a/n: supposed to be fragmented/not a linear narrative because the gaps are for you to imagine the endless possibilities as readers. weird style, i know. i hope you all enjoy this, & i really like seuldy now T.T
ps. i just like wendy with blue hair.

metronome, n.: any device that produces regular, metrical ticks (beats, clicks) — settable in beats per minute. (wikipedia)

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the kind of air that hangs heavily around kang seulgi is that of aloofness, the heavy kind of air that leaves you a little lethargic from breathing too deeply. safe to say, seulgi is not always easy to be around. afterall, if she does not bare her emotions the way most teenage girls wear their hearts on their sleeves, many would end up treading around seulgi on their tips of their toes. it's not easy to know if they've ever hit a raw nerve, ever broken a part of her heart or made anger and humiliation run through her veins, if all they get from kang seulgi is the expressionless expression she wears on her face, and the heavy air they struggle to breath in to survive around her.

within seulgi, all she hears is the loud tick-tock of her heart, and a soft rambling in her brain she pushes even further to the back of her head. if she doesn't bother stringing the incoherent jumble of mess within, none of them would configure into shapes of emotions that would re-paint her face, her external self. she thinks the world isn't worthy enough to experience the innate parts of herself anyway.

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72 bpm: she takes a leisurely walk to school, her earphones plugged into her ears, her head occasionally bobbing to the beat of the song. an ordinary mind, an ordinary body, an ordinary day. nothing seems out of the blue as she makes her way past the park just adjacent to her school. amidst the tune in her ears, she hears, or more so feels, the regular heartbeats and the soft thumping of her shoes on the concrete ground, probably in synchrony with the music. all seem to hit the perfect 4/4 beat, and she feels a small grin form on her face, the wind fluttering past the gaps in her hair in the 3rd beats of each bar. all seem a perfect order. yet from the corner of her eye, she catches a wisp of, or two, or three, or many strands of hair tinted blue at the tips, and she is reminded of the blue skies, blue skies near beaches, blue skies near the beach in her home in ansan.

maybe she had followed the sky, or the sky followed her (the world afterall, is a perfect circle), but seulgi finds herself stepping into her classroom with the sky. she wonders how she had carried the sky in the palms of her hands. she tells herself not to look, so she settles down and hears again the music in her ears, her heart too keeping the beat. but someone plonks down beside her and introduces herself as "wendy", her "partner". she tries hard to not notice but soon realizes during the course of the conversation, however minimal, how the music in her ears fade. she notices how something, she's not quite sure what it is yet, washes away her attention towards her heart keeping beat.

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48 bpm: the darkness surrounds her as she turns off her bedside lamp. seulgi stares at the darkness in front of her and thinks of the weight of darkness. she thinks it is a perfect container for secrets, for feelings, for things unexplained, for things that can't be explained, for fantasies to reveal themselves as repressed desires. she feels unnecessarily philosophical and she wants to scratch away the itch of wanting to make sense of the many things that run inside her head. she shuts her eyelids tight and drifts off to sleep.

she dreams of calm seas and the rustling of trees. she dreams looking up to the vastness of blue skies and a wrecking of a metronome.

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184 bpm: it's the kind of evening which sets the zephyrs blowing lightly, the kind of evening that bathes in the warm orange hues of the sunset. it's the kind of evening that makes you sit beside a stranger in a park and talk about the beauty of nature as your shadow elongates until dusk falls and in the darkness you find your hands intertwined -- the kind of evening that makes the beginning of love so easy to experience, the kind seulgi takes advantage of by tying up the shoelaces of her worn-out sports shoes so she can complete her run by the river.

she can feel the blood rushing in her veins and the pulse hammering in her ears. she likes hearing her pulse, likes to think it's the pulse of a soldier's march. she likes knowing she can control its rates in different ways -- knowing she has control over her pulse, despite the many uncontrollable things the world has in store for her soothes the anxiety in her. in a world of flux and uncertainty, it is always reassuring to know there is something to control even if she can't make sense of the multifarious emotions and thoughts that accompany it. but her heart is hers, and hers alone, and seulgi likes tweaking it like a metronome.

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200 bpm: she's halfway through her run, perspiration glistening on her forehead and the heavy rising and falling of her chest indicative of a rapid heart rate. she likes knowing she can push herself to her limits, challenge them, push them further until a new threshold is created. because control means pushing and thinking she will fail, but does not, and the new limits are evidence enough of a newer, stronger control over herself.

she halts suddenly when someone grabs her by the shoulder, almost falling since she was running at a rather fast pace, her shoes making a loud screech on the ground. a blur of blue follows her lurge forward before halting as well and seulgi turns to her right sharply.

