“See your eyes... See your face...

My heart kept pounding

See your eyes... See your face...

So I knew I placed you in my heart

Because this moment is more precious,

Than any other moment I’ve lived

In this world...”

Baek Ji Young – See You Again

~Spring-2001~

“Mina-yah, be careful darling. Don’t walk too far from the factory okay?”

The ten year-old nodded merrily, and leapt out from the construction manager’s room, leaving her dad there. Although she had whined and pestered him to take her when he left home in the morning to visit the construction site of their new factory, the endless columns of concrete and all the heavy machinery just bored her to no end, and the little girl was begging him to leave the site not long after.

The church with a pretty garden.

That’s where the girl actually wanted to take a peek at. She had seen it within a several hundred meters’ from the factory premises, and it didn’t take her more than a few minutes to run down the road they came, to find the cathedral.

With a garden full of flowers, most of them she didn’t even know the names of.

Few minutes into roaming around the pink and white cosmos flower beds, she noticed a group of boys, around the same age as her, running towards the stone wall of the church garden.

There’s a gate on that wall?

The four or five boys stopped at the gate for a brief moment, whispered a discussion between themselves and as if they were conspiring something, and walked through the small gate which they left open.

Curiosity took the best of the girl, and she followed the cautiously.

And found an old abandoned house beyond the ‘secret exit’, as she called it.

Exactly like those in the movies… Wonder who lives there.

Completely ignoring the advice of her mom that popped up in her head, to not to enter any strange looking places, Mina turned the creeking door knob and entered the house.

A broken furniture storage to be exact.

And she walked through the living room to find another room next, which she assumed to be a bedroom.

I’ll at least find a stray kitten in there.

Pushing the door open, she saw a pile of wooden crates, an old steel cabinet…

And a skinny little boy curled up on a mattress underneath the window.

He looked up when the door opened, and upon seeing the little figure that had entered, his arms those held his own knees tightly towards his chest, loosened in surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

“Back at you.” The girl answered right away, after blinking at the boy in confusion. “This place doesn’t look like your home, so why are you here? Alone?”

His eyes were still glued on her face, and the girl opened with a low ‘ah’ in realization. “Hide and seek I see…” She grinned and gave him a cheeky wink. “Want me to go out and shout to your buddies that you’re here?”

“No!” the boy was on his feet in no time. “They’re…” he then hesitated a bit, and started raking a hand through the unruly raven locks of his. “They’re not friends, actually… I mean, I don’t want to go out and see them”

“Why?” the girl blinked again, and stepped onto the mattress to stand before him. “Well they did look a bit…um…bad. Yeah.” She gave herself the answer before he could, and nodded assuming that the rest if the boys must be bullying this one. The boy stared at her for a while, before asking her a hesitant question. “Don’t you… remember me?”

The girl shook her head without thinking twice. “Isn’t it the first time we met?”

And he sat back on his original place, with a silent sigh. She didn’t spare the slightest moment, and sat beside him, not at all minding the dust that was getting on her expensive skirts. “Do they scare you? Or…” he eyes caught the purplish bruises on his pale skin, half hidden underneath the over stretched neckline of his sweater. “They do hit you.” She muttered in disgust. “Evil kids. How could they.”

“How come you find my hideout?” he asked, the delight of having company in the dark house clearly visible in his voice. “You don’t live nearby…do you?”

“Appa and I came for his work. Some business things. That place is so ugly and boring…so I had to leave at once!”

A light smile curved up the boy’s lips as she shrugged, despising the construction site.

“But it’s ugly here too.”

“But I found you here! So it’s not boring anymore.”

He watched her for a moment. “But we can’t step out for a while.”

“I know. It’s alright though…by the way what’s that metal-like thingy in the cabinet…is that an ornament? And what are these boxes? What’s in them?”

Like that, hours passed, her talking about each and everything that came to her mind, and him listening most of the time, only to interrupt with little questions every now and then.

“So the maid had been hiding six kittens in her room…SIX WHOLE kittens!” her eyes nearly popping out with her exaggeration, she didn’t fail to make him smile for the nth time that day. “She sat with them in the garden and begged my mom to let her keep them…she sat there till night fell- omo, is it dark already?”

Suddenly realizing how much time had passed, both children stood up and looked through the stained window glass. “Almost dark.” The boy muttered, noticing the sun set through the birch trees in the garden.

“I’m SO DEAD! Appa must be looking everywhere for me!” the girl squealed, and ran out of the room, straight to the front door of the house.

And he was left alone, standing idly in his hideout.

Alone, again.

Until he heard her whining and wailing from the living room.

“Why isn’t this thing opening???”

And he ran out, to find her struggling with a locked front door.

“They’ve done that again.” He muttered.

“Done what?” the panicked girl stopped pulling at the door knob and asked, panting.

“They do this often. The kids from the orphanage.” He explained. “If they find me hiding in here, the lock all the door from outside and go away. This is not the first time.”

“Then let’s shout for help!” the girl suggested. “Is anybody out there? SOME BAD KIDS