know why you’re here, Sooyoung?” Silence reshapes itself in front of Sooyoung as the girl’s voice takes over.

Hearing her name feels like a privilege.

“I died?” There’s confusion in Sooyoung’s voice and the girl seems to enjoy it.

“Not quite. Life is holding on to you.” The girl explains. And stops for a second. A second in which her voice becomes terribly missed by Sooyoung.

The girl knows that and feels amused by it, “You’re here to give me an answer. To tell me if you choose to hold back,” she resumes her talking. 

The question is a useless one. No one in their right mind would choose anything over burning under this sun.

“I don’t want to go back.”

The air tastes like disapproval and it leaves Sooyoung’s mouth dry. This girl asks no questions, Sooyoung notes, she only looks for answers; one answer, the one she wants. Sooyoung feels like a fool for not giving it to her. Never disappoint a god is what Sooyoung learns.

“Not yet, at least.” She corrects her words.

And then, satisfied by the response, the girl smiles. So gently, so softly. It breaks Sooyoung apart.

“What’s your name?” Sooyoung aches for intimacy. A name should give that to her.

“What makes you think I have one?”

“Everyone has one.”

“Whatever you choose to call me, that’s my name.”

Mine. Sooyoung thinks. But that couldn’t be farther away from the truth.

"Are you God? Is that it?"

The girl laughs. Sooyoung wants to grab that sound and keep it safe in her pocket. Worship it. Hold it in her hands and realize that that's where the world is born. That when the sun comes out in the morning, when animals wake up at the rise of dawn, when flowers reveal themselves to the light. They all do it in hopes of making the girl laugh.

The girl laughs, and it answers Sooyoung's question.

"Isn't everyone?" She says, serene as ever.

No name seems fit for the girl, no matter how hard she thinks. A thousand sounds and entire hymns come to mind. But it all seems insignificant next to the girl that’s more than the body that holds her.

Days start and end with Sooyoung thinking about what to possibly call her.

The answer is harder than what she imagined.

The girl comes and goes as she pleases. When she’s gone, night takes over. And the darkness it leaves is always darker than the one Sooyoung remembers from the times before. But on the days the girl smiles, there’s double the stars in the sky. Or maybe that’s just what it feels like for Sooyoung. 

Sooyoung wonders if the girl notices her absence when she leaves. Probably not.

Sometimes, she stays for longer. She let's Sooyoung hold stars in her hand and rearrange them however she likes. Each night creating a different pattern in the sky. It makes the moon jealous. The girl gives it an ocean to play with to calm it down.

The girls grows millions of landscapes with a single movement of her finger. She builds, and constructs. Dismantles and repairs. She tells Sooyoung to get closer, to take a good look at this new garden she just made.

Each place has a song of it's own. Sooyoung doesn't understand them. The girl tells her what they say. She tells her everything.

Sooyoung’s hands start shaking one day. Probably from holding on for so long. But even then, she continues reaching out for the sun. It's never close enough.

Unlike Sooyoung, the girl’s hands never falter. They carve the air around her with their every move. It falls victim to her as she moves through it- past it.

Sooyoung can see traces of entire lifetimes in the girl’s palms. They’ve held it all; the raging fire of a burning passion, deep blue oceans where sorrow bathes itself, the wind in which memories get lost, blowing themselves over long distances until they fall into the ground only to be reborn as new ones.

“Do they miss me? Back home?” Sooyoung asks that same day.

“You’re not gone, yet, remember? Absence is the sound that only departure makes, and you’re silent."

“When I go back. Will I be loud for you?”

The girl shows no emotion. But Sooyoung notices it’s the first time she doesn’t answer straight away. The girl sighs- or that’s what it looks like for Sooyoung. And it’s the first time she shows any indications of having to make an effort to exist. Breathing. It makes her seem like something she’s not; human.

Sooyoung takes the silence given by the girl and makes it hers.

“How can I be something you miss?” She speaks again.

At this, the girl smiles. It’s finally a smile for Sooyoung. And it’s as thrilling as she ever imagined it would be. It’s an explosion of golden that hides in her soul. It feels like a part of the girl is now hers. It exists because Sooyoung does.

“You've been here for a long time. Longer than anyone before," She hums, and it's melodic. Sooyoung still doesn't catch the extent of her songs, "I was afraid this would happen. But I like you, Sooyoung.”

It shakes her, what the girl says. The fact that she can feel something as human as fear. It makes no sense for Sooyoung. The other half, she can’t focus on.

“And for that,” continues the girl, “I’ll help you with your answer.”

Sooyoung shakes her head. She can imagine where this is going. Did she get too close for comfort? Is this her getting burnt?

At this point, she’ll shamelessly decide to die suffocated by the heat.

