lifelines
lifelines
1,963w; pg (soohyun/hyorin)
to those summers in between, when i fell for you and you fell for me.
a/n: super late birthday present for the lovely rilakkiseop. i'm sorry for taking forever on this and having this as the result orz. i love you and i hope you had a great birthday and have many great ones to come! ♥
Hyorin goes out to the beach every morning before the tide comes in and draws two lines in the sand.
He thinks it’s weird, strange. She’s never done so before, not in their sixteen summers spent together.
Soohyun never asks her what they are, what they’re supposed to be, just hangs back in the house and makes himself breakfast, leaving her a cup of coffee on the side table.
They watch a movie on his first night back. It’s one of the old horror films she likes, something she still screams to, she confesses with a sheepish grin. It’s at the part where the ghost comes out of the mirror that he remembers they watched it before, two or three years ago.
All the bay windows and sliding doors are open, the salty beach air filtering in until it’s all that he smells, all that he knows. It is dark and silent except for the girl screaming her head off in the movie, Hyorin next to him on the couch. If he stretched his fingers out far enough, he might even be able to feel the heat radiating off her body.
He counts backwards from ten. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
“Can you believe that this is our last summer together?”
“I want a castle,” she tells him resolutely the next morning. “That’s no excuse!” she frowns when he tells her it’s only eight. She wrestles to get him out of bed, stronger than she leads herself on to be. He gives up quickly, laughing hard, maybe a little too hard for someone who just woke up.
“And what kind of castle does Queen Hyorin want?” He plunges his fingers into the sand, the grains warm from the sun. She thinks about it, eyebrows furrowed and forehead creased.
“Anything goes!” She’s smiling one of those smiles now, the kind of smile that’s so bright and big that Soohyun wonders how it stays on her face. He smiles back, not as big but just as hard.
It’s when he’s patting the corners of the base down that he sees her out of the corner of his eyes, playing a game of tag with the waves. Not Hyorin, but Hyojung, the girl who leaves a nightlight on in the dark, the girl who needs a hand to hold and a shoulder to cry on.
He would give Hyojung the world but he knows she wouldn’t take it from him.
Instead, he builds her sandcastle, hoping that it’s enough even though it’s temporary.
“Don’t you ever wish that we wouldn’t have to grow up?”
He turns his head to face her. They’re lying on their beach towels, still a little damp from the swim they took earlier, and watching the night sky. The tide sweeps against the sand every now and then, creating a soft rhythm. He doesn’t know how to answer, doesn’t want to answer, just wants to remember everything as beautiful.
“We still have three weeks left, Hyorin,” he whispers. Her eyes do not move from their fixation on the sky.
“Just forget I said anything, Soohyun.”
He wakes up the next morning to the smell of something sweet.
“What are you doing?” he asks with a yawn. She has a red apron over her ratty old t-shirt and denim shorts. The stove is on, some mysterious concoction bubbling inside a substantially-sized pot. A huge basket of peaches, skins red and white, sits on the counter across from her.
“I’m making jam,” she tells him, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. She has a smear of it on her forehead, shiny and sticky. He gently wipes it off with his palm, then dabs his tongue in it.
He makes a face. “It’s too sugary.”
She laughs, sweet and husky and a little melodious. “You never liked jam, anyway.” Her eyes twinkle in that childish way and it makes him want to keep that moment, just that moment, in the back of his mind forever.
They only have two more weeks left.
Soohyun knows he should feel the pit, the dreading pit of doom, from the limited time they have left, but oddly, he doesn’t.
And that’s what scares him the most.
She takes him to the far side of the beach one Thursday afternoon, rusty red truck wheezing for breath on the highway. The windows are all rolled down, sunshine on their backs and wind in their hair, because the air conditioning never works. He pretends not to notice the way she drums her fingers on the wheel, the way she knows his favorite radio station without having to ask him.
She parks on the sand despite his questioning of whether her tires could handle it. They run, run across the yellow grains and watch the orange streaks of sunset glide along the horizon.
“You can’t catch me!” she taunts him from farther down the beach. She runs off again, leaving him to chase her.
He catches her near the shore, squirming in his arms like a wild animal. They laugh and laugh and laugh until their stomachs feel full, leaving them gasping. It’s all innocent, innocent and childish, just the way it’s supposed to be.
“We should’ve done this last time,” he teases. All too late he realizes that it’s the wrong thing to say, that she’s standing up and stepping away from him with her arms wrapped around her body, protecting herself, and he feels it now, that pit, that coldness of losing her again, of not seeing her smiles that barely stay on her face, all because of his stupidity and stupid choices of words.
“Let’s go back,” she says after a long silence.
There is no music, no laughter, no open windows or sunshine on the drive home.
