FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Pomegranate seeds

6 years ago…

The beeping of machines dominates the air pungent with the smell of disinfectant. Monitors that indicate various data that escapes him, tiny lights flickering, levels rising and failing sum up into the sole reason he carry on.

Life.

She is still alive. So far from him, yet so close. So dear to him, yet so distant. After this moment they shall never meet again. Still she will live and live well; the knowledge makes him take a shaky breath in. That should be enough for a man who had lived decades with ashes of the woman he loved. It should be enough.

He is greedy for more - just a brush of fingertips through her hair, he assuages himself. In her deadly slumber Ha Jin does not stir and Hwang So, still scarred, still in the mourning clothes from his brother’s funeral, lets his fingers wander - over her closed eyes, the bridge of her nose, ghosting over the outline of her cracked lips.

Greed, burns in him, fueled by love and longing.

He has exactly five minutes before riding to the airport and thousands of miles away from her. He muses if she knows, if in her sleep she would dream about him.

“Ha Jin - ah,” the back of his knuckles stroke her cheek. “Thank you - though I’ve never admitted, it felt good to have you pestering after me. To know that someone cared. Thank you for everything.” His voice fails him and his throat tightens uncomfortably that he has to stop and swallow. “And I’m sorry - so sorry that I can’t be the one for you.”

“It has to end. It had to end, somehow. You are too good for me.”

Sandwiched between his hands her hand is small and white, too soft that it scares him to squeeze it tight.

“Live well. Don’t get into trouble. Eat well. Sleep well and try not to miss me much.” He shrugs despite of himself. “And if we ever meet again, don’t follow me, don’t hold my hand, don’t cry for me. Don’t love me ever again.”

In spite his own reservations, he touches his lips to her forehead with a sigh. His eyes burn and so did he. Steeling himself Hwang So turns to leave.

**
“So!” She wakes up with his name on her lips, in the semi darkness rippling with straps of soft silvery light. Her throat is parched and her eyes pool with years of un - shed tears. Tears she had no idea was buried under the cuts of her soul - never letting them heal properly. That fool - oh that sweet fool! “So!”

It makes sense all too late, the strange pull between them. Perhaps she had always loved him, or perhaps it was her fate to fell over and over again. For the life of her, Ha Jin does not care. For she has lived the life of reservations, protocols and directions for too long. Now that she has finally remembered, if not all, what it meant to be Ha Jin before the storm came and wracked her life, what he meant to her, she was not planning on letting him go.

The soft silvery light fills everywhere. Not enough to chase away the shadows, only adequate to keep them at bay. In darkness she stumbles around, the unknown landscape of the room she woke up in, hindering her progress.

She finds her phone charging on the nightstand, a glass of water that she gulps in one go, massaging her throat Ha Jin looks around, finally settled enough to take notice of her surroundings. Chrome gray and white walls are strapped with that silver light, the decor is black, hinted with hues of the deepest blue and sliver. There is a sharp precision in everything from the gray pillows on the sofa to the crease - less bedspread. A detached cleanliness, a lonely perfection of an empty house not a home lived in.

She merely glances at her phone, does not even touch it as she wanders out of the room. The silver light dances in the passage outside, more pronounced and rippling. It comes from the open space into which a polished spiral staircase descends, abstract paintings on the walls splash sudden bursts of color into the otherwise muted black and white.