CHAPTER FOUR

ONE PHOTOGRAPH AGO

Taeyeon looked at the photography in her hands: it wasn’t old, but the careless way it was treated turned it into a disaster. The photo was little, a Polaroid frame surrounding it. In the center of the picture a girl smiled to Taeyeon, and she answered it with the same smile while watching every detail of that photo: The red of the dress, almost comparing to a rose’s red; the almost-white blue of the sky, the green of the lawn.

-Taeyeon-, said Jessica while looking at the ghost, -what are you doing? - She spoke at the same time she tried to take a peek of the thing her friend was appreciating so avertedly.

-It’s nothing Sica. I was just thinking…- Taeyeon answered and saved the photo in one of the pockets of her jacket. Actually, it was Jessica’s jacket but after they discovered that Taeyeon could take a completely solid form Tiffany insisted on buying clothes to the girl. Jessica protested saying she had a lot of girly clothes she wasn’t using and they ended up deciding that it was going to be Taeyeon’s closet. The former didn’t care about it.

Jessica arched one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows as she looked at her companion. –You know that lying will not work with me, don’t you? - The shorter shuddered at her words, but remained calm while talking.

-What I know, Jessica, is that you hate your past. Therefore I wasn’t planning on hurting you, but if you ask for it…- She reached for the photography hidden in her pocket. –There you go- Taeyeon handed the photograph to Jessica, and the later looked at it before widening her eyes.

-What in the world… where did you got this from? - asked Jessica after tossing the photo to the ground, looking at it with disgust. Taeyeon face didn’t changed at all, and for a moment it seemed as if they have exchanged rolls. Taeyeon was now the cold butterfly, and she described Jessica as the fragile petal of a rose. She stayed quiet, and after a few seconds that seemed like years to the taller, she spoke.

-It was in the trunk, with all the clothes. It fell after I picked up this jacket; but I didn’t know it was yours… I’m sorry Sica. -  Taeyeon looked at her friend and smiled with a faint sigh. Jessica recovered her cold self and looked Taeyeon’s way with a freezing glare, making her look down.

-Go away. I don’t want to see you or hear you…- The ghost heard Jessica’s words and opened her eyes, when the jacket started to fell, slowly and dramatically, of the girl’s skin as she faded to nothing.

Jessica stood there, frozen and silent, looking at the jacket in the floor. A feeling of emptiness filled every corner of her mind, but she didn’t say anything. Taeyeon wanted to scream, talk, hug, and cry… anything to let Jessica know she was still there, but nothing worked. She was there, like the first time, invisible to everyone’s eyes. She saw how Jessica picked up the photo, looking at it carefully and smiling as a tear fell from her eyes. Jessica shouldn’t live like this Taeyeon thought while hugging the blond girl. Nonetheless, the hug was nothing but a small breeze that caressed Jessica’s skin.

— T-Taeyeon? Is that you? — She could hear the blonde girl’s whispering with a saddened voice, trembling at the thought of losing her one and only friend. She had the urge to scream out loud “I’m here Jessica! I’m here” and it was killing her.

— I’m h-here Jess. I am here! I am here. —She spoke with anxiety and terrified look on her eyes, darting towards the whole room. And then she saw the mirror.

It was an old mirror, the years had poisoned it’s painting, leaving it with an older look. Taeyeon looked at it with a faint sigh, it wasn’t something she had ever tried but she could make-believe for a moment… She walked to the mirror and looked at it, thinking about how much she wanted — and needed— to be inside of that piece of old and sad perfection. She opened her eyes and looked to the front, seeing herself with her eyes closed, almost as if she was sleeping. I think I did it! She beamed in her mind. And then she looked at Jessica and her eyes changed, her smile disappearing with it. She appeared so weak that Taeyeon could only blink at her.

And then a tear fell from Jessica’s eyes. Taeyeon widened her eyes at it and saw it as it fell slowly, like a painful goodbye in the rain. Drop, drop, drop. The tears fell with a mad rhythm and Jessica looked down.

