Songs:

¬ Nudos y Torres

Bora’s conscience spiraled around both pride and remorse as her heeled boots marked a relatively fast click against the sidewalk. Her arms hugged her backpack with uneasy tightness as she repeatedly went over the path to Handong and Yubin’s apartment in her head. It was nearing eight in the evening and the streets lacked movement, and interaction, and the feel of daylight time, strengthening the stress piling up in Bora’s chest. She probably should’ve listened and stayed in the apartment, she thought, but at the same time she tried to justify her actions with the fact that she finally acquired a contact willing to fund the continuation of her studies. Her presentation was a total success, and, even though the danger she was currently in didn’t properly let her savor the achievement, it meant that all her hard work, long hours of practice, frustrations... weren’t meaningless after all. It became a regular scheme, for her to conjoin repetition with monotony with good with bad with right with wrong. Safety, plain safety, and stability; those were the origins of her greatest pride. She practiced her dancing every day, along with the stimulation of her creative endeavours as a choreographer, and it was steady, comfortable, because she knew what she was doing and she was good at it. She couldn’t imagine a more appropriate way to follow her life, really.

The sound of her boots clashing against the cement didn’t vary in pace. It wasn’t too fast to be considered jogging, nor too slow to be named walking, and it stood out from the distant opaque but peculiar sounds of the night in the city. She hoped the path would end in the next block turn, but her ears picked up a certain mimetizing of her stride not so far from her; her soaring panic made the already extensive trail much longer. She started walking faster, only for the other pair of shoes to progressively raise their velocity to match hers. Her arms unconsciously tightened their grip around her backpack and her heart pushed her lungs to start a dissimilar rhythm. She forgot to buy that pepper spray she always wanted, she didn’t bring a weapon, she was a woman, she didn’t have keys to put between her fingers, she completely disregarded the temporal safety of the apartment... she thought. 

“Kim Bora.” A deep voice belonging to a man called out with a stringent edge that cut through Bora’s last thread of rationality. Her mind got cluttered in a matter of milliseconds, and before she could think about it her feet caught cognizance. She ran fast without looking back, shambolic, trackless, each step falling heavy and loud with a pinch of haste and desperation, but it wasn’t enough. The man was faster, and showcased his strength when he hooked the length of his arm around Bora’s neck. Inertia made Bora’s lower body move a few steps forward before registering she was stuck and somewhat hanging. The man’s forearm got tugged away by her small hands, or at least they tried to, but upon realizing his grip remained static she screamed for help. His locked arm loosened a bit in response to the sharp yell and his eyes examined their surroundings in search of any other human. Concluding his visual scan with a negative, he loosened the grip even more. Only then was Bora able to pull his arm away, and after she succeeded she was met with a laugh that came from the gut. His mockery took her over the edge, and having all types of panic vanished and substituted with hurt ego, she turned around and messily swung her leg to make it clash against the man’s groin. Before she could start running away from the groaning man, his face made her stay, and her anger worsened.

“DUDE!” She pushed his head back with enough strength to make him lose his balance.

It was silent for almost a minute. “I can’t believe you didn’t recognize my voice at first.” He almost mumbled, still trying to manage the pain that had made him feel nauseous.

“Seriously, who the hell does that?! you, oh my god…”

“Why are you so jumpy?” He asked after almost fully recovering.

Bora didn’t answer right away. She asked herself if she should dump a pile of information on a classmate she never got close enough to and hadn’t seen in a while. “It’s dark, I don’t have anything to defend myself with and I literally thought this was my end!” Not her end, the end of her life as she knew it perhaps. He showed his teeth in a wide, charlatan smile.

“It’s my way of greeting a long lost friend.”

“It’s been only months, and we were just classmates.”

“Ouch. Anyways, how’s life going? Are you still on that dancer ?”

“Are you still on that ?” Her eyes focused on how the indirect light of the moon induced the outlining of everything around her, like benches and lampposts, rather than looking at him.

“Funny, as always.” He let out a chuckle. “Why are you going that way? Isn’t your apartment close to that… clothing store? That your friend owns, I think it’s called-”

She interrupted him without care. “Yeah, yeah, it is, but I’m staying somewhere else now.”

