Just another night.

Just another sleepless night.

Just another sleepless night, filled with playbacks of earlier events.

Just another sleepless night, filled with playbacks of earlier events, that should've been forgotten at once instead of being replayed the moment I closed my eyes.

"How could you say that? I thought you loved me?"

Whoever in the world would say that randomly to a stranger? Especially to an ahjumma. How could he be so disrespectful? Tactless? Was he even real? Or was it just my imagination? Why would I imagine something like that anyway? Have I become that depressed? That desperate? Was it because of the conversations at the family gathering before I went there? That led to hallucinating? 

But...it couldn't be, it had to be real. It had to.

"I...I don't know you."

"Does it matter?"

Right, what even mattered to him? He's just a kid. A kid. Psh, how could I let myself forget that? He's just a kid. What do I expect from a kid? How could I even expect anything from a kid to be something reliable? Even if the way he spoke made me want to believe everything. He's probably just a smart talker anyway. Huh.

"Possibilities. Of what could emerge from the dark. Isn't it beautiful?"

I never thought I'd be thinking of such a silly thought...but now after going through it...being in the dark, and possibility that emerged from it, people that could be met like a stupid miracle, it really is beautiful. Too beautiful that it hurts. Why did I even let such juvenile speech from a kid to dictate my feelings?

"Are you afraid that if you stay here longer, you'd fall in love with me? And you're frustrated because you're too old to fall in love to a kid as you word it?"

Tch, not as I word it, but the truth. Yet, he managed to say everything in his annoyingly straightforward, confident manner, not even once losing his cool even while being referred to as kid over and over again. In fact, he seemed more assured of what he's talking of than my ownself. Why must he be so attractive? He shouldn't be. He's too young.

"No, because it's scaring you that you're so attracted to me now."

And why must he always know everything before myself even when he's talking about me? How did that even make any sense? Did he hid inside my mind? Or was he really just an illusion?

"Don't leave. Or you'll regret it."

Not leaving earlier. Truthfully, that was the greatest regret. I should've left when I could, before I was entrapped in this nonexisting cage I wasn't sure I even want to leave anymore. I regretted letting each minutes that followed planted seeds and weaved threads, of the very things that would be shameful for someone like me to still have. He turned me into a fool, and I couldn't even hate it anymore. I regretted not regretting it.

"What are you doing?!"

"Touching your hand. Did you see me doing anything else? Or am I doing something else to you, without really doing anything?"

It had been... how long had it been...since the last time somebody hold my hand? But even so, any kind of nostalgia would be erased, with the way his hand touched and clutched and brushed against mine. I don't get it. How could he be so cruel to a stranger? What have I done to him to deserve this? Even now, I could still feel the warmth radiating from his cold hand. 

"I'm old enough to be your lover, ...auntie."

"Stop being so insecure about your age. Who cares if you're an auntie? Do you need to tell it every single time? I don't need to hear you teach me how to behave to someone older. To me, you're just a person I met here. A person who's obviously attracted to me but try so hard to deny it because you're an auntie."

Well, he made even being auntie doesn't seem so bad. Even if everything was just a lie. If they're not lies, he wouldn't disappear, would he?

"But why is it so hard for you to just admit it? Even grannies out there want me. They're not shameful to admit it. Why would you? Everyone's attracted to me."

Maybe because I'm not a granny. Maybe it's because all the people who admitted to being attracted to him were from a different world than mine. How could they not be shameful? Is it my fault for being shameful? Is it my fault if he stirred me so much to the point that not being shameful isn't even an option?

"That's not funny. Have you ever felt how it was to be wanted like crazy?"

Of course not. But if even meeting someone like him for less than an hour could blissfully hurt this much, I could imagine the feelings of those who wanted him like crazy. Have he ever wondered why they'd want him that bad and how hard it must've been for those people?

"I'm suffocated I could die of it even without jumping into the river. I need to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me, and you need to be with someone who wants to be with you. Please."

