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When Hange was nine, she moved out of the city and into a small town.
She couldn’t say she was too happy about it. A small town was a far flung dream from the city, too quiet, too boring, too mundane. Any glimmer of life was just a little too repetitive.
Hange thrived on change, a lack of anything stimulating but green, blue and the occasional yellow was too monotonous at the least, soul sucking at worst. Hange though, still strived to see change in the monotonous. She strived to see conflict in the peace.
It was a slow process, and one that required more brain cells and very deep thought but eventually, Hange did see it and she wondered why it had taken her so long.
The countryside wasn’t the city and it didn’t offer the crowds, the variety of people or the convenience of having school, shopping or entertainment just a convenient few minutes walk away. Every part of the city seemed to be part of her world but the parts of the countryside, most visible to the naked eye, seemed to be offering something else.
Despite the lack of convenience, the countryside seemed to offer more.
Something Hange didn’t understand, just yet. The curious side of her spurred her on.
One quiet and peaceful Saturday, free from the pressures and expectations of a full school day, Hange ventured out and into the forest.
The young boy first appeared, nestled among branches.
At the most, he was a few years older than her. He seemed just a little too timid, hoodie over his small frame, hands buried deep into his pockets. Among other kids, he would have fit in, blended too far in in the crowds that maybe he had never appeared in the forest, Hange never would have spared him a second look.
He was typical, spoke unremarkably and Hange could have sworn that for a while he was forgettable. Until within months she decided, maybe he could be at the least, a little memorable.
It started with an exchange of awkward greetings, a name and a very very surprising condition not to touch him
Although Hange was raised to respect the simplest of requests, she couldn’t help but pry just a little, even if just in the privacy of her own observations and the internal monologue that followed
He was at least in middle school, Hange would have guessed. But there were too many signs which didn’t seem to line up. For one, their middle school was right next to her grade school, small enough that Hange should have seen him or at least recognized him.
Secondly, there was only one school for miles around. If he were in their school, she should have recognized those piercing blue eyes for miles around.
She didn’t recognize them as part of their community for sure. But she couldn’t say, she had never seen them either. Those endless blue that seemed to hold years of experience, an endless blue which told of power, prowess and wisdom, miles, years beyond her own.
Curious and confident, Hange opted to test the waters one Saturday morning, sprawled on the glade of the forest. “Tell me a story.”
“A story about what?” he asked.
“Your life?”
“I’ve lived here my whole life. There’s nothing much I could talk about.”
“About school?”
“None.”
“About home? Your family?”
“None and none.”
“What about life in the forest?”
The boy huffed, shifted his weight to the palm of his hands. “What if I told you a story about someone else?”
“About who?” Hange’s ears perked up. At that point, curiosity was burning inside her and any information out of that boy was a gold mine.
“Just two people,” he said with a shrug. “Two soldiers from a land far away.”
Hange knew her way around history, world wars, civil wars and territorial disputes. Levi though never named any of them, keeping his scope close to not the war, but the two people. He spoke of a subtle confession in a forest, a subtle reciprocation that came a few days later at a port, just a little too late for most.
A story was still a story. Information was still information. When Levi spoke of them, it looked like he aged a decade in that split second.
Was that a hint to something? Hange would have liked to ask.
Time was a scarce resource. Life was a demanding chief. Curiosity at the unknown, the natural wanderlust could wait. It had to wait.
An afternoon exchanging stories ended with a little more than a nod of the head, a few spoken words and although Hange had reached her hand out for a shake, he didn’t even look at it.
Levi turned away, walked quickly and disappeared into the forest. And Hange had to admit, she was at the least, a little hurt by that slight, subtle yet very much unintentional rejection.
Levi grew with Hange, yet strangely it had been an experience exclusive to the both of them.
Hange had insisted he meet with her family while he insisted it wasn’t anything particularly urgent.
When there were stories to tell, scenarios to make up in their head and thoughts and feelings to share, Hange didn’t think it pressing either to pull him out of his comfort zone.
But still, he grew with her.
There was an awkward point in time where Hange towered over him, and she had expected him to tower over her within months. That’s how boys were shorter for a few years before puberty kicked in.
It never came, and Hange had to hold her laugh that day, at the age of sixteen when she realised she was a good few inches taller than he was.
Levi didn’t laugh though, he didn’t act all surprised or self conscious. A fact of life he seemed to stomach so well when there were other boys her age, taller than Levi, who held a lack of height like a red mark in a permanent record.
Vulnerabilities and insecurities were ubiquitous facts of life and Hange searched for them in Levi. In the way, Levi stared at her, the way he bade her goodbye after meeting. It had been difficult to pick out at first, and for a while Hange almost expected she’d forget.
That is, until one day, she told Levi about a prom, and a date.
“Would you like to go?”
“I can’t leave.”
“You can’t leave the forest?” Hange sought clarity in such a ludicrous statement.
“I can’t.”
“Oh… Hange trailed off. Questions raced through her mind at breakneck speed and she found a hundred reasons to be suspicious.