“Go back with me.” Sooyoung nothing but pleas.

“I can’t.”

“Have you ever been there? Have you ever been like me?”

“No,” the girl’s stare softens, and the galaxies in her eyes quiet down, leaving the two of them alone for once, “But you have been like me.”

She furrows her eyes; confusion fills the air. This time the girl is the one to taste it. 

“It’s not my time to be there,” answers the girl before Sooyoung can even think about the question.

“Well when will that time come, then? Why can’t you just leave?”

“And it’s not your place to know those answers.”

The air Sooyoung breaths holds frustration now. She’s unsure of who it is coming from. The girl’s eyes, now empty of galaxies, hold a sadness that leave Sooyoung feeling heavy. As if she’s been witness to something that shouldn’t exist. Something that doesn’t make sense. She wonders how the girl carries such a weight without it crashing in on itself. She wonders if that is where chaos is born. 

“Will I ever know them, those answers?”

“You already do.”

And then she’s gone.

 

1.

 

Sooyoung wakes up and the girl is watching her. Sunlight shines down on her face.

The girl smiles under Sooyoung’s attention. It’s not a blinding smile.

“Your answers waiting for you, Sooyoung."

Sooyoung’s heart feels heavy. Heavy enough that it could sink her back to earth. Latch itself on the mortal ground she’s been dreading going back to. She knew this day would come. 

Sooyoung’s heart feels heavy. But it’s gentle. Oh, so gentle. The feeling of being filled by emotions that root themselves on the girl. Feelings that are for the girl, only. A blissful, cruel desire. That no one, not even the girl, Sooyoung thinks, could ever understand.

“Kiss me goodbye?”

“I can’t do that.”

“Says who?”

And so, she does. She moves to Sooyoung. Almost floats towards her. Effortlessly, smoothly. Like she’s been practicing the route for thousands of years.

She gets close, so close her light shines directly onto Sooyoung. Neither of them have ever known a closeness such as this one. It makes Sooyoung want to cry because for a second, she can imagine that they share a sun and a moon.

Time seems to move on a linear manner as the girl learns what a breath feels like. And Sooyoung feels terrified, because she never knew being burnt could feel so sacred.

Light seems euphoric to exist in their presence. Eager to trace each and every one of the lines that make them. Carefully caressing their skin and giving it a glow of its own. Light gives itself to them. For a second, it becomes one with them, rather than just a part of the picture. 

They’re trimmed by blaze.

Sooyoung’s wound is sealed by gold, she’s stained by light. And so light she becomes.

A light that travels. It goes away. And darkness comes.

It’s dark again.

So dark, she can feel everything this time, and god- she wished she couldn’t. It hurts. So much. 

She opens her eyes, finally. There are colors again, but they’re not vibrant this time. They’re dull. Boring. Human.

There are figures. They look like people, they are people. Just people. She’s surrounded by them.

“She’s awakened!” Someone screams. It pierces her ears.

She immediately recognizes her surroundings. It’s her home, her room. 

Memories flash through her mind.

A battle. An arrow. A cry. It wasn’t hers. The chest was, though.

There’s a bandage in her chest, now. She knows she doesn’t need it. It’s healed already.

 

“You got shot.”

“An arrow reached you.”

“We thought you were dead.”

“I had to carry your body out of the battlefield”

“You’ve been asleep for 3 days”

 

So many voices, all talking at once. It makes Sooyoung feel dizzy. Suddenly one rings above them all. 

“Who’s Jinsoul?” Asks one of the people surrounding her.

“What?” Sooyoung’s voice is hoarse. Throat dried, she could drink an entire ocean.

“Jinsoul. You kept mumbling it in your sleep.”

“Jinsoul,” she repeats, and she knows. She just knows. Her thirst seems to become satiated immediately,  “That’s her name.”

“Whose name?”

“Hers.”

Her words get disregarded as the rambles of a madwoman that’s still shaken up by everything that happened. But she knows. She knows, now. And no one else needs to.

 

0.

 

The girl waits for her time to come. She waits for as long as she has to.

 

1.

 

Light travels. It travels fast. And far. So far.

 

Sooyoung is sitting down at a cafe. Scrolling through her phone as she waits for her order. She feels like she’s been waiting forever.

Just as she’s about to approach the counter and ask what’s taking so long, she hears her name being called out.

Finally, she thinks.

“Ugh, thank you. Did you guys go to the end of the world to get this coffee,” she rapidly grabs her order and merely drops it when her hands brush with the employee that hands it out. It literally gives her a light electrical shock. She looks up and meets the eyes of a girl, which gives her a second, more intense one. 

She reads the name tag.

“Jinsoul?”

The girl smiles, and it holds the sun.

“Hi, you."