it's always ourselves that we find in the sea || jensoo

Chapter 37

If Jennie's superstitions were to be believed, bad things always came in three's. No matter whether she walked around drains, avoided stepping on cracks on the sidewalk, or kept on t-shirts that she clumsily put on inside out, it was inevitable that something bad would happen. She could almost feel it in the air, looming closer and closer with no foreseeable way to avoid it. All she knew was that Jisoo was at the centre of it, because as hard as she tried - as hard as they both tried - things were far from the easy way they had been around each other at the beginning.

The worst was the silence. Jennie found it strange that silence could be so loud, and in the large house, it was almost deafening. The sound of wondrous music drifting out of the piano room and filling the house with its sound was gone, along with Jisoo's will or skill to play, and the conversations between them were stilted and quiet. Even the sea was tranquil as the stillness of spring crept in with sunshine and warm breezes. When she wasn't inside with Jisoo, Jennie spent most of her spare time gardening, coaxing life back into the colourless plants that had died for the winter and in desperate need of attention after a bitter winter and a rainy start to spring. For days on end, her knees were grass stained and fingernails muddy, and Jisoo would silently sit on the porch, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she nursed a cup of tea in trembling hands, lost in her thoughts, while Jennie was similarly lost in her own.

There had been a time when their thoughts had never stayed trapped inside their heads for too long, but she was having a hard time figuring out what Jisoo was thinking lately. The only thing that was painfully obvious was that she was suffering. She did it in silence, for the most part, and Jennie would've preferred it if she'd just shouted and vented, but she kept it all bottled up inside until her rehab tasks got too difficult, or she messed up trying to pour cereal into a bowl with her trembling hands, and quietly started crying. It hurt to watch.

It was even worse to try so hard to get nothing in response. A week after Jisoo had the cast on her arm removed, Jennie suggested that they go for a walk to the cliff, and Jisoo didn't argue so she bundled her up in way too many layers for the mild weather, and Jisoo didn't protest that either, and then they set off along the beach. Their walks had used to be mostly silent, with both of them enjoying the bracing air and the fresh smell of the sea and earthy smell of damp sand, but that walk was different. Walking in silence when you knew the silence wasn't going to be broken felt almost suffocating, and Jennie was grateful for the sound of the sea to fill the silence with a blanket of white noise. She understood why Jisoo was quiet, knowing that her pride made it hard for her to talk in broken sentences, forgetting words and pausing at odd points, so she just opted for silence instead. If it wasn't for her daily phonecalls with Chaeyoung and visits to Minzy's house, Jennie thought that the silence would've consumed her. Even the TV on wasn't enough to dispel the uncomfortable quietness of the house. She never touched any of the CD's though, and whenever she drove them somewhere, the radio stayed off, as if the mere sound of music would cause Jisoo to breakdown again.

She had hoped that the silent walk would be good for Jisoo, but it ended up being a waste of time. It took three times longer than usual, with Jisoo still recovering from her pneumonia and the occasional stumbling footstep on top of her already impeded lack of sight to give her balance problems. She clung on tightly to Jisoo's arm, which was something at least. They made it all the way there, and Jennie didn't describe anything along the way, keeping quiet about the new shoots of green grass pushing up through the dirt to their left, or the budding new leaves and flowers, while birds flitted through the trees. Or how the sky was a clear shade of pale blue, with only a few wisps of clouds obstructing the view, and the sea was a deep blue and sparkling in the sunshine. She had all the shades on the tip of her tongue, but they never fell as they followed the sand dunes up to the beginnings of the cliffs, following the rocky curve of the coast, gradually growing steeper, until they reached the place where it jutted out a bit further.