1 and 24 - A tripleS story ❀

Chapter 4

and also twenty-four

we can create a new world

from the other side of the door

the wave

together

in the cosmos, one will be twenty-four again.

Seoyeon stared at the piece of paper that had just fallen out her diary, blankly. Too much of it was missing for the phrases – the fragments of phrases, rather – handwritten on it to make sense, yet...

She read it a second, then a third time, and the words started hovering around in her head, like dandelion seeds looking for a place to sow and blossom, in search of completion.

What was it...? When was it?

There was something familiar about them, and the way they were put together. Seoyeon read the first line again, this time out loud: – "And also twenty-four"...

That number, for example. 24. She knew it was important – it had immediately stood out to her, like a four-leaf clover left in the middle of a mowed meadow. She smiled. A lucky number...

Seoyeon, still sitting on the floor, rested her head on the side of the mattress, holding the piece of paper up in the air. But what does "and also twenty-four" mean? What is "also twenty-four"?? Was it another number, like 1 – the last line seemed to suggest it – or was it something else? But then, how can "one" "be twenty-four again"? It didn't make sense, unless...

Unless it's counting, counting pieces, lost pieces that were once together – twenty-four, as one.

She smiled again, bitter this time. Wasn't that exactly how she felt, too? – lost, in search – in need – of the place she once belonged to, the one place where she wasn't alone, knowing that, in a way, that place too belonged with her, and was waiting for her somewhere – the way anyone who looks at the crescent moon that changes every night, and finds it beautiful, will always wait for that one night a month when it'll beam full.

But there was more than that. One and also twenty-four, if that was right line, meant that something was 1 and 24 at the same time, so that when it was 24 it could always be 1, and when it was 1, "one will be twenty-four again". But how could that be? How could something be complete in itself, but also just a part? It didn't make sense, yet Seoyeon knew it was the right solution, so, even though it felt too difficult, she still tried to put it into words, too afraid to forget the way she was feeling, too, just like she had forgotten everything else.

It's like... it's like the way water, be it a cloud, snow, a river or a lake, even if it, by itself, can fly, fall, run or rest for a thousand kilometers, and give light to a million lives, will always goes back to the ocean – and the ocean, even if it doesn't stop to exist when its waters leave it, does so knowing that, though they may have left, they may never be lost, and they'll always come back.