It might seem strange, but I liked to drown myself.

This was not a metaphor or a phrase to place false edginess on me. I genuinely liked to drown.

I'd fill the bath up to the brim, letting the water splash over the sides and flood the room. I'd flood the room from wall to wall, float up to the ceiling if I could. When I stepped into the water, I'd bury myself at the bottom and listen. Listen to the quiet. Listen to the voices. Feel the tickle of my hair as it swarmed around me. 

At first I would breathe fine, pushing the last gasps of air out of my lungs. Then the panic would rise. I had done it so many times now that it came almost naturally. I was calm. It was the moments after the last breath that were hard. The instinct not to breathe is so strong it overcomes the agony of running out of air. I was tranquil but I still felt the pain and had to fight against my body. I'd break my arms and legs so I couldn't climb out of the water. The pain of drowning was almost overshadowed by the pain coursing through my body. 

As the edges of my vision started to close, I would reach my breaking point and make that first unfortunate gulp of water. It was over then. With no strength in my broken limbs to save me, my vision would turn dark and the last thing I would hear was the splash of water and the panicked beating of my heart

When I'd wake up hours later, my skin would be burning, my nerve endings firing wildly, tenderly. The water would be cold enough to make me wince and my skin would be raw. I'd bury myself deeper into the water, trying to savour this precious pain. I knew it would all be over soon and nothing would have changed.

My bones had mended, fusing together as I slept, as if they had never been broken. Tender but fllawless. I placed my hands on the sides of the bath and pulled my body up. Water splashed over the sides and covered the floor for a second time. I didn't have the heart to care. It hadn't worked. It hadn't worked the times before, if anything I had grown stronger. 

I reached for my sheepskin robe tentatively. At least my sense of touch did not disappoint, I could still appreciate the finer things. Wrapping myself up in it, I aimlessly wandered around my home until I reached my kitchen. I poured myself a glass of absinthe and nursed it as I headed towards my balcony. It was still early, barely any cars on the road. I had only been out for a few hours, the blink of an eye in my lifespan but the sunrise was rolling in. Glancing down at the street, seemingly miles beneath me, I spotted a young couple on their way home.

I bathed in my sonder, wondering if they had an inkling about what I had spent my night doing. I could throw myself from his balcony, feel the rush of morning air before my world turned dark again and brightened once more. I didn't want to be a nuisance.

 

"You weren't at Benji's last night" Juniper stated as I unlocked the grill in front of the shop. I had opened a coffee shop to give myself something to do when I was feeling low. Interacting with as many people as possible at the same time made everything almost bearable. If I could submerge myself in a thousand shouting voices, I could almost block out my own thoughts. I smiled to myself. If only she knew what I had been up to last night. Would it disgust her?

"I wasn't really up to it. Cramps, you know" I lied openly.  Lies to me were like . Half as fun and twice as messy if you got caught, but I never got caught. I had to be honest, it was the little white lies I told that got me through the day. I almost shouldn't have bothered, because my answer had not sated her.

"Mason was asking after you" I rolled my eyes in a not so discreet fashion. Mason was Juniper's latest attempt at sparking some sort of romance in my life. I had dated a thousand Masons. I had given and wasted my time on a thousand Masons. I only had one goal left, and it wasn't dressed in a soft flannel t-shirt, immaculately kept facial hair and didn't spend his every Friday at the Irish bar three blocks down.

"I really don't see why you bother trying to set me up with people. I have a like life, I don't need a love life," I forced the grill upwards until it clicked into place and unlocked the door, "Besides, you know I'm not interested" My interests lay in something much darker.

"I do it because I'm your best friend" She whined the last part, following me into the coffee shop and tugging on my arm. Although she had rather annoying characteristics, Juniper had managed to garner a strange sense of affection from me and I liked having her around. Her mismatched attempts at finding romance for me were unwelcome, but amusing nonetheless. She followed me around the cafe as I set up for the morning, turning chairs over, wiping tables down. She was being useless, chattering away in that way that she did, so bright and chirpy, but I didn't mind. There were no customers at this time of day anyway. The sun had barely started to rise. Cutting through the fog of my thoughts, Juniper made a last ditch attempt at getting me to join 'Camp Mason'.

"I think he really likes you" She singsonged and waggled her eyebrows at me. I scoffed. Now I knew she was being ridiculous. I swung my head over my shoulder and looked at her lopsidedly. 

"I think you'll find he liked himself a lot more" Juniper snorted at this, trying to cover her laugh as we both recalled what had happened that fateful night. To cut a long story short, it seemed that Mason was the only person alive to have ever visited the Great Wall of China and was adamant that everyone had to go or they 'hadn't lived'. It took all my strength that evening to smile through my teeth like a doll as a rage swelled up inside my chest. I almost wanted to scream at him that I had been there when they built the damn thing, but it seemed inappropriate to scream at someone at the first meeting. Juniper conceded finally and turned quiet. She traced around the counter and started turning the machines on, wiping down the counters as she did. I could almost hear the processor inside her head flipping through her endless catalogue of single guys she had saved in case her perpetually single friend was still single.

I believed that Juniper liked to live vicariously through me. I was single but she was not. Unhappily shackled down I believed, but I was still waiting for her to tell me. She put more effort into finding me dates every week for me to knock them down each week, than she did into her relationship. I had met her boyfriend all of three times in the two years that we had been friends and colleagues. It was a shame really. Juniper had her fair share of faithful admirers but polyamory wasn't very en vogue this century. Monogamy was the chosen route for relationships nowadays and I found it led to paranoia, vindictive behaviour and wasted time but who was I to judge. I simply hoped that Juniper would open her eyes to the idea of trying new things and stop wasting her time on such a trivial individual. Her life would be over in the blink of an eye and she would never get back the four years she had already spent on her paramour.

