I have bad luck when it comes down to umbrellas. The first one I got for myself was of a fancy purple which glimmered under the sun, painting my pale skin in a violet beam. I got it from my mother, and she got it as a gift from somebody, I don’t remember much, perhaps because it wasn’t particularly important to me back then, nonetheless it was my first umbrella. It broke one day, when I was waiting by the crossing in a busy street in Yonsang. It was a rather embarrassing experience so to say, what with me trying to close it in the middle of the crowded street and having to step on it to close it down. That time I decided to not to use an umbrella again. But time wouldn’t allow me to go by as I planned. The spring that time was stormy when I got myself the second umbrella. It was a dark, blackish blue and served well as a shade from the heavy beams of the sun in the noon as much as did from the rain. All was good with it, but I am not careful when it comes to protecting my belongings. I don’t even know how this second umbrella broke. It broke nonetheless, I was unable to open it, so I bought myself a third.

I am under this third umbrella now. It is still the heavy, stormy rainy season, the raindrops breezing horizontally along the direction of the hefty wind, dampening my skirt and shoes. The umbrella, a pastel yellow one with a flowery design, isn’t doing a great job as the umbrellas go. It wasn’t keeping me from getting damp as it was broken like all my other umbrellas were. I think I won’t buy an umbrella again. Umbrellas are not for me. As I make it home through the storms, I am wet as if I haven’t even held an umbrella. Damp from head to toe, my book bag held close to my chest securely, I make my way into my house, up to my bedroom and close the door behind me. It is only once I’m in my bedroom do I feel that I am home.

The phone appears to hold messages on it, which I decide to check later on. I’m not in the mood for anything, actually. Not even to get rid of the heavily dampened clothes on me. All of which surrounds me naturally seems unimportant. It has been long since my life has become dull and unimportant to me. I knew as much, though I cannot fathom the reason why. I knew as much to know that I have grown tired of living.

My hand phone buzzes with another message. I pick it up, and watch hazily as messages begin to appear on it, one after the other in a flurry. I open them only after the phone stops buzzing.

They are from him, Nam Woohyun.

I met Nam Woohyun on a social media site. He and I are from the same university although the fields we take are different. He did medical science, I did social sciences, he was a year older to me; I was a year behind. He was a living, breathing being, I was surviving. However, for some unfathomable reason, we fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. In the beginning, we were only casual friends. We spoke about everything under the sun. He told me about his parents, his brother and how his best friend was obsessed with Mangas, and how his dog liked to his feet at the crack of the dawn; I told him about myself too, a bit. I told him how my sister and I only shared the room and the shoes and how my writing helped me survive the day. At first, I kept away the bigger details, everything that defined me. To him I drew a different image of myself, and he believed me. He wasn’t dubious. He believed me.

But as we opened ourselves more to each other, I couldn’t stop my paining soul from opening up to him. It was as if he opened the doors for me. He had that effect on people I guess, that effect which drew people to him, that effect which made them trust him to protect the slightest and even the darkest secrets of them over his life. He came to me with that promise. He came to me with the promise to secure them over his life.

It has been long since I told him how always I wanted to die.

I am a writer. I do writing as a method of surviving each day. The deadline of my each piece is the deadline of myself. The deadlines kept me living. It’s ironic, how the end of a story, reaching the end of a story kept me living longer. I am afraid of dying still, when I come to think of it. It’s this fear which kept me from ending half the many stories I write, how my poems laid unfinished on my table and how half the books I read were yet to be read until the end. I think it’s common among writers to be associated with demons. I am associated with demons, inner demons embraced me like sun did the sky every morning, but darker. The land it led me to had dark, serpentine roads onto a hollow, endless abyss. It is about all these that I tell him every day, and he helps me to keep living.

