Mosquito
The place where he passed was swollen with light pink, and the pain came little by little. The sensation and pain settled in my mind so that I could not forget it. I sat on the orange-colored wooden bench in front of my house and stepped on his shadow next to me. There wasn’t anyone next to me.
I only stepped on the shadow he created and left behind. At one point, whenever I was anxious, scared, or worried, he gave me hope, as if his world was full of hope and laughter. Also, we shared deep secrets of each other and kept them. It was close, and we were shining each other’s time. But he began to break the rift between us, who were at peace. A month ago, he told me that he had bigger dreams and wanted to follow them. Thus, he said he had no time for you anymore because he wanted to pursue his own dreams. Then, he left after saying irresponsible words and not even giving me a chance. The word made me frown between my eyes for a moment.
He looked at my expression and added fine needle-like words. “I think it’s time for each of us to find a dream and settle down stably; I want you to find something you like and achieve your dream. Then the future will be more solid and unshakable.” At that moment, I made a ceramic in my mind: a mixture of depression, embarrassment, sadness, and emptiness. The form of depression seemed to be falling apart, and it contained beauty. I don’t know if my head is shaking and my heart is split so much because of the little beauty contained in the pottery made like that. It looked desperate but brilliant and took an unknown form.
At that time, I wanted to ask him if the time we’ve spent together so far is flying away in such a small word. But my mouth couldn’t move and stopped. Maybe I was afraid even to hear his answer. Maybe I was scared because I already knew his answer. I was frustrated, and my head was complicated, so I just held and stretched my hands for no reason. He didn’t mean to hear my answer. It was only his purpose to convey his heart and end this relationship. It was around when the particularly long and thick summer finally passed and autumn took its steps. He walked away to the end of my rural village every fall wearing a brown suede jacket that I praised for being pretty.
Our story, which used to paint various colors with numerous four seasons, suddenly ended in the last chapter. Looking at his confident eyes a little while ago, I think he actually wanted to say this before, or maybe he hasn’t been able to say it until now. I couldn’t do anything then. Perhaps when I saw the cherry blossoms in spring and looked pretty, when we promised to go on a trip far away, and when we shared many good restaurants to go to together in the future, I think you have already considered separation and hesitated since then. I know I’ll be hurt, torn down, and scratched myself, but I doubted our past days.
My dream was to have a good love for anyone for a long time so that the justice of love could point to us. But you left me to have a bigger dream and follow it. I lost my dream that day. Then I should find my dream now, but I didn’t know what to do first. He was included in everything I liked and everything I wanted to do. The days I met him were so long and deep that I couldn’t even remember what I liked before I met him. Since then, I’ve been wandering around for the past month, stuck in memories, imagining things from before and living in them, and the reality felt like it was just another world.
As time has gone by, one day, I buy a beer by myself and sit on a stone staircase that begins in the alley between an alterations shop and a small bookstore where I often whisper secrets with him, mumbling, thinking about him who is not next to me. I asked you a question in the air for no reason. I know his answer won’t come back, but I’ve been waiting. However, all I can hear is the laughter of the men talking happily in the distance and the horns of cars ringing on the road in the beautiful scenery.
For a moment, I feel like I’m losing my mind and going crazy again. It was difficult to tell whether I was mentally struggling because I kept being aware of my difficulties or whether I was emotionally struggling due to loneliness coming from my heart. For me, who experienced a breakup for the first time, it wasn’t easy to control, and even my emotions could not be defined. I found out that my condition was serious two weeks after I broke up. But… I didn’t want to fix it weirdly. It was because I thought that if I went back to my daily life with a normal, carefree smile, I would feel heavier, more depressed, and lonely.
I felt like I shouldn’t forget. If I forget, the secrets and stories we shared and kept felt like a sheet of meaningless discarded notes. Those notes make you think that you have lost the meaning and value that anyone can look into. Those notes will be thrown away in an ocher-colored baggy, but still, those notes that we once wrote about while writing something. There are only a few seconds when meaning and value change. When I think of him, I feel confused, numb, and sour in my heart. The tip of my nose and the area around my eyes often became grim and red without even thinking about the past of separation. Sometimes, I forget that sense and think about it, but there are many cases where only hot tears flow without realizing it.
After sitting like that, I quickly crushed the beer can and got up from my seat. I dragged my shoes home as if they were gummed up. Is it because of one person that I am so broken, or is it because the love is deeper than I thought, or is there no love for me to share now, or can’t I expect that love? It gives me goosebumps that love was so strong and terrifyingly sustainable. All I could hear was the sound of my shoes on the way home from the old countryside. It was a long, persistent, and bitter step.
When I got home, I was deeply lost in his thoughts for the first time in a long time, so I was so exhausted. I sat in front of the shoe rack, hesitated, and tried calming myself down. I stared blankly at the mirror installed on the other side and looked at my face. Badly-maintained hair, a red nose and eyes crying for a while, and shabby clothes because I couldn’t afford to dress neatly. At that moment, I felt like I was getting smaller. In my house, the sound of birds coming from the window and people passing by came through the cracks in the slightly open window. I sat in a cold, shaded shoe cabinet for a while without focus. I hated even the strong light coming through the window at that time. I envied the shining light even though I was still. And I hated this silence.
So I sometimes walked on the noisy streets and went to a store that was popular. What this silence eventually brings is that I am lost in thought as if I were being swept away by a big, high wave. It was scary. I’m afraid it’ll ruin me more than it is now. So, I don’t always beat that high wave. The place where he passed was swollen with red and bright light pink and itched and stung over time. So the more I touched, the more I felt, the more I felt the pain. The more I thought about it, the more painful it was, and when it was time to forget, the pain came again. The harder you look away, the deeper you settle in your head. Sometimes, the sound makes a sound in a circle that is annoying to the ears. Sometimes, they just hurt me without any sound…tap..!
A dull, reverberating sound spread from the house where the silence and heavy silence flowed. Among the scattered sneakers, I found a mosquito quietly seeking a chance on the shoe rack tiles. In the end, the mosquito did not catch it, but the mosquito hurriedly hid itself. When I looked at my arm, it was already a little red and swollen. It had already been bitten.
At that time, I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, maybe my love is similar to the wound left by the mosquito.’ The place he left behind is annoying and painful, so if you can’t sleep and try to forget, wouldn’t it be like you suddenly get sick again? Still, mosquito bites disappear in time. Will this sudden goodbye disappear, too, or will it become a scar? Scars mean the past and prove their worth, and I thought my breakup would be special, too. The first separation became much lighter and lighter when I saw the small scar left on my arm in the days of hard, exhausting, and despair alone. I feel like an unexpected coincidence has gifted me a new beginning. Only then did I have a subtle smile. Still, I thought having something more cool instead of scarring would be nice. Still, I wanted to look brighter and prettier than scarring. So it wasn’t bad for the scars he left behind to become a scar and symbol of our story, but before it became more beautiful and scarred, I prepared to bloom on the spot. And now I will fill myself with the love I gave him without the expiration date.
Now I know that the purpose of love is not just to love someone else, that I was ashamed of myself, and that I was a smaller person than I thought. I’m ready to finish our love novel and write my own growth novel. Only then did I have the courage to find out what I wanted to do and what I wanted to do from now on. I haven’t caught the mosquito that gave me a fresh start yet..
By: jiwon seo
Write and Win: Participate in Creative writing Contest & International Essay Contest and win fabulous prizes.