    “Is that so? What happened?”

    “Why do you care?”

    “I’m just curious! Like, I passed by yesterday and your car was there, so I went in and asked for you but they said you haven’t been there all day.”

    “Okay, leave me alone.” She started to turn around but he caught her arm to stop her, so she stepped away and tugged her limb free. “Aside from leaving me alone, don’t touch me.”

    “Okay, I’m sorry.” He moved two or three steps away from her and put his hands behind him. “I’ve just… missed you. Haven’t seen you around campus either.”

    “I’ve been busy. Anyways, have you been in contact with Junmyeon lately?” 

    “Yeah, he’s been to my house a couple of times lately. Why?”

    “I need to talk to him about legal stuff.”

    “, are you in trouble?”

    She chuckled mentally. “Not really. I just have some questions regarding legal papers and all that.”

    “I could call him right now. We could go to my house, it’s barely nine pm.”

“No, no, I really need to get going. It’s late, so goodbye.”

    “At least let me walk you to wherever you’re staying.” His offer rolled off his tongue like it burned, like he wanted to get rid of a bad taste.

    “Thank you, but no.” She finally turned away from him completely and started walking at the same pace as before. “Don’t follow me, either.” After some thought, she decided to make a wrong turn in the next intersection, just in case.

🝰🝰🝰

Siyeon was back in the same position as in the start of the day, kneeling in front of a window and leaning in, equally perplexed, but this time her gaze was stuck to the freckles of the night sky. When it’s blue, the white has shapes that seem soft and edgeless, not perfect dots that seemed like white sand, or dirt, thrown onto black paper, or the spheres of fertilizer that contrast against the dark soil. When it’s blue, sometimes it doesn’t even have white at all. When it’s blue, she couldn’t properly see the moon like she could now; she was fascinated by the round figure and the white grey details that made it seem like it had its own freckles, or flowers, or the good and bad, or just plain circles inside of circles. She spent some time admiring the planet’s natural satellite, giving it meaning and interpretation, and it inspired her mind to construct a palace of abstraction fueled by her hyperactive imagination. Her irises struck deep into the spotted dark dome, generating thoughts, thoughts of immersion, thoughts of conjunction… the black of the dot in her eye melted and fused with the void of space; she felt she belonged, this was her place. It was a strange sensation, but not unpleasant, rather unsettling as she felt something inside of her metaphysical self was shifting.

She inhaled deeply and rested her forehead on the glass. What else was she missing out on... she played with the thought in her head as Yubin put her book aside to go open the door. Her eyes never separated from the window, even when she detected a set of steps getting closer. When they stopped, she was able to make up Bora’s side profile from her peripheral vision, making her slightly exhale into a fugacious smile. The dancer had also kneeled in front of the window, right next to her, and didn’t say anything; she was focused on the freckled sky, too. Then, her focus landed on Siyeon’s face, making the latter make an effort to look back at her without taking her eyes off their original position. She questioned her nervousness, also a strange sensation, and her reason moved her head towards the dancer without thinking about it more than once.

Bora moved her head to face the window as soon as she felt Siyeon’s fervid eyes traveling upon her features. Her initial boldness got shadowed by a tide of unwelcome vulnerability. That was strange, she thought, she was just looking at her. But her eyes felt as if they had the ability to look into her soul, grab a handful of emotions and throw them in the air like one does with the fallen leaves of autumn. She tried to concentrate on the rhythm of her breathing to clear her thoughts. Her mind worked fast, fast and efficient enough to leave the tense feeling behind and make her stand up with a liquid idea. “Come on.” She extended her arm with an open hand, and Siyeon took it to get on her feet.

“What?”

“It’s even better without the filter.”

Siyeon tilted her head, a side smile escaping, concretizing the utter pleasure she found in the other’s choice of words. She reached for her crutches and Bora for any type of blanket before heading to the door. Yubin lowered her book to watch them go out the door like they thought they were invisible, then raised it back up to continue her reading, unbothered.