I sit at my computer, still grasping the phone in my hand. I have a particularly bad mood today, which I’m not certain why. The mood swings are terrible, when they come as I go, and today, I felt indescribably hollow, somber than I usually do. I begin to think of what I should write, yet nothing appears. My thoughts are blocked, the train of which has vanished; my head is dull and empty, just as my entire life is. Dark, hollow and empty. Naturally, I begin to feel useless. I am useless, there is no question about that. There isn’t anything that I can find myself succeeding in. The existence of myself is useless, as if I’m a weak, hollow bark of a rotten tree, swaying longingly in the breeze. I know as much, and along with this feeling comes the desire, the desire of pain.

Pain helps me relinquish, to my empty hollow feelings. I surrender without question as the pain takes over. My hand reaching for the blade is almost hungry in desire, as would a ferocious beast to its prey. The blade is lying lifelessly on the table, still stained of blood from its last adventure. It’s always been horizontal, the cut. Because I’m too scared to see where it goes if it does slice otherwise.

The phone buzzes again, stopping me. I sigh deeply, my pain slowly flowing away. This time I check the messages, my eyes skipping rapidly through the texts.

“It’s raining, did you get wet?”

Of course I did. I wanted to say, but it didn’t kill me. Yet I didn’t. Instead I type, “I carried an umbrella”

Carrying an umbrella was a habit of mine. It wasn’t so, for Nam Woo Hyun. He didn’t care if it was humid or it rained. He was too occupied to care, not even to care about where his life goes. To me his life seems so easy, so desirable. I have not taken med school, I haven’t got the ability to, but seeing where I am now, I wish my choices have been different. Would my life have taken a different path then? Will I not be coming into this hapless painful life? I cannot be certain, for I cannot see myself beyond the walls drawn around me. These walls defined me. I can’t be myself more than I am now.

The phone is silent, and the silence is so unbearable that I type, my fingers working fiercely, “Did you carry an umbrella?”

Woohyun never carried an umbrella. I carried one for him.

The response comes almost instantly. “No. And I caught a cold”

I feel a rush of envy at his response. He has caught a cold, and here I am, caught in a labyrinth. There is no question in what is worse.

Good for you. I have the urge to type. But a cold isn’t a better choice in his definition. Woohyun is an optimist, and things have to go in his way, and also there is the risk of him figuring it out, figuring out that I had opted to the blade yet again, and not confiding in him.

“Take good care of yourself. Have you taken meds?” is what I type.

I take the blade yet again and run a finger along its sharp edge. Its only one push that it needs to slice through. One push, it opens the doors to my kind of heaven.

The phone buzzes again, and I keep the blade away to take it in my hands. Woohyun has that kind of an effect on me, as strange as it is. I’m not like Woohyun, I don’t enjoy all the attention he is giving me, but when he’s there I can’t possibly keep away from him. It’s the fear that I have if he will guess that something is wrong. It’s the fear that he will try to stop me.

He cannot stop me. He shouldn’t. It pains too much I can swear I will die. But he mustn’t know it. In his eyes, I’m doing absolutely well.

“Yes I have” He has sent to me. “Anyway, how are you today?”

I look at the blade on the table and type. “I’m doing great”

That’s the mask I wear every day, wherever I go, whatever I do, that’s the mask which kept me going, the mask which said that I was doing great.

Which I never was.

+-+

It isn’t raining on that Monday when Woohyun sends me a message saying that he’s on his way to meet me. I’m wearing a flower printed long skirt today, the kind of a skirt which isn’t heavy and swished in the cold spring breeze. I’m standing at a crossway of the campus under a cherry blossom tree, its blossoms, pastel pink, slowly falling off the branches and landing on my hair and by my feet. I keep my books hugged against my chest, the wounds from the blade’s last adventure hidden beneath the long sleeved white cardigan I wore as if they’re never there. It’s natural to deceive like this. Nobody even guesses what’s underneath. Nobody, but Woohyun. Woohyun is different. I remind myself for the umpteenth time to not let down the books I am hugging against my chest, no matter what.

