Taeyeon sat down on her bed and stared blankly into the small television set, just at the foot of her bed.

It wasn’t even switched on. Her mind was bordering on emptiness. She tried to feel something, anything, but she couldn’t. She tried forcing herself to cry but nothing came out, except exasperated frustrations. She stood up and walked over to her dressing table and took a seat. She stared at her own reflection, hoping to feel something but it was like gazing at someone else’s reflection. She used to have long permed hair and dyed with just the perfect tinge of brown, but now she kept it trimmed to just below shoulder length. Her hair colour was reduced to just remnant traces of the old dye, replaced with unkempt jet-black hair; her natural colour. It was then that she noticed a few deep gashes just below her right eye. They had stopped bleeding but looked deep, with a danger of scars. Yet, she couldn’t muster an emotion in reaction.

She couldn’t feel anything when David and Seohyun asked what happened to the family doctor. She felt nothing when she just shook her head with no further explanation, and watched their faces turned grim and pale with shock. She couldn’t even be bothered to retaliate when the hot-headed David exploded in anger and frustration when he saw Yuri being brought back.

“Who the is this!? We lost our own and you brought back another ing stranger!? Have you gone bloody insane!?” was what David vociferated, if she recalled correctly.

There was a commotion outside, but Taeyeon sat in her own room, totally shutting out the chaos outside. She knew she was leaving Jessica out there to defend for herself. She knew she should do something, so why couldn’t she leave the room? It wasn’t Jessica’s fault, but in the heat of things, people needed someone to blame. Situations like those needed a mediator.

So why couldn’t she leave the room?

“Every ing thing happened after you joined our family! Now we ing lost Yoona! You dare to bring another ing hobo into our family!?”

“You better watch that goddamn mouth, David.”

“Or what!? This is my house! I could toss her out right now!”

“You don’t lay a goddamn finger on her! I warn you!”

“Or what!? Then, I toss you both out! Who the do you think you are!? You think our home is a goddamn graveyard for all of your family members to die in!?”

“What did you say…!?”

“I’m saying history repeats itself and Yuri is going to ing die, just like Krystal and thanks to you, Yoona as well!”

Taeyeon heard what sounded as a hard punch, followed by a loud crash just at the hallway outside.

“You !” David bellowed, followed the sound of tables being moved as he thuggishly scrambled to his feet and then the sound of the vase smashing to pieces on the floor, “I will kill you!”

Taeyeon could hear Seohyun screaming something but couldn’t make out her words. David and Jessica’s vehement argument totally drowned out her soft-spoken voice. Taeyeon could guess she was screaming at David to stop but judging from the commotion outside, she failed. Jessica was definitely pissed, antagonising him further.

Jessica could take David on easily, Taeyeon calculated; she was hardened by the harshness outside, far more than the hot-tempered David. His bark was worse than his bite but the opposite was for Jessica’s; her bite was possibly venomous. Seohyun, however, might be the true victim of this heated confrontation, being caught in the crossfire.

Jessica landed a straight homerun kick for David’s crotch and he dropped to his knees in pain. That didn’t paralyse him from the fight. He grabbed Jessica’s leg and pulled it forward, making her fall backwards on the coffee table, smashing the glass to pieces and breaking the wooden frame to bits. Jessica groaned in aches, sprawling in a sea of broken glass shards and wood. Her forehead began to bleed. Seohyun’s efforts to break it up were futile. Her words became just noise to them. They were too focused to strangling each other to death.

Within a minute, Jessica was back to her feet and ready for round two, as was David.

“Enough.”

They glanced and saw Taeyeon, standing in the hallway, glaring the mess.

“You both done killing each other? Have we not lost enough?”

The three of them replied with silence.

“If you want to beat each other, do it outside and don’t break the furniture that I arranged and decorated.”

She picked up a fallen picture frame and hung it on the wall.

“Please act like goddamn adults. I’m not your ing mother.”

***

Taeyeon sat and stared at the window, looking at the night sky. She watched as the strong breeze made her curtains flutter and the trees to shake vigorously, dropping leaves like it was the middle of autumn. In this household, there had been a lot of weather watching happening lately and all of them were triggered by all of the wrong reasons. It was cold as hell, but she kept the windows wide open so that the cold breeze would draft in. She wrapped herself in her fleece blanket and stayed in the same position as she did for the past four hours. She switched off all the lights, soaking herself in darkness at staring at the dim and ghostly pale moonlight just beyond the grills of her window; even the moon’s glow had lost all of its vigour.

Not a single tear came out of her eyes.

