Wishes in Your Eyes

Way Back to You

At the stroke of dawn roosters crowed; time to wake up. Or maybe even earlier. Except no animal was crowing. It was the mental alarm waking her up.

Kicking over the thin white sheets she always nagged about, slender legs slid over the bed, feet searching for landing before her body followed. Digging blind through the dimness for her clothes, Kim Namjoo picked up skin tight jeans and t-shirt baring a logo too inappropriate for the general public.

Pulling the jeans on with some difficulty she yanked the zipper up and completed the metallic button. A blur washed over her eyes she quickly blinked away. Behind her the animal-like snore rumbled into the flat pillow. Peering over her shoulder she hissed at the naked man asleep in bed who'd stolen most of the blanket from her through the night. Blinding herself stupid from the sunlight starting to streak through his too thin curtain. Damn sheets never making an effort to darken the room for a good night's sleep.

She hated his crummy apartment yet still visited one time too many. Curse herself, too.

Slipping into her Angel Fuck shirt – a gift courtesy of her roommate Kwon Chaeri "Don't you love it? You're welcome!"

"Uh...thanks." Was her flattest reply though she'd been internally mortified.

Hopping on one foot jerkily, she struggled to slip into her sock. Her balance sucked, too. Blowing a breath up into her bangs she planted hands on her hips exhausted from the effort. Finally grabbing her phone off the blue carpeting, she made a run out of there. The door slammed with a boom after her, which was sure to wake him up but she could care less.

Dashing down the steel staircase of his second-floor apartment, Namjoo leapt onto the cracked sidewalk and sprinted across the empty street. Early this morning, her hometown of Goseong was already awake. Businesses opening. Smoke churning from restaurant vents into the sky. Elder ladies sitting outside chatting.

"Morning, young lady." They'd greet whenever they saw her and she would wave in greeting, shouting, "You're up early today!"

Several beat up cars always made their daily trip out of town for business; their engines spitting like an ill man hoarsely coughing, threatening to blow. Goseong was a lovely, quaint town on the edge of South Gyeongsang, the booming city bursting with tourism. They weren't rural, but there were farms near the countryside boasting of cows, goats, chickens, and horses; the generic farm animals.

Her hometown was famous for its surrounding mountains and luscious tree lined roads. Warm and mild all year round because of its oceanic climate. Family business, mainly shipbuilding, were generally passed down through generations, but nowadays the children preferred to move to bigger cities instead of inheriting from those passed. City dwellers in debt or searching for new starts moved in once in a while, searching for a new beginning. Those that did often ended up employed in the factories that kept the city running.

Namjoo had grown up in one of the clusters of blue roofed white buildings. A home with two cramped bedrooms, the tiniest kitchen, an even smaller living room where the television took majority of the space. The walls were so thin she could always hear what her parents were doing at nights. By that it was not the deed they were doing. Her parents bickered like parrots, arguing constantly about money, life, work, friends, family, the community, the suffocation of a small knitted town with not enough resources; whatever, really.

Living close to the edge of the ocean provided plenty of scenic beaches. Clear blue on sunny days. Dark and gloomy on stormy days. Her father hated the seaside. Her mother loved it. She may have taken after her mother, but ironically it was her mother that chose to move away.

Namjoo's favorite place was the express highway that curved around the ocean, circled around town, and all the way back to the waters. The heavy thrush, greens, wild plants on the left while the blue burst on the right.