Before she could even think straight or even think about running away, he held her close. She wasn’t used to this kind of contact and she didn’t know to what point she was comfortable with all of this.

“Let me go.”

Her voice didn’t come out as she had hoped for. She wanted to sound loud and clear, but instead her voice was almost a whisper and all she could do was stare to the floor and feel like her brain was going to melt into a giant pile of goo. She hated this feeling, it wasn’t her, it wasn’t like her at all.

“I can’t do that…”

She opened to talk but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead she just felt him come even closer to her. She could feel his breathe closer to her face and she could feel herself losing the strength in her legs. Her heart was beating so fast she couldn’t hear anything else, her eyes closed and she just hoped everything stopped there.

She was sure about what was coming and she didn’t want to see it. She didn’t want it at all but for some reason, instead of protesting, all she could do was stand at his mercy. He moved a lot closer than before, for some reason he was taking longer than she was hoping for, she couldn’t even breathe. She opened to try to speak again, but all it came out was

“What a bunch of bull!”

Everyone around looked at the girl with the white shirt and dark jeans. She had a very pale skin, long hair and the expression in her face looked beyond annoyed. She could easily stand out from a crowd because her gentle, yet sophisticated beauty even thought she liked to hide from everyone. Being the center of the attention wasn’t her favorite thing in the world, not even close. She was holding a book that probably had the most romantic, sappy title, but she couldn’t remember which one; her brain stopped functioning as soon as she started reading that page.

“This is probably the worst thing I’ve ever read, and I’ve read Twilight.”

She noticed some teenage girls around her heard her and were deeply offended with what she just said, but honestly, did she care? If she did she wouldn’t say it. Krystal threw away the book in front of her and left the store. Outside, she grabbed her helmet and her black motorcycle and left as soon as possible. She hated when books were like that, too romantic and too unrealistic. Sure, books should transport people to a fantasy world where anyone could forget about their problems, but this, this was just too much. Fantasy was one thing, give false hopes about romance to people was another one.

Krystal doesn’t remember when or why, but lately everything has been annoying her. Books, people, even the damn weather have been annoying her and she didn’t know why. It was like something inside her was boiling and all she could do to control that anger inside her was to get angry at small things. She would usually feel something burn inside her, feel like something was stuck in . Each day that passed it got a little worst. She wanted to control that unknown anger, but before she could do it, she would find herself fighting with someone, usually unknown people who would get in her nerves. Sometimes even the person’s breathing would anger her, which made absolutely no sense.

She had always been a difficult person, at least from what she remembers, and she doesn’t remember much.

To be perfectly honest, she just has memories from when she was 11 years old. Everything besides that it’s a complete blank space. All she remembers is one day waking up in a room she didn’t know and a very scary woman yelling at her. She had no idea who the woman was and why she was yelling, but it got worst from that day forward. The woman would abuse her mentally and physically and one time she even broke Krystal’s leg and arm. It continued like that at least until she was 14.

One day Krystal found enough courage and ran away. She would rather live in the streets and probably die of anger than stay one more second in that house. She had no idea who the woman was, she didn’t remember her, and it was like she was placed there out of nowhere. She felt no attachment towards the woman and she knew they weren’t from the same family. They couldn’t be.

Everything Krystal knew, she knew for herself. She learned how to read and write very late, she was 13, and she learned it all by herself. She wasn’t a dumb girl or did she had learning problems; on the contrary, she was one of the smartest people out there. the only problem she had was that before she had no help.

She never went to school, everything she knew, she learned thanks to books and libraries. She was curious by nature and when she wasn’t feeling the burning anger inside her, all she wanted to do was read and learn. Sometimes her brain worked too fast for her to keep up but she found that a good thing.

Thanks to her need and want to learn, she managed to build her own small business. At the age of 15 she would work in as a cleaning girl and study at night. She learned how to do proper math, and she couldn’t thank enough to her teacher. He was the one who saw the amazing potential she possessed.

He would get frustrated at her most of the times. She was too smart for her own good, he would call her intelligence out of this world, but at the same time if she didn’t get things at first perfectly, she felt like giving up. But thankfully, he wouldn’t let her, and now, at 23, she was a self made woman.

She had a small beauty shop in the heart of Seoul; she had her own apartment and owned nothing to anyone.  She should be happy with everything in her life. She fought against all hoods and now, she had more than most people could even dream. And yet, she felt angry. She felt lonely. She felt desperate.

