chasing girl wonder

run the dish

Five months. Almost five months had passed since I saw that smile. Isn't it pretty to admire it from memory?

Lisa was supposed to head straight to Seoul after surfing for three hours on 38th Parallel Beach, north of Jukdo Beach, during sunrise. Knowing herself too well—or maybe not very well anymore since she had that encounter with that blonde girl—she knew she would end up driving back to Jukdo to take a one-in-a-million chance to see that smile again.

Just... What if she's there today?

In the mornings that followed that serendipitous encounter, she found herself staring at the ceiling without actually seeing the ceiling. On it was a clear picture of that stranger's smile. That short meeting kept playing in her head like a broken tape that transmitted a visual image on repeat that comforted her heartstrings, an apropos, seasonably, to her heart's longing. Her mind was occupied, unapologetically shaking her belief system, with her words.

What she said.

"The rain can stay crazy for days, and you just have to find one reason to love it for what it is." On those days it rained, she found herself staring out the window, trying to find a single reason to love it.

And how she said it.

"And see? The rain stops eventually." Her sixth sense had since developed from reading the cloud formation and sensing the pitter-patter of raindrops to the dissonance of rain as it would come to its eventual stop.

She would delay getting up from her bed just to live in that memory like it happened yesterday and when her lips would curve up ever so slightly, she would get rattled and bolt right up, causing Love to panic and bark at her relentlessly until she fed him breakfast. It became a routine until the eleventh hour when she was consumed by the sickening feeling of decadence. She judged herself for being a creep. That kind of obsession was a mere escape from the troubles of her heart, just like how she had been too attached to Nana before despite not having an official relationship. If she allowed herself to be that vulnerable again, people would just stop believing she could stand on her own two feet.

And so, she kept herself busy in the restaurant where too much pressure and quick demands heightened her senses and logic. There were no feelings attached whenever she ran the kitchen. No stranger's smile to think about. No food for thought. "Can you flash that plate for me?" "Kill that steak!" "Mise en place?" and her favorite, "The special is 86ed already!" It meant her special dish for the night had run out.

Somebody slapped a brown bag containing something soft but solid on her shoulder. "Is this milk bread enough for your two-and-a-half-hour drive, boss?"

Pulling the Terea Blue tobacco stick from her IQOS Iluma device, Lisa stood up straight from her leaning position against the railings outside the restaurant she worked in, "Poached Wohnen." Clicking her tongue in annoyance in between blowing out the last smoke she puffed, she shot the Hotel Manager a sullen look before taking the bag. "Jeez. Don't hit people with food, Sorn!"

Sorn playfully did the same with Love, letting him get a sniff of the pack she prepared—five loaves of wheat bread as he liked it—before handing it to Lisa.

"Not dogs too!" Lisa cried in bewilderment.

Laughing harshly, Sorn patted Love's head and then gestured at the sea. "Are you going to miss it?"

Side-eyeing Sorn with a look of peruse, Lisa grumbled, "Stop doing that every time I leave town. I'll be back before you know it. And I do this every year."