How did you get here ? It's not a peculiar question, but it's not the question that those who ask wonder about. It is the question of if they are likely to end up there as well. All he usually said was "It's rather easy."
It's incredibly easy to drop out of the 'normal' state of mind (though it is always questionable if who set the example of a 'normal' state of mind was sane himself.) Or even to slip out of our world and into your very own- almost a 'real' fairy tale that you walk through as often as the small child across the street in spring takes his allergy medicine.
Or aside from associating dropping out of the 'normal' state of mind with insanity, thinking of it as developing a new line of thinking. Which, was what he had done from when he had first met her to when he last laid his eyes of her beautiful form.
He smiled slowly, breathing in the chilled air of Margaret's library with books and other nic-nacs dating back to god knows when. A library, as we know, is indiscriminate, a stomah which digests its contents without hierarchies. Actually not. Like a museum, the library selects, forgets, archives, classifies and celebrates. A private library tells a sordid personal history. A national library tells about the barbarism of the community. A library is the cemetary of those who do not have a voice, the definitively dead.
How do you go about reading in an immense library which is built up through the years from streets and museums, from book libraries and from the televised encyclopedia, from rituals pagan and ecclesiatical ? How do you decide where to look in this impossible library ? How to do catalogue its unstable contents ? Is it like picking an ice cream flavor to put in that paper-covered cone in a local sweet store ? Or is reading merely picking through the ruins ?
He was a library in ruins, the ruins of concepts and ideas and mistakes. One of them being his unwise decision of wearing his heart out on his sleeve. Left out to pick at, to scorn and to be stolen away the one girl who he'd never expect with all the twists and turns the world had made since then would leave him alone in the end to heal his scars.
" Haunted heart … won't let me be … Dreams repeat
a sweet but lonesome song to me …" He whispered into the musty, cool air.
" Kiwotsukeru hitomajiwari osanagokoro,"
Hyejin's grandmother said softly, smiling at her.
" I'm sorry?" She said, surprised. She had a
very basic knowledge of Japanese, thanks to some small international business
transactions, but she had no idea what the old woman had just said to her. The
woman then walked away without explaining, disappearing into one of the many
bedrooms in her colleague, Hyejin's house. 'Man, this house is crowded',
she thought as she made my way through the masses of relatives that had all
come for my colleague's surprise party. She was sure she'd get no sleep: she
was sharing one of the guest rooms with Hyejin and two of her cousins.
"
She said 'Be careful with his heart'," Hyejin's voice came suddenly from
the shadows of the doorway of her room.
"
What does she mean by that?" She asked, my heart racing. How could Hyejin's
grandmother possibly know that she had once been reckless with his heart?
Reckless with his heart … she hadn't really thought of it like that
before.
"
Who knows?" Hyejin said, as she joined her as they walked down the stairs
to the very center of the party full with relatives, caterers and practically
anyone else that could fit in Hyejin's fashionable studio apartment. " She's
getting a little senile in her old age. Women in my family live forever … it's
kind of daunting." She said with a laugh before excusing herself to go
mingle with the other guests.
She
started to remember him, little by little, and soon all the pieces of his
puzzle were pieced. At least, the ones she'd managed to collect over the years.
She
allowed herself to imagine what his lips might taste like now. Not like
the butterbeer of their youth, surely. There would be traces of cigarette
smoke; she imagined he'd had a smoke this morning, early, just after the sun
had come up behind the clouds. Then there would be the taste of coffee: sharp
and dull, probably the only breakfast he'd had. Somewhere in the mix there
would the taste of pure him, a flavor she'd sampled only once. She could
barely remember, now.
As
she walked around Hyejin's home with a glass of sherry in hand, she couldn't
help but shut her eyes, trying to make the darkness of the world seep into her
mind, making it dark. Thus, free of those taunting memories. When she opened them
again I stood in-front of the massive brick fireplace. The fireplace reminds
one of a white Christmas, a time to rejoice, love, a time to build up new
memories for a new year. However, judging from the decoration of the room;
tipsy members of Hyejin's family, bowls of punch, and the traces of the
multi-layered chocolate cake: it seemed that it was not such a cookie-cutter
type of day as the fireplace gave off. There were no long socks stuffed with
presents on the fireplace. There were no pine trees in the room, no twinkling
light bulbs, no angels, no silver bells and no candles on the copper candle
stands either.
The
marble clock on the fireplace had its hour hand moving towards one, the minute
hand towards nine, and the position of the second hand was uncertain. It was
already past midnight. If it was a coach, it would have reverted to a pumpkin,
if it was a horse, it would have reverted to a mouse, and the ballgown would
have reverted to rags and tatters.
Yes, it was past midnight. But according to the fairy tale, before midnight Cinderella will have met a prince. Zero hour is always worrisome. How will things be at zero hour plus one ? Can the future be seen through the mirror ?