Dark Blue - 深蓝の魂 by 珊


Chapter 32
Looking in on her through the glass windows, Mike stood solemnly still, lost in a daze as he watched her work. Just as his day began, all he could do was thinks of her. Despite the strange feelings of his past experience and what he knew about her, he still remembered that it was all an illusion.

He stood in front of the person who changed him. She was so close to him, but so far out of reach. Would she ever give him a chance to obtain what they’d shared in his illusory mental image? Engraved in his mind, he knew it was just an impracticable past.

As the person who was with her, her patient, walked out of the contemptibly unimportant space, he put Ji Yun and all thoughts behind him and made his way across the street.

Li Ann stacked away her previous patient’s files before taking a deep breath and checked her watch. It had been only her first patient of the day, and already she was starting to stress out. She opened the desk drawer and began searching for a pen to write a report with when the bell attached to her door rang.

His blood circulated quicker than usual as he entered and looked around, acting as if he hadn’t been there the day before. She looked up and knitted her eyebrows at him. A moment later, she remembered him as the man from the day before. What was he doing back here?

“Hi, can I help you?” she asked. Mike closed the door and walked into the space where she had a few chairs for waiting patients to sit.

“Yes, I need somebody to talk to,” Mike replied, not knowing what else he could say.

“Mr. Lee, I already told you I-”

“I’m not here to ask you to have coffee with me or anything. I’m just looking for a psychologist and well, your brother said you’re the best in town.”

He tossed in a smile to bring in a natural conclusion.

“He did?” Li Ann raised an eyebrow in question. Mike nodded quickly.

“All right,” Li Ann sighed. “Do you need me to go over with you the details of my weekly sessions or coverage for a reasonable amount of time?”

Mike shook his head. “Your brother has already told me enough.”

Still not fully believing that her brother would care so much to let a “close” friend know about her occupation, she pulled out a clipboard and picked up her pen.

“Follow me,” she smiled. She would give it a try since she didn’t have any other patients soon.

Mike sat down on a long couch while Li Ann sat across from him, slipping on her glasses as she cleared her throat. Mike waited patiently for her to begin.

“Mr. Lee,” Li Ann started.

“Mike. Call me Mike,” he asked politely.

“Okay, Mike.” She felt awkward. “Why don’t you give me the reason why you’re in need of therapy?”

“I...I start first?” Mike asked, uncertainty filling his thoughts.

“Yes,” Li Ann confirmed.

“Well, first reason is that I don’t want to go to work,” Mike replied, debating to himself if that was the initial or second reason. “And second is to get away from my wife.”

“Mr. Lee, I would ask that you be serious on this. This is costing you a lot of money you know,” Li Ann calmly told him.

Mike managed a slight laugh. “Okay, I’ll be serious.”

“Go on,” she continued.

“Two weeks ago, I got into an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“The brakes on my car didn’t work, so I ran over a bridge and landed in a stream. My head had a pretty bad concussion and I went into a coma, for two weeks. I just woke up three days ago, and now I’m here.”

She stopped writing for a second, then glanced up at him. Was he trying to ridicule her?

“Is that all?”

“During my coma, I had a dream. I must’ve dreamt every night during my coma, because I counted near 14 days of being in my dream.”

“And what was your dream about?” she was beginning to grow interested in his story.

“I died.”

He stopped there, waiting for her reaction. Of course there was none, but only a mere surprised look on her face. He continued.

“I was a ghost. I saw my destiny for once, and also the person who caused my death. It was like watching a movie of my afterlife.”

Li Ann had stopped writing now, and was listening intently to his story. Not only the way he told it amused her - it was how his dream differed from the usual mind tricks her other patients would tell her about.

“And who was that?”

“My wife,” Mike responded bitterly. She noticed the ring he wore yesterday was now gone.

“You don’t have to believe me, Dr. Kim, but I have a question for you.”

“Yes?” Li Ann wasn’t expecting one. At least not yet.

“Can you see ghosts?”

Li Ann went blank for a second. What did he mean by that? A small smile broke out on her face as she thought he was only joking, but the man’s still face remained.

“No, Mr. Lee. I can’t. I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“Are you sure? I believe you can.”