—It feels like being hit by a bullet, Tae. — The mentioned looked at Jessica and tried to get out of the mirror, but it seemed as if she was chained to it.

—I’m sorry, Sica… — she said as she sat there, a tiny bird scared and captive.

After that they both remained silent, only the sound of their breathing floating in the air. The sky was gray, the clouds were darker and the feeling inside the house was darker too. Taeyeon was trapped in the mirror and Jessica was holding to the photo as the first rain drop fell. Time froze and nothing but the rain moved. Taeyeon was exasperated, banging on the mirrors inside and crying, fading once again.

Jessica was broken, thinking about her childhood, thinking about her broken dreams. Of course she remembered the photography… After all, it was the last one she took.

—Jessica! Jessica! Come look at this! — Her sister Krystal, a little girl who was seven years old, was screaming and pulling her sister to the forest near their mansion.

—Krystal, — the older girl, Jessica, spoke. With twelve years of live, she was trying hard to convince herself that she didn’t cared anymore about the childish things her sister liked. —I’m busy, mom told me to do the chores so I can’t go. Why don’t you take a photo with my camera? — She said and handled the device to her sister, who smiled sadly for a moment and then returned to her happy self.

— Okay, I’ll do it Jeska — she said elongating the nickname she gave to her older sister.

It hurts that the memory is still intact. It hurts, because she could have done something! “Of course I didn’t” she kept telling herself in a purely masochistic act.  She remembered how later, after she let her sister go alone to the forest, something told her that it was wrong. And how much she wished for that to be a lie, to be a stupid premonition of a twelve-years-old… but it wasn’t, and nothing could repair the broken parts of her childhood. Nothing could bring back Krystal.

The seventh of November, year 2001; Krystal Jung was reported missing. The only things left of her were the camera and a necklace with tiny drops of blood. The camera had only two photos: The first one, the photography Krystal took of her sister smiling, the one Jessica was holding. The other one was a blurred frame in which the only thing you could look at was Krystal’s scared face, with a hand covering . The Jung family was devastated by it, scared of the person who did that to their little princess. The older sister remained silent when the police was investigating her younger sister’s kidnapping; the parents blamed everything on her.

— It was your entire fault. You should have been with her! You should have protected your little sister, Jessica Jung. Y-you should have been the one he took…— Jessica repeated the words of her parents as she slowly touched the photo. Krystal was never found, even when she searched, even when they parents forgot her.

 Twelve years had passed and the older sister was no longer a kid, but a woman. However, she was still dealing with her fault, dealing with the guilt of not going with her sister, at the age of twelve, to the near forest. She realized that the storm was no longer there, but the cloudy sky wouldn’t disappear. She walked towards the frames hanging in her wall, and placed the photograph in a tiny space that was empty. Her smile never came back, and the thick ice covered her cracked heart once again. She was going to find Taeyeon; she was not going to carry the same guilt.

—Taeyeon! Where are you? I’m sorry for screaming to you, for being rude and impolite. Please comeback! Please… — the last word came out as a whisper, begging to someone who couldn’t hear anything. She had searched all over the house, even called Tiffany to ask if she had seen the ghost. She was nowhere to be seen.

She stood then in front of the mirror. Her reflection was as shattered as her own self: hair messed up and tangled, dirty clothes with traces of dirt on them, giant bags under her eyes contrasting with the pale skin she had. Jessica smiled at the reflection, a pitiful smile that could trick no one, not even her. She then noticed the faded reflection that sat at her right, looking at it with her eyes sparkling.

— Tae! I searched for you all this time! Y-you don’t know how preoccupied I was… — Jessica walked a few steps back thinking that she was going to find her friend right behind her, but when she bumped against the cold wall she realized what she had done. Her back slowly slipped from the wall to the ivory floor, and she slowly crawled towards the mirror, through it, and sat inside there just as Taeyeon

Immobile, silent, with her eyes closed. Dead.