A little girl ran in front of Momo, her giggles resounding in her ears as the girl pointed at a nearby stall. Momo forced a smile as she scractched for the millionth time that part in her arm with the already peeled off skin, feeling the pain from the different bruises in her arms and back.

“Onee! Let’s play!”

It had been extremely difficult to mask the bruise in her cheek, and the thought of it made her want to scratch her cheek as well, and peel all the skin on her face. She just pinched the skin on her forearm, instead.

“Hmm. How do you play this?” Momo asked the girl, but the man within the stall answered instead.

“Just hit the bottles with the ball. If you get 5, you’ll get a prize.” His voice was rough, probably tired out by screaming at passers-by.

“You try it,” she told the girl, requiescing the space in front of the stall. When the girl was already on the place Momo had been, the latter just grabbed her, lifting her up. “You can do it.”

The first ball was thrown, and, surprisingly, it did knock a bottle, albeit not the one the girl intended to.

“Did you see it?” the girl exclaimed excitedly. Momo nodded absentmindedly, trying to offer a sincere smile, but there was something that unsettled her. Something was just not right.

The second and third ball were thrown, and, just like before, they knocked two bottles down.

“Just two more!” the girl said, signaling with her fingers at other two bottles in their line of vision.

“No, wait. Just...” Momo mumbled, the dread growing in her belly. She moved to put the girl down, and take her away from that damn stall, but the man’s hand reached for the girl’s arm.

“That’s okay. She just won,” the man said robotically.

“No. It’s fine. We’re just leaving,” Momo exclaimed with panic, trying to snatch the girl away, but the man pulled with a greater force.

Momo was falling, her ears were ringing and the only other thing she could hear were the girl’s screams.

No! No!

“Rena!” she tried to scream, but no sound could come out of , because HE was choking her.

He was choking her, his eyes beady black, a hurricane that you in and spat you out into hell. Momo reached out, scratching his arms in a bid to get free. Rena’s screams only became louder, but she could do nothing.

“You are a very bad girl,” the man wheezed out, spitting on her face as he spoke. “You told Mr. Senzo you wouldn’t play with him.”

Momo tried to speak, to apologize, to get free, to do ANYTHING to save her. She couldn’t die. She just couldn’t.

“Bad girls don’t deserve to have dinner. Bad girls don’t deserve to sleep in their bed.” The pressure on increased, making her feel more disoriented and panicked.

“Bad girls don’t deserve to live.”

--

“NO!” she screamed, her body spasming as she tried to reach for the unseen. Her brain adjusted quickly to her real surroundings, but her heart still beat out of her chest. It wasn’t difficult to feel the sweat drenching her body, or the tears drenching her face, but she only concentrated on angrily rubbing her eyes, trying to get rid of the embarrassing evidence of her weakness when she would, eventually, look at herself in the mirror.

She didn’t know how much time she spent watching the tv (she had left it , the same as every night) after that, because her mind was on the weed that motherer hadn’t brought her in a while.

She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to remember her messy encounter with Jihyo. She didn’t want to remember her stupid breakdown. She didn’t want to remember that that was going to embark her on a two-hour lecture for breaking the wall with her fist.

In her defence it was a weak- wall.

It had been a hard week, and without weed she couldn’t even sleep properly. Ever since she had started smoking, she had never gone more than a few days without it, and as she realized it brought her benefits at nighttime, often giving her a more tranquil sleep, she barely stopped smoking more than a single day.

A week. A whole ing week without it, she was inclined to just buy booze and get herself stupid drunk, but she didn’t want to convert the two-hour lecture into a four-hour one. She still had some self-love.

She reached for her phone, and there were the same notifications of new messages, most coming from Sana. Swiping them off the screen, she felt the urge to scratch her cheek, feeling the age-old feeling of something crawling under her skin.

It was midday. Huh.

She should have died.