They got up with moderate difficulty and frustration considering Siyeon’s leg, but when they arrived at the roof a brumal breeze caressed their faces, triggering a mood reset. Bora placed the blanket on the floor and invited Siyeon to sit beside her. When the latter did, she noticed a dark red patch on the cement surface next to where they were sitting and chuckled.

“That’s mine.” She pointed at the patch so Bora would see it, like she was somehow amused by it, or proud of it.

“So this is how you stained Handong’s rug?”

“I’m not gonna hear the end of this am I?”

Bora laughed. “Probably not.” She laid down to have a better look of the sky, and Siyeon did too. “I can partially promise to not mention it again… I don’t know about Handong though.” They both chuckled as they got lost in the fullness of the infinite nothingness of space again. Bora’s head didn’t travel that far as Siyeon’s though; she was visually focusing on the black and white, but her attention wandered around the essence of the woman laying down next to her. She had weird habits, she thought, and even though her assumed tabula rasa made her behave like a newborn child, constantly bemused by the most simplistic eventualities, Bora knew she had something else going on. She had never met anyone like her; someone that could spend who knows how much time staring at the sky just because the color calls her, someone that even without memories seemed like she has a fuller mind than half of the people Bora knew. She turned her head towards her and stared, again; she didn’t understand why she was so intrigued by her, or why it was a recurrent impulse to simply focus her vision on her face. Impulses, they reigned her supposed nature, impulses, they made her concretize out of emptiness instead of waiting for abstraction; “Who are you?”

The foreign question pulled Siyeon out of her daze, and made her focus on the other woman. “What?”

“Who are you?” Bora repeated, emphasizing the ‘are’ and looking away into the sky.

Siyeon did the same, her eyes piercing into the void almost as if she was trying to brew the answer by connecting all the bright dots. A string of moments passed by without a word being heard; Bora, expectant; Siyeon, searching for remnants, seemingly inexistent remnants she tried too hard to dig up. She was… Lee Siyeon, she thought, but if she had just remembered her name days ago, who was she before? Was she her name? Was she her materialized body? Was she even Lee Siyeon, truly? Yes, she was, she apprehended her inner voice, because she just knew that was her identifier. Her only identifier. Were there more? Questions were the only thing roaring in her mind at that moment; too many questions, and only one answer: “I don’t know.” And she became blue, tinted by the realization of her apparent inexistence. It had been stated by several sources, not just her inability to answer Bora’s question; she had been told she has no digital fingerprint, she probably has none of those legal and medical papers everyone kept talking about, she had no answer to any question they asked her about her identity, nothing, and not even nothingness, because she was something. She was aware, like Bora, and that made her curious enough; “Who are you?” She emphasized the ‘you’ instead.

After time of consideration, and a share of Siyeon’s anticipation, Bora sighed. “To be honest, I don’t know either.”

They fell silent again, and relaxed in confusion.

“I’m sorry, again…” The dancer broke the silence again.

“For?”

“For making you uncomfortable, I don’t know… First with the police thing, then with memento, which is an amazing movie you should see. Wait, actually I don’t know if you should see it. Anyways, anyways, I joked about asking for forgiveness with the clothes but that was… that was not it.” A sigh escaped her lips. “It was a lot to take in, and it still is, but after thinking about it, I think you felt mocked and that wasn’t nice of me… I mean I mock everyone it’s basically the way I build relationships you know you can ask Minji-”

Siyeon interrupted her with a short laugh. “Kim Bora, it’s fine.” Bora let out a breath she was holding captive. “I reacted badly too, I think, and yes I was mad because I’m really trying here. But I don’t feel like that anymore. This is all new… but regardless of anything else, you’re good in my book.”

“Really?”

She responded with a hum, embracing silence again.

