Meddling with Me

“Speak plainly if you want something. Don’t play coy, testing people with that feeble act of yours.”

 “Even if I told you what I wanted, you wouldn’t care to listen, would you?”

Jinha, facing the woman before him, couldn’t help but recall the small, frail child she once was.

 Her skin was strikingly pale now, and her lips, a vivid red.

The girl who once sobbed buckets, swearing she’d never live like her mother,

 That soft, tender child—she was no longer a child.

Scenes he’d never noticed before began to unfold in his mind.

 The lush roses he’d seen only during summer vacations each year were now preparing to wither, their petals reduced to a scattered few.

The scent of the once-humid breeze, the shift of seasons,

 and the girl from his memories, her face streaked with tears and snot—

They had changed.

 Just as mountains and rivers transform over long years, everything has changed.

And one truth, realized far too late, struck him:

 He, too, had become a fool, manipulated by the woman she had become.