Chapter Text
That first night with Chanyeol was absolutely magical. Walking around our old neighborhood under the ethereal lights of the streetlamps, laughing and talking just like old times as we pushed each other on the swings, the way he used his hands to warm my frozen cheeks when he first arrived…
Huh? Ji Yeon-hee was shaken out of her daydream by the flash of a car light passing by her window. Her breath hitched a little in her throat as she craned her neck to peer outside, but she soon sat down again with a disappointed sigh. It was just an ordinary, small blue sedan that passed by without stopping. Not what she had been hoping for.
Sigh. Picking up her pencil, she turned back to her study materials. At 23 years old and still without a job, she was determined to move out of her mother’s house by the time summer vacation arrived. And that meant studying to pass her graduate exam.
But ever since her neighbors Exo had moved out as swiftly as they had moved in over winter break, however, there was a small part of her that had secretly been hoping that they would come back. Even just now, she had to admit that she had been hoping for that familiarly inconspicuous black van to come rolling back down her street.
Yawn. Ji’s eyes drooped, unable to stifle the yawn that had been building up in the back of her already-fuzzy brain. What time was it? She looked to the clock. Only 12:30. She had been studying ever since she had gotten home, but it still didn’t feel like she had studied enough for her exam this Friday.
Just. One. More. Problem. She promised herself, crossing her bunny slipper-clad feet on her chair. One more problem and she would be one step closer to getting her own place, getting her own job, and getting her own independent life away from—zzzZZZZZ.
…
“Ji! Ji! Wake up!” Ji was startled awake, as she was most days, by the feeling of her mother’s tight grip around her upper arm. Groggily, she felt around the floor to gather up her blankets and plop them back onto her bed..huh? That was strange. She opened her eyes to find her stern mother shouting in her face, as usual, but unlike usual, she did not find the hard, wood floor beneath her face or the gaggle of blankets twisted around her body.
As her surroundings slowly came into focus, she saw that what her hands had touched thinking was the floor was actually her desk, and what her face had been smushed up against, instead of her pillow, had been the soft and squishy pages of her exam prep textbook. Wait –soft and mushy? She could have sworn that it hadn’t been that way before…
Finally opening her eyes fully, her gaze fell upon her textbook, confirming that it had indeed become soft and mushy right in the center --due to a large soggy puddle of saliva! Yuck!
“Ji! Ji! Do you hear me?” her mother was still shouting in her face. “You better get to school on time for your review session today! It’s already 7 in the morning!”
Looking to her mom, Ji nodded furiously, picking up her textbook and desperately trying to shake the pages dry.
“Ok, see you in the kitchen in 5 minutes,” a stern Mama Park ordered, huffing as she went back out the door.
Yikes! Ji snapped to attention. In an accelerated time-lapse, complete with high-pitched chipmunk whirring noises, she rushed around her room in a whirlwind of commotion, yanking off her fuzzy pajamas and pulling on her school uniform. At a jilting pace, as if she were in two places at once, she grabbed her books, stuffed them into her bag, and turned off her still-on desk lamp. When she ran into the kitchen, she was still buttoning the top buttons on her dress shirt.
Phew. She had made it just in time.
“Good morning, Mama Park! Good morning, Gwangsu!” she called to her mother and brother as she breezed through the dining room. Grabbing her breakfast to eat on the road, she stopped momentarily to adjust her clothes before going out the door. She took a deep breath. Ok, you got this, she said to herself.
“Good luck, sister!” her brother called after her.
…
On the bus to school, Ji thought about what her mother had said to her two days earlier. Until now, the thought had almost escaped her mind, but on the quiet clamor of the bus ride to school (which was actually a not-so-quiet clamor, as indicated by the other passengers squishing her into a Ji sandwich from left and right), her mind finally had some time to wander.
She had been so busy studying for her exams lately that she had tried to push it out of her mind, perhaps pretending that it didn’t exist, but now, the truth had once again found her. She took a sulky bite out of her steamed pork bun.
So this was it. According to her mother, the manager of the apartment unit belonging to the Park family (the other Park family, namely a certain Park Chanyeol’s), a new tenant would be moving in the day after the next, on the upcoming Friday afternoon. She had been informed in quite the unceremonious manner about it, too, being ordered over text by her mother to go next door and clean before the new tenants got here. Right after her exams!
“Well, that will be the perfect time to unwind, then,” Mama Park had declared, already settling the matter over her feeble protests. As things always were, Mama Park’s word was law, and there was nothing Ji could do about it as long as she lived under her roof.
That’s why she had to move out, then, Ji thought to herself with renewed determination. She would pass the exam, and then she would move out.
Although…She felt a little part of her twinge, a little part of her heart still wishing that Park Chanyeol, her childhood best friend and winter vacation love had returned like he had promised her on the day he had left. “We will meet again soon,” his note had read. Yet, as the days and weeks and months had passed, she hadn’t received a single call or text or email from him.
All this time, she had help out hope that maybe, maybe he was just the kind of person who valued in-person interactions over online messages or that he had purposefully left her in radio silence to make their long-awaited reunion that much sweeter. But now, with her mother’s sudden announcement, there was no denying the fact that he had forgotten all about her.
Stupid girl, she chided herself. There’s no use in waiting your whole life for someone who has left your life forever.
Crossly, she crossed her arms over her crinkled uniform and aggressively crumpled the delicate plastic bag that held the last of her pork bun in her hand. The bus jolted to a stop and she squeezed past her fellow passengers to get off at her stop. She had a class to catch, a whole new life to begin, a whole new life without Park Chanyeol.
In the back of an ill-lit black van, a pair of pale, slender fingers brushed over an old photo of three young children: a boy with a runny nose and bowl haircut, a small, plump boy in an oversized winter coat sitting on a playground spring toy, and a girl with bright red cheeks and a slightly snaggle-toothed smile.
Park Chanyeol smiled fondly as he grazed his fingers over the grainy surface, lingering on the little girl on the right.
“Two days,” he whispered.