Strawberry Wine

twenty four

        Chae Young knew Jung Kook was having conflicts with his mother. She did not approve of Jung Kook's illegal activities and wanted him to return home. Jung Kook never discussed it with Chae Young but she could read his troubled eyes every time he ended a phone call from home. As for her, she had still not heard from her father.

A right pair they were, she thought with amusement.

They took their teacher's license exam in the spring. Chae Young thought it had gone rather well, but was afraid to hope. She didn't ask Jung Kook how his went because she knew he was stressing over it more than she was.

Not long after, during a phone call with her grandma, she learnt that her grandfather had had a stroke. Knowing that they were at an age where even a common cold could prove to be fatal, she decided to go and stay with them for a while.

Her grandparents were ecstatic to see her. They had even cleaned up her mother's old room for her.

"You didn't have to," Chae Young chastised her grandma lightly. "You already have enough to do."

With Chae Young at home, her grandma could go to the field. She had a hired help, but she liked the satisfaction of supervising the works herself.

Her grandfather had body aches and mild dementia. He would ask Chae Young which grade she was in or sometimes even ask when her mother would be visiting them.

Neither she nor her grandma, and not even the doctor said it out loud, but they knew that taking him for further treatment was now futile.

She decided to tell her brother. She did not have the guts to call her father still.

When she made the decision to come to the village, she had been mentally prepared about her grandfather's health. She had quit her tutoring job and had taken out most of her savings to buy medicines and good food. She found herself once again trying to be the strong one as she kept her cheer around the house. It made her miss Jung Kook.

They talked often but she couldn't say anything intimate what with the landline being in her grandparents' room. She longed to tell him of how much she missed him, how everything she did reminded her of him and even of her intimate dreams of him. But she had to stick to asking about his day and if he had had his meal.

"Is that Jung Kook, Mi Hee's grandson?" her grandmother asked calmly one day, when Chae Young walked out of their room after talking to Jung Kook.

Chae Young tried not to look at her as she mumbled a yes.

"Ah, so it really happened."

"Ney?" Chae Young's head shot up in surprise.

"You think I didn't know?" Her grandmother grinned, "The two of you were in love since back then. Intoxicated in love. You forgot that I was young once. The secret gaze of lovers don't escape me."

Chae Young blushed. She simply laughed and fled the kitchen.

But not long after that, she woke one morning to voices from the kitchen. Her grandmother was talking to someone. She lied on bed, listening. It was a man's voice. And then, with a jolt, she recognized it.

Hair flying about and still in her sleeping clothes, she bounded to the kitchen. Sitting there on her grandparents' floor was Jeon Jung Kook, comfortably sipping on plum tea with her grandmother.

Her jaw dropped.

Without a word, her grandmother quietly left the kitchen.

"Why didn't you call?" she demanded, sitting down next to him.