f o u r

We occasionally forget the little things in life that some deem as not as significant as the bigger ones, like how important a brief ten seconds is.

In ten seconds, a person can complete a 100m race.

In ten seconds, you can say the word I love you to your dearest someone a dozen times.

In ten seconds, dark clouds can dim the clear bright sky.

In ten seconds, a delicate moment of happiness can easily be replaced with sorrow.

In ten seconds, in merely ten seconds, a life can be lost.

-

I witnessed everything ― every second after the crash happened. I witnessed the airbags bursting open to shield appa and umma. I witnessed Bomi knocking her head to the side door as a result of inertia. I witnessed blood gushing out from her forehead. I witnessed appa stealing a glance to check on his daughter just a fleeting moment before passing out.

With the car upside down and everybody else being unconscious, my eyes darted towards the sky. I realized then that the clear blue sky I was admiring earlier was gone. In a split second without me noticing, the sky had gone dark with bits of gray clouds dimming the atmosphere. Soon, rain started to fall.

When the crash happened, Bomi held me tight ― so tight that I wondered where she got all the strength from, so tight that I was almost certain that she was never going to let me go, so tight that it prevented me from flying out of her grasp, so tight that when a paramedic came to rescue her, she didn’t forget to take me along.

-

After the accident, the whole family grew aloof and quiet.

Appa distanced himself from the house by spending more time at the office. He buried himself with work ― a medium to distract his mind off the harsh reality. Perhaps he was a coward and was simply running away from it all, but the truth was, he was scared. He blamed no one but himself for everything that happened.

Umma grew quiet. With every passing day, she spoke less and less. She avoided all means of communication and direct touch. She even stopped caring about her appearance, letting her usual neat hair go wild and unattended. Sometimes in the mornings when appa was at work, Bomi was at school and she supposed she was alone, I heard her soft whimpers from what would have been her daughter’s room.

Bomi, meanwhile, became more and more afraid of everything. At such a tender age, she was forced to learn the fragility of life and to deal with its painful consequences. She would watch her parents who were growing apart day by day from afar, scared that perhaps they might be taken away from her, too, someday. The kids at school who knew about the tragedy tried to befriend her and let her join in their circles out of sympathy, but that made her take a further step away.

At nights, she would stare at the stars. She heard once that people who die would become a star, so she would gaze at the night sky and wondered if her sister was one of the twinkling lights.

Since umma stopped tucking Bomi to sleep after the incident, one night, she decided to read a fairytale for herself. Once she was done reading, she fell silent. For a second I thought she had already fallen asleep, but then I saw a sparkle of silver liquid in her eyes. For some reason, I didn’t want to make her feel embarrassed, so I looked away.

She turned off the lamp and hid herself underneath her warm blanket in the engulfing darkness. The silence between us seemed to be stretching on till forever, until she broke it with her sudden question.

“Ho-ya,” she began. “When they say happily ever after, how long is that ever after supposed to be?”

Perhaps already guessing that there was not any definite answer to her question, she fell asleep just like that ― lost and uncertain.