FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Anchor

The grass underneath her feet is wet from late night rain and around her lush green countryside spread over the world is a velvety blanket glittering in sunlight. Ha Jin draws in a breath and exhales hands cupped against her mouth. The cold dawn tingles against her skin and brushes across the back of her neck.

By her side the land slopes, dipping into the gray green of a vast lake, a lone tree stands in a patch of land rising right at the middle of it- a guardian of the transcendental beauty surrounding her.

It is timeless and reminds her of a life spent thousand years ago. Flashes of fluttering stolen moments grace her memory, whenever she takes a walk by the lakeside watching the wind writing invisible letters across the wast expense of silky water.

Here she has found Miss. Oh.

Ha Jin will not call it a coincidence for she had known the lady through her cousin and college work before. Their shared enthusiasm for herbal lore has brought them closer over the years. An open invitation to apprentice under her has been pending since long.  

Oh Soo Yeon is a physiotherapist and a herbalist who is more inclined to carry on her father’s legacy of herbal medicine instead of just opening up a clinic in the city. The woman is an ageless beauty, just like the place she has bound herself to, and prefers solitude over the glory and wealth her obvious skills should have earned at a more populated venue.

A whim and a bout of anger have brought her here. Battling with nerves Ha Jin had made her way to Miss Oh’s door for the woman she knew had tender eyes and a hardened heart. She was half certain that she would be turned around at the threshold itself.

Ha Jin acknowledges it, that she has brought trouble in her backpack to Miss Oh’s secluded heaven. But the woman had not pressed her for information. Their contact is something only Myung Hee knew, for she had been the one to introduce them having met with Miss Oh in one of the high end cultural exhibitions before. Ha Jin is sure, her adopted family would not come looking for her in these lush green fields. They’d rather comb the city under their shadow than venture into the untouched provinces.

She thrives to keep herself busy, her time divided between her practice and Miss Oh’s patients. Years she spent learning (with only a vague interest) herbal medicine finally coming to her aid. She had no knowledge on physiotherapy but Miss Oh is ever a good teacher and Ha Jin has all the time in the world.

She thinks of the heavy and dusty volumes of ancient scribbles the older woman made her read with distaste.

“I wonder how you graduated without perusing any of these texts!” Her tone is mild and lady like even with raised eyebrows and accusing expression.

“I was always more inclined towards makeup,” Ha Jin mutters to herself as the dust makes her nose crinkle.

But she reads and she learns and she follows Miss Oh and observes. All the while she tries to find answers.

I will not have you live a shackled life

The words are still tucked inside her pillow and she wonders if that is a self deceit. She is not trying to forget, she is trying to remember. Ha Jin doesn’t deny it, that she feels bitter inside.

You would give me wings, but not your heart She thinks resentfully until the memories old and ancient are pricking at her eyelashes. If she wakes up puffy eyed and mournful Miss Oh does not comment on that. However hard she tries, she cannot crib away her curiosity, it burns her heart with a need to know answers find the missing pieces of the story, the truth So tries to keep her shielded from. Who broke whose heart? She questions the night. Who threw whom away? The only man who could have answered has left for god knows where - So she takes up research on their past, borrows from the psychiatrist tenant in the upper floor and reads on history, reincarnation, delusions and every possible scenario.