My eyes were tightly closed. I knew that I was hanging in there…like, really hanging in there! I was holding tight on the edge, trying my best not to fall when everything around me was darkness. I could feel the pain through my right arm, from my fingers to my shoulder and the cold sweat dripping down my forehead and down my nose…or were they tears?

“Teacher Cho?”

His voice sounded like Buddha's bell to me! So sweet and carrying, the ultimate salvation of my soul!

“Teacher Cho, where are you?”

Where was I?

“Can you hear me?”

Why wasn’t I able to answer to his calling? He was calling me, right? It wasn’t just a plain stupid dream of mine, right? So then, why the silence from me? And I was holding onto the edge with only four fingers…

“I got you!”his voice stretched through the hand that caught my wrist, holding me tight. And just as if the moon shone brightly, illuminating his face, I saw him up close. His delicate, yet manly features, his shining eyes, that small and perfect nose continued those perfect drawn lips. And his white face. And the frowning eyebrows. And the forming sweat on his forehead…for some odd reason, I felt like that was something I needed to protect, that it was something worth to die for. “I got you, teacher Cho!”

“Let go…”

“W-what?!”

“Let go of me, Kim Jong Woon,”my voice seemed to come from the heart of that chasm.

“No!”

“Let go of me.”

I could hear the ground growling and preparing to shake again. The earthquake was going to make him fall too. And then…then who was I going to try to persuade in liking me? Who was I going to stalk late at night, pretending that I was going to visit my grandmother? Who, if there was not longer going to be a Kim Jong Woon?

“Listen to me, Jong Woon,”I looked up to him, trying my best to keep my eyes clear. “There’s no time. Another earthquake will start soon and will make you fall over that edge too. So let me go when I tell you! It’s the only option…be a man! Chose yourself over me!” I felt my heart skipping a beat the moment I realized that his name came out from my mouth without the usual honorifics. How the sound melted on my lips, sounding perfectly coming from me!

The earth began shaking again… “Let go of me!”I shouted at him, feeling his grip tightening around my wrist. “Let me go, Kim Jong Woon, so that I can freely see you in my next life… Please…”

The ground was shaking differently this time. There was more power held inside the earth and he was standing right on the edge of the chasm…

“Be a man, Kim Jong Woon!”I yelled, feeling the sharp pain from my wrist resonating inside my chest.

Slowly, his grip was loosening. That was it, huh? The end of Cho Ae Ri… I smiled as I closed my eyes, preparing for my fall. I was good. I was feeling good. For once in my entire life, I saved someone else and not myself. For once, I didn’t held tight on life…

“Just what do you think you’re doing?!”

And that was another end. Jong Woon’s warm fingers were replaced by the cold ones of Jun Hyung, who pulled me up in not time and held me tight to his chest.

“I will never let you go,”he whispered in my ear as my hands rested on his back, silently driving away the tears that I felt falling on my cheeks. The siblings’ tears were blending… “As for you, Kim Jong Woon…” Jun Hyung’s fist flew towards Jong Woon’s face before I could do a thing about it. “This is because you wanted to let go off my sister. Mock my words, Kim Jong Woon: if you ever get near her, I will make you regret the day you saw the daylight,”he hissed to the one that was looking up from the ground. “Let’s go, Ae Ri!”he then pulled me after him towards the Academy. For some strange, I followed him even though my graze remained stuck on the blood that was dripping off from Jong Woon’s mouth…

The garden was silent. Even the crickets remained silent, while the students were trying to organize the things that fell during the earthquake. They were so agitated, that no one saw us entering the pavilion where the sweet smoke of the special wood was keeping the mosquitos away.

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