They continued their conversation, but it drifted off the topic of Mike’s reason to be there. It was on blameless topics that he brought up to avoid talking about what really happened in his dream. He didn’t want to scare her off, or reveal too much for her to take in all at once. He didn’t really know why he was there either, but he thought he wanted to see her.

Li Ann was beginning to agree to herself that he didn’t really need the help, but was just there to waste her time. Nonetheless, she treated him as she would any of her patients. The reason she didn’t ask for his personal information when he first came was because she predicted he wouldn’t stay as a patient very long. Not somebody who didn’t seem to have different views of the world.

“Mike, that’ll conclude our session for today. I take that you will come back for weekly visits?” It had been a full hour since they began talking.

“If I have to,” Mike replied, standing up after her. She seemed in such a hurry to get rid of him. Was she nervous?

She walked over to her desk and handed him a form. Mike looked over it and filled it out quickly. After signing his name on the bottom, he gladly handed it over to her. His cell phone rang.

After a few seconds of talking on the phone with Junjin, who had been wondering where he went all morning and afternoon, he was ready to leave. Turning around to say goodbye to her, Mike exited the little office. As he walked towards his car, he thought to himself of how cruel fate had decided to play him. So she didn’t remember anything at all, because it never happened.

But everything between him and Ji Yun did.

-

Casting himself away from the crowd, Hwanhee hid himself behind a row of tall bushes as Eric, followed by a few officers walked into the airport. They obviously weren’t looking for only him, but he knew he would easily get caught if he went in. Deciding it was too much of a risky chance, he whistled to the nearest taxi.

The taxi stopped in front of him and he tossed in his suitcase, half full of money and the other his personal items. He ordered the driver to head to the nearest train station - one which happened to be across town.

-

Ji Yun knew he would be home in less than an hour. Her fingers trembled as she stiffly held the small white package of poison. Contemplating to herself all day about what she would do, she had thought of really killing him after all. She looked over to the pot of soup she’d made earlier on the stove and pondered. Gripping the bag of drugs, she walked over and opened the lid to the pot. The soup was still hot.

It was now or never.

Ji Yun quickly emptied the contents of the bag into the soup. She bit her lips as fresh tears stung her eyes. He wanted to divorce her. She wouldn’t take that as an answer. Never before in her life had anybody rejected her, not even Hwanhee. She wasn’t going to let Mike go that easily.

Ji Yun made sure she didn’t pour the entire thing into the soup. She unknowingly didn’t want the poison to work, thinking that maybe if she poured only half, it wouldn’t harm him. But feeling foolish enough, she changed her mind and made sure all she had left was just the little bag in her hands.

She watched the white powdery drug sink slowly into the thick soup. Her heart sank with it. She would have to watch him die...

Balling her hand into a fist, she spread it back out and looked at the ring on her finger. It glittered from the translucent light above her. He was so happy when he placed that ring on her finger.

Closing her eyes, she tried to remember the past - before she had met him, and when she had just first gone out with him. Their first date, first kiss, and how sweet he was. She was secretly happy with him for a while. Though she knew it, she hid it from Hwanhee, for he expected her to finish her job.

Muttering a curse to herself, she took hold of the handles of the pot and poured out the soup into the sink. She couldn’t do it.

All Mike had ever wanted was to make her happy. Even if she wanted him for only his money, she couldn’t kill him. But what if he divorced her? Where would she go?

Her phone rang disturbingly, causing her to drop the entire pot into the sink. Wiping her hands on a rag, she quickly walked over to pick it up.

“Hello?” Her voice was a mere whisper.

“Ji Yun? Where’s Mike?” Hwanhee’s gruff voice seemed to be in a hurry.

“Still at work. Why?” Ji Yun began to worry about what Hwanhee was going to do.

“When’s he coming home?” Hwanhee’s question sounded like an angry demand.

“Soon.” Ji Yun managed to keep her voice steady.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Why? What are you going to do? Hwanhee?” Ji Yun began to panic.

“Undelivered gift to Mike. We’ll finish the job today.”

He hung up.

Ji Yun glanced around the room and searched for the clock. She didn’t have the car to go find Mike, wherever he was. Hwanhee was coming to kill him, causing all calm feelings to leave Ji Yun. What was she going to do?

Devastated and out of a way to go, she did the only thing she could think of. She found her purse and fumbled around for the second bag of white powder poison.