Nico - Flowers and Dreamcatchers Short Stories

I was surprised to see her. Before I could even begin to feel my surprise, she came to the armchair where I was sitting and sat down. It was a quiet afternoon. The sun was shining on the street like a car waiting for someone, and I couldn’t think of anything to do when I saw her. It was like a person walking alone in their thoughts being pushed aside, or a person sleeping and being pulled up and asked a question. She seemed to know that I was surprised. She threw her umbrella, her crocodile-skin wallet, and the empty book that she had easily picked up on the table, and she pulled her red sports shirt from her chest and shook it and blew a few breaths. She must have known that my father and mother were going to the office, that I was reading and trying to fall asleep, that I had played a song or two mindlessly by looking at the scattered songbooks next to my sprawling guitar, and that she must have known a lot of the rest.

You know..., he's my ex-boyfriend. To put it a little more bluntly, he's my ex-boyfriend who broke up with me three years ago. He glanced at me, unable to move, and picked up the point-and-shoot design pen on the table...

"Hey... how did you write this? The back is covered in wood. Can you put ink in this little thing?"

When he finished speaking, he didn't look at me, who didn't say anything. He put down his pen and picked up the straw painting and looked at it again. He really wasn't good for me to come to him. He already knew that I hated him, that I hurt him. He was disgusted. But he wasn't like a girl who came to an ex-boyfriend with guilt, but like a girl who came to a friend's house. Oh...he wouldn't come like this. Of all the things I've ever experienced, this was the most petty kind of Maya for him.

The hard thing is... it's been three years since I broke up with him. I've never seen him again, I've even forgotten him. I don't remember, imagine, or think about him anymore, I don't even have any hopes or expectations, and I've been crazy about him for about a year now.

I waited for him to find out about my abuse and deception, to understand my forgiving love, and to see if he would return my favor, and to use cruel, harsh words to express my love for him, which had been abused.

When he said "forgive me" with sobs, I burst out and waited for him to say "forgive me" with words. But he didn't come that time. I also avoided seeing him. If he understood, he would come, and I would never try to meet or talk to him who had insulted me so much.

"Are you guys going to the office?"

His last words were...

"Yes"

I answered. I had no intention of not talking back to him. He shook his hair and smiled at me. What did he want, his movements, his dark eyes, his breath, his smile, I began to think about him. Yes, because what did he want from me?

She had abandoned me, who had loved me so much, so weakly and so fearfully, and had gone after someone else. What more could she want from me? I stared at her, but I didn't know what she wanted. I was too weak to ever guess her thoughts by watching her movements.

I think the winter afternoon is quieter than I had expected. Not only is it quiet, but there is a softness to this winter afternoon. The softness of the shoreline, the soft texture of a newly washed-out beach, like a piece of unpainted canvas, the sounds of his and my movements.

Let it be like footprints that are lost on a beach, like drops of water that fall on a beach.

And this winter afternoon, because of his arrival, the silences of the whole world have been summoned, and now, in this small room, our skin is tight.

I feel like we are in my apartment, surrounded by animals that will devour our every move and say.

He didn't seem to like the situation either. It must have been suffocating for him to be like this. But he tried to destroy the situation without success. What do you want? I asked myself, and I thought it would be better if I drove the silence out of the room. Oh... But I'm not the stupid twenty-one-year-old I used to be.

I was terrified when I thought about what if he suddenly started crying. In fact, I had never seen him cry. I had only seen him laugh and make fun of me. If he were to cry... As I thought about it, I was terrified, and I gradually became angry, resentful, and disgusted with him. Feelings that had been hidden for years, and that I could no longer remember, surged into my blood cells in an incredible amount in an instant. With that thought in mind, I looked at his face and thought, oh... I hate him.

"You're still in the Master's degree..."

"Sure..."

"I think you've found someone new..."

"My lord, I am not your servant."

The voice that shouted loudly seemed to surprise me at the change. He slammed the book he had opened in his hand shut and looked at me with determined eyes. But how long would he look at me with my angry, arrogant eyes? He lowered his head.

"Are you still angry with me?"

"What... are you still angry?"

At the end of the speech, I burst out laughing. At first I laughed. But I don't know how I did it, but I couldn't stop laughing. Haha... Haha... Haha.

I chased after a laugh, and another one came out, and finally the laughs died down, and I was exhausted. My hands were shaking as if I had run out of energy. I sighed and looked at his face, and he was a little rabbit, a flower about to be picked, a rainbow of colors, a moon rising at dawn, a leaf afraid of the wind...

"I'm not angry, I'm just resentful, Mi Mon..."

My voice was soft, like a prayer to say that I wasn't angry, but when I said the word "resentment," it roared like a lion roaring, causing all the animals in the world to run away. And I pulled his arm, which was scared, and threw it away. I stood up abruptly from the armchair.

He...

"Brother..."

"I'm so angry," he muttered. My chest was heaving with anger. His eyes were white.

I'm not acting anymore. I fell down at first, like a starving animal that my mother had been holding for so long.

"Don't call me, don't ever call me Ko Ye, I'm no longer a creature who used to eat the food you feed me, the person you call "brother" to a good person has already curled your lips, hasn't it? Don't try to make fun of my name by putting on that kind of lip color, I'm ashamed, Mi Mon."

"Don't say those things."

"Oh my... are those things... yes, I must say. You are my first love, my first love after a year of friendship, my first story, my first shadow, my first poison, the name of my shame. If I don't tell you these words, what is the meaning of my life?"

My veins are as if I've drunk two gallons of wine. I no longer have any of the mental maturity I gained from books, social interactions, or anything else in the three years since my breakup.

Images of my three years of university that I had forgotten about suddenly came flooding back to me, red lips and a half of my brain being scratched.

He and I were friends for a year, lovers for a year.