I see Woohyun coming from a distant. He’s in smart casual. The attire of a med student of our university is all the same. He glows in the crisp white shirt he wore. It brings out the fine features of his pair of almond shaped eyes. He seem me from a far, and as the wind blows, my hair flies across my face as I give him a tight wave. He comes running towards me, and is panting miserably as he reaches me.

“You looked pretty from up there” is the first thing he says in a breathless rush, and gestures at the way he came before giving me a smile. “Prettier…up close”

“It’s been long” I say, instantly averting the conversation. “How are you?”

“I’m well” He says and stands straight. “Shall we sit somewhere?”

And we do, on a bench under the shade of a tree. Students are scattered about the campus bounds, mingling in their own things and long conversations. Some are sitting under the sun, enjoying the warm sky and laughing at the jokes they crack. Some find their peace under the trees, deep into their books and endless thoughts. And then there are the two of us, Woohyun and I, sitting quietly and watching the people passing by.

“I missed you” He says, completely out of the blue. He’s looking at me, thus, suddenly feeling self-conscious, I tighten my fist onto the books held in my lap. “I was always around” I tell him. “Why would you miss me?”

“You’re distant” He says “I miss the real you”

It hits me in a wave, the sense of his words. The real me. Did he ever know the real me? Is there even a real me to begin with? The ‘me’ now is real enough as it goes, but suddenly, I’m uncertain. Where has the real me gone? Who has snatched her away? But time doesn’t allow my thoughts to run. He’s waiting, so I say to him, as sincerely as I could. “It’s still me”

He’s quiet then, and is staring at his hands, pale and holding each other, mulling over the words I said. He says then, after this moment of silence. “Don’t think I don’t know anything”

“What do you mean?” I ask, clutching onto my hand even tightly. He shouldn’t see, he shouldn’t know…

“I know”

I purse my lips, and then I attempt a light hearted laughter. “What are you talking about?”

Then, before even I can stop myself, he reaches out and takes my hand. The hand with the cuts, the hand of the visible remains of my relentless pain. He’s wordless as he slowly pushes back the sleeve of my cardigan, and there they are, the slits, the wounds, the evidence, my pain.

“Just-just never, ever, ever think” He says, “that I don’t know anything”

+-+

When it begins to rain that evening, I’m out at the bicycle shed, my book bag hanging down my back, taking a shade from the heavy downpour. Students are huddled inside the shed, saving themselves from the falling rain just like I am, and pushes each other around resulting someone to push me to the back and drenching me. I brush the drizzle off my shoulders while protecting my bag from the rain. It’s cold in here, regardless of the crowd huddled inside. And from a far I can see Woohyun, carrying a transparent umbrella which is a first, running across the tarmac ground towards the main building. I try to push myself into the crowd, wishing I were invisible. But much to my disdain, Woohyun effortlessly spots me from a far and comes towards me.

“Where is your umbrella?” he asks in a flurry, taking me under the shade of the plastic parasol, the heavy rain drops thudding hurriedly on its surface.

“It broke” I say, gesturing at my bag where it lays inside. “Why are you carrying an umbrella?”

He smiles, the kind of a smile which reminds me of sunshine and summer days, and looks up at the umbrella above us as though it held all the answers. “Because you asked me to”

I have the urge to scoff at his response, as it sounds so unlikely that he did, but it makes me wonder how far it actually went, him following anything I say.

“When did you ever do what I said?” I ask as we walk through the puddles towards the main building. The sound of the rain resonates over the sound of my voice, and I speak as loud and clear as I can.

“You’re one to ask” He retorts, and stares at the raindrops dripping down, falling by our feet. “It actually makes me wonder. What is it like to be you? Being introverted, carrying umbrellas, painting dreams…”

“When did I ever-?” I begin, but he beats it to me.

