Different
Mystical Love
chapter three
Different
"... There's always something about you that I can't figure out"
– Different, Urban Zakapa
Ever since that day, Chorong and Bomi became closer than ever. It was as though they became soul mates. However, Bomi remained a mystery for Chorong. Sometimes she wondered just why Bomi always refused to go home together with her, why Bomi always avoided the topic of ‘forest elf’, and why Bomi never wore different clothes. Everything about Bomi was confusing Chorong to the point that the latter often had sleepless nights because of the white-dressed girl.
One of the weirdest things about Bomi was her intelligence. No offense, but with that dorky, funny, and carefree outward appearance, Chorong certainly didn’t expect that Bomi was actually one of the smartest person she had ever met. Chorong remembered how Eunji had complained to her about how difficult her math exam was, and when she told Bomi about it, she was surprised that Bomi was able to answer it in a span of two minutes.
And that day, Chorong learned another strange thing about her new friend…
Chorong was asked to go grocery shopping as their refrigerator was nearly empty. On her way, she met the two kids who just came home from school. “Good afternoon, Chorong-unnie! Where are you going to?” Hayoung asked. “I’m going to go to the grocery store.” Chorong answered, smiling at the two.
“Unnie, can we come with you?” Namjoo asked which Chorong nodded in response. “Cool! Let’s go unnie, Hayoungie!”
While they were walking their way to the store, Chorong remembered something. “Namjoo-ya, Hayoung-ah, can I ask you something?”
“Sure! What is it, Chorong-unnie?”
“Do you guys happen to know a girl named Yoon Bomi?”
Namjoo and Hayoung suddenly stopped on their tracks, shocking the oldest girl. “W-What’s wrong-”
“Unnie… how did you know that name?” Hayoung asked, giving Chorong a terrified look. “H-Huh? Uh… I-”
“Chorong-unnie, are you in a hurry right now?” Namjoo interrupted. The new girl didn’t know what happened, but both Namjoo and Hayoung were looking serious at that moment. She unsurely nodded. “If so… Unnie, can you come with us? There’s something you need to know about Yoon Bomi-ssi.” Namjoo said. The two kids’ behavior was scaring Chorong and she had no choice but to agree.
“Umma, I’m home.” Namjoo half-shouted as they arrived at one of the house inside the village. A woman in her mid-50’s appeared from behind the wall, “oh, you’re early Namjoo. Hello, Hayoung-ah and… oh, I remember. You’re Park Chorong, right?” Mrs. Kim greeted the two guests who bowed politely at her. “Come in, you two. I made some tea.” She said. Chorong awkwardly nodded and removed her shoes, placed it nicely and entered the living room, where Namjoo and Hayoung were already seated, along with an elderly woman who she assumed to be Namjoo’s grandmother. A minute later, Mrs. Kim appeared at the living room, carrying a tray with three glasses on top of it. “Namjoo, Umma’s going to cook dinner, okay?” she said and left.
“Halmeoni, this is Chorong-unnie, our new neighbor. Unnie, this is my grandma, Kim Taehee.” Namjoo introduced the two. Chorong bowed 90o at Grandma Kim, “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Ah, just call me halmeoni, Chorong-ssi.” Grandma Kim smiled gently at Chorong, “so, what brings you here today?”
“Halmeoni… Chorong-unnie needs to know something…” Namjoo said, “Something about Yoon Bomi-ssi…”
The smile that was plastered on Grandma Kim’s face quickly disappeared, replaced with a frown, “Chorong-ssi, how did you know her?”
“Uh, I…” Chorong stammered. She didn’t know why, but she had a bad feeling, a very bad feeling that whatever happened next wouldn’t be something she wanted to hear. However, Park Chorong never lied, so she answered honestly, “… I… met her inside the forest…?”
“Chorong-ssi, don’t be ridiculous…” Grandma Kim gave her a hard look, “you met a ghost inside the forest?”
“G-Ghost!?” Chorong shouted. Obviously she wasn’t ready for that. Grandma Kim sighed, “Yes, ghost. I think a full explanation is necessary. Chorong-ssi, this happened around 50 years ago…”
[FLASHBACK, 50 YEARS AGO]
Kim Taehee was busy flowering the front yard of her house when she heard her daughter’s voice, “good morning umma!”
“Good morning, Taeyeon! Oh, who’re they? Your new friends?”
“Yep! Come on you two, introduce yourselves! Don’t worry, my umma won’t bite!” Taeyeon said cheekily. The two kids awkwardly nodded and bowed at Taehee.