Her mom comes to visit on Monday, eyes soft and knowing as they evaluate him from across the dinner table.
You still love her, don’t you? they ask him as she passes him the peas.
She still wakes up early every morning to head down to the beach, to her little plot of sand, where she draws her two lines before coming in for breakfast.
They don’t talk but he still leaves her a cup of coffee, usually forgetting to put in the extra sugar that she reminded him to add in two weeks ago.
The drop in his stomach makes him feel queasy now. Queasy and afraid.
She is slipping through his fingers. They only have one week left.
Meals are silent and awkward. So awkward that they try their best to avoid each other during meal times all together, opting for eating in their rooms or on the patio while the other sits elsewhere.
It’s Friday, their fifth-to-last day together, when he can’t take it anymore.
“I’m sorry, Hyorin,” he says. She doesn’t look up from wringing out the sponge. “I didn’t mean to say that, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Silence.
“Just leave it, Soohyun,” she sighs, turning the water back on. For a moment, he doesn’t know whether she’s talking about his dirty dishes or the subject.
He guesses it’s the dishes when she takes them from his hands.
She is drawing her lines on her plot of beach, but it’s nighttime. He follows her out but she doesn’t say anything, not even when he trips over a pebble and makes a racket.
He’s never seen them up close, but now he realizes that they’re parallel as she drags her finger through the wet sand.
“These are our lifelines,” she says, looking up at the sky. The stars are out, brighter than ever, and he thinks back to that night a few weeks ago when they lay under them.
“You graduated from graduate school, nearly at the top of your class,” she traces one line absentmindedly as she speaks. “I dropped out of college. Do you see how different we are?”
He narrows his eyes in discontent. “What does that matter?” He watches her take a deep breath, a breath that shakes her whole body.
“We’re not meant to be, Soohyun,” she whispers. Her eyes are full and sad when they meet his. “Why can’t you understand that?”
He can’t understand, won’t understand, why the vulnerable girl who leaves a nightlight on in the dark, who needs a hand to hold and a shoulder to cry on won’t take his, when it’s outstretched and reaching for her.
“Hyojung.” Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to us.
She stands up. “I’m leaving tomorrow. My friend is coming to pick me up at ten.” She smiles, but it’s a small and miniscule one, pale compared to her better ones, her brighter ones.
She walks back into the house a little after that, leaving Hyojung and him buried in the sand, washed away by the tide. He looks up at the sky and realizes that it hasn’t really changed from that night they lay under it. It’s just them, growing up even though they never wanted to.
“I love you, Hyojung.” He whispers even though it’s too late, too quiet, and too far away from her for her to know.
The pit in his stomach makes him dizzy and sick and sad but he doesn’t vomit.
He does not sleep well that night.
A silver compact car pulls up in the driveway at exactly ten in the morning the next day. He’s somewhat surprised, he never really expected Hyorin to have friends with such boring, commonplace cars when hers was outrageously outdated.
“I’ll help you carry your stuff,” he blurts out, not knowing what to say when he knows that this is all they’ll ever have, all they’ll ever amount to. She opens her mouth to protest, but he’s just grabs everything of hers before she can get the words out of her mouth.
Her friend’s name is Bora, a pretty girl with long, straight hair who’s going into graduate school in the fall. He nods, pretends he’s interested in her introduction, though all he’ll ever be is distracted with Hyorin standing there, loading her things into the trunk.
“Guess this is goodbye.” He smiles a tight-lipped smile. She returns one to him and he feels the coldness between them then.
“Yeah. Guess it is.” Bora is honking now, making motions that tell him that Hyorin needs to get in the car.
“You know you can call me anytime, right? Home phone, cell phone, email…”
“I know, Soohyun.” She sighs a little, the corners of her mouth pulling up slightly.
He wraps her in his arms, breathes in the scent of her shampoo. She returns the gesture after a tentative moment, stiff in his arms.
He counts backwards from ten. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
“Good luck in life, Soohyun.” She grabs his hand, squeezes it, then lets it go.
“You too.” He smiles as she walks towards the car, away from him, away from their summers and memories.
She does not look back.
He stands on the curb long after the silver car has disappeared from the horizon, still waiting for something.
Something, but he doesn’t know what.
He finds it on his last day when he’s loading his things into his car, holed up in the back corner of his trunk. It’s a small shoebox, unassuming and almost insignificant, but big enough to fit sixteen summers inside.
There’s sea glass, shells, sand, and old fruit jars that they polished off. A necklace he bought her when he was ten. Bracelets they made by stringing shells together. Child-proof firecrackers.
Suddenly, it hits him. Why she did not look back, why he waited. He collapses into the driver’s seat, leans his head on the wheel, listens to the lulling waves of the beach, and cries.
Goodbye, Soohyun.
Goodbye, Hyojung.