"hey"

it takes her awhile and she finds herself drowning in the silence and she panics inside. because the most ironic thing is, she should be feeling her heart rate for suddenly stopping her run, but all is silent and her head is spinning from the silence and heavy immobility that weighs down on her like anchors. the blue-tipped tresses still flow with the breeze and the ember glow of the sunset illuminates her partner's face in a pretty way, the sort of pretty that makes seulgi squint her eyes and wishes for someone to make sense of everything, because things like these, things like her partner's prettiness should be defined and epitomized for all.

"h-hey"

"just thought i would stop over to say hi, oops, i mean stop you so i could say hi"

there's a grin and before seulgi can unscramble the lexicon in her mind to form a coherent reply, wendy is dragging her to the benches where they sit side by side and wendy is giggly grinning and expressing all sorts of glee while seulgi sits frozen as ice.

it is when their very minimal conversation, thanks to seulgi's lack of conversational skills, turns to naught, the silence roaring in her ears that seulgi catches wendy lift her hand to pick up a stray leaf that has fallen on her hair, brushing her slightly wet hair. 

"uuuuh-"

"you're welcome"

208 bpm: and suddenly like the tsunami, the rush of a seismic wave disturbed by underwater explosions or volcanic eruptions, seulgi's pulse peals in her ear in so deafening a way that she shuts her eyes for a moment. she isn't sure if it is because finally she hears her heart beat again, or it is beating way too loudy, and definitely, way too fast for her liking. wendy leans in closer.

"are you ok?"

she presses her eyes close tighter. she hates the how the close proximity, how the nearness of her voice against seulgi's ears makes her heart race. all along she keeps her heart in beat and suddenly wendy alters it so easily, with just one word, with just one move closer to seulgi. she listens to her pulse, tries diligently to adjust her pulse to her own expectations but to no avail. she looks at wendy with furrowed eyebrows and wishes to make sense of things, if she now can no longer control her heart.

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60 bpm: she does not realize till much later when she falls asleep to more constrained spaces on her bed, when she's pressed too tightly against wendy's chest, that she presses her ears down on her pillow and hears something she has not heard before in all her nights alone. she hears a strong thumping of her chest, usual but not usual as well, and it would've been unnoticed by anyone who did not pay close attention — she could hear two hearts beating, not because there were lapses in the two pulses (there weren't). she just knew her heart alone couldn't beat so loudly and confidently, faster than her pulse when she was asleep, and likes to think wendy is the sole reason for it. her smile is so wide even behind pressed eyes she can feel its edges touch her pillow. the bed, no matter how small, can accommodate for two and she thinks her heart, despite the walls, has enough space, for another to beat in synchrony, too.

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210 bpm (note there is no such beat on the metronome): seulgi wouldn't say that she has shirked off all the aloofness in her. the walls she unconsciously built while retaining her emotions and thoughts to the private corner of her mind has been cracked a little by wendy, she feels the mind experience the lightness, like it can finally breathe with the cracks serving as breathing-holes. she still is confused by many things and perhaps, feels more confused than ever. there are days she can control her pulse, keep it to the steady rhythm that is reminiscent of an ordered peace. on some other days, she hears not the regular march of her heart, but the rapid pulse that sounds too much like gunshots at a firing range, too fast with no particularly consistent rhythm. more and more days seem to turn to days like these, and it scares seulgi a little, because she has no idea how to readjust it, if this is something she thinks inconceivable in the first place.

she looks down as wendy sits beside her on her couch, her hair, traces her finger up the length of seulgi's forearm and pulls her closer. this is when seulgi thinks her heart fails her the most and she sits very still and wonders why. wendy's lips graze just the edge of seulgi's ears and seulgi is sure wendy can hear the heart beat according to wendy's terms. if anything, all seulgi knows is she has lost control of the very thing she was once so good at controlling, and if the heart is what makes oxygen flow in your blood, seulgi finally makes sense of the fact she needs oxygen to breathe.

so seulgi curls her fingers, feels the last of her own blood come to life at the tips of the fingertips, holds wendy by her cheek and brings her nearer to her lips.

because, well, wendy is the sky.