The Ocean's Memory

1) Viva La Vida

The tales you have been told about me are mostly true. Yes, I eat people alive. Yes, I swallow them whole. Yes, I make it so that they feel like they never existed.

Yes, I am the truest form of doom, the end like it has never been before.

"Your father," there was a heartbeat to the clock on the wall, a life to ticking of time; it was precious, unearthly, and it was very unlikely to be paralleled with something so vivid any time soon, "he was not merely my hero, but an entire country's."

Hyejin sat back, listening; the fire was burning in the distance, but its warmth still radiated everywhere in the room. The blankets were covering the floor while the entirety of the house sat silent, reveling in the sound of fire and the oldest between them telling her favourite story.

"Your father was a legend," there was also a heartbeat to the words, they were spoken with so much emotion, and the story was oh so true, oh so unimaginably alive, being told from that lovesick perspective, "for his home," the grandmother cried, falling for the magic of her own words, "and for this home."

Hyejin did not know much about her father. Unlike her sisters, she was too young when he was gone, and all of her memories of him were distorted, even his features were blurry, and the only way she could recall them was through pictures of him that barely had much color in them.

Yet, she received the story with a smile.

It was a terrible thing to deal with - slowly forgetting someone so important and not having a true memory with them, and perhaps that was exactly why she was crying alongside her mother. That was the only reason why she was crying alongside her mother.

Between her sisters, she was the only one who still had her eyes opened, her heart refusing to allow her to go to sleep like the rest of them, and the words were still playing in her head. To her side, she wrapped her arms around the child the was the remnant of all the things she could not clearly remember, and she pulled her head closer were her chest was.

The early air of the morning was colder than usual, and Hyejin would have welcomed it so much more dearly had it not been for a her inability to sleep properly through the night, for the sadness kept her at bay, unable to reach for the depth of her own ocean where silence was a luxury, an escape.

It did not matter, however, because as soon as she was on her feet and among her people, immersed in her work, Hyejin was easily able to shrug the fatigue of her shoulders and find a smile with which she wrapped the store in.

The early hours of the day were the most crowded at work; everyone in town knew where to go if they needed a good breakfast and a good way to start their day, and that was where Hyejin was all the time - The Ocean's Memory.

Hyejin's book cafe was not much special, but it was truly a landmark in Dolsan-do. When the people of the small island wanted to seek anything, be it solance, solitude, silence, or company, they knew where to turn to, and it just never once disappointed them or turned its back on them.

Hyejin worked herself on the coffee, and most of the books on the shelves were ones she had chosen on her own. They were ones she had read and loved and decided to be the reason others fell inside them just like she did, the reason others found a new world, an escape, through them just like she did.

"Iseul, it's book time," Hyejin said as she worked her way through a new order, hands busy but mind very attentive of the time, for that was one of her biggest fears - losing to the minutes, the hours that were merciless in their stance, "hurry now."