SINB

It was well and truly past visitor’s time, but I still managed to get my up here (the things I do for people). I walked down the empty hallway. There were nurses now and then; most of them don’t give a damn I’m here. Others threatened to call in security (why? Because. They gave two sh*ts about a stubborn teenager). I arrived at my supposed destination and I placed my hand on the handle, careful not to wake any of the crazy patients in this hostile playground. I shuffled into the dark room. It wasn’t like any other rooms where the warmth brushed against your skin. No. It was a room that sent shivers down your spine. It was a room that made you feel lost and weird when you leave it. I didn’t want to feel this way so I force myself out of the black hole of crippling depression. And I too wanted to pull Sowon out of it.

“Who’s here?” Sowon says. I didn’t answer her the first time. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me. Sinb.” I whispered.

“.” Even the curse that left the tip of her tongue felt foreign. That wasn’t Sowon. “Sinb?”

“Y-yes?” She scared me enough to leave me stuttering.

“I don’t know you.” She crooned on the other side of the room. When she said that my heart dropped and the numbness in my chest slowly spread throughout my body. I don’t know you.

She doesn’t remember me. This person who makes people feel all sort of things couldn’t remember me.

This can’t be. I paced my way to the sound of her breathing.

“Sowon it’s me Sinb.” I say to her once more.

“I don’t know you.”

I switched on her lamp and she squirms covering the blanket over her head. “This isn’t you, wake up. Wake the hell up.” I ripped the blanket off her. Curled up in a ball, laid Sowon’s small frame.  I unravelled her and lifted her chin up so I could see her eyes. She was scared. The fear swallowed her whole and she didn’t see me. She couldn’t see me. Something was eating her up. It hurt me so much to see her like this. I pulled her up so I could wrap my arms around her. She resisted. She tried to push me away, but that only made me hold her tighter.

“Wake up Sowon. It’s okay. I’m here. And I won’t let you go so please whatever it is that’s hurting you, let it go. Stop fighting it.” She wouldn’t stop pushing against my body. She started to cry, her body giving up on her and she sank into me. Her tears soaked into my shirt and seeped onto my shoulder.

She felt so small.

I couldn’t bear to see her wired up to some mechanical monitoring, plugged to the wall. I couldn’t bear to see the many marks on her skin, where it was evident that the nurses tried to drug her to sleep because she was uncontrollable. Or the dark circles under her eyes, in which she stood awake. And the many hours of consciousness she was alone. Staring into the pitch-black room, waiting for her wild mind to slowly kill her.

What a sh*tty world we live in. It’s so ed up.

She was breathing heavily through and I could feel her breath warming my chest. “A-Are you okay?” I asked her.

“We have a big home but there’s no one in it.” Sowon starts between her sobs.

“It’s always me. Alone.”

“I know.” I managed to squeeze out of my pathetic mouth.

“I’m so alone.” I pull her away from our embrace to look at her. I wiped away her tears with my thumb. “You idiot.” She laughs.

“What happened to you?”

“Welcome to my dark side.”

“That’s not funny.” Her head dropped.

“I…I don’t even know myself.”

“How long has this been going on for?”

“What’s with all these questions?”

“Sowon, I just witnessed an exorcism right in ing front of me!” She sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m just so scared. Because maybe one day, you won’t be able to get out of your head. Maybe one day you won’t remember any of us.”

“You give too many s. It won’t happen.”

“And why didn’t you tell me that you were having a relapse? Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you felt that you were going to get trap in another loop?”

“And what would you have done? Bring me here again? Trust me. You would know that the hundred of times I’ve wind up here. I’ve gone home the same number of time dealing with the same old sh*t. It doesn’t go away, no one can help me.”

“What can we do now?”

“We can wait until I die. Or I can live my damned life and deal a little crazy spasm sometimes.” The room fell silent. I looked up at Sowon.

“You still should’ve told someone.”

“Won’t do me any good. No one would understand. Not even you.”

“No I probably wouldn’t but I could try. It would’ve been better than keeping it inside you. You know I would listen.” She smiled a little.

“I want to punch you really hard for being so stubborn.” She throws a light punch at me and I laugh. “I tried, but once I got trapped into another loop. The anxiety. God the anxiety would attack me Sinb. I didn’t know who I was.”

“Sowon?”

“Yeah?” she looks up at me with her little smile.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

“Do I even have to answer that?”

“I mean I feel bad for bringing you here in the first place.”

“You what?”

“Nothing.”

And like that we snuck out of the hospital. You’re asking me what made Sowon this way and who the hell is this mystery chick. No one knows for sure. All we know is that she went though some crazy stuff in the past. Traumatic? I suppose. Is she rich? Yeah sure. Pretty? She’s a ing Goddess. But there is nothing worse than living half your life forgotten and alone.

“Why was everyone looking at me so weirdly before?” Sowon furrows her eyebrows, while biting into her potato cake.

“Maybe because you’re a Goddess?” She scoffs.

“Or…” she turns to face me with her glistening eyes. “Because you’ve been walking around the whole ing city with your hospital gown!” fell open and threw her potato cake.

“Oh sh*t. Holy sh*t. Why the didn’t you tell me?!” I rolled on the ground clasping my stomach hurting from laughing so hard “You b*tch!” she screams.

I wiped away the tears from my eyes. “ Oh my God that was so funny.” The curses that left her lips now. That was Sowon. “Hey, that’s enough swearing to make Pope Francis cry.”

“You’re not even Christian Sinb!” She playfully hit me on the arm.

“But are you full?”

