. C H A P T E R   F O U R .

It was about 3 am when both of them decide they should call the night off. They spent about three hours just talking, but not even a second of those three hours felt dull to both of them. Chansung had not expected it, but as unseemly as it may be, he lay down confessing he enjoyed the night, thanking her for being there.

Chansung had positioned himself on the carpeted floor of the room with the huge comforter over him, insisting that Fei should take the bed. It was a gesture she found hard to accept, because she’d never been offered the better side of the scale, never by a man. In the end Chansung convinced her to take the bed, and she did, because he wanted to, and that night nothing ever mattered to her but him and the things he wanted. Besides, isn’t it what she gets paid for? Doing what men wanted her to do?

But her job never felt this satisfying. Not until this man.

o0o0o0o

He wakes up to the throbbing pain on his temples. He can almost hear his veins wanting to explode inside. His eyes slowly open, agonizingly, and he flinches at the sight of a hollow room covered with clean, white walls in front of him. Where is he? He rubs his eyes with his fingers, trying to rid of the blurry haze that was blocking his sight, but they fail him.

He wrestles with pain as he tries harder to move his body. In about a minute, he is able to turn his body to the other side, and there he sees something that catches his attention.

A figure that of a little girl beside his bed. She starts grinning, and a giggle slowly fades in the background. And now he can see her eyes.  Her pitch black pupils illuminating over her all-white wardrobe. It's a feeling he was never able to explain. A bliss always an inch beyond his grasp. He twitches his eyes at the beautiful sight, only to open them again with the same little girl, but now she is crying, loudly, his ears almost bursting – not with the loudness but with the sound so utterly full with sorrow.

He feels a twinge of pain in his chest, as if a huge amount of empty space has been ed into it. A terrifying look occupies the little girl’s sorrowful face, and she starts pointing over his shoulder, as if wanting him to look at something. He struggles, but eventually turns to see what it was.

An echoing gunshot. A huge amount of brightness and his head jerks off to the side with a throbbing pain.

He wrestles with the comforter, tossing his head in both sides. His upper body stiffens in an upward position, and now he is sitting. He wakes up stuffing screams back into his throat, eyes bulging, and chest rising in deep breaths, cold sweat enveloping his whole body.

“Chansung-sshi, are you okay?” A voice fades in behind him, and he sees Fei, now getting off the bed to near him. “What happened?”

Chasung shakes his head, palms rubbing his temples, still trying to get hold of things. “Just… a dream.” He mutters. He lifts his arms to check his watch. It was 4am; he’d only been asleep for an hour. How is it possible that he feels like so many things had happened in his dream?

“A bad one?” Fei asks, now rubbing his back for comfort.

Chansung nods, hesitantly.

It wasn’t totally bad. The first half wasn’t, in fact it was something he’d wished for, for the past months. The first half of the dream. He used to dream about the little girl a lot. But he always woke up happy with it. This time it was different. He woke up terrified, as if being reminded about the dark cloud, the tragedy. He had dreamed about the little girl practically his whole life. Sometimes he even wondered if she was real, if whether she really existed or not. He used to dream about her every passing night.

He once read in his book that dreams were made through the unconscious. It means that a dream is something lying just behind your thoughts. An evanescent reality - something that had to do with your memories and thoughts. In class he learned that dreams always meant something.

And yet he was never able to understand what the little girl in his dreams meant to him.

o0o0o0o

Sunye enters the door to the refreshing aroma of chicken soup and chives. She breathes in for the second time, and then knows how much of a good cook this woman is. It's a warm feeling, entering her house. It gives her an immediate homey vibe, perhaps because of the wooden furniture that surrounded her, quiet colors adorning each one of them. She takes a 180 degree skim at the house. To the left is the living room, a long, blue-green couch occupying most of its space. Straight ahead she can see the kitchen counter, at that time occupied with spices and utensils. She had been cooking when they’d rang the doorbell. To the right is the dining area, with a small dining table indicating she lived alone. Just behind it is a stairway, perhaps to her room or an attic. It is a beautiful house, soft and very welcoming. Only one thing lacked in it: sunlight. Sunlight to flash all the beauty it had, to show off the warm feeling that it so utterly came with. And it is because of the cream colored curtains that covered every window in the house that somehow, made one feel so lonely inside.

“S-sit down.” Yeeun signals them to the couch in the living room, and they follow. She starts smiling, more reassuringly than ever. And now Sunye can imagine her face on her canvas, her smiles so seemingly different from one another. So delicately light, but alive. She thinks of what brush number she would have used, what colors she would’ve picked. Her hair is a sure sandy yellow, though she still wonders if whether that was her real hair, or just a wig, because it looks so beautifully striking, just like that of the Barbie doll she once owned. Her skin is an utterly fair light brownish-yellow, and her eyes deep and strikingly dark. She is beautiful. And Sunye finds herself smiling so joyfully inside.

She found the perfect subject. The woman of her paintings, the life of her empty canvases.

“So…” Sunye starts with a smile, careful not to spill all the excitement inside her. “You’re Yeeun right? Nice to meet you.” Sunye extends her hand out for a shake, but Yeeun’s face suddenly shifts into a grudge, her brows creasing in the middle.

Her eyes are now bulging, as if she’d just heard something horrifying. “How did you know my name?” She starts breathing hard, sweat forming on her hairline. “They told you didn’t they? They did, didn’t they? And you’re here to take me, right?” She speaks sternly and fast, leaving the sisters fumbling on words to say.

“I uhh. We.” Sunye stammers, frightened by the sudden change in Yeeun’s face. It’s as if she’d turned into a totally different person, a three hundred and sixty degree change from the person she was, seconds ago. Yet Sunye can imagine her on a painting still, but with a different look this time – her glare almost leaping off the canvas.

“Who sent you here?” Yeeun slithers away from the sisters, flustering at their confused faces. She panics, nearing the door as if wanting to get out of the place, away from them – away from everything.

“No one.” Sunmi finally interrupts, and Yeeun turns to her in disbelief. “Nobody sent us here. I.. heard your name from the neighbors. I wanted to know what your name was, so I asked. And they told me.” She tries to explain, though trying to withdraw from Yeeun’s fervent glare.

But Yeeun doesn’t seem convinced. She reaches for the doorknob, but with her eyes still glued on the sisters. She opens the door an inch or two wide, a hint of winter breeze brushing over her face. “Jeonggamie…” She hollers in a loud voice, poking her head around as if calling out to someone, though still eyeing at the sisters. Sunye and Sunmi looks at each other, baffled. A drawly meow follows, and a beautiful, fat cat appears running from the kitchen.

Yeeun bends down cupping it tightly in her arms, but her glare never leaving the two. She moves so fast, yet so sure. Sunye and Sunmi never got the time to speak, or to even think about what to say. She turns away and starts walking, prodding into the crisp winter breeze.

Sunye and Sunmi remains sitting on the couch, equally befuddled by Yeeun’s sudden disquieting actions.

 . A U T H O R  N O T E S .