Loss.

“Kim Jongin!”

His voice boomed, almost as though it shook the house. With his face flushed red, dad viciously ripped up my test papers and threw it into the air, his hands trembling with anger.

“What the are with these scores?” he roared. “I’ve been cutting you too much slack for the past month! To even think you were straightening yourself out!”

I bit back the urge to roll my eyes at him and stayed quiet as he continued to go off his head yet again.

“Kim Jongin! Answer me!”

I flashed him a glare. “Don’t ing call me that.”

Feeling annoyed that this was about the tenth time he yelled at me because of the same thing, I let out a sigh and left the house, while he was still too shocked for words.

“KIM ING JONGIN! COME BACK HERE!”

“Just die already…” I muttered under my breath, digging my face deeper into my shirt as the cold air attacked me as soon as I stepped foot outside the house.

“You shouldn’t say that,” Sull-Hee said, appearing right next to me and dropped the temperature even more.

“I don’t really give a right now…” I grumbled back, breaking into a full out sprint down the street as I heard the door swing open behind me. “He can break a leg for all I care.”

“Is that your wish?”

I continued running as she effortlessly kept up with me, calm and composed as always.

“What?”

“For him to disappear. Is that your wish?”

Slightly taken aback by her not-so-childish question like what she’d always ask me, I stopped at a kid’s playground and caught my breath.

“Humans… live to die.” I managed, realizing that I used way more energy than my body had enough time to offer. “Whether it’ll be of old age or a car accident, that old man will die eventually. There’s no need to do anything.”

After staring at me for a while, she nodded. “I understand.”

Settling down on one of the swings, which thank God was the perfect size for me, a question popped up in my head, one that I’ve been thinking about for the past two months since I’ve met Sull-Hee.

“Sull-Hee, don’t you ever wish for anything?”

She turned to me “Me?”

I nodded.

She slowly shook her head. “We snowflakes only realize our wishes after we disappear.”

“How would you fulfill it then?” I asked her.

She smiled sadly. “We don’t.”

I took a moment to think. Then I shrugged. “By that time, it might already be fulfilled without you knowing.”

I watched as she lifted her head and a beaming smile slowly lit up her face again. “That’ll be nice.”

I let out a sigh and pushed my feet back and off the ground, sending the swing backwards, then it was pulled forwards. It took me a while to realize that this playground was one of the most important places of my childhood.

Looking around once again, fragments of different memories drifted into my head. I could see two little kids, a boy and a girl, play on the slide together, the boy would be positioned at the bottom of the slide to catch the girl as she slid down with her usual emotionless face.

I turned to the swing next to me. The little boy was screaming for his life as the girl pushed the swing with all her strength forwards and watched as he continued to scream until he cried. She’d later make it up to him by buying him ice cream.

I still remembered everything vividly in my head, as if it happened yesterday.

This place was our sanctuary.

An important place to us. As kids.

Only now, we aren’t kids anymore.

❄

“ –ster. Master!”

My eyes snapped open as I felt my whole body jerk up. “W-What?”

“Shouldn’t you be getting back?” Sull-Hee asked, hands on her hips. “If you haven’t noticed, it’s already really dark.”

“Oh… right.” Yawning, I stood up and did a couple stretches before leaving the park and made my way home again. Hopefully, they were all asleep by now.

I turned back and had a final glance at the playground before turning at a corner to see it disappear from my sight. A little feeling of wanting and regret stirred up my insides.

Even if our childhood was short, I wished it could’ve lasted for a bit longer.

Her smiling face popped up in my head, along with ahjusshi’s always-beaming face.

Then there came the day when she cried.

The day when ahjusshi left this world.

“, it’s cold…” I muttered under my breath as we turned at another corner.

Things that we love always get taken away from us, leaving us with nothing but ‘memories’. Memories that no matter how hard we tried to forget, we just couldn’t.

These memories only serve as a ‘remembrance’.

A ‘remembrance’ of the happy days that we once had.

Days that will surely never come again.

❄

We both arrived home and entered silently while all of them were sound asleep. I slipped in through the window of my bedroom like always and landed quietly into my room.

I quickly changed into a new shirt and fell onto my bed, sinking deep into the soft mattress.

“Master,” Sull-Hee said, after a couple minutes of silence.

“What?” I watched her as she slowly floated over and settled at the foot of my bed.

“It’s coming to an end.”

“What is?” I asked, continued to be confused by the strange statements she’d make every so often.

“The story.”

I arched a brow, stopped myself from making another sentence starting with ‘what’.

“Stories don’t end.” I chose to say instead.

“They do. Certain stories do end. Like ours, for example.” She replied. “So that’s why, by the end of our story, I hope that you don’t forget me, Master.”

I looked up at her. “Is that your wish?”

Sull-Hee smiled. “No, it’s a favor.” Her blue eyes gleamed. “Can you do that?”

I let out a yawn. “Of course.”