1,963w; pg (soohyun/hyorin)
to those summers in between, when i fell for you and you fell for me.
a/n: super late birthday present for the lovely rilakkiseop. i'm sorry for taking forever on this and having this as the result orz. i love you and i hope you had a great birthday and have many great ones to come! ♥
Hyorin goes out to the beach every morning before the tide comes in and draws two lines in the sand.
He thinks it’s weird, strange. She’s never done so before, not in their sixteen summers spent together.
Soohyun never asks her what they are, what they’re supposed to be, just hangs back in the house and makes himself breakfast, leaving her a cup of coffee on the side table.
They watch a movie on his first night back. It’s one of the old horror films she likes, something she still screams to, she confesses with a sheepish grin. It’s at the part where the ghost comes out of the mirror that he remembers they watched it before, two or three years ago.
All the bay windows and sliding doors are open, the salty beach air filtering in until it’s all that he smells, all that he knows. It is dark and silent except for the girl screaming her head off in the movie, Hyorin next to him on the couch. If he stretched his fingers out far enough, he might even be able to feel the heat radiating off her body.
He counts backwards from ten. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
“Can you believe that this is our last summer together?”
“I want a castle,” she tells him resolutely the next morning. “That’s no excuse!” she frowns when he tells her it’s only eight. She wrestles to get him out of bed, stronger than she leads herself on to be. He gives up quickly, laughing hard, maybe a little too hard for someone who just woke up.
“And what kind of castle does Queen Hyorin want?” He plunges his fingers into the sand, the grains warm from the sun. She thinks about it, eyebrows furrowed and forehead creased.
“Anything goes!” She’s smiling one of those smiles now, the kind of smile that’s so bright and big that Soohyun wonders how it stays on her face. He smiles back, not as big but just as hard.
It’s when he’s patting the corners of the base down that he sees her out of the corner of his eyes, playing a game of tag with the waves. Not Hyorin, but Hyojung, the girl who leaves a nightlight on in the dark, the girl who needs a hand to hold and a shoulder to cry on.
He would give Hyojung the world but he knows she wouldn’t take it from him.
Instead, he builds her sandcastle, hoping that it’s enough even though it’s temporary.
“Don’t you ever wish that we wouldn’t have to grow up?”
He turns his head to face her. They’re lying on their beach towels, still a little damp from the swim they took earlier, and watching the night sky. The tide sweeps against the sand every now and then, creating a soft rhythm. He doesn’t know how to answer, doesn’t want to answer, just wants to remember everything as beautiful.
“We still have three weeks left, Hyorin,” he whispers. Her eyes do not move from their fixation on the sky.
“Just forget I said anything, Soohyun.”
He wakes up the next morning to the smell of something sweet.
“What are you doing?” he asks with a yawn. She has a red apron over her ratty old t-shirt and denim shorts. The stove is on, some mysterious concoction bubbling inside a substantially-sized pot. A huge basket of peaches, skins red and white, sits on the counter across from her.
“I’m making jam,” she tells him, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. She has a smear of it on her forehead, shiny and sticky. He gently wipes it off with his palm, then dabs his tongue in it.
He makes a face. “It’s too sugary.”
She laughs, sweet and husky and a little melodious. “You never liked jam, anyway.” Her eyes twinkle in that childish way and it makes him want to keep that moment, just that moment, in the back of his mind forever.
They only have two more weeks left.
Soohyun knows he should feel the pit, the dreading pit of doom, from the limited time they have left, but oddly, he doesn’t.
And that’s what scares him the most.
She takes him to the far side of the beach one Thursday afternoon, rusty red truck wheezing for breath on the highway. The windows are all rolled down, sunshine on their backs and wind in their hair, because the air conditioning never works. He pretends not to notice the way she drums her fingers on the wheel, the way she knows his favorite radio station without having to ask him.
She parks on the sand despite his questioning of whether her tires could handle it. They run, run across the yellow grains and watch the orange streaks of sunset glide along the horizon.
“You can’t catch me!” she taunts him from farther down the beach. She runs off again, leaving him to chase her.
He catches her near the shore, squirming in his arms like a wild animal. They laugh and laugh and laugh until their stomachs feel full, leaving them gasping. It’s all innocent, innocent and childish, just the way it’s supposed to be.
“We should’ve done this last time,” he teases. All too late he realizes that it’s the wrong thing to say, that she’s standing up and stepping away from him with her arms wrapped around her body, protecting herself, and he feels it now, that pit, that coldness of losing her again, of not seeing her smiles that barely stay on her face, all because of his stupidity and stupid choices of words.
“Let’s go back,” she says after a long silence.
There is no music, no laughter, no open windows or sunshine on the drive home.
