jiu
"have i been selected as a subject of yours?" a familiar voice creeped upon my shoulder, yet still, it appeared almost inaudible.
disco songs were blasting from huge speakers that you'll feel like it's coming from your chest as different colors from different corners of this big space, in which we call the ball, is blinding.
lowering my camera from my focused eyes to my chest, i turned my feet around and met a woman whom i think is one of the organizers of this event. it's obvious from her clothing, black dress and black veil, a typical too much of a church girl but not too willing to become a nun.
"i've been looking for you, jiu" i just gave a simple smile.
of course she knew me, more personal than most people would expect.
"sunday afternoon. promise you'll come?" knowing her previlage she got in me, she knows just how to always make me agree.
or it is just me who can't say no?
"you know i hated him, yoohyeon"
"you can hate a dead person? i know he had not been kind to you or me- without him-" her own realization took her word's off. she can not use what the person who adopted me has done against me. "i just can't accept you left"
"will i get to speak in the funeral?"
"if you want to"
---
[younger days]
"what is your name?" a 6-year old me couldn't speak. i remember my mom's face but the cold the rain has left over my whole body has taken over my ability to even know my name but with towels wrapped around me given by an old stranger and a young girl, it's my only comfort. "i am yoohyeon" said her.
"don't interrogate her, yooh" said the man, bringing me a cup of hot chocolate with spare clothes which i assume belongs to this talkative girl.
that night felt strange, i fell asleep into somebody else's bed without permission of my parents who intentionally abonded me but i learnt that i can be capable of learning how to befriend.
kids usually don't like me.
they filed me as a missing child like those kids you see in milk or cereal boxes but nobody claims me.
---
[present]
"and that's how i made a family of them" and that's my last message for him at his own funeral, excluding everything we were issued for.
---
"how are you?" after they buried him 6 feet underground, we sat here just in front of his name, birthdate and all written on a stone. it made it hard to avoid our teenage years.
"shouldn't you have asked me that last week?" i asked back. yoohyeon apologized and i always understood. "have you had the time to know yourself?"
she chuckled, "now that i'm free, i think i'd be lost"
"that's how you know it's real, you have nowhere to go but anywhere"
we just had our reunion, in front of his tombstone and even though the climate change is hitting our skin so hot, i think we just like this way.
"is this???..." a man spoke questionable when he got to us, beers and a large box of pizza on his hand. "god, save you" he handed what we ordered and ran back to his motor outside the cemetery.
---
"i can't believe he fucking used god to blackmail us, he's a fucking bullshit, he always seems to know what he's speaking but he doesn't" yoohyeon, a little drunk, ranted.
"he's just a kind asshole"
now we're laying side by side with his tombstone between our heads, looking up at nothing but just black sky. a reminder it's gonna rain anytime soon now.
"fucker! fucker! fucker!" she punched him, silently-shouting.
---
[teenage years]
"pray and seek for forgiveness. i cannot hurt you but i am willing to give you over the convent until you learn what should and shouldn't be" pain in our knees as we kneel infront of his carved saints, our tears salted our cheeks and palms sweaty over each other.
that was after he caught us kissing each other.
yoohyeon wasn't a rebel and so was i. we didn't have enough choice to make and that made all my teenage years lost to seeking forgiveness for something i don't even regret.
i admit it felt good to serve but with yoohyeon's avoidance, i can't stop to build something in my space that sooner made me leave.
---
[present]
"so tell me why did you come back? you were even a photographer in the event"
"because i belong with the children, orphans" i spoke. i didn't know she was even gonna be here. "it was just an act of fate that we met"
"i thought so too"
and there was silence, silent laughter and complete white noise.
"you always have that damn camera but never have you taken a photo of me. we were sixteen, seventeen and i was always wary of why is that" she complaint about something that could've been solved years ago if she had just said.
"i did"
"were you just shy?"
"i never learned how to love you loudly"
"but i understood your silent"
---
[teenage days]
"hey what is that?!" a peacefully sleeping yoohyeon just woke to my flash, probably assuming it was something like lightning. "oh god save me" she prayed with her eyes closed like we always does.
"yoohyeon, it's jiu" i laughed a little, hiding her photo.
i don't want her to know all i got in this cheap camera is her face. sleeping, eating alone, calling her classmates and all that will remind us of our younger years.
all with pain but something so similar to innocence and new love.
