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These are the dreams we should be having. I shouldn’t have to
clean them up like this.
It's not necessarily a matter of why, but when Jinsol calls. She reminds herself of that.
Cheongju is three hours away, after all.
On the third ring, Cheongju answers.
“Hello?”
The clock ticks. The world spins. Jungeun waits.
“Jinsol?” she asks, her voice hoarse as the words filter through, and Jinsol wonders what time it is. “Why are you calling me?”
And though there’s nothing particularly funny, Jinsol ventures a breathy laugh, something soft and light that bounces off the chipped pillars and decrepit concrete walls, echoing.
“Can you,” she tries, glancing across the room, and holding her breath. She stares wordlessly at the body on the floor, still unmoving; the coppery tang of blood still fresh on her tongue, and finishes, “Can you come pick me up?”
And still, somehow, Jungeun gets it. “What’s wrong?”
“Jungeun, I can’t –” Jinsol presses herself up against the wall and slides down, her skin grating against the cool concrete. Takes a slow breath. “–I can’t walk.”
She watches the red pool at his feet.
“Where are you?”
The world spins a little faster.
“The warehouse," she tells her, "The one near the docks.”
A beat passes, maybe two, maybe more before she hears shuffling. Bouts of static, the shrill creak of bedsprings, Haseul’s voice far-off, muffled and sleep-drunk on the other end of the line and the rush of engines and crowded city streets, soft and distant in the background, resonating. For a second it feels so familiar that Jinsol forgets why she’s calling in the first place.
“I’m on my way.”
And as Jinsol bites her tongue, teeth sinking into the things she doesn’t want to and knows she shouldn’t say, she manages a soft hum as the line goes dead.
“You can’t always be the hero.” You can’t save everyone, she thinks. Jungeun doesn’t say that part.
But at the end of the day, when Jinsol calls again, tired and bruised and alone—be it in some filthy alleyway or empty warehouse, Jungeun will be the one to find her. No matter if nothing good has ever come of it.
On nights like these, Jinsol realises that things could be worse.
When Jinsol is fifteen, she falls off a building for the first time.
By seventeen, she’s felt the rush of diving off skyscrapers and has flirted with death more times than she can remember. By twenty, she knows the feel of a bullet.
At twenty-one, she falls in love, breaks a heart or three and loses her best friend.
And now, at twenty-three, she’s riding shotgun in Jungeun’s car, bleeding onto the worn leather seats.
“What?”
Jinsol looks down, brows pinched together in thought. Jungeun drinks her in. Jinsol with her spider-emblazoned hoodie and matching red ski mask pulled over her head, sitting idly on her bed, looking more like a petty thief than she does ‘friendly neighbourhood superhero.’
The room goes quiet. Jinsol marks the seconds.
Cheongju is three hours from Incheon. Jinsol knows this by heart.
She crashes through Jungeun’s window another night, headfirst. Tumbles onto the floor, dusts herself off. She even has the audacity to smile.
“Jungeun.” She laughs. The sound is sweet. “I’m a superhero.”
She cards a hand through her hair, ruffled and mussed, and grins so wide her cheeks hurt. Her suit is torn, her face painted with deep, reddened nicks and scratches. Her legs might buckle any second now and her body aches but god—she feels giddy, like she’s never felt before. Like she’s walking on air. Like she’s too high to come down. “Jungeun,” Jinsol says, near breathless. Laughing somewhere in between. “I’m a superhero.”
Jungeun breathes a little slower. Smiles a bit softer.
And really, Jinsol thinks, maybe this hero thing isn’t so bad.
That night, Jungeun calls. Tells her one day she’s going to get herself killed. She doesn’t raise her voice. Doesn’t laugh when she says it, either.
The engine sputters.
Summertime in Seoul comes like a plague, giving fever to the population — the city bathed in mid-July heat, the familiar whir of overworked air conditioning units, sweltering nights curled into the seats of Jungeun's car— and Jinsol welcomes it.
The world spins.
The clock ticks.
At the end of the night, Jinsol wonders how far Cheongju is from Busan.
You were lying in the middle of the empty highway.
The sky was red and the sand was red and you were wearing a brown coat.
There were flecks of foam in the corners of your mouth.
The birds were watching you.
Your eyes were closed and you were listening to the road and I could
hear your breathing, I could hear your heart beating.