Her mom comes to visit on Monday, eyes soft and knowing as they evaluate him from across the dinner table.
You still love her, don’t you? they ask him as she passes him the peas.
She still wakes up early every morning to head down to the beach, to her little plot of sand, where she draws her two lines before coming in for breakfast.
They don’t talk but he still leaves her a cup of coffee, usually forgetting to put in the extra sugar that she reminded him to add in two weeks ago.
The drop in his stomach makes him feel queasy now. Queasy and afraid.
She is slipping through his fingers. They only have one week left.
Meals are silent and awkward. So awkward that they try their best to avoid each other during meal times all together, opting for eating in their rooms or on the patio while the other sits elsewhere.
It’s Friday, their fifth-to-last day together, when he can’t take it anymore.
“I’m sorry, Hyorin,” he says. She doesn’t look up from wringing out the sponge. “I didn’t mean to say that, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Silence.
“Just leave it, Soohyun,” she sighs, turning the water back on. For a moment, he doesn’t know whether she’s talking about his dirty dishes or the subject.
He guesses it’s the dishes when she takes them from his hands.
She is drawing her lines on her plot of beach, but it’s nighttime. He follows her out but she doesn’t say anything, not even when he trips over a pebble and makes a racket.
He’s never seen them up close, but now he realizes that they’re parallel as she drags her finger through the wet sand.
“These are our lifelines,” she says, looking up at the sky. The stars are out, brighter than ever, and he thinks back to that night a few weeks ago when they lay under them.
“You graduated from graduate school, nearly at the top of your class,” she traces one line absentmindedly as she speaks. “I dropped out of college. Do you see how different we are?”
He narrows his eyes in discontent. “What does that matter?” He watches her take a deep breath, a breath that shakes her whole body.
“We’re not meant to be, Soohyun,” she whispers. Her eyes are full and sad when they meet his. “Why can’t you understand that?”
He can’t understand, won’t understand, why the vulnerable girl who leaves a nightlight on in the dark, who needs a hand to hold and a shoulder to cry on won’t take his, when it’s outstretched and reaching for her.
“Hyojung.” Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to us.
She stands up. “I’m leaving tomorrow. My friend is coming to pick me up at ten.” She smiles, but it’s a small and miniscule one, pale compared to her better ones, her brighter ones.
She walks back into the house a little after that, leaving Hyojung and him buried in the sand, washed away by the tide. He looks up at the sky and realizes that it hasn’t really changed from that night they lay under it. It’s just them, growing up even though they never wanted to.
“I love you, Hyojung.” He whispers even though it’s too late, too quiet, and too far away from her for her to know.
The pit in his stomach makes him dizzy and sick and sad but he doesn’t vomit.
He does not sleep well that night.
A silver compact car pulls up in the driveway at exactly ten in the morning the next day. He’s somewhat surprised, he never really expected Hyorin to have friends with such boring, commonplace cars when hers was outrageously outdated.
“I’ll help you carry your stuff,” he blurts out, not knowing what to say when he knows that this is all they’ll ever have, all they’ll ever amount to. She opens her mouth to protest, but he’s just grabs everything of hers before she can get the words out of her mouth.
Her friend’s name is Bora, a pretty girl with long, straight hair who’s going into graduate school in the fall. He nods, pretends he’s interested in her introduction, though all he’ll ever be is distracted with Hyorin standing there, loading her things into the trunk.
“Guess this is goodbye.” He smiles a tight-lipped smile. She returns one to him and he feels the coldness between them then.
“Yeah. Guess it is.” Bora is honking now, making motions that tell him that Hyorin needs to get in the car.
“You know you can call me anytime, right? Home phone, cell phone, email…”
“I know, Soohyun.” She sighs a little, the corners of her mouth pulling up slightly.
He wraps her in his arms, breathes in the scent of her shampoo. She returns the gesture after a tentative moment, stiff in his arms.
He counts backwards from ten. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
“Good luck in life, Soohyun.” She grabs his hand, squeezes it, then lets it go.
“You too.” He smiles as she walks towards the car, away from him, away from their summers and memories.
She does not look back.
He stands on the curb long after the silver car has disappeared from the horizon, still waiting for something.
Something, but he doesn’t know what.
He finds it on his last day when he’s loading his things into his car, holed up in the back corner of his trunk. It’s a small shoebox, unassuming and almost insignificant, but big enough to fit sixteen summers inside.
There’s sea glass, shells, sand, and old fruit jars that they polished off. A necklace he bought her when he was ten. Bracelets they made by stringing shells together. Child-proof firecrackers.
Suddenly, it hits him. Why she did not look back, why he waited. He collapses into the driver’s seat, leans his head on the wheel, listens to the lulling waves of the beach, and cries.
Goodbye, Soohyun.
Goodbye, Hyojung.