“Okay I forgive you for feeding me. Maybe next time I won’t.” We had or last bit of laughter before we quite down and the silence left me with so many questions to ask her, but I leave it be. It kept circling my mind.

I have to tell Sinb. Tape. The Tape.

“How are you feeling?” I ask her.

“What do you mean? Me being up here on the rooftop of your apartment building thirteen levels above the ground in a hospital gown? I don’t know Sinb, you tell me.” I laugh

“I’m serious.” She sighs.

“Better.”

“I hate that after today I have to go live my ty life”

“As if it wasn’t before.”

“Shut up.” She smiles.

“You want to talk crazy?” I say.

“There’s so much crazy in the world. I don’t see why not?” I exhale a long, long time.

“Um so…I don’t know how to put this.” I look down at my lap. “I have feelings for Yuju.”

Sowon looks at me and bursts out laughing. “Your massively unrequited love for Yuju. Ah~ I knew it!”

“What? How? I’ve like told no one. And don’t say unrequited.” I could feel my face burning up.

“It was obvious.”

“Really?”

“Well to me it was.”

“Damn it.”

“How does she feel about you?”

“I’m her friend. She likes me as a friend, nothing more.”

“Unrequited.” She whispers in my ear.

“You should tell her.”

“What?! No. Never in a million years.”

“Why?”

“Every pretty girl ever is always straight. Straight like a ing stripping pole.”

“How do you know that if you never ask?”

“How am I going to? Am I just going to be like, ‘Yo what’s up are you gay?’”

“Not necessary, that’s just being called creepy.”

“Then how?”

“Kiss her.” I looked straight into her eyes and I kept looking at her with my are-you-serious-Kim-SoJung look.

“You are absolutely out of your Goddamn mind. I’m taking you back home.” I say about to walk away but she grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down.

“Yes I am and that it the only way to know.”

“Your logic is out of this world.”

“And you are so freaking cute when you’re-“

“I am not ever like this.” I cut in.

“I kinda don’t miss the cold, arrogant, shameless Sinb.”

“Pfftt. I don’t know what to say to you anymore. You win.” She laughs. What makes everything okay one moment then the next it’s not? Life is weird. What makes Sowon feel so okay?

Things were left unanswered because I haven’t asked the right questions. I thought that people would understand my circumstances but then I realized how self-centered that was. I needed to know and she needed to tell me.

“What do you know about the tape?” Silence. The thing I dreaded most, the first process of the unknown. It rendered my mind crazy, but I had to push past this stage and eliminate the possibilities of failing. She inhaled a lungful of air, I suppose it was the key to everything.

“I don’t know much but the fact that I had to deliver it to you.”

I don’t know. Why is it the same answer people choose to say when we all know that she was lying.

“There’s more. Isn’t there?” She looks away down at the city.

Light pollution.

“Sowon look at me. I just need you to tell me. Does it hurt to tell me?”

“Yes. Yes it does Sinb. It will kill you. You have to live everyday knowing that your name is somewhere on a watch list. Someone…is watching you, there’s no point of return.”

“And were you planning to keep it from me forever?”

“No I don’t think I have the right to.”

“So why? I don’t have anything else to lose anyway.”

“But some people don’t want to lose you.” She looks at me and turns her head back to the city streets.

The world is so complex.

“Who ordered you to bring the tape to me?”

“The delivery man didn’t give me his identity. All he had to do to make me listen was, point that gun against me head.” Sowon’s bloodshot eyes zoned into mine. “Shut the up he said. Deliver this to Sinb…or I will blow your ing brains.”

“I’m sorry.” She scoffs.

“So I had to think. My life was on the line and so was yours. Such a coward. He could just’ve given it to you himself. Unless he was working for someone who promised him paradise.”

“When did this happen?”

“A couple of weeks after you moved in with me.”

“Sowon, what if I go searching for this thing only to end up in that stupid mess which was only done to cover everything up.”

“Everyone is searching for something, the same thing even. So, listen to it before it’s too late. Stuff about the promises on your 19^th birthday.” I sighed and lay back on the concrete ground looking into the night sky.

“There’s no stars tonight.” Sowon says lying down with me.

“Do you have smokes?”

“No! Who do you think I am? Find a distraction yes. But don’t go killing yourself!” She burst out laughing and I joined too. I felt so warm. “You need to go solve your mystery and I need to go sleep.”

“I’ll take you back then.”

“Great.”

SOWON

She stopped in front of the hospital.

“Sinb?” I call out her name as I got out of the car.

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No not really. Well maybe just a little bit.”

“Good.”

“Why’d you ask?”

“Don’t come by tomorrow.”

“Is that an order?”

“Yes. I just need some time alone. Is that okay with you?”

“I suppose so. Respect your wishes then.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything else? Since I’m not coming by tomorrow.”

“Tell Eunha I love her. Very, very much.”

“That’s easy. And I think she already knows that.”

“And I love you very much too. It was nice having you as a sister.”

“Okay, what is this all of a sudden? That’s disgusting stop it.” I laughs.

“You’re awesome, you know that Sowon.” She says smiling at me.

“Okay then, bye.” I say turning around walking up the stairs to the entrance of the hospital.

“I’m not saying bye! I’m seeing you after one day.” She yells from the car.

“Keep the car Sinb! I won’t need it!” I yell back to her.

“You’re crazy!”

What I was trying to say to her was. Don’t look for me, don’t find me. It’s just that I can’t handle having two minds fighting for one soul. I’m crazy Sinb. I ing am. I wish you don’t have to live in this world and suffer Sinb.  

A/N 

I'm really sorry for not updating first enough. And not much as well. But anyway hope you enjoy this short chapter. Thank you. :)