It was already seven in the evening when Lee and I finished eating dinner. We wanted to build a bonfire despite the weather. We requested for some firewood and after a while, right there on the hilltop, we built our bonfire. I was scared that the flames would be blown away towards the guest houses but Lee assured me it wouldn’t. Besides, the bonfire was in a hollow on the ground. It was dug a few feet deep. There was no way that the fire would creep on the ground and burn the guest houses. Along with the howl of the wind, amid the drizzles, we ourselves howled—I howled any English song that would come across my mind, and he did the same with any Korean song that he remembered. We took turns singing, er, howling. I did not understand any line he sang but based on the melody and the way he sang them, the songs were about a love that was found and lost. Music is a universal language. Ah, the pain of a lost love.

The other travelers from the other guest houses were looking at us through a small opening in their windows. I guess it was their first time to see two souls crazy enough to build a bonfire in the middle of a cloudstorm, being battered by the wind and drizzles.

Lee was drinking San Miguel Light while I was drinking tea again.

Our accommodation house was on top of the hill, overlooking the rest of the place below. Amid the storm, we could see the lights in the distance. It was quite a beautiful evening despite the harsh weather.  We kept on requesting for more firewood and the bonfire kept getting bigger. Oftentimes the flames would make a woosh-woosh  sound and my heart would skip not a beat but maybe five.  Somebody down below must have seen the big fire we built and secretly cursed us for making such a big fire in the middle of a storm. It was drizzling but the drizzle did not put out the fire because the winds blew the flames even more. The wind was more powerful than the drizzle.

After singing or rather howling Hand in Hand, Lee and I decided to call it a night.

All night long, it was windy and the cloudstorm continued. One of the screws in my window shutter had come loose, and when the wind would beat the shutter, the shutter made a strange sound that would wake me up from time to time. The following day when I woke up, I was happy to see sunshine on the rolling hills yonder. Wow, what a peaceful, beautiful, lovely, refreshing day.