Yet, he overestimated me when I'm more desperate than any grannies out there. How badly have they hurt him that such an unrealistically stunning but weird God's work of art would want to leave the world he could have at his feet any other day? How absurd could human fates be? And most of all, how could he thought there'd be anyone who doesn't want him if that's how he carried himself?

He even made me a complete fool there. An ahjumma who should've known better, who should've learnt so much more from her long arduous life journey then to accept the ludicrousness of someone like him, wanted to be with me. Huh.

"But...why me?"

"I told you."

"I don't know you."

"You don't have to. I don't know you either. We don't have to know. It doesn't matter, does it?"

If it was that simple, everyone in this world would be living their own fairytales. We don't need no Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or Snow White or whoever. Disney would go bankrupt because there are so many more better fairytales being lived out there, you don't even have to be a princess.

But life is no fairy tale. Especially when you're no princess. And that's why he had to disappear. After messing up everything.

"For as long as May lasts, until the final love song departs. Then we can go back. Return to where we were, you don't have to see me again. You'll meet the one you've been waiting for all your life. I promise."

How cruelly dense could he be after all the smart talking? How could he think it's that simple to go somewhere you refused to go only to return to the mindset of never having gone there, and pretended whatever happened, didn't happen, and whatever felt never felt?

"May is the time when love songs march in the air...sprinkling hopes, joy, companionship, chemistry, love. We only have few more minutes before the final song finishes."

Then why meet me in May at all? And worse, the final night of it. Couldn't I at least have more than an hour to be cherished for the rest of my depressed life alone? To be the distraction whenever there are those annoying family gatherings?

"You will hear it. Just close your eyes. You have to find it. And tomorrow, you will meet the person who will not make you lonely or wanting to suicide anymore."

But what if, the 'song' I heard wasn't even a song? Does it mean the magic won't work? It wasn't a song. I never got to ask him...but I heard it. I wanted to believe what I heard was what he wanted me to hear. Does that make me a fool?

"You'll meet him tomorrow then. You'll believe me, right?"

Of course I believe him. Who wouldn't turn dumb and believe everything wholeheartedly under such spell, such charms, such lies? Even grannies would. I wanted to believe I'm not the only fool here.

"It's time to end this night then."

He forced me to reinstill those deceiving hopes and dreams, even when I knew better and tried to refuse, he made me want to believe again. And right after I began to accept, all he said was...

"Goodbye."

This is worse than some April Fool prank those kids at the office who never even bothered getting to know me properly would pull on me for some 'fun' humiliating purpose. He forced me to hear what i didn't want to, until it rang endlessly without a rest in my ears, my eyes, my whole being.

And then he disappeared without telling me how to stop it.

"You'll believe me, right?"

I hate to admit it, but there's no way I could not believe him, by then. But believing felt too painful when it came in this way. The way that could easily melt the hardest resistance I could produce with all I have in me. The way that could set the coldest night ablaze without even lighting a flame.

What else could I do but believing stupidly? But was that the end of it? Was he sent to me, only for as long as the melody of May lasted? The love song I couldn't hear nor own? What I heard, I doubt was what he was referring to. Does that mean the magic wouldn't work? And tomorrow would be just like any other day? Dry, exhausting, empty?

No, I believe him.

I will meet a new person tomorrow.

But does it matter anymore?

If it's not one who could stop making me hear this song ed into my every veins, it doesn't matter.

Or maybe it wouldn't matter at all, regardless of who, if it's other than him.

Five in the morning, first of June; I closed my eyes, attempting for the nth time in vain, to fall asleep, when it's already time to wake up from this pointless dream.

Yet, all I could hear whenever darkness fill my entire view, would be the promise that doesn't mean a thing.

It was just another sleepless night.

But the reason is no longer the same as any other sleepless nights.

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sorry for rather crappy start. this is like prologue. n continuation platform/bridge from the first story.