At Blue Hour, I Fall In Love [BEOMJUN] ✓

fourteen

Shin Hana was an autobiographical writer from before the war. She wasn’t very well-known to the public, but apparently, she had some loyal fans.

Her most notable work, A Ray of Sunshine was known as a typical piece of sanatorium literature. Sanatorium literature refers to works depicting the lives of patients hospitalized in sanatoriums. A Ray of Sunshine depicted the life of a protagonist who suffered from blue hour disease. Shin Hana was an autobiographical writer, and autobiographies are generally stories written based on actual experiences. Shin Hana herself had suffered from blue hour disease and died in her twenties.

I couldn’t quite get a grasp on the image her work portrayed just from this description on the internet, so I decided to actually borrow the book from Beomgyu and read it.

While I was reading A Ray of Sunshine at my own seat between classes, Taehyun called out to me.

“What are you reading that for?” he asked.

“Ah, it’s just…”

It was an old book; its literary style and metaphors were old-fashioned, so it took me quite a while to read through it. Honestly, it was such a minor work, and I would never have picked it up in my life if Mamizu hadn’t been reading it.

“That’s the book that Choi Beomgyu likes, isn’t it?”

I was startled.

Did Taehyun know something?

“Oh, really?” I played dumb. Isn’t this a really obvious way to play dumb? I thought.

“I like it too, actually,” Taehyun said.

This was an unexpected fact. Or rather, I couldn’t imagine that it was a coincidence. I would have understood if it were a famous novel, but it was no coincidence that Taehyun liked an obscure book like this.

“I haven’t finished reading it yet, so don’t spoil it,” I said.

“She dies in the end,” Taehyun said, spoiling the story immediately.

But even I knew that much of the ending, so I didn’t feel like getting angry.

A Ray of Sunshine wasn’t that long a book. It wasn’t even two hundred pages in paperback form. I finished reading it within the day. Honestly speaking, I didn’t find it particularly interesting. Well, there were interesting parts, but the story seemed to have few redeeming features in my eyes. Maybe that was because it was a work where an autobiographer knew that he was dying and depicted what he thought his own death was going to be like. It was melancholic and induced a dark mood.

The next day, we had an educational field trip. It had been decided that our class would go to the folklore museum. I could kind of imagine what the folklore museum would be like, but not quite. What kind of things would be on display? Earthenware? Bears?

It was at nine o’clock in the morning, just after I got past the ticket gate at the station near the museum we were supposed to be meeting at. I’d arrived early, but I encountered Taehyun, who had arrived even earlier. Almost none of the other students had arrived yet.

“Hey, shall we skip out on this?” Taehyun suggested. Of course Taehyun would be the one to suggest something like this.

I decided to join him, because I didn’t have much interest in the origins of the people of our hometown.

“I want to visit Shin Hana’s grave,” I said.

Taehyun looked a little taken aback, but he quickly regained his composure. “Well then, let’s go,” he said. “We’re leaving early,” he said to one of our classmates, who stared at him blankly.