Chapter 4

October 1st, 2014

She lies on her bed, the curtains covering the broken windows whisking around, agitated and desolate. The sun’s welcoming rays filter into the room, banishing the shadows that graced the darkness. Taeyeon is still, a forsaken word engraved in the forlorn blank. Her breaths come out ragged, but her face is dry. Her eyes shine, tears trapped inside, unable to escape the void of grief.

“I’m sorry.” she whispers in a monotone. No. The afternoon is way to bright to sulk and cry. Words breaks free from their chains in an endless pouring of gibberish. Nothing makes sense. Life doesn’t make sense.

I don’t make sense.

“You will regret this.” Jessica had said, her voice fathomless, reaching Thanatos and back, black flames alive in the pupils of her eyes. Dark, dark, eyes. So sinister.

I’m sorry.

“I hate you.”

I’m sorry.

“Curse you.”

Mianhae.

Jessica is gone. But then, the afternoon breeze finds its way into the room, cooling Taeyeon and the fever she had caught just a few days ago. A few days ago seems like an endless cycle of sulking and just laying on the bed, not sleeping but not exactly down-to-earth either.

“I love you, Taeyeon.” the soft and delicate voice that Taeyeon has grown too used to calls out in the midst of the melancholy, sweet and harmonious. None of the previous hostility and bile visible, only the old Jessica. The cute ice princess whose ice is slowly melting.

Her soul is dragged towards an the unmistakably fine line between what has gone by and the present.

It calls once more. “Come on, Taengoo!”

A smiling Jessica, her hands stretched out as if to pull Taeyeon closer. That will mean crossing the line of time. And time is nothing if not merciless.

“Are you coming?”

Swallowed up by her selfishness and yearning, she breaks into a run, up the hill and crashing into the former member who laughs at the sudden charge. Just like good old times.

Taeyeon doesn’t let go of the familiar body, her heartache momentarily ceased by the touch of comfort. “I miss you.”

“And I you.”

She closes her eyes, images of her and Jessica sharing a bowl of ramen, playing table tennis, being a byun-couple, jumping excitedly with each other, flashing into her mind. She will never be able to despise the girl she had once called best friend, along with Tiffany. Jessica was and still is, far too precious to let go. Despite Fate’s devilish intentions in cutting their lives apart, breaking the chain of friendship, sisterhood, and love. Love. Why is Fate so unrelenting?

Jessica breaks the embrace, a wide smile stretching from ear to ear. She clasps Taeyeon’s hands and squeezes it tightly. “Lets go!”

“Where?”

“Ice skating!” she squeals in delight and excitement.

Ice skating.

Taeyeon smiles, wondering if this is really just her memory, maybe her hallucination. It seems so real, she can’t help