“Hello, Mrs. Kim… my name is _________…” the kid with the jet black hair said. Meanwhile, the other girl with brunette hair kept mum. The impatient Taeyeon nudged her new friend, “yah, aren’t you going to introduce yourself?”
“O-Oops, sorry! I thought ________ still wants to talk more. Hehehe~” she grinned, “good afternoon, Mrs. Kim! My name is Yoon Bomi! Pleased to meet you!”
[FLASHBACK ENDS]
“W-WHAT!?” Chorong shouted all of a sudden, surprising the other people in the house. “U-Unnie, what’s wrong?” Hayoung asked, worried. Chorong smiled a bit at the youngest kid though she wasn’t the slightest bit amused.
“Grandma Kim… are you sure she was Yoon Bomi?” Chorong asked carefully. Grandma Kim pursed her lips and tried to reach the nearby drawer. She pulled out a thick, worn-out book and opened it. After she arrived at a certain page, she showed it to Chorong and asked, “Did she look like this?”
Chorong took the book from Grandma Kim’s hands and looked at the content intensely. A moment later, a trickle of tear fell from her eyes. She touched the only photo inside the page as if it was the most fragile thing on Earth, her face contorted into a disbelieving look.
It was a photo of a smiling Bomi.
After Chorong dropped the groceries home, she excused herself to go to the forest. She had to meet Bomi. She had to confirm her suspicions. She had a rough idea as to whom Bomi was, but she wanted to hear the answer from the girl herself.
She found her friend at their usual place, the flower garden. Bomi was looking away, back facing her. Suddenly her melodious voice echoed, “I guess you’ve figured it out, Park Chorong…” she said, turning around to meet Chorong’s shocked gaze. Her irises were light green in color, “now tell me, what’s on your mind right now?”
Chorong gulped down her saliva and made her way to Bomi’s place, “Yoon Bomi, let me tell you that there’s always something about you that I can’t figure out.” Chorong trailed off, unsure if she should ask that question. But her friend gave her an encouraging look, one that assured Chorong that she was fine with it. In the end, Chorong finally asked,
“But, let me ask you this…
Are you the ‘forest elf’?”
Meanwhile, with Jung Eunji…
Eunji found herself at the beach again. Ever since she saw that girl, she wanted to see her again and the thought kept bugging her so many times. She thought that maybe she could see the girl on the beach again, and she wasn’t wrong.
There she was, exactly on the same spot as where Eunji last saw her, looking at the ocean. Her hoodie covered her face, but Eunji could tell it was the same girl as before. Again, as if she’s experiencing déjà vu, the girl saw her and they locked their eye contact. Eunji’s gaze fell deeper into those black irises, unable to look away. The girl still had the same cold and lonely expression, but there was a hint of intrigue on her face. It seemed as though the girl found Eunji interesting.
But again, the girl ran away and, before Eunji could process what just happened, she disappeared into nothingness.
“Just… what was going on?”
Back at the forest, Chorong was nervously anticipating Bomi’s answer. The white-dressed girl had yet to say anything and the silence was killing Chorong emotionally. Bomi’s weirdly colored eyes didn’t help Chorong ease up in the slightest bit. In fact, that only brought more questions into Chorong’s heavily jumbled up mind, ‘since when did Bomi have light green eyes?’
All of a sudden, Bomi bursted into laughter. Chorong snapped out of her thought and glanced at her friend with an incredulous look that screamed why-are-you-laughing.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA PARK CHORONG, SERIOUSLY!?” she said in between her laughs, “IT TOOK YOU THIS LONG TO REALIZE THAT?”
Her voice was loudly echoing in Chorong’s ears, but it was as though her surroundings became quiet. She could only hear Bomi’s addicting sweet voice.
“S-So you’re really?” she stuttered, still couldn’t believe her ears. Bomi stopped laughing and smiled at her, before tucking her hair to the back of her left ear. That was when Chorong got her confirmation. Bomi had pointed ears.
“U-Unbelievable…” Chorong gasped and fell on her knees. All this time, she had found and befriended what Namjoo and Hayoung and probably everyone else in the village had been searching for the longest time. All this time, she had denied the existence of ‘forest elf’ and yet she was the only person who managed to meet, talk, and even became friends with it. With Yoon Bomi.
“Didn’t I tell you that you’re bound to believe its existence?” Bomi smirked, “well, you’re bound to believe my existence. Yes, I am the ‘forest elf’, Yoon Bomi. Nice to meet you, Park Chorong.”
“But… But…”
“Park Chorong, you’re very smart. Surely you must’ve realized how I never change my clothes, how I never go to the village, how I know so much about the forest, and how I know modern education despite not going to school. Don’t you find it strange? Also, I look younger than you, but I never once called you ‘unnie’. Do you know why? It’s because technically I’m way older than you.” She explained, grinning while doing so.
