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spring.
yerim feels a petal land on her cheek while lying down under the shade of a tree in campus during lunchtime.
the cold wind blows at her sporadically, and she smiles. spring is calm, spring is birth, spring is renewal.
but spring was also graduation time. from afar, yerim watches the seniors line up rather languidly. yerim could tell that graduation practice was a pain in the ass. the seniors begin to sing the painfully familiar school anthem with no emotion whatsoever.
and they're only supposed to look like a mere clump of people to yerim, boys and girls huddled together for the sake of finally leaving school - but yerim does not see it this way. well, to an extent, she does, but more than the clump of people huddled together, yerim sees sooyoung.
park sooyoung, with her long orange hair that reached her lower back, and her tall stature that made her head look like it was floating above the crowd of seniors. park sooyoung, whom yerim felt ambivalent towards because of her leaving. just a year ago, they had watched seungwan-unnie and seulgi-unnie graduate, and they had only watched with shared amusement of how time flew fast. but now- yerim couldn't decipher the weird feeling in her chest about sooyoung leaving. she wanted to catch time in her hands, clutch onto it and paralyze it, but she felt it slipping between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand.
they said spring was beautiful. they said spring was renewal. they said spring was a birth of something new - but yerim cannot help but think of rotten beginnings and unsatisfied longing.
summer.
yerim stays put on her chair.
the mini electric fan, perched atop a stack of books, (which was perched atop her study table), endlessly whirls in front of her face, her hair strands flying to the direction the wind was blowing. still, she feels a bead of sweat roll down her back. the heat was too much. yeri concluded that this isn't conclusive to learning. she decides to take a break and closes her eyes.
maybe if she closed her eyes so tight, she thought, she wouldn't need to face the world around her anymore; maybe if she closed her eyes so tight, the world around her would suddenly disappear, or if not, then she would be just a simple speck in whatever universe she lived in.
but yerim was wrong.
whenever yerim closes her eyes, all she sees is orange - she sees pretty orange strands of hair and bright smiles, hears laughter and hesitant (but fresh) promises of “i'll see you soon,” and on really melancholic days, “i won't forget you even if i tried.”
she opens her eyes, and yerim suddenly gasps.
it wasn’t anything alarming, though. yerim often escapes death by suffocation when she dives under, in familiar attempts of escaping from the surface.
.
autumn.
“you look tired.” yerim's dad brings up one saturday. “what's wrong?”
“oh,” yerim doesn't look up. she continues to stare at her bowl of cereal when she answers, “you know, hayfever. the usual. it’s just the weather.”
yerim’s father continues skimming through the newspaper when he speaks. “oh, look at you. always blaming the seasons. maybe you should sleep earlier. eat more vegetables.” he faces her when he finishes talking.
yerim gives her father a weak smile, “thanks, dad. you're right.”
her father smiles back. “oh - i forgot to tell you, by the way. sooyoung’s parents called; we have a dinner with the parks tomorrow. apparently sooyoung’s coming back from college for winter break... yeah, you know how colleges start early with these kinds of things, hm.”
yerim rests (drops) her spoon in her bowl of cereal, and stares at the wall past her father’s left ear. sooyoung. she hasn’t heard that name in months (outside her head, at least), she hasn’t heard sooyoung’s voice in seasons.
.
it’s autumn, and all yerim can think about is sooyoung. she doesn’t know what to do with the uncontrollable and palpitating beats of her heart either. surely, she didn't want to bring that - the pink, beating muscle within the ribcages in her torso - to dinner tomorrow, but she had to. she was afraid of bringing her heart tomorrow, lest sooyoung accidentally cracks it open again, or even worse - breaks it, again.
.
winter.
winter. yerim has never really liked winter. winter was when flowers died, and when some animals froze to death. winter signified end. for optimists, though, it was an indication of change. but to yerim, winter wasn’t change. it wasn’t the last of the seasons for nothing.
.
“you said you would see me soon. you said you wouldn’t forget me,” yerim whispers to sooyoung underneath sooyoung’s warm duvets, just like before. “but you didn’t meet me, and you did forget. you- you lied to me.”
“oh, yerim, you precious little...” sooyoung snakes her hand and rests it atop yerim’s stomach to warm her further, “you know i've been busy, college has been-”
“no. i don’t understand.” yerim cuts sooyoung off midway.
“yeri–”
“i’m not your plaything anymore. i’m no longer your doll.” yerim calmly states. “i’ve learned a lot of things.”
“i see.” sooyoung bites her lips, and purses it into a straight line, ashamed. “i understand.”
“when are you leaving again?”
sooyoung lifts a brow.
“for university, i mean.”
“oh. in a week or so.”
“welp,” yerim clucks her tongue. “i’ll see you until then, i guess.”
“you guess?”
“no, i’ll see you only until then- and that’s it. maybe you’ll come back again next winter. but that choice... is up to you,”
up to me, sooyoung whispers.
and yerim hears it. but yerim’s not sorry. it was winter, after all. perhaps the coldness of her surroundings had permeated her heart- that's what she got for wearing it on her sleeve almost all the time. or perhaps it was just the lack of warmth. either way, yerim no longer gives her heart to sooyoung, and the season, this time, adheres to what yerim desires, and grants it to her: an end.
neither did yerim have to keep dreaming of orange anymore, nor did she still have to be suffocated in the darkness, whenever she closed her eyes. she wouldn't need to hear empty promises and hollow laughter anymore. now, yerim could close her eyes in peace, growing with direction, and living with criteria.
she kisses sooyoung goodbye, and she leaves a bouquet of plumerias over the grave of her and sooyoung’s dead love.