Dark Tide

Chapter 8: epilogue

Most of the time
I don't feel I dare
to say I miss you,
Because I'm just me
and you are pure stardust
slipping through my fingers
impossible to grasp
or to pin down,
But just sometimes
when the waning moon
hangs low on the horizon
and sleep evades me,
Then
'I miss you.'

Snow is falling in flurries, as she walks up from Itaewon metro to the bar where she has arranged to meet Minseok. She pulls the black bucket hat down to shield her eyes from the whirling snowflakes. She finds herself wondering what the blue-haired idol's schedule is, and then wondering why she's even considering that.

She has used the alleyway where the crowd crush happened: she makes a point of using it to cut through to the bars now, as if staring that night in the face. It is always empty and ghostly, as most people avoid it. For her, it has become a way of reminding herself not to slip backwards to that person she once was.

As she reaches the top, her Kakao-Talk notification sounds, and she expects it to be Minseok, asking why she's not used their driver in this weather. When she sees it is from his number instead, she freezes in the mouth of the alleyway.

Shielding her screen from the wet snowflakes, she clicks.

"I go in one week," his message reads. "Meet me at Songjiho on Thursday." And then as her breath mists the air between her and the screen, and tiny falling icicles plant themselves on his anonymous number and his message script, a third message appears. "Please come."

She looks over her shoulder, feeling like the whole weight of this place is hovering behind her with omniscient eyes, watching. But the alleyway is dark and empty, the snowflakes mostly hitting the walls in flurries before they can touch the concrete ground.

"I need to think," she replies. But she knows what she will do. She knows that she cannot resist the opportunity to fall backwards into the lure of his smile and his scent and his fathomless eyes.

*******

The sun is already low in the sky, hovering behind her, back in the direction of Seoul, when she parks up. Her breath hangs in the cold air, but there's no snow here, the proximity to the sea keeping the temperature more kind than Seoul. He has heard her car disturb the silent stillness of winter that hangs around the beach house, almost as if it exists in a void away from time and space. She doesn't have time to worry about knocking, or to psyche herself up to it, because he opens the door and peers out at her, his eyes round under the brim of his bucket-hat, and then steps back to invite her inside.

They stand on opposite sides of the hallway, for a time she can't even analyse, and she longs for a rainstorm dripping off them into puddles, or his dog shaking water all over them, or anything to break the awkward stillness that stretches between them. His head is bowed, and she notices that no strands of hair fall down below the brim of his hat, and her stomach lurches with realisation. Then he raises his face, and she feels flustered as his eyes meet hers, because he's caught her just staring. Blushing, she moves past him into the room.

She is struck by how sparse it seems. The TV and sofa are gone and there's no comforting muddle of his suitcases and scattered belongings now, and no dog crate or padding feet coming to greet her.

"Oh," escapes her lips as she looks around, and it is as if he reads her thoughts.

"He's with my brother," he sighs. "He loves it there. I sometimes think he might think that's his actual home," and he shrugs, and then disappears into the kitchen, leaving her standing in the middle of the space which has haunted her for months. The mattresses still lie, slightly skewed on top of each other, and she resists that urge to go and straighten them; and the white bedding lies smooth and unslept in. Two candles are lit on a ledge next to the mattresses, and she finds herself wondering if these are the same candles that burned on the floor last time. The mental images of them together here, that summer, crowd her mind and tug at her breath and she folds her arms and unfolds them several times, feeling nervous and uncertain.