“It must be one hell of a ride” He says, smiling fondly as he does. “Your life”

+-+

I don’t remember the last time I had pleasant dreams, so to speak. Everything I have in my mind are dark, unpleasant things, as if it’s an endless abyss with uncertainty. My mind reminds me of a story I read on a blog some time ago. It’s a game actually, which goes by the name ‘Doors of the mind’. It’s a game played by two players, the dreamer, and the partner. The dreamer goes into a sleep as his partner says these words; ‘You are at one end of a very long corridor. There are numerous doors on both sides of this corridor, spanning the entire length. I want you to explore these doors and the rooms behind them. Describe to me what you can see, hear, touch, and feel with great detail’. The dreamer then finds himself, like said, in a long corridor, lining the walls are streaks of doors on the either sides. Each door hides a room behind it, each hiding something dark beyond them. A set of clocks, a lone old woman, a stern faceless man, the deepest darkest secrets, the wretched fears which he had hidden away from for many, many years. I think my mind too, have such doors, hiding away my deepest fears. At times I feel I might know them, know what they might be, but at most times I am clueless of what my mind hides away about me. It is difficult to fathom, certain states of my mind, they say that they are mood swings. But I think they are deceits.

Nonetheless the reason why I am speaking of dreams is that I had a rather pleasant dream quite recently, a dream involving Woohyun and me. Woohyun and I are a family in it, a family of three. Woohyun, me and a child. We’re living in a dandy little cottage, the kind of a cottage you can only expect in dreams with pastel shaded walls and beds of tulips under the shade of high rising trees. I’m cooking, Woohyun is reading the papers, and the papers have the story of a young girl committing suicide in a railway station of which the station master is a cat named Toko who speaks as a witness to the case. Woohyun reads the headline aloud while I toss the pancakes. The child is eating and Woohyun puts down the paper to say. “It’s strange, the girl looks like you”

The dream was pleasant until that point, and then it suddenly became a heap of dread. It turns out that I’m indeed the girl in the papers, the girl who kills herself at the train station of which the master is a speaking cat named Toko, and the child turns into ashes and the house collapses in an earthquake. Woohyun tries to save me as we stand in the dark on the second storey which is held immobile by the hair of a ragdoll, and I tell him, “save yourself” before we both fall into a dark abyss. That is how the dreams turn out to be for me. But it is quite strange that I saw Woohyun in my dreams. I had this slight idea then, that it is what Woohyun was talking about the other day. Because he too, painted my dreams for me.

+-+

Mid-term examinations of the first semester come by, and there comes that period of time where all the students of the faculty begin to stress over the decisions of our lives. I am no different from the rest of them, studying and stressing over the oceans of subject matters and endless assignments, still on the verge of completion. I begin to specifically stress over the fact that I have selected a stream which I am not particularly keen of. In fact, this particular subject is like a curse for me, coming after every decision of my life like a cartwheel behind a horse. This then led to deeper subjects of my life, one thing leads to another, and then finally when it adds up to all the painful matters in my life, I opt to the last resort, the blades gains itself more deeper, thrilling adventures.

I’m in the bathroom of my dingy little apartment, a dismal affair with an open planned interior with pastel blue walls and a mismatched grey carpeted floor, crimson swirling down through the drain as I hold my stinging wrist under the warm splash of water. There are lines of tears down my cheeks, eyes holding a similar touch of crimson and protruding veins. My hair is cascaded down my shoulders, ending up near the edge of the sink and dampening the slightest.

I’m unsure of what I feel after each of these adventures. Am I feeling the pain? Or am I focusing more on the strange sense of accomplishment after each slit of skin? Or is there a horrific happiness, the kind of a happiness which I have never come by to feel before blooming in my heart? Or is it just dull and dark as it has always been? These are the questions I always ask of myself after each cut, after each drop of blood I draw with the blade. Am I happy doing this? Is this the happiness I’m earning for? This strange sense of accomplishment? I never come around to find answers for them though. They always remain the questions quietly floating around the air around me.

