Hole in the Earth.

born in mugunghwa. has never left mugunghwa. seldom ever sustains the idea of leaving mugunghwa. doing so feels almost sacrilegious. also counterproductive. that’s not to say she’s fixated on this little slice of earth that she inhabits but she’s fixated on it. it’s what she knows. here within this pocket of existence, she can witness all the bad things that happen everywhere in the world and remain untouched in that limited tower. 

so, there’s really no reason to ever venture beyond it. mugunghwa recognizes her with familial status, compliments her lifestyle, awards a kind of authority she can exercise easily when the domestic sphere is so provincial. small town locale makes for an easier dominion. that’s great because she’s the kind of person who has to know everything.

loves her parents and jisoo because they’re her family. goes into university right after highschool because that’s what you’re supposed to do. a traditionalist to her core, jiyeon is someone who subscribes to every adage about working hard and the standard, ethical rhetoric that’s got no room for worldly nuance. it’s easy goodness to the outside world. the comparative inside, that belongs to her.

what does that look like? so much red you can’t stand it. red for love. red for hatred. red for wrath. red for passion in general. she feels strongly and she feels sincerely. the pride she’s carrying is real and not something she’s fabricated for the sake of anyone’s appeasement or surface looks. the difference she’s intending with the “inside” and the “outside” is that it's an internal mechanism that just means she is always thinking more than you think she’s thinking. everything is intentional. full of feeling. so full it always reaches a point of obsession and sometimes throws up. really, really, really red for love.

she’s defined by that, too—her fervent capacity to experience and to relish and drown in that figurative entrenchment. all the thoughts. all the feelings. defined by her avid romanticism that’s so boundless, even if she wasn’t sworn to mugunghwa she’d never need to travel the world anyway. she thinks she’d be able to imagine it. beautiful cityscapes or lush greens or what the sky looks like on fire. 

the intuitive spark that embellishes a person, makes them curious about the world around them in a gentle way that leaves them open and wanting, jiyeon doesn’t have that. lacks that sociable feeling of not knowing and wanting to know. of conversational gateways. has that feeling of indomitable, incontestable certainty [presumptuousness] that feels so stoney it’s hard to talk to her. for somebody who wants to know everything, she makes it difficult for herself.

she loves jisoo. embraces his death with the fond familiarity all temporal beings do. amidst that, a drop of chaos she can’t really place. like, all this love and she’s got no place to put it anymore but the feeling of loss isn’t coming out like how grief should even though it haunts her and it hurts her.

it’s important, she thinks. it’s what she says in the text message she sends to jaeyi. the text message jaeyi ignores. it’s not really something jiyeon has to spend much time deliberating over—whether or not she should see her. parking her car in the lot, jiyeon takes her swift steps with pride, swept along by the incipient, autumnal chill. she’s got a plastic bag with her, full of the things she describes as having noted because she refuses to say she had to learn it. omits whatever meaningfulness accompanies plans for brunch and walks on beaches and pastimes like that. discarding it means she doesn’t really have to think about why jaeyi is creating the space between them that jiyeon knows she’s creating. it means jiyeon only needs to think that jaeyi shouldn’t be doing that, not when she’s treated her so well.

“hey,” jiyeon waves from behind the glass of the campus’ security post. she tilts her head, countenances softness like a gentle offering, a neutral one. “you didn’t answer my text message yesterday. i was worried sick about you. i told you it scares me, jaeyi. working alone at night. you could’ve let me know you had a shift today.” 

jiyeon pauses and then issues challenge, “i thought you were ignoring me.”