Chapter Text
The first time Jeongyeon saw her, it was snowing.
It was 6:21 pm, and the time of year when that meant the sky had already gone dark, making streetlights the most reliable provider of light, and Jeongyeon had gotten off of work 40 minutes before. The walk home would typically only take around 20 minutes, but tonight she took her time, less walking and more drifting, following the wind and trusting that it would lead her back to her apartment.
Tonight, she gave herself over to her love, her camera. She’d been too busy the week before to give her camera any real attention, too busy to find it a proper subject. So tonight she walked the streets, camera to her eye, searching for the frame that would light a spark in her eye. For the camera, she ignored the chill in her bones though it grew every moment. While there had been snow on the ground when she left for work in the morning—the first snow of the season—she had underestimated just how cold it would get at night, and only brought a light corduroy jacket more suited to an October day than a December night. Jeongyeon was forced to take down the ponytail she kept at work for the warmth that hair on her neck afforded her (what little it was—her hair was still just past her shoulders despite her recent efforts to grow it out). She could no longer feel her feet, and was close to losing feeling in her hands as well.
She was nearing her apartment, and the cold combined with the thought of the two hungry dogs waiting for her, and her ever-thining patience were tempting her to give up and hurry home. But the few photos she had snapped so far were adequate at most, and the tugging sensation she felt towards her home was nowhere near as strong as the pull towards the potential she felt waiting for her camera somewhere on the street.
She came to a bridge that she believed was a few blocks away from her apartment, although she could not be entirely sure given that she had never been on it before. The sidewalks she walked across were coated in ice, making her trek atop it even slower than before. The bridge overlooked a river that had yet to freeze, and would flow for a short while longer. Jeongyeon turned her head to the side, bringing the camera away from her face and looking out at the river. It ran fast, faster than a river that cold should've been able to, but somehow still slower than it seemed to be meant to. Like it was fighting against the ice that would inevitably cover it. Jeongyeon stared at it, fascinated. In that moment, it seemed to be the only thing left in the world still moving. The blinking lights of the city beyond the river stopped, the snow stilled in the air, and Jeongyeon herself paused in her tracks. She felt strongly and completely that when this river froze over the whole world would freeze in its wake. The feeling grew in her chest so heavily and fiercely that she might have cried out had she not still been frozen by the sight of the river, although she could not tell whether it would be a cry of terror or joy.
Jeongyeon brought herself to move again, so she could raise her camera back to her face and photograph the river. Despite her staunch conviction of the river's importance, she still felt dissatisfied with her findings, but nevertheless decided to head home, hoping tomorrow would bring what she searched for. She cursed herself internally for her yearning for more, because that night the river seemed to prove that it would never end. Yearning for what she could not say, only knowing that she did not know this thing, and now suspecting she never would. If the river that kept the world alive wasn't enough for her how could anything ever hope to be? She had found a vein of the earth itself and somehow still craved more.
Sighing, she moved on. It was 6:40 now, Peanut and Yuki were sure to be getting restless. She walked on, eyes focused on the ground for the remainder of her time on the bridge in an effort not to slip on its ice coating. As she reached its end, she brought her camera back to her eye—just in case—and proceeded forward. Shortly after passing the bridge, a man came into focus in the eye of her camera.
He was standing with his back turned to Jeongyeon, with his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t moving (maybe the river had frozen over after all) and his head pointed up, staring at something above him. In an effort to see what this might be, Jeongyeon moved to take the camera from her face, in the process of which she somehow managed to slip and fall on her ass. It turns out the ice sheet hadn't ended when the bridge did. In the fall, Jeongyeon had managed to protect her camera from harm, although regrettably, she could not say the same about herself, who would surely have a large bruise by morning.
Jeongyeon pulled herself to her knees, and looked ahead. First the man came back into view, he had not moved from hearing her fall, or may have been too lost in his thoughts to hear her at all. Then she saw what the man was looking at.
It was a billboard. Not a remarkable one, in fact a somewhat depressing one. Half the lights along the sides and bottom seemed to be broken, and the plastic sheet the advertisement was on was peeling at the edges. And the ad itself was hardly complex—most likely some minimalist perfume ad, although it was so bare it was hard to decipher what exactly it was advertising. A majority of the board was just white, with one large, but not quite large enough to read golden word on the left-hand side—not that Jeongyeon could have read it anyway, it being in some kind of western language that she did not know (maybe french?)—but despite all that Jeongyeon immediately understood what had made the man stop in his tracks to stare at the billboard.
Because across from the word, on the right-hand side of the advertisement, was a picture of a woman.
Only half-illuminated, but somehow glowing, she was visible only from the shoulders up, on her body wearing a black blouse composed of some kind of mesh, that left her shoulders bare and instead converged at her neck, wrapping around and disappearing behind it. Her body was turned 3 quarters of the way forwards leaving her staring out into the abyss of the starless night. Her face was long and thin, her lips—which were parted just slightly, as if she were taking a small breath—were round and coated in a soft pink lipstick to match with the light blush on her cheeks. Her nose was long, thin, and sharp, much like the rest of her face, unlike many whose features look haphazardly put together, this woman's face was in perfect harmony. If ever there was a human who had been lovingly and meticulously shaped by God, this was it. The skin atop her face, as well as that which covered her neck and shoulders was perfectly smooth, and even upscaled as it was, no blemishes or breaks could be found within it. Her face was framed by long black hair, curled perfectly and fallen just so around her shoulders. But above all this, the most striking thing about her was her eyes. Not that they could be considered as physically more remarkable than the rest of her features (although unremarkable for her would have been outstanding for anyone else), it was the expression contained within them that drew focus. On the surface, they were blank, like the rest of her face, but underneath they seemed to contain pools, pools of ink that might be used to paint a universe if they were so inclined. There was such a depth of emotion clearly captured in those eyes, but its nature was shrouded and undecipherable.
Jeongyeon stood, utterly transfixed, staring at the woman on the billboard. She was the most beautiful woman that Jeongyeon had ever seen. Every line that made up the shape of her face, every part of her was perfect—no, perfect wasn’t the right word for what she was. Perfect implied that she was something known and recorded, something that merely needed to be found. But she was something entirely new, previously unknown and unthinkable, she held such a magic in her gaze that should have been impossible for a human to hold. Jeongyeon had not found her no, Jeongyeon had discovered her, and it seemed the most illuminary discovery in the history of humankind since man discovered fire. It was in that moment that Jeongyeon knew what she had been yearning for. She had been feeling the pull of this woman since she had first picked up a camera, her search for the perfect subject had left her disappointed by rivers, mountains, and sunsets, but finally, she'd found the thing whose beauty eclipsed them all.
It was her.
Quickly, Jeongyeon raised her camera to her eye, and lifted herself off her knees—carefully, so as not to slip again. She framed her shot, focusing on the billboard of course, but making sure to also capture the man beneath it, she thought it right that he was captured with her, to show how she should be treated, with reverence and awe.
When Jeongyeon took the camera away from her face, the man was gone, and the night was empty—save of course, for her. Jeongyeon took the man's place, staring up at the billboard—at her billboard. She took another picture of the woman from this new perspective, then stood, as the man had before, simply admiring. She stood for as long as she could bear, but soon her fingers went numb, and a quiet voice in the back of her mind worried about the ever-growing possibility of frostbite, so Jeongyeon forced herself to move on, this time walking with a newly revived purpose. The sooner she could get home, the sooner she could find this mystery woman. And she would find her, she must.
A soft smile grew on Jeongyeon’s face as she made her way home, finally knowing what it was she yearned for.