Air Born

"Hey, DoKyeom, after here in Andalucia, I'd like to go to Slovenia, too. I've heard there's a lot of age-old forests and crystal clear waters up there," her face was so bright the night she said it and I'd forever etched that in my memory. 

She was drinking her blue lemonade while we sat outside our cottage in Conil.

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He's crying silent tears as he navigated the road again to Conil de la Frontera, back in Andalucia, Spain.

Squinting through tears and midnight chills, he wasn't sure if he can make it on time.

The soft breathing of someone asleep is the only sound that can be heard in the rental car he's driving.

She was in the backseat, wrapped in a rainbow quilt. Spots of blood are now too apparent in the quilt.

I only smiled as a response to her Slovenian dream.

Her smile? It was just so priceless that I want to see her like that forever.

"How long are we before going to reach Conil?" a tired, almost inaudible voice heard from behind him.

He was starting to cry again. It's the only capable thing he could do at the moment.

I remembered being the one in charge to take pictures of our Andalucian trip but sometimes, I couldn't focus on the task knowing the one I considered my world is just in front of me.

How could someone focus on that, right?

"I'm thirsty." he heard her say. But he knew he couldn't do something with it.

She hasn't been drinking water or any other fluids for the past three days.

She said she was thirsty but she was craving for something else she couldn't pinpoint at all.

That day in college when I was left without a choice but you, to become my partner for a project is one of the best that has ever happened in my life.

If we both didn't come in late to school that day, our professor perhaps won't pair us at all.

Or worst, you might not ever consider pairing with me if you had the choice.

But at least, the very fact that you are my girlfriend now will always remain the positive plot twist in the story.

The flight from Seoul Gimpo International Airport to El Prat Airport in Barcelona, Spain to Valparaiso until Andalucia took approximately 20 hours.

And two days before that, she was already suffering. Aside from no fluids at all, she hasn't eaten meals, too.

She was just tired and deteriorating and doesn't even speak for more than 10 words.

We visit a certain bird sanctuary in Andalucia and we found out that aside from a wide variety of homely and friendly birds, they also housed the wild and scary ones like vultures, buzzards, sparrowhawks, condor, and many more.

I remembered JiHyo said something I wish she hadn't.

"Look DoKyeom, it's scary enough to see hundreds and hundreds of birds in one setting and they even considered to house vultures? The one feeding the dead?"

Her face, I recalled, was disgusted.

Someone somewhere heard us- her, and answered, "At least you're not the one being fed at."

The one who answered her was smiling eerily.

She was an elderly woman, I estimated to be about 80 years old. Her hair was all white and she was wearing a gray herringbone coat on top of an orange turtleneck. Her shoes were worn-out black loafers with mud on all the sides. 

Her pants, a-once-navy-blue-but-now-faded twill pants. She had a gray trilby hat in one hand and a medium-sized white-turned-gray duffel bag in the other.

Overall, she was somewhat clean but there's no elegance in her.

JiHyo's eyes, though, widened with what she said.

"Are we halfway there?" she once again asked although still inaudible. He heard her shifting position in the backseat.

Upon hearing her voice, fresh tears started rolling down his cheeks once more. Yet, trying to gain composure, he replied, "We are already in Finca Duende."

That's 11 mins more until Conil de la Frontera.

Our Andalucian trip lasted for two weeks and we went back to Seoul right after.

But that's where the catch is.

She told me the night we arrived that she found a single feather, from a vulture she believed, in her mini backpack.

She then started dreaming weird dreams for five straight nights.

In her dream, she saw the elderly woman, still smiling at her eerily amid hundreds of vultures.

The elderly woman was at first, at a good distance from her but then she got nearer and nearer as each dream drag on.

She was whispering the same lines in each dream. "Come back."

As the days passed on, I remembered JiHyo telling me she spotted several cuts in her body mostly at the back and it was bleeding, although not profusely, but scarily continuous- and it gets bigger and deeper each passing day.

They finally arrived at Contil.

JiHyo then suddenly whispered that they should find a forest.

JiHyo told me that we have to go back to Andalucia, Spain right away because maybe she was cursed by the elderly woman.

She believed, if we came back to make amends with that woman, everything will be alright again.

I hope.

DoKyeom's face lighted up as he saw a forest. Relaying it to JiHyo, she slowly emerged her head from the quilt.

She smiled a little.

Arriving at a clearing, she tapped DoKyeom's shoulder, signaling him to slow down and stop.

He, of course, obeyed.

"Please let me out," he heard her say once more.

Knowing that JiHyo was already too weak to let out herself alone, DoKyeom opened the door for her and carried her- the bridal way, but still covered with the blood-spotted quilt.

"In the center of the clearing, please." She whispered, now too weak to be audible.

DoKyeom, although confused, obeyed and placed her at the center of the clearing. He was now standing beside her as she sat.

The light of dawn is already seeping through that time and there was a pearly glow in the sky.

But although it was still kind of dark, he saw that JiHyo did smile widely just like her old self for the first time.

After two beats, she suddenly softly announced, "You can now leave me."

He was genuinely shocked. "What?" his brows meet.

"Leave,"

"For God's sake JiHyo, what are you saying?" He now folded his knees and leaned closer to her.

JiHyo didn't answer. She was closing her eyes so he stared at her.

She, however, snapped her eyes without warning and glared at him. With all the remaining strength she had, she shouted, "LEAVE!"

He jumped away from her but suddenly realizing what had happened, he cried once more, heavier this time.

He stared at her for a while and whispered, "Why?"

But he wasn't prepared for what happened next.

JiHyo, suddenly snapped her eyes shut and hurriedly squirmed outside from the quilt that covered her.

She then knelt by the time she was already out from the quilt covering her and somewhat wriggling from something invisible. She must be suppressing pain because she was gnashing.

Then, out of the hundred cuts that developed in her body days ago, appears deep brown feathers. 

It grows too fast that DoKyeom was left speechless.

She was bleeding profusely by now and she was gasping for air. 

Something weird is happening to her and DoKyeom can't quite comprehend.

After mere seconds, she metamorphosed into something.

A vulture.

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"So, that was it?" a lady police asked him.

His shirt was full of blood.

But he only remembered that he was in contact with JiHyo's blood through the spots in the quilt.

"... because we don't believe any of it Mister." the lady police, her nameplate writes Angel- that's probably her name, glared at him questioningly.

He was charged with JiHyo's murder.

A farmer found him outside the rental car he drove with JiHyo.

The farmer, noticing that his shirt was full of blood, asked for help from the Andalucian police.

Upon DNA, it was found that the blood in the backseat was JiHyo's.

Yet, they don't believe when he said the truth.

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JiHyo of Twice

DoKyeom of Seventeen