This was the first day she was permitted to go outside after the 14 days of quarantine. Half a month ago, she arrived home after a 10-month stay in the country of her birth. While the visit was only meant to last for a month, numerous flight cancellations had occurred during her time there.

This was his first year studying abroad. The Northern land that he found himself upon has yet to begin to feel like a home. Within the first month of arrival, lockdown was announced in his region. All of his classes shifted to virtual and his plan to visit home during the holiday became subsequently cancelled.

The cultural re-immersion was a wide-eyed experience, as a different yet familiar history paved the sidewalks beneath her. The street never ceased to pulse with electricity, while the amorphous sea of crowds captured the silhouettes of countless vivid lives. While she appreciated the serendipity along the way, she felt increasingly homesick in her motherland.

You will be able to meet new friends, he told himself whenever the walls of the apartment room felt as though they were enclosing around him, as soon as all of this is over. In the meantime, he was caught in disorientation while trying to navigate through this new chapter in a foreign landscape. Loneliness lingered in the air like frostbite. He was unaccustomed to the cold.

She trod onto the snow. If someone were to tell her a year ago that she would voluntarily come outside in the frigid weather, she would have simply furrowed her brows at the absurdity of the suggestion. Yet there she was, standing amidst the frosted landscape, deeply rejuvenated by the spaciousness and quietude of the wintry air. A myriad of snowflakes swirled around her, glimmering like countless infinitesimal fragments that she had previously taken for granted.

Closing his laptop, he removed himself from the desk he was sitting at all day and walked towards the windowsill. A small blizzard was unravelling outside, the empty street in his view appeared as a monochrome scenery painted from charcoal. It rarely snowed where he came from. He allowed his thoughts to wander to the geography half a globe away.

Upon returning, the smell of freshly brewed coffee infused the interior atmosphere. As she wrapped her fingers around the mug, the warmth of the beverage permeated gradually through her skin. She stood quietly in the living room, surrounded by the familiar furniture and embraced by the comfort of simplicity. There is no remedy like coming home, she thought to herself.

The ringtone of an incoming call interrupted his stream of thoughts. He picked up his phone from the desk, the screen lit up and a familiar face appeared. "Hi, mama." The woman on the other end of the screen beamed like the daylight, capable of melting away the invisible tension carried on his shoulders. There is no remedy like the feeling of home, he thought to himself.

About the Author

Kun is a Mathematics student who spends her days surrounded by algorithms and equations. Outside of studying, Kun is wide-eyed before artistic expressions of all forms. Having grown up in China, the two landscapes mean home to her in different ways.