Day 2: A Parallel.
At the bottom of the river, she's Schrödinger's cat, alive and dead, breathless in black water, a burial for Go Ha Jin. I'm okay, mother, she said for months, I'm really okay,but the pull was as uncontrollable as her will, I can't leave you alone, I can't.
The eclipse can't even be seen, it's nothing like the first time, nothing is on her side, yet she jumps, leaps, falls, flies with her arms wide open and a burning in her chest. She prays to the moon that stole the sun, prays to the moon deity, let me steal him, too, give him back to me. She cannot see or hear anything but her own chanting in her head and she's dead, it's over, it has been over for a millennia but she had failed to understand, hadn't she? Things always had to go her way, her mother used to say, she would never yield, her daughter. Go Ha Jin would never surrender.
Never.
Hae Soo emerges from the water, startled, out of breath, like she's taken a bullet to the chest. She must be dying, not from drowning but from a heart attack, from heartache, but no, it's just the whole course of time punishing her for her foolishness, not enough to kill but just enough to bruise. It sends the message that this is the last time, any other time and we'll come for you, no more chances, no more rise for Go Ha Jin. The moon shines with the sun's light, from its shadowed face at day to its aggressive self at night, and who was she to steal that, to usurp that miracle?
She lives. She breathes.
He stares at her like he sees the dead.
She's aware that she's trembling, all over, from the inside out, from every cell that makes her Hae Soo. She's Hae Soo. She was always meant to be Hae Soo, she made Soo herself, from the scraps of a broken Go Ha Jin, puzzle pieces of stubbornness and optimism and love. Oh, love. He stares at her with a bared face and a bared soul and she knows it's the first time, somewhere behind him lies the butterfly of his rejection from a mother who'd rather see him dead. Unborn. Unmade.
She takes a step forward and he can't even react. This girl who showed up out of nowhere, this concept he cannot comprehend, where, how, what, who are you? He instinctively places a hand over his scar but Soo takes hold of it, with all the strength of her little body she pulls it down to look. She knows he could kill her if he wanted to, she knows so many things about him and it's not enough, so she takes a step forward. She wants to wake up every day by his side and discover a new side of him. She wants to know every scar so deeply she could kiss a trail of them with her eyes closed. She wants.
She breathes on his face and he's shaking too, she sees it in his eyes, her mouth is agape in wonder and she loves him so much he could kill her right there and it'd have been worth it.
"You're as beautiful as I remember," she whispers, her words clinging to the steam around them, penetrating his pores, and right then he looks so much younger, she feels immortal in his youth, in his fragile innocence. "I've missed you."
As though she steals oxygen with her words he retreats, leaves behind the hairpin like Cinderella with her slipper, and Hae Soo smiles, delights in the repetition. She takes all the scolding her beloved Myung Hee gives her, her petite arms wrapping tightly around her beautiful mother to scare death away. Go, go away, come back another day. Like it's rain.
"Hae Soo," he calls next day, his face stern but clouded with confusion. She smiles so widely he must think her crazy and she knows she is. Time is so destabilized that she showed up days after the first time, but he knows her name so her mark is still in the past. She still has a mark on him. "What… Who are you? What are you trying to pull?"
With her face in both her hands she beams up at him, the flowers and the braids in her hair inviting him for a whole new beginning.
"I dreamed of you. Didn't you dream of me?"
He scoffs but under the layer of incredulity lies a question.
Should I?
You will.
