Hwasun One shots

I'm (Un) Real

Hyejin loved to drive. She liked to take the backroads and explore, listen to music, and just relax. Driving always took her mind off things. It was so automatic but took just enough focus that none of her problems seemed able to infiltrate her brain. She was driving the backroads when she found it.

The road leading up to it was cracked and full of potholes, the parking area a dirt clearing. The front gate was hanging off its hinges, a decrepit sign telling her "No Trespassing. Open Sunrise to Sunset. Gold Hill Cemetery." Hyejin felt a longing, a yearning towards this place. She was overwhelmingly compelled to explore.

Slipping through the half-fallen gate, Hyejin looked around her. The majority of the headstones were covered in moss, fences rusted, tree roots pushing many headstones to be crooked. There were fallen tree branches from the stormy winter preceding that spring, some grave markers wooden and rotting. The flowers that were placed at a few headstones were long dead and wilted away. The place was beautiful, and Hyejin was enamored.

Hyejin began searching through the headstones to find the oldest one there. To find the youngest. To find the oldest. To find the one most taken over by the surrounding nature. She came across many from the 1910s and 20s, lives lost clearly to war and influenza. There was a headstone marking the grave of a three-month-old baby. Hyejin teared up. This poor baby has been alone for so long.

Hyejin slipped back out the gate and unlocked her car, grabbing a book from the front seat. "The Last Painting of Sara de Vos." It wasn't quite suited for a baby, but it was the only book she had. She sat herself in front of the little baby's small headstone, working to make out the name underneath the moss and weathering. Jung? Wheein? Something that started with a J and had an N towards the end. She figured it didn't matter. Despite being halfway through the book, Hyejin started from the beginning.

"The painting is stolen the same week the Russians put a dog into space...."

From behind a tree nearby, Yongsun listened carefully to the story of the painting.

-

Hyejin went back later that week, unable to get the headstone of the baby out of her mind. It broke her heart. She returned with a book much more suited to the baby's age, borrowed from her nephews. Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes. She sang some, read others she didn't know the tune to. She read until the sun began to set and she could no longer make out the words.

"I'm so sorry this happened to you, little one," she said, after a long pause in her reading. "You deserved a long and happy life. But I hope I can be a small comfort after a long time spent alone."

She didn't know what it was compelling her to speak, to read, to keep coming back. But Hyejin couldn't help herself.

A week later she returned to continue the story of "The Last Painting of Sara de Vos." She figured it must have been annoying to anyone else listening that she left off partway through.

The relief Hyejin felt upon seeing this girl again was unspeakable. She's been alone for so long, the comfort of her voice and the stories was insurmountable. Hyejin sat atop a headstone next to sweet little Wheein's, swinging her legs back and forth as she listened to the story. Her feet bumped against the cement headstone.

Hyejin's head snapped to the side, hearing a bumping noise. Nothing. There was nothing there. Shrugging it off, she continued reading.

-

After weeks of reading to the baby's headstone, Hyejin looked through her bookshelves for something she thought might be satisfactory for listeners of all ages in the cemetery. She didn't know which people had stayed behind, so she wanted to cover her bases. She settled on "Alice in Wonderland." It was her mother's copy, printed in 1954. Upon arriving at her cemetery, something was immediately off. The half-fallen gate was wide open. Hyejin shrugged it off, supposing another visitor may not have been able to fit through the opening Hyejin had been sliding through. It was a warm spring day, but Hyejin felt a chill as she sat in front of the baby's headstone. She closed her eyes, focusing as hard as she could. She knew someone else was there.