Alliterative Arrangement (buttbun Homage)

The trees raced past the window, blurs of tentative green in anticipation of the new spring. Above them, stretching on and on, was a vibrant and clear sky. That day it was a particular shade of blue- that certain shade that sent your heart to aching just by looking at the beauty of it all, a vivid expanse that spoke as much of life as the thrill of a full breath or the beating of your heart. A breathtaking painting out beyond the glass, so beautiful it could almost make one forget all the pain in the world.

Miyeon curled her fingers on the window, letting the ever-present rattle tickle her fingertips. She watched the splashes of green and vivid blue pass by for a few more seconds, then let her gaze drift away. A gentle brushing at her lips drew her attention to the stray strand of hair that had fallen across her face. Miyeon brushed it back to tuck it again behind her ear, and caught a glimpse of her seatmate- a cute brown-eyed girl with fiery dyed hair- watching her timidly. The girl immediately realized that she had been staring, grew red, and hastily looked away.

Miyeon bemusedly looked back out the window. Her fellow passenger had yet to say a word for the thirty-odd minutes that had already passed on the train. For a good chunk of that time, the girl had been furiously texting away at her phone, chatting back and forth with a “Sam” with a dreamy look on her face. However, she had hardly made any utterances out loud, except for the occasional soft ahem-hem as she cleared her throat and tugged at a- was that a choker with a cat-shaped charm?

The girl glanced at her with an apologetic smile, then quickly looked back down and began thumbing her phone’s screen on and off. Miyeon casually turned her gaze, which had apparently drifted to her shy seatmate, again to the window. She gently rubbed her fingers together thoughtfully. Perhaps it was time that she broke the ice- there was at least an hour left in the ride, after all. Miyeon turned back to the girl hesitantly.

“...Nice shirt.”

The girl looked up quickly from her empty phone screen, which she had been turning on and off idly. “I- sorry?”

Miyeon gestured. “Presse... ne pas Avaler.”

She looked down at her shirt. “Oh, yeah. Um. Thanks.” The girl gave Miyeon a small, embarrassed smile, then began to fidget again with her phone.

“The name’s Miyeon, by the way. What’s yours?”

The girl glanced back up. Her gaze flicked across the train compartment, then quietly- “Mira.” A small crease furrowed her brow, and she blushed a little. She sat up straighter. “My name’s Mira,” the girl said more loudly.

Miyeon gave Mira as warm and reassuring a smile as she could. “Nice to meet you, Mira.”

A sliver of pink appeared at the girl’s lips as she nervously wetted them for a moment. “It was… Mian, was it?”

“Miyeon!”

“Oh-?”

Miyeon nodded. “Me-yun. Miyeon.”

The blush was back. Mira sank a little in her seat. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s perfectly fine!” Miyeon beamed welcomingly at the girl.

They sat in awkward silence for a few seconds, before Mira quietly cleared her throat. “Is that, uh, Korean?”

“My name? Yeah, I was born in South Korea. My parents moved and brought me here when I was, like, six. I barely speak any Korean, but… well, yeah.”

Mira nodded. “I… uh… I guess I could say I knew a Korean friend.”

“Really?”

“Yeah… Hyeon. Her name was Hyeon.”

“Hyeon…? That’s a pretty uncommon surname.”

Mira looked confused for a second. “That’s a surname? Oh, shit.”

Miyeon laughed. “Did she not tell you?”

Mira glanced abashedly at Miyeon. “Uh… we didn’t really spend too much time together. Actually, to be quite honest, I’ve only met her once at a restaurant with some, ah, mutual friends. There wasn’t too much opportunity for conversation. She was pretty tight.”

“Tight?”

Mira blushed. “Oh. I meant, uh, tight… on time. Couldn’t stay for long.”

“Oh?” Miyeon gave her a vaguely quizzical look. She could swear that Mira looked positively embarrassed- but for what reason? Miyeon cocked her head, bemused.

The other girl was fidgeting again. Suddenly she looked up, apparently trying to revive the conversation that had awkwardly trailed off. “So, uh, what brings you to the city?”

“Oh, visiting my boyfriend,” Miyeon replied cheerfully. “I have a government job in the countryside, and he’s an aspiring reporter for the daily. We make it work…” Miyeon felt her smile flicker, and pushed it back up again, but it was too late. Mira looked at her curiously from the side as Miyeon turned her head to look out the window in a failed attempt to hide the insecurity in her eyes. “...for the most part,” she finished awkwardly.

“I… I’m sorry,” Mira said carefully.

“It’s no big deal,” Miyeon said, trying to make her voice casual. “It’s just… long distance relationships are hard. And it’s stressful for him, the job and all, picking up after everyone else with no recognition at all, they don’t really treat him well at all, he gets so frustrated by the unfairness of everything, so he-” Miyeon came to a stop. The memories were suddenly too painful to bring up to light and examine at the present. Also, she had said too much. Why had she said that? Why had she gone down that path at all? Mira’s disarming shyness had loosened her tongue one degree too far. Miyeon clamped her mouth shut, angry at herself, a choked feeling in her chest, and slumped into her seat.

“Miyeon?” Mira was looking at her with a worried look slowly drifting onto her face. “Are you… is everything… okay?”

“Yes,” Miyeon said, trying to keep her tone neutral. “I- It’s just- nothing.” She tried her best to smile at Mira but could only muster what was at most a grimace. “Nothing.”