At one point Siyeon closed her eyes and her fingers traced figures on top of her chest. Bora never closed her eyes, but rather paid attention to the other’s actions, motivated by intrigue, intrigue, intrigue... what went on in that woman’s head? But also, what and how much was missing? She played with an idea in her mind, considering what she had seen of the stranger; she was extremely fascinated by the smallest thing, she seemed to know nothing. Has she ever experienced the taste of freshly baked bread or been attacked by the freezing feeling of ice cream in the palate, or went to splash her feet in the encounter of the sand and the sea? Has she ever experienced the rush of adrenaline from being inside a speeding car, or felt the fish of the lake swim against her skin when she submerged her legs in the water, or smelled the essence of wood in her hands after touching a tree in a forest where it had recently rained? Has she ever experienced a hug that melted her senses? Many thoughts, many ideas, and missions, that was what dwelled and spun between her ears. Irrational, at the moment; she stopped herself to ask about the reason for this merge of daydreaming. She put her hands as a pillow behind her head and exhaled perceptibly, feeling like all these sensitivities got expulsed with the deflating of her lungs. Deep in a dark corner though, they stayed, and got subconsciously accepted.

🝰🝰🝰

Two days transcurred in an unoriginal fashion; since the presentation had already passed, Bora had no reason, other than stubbornness, to go out of the building and neither did Siyeon. Part of the reason for this is that Minji found out about Bora’s recklessness, so she was vigilant. They both stayed in, Bora practicing her dancing in the apartment’s bigger space and Siyeon facing trial and error like she had done the past days. Nothing out of the ordinary, no more headaches thanks to the underground aspirin prescription. The two of them had only talked about trivial stuff ever since they got back from the roof, apart from random stuff Bora teached Siyeon when she saw her struggling or wondering, like the smart television or cooking.

Handong was at the store and Yubin was in one of the sofas, working with yet another dismantled computer whose parts were dispersed all over the coffee table, and some screws could be found on the floor if you looked hard enough. Siyeon sat in one of the kitchen island’s stools, gently pinching a bit of skin from the back of her hand, across from Bora, who had a vegetable filled skillet in hand. She noticed a marker and a bunch of paper in the corner of her eye, and her impulse was to bring them closer. She took the cap off the marker and admired its rich violet invaded by bruised brown and gray, like a plum, and then proceeded to imprint a thick circle on the empty paper. Then, she drew another circle next to it, before adding diagonal lines; one line on the top of the left circle and the other one at the bottom of the right one, both in the same direction. The symbol caught Bora’s attention, so she put down the kitchen utensils and spoke; “What’s that?”

“From what I remember it’s like a promise. Yoohyeon, Gahyeon and I used to put it everywhere to remind ourselves we always had each other. Other than that, I don't really know where it comes from.” Just as she finished her last sentence her phone rang. It was Yoohyeon. “Hello?”

“I can meet right now, where are you?”

“Uhhh…” She looked at Bora for assistance but she was busy with the food, so she retorted to Yubin. “Give me a second.” She took the phone off her ear and addressed the computer assistant in loud whispers. “Hey, hey, come here.”

“What’s going on?” Yubin stood up and approached her.

“It’s my friend. On the phone. I really need to meet with her right now but I’m stuck here. Could she come here?”

“It’s fine by me. You’ll have to deal with Handong later though.”

“Is that Minji?”

Siyeon put the phone on speaker and pointed it in Yubin’s direction. “No, Yubin here. Hello.”

“Oh, nice to meet you Yubin.”

“You can come over. Where are you right now?”

In between the directions Yubin gave Yoohyeon, Siyeon and Bora, who were previously atent to the conversation, returned to their initial activities. Siyeon completely disconnected after seconds of staring at the paper, then something took over her. Her hand moved unconstrained, debossing plum colored flowing lines on the surface’s whiteness, and, when they stopped, her eyes landed on the woman in front of her; on the tamed waves of her hair, on the sharp slope of her nose, on the assiduous look in her irises as she locked them in the visually perceptible simmering of the vegetables in the skillet. After the absorption of her focus she returned to the paper with a dim smile and started the continuation of the lines, until several shy knocks ruptured the lack of sound. Yubin put her book down and went to open the door to reveal a woman whose nervousness, or disguised excitement, was evident in her aura.

“Yubin?”

Siyeon’s head shot up as she heard the voice. “Yooh!” She reached for her crutches and quickly approached the door. “Your hair is colored differently!”