She didn't speak to me during the morning coffee rush. She was usually throwing endless banter at me that I rebutted with my own witty quips but today it seen as if she was processing something incredibly difficult. She chewed on her lip with such a passion that it was red raw and puffy by 10 o'clock. As the morning rush started to die down, she turned round to look at me and I saw my June again. June was beautiful in her own unique day. Short cropped black hair which she dyed to have a blueish tint when the sunlight hit it, thick eyebrows that were blessed with good shaped and biological upkeep, a cute, crooked nose and a broad smile of strangely even teeth. Her eyes were what drew her the most attention to her. When she looked at you with mischief in her eyes, she drew you in.

"No" I stated, not letting her even open . She had another guy for me, I knew it from the way her eyes sparkled pixie-like. She pouted loudly, forcing the corners of down comically until she looked like a guppy. She jaunted over to me, running her fingers across the table in repetitive clicking movements before stopping beside me and planting her head in her hands, elbows firmly on the black marble work surfaces.

"But whyyyyyyyyyy" she drawled, blinking her eyes at me in an over-exaggerated manner. I knew all her tricks and mannerisms but I would enjoy watching this play out.

"I think we both know why June" I bypassed her and started serving the next customer, a young boy who seemed mildly overwhelmed by the two grown women who were playing about. He stammered as he gave me his order, as if he hadn't had time to rehearse it in his head. Juniper took to the task of making his order, meaning that I had nothing other to do than listen to her try and woo me with a new mystery guy.

"Because you have nothing better to do than stay at home and wallow in your own misery than go out with a perfectly reasonably good looking guy?" She raised an eyebrow as she used the milk steamer. I chose to wait until she had finished using dangerous machinery before replying with a put down. She handed the drink to the boy with one hand, the other outstretched for cash. The boy reached into his pocket and handed her a crumbled note which she grimaced at but took, "I don't see why you don't give these guys more of a chance. You never know what will happen. You only have so many baby making years left and then *poof*' she made a wild gesture with her hands and dropped the boys change on the floor.

"See what you made me do?" I had to laugh at the irony of her stance. I was running out of time to settle down and have kids. I was wasting valuable birthing years by being a cold fish. She didn't realise the sheer ridiculousness of her own statement, but then she wouldn't wish to. Much like Plato's allegory of the caves, people like Juniper didn't like to peek behind the curtain, and given the option, would rather plunge back into ignorance. The ripeness of my ovaries was of no concern to her. But I would play along.

"This is all you June. You put too much passion into me. I'm more of a horizontal person, when love happens to me, it will happen" I shrugged openly, palms open as if to wash any responsibility for my own love life off my hands. Juniper was not taking my lackadaisically answer lying down and ing the change at the boy squawked at him.

"What do you think of her? She's gorgeous right?" She crooked her thumb back at me aggressively. The boy's eyes widen in alarm and his eyes darted between the two of us; June's aggression on one side, my mocking amusement on the other. His mouth opened and closed, as a fish searching for food, but this action was enough to satisfy Juniper's devilish rampage.

"You see that, he's speechless from your beauty" She waved him away and beckoned the next customer in line to come forward, who was looking slightly cautious as if he were next for the chopping board. Juniper went through the motions of serving the customer and I thought she might be done with her romantic tirade when she uttered the immortal phrase;

"If you give one more guy a try, I promise it'll be the last one" Now here I was at a crossroads. I had no great desire to go out with another one of Juniper's romantic experiments, but if I did I would never have to go on another date for as long as she lived. I knew the obvious answer, I had to resist digging in my heels. She batted her eyelashes at me, knowing she had struck a cord but let me make baby steps towards it. I opened my mouth to answer, knowing I was selling my soul to the devil, but I was saved by the angry rapping of knuckles against the marble counter.

"Can someone service this customer?" I gave Juniper a look that said 'oh well' and trotted over. I could feel her beady little eyes bearing into the skin of my back. We both knew I had made a narrow escape. I wasn't sure if it was going to happen again. 

 

As Seungcheol placed the last box of his belongings on the shared kitchen floor, he couldn't resist the smile which bellowed across his face. He had made it to the final year. He wasn't the first member of his family to go to university and he doubted that he would be the last, but there was something so satisfying about having an achievement that was unoquivocally his. It was he, Seungcheol, who had put the work it, all of this was his. A friendly hand on his shoulder brought him out of his daze and he found Jeonghan beaming up at him. Another perk of third year was that they got the first pick of the rooms. 

Seungcheol had known Jeonghan almost all his life so it was almost fact that they would attend university together. Jeonghan had been there for all of Seungcheol's biggest moments. If anything, he knew Seungcheol better than he knew himself. He beamed back at his friend.

"I know" Jeonghan whistled, gesturing at their flatshare. Evidently finances had opened up their tight fists and spend way more money on the senior dorms. Jeonghan started laughing and Seungcheol couldn't help but get caught up into it. They had made it, through everything, all the fights and heartbreak. They had shared everything and this was just another addition to the list. 

"How do you feel about Sera's transfer?" Jeonghan asked, pulling away. Seungcheol stiffened slightly. He had directly chosen not to think about her transfer to his uni for one very obvious reason. Space. He wanted to enjoy the last year, spend time with the boys, experience all the things he wouldn't be able to experience once he graduated. He knew what was expected of him once he graduated. It was hard being a young adult. He wanted to behave how he felt, without having to worry about the feelings of someone else, or constantly have to be checking his phone. He wanted to be free of responsibility.