The silence felt like a torn flower to Miyeon, a blossom with petals sliced and ripped and rent apart. There was a dull, resonant feeling in her chest, as if she were a shattered bell that had been hit by a hammer. She looked back out of the window and tried to breathe, and suddenly found her vision misted, the trees and beauty outside the train blurred. Suddenly Miyeon was fenced in, crushed between a hundred walls-

And a warm hand took her own, a gentle pressure from the side. Miyeon made a choked sound and whirled around. Mira, who had taken her hand, flinched, but gave her a timid attempt at a reassuring smile. This stranger, this absolute stranger, was looking at her with absolute compassion in her eyes- with empathy- did she know? How could she know? How could she-

“It’s okay,” Mira said, quietly. “Tell me, if you want. I’m here.”

So Miyeon told her.

---

The buildings passing by were now tall and looming. Miyeon had calmed down noticeably and had long since wiped the tears from her eyes. The old couple across the aisle were politely pretending that Miyeon hadn’t been damn near bawling her eyes out a few minutes ago.

Mira, for her part, had been attentive and understanding the entire time. She hadn’t interrupted even once. As Miyeon had told her story, stuttering through numb lips, Mira didn’t pull her reassuring grasp away or break eye contact with her. She simply watched and listened, nodding sympathetically.

When Miyeon finished, Mira sat there quietly, letting her eyes trace off into the window beyond Miyeon’s shoulder. Then her gaze returned, meshing with Miyeon’s.

“I’m sorry,” Mira said. “It sounds… horrible.”

“It’s been the last six months,” Miyeon said, bravely attempting at a shrug. “I’m sure it will pass.”

Mira pursed her lips. “You’re a... human being, Miyeon,” she said. “You can’t continue enduring this. You deserve more than this.”

“He’s really all I have,” Miyeon replied, a quiet and uncertain protest. “I wouldn’t know what to do without him.”

“Move on,” Mira said. There was a hard edge to her voice. “Let the little shit go and never let him return into your life. There are so many people in this world that you can find, good people, kind people who would appreciate you for all eternity. Don’t feel a single iota of obligation to stay with a person like that, Miyeon. You deserve better. You deserve… so much better.”

A soft chiming sound. Mira looked around, confused. Miyeon pulled out her phone.

“It’s him.” Miyeon slowly looked at Mira. “He’s expecting me in like two hours.”

Mira met Miyeon’s eyes, then sent her gaze down to the ringing phone. “Don’t answer.”

“I should,” Miyeon said softly. “He’d get mad if I didn’t-”

“Don’t.”

A hand, slender and pale but for a faint, oddly shaped bruise near the wrist, came to hover over Miyeon’s phone screen, blocking out the caller ID. Miyeon tore her eyes away from the screen, not knowing that she had been staring so. “I… don’t know what else to do but answer.”

Mira looked down, then sighed- a short, quiet sigh, gone in an instant like an errant breeze but, without mistake, full of pain. “Trust me.”

Miyeon put the phone away.

Mira lowered her hand and massaged her temple and looked down into her lap. “I… met a guy, once. Through a site. We were trying some stuff out, experimenting, and he went too far. Always too far. It got abusive.

It was hard to leave. I kept lying to myself. I was in denial at first, telling myself that it hadn’t gotten that far yet, that I needed him, that I wanted him. It took… a long time. But I finally screwed up the courage to take my stuff and go. I’ve never looked back since.”

Mira looked up and gave Miyeon a tentative smile. “After him, I met Sam, and the last few weeks have been pure bliss... Leaving was the best decision I made in my life.”

Miyeon realized that her mouth was hanging open ever so slightly, and shut it. She looked away, just in time to hear the chiming of her phone. Her boyfriend was calling once again. Her hand itched with the unsaid geas, the driving compulsion.

She slowly declined the call.

Both girls were silent for a while.

“Do you have anything at his place?” Mira asked. “Anything important?”

“No,” Miyeon said.

“Okay.” Mira nodded. “Then it’s simpler. All you have to do is not go. Call him and tell him that the relationship is off, that you’re done. Or… if you don’t feel up to it… I can do it for you.”

“No.” Miyeon stared at the blank screen of her phone. “I’ll… I’ll do it.”

Mira slowly breathed out through her nose and nodded once again, with finality. Miyeon blew out a deep breath. The decision was made in her mind- and funnily enough, even though she hadn’t said a single word to her boyfriend yet, the leaden weight that had been pressing at her chest was now gone, dissipated into thin air like smoke in the wind.

The train was slowing down now, coming into the station. Around them were buildings with rickety fire escapes and worn brick walls, and in the distance rose skyscrapers that reached for the bright blue sky in prayer. Some passengers were already up, reaching for their luggage and bustling with the anticipation of stretching their legs. Miyeon wetted her lips, then met Mira’s gaze. The other girl had not moved, watching her with equal measures of concern and sympathy.

“Are you okay?” Mira asked.

“Thank you,” Miyeon said, quietly. She reached over and embraced her seatmate, who had only hours ago been a total stranger, a brown-eyed girl with fiery hair anxiously thumbing her phone on and off.

Mira hugged her back warmly. “I have all the hope in the world for you,” she said.

The station was still wreathed with morning mist, and Miyeon disembarked onto a platform seemingly woven from a cloud. Mira was ahead of her, picking up pace suddenly, then racing to an olive-skinned middle age woman in a professional blue jacket and black skirt. Miyeon heard a faint, jubilant squeal, and Mira crashed into the woman, cuddling her like a fiery-haired kitten. Then Mira turned, breaking from her embrace, scanning quickly, and found Miyeon amongst the crowd. She raised a hand in farewell.

Miyeon smiled and waved back, then turned to leave the platform. As she looked up into the bright blue sky, she couldn’t help but let out a small laugh of relief and delight. She had a phone call to make, then a search to begin. New horizons and faces awaited her.

Miyeon took in a deep breath, tasting the cool, adventurous air, and proceeded.