FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Message in a bottle

The sand is cool under her feet and the stars are silent overhead. The pounding that drowns out her thoughts comes from her own pulse. Ha Jin begins to learn what it means to find their way to the other - for she had not been the one left behind in their equation before. It was So - it had always been So who waited - then and now and again until she found her way back to him.

Instead fate turns on her - it seems like the repayment of a lifetime he had spent longing for her. But still not - for he is not entirely free from the suffering either. The waves crash against the shore, and she hugs herself against the salty wind - feeling insignificant alone in the vast emptiness of the night. Without his hand in hers, his shoulder brushing against hers, or his breath touching her skin - the charm of that spot was lost to her.

Closing her eyes she draws in a lungful of salty air, chilled in the night and humid as it swept across the sea. In her mind a younger So grins, bronze skinned and sparkling eyed - the first time he ever brought her there. The trip that ended in the darkest way imaginable and had broken them apart for so many long years.

"What were you doing?" She asks him, trying to see what he was hiding in his hands, clasped behind his back. There is nothing, other than the sand that coats his arms. "What were you hiding?"

He grins sheepishly, reaching out to take her hand.

"It's your birthday present," he admits, looking into her eyes. There is a trace of that same insecurity of the boy who had brought her the peony pendant, the hesitance that she finds endearing. "Ha Jin - ah," he mutters, tucking an errand lock behind her ear and allowing his touch to linger. "I want you to dug it out, yourself - will you promise me to do that?"

"Why - you -" she swallows her words, her throat suddenly tight. "You won't be here for my birthday."

"I -" he lets go of her hands, in favor of resting his palms atop her shoulders. Sun shines behind him, casting a halo around his head and he looks so beautiful that she finds it hard to breath. "I want you to call me when you do. Tell me what you think - huh? Promise?"
"What is it anyway?" She tries to lighten the mood. They were not supposed to think of his leaving until the moment comes. "Is it something valuable?"

"You tell me -" he says, drawing her closer, his sand coated fingers trailing along her arms. "When you find it."
"I'm getting curious -" she replies.

"Um hmm -" he murmurs nuzzling against her jaw. She turns her face away when he tries to steal a kiss.

"Tell me what it is?"

"A bottle -"

"What?"

"A message in a bottle. Message for an eighteen year old Ha Jin."

The last of his words fade away to her thoughts and Ha Jin walks towards the rocky edge that he had pointed out. At the foot of the cave, she knows where her gift is hidden. Though the eighteen year old Ha Jin had never gotten the chance to dig it out.

It feels oddly symbolic - and a little ironic that in the biggest storm of their life she is looking for his message in a bottle. The effort takes away some of her bottled up emotions, the rage that her own incapability - the helpless frustration. Until something solid emerges from the sand. Ha Jin holds her breath as she lifts out the little metal box - latched shut, and inside as he had promised is indeed a tiny crystal cut bottle. She uncorks it and empties it on her palm.

A ring with the single most beautiful pearl she had ever seen slips out, attached to it a scroll of tightly wound paper - yellowed with time. His writing, neat, slender and stylish, fills the little piece of paper - calling for her through the blurred vision of her eyes. Ha Jin allows the tears to fall, clutching to the words he had written so long ago.