Tangled Red String [Hyunsung] ✓

Chapter 7

March 2019

“I'm here again, hyung.” Hyunjin greeted.

He stood still awkwardly outside a cemetery gate. There, his older brother’s cremated ash was buried near the corner.

An ivory ceramic vase filled with blue Hydrangeas was placed in front of the obelisk gravestone. It was a picturesque flower. Hyunjin liked how its radiant color enlivened the monotone shades of the cemetery.

Blue Hydrangeas started to bloom as a sign of an approaching rainy season and his family went on a trip to Kyoto at that time.

They visited a temple and were lucky to see the holy place decorated with blue Hydrangeas. It was such a magnificent view and his older brother captured countless pictures of this beautiful flower, although most of them were blurry.

His family then decided to have another trip in summer, exploring other parts of Kyoto that they never had a chance to visit before, only for death to take his older brother away.

Hyunjin smiled bitterly when he found out that blue Hydrangeas symbolized apology; it was given to someone when you were deeply sorry for doing certain action toward them.

Hyunjin knew it was selfish and heartless, but if he could rewind the time, he would absolutely hold his older brother’s hand tightly and refrain him from suddenly running toward the busy road, even if it meant another child's life would have been taken away that day.

Moving his attention back to his older brother's grave, there was also another vase which contained vibrant yellow flowers.

Hyunjin could not recognize what kind of flower it was and was puzzled why it was there to begin with; not until he visited the grave--in real life--last July and found a cylinder vase full of Daffodils there. It was exactly the same with the one that appeared in his dream. What made it different was the fact that the flowers were wilted; they were not blooming like the ones in his dream.

Discovering such fact was quite terrifying and giving him goosebumps. He would be lying if he said he did not freak out and nearly pass out at that moment.

Hyunjin had tried to ask the cemetery worker about it, hoping the worker would give him at least a name-card or some sort. Unfortunately, the stranger did not give any information about himself and simply said to the worker that he was his older brother's old friend.

The cemetery worker described the stranger's appearance, though. He said that he was a young polite man and probably around Hyunjin's age. His body was tall, but not taller than Hyunjin. Unluckily, besides this information, there was nothing more, considering there were also many visitors that came to the cemetery and the worker could not memorize every single detail of the visitors.

Hyunjin remembered the first time he had this dream was on the exact same day he broke up with Chan. He did not think much about it and simply thought that he just missed his older brother. But, after discovering the truth, as creepy as it sounded, Hyunjin believed that his older brother—Jinyoung—wanted to show him something.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried to get through the cemetery gate to find any clues in his dream, his attempt was to no avail. It was like there was some kind of invisible shield that prevented him to trespass, leaving him with no other choices but to turn his body around.

A single yet ample, luminous path surrounded with bamboo planted on both side greeted him. There was no other sound except a gentle rustling come from the passing wind among the bamboo.

The dream; it was always the same. Somewhere along the way of his aimless stroll, someone would suddenly appear and walk with him, accompanying him without uttering any single word. Hyunjin just assumed that it was Jinyoung.