She knew Yoona was in pieces right now, but somehow she couldn’t wrap an emotion around it. She just couldn’t. She tried but the more she struggled, the emptier she felt. She kept hearing the same explosion over and over again, ringing about in her ears and deep inside her mind. If she let it, she would start envisioning the entire thing all over again, like she was there right now, cursed to watch the building crumble with Yoona inside, stuck on repeat.

She didn’t know what to do.

She didn’t know how to shut it out.

She didn’t know how to cry.

She stood up and walked out of the room. She walked along the dim hall, past the mess that they tried to cover up from the scuffle, but there was a table missing. That was one of her favourite tables. Too tired to care, she proceeded downstairs into the basement. She flicked the switch and the small tungsten bulb came to life. It buzzed with electricity and it was getting dimmer with age. The wind from the outside blew through the tiny ventilation window, swinging the bulb, which was attached to a short and thin wire, swaying back and forth gently. She picked up a shovel and a fishtail gouge.

The next moment, she was outside in the backyard. She dug the ground right in the middle of the night, shovelling dirt to the side, digging a grave for two. She dug deeper and deeper, wider and wider, until she was totally soiled from mud and dirt, drenched with her own sweat. She dug and dug until her arms felt numb from exhaustion. She climbed out of the six feet deep hole that she dug and wiped off the sweat from her brows. She shone her flashlight into the ground to check if it was deep enough. It was. She shivered a little; her sweat made her skin even colder against the chilly night. The ice-cold breeze was really giving it all.

Now that the first part was done, it was time to move on to the next.

She went back into the house and entered Yoona’s room. It still smelled… fresh. Yoona had just made her room a few days back, setting up fresh bedsheets for her own return. She always enjoyed coming back to a cosy and comfy room. It became her motivation to return. That was just her. Her room still had the scent from her Caribbean Escape candle that she had lit just moments before they left for Novak. Now she would never be able to smell it again. The longer Taeyeon stared at the room, the more she could still feel Yoona around, as if she had never left.

She grabbed a pair of Yoona’s favourite outfit and put it around her left hand; a beige shirt and jeans. She always wore this outfit, time and time again. Everyone else got bored just looking at it, but Yoona wasn’t. Perhaps it held a certain sentimental value to her, but she never spoke of it. She then opened the other cupboard and looked at Melissa’s clothes. The siblings shared a room before the tragedy struck the two of them. Yoona kept her sister’s clothes the way they were, neat, tidy and intricately arranged. She didn’t move a fabric from its original place. They were all ready for Melissa’s return… that never came.

Swiftly, she left the house with the clothes. She climbed down into the pit that she had dug earlier and neatly placed them neatly into the grave. She placed the sisters’ outfits together, right next to each other, as a symbol of finality. They were separated in life with tragedy, so maybe in death they would be reunited in solace.

She began shovelling back the heap of soil that she made earlier, covering up the grave. It was time to give them some privacy that they much deserved. Perhaps, they had a lot of catching up to do. It wasn’t long before Taeyeon was panting. This was immensely arduous. About ten percent of the way, she stopped to catch her breath. She looked at the half-filled hole in the ground without much expression. Her hands were shaking from strain. Her biceps were aching.

She felt a hand resting on her shoulder.

“Here, let me,” David took the shovel from her, “Come on, Taeyeon. Let me help.”

She nodded and let him take over. He asked no further questions, nor gave any comments. It was just the understanding of silence between them, with the scrapping sound of the shovel throwing back the dirt where they belong. While he did that, Taeyeon took a small slab of concrete from the corner and carved on the stone.
 

Herein rests the memories of two beloved sisters and very dear friends:

Im Yoona (1987 to 2012)
Melissa Im (1990 to 2012)

Cherished in life, missed in death;
May there be peace in the afterlife.

She placed it at the head of the grave, now fully covered and levelled with soil.

She put a white lily on top of the tombstone and walked back. She sat and stared at the tomb that she made to bury two of her own family members. David sat next to her quietly, providing comfort with his presence. They stared in utter silence, basking themselves in darkness and the sound of the nocturnal nature.  They sat and they felt.

It was then that the first drop of tears came. She sniffled quietly and looked downwards at the ground, closing her eyes. There it was… the feeling that she was finding all night long. There it was… tearing up her insides. There it was… her regrets.

She kept her sobs to a quiet minimum and covered her face within her folded knees. David motioned her and she rested her head on her brother’s shoulder.

“Do you think she will forgive me…?”

“Huh?”

“Maybe- maybe if I let her save Melissa in the very first place… maybe- maybe both of them would still be alive…”

“You don’t know that, Taeyeon.”

