“Bye, Seul!  I promise I’ll visit you when I can!”

    Sure, you will.  “Yeah, ‘see you around.”

    Seulgi heaved a sigh as she threw herself back against the sheets of her bed.  She scowled at the disappointment and sadness rippling through her body.  She hated that tremble -- no, she detested it.  She clawed at the edges of her temples as Soojung’s figure retreated into the sandy haze.  As her fingers slid past her cheeks, her lips drooped as well.  Another friend lost, and a constant egging suddenly remembered.

    She wasn’t particularly upset with her friend; Seulgi was angry with herself for being so stupid.  For letting yet another person into her life and allowing herself to feel so pathetically small and unwanted when they left.  Her eyes traced the marker on the peeling label of Soojung’s (now old) bed.

Almost Home

Gurim Orphanage

    She let out a hopeless scoff.  Almost home?  She remembered when the name once gave her a sliver of hope.  “When will I ever be home?” She hissed through gritted teeth.

    It had been a painful twelve years since the death of her parents.  And it had been nine years since she first stepped through those moldy wooden doors with a bear tucked under her arm and a thumb on the edge of her lip.  Now seventeen, Seulgi cursed the world with egoistic fingers and a flimsy shout.  She watched as people slowly trickled in and out of her life, impacting her in more ways than one, only to one day disappear and leave Seulgi in a devastated wake.  

    Seulgi recalled the first time she had had dinner with the other kids in the orphanage.

    “Do you wanna come up and play with us?” A buck-toothed boy by the name of Jimin asked.

    Seulgi shook her head, “Nope. I have to wait for my aunt Taeyeon to come and pick me up!”

    Jimin stared at her in confusion, “Someone’s coming for you?”

    “Of course!” Seulgi beamed, “Auntie Tae always comes back.”

    Taeyeon never did show up.  Nor did her other aunt, Tiffany.  Seulgi learned never to place that kind of hope on someone else’s promise.  She lived every day as if everyone she met would vanish the next, and more often than not, that’s exactly what seemed to happen.

    At some point past nine, she decided that she had been moping long enough.  She mustered all the courage she could to reinforce her walls and stepped into the world.

    “You’re still home?!”  Sister Kim screeched, “You’re late for school, young lady!”

    Seulgi dismissed her with a lazy wave as she walked through the door, “Don’t worry, sis’.”

    As she turned to shut the door, she caught of glimpse of Sister Kim’s face twist into pity.  The door closed; and Seulgi smiled.

    It always felt better being the one leaving.

    “Mornin’ Joohyun.”

    Joohyun’s lip twitched a few degrees at the lazy greeting.  “You’re late, Seul.”

    Seulgi shrugged, reclining into her chair at their Professor’s glare.  Joohyun knew better than to comment on her appearance.  Dark circles under her eyes, a jaw that continuously clenched and unclenched, and eyes that flickered across the room to keep from pooling.

    She turned back towards the board, where several more lines of notes had miraculously appeared.  Even though her hands copied down the notes diligently, her mind wandered to Seulgi, who seemed to be retreating into the tattered hoodie that hugged her body.  Joohyun wondered what it felt like to become so overwhelmed by emotion.  What would her life like if she were like Seulgi?

    She supposes that they wouldn’t be such great friends, for one.  Joohyun was someone who never felt the need to feel.  Capable?  She was sure that somewhere inside her, she could empathize and relate, just like Seulgi and Seungwan could.  The majority of her just didn’t want to.  If feeling turned her into the angry, emotional wreck Seulgi was, Joohyun would pass.  She found a sense of peace with her passiveness.

    She was too proud to admit that peacefulness felt excruciatingly lonely.

    It was during lunch that she received a text from her father.  Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, which also seemed to be pretty foreign to Joohyun.

Make yourself supper tonight.  I will be coming home late.

    Joohyun’s expression flickered into an amused smile.  Sarcasm and irony were two things she had no problem identifying within herself.  

    What time would her father be home?  Would he be bringing home another woman?  He had been gone for a majority of the week.  What made this return so different if he was going to leave again anyway?  Joohyun briefly contemplated crashing at Sooyoung’s house for the night, or perhaps meeting Seulgi at the river.  Her hand grasped the charm on her necklace that used to be her mother’s.  I miss you, mom.  A sense of worthlessness weaved through her senses as she let go of the pennant.  Her father didn’t nearly love her as much as her mother once did.  Joohyun wondered if he even had loved her mother.

    “You alright?”  Yerim nudged, noticing the unfinished tray of food in front of her friend.

    She nodded, though the dark grin didn’t fade.  The concern in Yerim’s voice never seemed to settle right in her stomach.  It felt so strange.  “Yeah.”

    Joohyun’s father never came home that night.

    “Take the shortcut home today with Seulgi.”

    Yerim pushed her kimchi onto Sooyoung’s tray, “Why?”

    Sooyoung took the food, mischief etched onto her smile.  “Dad’s having a gathering today at the chapel.”

    “I see.”

    Yerim frowned.  A gathering meant three things; that Sooyoung wouldn’t be available, she would have to avoid the town’s pastor like the plague, and that anxiety would shake her into the dead of night.  She rubbed her eyes for a moment before a dull ache set in, and she pulled away.

    Joohyun eyed her curiously, “You been getting sleep lately?”

    No. “Yeah,” Yerim smiled, “I think I’m just catching a cold.”

    “What?” Sooyoung exclaimed, immediately removing her blazer and wrapping it around her shoulders.  “Take better care of yourself, Yerim!”

    Yerim grinned at her girlfriend’s concern.  She relished in the feeling of Sooyoung’s jacket around her body, at the scent that filled her senses and screamed belonging.  For a moment, she felt euphoric.  

    However just as quickly as it had come, it had mellowed down into a feeling of numbing discomfort.  Her fingers grazed the wounds covered by her uniform.  They were beginning to itch.  She would have to reopen them when she got home.  Had she forgotten her pills today?  She was too tired to remember.  Perhaps she had.

    A white haze bordered the edges of her vision, reminding her of just what seemed to pull her down.  Depression had never been an easy feat to overcome for Yerim.  At first, she thought it was a constant lapsing between good days and bad, that her sadness