Dancing to Thunder - Kim Jongdae

It Began

"Why do people hate goodbyes? Is it because it's the very end? They should hate first meetings then, because that's when it all begins to end."

"Get used to being alone. You'll be alone your whole life."

Had Kim Jongdae even existed? Had he been a real being or was he just some sick, twisted joke that her mind was playing on her? Perhaps he had been a figment of her imagination to sooth her loneliness, and perhaps her mind just couldn't project him anymore.

Maybe she had been alone all this time. Perhaps all the moments they shared were fake, all the time he cried and laughed and talked and danced. Perhaps the lightning was not summoned by any boy that stood on a hill.

Maybe her mind made Kim Jongdae lonely because she was lonely and she so desperately didn't want to feel that way.

Maybe Kim Jongdae was just someone who she thought up one lonely, solemn night, her weary mind trying to grasp some sort of reality; integrating the lightning with some sort of magic boy who could wield the bolts from the Heavens like a ttakji in a child's hand.

But what if this Jongdae was real, and he just left? Did that make Yonhee any less lonely than she was before this all started? Or had she been lonely all this time, even in the presence of Jongdae? (who she still didn't know whether or not existed)

Either way, Han Yonhee ended up lonely once more, the times spent with Kim Jongdae getting farther and farther away from her until they were just a blurry cloud lost in her mind.

It never thundered again, the sky never lit up with that dazzling Lightning again.

So Yonhee would hold herself back from venturing up the hill, and instead would stare out her window as to not cause herself more pain.

Until one night when the rain hammered the roof and the sky was lit up by a sudden jagged streak of white. Shooting to her feet, Han Yonhee stumbled out of her lonely house and made a beeline for the lonely tree on the lonely hill, her heart soaring with the hope that just maybe Kim Jongdae had returned for her.

She tripped halfway up the hill, her foot sliding on some slipper mud that grabbed at her shoes.  Pulling her foot away, Yonhee continued her mad scramble up the hill, feeling the pressure of tears at the back of her eyes.

"Kim Jong-" she broke off as she reached the crest of the hill, Jongdae's name halfway through her lips. 

Han Yonhee stared at the grass before the tree, then the tree itself. 

There was no Kim Jongdae.

All there was was the dark grass and the lonely tree, now broken from the constant battering by the elements of nature.

Pushing a hand over her mouth, Han Yonhee stifled a sob, her heart clenching painfully in her chest.  She slowly dropped to her knees and curled in over herself, eyes squeezing shut as she tried to tell herself that it was all fake.

How could the world be so cruel to her? Cruel enough to play this horrible joke on her already tormented heart.

The lightning subsided and there was just the patter of rain on the leaves of the tree and the grass; the light tone once more reminded her of Kim Jongdaes bell like laugh and that's what made her hurt more.

It wasn't so much that he was gone- all people go some day - but it was more that the beautiful memories of him still haunted her, fresh in her mind as if it were yesterday.

Funny how in just one moment things can turn upside down.

The world took Han Yonhee by surprise. No, she never saw it coming. How could se have expected what little happiness she had to be ripped away so violently?

Shaking her head, Yonhee managed out a soft, "no, God please, no," into her hand,  her warm tears mixing with the icy rain from the weeping clouds above her.

Han Yonhee knew who the clouds weeped for now. They weeped for the lonely girl that was left behind in the cold world, the lonely girl that only knew pure happiness for so long. 

And she weeped with them, but for a different reason. She weeped for the lonely boy who had left her, the lonely boy who lived a true hell.

And no one would ever go looking for that lonely boy. If he was part of her imagination, who else would know? But if he were real, Kim Jongdae was just a despised and hated boy who was truly innocent of the stains the sea put on him.

Kim Jongdae was a boy who used to play with lightning.

Han Yonhee was a girl who used to watch the lightning.

The two used to meet beneath a lonely tree and whisper warm secrets in each other's ears and laugh and dance in the rain like children.

One day, the boy stopped meeting the girl beneath the lonely tree and the lightning stopped dancing in the indigo sky.

And the girl was left to wonder why there was only silence.