“I stopped her from saving her own family. I stopped her instead of helping her, when she needed me the most,” Taeyeon whimpered, keeping her eyes on the tombstone, “Maybe I should have…”

“You did what was right. You made a decision, the right decision. If we had charged into Novak without any planning, just impulsively with Yoona, we’d all be dead.”

“She was so angry at me… so disappointed. I didn’t even bother to listen to her side of the story. I just went along with my calculated thinking. I didn’t even try to be human.”

“You are human, Taeyeon, and your decision was difficult but it was for the best. That’s why you’re the leader. There are decisions that people will not agree with you for it, but deep down you know that they are the right ones to make.”

“Then, why does it feel like I’ve failed her, David?”

“Right decisions do not always feel right. It’s the way it is.”

“If I had lost one of you to Novak and Yoona tried to stop me, I’d- I wouldn’t let her stop me, but she stayed.”

“That’s because she trusts you.”

“And yet I’ve failed her.”

“You didn’t kill them, Taeyeon.”

“No, but I destroyed every chance to save Melissa and possibly Yoona. Yoona was already dead inside from the moment that I forbid her to save her own sister.”

“My dear sister, sometimes the right decision brings consequences that look bad, but making the wrong one would be worse. We could all be dead. I think the question now is not whether Yoona will forgive you. It is whether you would forgive yourself,” David rubbed her sister’s head, “Though to me, you didn’t do anything wrong. You did what you had to do and you have my respect for that.”   

Taeyeon nodded and gently tapped her brother’s shoulder.

“Do you think it was suicide?”

“No,” Taeyeon shook her head, “She wouldn’t…”

“Okay.”

“You should get some rest, David.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Yeah, I’m going back in after a moment. What about you?”

“I’m… I’m grieving right now, Taeyeon, but I’ll pull through. I just… not now. We’ll talk soon.”

“We should,” Taeyeon agreed, “It had been a long while since we had a good talk.”

“Okay,” he stood up and began walking back to the house, “Goodnight sister.”

“Nights.”

Taeyeon waited for him to be gone and her finally being alone once more. She grabbed some soil and walked over to their tomb. She dropped it on the grave as a sign of respect.

“I hope you both can find it in your hearts to forgive me. I’m sorry.”

***

Lunch the next day was grim.

Nobody had the mood to eat, not even Seohyun. She looked like she barely slept at all, with her eyes all red and puffy from presumably crying. She took a few bites off the bread and just stopped completely, staring at the plate of food. She didn’t even touch the frankfurters or the eggs. She couldn’t. She felt like vomiting.  

Jessica and David had calmed down over the course of the night. They weren’t talking to each other, but at least they weren’t trying to kill one another. They sat on the opposite ends of the table, eating quietly. Their little ruckus yesterday must have made them hungry despite it all. The food might not taste like anything to them since their noses were all clogged, but food was food nevertheless. Better to grieve with a full stomach than an empty one.

Taeyeon ate silently. Though she prepared the food, she wasn’t exactly enjoying her meal either. Everyone that was still left alive was at the table, except for Yuri. She didn’t take the news about Krystal too well. Everyone here wasn’t taking anything well.

“Can I speak to Yuri?”

“She won’t speak to you. She won’t even speak to me.”

“Well, she has to. She’s involved in something much larger than her own feelings.”

“Hey, Taeyeon, she won’t talk to you.”

“She will!” Taeyeon spoke sternly, “I will get the information I want, squeezing it out of her if I have to.”

“What are you trying to do!?”

“My family died out there!” she rampaged, “What would you do if you knew the only person who could explain what the happened out there? We deserve some sort edification for the that happened and only Yuri can provide that!”

Jessica was speechless. Taeyeon sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“I’m sorry. I was out of bounds.”

“Give me till tonight.”

“Very well, Jessica,” she turned around and walked to the kitchen, “Please.”

“Taeyeon,” she called out to her, “We… we have decided to leave here.”

She stopped in her tracks and looked at Jessica.

“Not until I get my answer, Jessica.”

“You will.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow, at the break of dawn.”

“I think that’d be best,” Taeyeon replied.

***

“Knowledge can be a curse too, Jessica. I’m protecting you from the truth that I know you cannot handle.”

How was she supposed to reply that?

Maybe tonight Jessica would be able to dose off. She closed her eyes and emptied her mind. A certain amount of time went by. Perhaps she really had dosed off without realising. She was stuck between the state of sleeping and being conscious. She could feel time passing by, but felt