Chapter 2: Between Full Bloom and Falling Blossoms

 

Chapter 2: Between Full Bloom and Falling Blossoms

Hyeon-seo shifted gears and pressed her foot smoothly down on the accelerator. Rather than a mechanical shriek, the battered compact car let out a low, muffled groan as it glided onto the asphalt.

Someone once said that romance and marriage belong to entirely different worlds, and that reality is far colder than any illusion. Yet, to the Hyeon-seo of the past, marriage had not been the fruition of love; it was a desperate escape from hell. As long as she could flee her alcoholic father’s drunken rants and the suffocating confines of that house, the identity of the man beside her simply did not matter. Thus, she chose a wedding held concurrently with her university graduation. Now, at forty, the price of choosing life as a mere escape had returned to her in the form of shuddering regret and bitter wails before the arrival of a true, genuine love.

Before she knew it, the car had slipped out of the winding bends and was cruising through the forest tunnel of the Hallasan Mountain foothills. For twenty long years, sharing flesh with someone she did not love had been a duty akin to a lifelong sentence. She had stopped caring about who her husband met outside. Her only prayer was that he would leave her in peace—that he would not ruthlessly claim her body as his own. The memories of his violent intimacy, which had systematically crushed her self-esteem, and the beast-like humiliation that always followed in its wake… Hyeon-seo shook her head violently, trying to shatter the lingering panic of those recollections.

At the entrance of a secluded village, the car came to a halt before a weathered gate heavily overgrown with tangled vines. This was the very place where, three years ago, a man had appeared to breathe life back into her dying soul. Hyeon-seo closed her eyes, heavy with exhaustion. Beyond her shut eyelids, a voice as sweet as a mirage drifted in on the wind like a phantom echo.

‘I love you, Hyeon-seo.’

As Hyeon-seo stepped out of the car, her bobbed hair scattered in the breeze. Even the haggard exhaustion from the near-accident could not mask her youthful features, which still held the vibrant freshness of someone in their early thirties. Yet, what she yearned for was not a mere empty shell of youth. It was the lingering scent that man had left behind three years ago, the rough texture of his breath tickling her ear, and the scorching sensory memory of the time she had been treated as the most precious entity in the entire world.

Standing before the rusted iron gate, she closed her eyes once more and deliberately cast herself into the abyss of her memories. Within her mind, a kaleidoscope of the four seasons began to flow to a mournful melody.

[Spring: The Goddess of Canola Blossoms]

It was a spring day beneath the Seongsan Ilchulbong Tuff Cone, where the yellow canola blossoms rippled like a golden ocean. Hyeon-seo stood amidst the sea of flowers, draped in a traditional fairy gown. In-wu repeatedly pressed the shutter, collecting the most beautiful, fleeting fragments of her existence.

"Beautiful. Now, tilt your body just a fraction more toward me. Sexily… Yes, just like that. Perfect. Okay, good."

At the sound of his gentle voice, Hyeon-seo felt a sudden surge of vitality wrap around her—a sensation she had never experienced in her entire life. Bathed in his gaze, which was far thicker and intoxicating than the fragrance of the flowers, she finally realized that she was a woman who was truly alive.

[Summer: A Love Scorching Hotter Than the Waves]

It was a summer day beneath the cliffs of Chagwido Island, where the innocent laughter of children bled into the crashing waves. Hyeon-seo stood before his lens, dressed in alluring, sensual attire.

"Hyeon-seo, lean forward just a little bit. Let your collarbone and cleavage show subtly…" In-wu advanced toward her, his shutter clicking without a single pause.

‘You’re really not going to commercialize these, right?’

As she shrank back in sudden bashfulness, In-wu lowered his camera and offered her the most harmless, pure smile in the world.

"Of course not. I simply want to record the most beautiful era of your life. So that later, when we grow old together, we can look back and cherish this very moment."

His promise struck her heart like a sweet, addictive narcotic. More than the bare skin exposed beneath her clothes, it was the burning intensity of his gaze—looking at her not as an object, but as a whole human being, as the most beautiful subject in the universe—that made Hyeon-seo feel as though her entire being was melting away.

[Autumn: The Bookmark of My Heart]

When the forest path of the 516 Road was dyed in crimson autumn leaves, Hyeon-seo stood like a spirit of the woods, draped only in a single long coat. The fleeting glimpses of her bare skin beneath the coat were not an obscenity, but a work of pure art. Their love, burning as fiercely as well-ripened red leaves, became an indelible bookmark pressed deep into her heart. In-wu’s whispered words as he gently pulled her coat collars closer—"It’s cold, my love"—echoed in her ears now, sharper and chillier than the autumn wind itself.

[Winter: Frozen Time]

Upon the snow-covered plains of the 1100 Altitude where snow blossoms bloomed in full, the two tumbled and played like innocent children, tossing snowballs at each other. A love they believed would walk together forever, just like the footprints carved into the pristine white snow. Yet, at the end of that brilliant winter, their love ground to a halt, leaving behind nothing but a heart frozen solid. The chill of that parting was as bone-piercingly cold as their passion had been searingly hot.

Fade to Black.

Hyeon-seo leaned her weight against the ancient tree beside the gate, exhaling a trembling breath. Though the four seasons had cycled three times over, her time remained captured, taxidermied at that very spot in that winter three years ago when he had walked away.

‘Three years have passed, yet his soul still breathes inside my chest. No, perhaps he has borrowed my entire soul to live on.’

As if awakening from a agonizing reverie of longing, Hyeon-seo slowly opened her eyes. And with a heavy heart, she took a single, halting step toward the vine-entangled, now masterless gate of the house.