tw: borderline schezophrenia.

mina sits at her usual spot in the library -the round table closest to the big wooden door, where the air is always fresh and she could take a whiff of the season's scent. the place is silent, as if no person occupying a patch of the vast space is alive. and maybe they were not. they lacked life anyways, especially during exams. it is empty on most regular days, and she likes it that way -silent, empty, peaceful. 

she's watched seasons pass by the old building, as it remains a sculpture protected by the gods, unchanged. 

she considers it her own shell, a shelter from the outside world, an excuse not to go home right after classes end. sometimes she frequents it during the holidays too, like a monk sticking to his shrine, never leaving, never wanting to leave. jihyo would drop by every now and then, getting done stuff she should've been over with long time ago. she's not the only one who would frequent the abandoned place though; a junior kid sticks around for holidays too, always sitting by the huge window on the second floor, sketching something down her notebook. mina thinks she has no family to go back to; feels like a monster for wishing she had none herself. 

it gets pretty cold during winter; the heaters at their job just like everyone else. and the kids find themselves huddled in their padded coats and ugly christmas sweaters. but mina loves it, loves the cold of the library that feels warmer than what’s supposed to be her own home. home. such a queer feeling to mina. she loves the library that is silent, empty, peaceful

she is staring down at her collection of colored note cards, thinking about how this building older than her grandparents, how these walls standing tall and proud, create some sort of a safe zone that she finds herself sinking into. looking up, her eyes trace the endless bookshelves, carrying thousands of millions of words between the often yellowing pages.

she has always loved the smell of books: new books, old books..since she was a child. they've allowed her to live in worlds other than where she exists: kingdoms, villages, homes, where her parents were not screaming at each other the entire time, where her father never would raise his hand, where her mother knew the meaning of sobriety. in her world, love was no longer a sequence of letters forming a word that described an unknown feeling, family was a bond that went much further than blood-relationships, and life, was beautiful.

mina has developed a handful of habits as she grew up. the school’s therapist -whom she was forced to see by none other than jihyo- calls them coping mechanisms. the old man rates them from best -reading- to worst -smoking. mina likes to remind him that at least she’s not a drug addict, or god forbid, an alcoholic. how ironic would it have been if she were an alcoholic.

mina has been seeing the old man for a while now, and he may or may not know that she only does that for all the interesting books he keeps recommending her.

she never told him about her failed attempts, or the voices in her head. she never will.

mina locks herself in the library, metaphorically -except that one time when it wasn’t so metaphorical and she “accidentally” got locked up in the library-, spends most of her free time attending meetings of clubs she isn’t even officially a member at, goes to school even when she’s got a high fever and a killer flu, and works herself to the point of exhaustion, to avoid going home. that’s miss myoui mina, the myoui mina who isn’t student council vice president, model student, underclassman prodigy, but the myoui mina who is a mess, a mess, and a mess.

she despises going home, having no one to go home to. she locks the door to her room more often than not, skips dinner, keeps any interaction with her parents as short and as shallow as possible, disgusted to even breathe the same air they are breathing. mina grew up blaming herself for how little her parents cared about her, how much they did not love her. she used to think that if she did good in school they would love her, be proud of her. now she only thinks about how she is never going to be good enough, and she hates herself.

“you okay?” the question pulls her out of her reverie, and she looks down from the cloudy sky to meet nayeon’s worried eyes. she wants to greet the girl with a smile, or anything that isn’t the frown plastered on her face, but she finds herself unable to smooth the creases between her brows. nayeon doesn’t mind the lack of response, and squats down next to the younger girl. she watches mina let fall the cigarette she was smoking, pulling out her packet to offer her a cigarette, as she grabs another one for herself.

“smoking much today, myoui?” she tries again, in an attempt to incite a response from the girl. nothing.

she tries to ignore the tightening in her chest, blames it on the lack of nicotine, as she lights up the white stick perched between her lips. she doesn’t comment on how aggressively mina seems to be breathing in the chemicals.

“you know that saying ‘no one will love you before you love yourself first’?” mina’s sudden question almost startles her, almost.

she hums in response.

“i think it’s full of bull.”

now, if the question didn’t startle her, then mina’s unforeseen use of a swear word surely did, and she silently gasps.

“would you like to elaborate?” she asks after a beat of silence.

mina stares down at her cigarette, as if inspecting it, as she tries to put her thoughts into words. she inhales again, before trying to explain it to the girl who’s looking up at her from her crouched position.

“the answer is inevitably ‘love,’ but i think that loving yourself isn’t the first step to take, at least not in this case. i believe that, i believe that..because some of us didn’t learn to love themselves, didn’t even learn the meaning of love, it shall be more like ‘i will love you, until you love yourself.”