The Afterlife

4) Sunny days barely ever vowed rain.

Sunny days barely ever vowed rain.

The chirping and ruffling did all to promise a summer day, one as bright as almost all beginnings, and it was a beginning, indeed.

Once schools rang their last bells and summer rang its first, homes had a different scent to them and of course, families never sounded the same. With summer was borne opportunities from emptiness, and with its very radiant sun was borne a promise for clearance and transparency, a chance for the world to see through its self, to look for what had made it so, to build up, again, what had shattered with the rigidness and dry of winter's cold.

Sunghoon never lost an opportunity to enjoy himself, and although it had not been his best exams season, there was no stopping him from thinking that summer was only a gap between him and his new trial, an opening to patch whichever that he had left unsewn.

He knew he was not halfway close to how smart his sister was, and he had seen her being praised for it countless times, but he also knew he was being praised as much, and he was being accepted for said much. His acknowledgement of himself not doing his best did nothing to sway his parents' love away from him, and it was solely why he had in mind to do better.

The way was long, and he also knew that. There was much that he had knowledge of, and it kept him safer than he knew most times, because while he thought of himself lacking at some aspects, he also pat himself on the back for knowing much more in others.

The time at the young boy's hands looked eternal to him, and so did their road to the mountain side.

He had heard his father speak about it countless times back during exams, too many words that made no presence in his simple vocabulary, but he made enough sense out of them to know how excited his father was about the forest house he bought for their family and the time they would spend together in it.

He could not help but feel the same excitement. He blamed himself for it, thinking that had he not overwhelmed himself with the thought of spending summer with his family somewhere new, he would have left enough space in his head for darned equations and Korean grammar.

Sunghoon's sister had her featherlight head placed on his legs; he did not mind it though the ride was to go on, and he kept switching gazes between her and the window.

Brown cities turned into green lands, and the change of colors painted his heart along the way. Weight kept adding to his small pumping heart, and excitement grew on him like the veins on the trees that surrounded him.

"Do you think we can go mountain biking?" Sunghoon heard his mother chime, and his eyes were snatched immediately off the road.

She was an older version of his sister - tall, fair, mixed with all black and blue of the world, painted with all pink and red there was to add life, and she looked like everything Sunghoon wanted to look at. Ease washed over the kid's body whenever he was to meet his mother's face, and looking away after was such a challenging case.

The bubbles that kept rising to his mother's eyes grew on him as well, and the elation her own suggestion brought to her made sound before meaning for the world whole to hear before read it.

"For sure," Sunghoon was watching, and the next scenery was as beautiful as all; his father was friends with a giggle, and while one hand was on his wheel to give their ride directions and guide, the other worked its way down his wife's hair, patting her soft head a few times as he spoke, "anything you want."

"So then we can go fishing, barbecuing, hunting," baits, skewers, and guns were made out of her fair fingers, making life of all that she had in mind; Sunghoon knew his mother was not usually like that, but he did not usually feel so excited as well. Normally, their summer would be rare beach days and new dishes for dinner, because it was hard to do more when his father was the busiest during summer, so it was only normal for them to hunt down joy and will.