The former city girl remained quiet. Of course she noticed it, she was not stupid. But being with Bomi, she never really paid attention to any small details like that. She only saw Bomi, and that was enough.
“Park Chorong, what are you going to do?” Bomi asked, still smiling, except now her smile was gentler. “What do you mean?” she asked back. “I mean, now that you know that I’m the forest elf, what are you going to do? Do you want to receive blessings? Even though I may not look like it, the rumors that said that I can give blessings are true.”
“But once you receive them…” Bomi suddenly said with a serious look, “we can never meet again.”
“W-What!? Why!?” Chorong yelled, clearly not pleased. “That’s the rules, Park Chorong. I’m different from you. You’re different from me. How can we still meet after all this?”
“Of course we still can!” Chorong screamed, catching Bomi off-guard, “We… We can still be friends! I… I don’t care if you’re a forest elf or not, you’re still Yoon Bomi for me and that’s final!”
“Park Chorong, you can still rethink this through-“
“NO!”
“YAH LISTEN TO ME PARK TO THE CHO TO THE RONG!” Bomi shouted, “How do you think of me?”
“W-What do you mean?”
Bomi sighed before looking at Chorong with a look that the latter had never seen before. Bomi’s eyes were full of hope, longing, and… love. “Let me tell you why you have to choose…” she said, “forest elves like me aren’t supposed to fall in love with a human, but you’re making it so difficult for me…”
“B-Bomi-”
“I love you, Park Chorong.”
Chorong lifelessly lay down on top of her bed, staring at the ceiling like it was the most interesting thing on Earth. However, her mind was travelling elsewhere. It was travelling to Bomi.
She remembered Bomi’s sudden confession just that afternoon…
[FLASHBACK]
“I love you, Park Chorong.”
Chorong felt like flying to cloud nine the moment Bomi’s confession struck her heart. But then she questioned herself. Yes, truth to be told, sometimes she felt something more for Bomi, something more than just a friend, but less than a lover. She felt attracted but she didn’t know if that was enough to be able to say that she loved Bomi.
“I-”
“I don’t need your answer now, Chorong…” Bomi interrupted her, “think about this through.” She said, before she leaned over and placed a kiss on Chorong’s cheek, which successfully made the latter’s heart thumping loudly and wildly. “When you’re ready, meet me here. I’ll wait.” The white-dressed girl said before she suddenly dissipated into the thin air, leaving Chorong alone, cheeks flushed and heart beating abnormally.
[FLASHBACK ENDS]
“Unnie, have you slept yet?” Eunji’s voice suddenly appeared, returning Chorong’s back to reality. Eunji looked at her cousin weirdly, “what happened to your face again?”
“Ah, uh… nothing…” Chorong answered, flustered. She noticed Eunji’s unusual expression. “did something happen to you, Eun? You seem… weird.”
“… Unnie, can I tell you something?” the Jung asked which earned her a nod in response. She then looked away, far off the balcony.
“Unnie, this had happened several times but I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. Actually… I saw something ethereal. It looked like a girl. She was so beautiful, yet so surreal. It was like a fateful encounter.”
___________________________________________________
author's note » Crappyyyyyyyyyy -_- yeah well I kinda rushed this one but who cares hahahahahaha *evil author in action again* XD too short of a flashback LOL don't worry next chapter will reveal more of it and 2Eun going nowhere mwahahahaha I'm that evil XD by the way, happy birthday to Infinite's Sunggyu! Nah, I'm not his fan actually... I haven't even listen to any of Infinite's songs before LOL I just congratulated him because he has the same birthday as mine yeah today is my birthday wooo happy birthday to me~ *listens to f(x)'s Surprise Party* hahaha oh, let me tell you that I'm going to focus on this story first because I still have no inspirations for Namjoo this fic is just... yeah. And do you know how difficult it is to search for a song that has suitable lyrics for this story!? Huh!? It's so difficult I'm gonna go crazy aaarggghhhh huhuhuhuhu don't mind me I'm not on my right mind right now. Just to tell you though, I already have an idea how this fic will develop and it won't end happily huehehehehe *devil's smirk*
@athousandreveries: ahaha thank you~! Part of Chorong's background story was a bit based on me tbh (except for the nomadic part) and I'm glad that her story touches you hehe don't mind me :p
@akumatsubasa: tsk your chomi is seriously giving me headaches LOL be prepared for Bomi's story next chingu~
@troublemaker92: hehehe thank you~ (?)
finally putting this story to a rest. final chapter is up gaiiissss :D that 'complete' status makes me a bit teary :"
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