Small World

The Abandoned House

I walked, step by step, towards the house. Her house. My footsteps echoed through the dark night, and I shivered in my gray suit.

As I turned around the corner, I froze. The house was shattered - broken down, cobwebs. How long had this been going on?

As I looked at a shard of glass hanging on the door, I glanced at my surroundings behind me. The house was abandoned. Out the window, the wind blew and shrieked like a ghost. My suit looked silver in the moonlight.

I shivered, goosebumps raised on my arms through the warm suit. Where had she gone?

I saw the piano - the piano where we both had created music on, the piano where we had had our first kiss...

As I sat, a tear ran down my face. How could she leave me? Instead of her warmth, I felt the ghost she had left behind.

The Ghost of the Wind.

As I pulled through the debris and the shards of glass, I felt tear by tear drip in a rhythmic pattern, making a trail through the dust. The wind howled outside, giving me chills. WHY had I tried to make amends so late at night?

I rolled myself up in a corner, and the flowers were crushed beneath my trembling fingers. "It's all my fault", I whispered into the crook of my elbow, "I'm so sorry."

A hand tapped lightly on my shoulder. I whipped around, tears streaks still down my face, and gasped. It was her.

I scrambled up, taking her hands. She was still so breathtakingly beautiful - her brown locks and her silver nightgown matched mine, the rose in her hair looking like exact one I had given her on our first date.

She smiled, though her face looked regretful. "Hyungsik-ah", she murmured, cupping my face in her hands and using the soft pad of her thumb to wipe the tears away. "It's alright. You've got to move on. It's the same thing over and over again. Stop living in the past."

I shook my head violently, reaching my trembling hand over to pat her hair. "I love you", I said, though she nodded like she already knew.

She smiled gently and her voice was soft. "Loved, oppa. Not 'love'. I'm gone but you're still slipping away."

The tears made my eyes go blurry. I could barely see her anymore. She looked like she was fading. "Please, oppa. Live your life. I love you too."

She then disappeared.

I looked around frantically, and knocked my head on the wall. It creaked.

It couldn't have been a dream. No, she was here still. Right?

He spotted the rose next to his crushed flowers. Her rose. He knelt to the ground and sobbed.

And when he woke up, he glanced over his bed to see her picture. With the white rose next to the red one. "One for love", he whispered, tears plopping on the covers of his bed, "and one for the death I keep dreaming of over and over again."