Yoohyeon looked inside the apartment and her face morphed into pure delight before rushing towards Siyeon and embracing her in a tight hug. Bora, still working on dinner, caught a glimpse of the interaction and the only thing she did before focusing back on the skillet was exhale noticeably harder through her nose. When they broke apart, the taller one noticed three things; Siyeon’s crutches, the absence of Gahyeon after her eyes scanned the apartment, and the presence of Bora. The three made her smile fall, and she didn’t know where to direct her inquiries first. Siyeon’s face became a mirror of the taller one’s face, and decided to speak first; “She couldn’t make it… and I got shot.”

“What do you mean she couldn’t make it? My plan was supposed to help you two get out unnoticed like I did…”

“I… may have missed that part... Was it... described towards the end…?”

“Siyeon!” Yoohyeon’s newly emergent frustration stained her voice, and Siyeon’s regrets came back stronger than ever before.

“...I’m sorry.” She could’t conjoin any more words at the moment. The totality of her muscles were gradually tensing; the image of Gahyeon invaded her conscience, her words also. Wait hold on you’re actually going to try to enter after ten minutes of looking at Yoohyeon’s instructions?... And they repeated, and repeated, and repeated. If she had just listened to every single one her roommate’s concerns this probably would’ve been evaded. More tension, with silence, with the clenching of her jaw, it was spreading across all her being. Just as the first signs of neural overcharge were beginning to effervesce from her body, she got surrounded by the arms of her friend. Her neck stopped tensing, she let the crutches fall to the ground and her head relaxed on Yoohyeon’s shoulder; “I’m sorry…” Heavy eyelids and taut eyebrows followed. “I wish I could fix it. I can’t believe this is my fault. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.” The taller one’s voice returned to it’s usual taste of honey. “I don’t know what you guys were thinking after my letter and after seeing all that stuff in the basement.”

Siyeon broke apart with confusion plastered all over her face. “Basement?” Silence. Yubin and Bora were engrossed in the conversation but refused to let out a single sound. “The stairs…”

“You didn’t go down?”

“No. All we saw was a room with medical equipment, a mess of blood there, and the file room. We almost got caught reading them. That’s why… all of this happened.” She picked up the crutches and walked to the sofa, Yoohyeon followed. “I have so many questions Yooh… first of all did you have surgery? What’s that all about?”

“We all did.” A sigh escaped Yoohyeon’s lips before pointing at her scar. “They mess up something here. That’s why we don’t remember anything else other than popping up at The House one day.”

“So we had another life before…”

“Then why can’t we find anything about Siyeon on the internet?” Bora inserted herself in the conversation and sat beside them.

“I-” Yoohyeon couldn’t continue, stopping because of the sound of the door opening.

“Great, is this an Airbnb now? Who is this?” Handong entered the apartment and all eyes centered on her. “Yubin?” She addressed the computer technician, who raised her book to cover her eyes after briefly looking at the saleswoman.

“Who’s there?” Minji came from behind, and, when she made sense of the stranger sitting next to Siyeon, her hand involuntarily passed through her hair, making any rebel strand go back into their respective place. The same hand pulled down the top of her uniform; truly an unconscious effort to present a better version of herself.

“Yoohyeon. You talked to her on the phone.” Siyeon spoke.

“And you must be Minji.” Yoohyeon’s eyes softened as she smiled.

“Minji. Yes, Minji is my name.” She talked fast, almost tripping over her words, pressing her lips together into a stiff closed smile. One of her hands tensed in a fist behind her back in response to her patheticness.

An exchange of names and basic information took place after that. Yoohyeon was given the space to explain The House better to the four strangers; or rather describe in depth, since she didn’t really get to the bottom of everything before running away. Her determination grew stronger with every detail she revealed, she wasn’t going to think about it, not even once; “...and I’m going back. ‘Cause I can’t let Gahyeon there. She must be going through so much right now…”

“What do you mean go back? You can’t go alone. You’ll get caught, and then I lose you again… I can't lose you too.” Siyeon was concerned, primarily because of what going back entailed, secondarily because she was basically useless thanks to her wound. She couldn’t even begin to grasp what would happen if she got caught wandering around those white halls after running away almost a week before.

“She doesn’t need to go alone. I can go.” Now all eyes were on her, the paramedic, who had just spilled those words like they were nothing.