BUTTERFLIES (YONGSUN POV)

          I’ve never cared much for Mondays, although I guess that’s not exactly a rare opinion. From what I’ve learned, most people view it as a start to a new week, or just purely the day they have to return to work or their studies. Personally, I think of it as a start I’ll never experience.

Truth be told, my life up until this moment has been a bit... dull, all twenty-eight years of it. You could probably compare it to a stone, a mute grey, unchanging, and completely spiritless stone. I’ve been working as a barista for the 4Seasons Café in Seoul for the past 7 years, which is just as uneventful and mind-numbing as you’d think. I wake up ridiculously early in the morning, get dressed, go to my job making just about the same coffees every day, and when my shift is over, I take the subway home and immediately fall into my bed. It’s become a routine, with little to no variation within it.

Now, and trust me when I say this, I’m not a dreary person, I just have an exceptionally uninteresting life. I used to be the happy-go-lucky type when I was younger, but that faded away gradually over the years. Which, is a bit ironic as my name is Yongsun, meaning “fresh-faced.” I’m not entirely sure why my parents decided to go with that, but they obviously had a total lack of foresight on that one. Quite possibly the only interesting event in my life, that I remember of course, were the incredibly vivid dreams and nightmares I had when I was little. Although, as I grew up, those too faded away, leaving my existence to be nothing but a colorless, infinite cycle. But I guess, if dreams were the highlight of my being, it couldn’t have been that colorful to begin with.

I’ve lived in Seoul all my life, the full twenty-eight years, with absolutely no intention to go anywhere else. I guess I just hate change. I’ve been in the exact same apartment ever since I graduated from university, and you’d think that within eight years I would have decorated my own place by now, but no, all the walls are bare except for an occasional painting. They say a person’s home is a reflection and their personality and well, they were spot on with that one. Within my monotonous life, I haven’t really allowed time for friends, which is probably why I’m down with the flu, alone on my couch at the moment. Kind of a depressing picture, don’t you think? Well to make it worse, I’ve been watching the same episode of Hotel Del Luna for the past three days because I always fall asleep before I can finish, it’s a bit pathetic. I always tell myself, “I’ll make sure I watch it all tonight” and then, of course, it doesn’t happen. A tad ironic that I always say “lazy people have no future” when I’m almost entirely lethargic myself.

I felt around for my phone underneath the blanket and when I managed to find it, it greeted me with the light of the screen, reading “April 17, 2019, 1:24AM”

I sighed, “It’s really already this late?” I dropped my phone on the side table next to me, resulting in a loud clack, and exchanged it for the remote. The warm orange light radiated from behind the buttons, illuminating them. I pressed the power button to turn on the screen and quickly selected Hotel Del Luna.

The room around me was completely enveloped in the night, save for the cold glow of the TV screen opposite me. I had only gotten about half an hour into the episode until once again, my eyes had begun to droop. After a fifteen-minute struggle with my body, I eventually gave in and fell victim to warm embrace sleep. Even as I fell deeper into my slumber, I could still make out the voices on the television mixing and muddling with the outside sounds of the world. Eventually they all fell silent, until a small voice, seemingly from behind me called out my name, “Yongsun-ssi!”

I don’t believe I fully registered the voice until a great magnolia tree, veiled with stark white blossoms, blurred into view out from the blackness. The tree sat on a hill overlooking a small stream running quietly below, its fallen flowers being carried away along the flowing water. The clouds were few are far apart, simply dotting the sky with thin puffs of white, allowing the brilliance of the sun to shower the area with a pleasant warmth. The ground was a mix of earthy browns and vivid emerald greens, with small colored flowers sparsely scattered within.

Just then, a butterfly, its wings adorned with a multitude of magnificent colors, flew into my field of vision and then swiftly exited again. I whipped my head around to follow it, yet it had already vanished, and in place of the butterfly was a woman. A rather beautiful one at that, her eyes a shade of brown that almost bordered upon black, and her hair, glistening in the sun-

“Yongsun-ssi, you’re staring.”

I froze, not entirely sure of what to say until I settled upon two measly words, “Was I?”

She smiled and laughed, her eyes turning into crescent shaped moons, “Yes, you were, again, and if you keep that up, we’re going to get caught!”

Oh, that smile, and that laugh, it was a wonderful symphony of pure euphoria that I’ve never experienced, and I never wanted to end. I suddenly wished I could stay beside her for an eternity, I craved for just her simple presence to overtake my life. It was a magnificent fantasy that somehow seemed attainable at that very moment. I wanted to ask her name, but I was no longer in control of my body. I was outright stunned, completely unable to move or function properly and then, the moment was over. The woman’s smile faded, and that crashing wave of emotions retreated silently back into the sea, paying no mind to wreckage it left behind.

I wasn’t entirely sure on what had happened, but all I knew was that this woman was important to me. I wasn’t aware of who she was, her history, or even just her name, yet there was undoubtedly some kind of bond towards her that I simply couldn’t explain. The best way I can describe it is that she was a kind of familiar stranger. Contradicting, I know, but that’s the only way I know how to express it.

I think I had begun to stare for too long as the peripheries of my vision began to slowly blur and darken. The woman was still looking at me, this time with the small butterfly from earlier resting upon her shoulder, fluttering its wings in place. I began to move toward the woman, but she seemed to travel further away from me the more I tried. The blackness around me seemed to creep closer in until I was completely engulfed in it. The tree, the hills, and the woman were no longer there, the only two things left within the blackness was me, and the butterfly. Its brightly colored wings fluttered closer and closer until I felt it lightly set down on my finger, tapping its feet.

I didn’t realize until quite some time after, but as it continued to stay with me, the colors within its wings were slowly, but surely being leeched off into me. When it was completely drained of color, the entirety of it began to turn black. The darkness spreading its way through its veins until it dissolved into the air, leaving me completely and utterly, alone.

All of a sudden, bright lights and noises began to flood my senses, forcing me to open my eyes. I sat up, totally unaware of my surroundings, believing myself to be in a foreign environment. Then, I realized I was back in my apartment, on the same couch I had fallen asleep on, with the TV still playing. I stayed still for a moment, trying to process what I had just envisioned, who that woman was, and why she seemed so frustratingly familiar. I toiled over the thought of her for a long while until I resolved to just dismiss the experience as nothing more than a delusion. Merely, simply, and purely, a dream.