Drug dealer. Truant. Runaway.
Levi had the sharp eyes, the natural aloof look that made it too easy for Hange to imagine that he could have been one of the members of a gang. They held the same kindness, this familiarity and understanding that Hange couldn’t say either that he was definitely not someone to deal with.
“I guess I’ll go with someone else,” Hange said.
“Oh, that might be better,” Levi commented with a soft huff, or a hiss. His mouth had crumpled into a pout for a split second before he opened his mouth again. “I’ll see you here soon?”
Hange shook her head. “I have exams coming.”
“Oh?” Levi cocked his head to one side, and it was if he was seven years old again, just like when they first met.
“Next week,” Hange clarified. She ran her hands over the grass in some attempt to suppress the shame inside her.
Shame? No, it wasn’t shameful. Maybe it was just that understanding that the world was pulling her away from the forest. Real life was demanding, it was selfish, rude and it would never rival the gentle, elegant yet passive way nature seemed to pull her towards it.
And by extension, whatever Levi had been doing, pulled her towards him.
Real life offered a little more, it ran on expectations, a need to survive and the society that demanded that everybody joined it.
Hange ruminating such a deep and complex thought, took a deep breath. “I’ll see you after I finish my exams?” she asked.
Levi didn’t conceal his disappointment. Or maybe he had attempted and Hange had just looked too far into it. “I’ll see you then,” he said.
Exams ended on a good note. And exams always made way for vacations, short and long, but sometimes, with the right circumstances, vacations could end up even more overbearing than school. Hange had summer classes, trips with her parents and the occasional part time job.
Life never stopped giving opportunities but it never stopped taking time. It never stopped taking and in the few moments real life had left for her, Hange had already given up on going back to the forest, her body and mind too exhausted to do much but scroll through her phone, and find stimulation in anything else life could actually offer.
The next time Hange had met Levi, it was in a river by the forest. Nostalgia might have played a part. The alien feeling of guilt that came with such a peaceful and breathtaking view of the forest was like an alarm bell ringing.
She should have been there earlier. Someone must have been waiting for her.
He was still in a hoodie, something a few sizes bigger, cargo pants. He wore an expression of mock annoyance, and when he saw her, she had expected him to wrinkle his nose at that small moment when she may have struggled to recognize him.
But she still did, that was what was important.
“It’s been years.”
“A busy few years,” Levi said. “What are you doing now?”
“Preparing for entrance exams to university.”
“What are you gonna study?”
“Hmmm… My dad said law.”
“You’ve always felt like someone who’d take biology.”
Hange raised one eyebrow. “Really? Why so?”
“Remember the story of the two soldiers?” Levi asked, with one raised eyebrow.
Hange paused for a moment and the moment could have lasted an eternity. He did tell her a story, about two soldiers, a close friendship that could have been something more. She had forgotten most of the details, most of the words he had used. But she had remembered emotions, and strangely, biology was starting to feel a lot like home. “What will you take?” Hange asked. At that point, she was biding for time.
“I won't be going to college,” Levi said.
“Oh.” Hange couldn’t find much to say after that. Maybe because she didn’t want to think about her own privilege. Maybe because she didn’t want to say anything that could have made it hurt for Levi. And maybe because after years of not talking to him, she was struggling to find the right way to relate.
They sat in some comfortable silence, which was strangely more comfortable than keeping up some half hearted conversation.
Eventually, they exchanged goodbyes. Hange raced to her home and she opened her college application once again.
She soon decided, Levi was right. She wanted to take biology.
Levi must have sensed something in her distant look. “Anywhere near the area?”
“No I’m going to college in the city. That’s why I’m going back there.” Hange accepted, she couldn't hide it.
“Back?”
“I used to live there when I was a child. My father just brought us here for work.”
“You think you’ll come back?”
“During the summer maybe?”
“That works. Just come when you can, I’ll be waiting.” There was disappointment laced into that statement, embedded so deeply that if Hange hadn’t perked her ears up, if she didn’t search for it, she wouldn’t have seen it. He turned his back on her.
You never tell me what you do? For one reason or the other, Hange had thought it impolite to mention. He wouldn't have been hiding it if he was ashamed of it.
Levi looked back at her, a subtle smile played at his lips. “I'm staying here.”
“What do you mean? You don’t go home?”
“This is my home.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just a spirit, who lives in the forest.”
Then and there Levi had said it so nonchalantly, so casually. Hange could only come up with two explanations. He could have been right or he could have been crazy. .
But before she could continue to press, before she could run into the forest, he disappeared into the shade, disappeared, actually disappeared.
With exams coming up though, Hange thought it ridiculous to spend time pondering something so unscientific.
Hange was a natural rationalizer, a natural realist. She was constantly finding reason in the incomprehensible.
But one condition which any curious, overly attached individual had to hold tightly was, they had to work within the bounds of the world. Unconsciously, Hange had picked that out for herself.
Only recently did she become conscious of it.
