LOST STARS: Episode 1, Runaway

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The murmuring of the staff outside on the road droned behind him as the afternoon wore on.

He looked out the van window.

The road behind the barrier dipped down sharply to a creek at the bottom and then rose again to a small knoll. There was a pagoda on top of it, its teal green and red paint almost sparkling in the warm sun, a jewel set in a forest of yellow and bright aspen, fading summer birches turning their leaves to autumn. It was the most beautiful thing he had thought he had ever seen.

It was tantalising. He wished he could be up there, under the painted eaves of the shrine, looking down at the valley beyond, the wind on his face, the sweet burble of the creek and the birds in his ears, breath in his lungs again. Oh! To be able to breathe.

Well… whyever not.

His heart beat loudly in his chest. It blocked out all other noise.

It was right there. A ten-minute walk at tops.

And then the thought grew.

They were all focused on the tyre. On getting him to his next schedule on time. And the next one, and the next one. Nobody was watching the right-hand door. Nobody was watching him. Nobody would see him go. And that meant, he didn’t have to come back.

Before he even realised what he was doing, his phone was out and he was transferring most of his money to his private card. The one with the Other Bank. He scheduled a message to the manager. He took off all his rings but one, and took out anything unnecessary in his wallet. He looked down at his shoes and light leather jacket. They would have to do. He shut the screen between the driving pit and his seat.

“I will have a nap then”, he had said when the driver had told him about the tyre, “don’t worry about me.”

They wouldn’t check on him till Daejeon.

He stepped out of the van. The road was hot. Autumn was late. The staff were still talking. Discussing. There were no cars. He shut the door softly. Nobody paid any attention to it.

He crossed the road.

And hopped the barrier and never looked back_

He took his time walking up to the pagoda. The sun was warm, and his clothing black. When he reached the top the blue haze of distance blurred the valley beyond and mountains hung close and he felt very far away from everything and very alone.

He lay in the pagoda and stared up at the dancheong tracing patterns and past lives and chasing thoughts he could not catch till the sun sank into the blue haze and turned everything purple. His chest was heavy.

The staff were long gone when he walked down the path back to the road. He stopped by the stream and splashed the cold water over his face, wiping off the sweat and the makeup and the mask. It sent a shiver down into his belly and he could feel it burning behind his ribs. He gasped and stood there dripping over the stream breathing heavily, watching the water slip and gurgle over the brown rocks, distorting his reflection.

It was dark when he made it back to the road. There was one street lamp marking the track to the shrine. He stood opposite it on the pull over bay with his jacket slung over his shoulder and stuck out his thumb, damp hair clinging to his forehead, staring at nothing. He could feel the weight of a thousand days on his limbs.

The first car that passed stopped.

It dropped him off in the first town south without his jacket. He had offered money but the driver asked for the designer item instead. He didn’t care.

There wasn’t much in the town. It was only two streets, a loop off the highway, the second lying parallel to the main street on the north side, on the bank of the creek.

There was a store. A couple of tent bars. Three restaurants, all small and family owned with local fare. A row of trade shops. A bookshop cafe. A pharmacy and a doctor’s clinic in one. A community hall with a tiny civil servant office attached and an atm outside. Two motels; one cheap and dark, one a nicer looking two story hanok house with a 3.5 star rating on a sign over the door. Something the town would boast.

It most likely serviced the farms and orchards on the hills behind, and as a pit stop, and not much else.

He checked into the hanok house and paid in cash. They brought food to his room with makgeolli and he downed the bottle straight and passed out.

He checked out the next morning. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know where he was going to go that night.

The heaviness was only growing. Like something that had been lurking and sitting there for so long was now breaking out. There was a numbness behind his eyes.

He ended up at a tent bar by 5. It was hot, the air was electric; there was a storm coming.

Thunder clapped and he startled as he was rising from his table.

He didn’t know when the storm had started. It was late. The table in front of him was littered with soju bottles. The owner was tidying up. It must’ve been very late.

The tent flap opened and the patron’s husband came in, ushering in a pile of boxes out of the rain.

There was a momentary meeting of places, otherwise disconnected by the thick canvas walls that seemed to draw a line between realities; the slicked streets and sheets of the storm collided with the orange glow and enclosed space of the tent, and the intense smell of hot country earth swiftly becoming wet, mixed with the bittersweet headiness of rice wine.

The world spun. His mouth tasted metallic, and he was shaking but he didn’t realise it. He fumbled a wad of bills out of his pocket, and stumbled out into the elements.

It was like being hit by a truck.

The sudden coolness of the late Summer rain against his skin was like the shock of the little valley creek all over again but stronger, only it didn’t clear his head, so much as his heart. Keen and clarion like the lightning that flashed and backlit the mountains across the valley, drenching him in the blue light of cold fire mixed with the toxic neon of the town lights, he felt the immense weight finally break, and lift off him, only to be replaced by a cutting, rushing, all enveloping pain.

He collapsed drunk under the eave of the book shop, as the rain poured down, and cried.

Shin Myung looked out the passenger seat window of the truck, the few street and store lights trailing down the pane in watercolours. There was a man, no, a boy really, sitting under the door of the bookshop, one knee drawn up to his chest, hand draped over, one leg stretched out in front of him, his torso wracking with sobs.

She remembered a boy in a red t-shirt playing in the cabbage fields a long time ago. The boy running home to be thrown high into the air by his father and sweet laughter echoing in a now empty room.

She reached for the umbrella and got out of the truck, walking over to the young man and crouching down in front of him.

‹‹ 괜찮으세요? ›› “Are you okay?”

Through the numbness the voice came. He looked up and met her eyes.

Something swift and sharp cut through her like a knife then.

“Where are you from?” She asked above the rain.

“Where am I…” tears sprang from his eyes again. He shook his head.

She tried again.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” he said, in the smallest voice imaginable.

“The motel?”

He shook his head again.

“Away. Not here.”

She looked around. The tent bar was closing, the patron hurriedly stacking chairs now in a
bright yellow rain jacket.

“Not here, eh. Alright then.”

She held out her hand.

He stared at it.

“Up you get.”

Tentatively he accepted the hand and she pulled him up. He stumbled but she supported him with one short and sturdy arm around his waist to the truck door.

He stood shivering in the rain looking at the open door with the seat and the warm heater air blowing on his face. He blinked.

“Get in,” the older woman said with a smile.

He got in. His head was on fire. The world went in and out of focus as the woman drove the truck out of the town and across the bridge over the creek and up a road lined with cherry trees with fiery leaves.

The truck pulled up at a large horseshoe shaped hanok farm house.

He was slightly more conscious now, but still tipsy and shivering. He got out of the truck and his head swam with a wave of nausea. A day’s glasses of soju all rushed to his head at once.

He followed the ahjummah inside wordlessly. Her husband looked up from his place on the couch reading the newspaper, seemingly unsurprised by the otherwise unexpected visitor.

He bowed automatically but could find no words.

The woman clucked under her breath and instead of staying for introductions, she steered him immediately towards a bathroom to the right of an open spacious central kitchen, pulling a towel and some spare clothes apparently out of thin air.

“Get yerself in there and have a shower, kid.” Her voice was low and soothing against the spiky noise in his brain, and the ache in his bones.

She shut the door. He slumped to the floor and promptly threw up in the toilet.

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