Memories | Sanjoong

35. Questions

*
Fairytales of yesterday will grow but
never die
*

"San, San, San! Wake up!" A voice called, shaking San out of his slumber.

San sat up suddenly, gasping for air. He felt around for some sort of comfort in the darkness, failing to find it. Still panting, San put his hand to his neck which hurt from the suffocation of the water.

"Are you alright?" Hongjoong said from beside him. San turned a little to look at Hongjoong sit up with a yawn.

"You mean you weren't the one waking me up?" San questioned, bewildered.

Hongjoong furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "What are you talking about? I just felt you get up, and you're breathing really heavily right now." Hongjoong saw San's figure moving again, as San swung his legs out of the bed. He sat on the edge, looking at his lap. San gripped the sheets he was sitting on, keeping his head lowered.

Switching the lamp on, Hongjoong moved closer to San. "Tell me what's wrong." Hongjoong slipped his arms around San's waist and rested his chin on San's shoulder. San recollected what he had seen and shuddered.

He had so many questions and no idea where to start. "I saw something strange..." and that was all he was able to say. San shrugged Hongjoong off and leapt out of the bed. He went to the covered paintings and pulled off the white sheet from one of them to reveal the art underneath.

"There's something off about all of this," he muttered. He reached over and uncovered the other two paintings then sat down on the edge of the bed again, facing the canvases.

"What are you doing?" Hongjoong asked, furrowing his eyebrows. He shuffled closer and looked at the paintings with San. "Don't worry too much about it San, just go back to sleep and you can work it all out tomorrow."

"I can't wait that long!" San exclaimed, but kept his voice down so as not to wake Mr Park who was asleep in the other room. "The longer I leave this untouched, the worse it becomes, the more I lose my freakin sanity."

"Ok... ok then I'll help. Tell me what you saw," Hongjoong said softly, getting out of bed and sitting next to San.

San explained the strange dream he had just had. Where he started in a beautiful meadow with Hyunsik, into some sort of argument with Hongsik followed by a strange dinner before he was thrust into the ocean water.

"But something doesn't make sense to me," San said, recollecting the strange dinner. "That diner with Hyunsik doesn't feel like a memory. It was something else. Maybe a figment of my imagination. The people in the restaurant seemed to be corpses... or zombies... of some sort." He shuddered at the thought of that man who snapped his head in San's direction during the dream. No regular human could turn a neck in such a way. And those piercing eyes brought chills down San's spine when he remembered the way every head turned and every pair of eyes looked at him in the same way.

Hongjoong listened intently to all of it, attempting to think of a plausible theory. "What if... this was one of your own dreams. Maybe this time your imagination used the memories to create something nightmarish."

"It could be," San mumbled, but he wasn't entirely convinced by that idea.

San looked at the three paintings again; a small country cottage, a stretch of dark, rippling waves and a vase of mismatched flowers. He found that each painting linked to his own memories, but it still unnerved him that someone out there was able to paint the things that only San could see.

What if San wasn't the only one to see this story?

What if others could see the same story as San?

"Good morning boys! Did you sleep well?" Mr. Park asked cheerfully as he watched San and Hongjoong walk into the kitchen.