I’m blindly reaching for a towel as the blood doesn’t stop gushing out when my phone begins to ring. With the towel wrapped around my hand, slowly dampening in red, I trudge across the hall towards where my phone lies and pick it up on the seventh ring.

“What are you doing?” Is the first question Woohyun asks me as though he’s been reading my mind. His voice is deep and stern, as though he’s not going to buy my lies. But lying is what I do, it comes along just naturally, not even the tone of my voice is giving away anything. “Studying” I say.

“Why didn’t you drop me a message today? It’s always me, thinking, worrying….” He sighs and adds in a small voice. “This stupid one sided thing”

I stay quiet, building a mental picture of him in my mind. Him running his slender, long fingers through his hair, his head shaking in pent up frustration, in his mind the blooming rage and the complications of love and hatred. Woohyun is a strange person. Woohyun is the epitome of uncertainty. It’s difficult to read him off the first pages. He’s like a book of poetry. All the misconceptions and trains of thoughts in words and verses are deep and long, one needs to read between the lines to know what he feels.

“Anyway” He says, as usual, he suddenly changes routes. “How are you feeling today?”

I look down at the towel, drenched in blood and say. “I’m doing absolutely great”

“Are you sure?”

“What’s there to be sure about?”

“No just…” He hesitates and sighs again. “I had a bad feeling”

He had a bad feeling. What must have it been, this bad feeling? Bad feeling that I might cut again? Bad feeling that I might die? He’s always been worried about losing me. What’s there to lose about me? I have already lost myself in these darkened allies and crossroads of life. What’s left there to lose of me?

But I say nothing. That’s what I always do. Say nothing.

“It’s just you” I say in the end. “Why do you always worry? I’m okay”

It’s so easy to deceive. It’s so easy to hide behind the mask. To say that I was okay while I was not okay.

“Maybe it is” He says. “But you always worry me. It’s always about you, you know. Do you have any idea how important you are for me?”

“But why?” I ask. “It’s only me”

He’s quiet for a while then, I stay quiet too. We listen to the sound of our breath, the only evidence that we’re still alive, and then finally, he says, “Because it’s you”

+-+

On a bright spring morning, as the students filed out into the green lawn after long hours of lectures, Woohyun sends me a message saying that he’s coming to see me. Woohyun likes to come and see me more often than not. I don’t know what exactly I feel about this. I don’t have many friends at university and Woohyun is basically the only person I speak to, so it is entertaining in a manner that I don’t really despise. But I quite hate the fact that he has the ability to effortlessly make me open up to him. He makes me feel important, he makes me a priority, a significant part of his life. Which makes me wonder where does he stand in my life? Is he a lover? I do not entirely hold such feelings towards him and I’m unaware of what he feels towards me which leaves a question. Does it make us friends then? More or less we are, but the bond he hold with me is much stronger, and I suppose it is for the best that I question this no more.

We make plans to meet up in one of those summer huts out in the garden which separated each faculty from one another. I have a quiet late breakfast afterwards, which only consists of a sandwich and a carton of banana milk. Afterwards, I pull out my copy of 1Q84 and make my way across the cobble path and towards the hut where I see Woohyun, already seated, waving his hand at my direction.

“You are pretty today” He says as I sit down on the bench beside him. “It’s not like you aren’t pretty on the other days, like, you are significantly more beautiful today”

“Thank you” I murmur and push my hair behind my ear. “How was your day?”

“We had dissections today” He begins, and for a long while he’s explaining to me how his lessons worked. I listen carefully, paying attention to each and every syllable he speaks and notice the smallest details about him. How his lips moved, how his hair shook slowly in the breeze, how his eyes formed crescent moons when he smiled, and I realize how much of an important person he is for me.

Woohyun, somehow, has become a significant part of my life.

“That’s enough about me” He says after a while. “I’m doing all the talking. How has your day been?”

