"Life is brief;
Fall in love, maidens,
Before the crimson bloom
Fades from your lips,
Before the tides of passion
Cool within you,
For those you
Who know no tomorrow.
"Life is brief;
Fall in love, maidens,
Before his hands
Take up the boat,
Before the flush of his cheeks
Fades for those of you
Who will never return here."
-- from IKIRU, a film by Akira Kurosawa
The street they walked was slightly downhill from the crest on which his apartment was built to the center of town, and they coasted much of the way, aloft in the still-sunny evening, late June, the checkered shade.
Though she didn't build futures for herself, sometimes the tattoo female could see one, a vivid moment that was to happen to her, and sometimes it would really happen; and this moment of walking with Jungkook on this street was one.
"Which way?" he asked her at the intersection.
"Away," she said. "This way."
They were going towards the seawall. They got out there. There was a lick of breeze, lifting her skirt, then no more.
He said something to her.
"Oh?" She felt a sudden small self-consciousness, as though he had brushed against her. She turned pensive.
When they went home, she drove. She turned the car at speed off the side road and onto the highway, and he lurched to the side. The blacktop receded into distance before them like a demonstration in geometry. She picked up speed, letting her hand fall down along the car's side as though she trailed it in the water from a gliding canoe.
"You got time," she said to him. "The main thing is to take it easy. Everything's okay."