“Then you shouldn’t try to forget her either.”

I stopped.

“You should talk to her.”

I let out a sigh, getting quite annoyed. “What is with you today, you’re saying all this weird .”

“I told you before that stories end, don’t they?” she repeated.

“Yeah, so what?”

“So, you should talk to Park Hana.”

She doesn’t get it. I sat up on the bed and pointed a finger at her. “Will you stop going on about that? It’s been a month since I’ve seen her.”

For the past month, I haven’t even seen her shadow. It’s like she just vanished into thin air. I’ve been too afraid to walk past her house so I’ve always been taking the alternative route to school.

A part of me was relieved that I didn’t have to deal with those feelings anymore but a part of me hated myself for avoiding all of this.

“It’s been a month.” Sull-Hee replied, gazing at me. “That’s exactly why you should try and keep what’s left of your relationship.”

I scoffed. “It doesn’t matter anyw –“

“Yes it does.” She cut in. “It does matter.”

I shrugged and leaned back on the bed head, clearly out of energy to fight with the snowflake any more. “It’s been one month, you stupid snowflake. She probably doesn’t even want to –“

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, Master, and I’ve finally found it.”

I heaved another frustrated sigh from being cut off yet again.

“There’s another answer to your riddle.” Sull-Hee said.

I lifted my head a looked at her. “Another answer?”

She nodded. “Yes. To that riddle you told me about a month ago.”

Sull-Hee said each syllable slowly, emphasizing the word.

“Arrivals.”

I quickly did the math in my head.

1 + 18 + 18 + 9 + 22 + 1 + 12 + 19 = …

“One hundred,” Sull-Hee said, taking the words right out of my thoughts. “The arrivals of certain people in your life is also what makes life 100%, is it not?” 

“So…” she continued, as I was slowly making out what she meant. “You should try and keep what’s left of your relationship.”

I turned to her. She looked back with her bright blue eyes.

“Save it.”

❄

The cold night wind hit my face as I tore down the street for the second time tonight. My whole body was tingling as I flew past the houses, my steps getting bigger as I went.

It was useless.

No matter how many times I tried to forget this route, it just remained fresh in my mind. I knew exactly where to go without even having to think twice about it.

I halted with a stumble of my sneakers and made my way to the front door, breathing heavily as my heart pumped loudly in my chest. A million things were running through my head.

What should I say to her?

Would she hit me and call me stupid for acting like this for so long?

Should I just come back in the morning?

“What are you waiting for?” Sull-Hee said behind me. “Hurry up and knock.”

“Right.”

As I gathered my hand into a ball, I stopped. “This is stupid, it’s the middle of the bloody night.” I said, taking a detour and walking around the house. “I might wake ahjumma up…”

I stopped in front of a window and grabbed onto the sill, peeking into the darkness. I knocked the window softly and stood back.

“Hana,” I quietly called out. “Hey, open up!”

Silence.

I tried knocking again, a bit louder this time.

“Hey, Hana! Open –“

“Jongin?”

I froze. . “Uh… Hello. Ahjumma.”

Hana’s mum opened the window wider, revealing her pale face in the dim street light. “What are you doing here at this time, Jongin?”

“I…”

“Tell her, already.” Sull-Hee said impatiently behind me.

I know already, you stupid snowflake!

“I came to see Hana.”

Ahjumma stared back at me, as if her face was drained even more of its colour.

“Ahjumma..?”

Then I began to notice.

She had dark bags under her eyes and her cheeks were caving in. I looked down at her fingers. They were nothing but bones attached to her hand and looked so fragile they could’ve snapped with the slightest touch. Her clothes were just merely hanging off her small, thin body. I slowly met her eyes.

They didn’t look the same anymore.

“Ah…jumma..?”

I could see the way her lips trembled as she tried to talk. I could see the tears welling up in her eyes as she mentioned her name. I could see the way her hung her head lower and lower as she explained everything to me.

“H-Hana’s gone, Jongin..!” Her face dropped into her hands. “S-She’s gone forever!”

And at that exact moment, I felt everything fly out of me. They all vanished. My thoughts, the sound of my heartbeat, Sull-Hee’s voice, ahjumma’s weeping, everything.

They were all replaced with pictures and memories of her.

My mind refused to swallow anything in, desperately filling my head up with memories, useless, painful memories that showed happier days.

I didn’t know what to do.

Before I knew it, my legs gave out on me. I ended up in a heap on the ground, my eyes not leaving the weeping ahjumma in front of me.

I just sat there the entire night and cried.

And cried, and cried, and cried.

❄

7th February

What makes humans different from other creatures is that they think back.

They wish.

They regret.

“If only I treated her like this…”

“If only things didn’t end up like this…”

“If only it didn’t happen like this…”

“If only I didn’t act like this…”

They bitterly regret the things they should’ve done a certain way and come to realize that fate isn’t the real enemy here.

It’s themselves.