Motorcycle Nights ✓

03| lanspresado

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03

lanspresado

( someone who always shows up without money.)

13th October, 2020

SI WOO stared blankly at the old brown maple leaf which had managed to travel with the autumn wind. It had landed on her head a few minutes ago, near the lamp post.

Her slender fingers ran on it freely as she felt its structure. Slowly, the brown structure turned into green. The leaf was fresh and new again. She removed her fingertips and looked at the red rashes that covered it. It would probably take an hour to heal.

The bright sun was up in the sky, scattering its warm rays all over her. She felt a little hot, still contemplating about whether to take off her brightly coloured, light woolen cardigan or not. The weather was blissfully calm. It had stopped raining and the sun had taken no time to conquer the temperature.

Her phone's battery was about to die. It's notification interrupted her jamming session. Now, she did not foresee this while leaving her house. Who knew that it would take her a long time to go back home? Seoul was supposed to be more crowded. She thought that there would be less people considering how the sun was high up in the sky. She let her guard down for a moment and got stabbed.

She pulled out the buds of the earphones from her ears and rolled them neatly before putting them away in her tote bag. She low-key questioned herself why she was doing that since it would become a tangled mess anyway when it would come out of her bag.

Halloween was a few days far and she couldn't keep calm. Pyeonghwa did not celebrate the event like they did in big cities like Seoul. It was rather uncommon for someone to dress up and go around asking for candies. Si Woo celebrated it every year. Her mother who was once her cheerleader, now looked at her with disinterest and disapproval. Yeseul never went out with her as she prefered catching up with the soap operas with her mother more.

Si Woo stretched her sore legs. She shifted impatiently, one foot to the next. The shop she was standing infront of, was the only grocery shop in the whole of Pyeonghwa.

In the twenty six years of her life, she had never seen the shop having customers less than ten at a time for a single day. It was always crowded. She always went prepared whenever she was instructed to visit it. It took her more than three hours to reach home once. She should have known better that Pyeonghwa's culture was stagnant throughout the corridors of time. Pyeonghwa was like a little region who managed to distance herself from other regions and refuse to grow up. Nothing changed everytime she visited. Even the wild flowers that bloomed near the roads seemed to be of the same number.

The owner of the store was an old chubby man who liked to chew betel nut and chat with his customers. The small, dark store had two part-timers who were rarely seen.

The owner, a man who had no family waiting for him back at home, was quite fond of his teen workers. He habitually turned a blind eye to their absence. They ditched their duty to go somewhere else and the owner really did not mind. Si Woo had seen him pampering those boys with small sweets and delicacies. Sometimes she found herself secretly wishing for a warm treatment like that. Simple life had better things to offer.

A sudden commotion infront of her caught her attention. She glanced at the two kids who were bickering about the something trivial. From what she could gather, it was probably about some sweet which the other had snatched away. The high-pitched whimpers and wails were making it difficult for her to stand and listen to them. The others around them took interest in the quarrel having nothing better to do. They added insensitive comments about how their parents needed to discipline them and the new generation were not considerate of others.