THAT GIRL.

LU HAN.

Her voice sounded different when she called me.
My lips opened, "Sahee".
All I could find in her eyes was sadness. 
 

She grabbed my hand and pulled me into an empty classroom.
I was startled by her sudden action — did she hide something?

"What happened?" I eventually asked and gulped.
Her eyes tried to escape mine and we stood there,
without saying a word. 

Sahee took a deep breath, opened a mouth, but nothing came out.
Her hands were shaking again. They always did when she was afraid of something.
Was she afraid of me?

She closed her eyes, took another deep breath and went over to the blackboard.
Her back was turned towards me and I couldn't see her face.
But I could tell that she was afraid of something.

Sahee slowly came back again, her eyes lowered.
She avoided me. 

"Did I tell you about the machines yet?"
Her voice was full of sorrow and it trembled slightly.
I paused a while before answering, "yes."
"How they are created?" 
Does it even matter? You're here. At my side.
"What do you mean?"

"Before a machine is created, there has to be someone who will provide the basics."
Basics? What was she talking about? I don't care how a machine was created.
She is here. She is the person I love. 
Her eyes were closed and she inhaled slowly.
She suddenly turned her back towards me. 
"What do you mean by basics?" I asked quietly.
"Someone who will provide memories. Looks. Or maybe even both."
Her voice was getting more silent and almost inaudible by the end of the sentence.
"In Kai's case, he provided looks. Appearance."
She paused while suddenly a picture of him appeared in front of me.
Sahee cried so much. Was she still thinking about him?
I had already opened my mouth to say something, but she was faster.
"In my case, I provided memories." 
I looked at her fragile body which looked even weaker today.
"Memories?" I repeated, confused. 
I could see her nod, but she didn't turn around. "Memories."
"So you remember your life before you became a machine?"
"Yes."

I just looked at her.
So she... died?
Thousands of different thoughts flashed through my mind,
but none of them actually made sense. 
I didn't know what she meant. 
But why was she so afraid then? 

"What can you remember?" I asked Sahee calmingly.
"I remember that I was a beautiful girl," she began. 
"I was popular, loved, loved by boys. I could have had anyone."
Her voice trembled and I knew that she was crying.

I stepped closer to her. 
"But I wasn't interested. I didn't care about them."

"But there was this one boy I fell in love with."

"I wished that I could be with him, but he had a girlfriend."
My eyebrows furrowed for a second when I repeated the sentence in my head.
"I loved him, but everything was a one-sided love."
Everything was becoming clear. This girl. Popular. One-sided love.
"So I ran away. From the truth that he didn't love me back."

Her voice broke down. 
She lifted her hands to wipe her tears away.

The day, we first met in the hallway.
You said, you were her friend.
The day, we met on the graveyard.
When we first talked.
You understood me, even though we just met.
—You came into my life, when had she left.

"I was this boy, right?" I heard how my voice was suddenly becoming weak too.
It was clear. She was it. She came back. "You were Lee Chaeri."

I never disliked Lee Chaeri.
I also knew that she loved me.
It was obvious. Her actions, how she acted.
But there was Minah.
Minah was my girlfriend and I loved her.

I felt guilty.
Chaeri died.
After I rejected her.
I still feel guilty.

Then, suddenly, a new person entered my life.
Kim Sahee. She was different.
There was so much which brought us together.
Mainly, it was Chaeri.

After all this time,
after Sahee confessed that she was a machine,
after Kai died, because he was a machine,
I didn't stop loving her.

Sahee was Chaeri.
Chaeri was Sahee.
Her soul was still alive.
Inside the body of a machine.
But she was different.
She wasn't the old Chaeri.
She was Sahee.

"Do you love me?" I asked and turned her around.
Her eyes looked at me frantically, tears were smudged over her whole face.
I cupped her face. "Sahee. Do you love me?"
"Yes. Yes, I love you," she answered weakly.

I bent down to her and kissed her.
I could taste the saltiness of her tears, when my lips touched hers.

"You have to know, Kim Sahee, I love you too.
It doesn't matter who you were or what you did.
I love you how you are, how you are now. 
Nothing else matters."

"How can you forgive me so easily..." she started, but I hugged her tightly.
"I love you, here and now. Everything we shared, everything we experienced,
how can I stop loving you?"
 

The days went by. Fast.
Even if I knew that she was Chaeri, nothing changed at all.
We didn't talk about her. 

All the memories about Chaeri came back.
I remembered how she looked at me, her eyes filled with sorrow.
But it was another sorrow. It was different from the sorrow I saw in Sahee's eyes.

We were sitting on a bench by the Han River.
Sahee's fingers clasped mine as she said,
"What would you do, if the world will end tomorrow and I would be gone?"
Her sudden question startled me for a second. "How...?"
"Just answer me," she asked and smiled.
"I would die with you," I answered without hesitating much.
She looked at me a bit disappointed. "But I don't want you to die with me."

The Han River shone in the red and violet lights of Seoul.
It was cold, but I could feel that spring was coming slowly.

"But it hurts much more to live apart from somebody you love."
"Then you have to let me go." Her voice was a bit louder than usual.
I looked at her in confusion, but she just shook her head apologetically.
I embraced her warmly. "Why do you ask such questions?"
I could feel her shrug, but her body tensed in the same moment. 

_____________________________________________________________
sorry about my super long hiatus. writer's block isn't really nice, you know, and i've been into
a lot of layouting lately and abandoned my writing. lewl. /slapped. sorry guise .__.
this chapter is really ey, so please don't complain. D: maybe more next week? uh, let's see
how much i'm bored. i really don't like happy endings, but since the real end is coming soon,
i think it will be quite okay. /coughcough.