The sun peeking through my curtains was enough to make me want to throw the blanketsover my head and sleep for another twelve hours. I actually did throw them back over me, turned to face the wall, and settled in for what I hoped would be at least another twelve, before I heard it.
Meow.
I groaned a little, wrapped the quilt closer, despite the already-blistering July heat, and pretended to keep sleeping. But my grandmother's cat knew better.Meeeoooowwwww, came her rumbling protest at my ignoring her, half growl, half whine.
"Shhhh, Jjingpang," I grumbled my own protest. "It's way too early for this." Actually, it wasn't too early; it was nearly eleven in the morning. But then, every morning felt to early for me. A wave of heaviness hit my stomach as I let my thoughts wander to the time. As long as I could sleep again, I'd be fine.
But Jjingpang was having none of it. "Meeeeeeeeeeoooooooowwwwwwww," she yowled, this time swatting with her paws at my blanket-covered face. I sighed, deeply, pulling myself up with great reluctance. "Fine. You win. Just stop prodding me, okay?" Clearly my response satisfied the cat, as she turned a full, supermodel 180, gave a long, luxurious stretch, and trotted off towards the kitchen.
I grabbed my ratty woollen cardigan off the end of my bed, wrapping it over my baggy t-shirt and Hello Kitty pajama pants, and shoved my feet into my open-toed slippers before following the cat to the kitchen. Even with the rising heat, everything felt cold to me.
I padded into the kitchen and opened the fridge, grabbing a chilled can of cat food for Jjingpang from the top shelf. My eye caught a depleted line of soju bottles, some still unopened, many empty. The full ones beckoned me, but I shook my head, and nudged the fridge door closed. You're not that bad yet, Hanna, I mumbled to myself, under my breath.
I grabbed Jjingpang's monogrammed bowl and emptied the contents from the can into it before setting it onto the ground. Jjingpang, who had been sitting expectantly for her food trotted over and immediately began munching. "Greedy cat," I mumbled, scratching her ears. Jjingpang acknowledged my presence through a low growl before continuing to chow down.
I got up from my crouching position and looked around me. It was more humid here than at home in Vancouver. B.C. got misty and humid—and often smoggy—in the summer, but it was actually hot here. I could tell when I looked at the fine mist of condensation on the windows, remnants from the early morning dew. I wrinkled my nose at it and fought off the temptation to go back up the hall and sleep again. But I'm not that bad yet, I reminded myself. It would be easy to hide here, far away from my supervisor's harsh words, from my flailing academic career. From the painful reality that I would never see my grandmother again, and that I had been so busy over the past seven years that I'd hardly made time to see her. It would be easy to hide away from all of that, to numb myself and pretend that the last few months never happened.
But they did happen, I reminded myself again. And I had a job to do. As my grandmother's only grandchild, my parents weren't surprised that I'd been left her little country house while they'd inherited her apartment in Seoul. It had been arranged when I was a teenager, and she'd known that we would probably always be her only descendants. It was also why it was my responsibility to tame her overgrown garden and muck out the pond. Besides my qualifications in botany, it was a good task for a depressed person; nobody else would want to do it.
I briefly considered whether or not I should change into my daytime clothes, before deciding that pajamas would be fine for the task. I was working on something. That was enough. Grabbing one of the soju bottles out of the fridge to keep me company, I threw on my gardening boots and headed out to work through the overgrown shrubbery. I have my work cut out for me, I thought as I hacked away at it with a pair of shears. Anyone who knew my grandmother knew that she was incredibly meticulous about her homes' interiors. They were always spotless, up-to-date, smelling like her homemade lemon and rose-scented cleaning spray, her version of Pine Sol.
The garden was another story. Dried-out shrubbery almost choked out any hint of anything living, including the windows of the traditional house. Probably why I had found it so easy to hide in there for the past week. Beyond the shrubbery, weeds and brown patches overtook the grass, and the pond would probably have been better described as a cesspit. No one would ever be able to tell that this was once a lush haven, not far from where Taejo, the first real Goryeo king, had made his own home.
I didn't want to get to work, really, especially looking at the state of Halmeoni's garden. But my parents would be FaceTimeing me later, wanting an update. Something told me that if I didn't make at least some small dent in the garden work, they'd be down from Seoul before I could say "disinherited." I couldn't help but grin a little at that thought. My parents were maybe a little over-worried about me, but they were loving. They wanted to make sure I was ok. "Alright, Halmeoni," I spoke up the sky again. "Thanks for the depression buster. I hope you're enjoying seeing me revitalize your yard." My stomach clenched a bit. If I hadn't been so busy, recently, she might have been able to see her garden revitalized again, in this life. I pushed the thought away as I set to it. At least good old Soju was here to keep me company while I worked.
*******************
After working for nearly an hour, I took another swig of Soju from the bottle, and found myself giving a little giggle. "This is your way of telling me to get over myself, right?" I spoke upwards to my grandma in heaven. I gulped some more of the sickly-sweet drink. Day-drinking is fun! Why haven't I tried it before? I laughed, before glancing at the bottom of the bottle. Darn it. Empty. I scowled at the empty bottle before remembering: there was more in the kitchen!
Usually I wasn't much of a drinker at all; at only one-hundred and twenty pounds I'd always been on the lighter side. But hard work deserved a reward, and there was no one here to see me do anything stupid at least. Feeling giddy, I turned towards the house, nearly tripping over the gardening shears. "That was close," I murmured under my breath. So many things in my life had changed in a moment. One minute, I would feel that I had it all together, then the next it would be gone. What happened next couldn't have reflected that trend more perfectly.
I tossed the shears to the side and continued on in pursuit of cold, refreshing alcohol. The happiest I'd been over recent days—the last few months, really—I was mid-skip when I felt my foot collide with something. Jjingping! I realized, but it was too late. In a split-second, I took in the blur of white and black fur racing past me, the sensation of falling, and then something hard against my head. If the fall only took a moment, then the pain only lasted milli-seconds, because—in the biggest cliché of my life—everything went black.