There was one class Hange had taken, that had been entertaining such a prospect.
Children are apparently more in touch with the spirit world.
And maybe that was the reason the forest had seemed so natural when she was a child, so natural yet so magical. Yet, overtime, with each new mathematical formula studied, with each new scientific concept studied, analysed and accepted as truth, Hange found the natural and the magical were polar opposites and maybe they had never been intertwined.
When all she had in the city was concrete and tiles, one festival back in the countryside, after months of slaving under city lights had her once again drawn to the forests once again.
Forests. Places that once held so much wonder, seemed to be conglomerates, breeding grounds of the rational, the scientific.
Every year, when the people in the town would celebrate the spirits, dead and departed, they always put up lights, up in the trees, hanging from one on the other. Many looked like fireflies just floating aimlessly on the sky, others were fireflies that took some solace on the trees around them.
The student in Hange was quick to rationalise it though, to chalk them up as little merely an illusion created from science.
Science after all explained everything from the celestial stars which seemed to illuminate the grass with glowing shades of orange and green were all just burning metals, some discovered, others soon to be discovered.
Levi was just another human. He should have just been another human.
Yet, for one reason or another, she believed he would disappear.
But that isn’t reality. Hange reminded herself. She had taken physics to know that solid things, solid people, were hard to the touch. They do not disintegrate to touch. She had taken physics and she knew that voices, words were vibrations in the air, and only concrete, solid people could make such sounds.
And maybe… if Levi had reminded her one time, she wouldn’t have reached her hand out.
Just don’t touch me. He had said years before and as a child, Hange had stayed silent and obeyed.
After years of rationalising, after years of not meeting him, not attempting to understand his own reality, Hange had made a fatal mistake.
She reached far enough to touch the string of his jacket, only to hit thin air, only for her brain to manifest for itself what the cotton of a hoodie was supposed to feel like. She convinced herself she felt something, so she gripped tightly at the sleeve, convincing herself that maybe the nothingness that came with it was an illusion.
Levi lowered his head, his mouth agape in shock and when he raised his hand to his chest, Hange caught it, gripped it tightly.
Thin air. If the hoodie was thin air, the draw strings underneath just a figment of her imagination, he should have been thin air. There was a difference between thin air and a vacuum. Soon, Hange found, there was a difference between a vacuum and what had happened next.
Remember the soldier I told you about? In the stories?
Stories weren’t so simply words, so simply feelings and empathic emotions manifested from words or feelings towards fictional characters.
At times, they were reality, vivid emotions. Haneg could have sworn she had been living vicariously through the stories. She wasn’t just living vicariously, she could have sworn it had been her.
Levi, do you remember? Hange’s mouth was agape for a second, open wide enough that she could have asked the question so easily if she had gained control of everything else.
“Hange?” Levi opened his mouth and spoke, but the sound came out as such a light whisper, Hange could have convinced herself it wasn’t there.
Do you remember?
“Remember what?” Hange asked.
The stories?
Of course Hange would remember. Of course she wouldn’t forget.
There were two soldiers back then in the forest, in the middle of the war. They had been friends for years, something more than that for a little less than that. But for some strange reason, there was no closure.
Or at least Hange didn’t feel it.
“Did they ever run away together to the forest?” she asked. At that point, she was playing with every possible ending in her mind to find the most believable one. How did it end? Somehow, she knew, at the least, it hadn’t ended nicely. “Was the love unrequited?”
Levi stared expectantly at her, as if she should have known the answer.
It wasn’t unrequited. Hange was sure of that much.
“In your story, she died right?” That was the ending and the death of one lover was as much of an ending as any other ending. A death was an ending. At the least, she should have felt a semblance of closure.
Levi had only narrowed his eyes at her, then nodded grimly.
Hange couldn’t feel the closure at all. “At the least, did they love each other?”
Levi didn’t answer, tight lipped, seemingly uncomfortable. He held one hand out to her,one attempt to touch her one last time.
Alone in the forest of fireflies, Hange started to count the lights, Then she was counting the fireflies, picking out the pockets of light that had three fireflies, others that held four, and she started to reflect on the story of the two soldiers. Then she wondered if the young boy, the one who had grown to a young man had been all her imagination.
Soon, she was wondering if even her own feelings were all just figments of her imagination.
Why had her childhood self enjoyed the forest so much? Why did she feel that strange melancholy at that moment? And most importantly, why did she suddenly feel with such certainty the ending to that love story?
Yes, the mystery soldier, the one who had died, had loved him. Yes, the love wasn’t unrequited.
And she allowed that thought the time of day. Then she allowed herself a moment to breathe, a moment to bathe in that strange melancholy. She passed the time, counting the fireflies for a few minutes longer before reminding herself, that bioluminescence was not at all magic, and was so easily explained as a chemical reaction.
She stood back up, dusted her bottoms and walked back to the festival. Soon, she concluded, she had her whole adult life ahead of her to find love again.
First things first, she had exams to study for and a degree to finish.