“Ah it’s just dull” I say and raise my hand to pull my hair into a bun. Woohyun stares at me as I tie my hair, a strange smile playing on his lips. I put my hands down, feeling self-conscious again, and he takes this as a moment to say. “You looked very pretty just now, doing that”

I purse my lips, unable to form a word to say. Woohyun likes to call me pretty too, all the time, whenever possible, and it has become a habit of mine to not to respond to it significantly. My personal appearance doesn’t come as particularly important to me. In fact, habitually, I compare myself to the prettier, stronger ones, and Woohyun hates it. What he says to me is that I was pretty enough to make his heart skip a beat. I don’t know the accuracy of this though, because Woohyun has the habit of using such terms in general speech. Nonetheless it makes me feel quite special, so I don’t go as far as to make him stop complimenting me.

He waits quietly for a moment then, and after a while he reaches for my hand. When I try to pull it away, however, he holds it tighter and slowly pushes back the sleeve of my shirt, revealing the most recent of the blade’s horrendous adventures. He frowns at them, his lips firmly pressed into a thin line. His thumb reaches the darkening slits, and when it stings, I try to push his hand away. But before I can even realize it or see it coming, Woohyun moves closer and kisses me on my forehead.

I pull away, stunned. I had expected number of things to come from Woohyun, but not this.

“I know what you’re going through” He says, pulling himself further away from me. “And knowing you, you won’t let me reach out for you. Lean on me, nevertheless, share the pain with me”

“I…” I begin, and find myself rendered speechless. I cannot let myself fall for it. The pain is for me to live with on my own. Woohyun is a significant part of me although I’m uncertain of who we are to each other, I can’t let him feel the pain that I feel.

He looks down at the cuts on my wrist then, and stares at my hand as if his gaze could help me heal.  Then he adds in a stern voice. “If you ever want to cut again, come to me”

“What?” I ask and he shakes his head.

“Come to me, take my hand, and cut as many times as you want”

I stared at him, stunned and speechless at the tone of his voice, weighing his words in my mind.

“I can’t-,” I begin, but I cannot say anything anymore. Because I understood him, I couldn’t say anything anymore.

+-+

Woohyun saves my life. I don’t know how he does it, or why, but he saves me slowly, pulling me out of the dark pitch I have fallen into, in his gentle ways. Woohyun is like a still standing pillar in whirlwind, holding on to me even in my darkest days. He doesn’t give up on me, even if its least of what I expect from him. Woohyun makes the impossible, possible, and shows me where the slightest ray of happiness lies even in the darkest times. I don’t know how important I am for him, whether it goes far beyond how much he says I mean to him, but one thing is certain. He’s the sunshine I never expected in the stormy days, the light in the darkness, the star of the empty skies, his hand is the warm one I’m always reaching out to, his gaze is the gaze my eyes are always searching for, his smile is the smile which brighten my days, his words are the words which keeps me going further, and maybe, just maybe, Woohyun, he’s the love of my life.

+++

Author's note.

This story is special for me, because it speaks of a special person who actually exists in my life. I suffer in severe depression, and was suffering in it for about a year now. This special person is the one who stayed beside me all through that tough journey and is helping me heal. He saved my life when i was on the brink of falling, and keeps me going even if the ride is tough. He taught me how easy life becomes when you're happy, and showed me how happiness can be found even in the darkest corners in life. Dear you, If you ever come across to read this, just know that you're a very, very important person to me.

And to my dear reader. Thank you for reading this story. Even if it isn't one of my best pieces, I put my best into writing this. Speaking out my honest feelings is quite difficult, bearing in mind the fact that they are quite persnal. This is me giving you an insight to my life. I hope you will not take into mind the explicitly explained bits on self harm. Self harm is nt an option to opt on when you're facing difficulties in life. I'm speaking with experience. Although it comes as momentary pleasure, it never helps, hirting yourself. Please reach out for the closest person possible, because, remember, this life is once in an eternity. Live this life to the fullest. I love you all, you beautiful souls.

With loads of love,

Achini.