Last Saturday

Ch.23 -end-

FIVE YEARS

“And what’s in this room-”

“Don’t!” Minji shouts, eyes widening in shock, “I’m sorry.” She laughs, “Please don’t open that door.”

“Oh…” Sullyoon slowly lets go of the doorknob, “I’m sorry.”
Minji smiles, “It’s okay, you didn’t know.”

The flower shop cashier and Minji have been getting closer, and she doesn’t remember when it started, but she’s sure that it’s due to Minji's frequent visits to the store, still buying many flowers and tools to maintain her garden.

Minji casually invites Sullyoon to dinner at some newly-opened ramen store near the flower shop, and it ends up with Sullyoon staying over at her place for the night, because the road to her place took an hour to drive to, worth mentioning the heavy traffic due to the rain, and Minji was too exhausted to drive even further. Sullyoon insists on using the bus home, but Minji knew she’d wait another hour for the next set to arrive. The woman always took public transportation before she saved enough money to get her own private vehicle.

“Is it fine if I ask what that room has inside?” Sullyoon cautiously asks, quietly chewing on some candy bar Minji threw at her. She observes the woman quietly, her back facing Sullyoon, seemingly too immersed in making coffee to look back.
She chuckles, “It’s Hanni's art room. I honestly haven’t entered it after she left, so I bet the place is dusty and all. Wouldn’t want to embarrass a visitor with a dirty room.”

“Oh.” is all that Sullyoon could say. The room’s been left untouched for five years, she doesn’t know what to think of that, it only sparks more curiosity.

Minji places two cups of coffee on the table, as silent as ever, and Sullyoon honestly found it awkward since she wasn’t the noisy type either.

“You don’t have to panic, it’s fine to stay silent.” Minji cackles, “If you think numerous questions about Hanni would keep us talking, then sure. I don’t mind.”

Maybe Minji can read minds, Sullyoon has no idea. But she certainly did speak exactly
what was in Sullyoon's.

“How were you after she left?”

Minji’s taken aback, not expecting a question directed towards herself, but she answers it anyway. “Oh, I was all sorts of things. I was the only one strong enough to organize her funeral so I held all my emotions in for at least two weeks before bursting them all out at home. I had no idea I was suffering that bad until Hanni’s mother came to visit me and looked at me in such a way, like I wasn’t fed food for a month.”

Sullyoon gives an expected reaction, “Was it the type of bad where you couldn’t even stand up to drink a glass of water even if you were thirsty?”

‘That’s oddly specific.’ One thing Minji learned about Sullyoon was that her personality was almost similar to a spectrum, she’s always unpredictable. You never expect anything that comes out of her mouth, know when she decides to be hyper and energetic, or when she feels like it’s better to be completely silent.

“It wasn’t that bad.” Minji looks at a random painting Hanni made that she hung on the wall about two years ago, thinking deeply, “It’s just that I couldn’t do normal house chores and work without crying. My eyes always had to be red and teary at some point.”

“Understandable.” Sullyoon almost chokes from how hot the coffee is after taking a sip,
“You’ve had her roaming around your house everyday for years and she’s suddenly not there anymore. You can’t help but think about her.”

“Correct.”

“True.”

They laugh in unison, the hilarious exchange was quite unprompted.