Page 63 of You Had Me At Annyeong!
Timira stays silent.
Hanee honks loudly enough to startle a pair of skylarks lurking at the curb, soaking in the silence. Flapping their wings about, they quickly hit the air and soon melt into the darkness.
Why does it get so dark so early here in the Far East?! It’s still afternoon in Bombay …
‘Seonbae, Seonbae! Come on, we’re set.’
Timira, who has been leaning back against the bonnet all this while, has to get up in instalments.
‘Careful when you jump off. Please don’t hurt yourself. There’s nobody around to carry you!’
Carry me? What is he even talking about? When has anybody carried me? Nobody can carry the weight of my awesomeness, okay? Maine hi uthaya hai, iss poorey dharti ka bojh. All the bloody baggage over all these years …
Cussing silently, she alights with caution and gingerly places her feet on the ground.
Dahengida… Haneul thinks to himself.
‘I’ll hang up now. Guess we’ll see you in a bit!’
‘Be safe. And please switch your phone on! Do you have any clue how worried I was?!’
Haneul’s eyebrows are in a frown but he has the warmest smile stretching his pouty, pink mouth.His eyes arelike a loved-up puppy’s, Timira observes giddily.
‘Bye!’ is all she can mumble into the phone without even looking at it. Clutching her belly, inside which butterflies seem to have set up camp and are currently practising cartwheels, she hurries inside the car where Hanee is staring at her wide-eyed and curious.
‘Don’t. Don’t say a thing. Just drive!’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Hanee replies with a smart salute and steps on it.
Reaching out for her travel duffel bag which has been sprawled across the backseat like a queen and grabbing it like a pickpocket by the scruff of his neck, Timira fishes out her phone and switches it on. The cartwheels have now reached her heart and it is pounding harder than the massage gun her trapezius has been in a relationship with since she turned thirty.
Fifteen missed calls and sixteen unread texts from Haneul. Each message is more desperate than the previous.
‘Are you safe?’
‘Why can’t I reach you?’
‘Where are you?’ x 5
‘I’ll come and get you.’
‘Why is your phone switched off?’
‘Please call back.’
‘Please tell me you’re okay.’
‘I’m worried.’ x 5
Here we go again… she muses and smiles ruefully.
I told myself that I’d never fall,
But here we go again, ooh.
As if on cue, The Weeknd offers his reaffirmation.
Chapter Ten