She didn’t know where that anger came from. She even tried to seek help, but it was no use. The psychologists where a bunch of idiots and would say her anger issues were due to her abandonment issues. That she felt like that because her parents abandoned her at such a young age and left her with an abusive woman. But the thing was, what parents? For all she remembers, she never had parents, she never had a family.

The only thing they got right was that Krystal came from an abusive house. The woman was so vile that one time, because the woman was angry with something that was beyond rational thinking, she threw a piece of glass to Krystal. Fortunately it didn’t hit her face, but it hit her between her shoulder and neck.

Luckily it didn’t hit the veins, otherwise she wouldn’t be alive. Krystal needed stitches badly, but instead of taking her to a hospital, she had to improvise and made the stitches herself. She has no idea how she managed to survive or even do a decent job. She tried to copy the same thing she saw on TV once and it worked. 

It wasn’t a professional job, it wasn’t a good job and now she had a scar for the rest of her life, a very ugly scar, but she didn’t really care. She was alive, so that was all it mattered. But even so, the worst scar she had in her body was probably a huge mark she had in her left right. It looked like a strange pattern, like a perfectly detailed drawing. She had no idea where that came from, but she had it since she woke up in that horrible house.

Maybe it was a birthmark, a very strange one, but a birthmark nonetheless. Maybe the mark had some deep meaning, maybe she could find out about her past thanks to that scar, but did she really want to dig up the past? Did she really want to dig up a past that she had no recollection of, a past that meant nothing to her?

Her life only started when she was 16. That was it. That was the time she could say she found a bit of happiness. Or something similar, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure if she would ever find true happiness, but she didn’t really care about it. She was feeling perfectly content with the life she had.

“It’s better to leave things the way they are.”

People always told her that dig up the past would only bring unhappiness, and she believed it. She already had a portion of her life where she was miserable; she didn’t need any more of that. She was a curious creature, god damn it she was, but it was better to leave some things untouched. Ignorance was bliss, and in this case, she couldn’t agree more with that.

She continued driving, not even bothering herself to be amazed by the beautiful summer sun and the majestic blue sky. She was just thinking about her life at that point and why in the world she was the way she was. There had to be an explanation, she couldn’t be angry just by the sake of being angry.

Krystal always enjoyed a little bit of speed, it was the only time she wouldn’t feel angry. It was the only time she would feel free. She continued driving as fast as she could, not even bothering with the possibility of having the police after her. Her hair was being caressed by the wind, the warm sun against her skin, it was all she needed, it was all she wanted to feel like she belonged to this world. This was exactly what she needed at that moment.

But for some reason, she felt like something was wrong. She felt like something didn’t fit quite right, that something about the day was different. Her usual speed felt too slow for her, the wind felt too cold. Even the sun, the only thing she could say she actually loved, was feeling incredibly different.  She felt like today, everything was wrong. She felt like the whole day was just so strange, she couldn’t even explain.

For some reason, she doesn’t know why, she decided to look up in the sky. Maybe she would get some sort of explanation. Maybe she would understand why she was feeling the way she was. Maybe it was just a passing cloud and she was losing her mind.

When she looked up, she didn’t even have enough time to think. Her eyes opened widely and her breathe was caught in . What she was seeing couldn’t be real. Such thing was completely impossible, it had to be. She had to be hallucinating, she had to be dreaming.

A flaming arrow was coming towards her at full speed. Before she could do anything else, she managed to make a violent turn with her bike, marking the floor with her trail. And not a moment too soon. As she did it, she looked towards the arrow and saw it hitting the floor with such force that it actually opened small breaches on the concrete.

The flames disappeared completely but the arrow stood there, completely unharmed, shining with the sun. Since when did an arrow possessed such power that it could hit something to hard? It was shining brighter than any diamond. She had an urge to touch it, but instead she decided to stay in her place.

Why wasn’t anyone else looking at it? Why did people around her look so…unfazed? Like nothing happened? A flaming arrow just felt from the sky and made incredible damage! How could people not see it? Where they blind? And since when did arrows were made of solid gold?

She looked to the arrow one last time and…it was gone. It was completely gone. Like it was never there.

“What just happened?”

She knew what she saw. She wasn’t going crazy. She knew exactly what she saw.