My Escape | Haerin x Minji

3

The roasted chestnuts were delicious. 

When Minji came back, it was already late evening. The autumn evening in Busan is the most beautiful. The setting sunlight spreads across the glass and is reflected in without falling. The window glass is coated with a layer of lavender. 

Haerin peeled off the chestnuts bit by bit along the cracked edges, one, two, three, four, five and arranged them on the textbooks in sequence. She's going to let them cool off before eating, she doesn't like food that burns her mouth. 

She had helped Minji tidy up her notebook in a clean and good manner. Haerin had her own logic and reasoning when she studied, she's a smart girl, and she could catch points during lessons where ordinary students could not. If it wasn't for the bullies isolating her, trying to get a peek at her notes would be everyone's goal in class. 

Minji was the opposite of her, the way she remembers things was a mess, her handwriting, messy, as though she didn't have an interest in learning. Haerin thought about her two thin pages of notes, even only half written and wondered why she could lend it to others so confidently as a reference.

"Mmm, delicious!"

"Damn, so neat."

There was no one in the classroom, and they spoke at the same time and laughed at the same time because of a little tacit understanding. The chestnuts are really fragrant, bite it open, and then chew it carefully, this is the first time in the past two years that Haerin feels relaxed, she walked out of her fragile self and in that moment, the light purple shade on the classroom's window was magnificent.

Haerin leaned against the windowsill, her whole body relaxed, and her expression softened involuntarily. She thought back to the beginning of spring when her heart was still grey, so she picked a sunny day alone to take a car to Gwangan beach to watch the sea, standing in the wet sand, barefoot. The seawater repeatedly surged up, and the sparkling sea at that time reminded her of her thighs. There were many scars on her thighs, burned by the bullies using cigarettes, and her white thighs became no longer white, but the sparkling sea was still sparkling no matter what. 

She looked afar, over Gwangan bridge, far far away where the sky and the sea met. 

"Over there, Is it free? Are the fishes in the sea free too?? Haerin thought as she lost herself in thought.

Her view came back to Minji's face, the light that has faded due to it being evening could barely illuminate the side of Minji's face. Haerin assumes that she was a realistic video recorder, so the subject being photographed is born with a not-so-typical beautiful girl face. The common feature is cleanliness and purity, but the difference is that there was a subtle sharpness hidden in the insensitivity. Minji was like those not easily broken china dolls.

"Unnie..." The word Unnie in Haerin's mouth was like tteokbokki, sticking to her ears and teeth. 

"You look very pure."

Minji amused, pokes her head out of the mess on the table.

"Really now? No one ever said that to me."

'It's because they don't know you." Haerin answered, with a serious expression on her face. 

"Do you know that Unnie? They don't know you." 

Haerin didn't explain who "they" were, but both of them knew what she was referring to.

Minji stopped laughing halfway, her eyes, still curved, and the corners of her mouth became straight. She didn't organize her words well, and she wasn't ready to even share them. For Kim Minji, the past was too long and private so they should stay in the past.