forget-me-not || lee dohwa

𝐌𝐲 𝐏𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐆𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐌𝐲 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞

My Pepero is Gone and So is My Home

As far as Gyeoul could remember, the way back home had been a straight, flat, beaten down path. One broken streetlight—courtesy of a rowdy kid wanting to test his aiming skills with a stone. Narrow streets diverging from the main road, like tributaries of a river, wounding around houses and stores of all shapes and sizes.

Gyeoul knew this neighbourhood like the back of her hand. She had lived here her whole life—had scraped her knee from falling off her bicycle, bought all the pepero from the nearby convenience store, waited for the school bus at the bend with her brother as he rubbed the sleep off his eyes, snuck in Namju aka the-boy-next-door into her room after hours only for him to break her heart a week later.

Then what was this? Why did the cemented road widen and incline upwards as she trudged back home? Why did the streetlights brighten up her path when Gyeoul was positive that she used to use the light from her phone to make sure she didn't trip on anything? Why was there a garage that could fit three cars in place of the walled front yard of her home? Where was the squeaky gate instead of this...this door that led to who knew where?

Why was there a lavish mansion with glass-for-walls instead of her cozy, semi-traditional home that her mother had designed and furnished with her own hands?

Gyeoul gaped at the garage shutter. She took a step back, craned her neck up to glimpse at the building again—large, gray, modern. Dwellings of the wealthy, her architect of a mother had wrinkled her nose, feel so barren and dull.

"This isn't possible," she whispered to herself in horror. All Gyeoul had done was storm out of the house, late in the evening, to get some air after finding out that the comic artist she was interning under had stolen the characters she had so lovingly and painstakingly designed.

Well, 'designed' would be a stretch. Gyeoul had drawn inspiration for her comic characters from her family and friends. There was only one that she had drawn from scratch. It had taken her years to perfect the hair and the dimpled smile and the gentle eyes. 

Gyeoul had filled her creation with kindness. The world has enough mean main characters, she had told her brother when he curiously peered over her shoulder to see her sketches.

Angels are boring, he had retorted while ruffling her hair.

Fifteen minutes was how long it took from her home to the convenience store and back—for her to impulsively purchase two boxes of double-dip pepero and scarf them down as she returned, still grumbling curses she had secretly learnt from her brother. The pepero boxes had emptied as quickly as she had bought them, further souring her mood.

Fifteen minutes and she returned to this.

"I couldn't have taken the wrong path," she muttered, glancing down the street, "There's no way. There is no way." Because Gyeoul could've walked back in her sleep or blindfolded. She knew every nook and corner of this neighbourhood and more often than not, her legs moved automatically to get her where she wanted to go.

Her insides had begun to make their way up her food pipe from the fear and nervousness. Her stomach grumbled and ached. What is this what is this what is this—

"Who are you?"

"Oh, thank god," Gyeoul slouched dramatically in relief as her brother approached her, hands in his pockets and frowning. She shuffled towards him, not seeing the wary look on his face, "Tell me I'm not lost. Our home was supposed to be here," she pointed at the mansion, "but I don't recognize the street at all."