“You scared me last night.”

“I’m sorry…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Can…can I tell you something?”

“What do you think? Of course.”

“I wasn’t going to do it. It fleeted across my mind for the briefest of seconds when I touched the razor, but then I knew I couldn’t even before the thought had finished. And I know how pathetic that sounds to you right now. Like such a lie. But really, truly, I wasn’t. This is going to sound so stupid…but I was actually going to cut the teddy bear’s head off.”

“…That’s…twisted…and slightly disturbing…I don’t know whether to be relieved that you’re not as suicidal as I thought or to be worried for your sanity…”

“Yea…I know…but it was a gift from my mother when I was a little girl. I loved that teddy.”

“Yea I know. You sleep with it every night like some five-year-old child. And you drool all over it…okok! I’m sorry. Me. Crude coarse insensitive jerk ok? Anyways…do you not love it anymore?”

“…”

“Hey. It’s ok. You don’t need to say if you don’t want.”

“…”

“Hey, Nayeongie…s’ok…”

“…You know I couldn’t look at him? When he was on top of me. Hurting me. I had to look somewhere else. I couldn’t bear to...to see…to see him doing that to me. So…so I looked to the side and focused on something, anything that would take me away from what was happening, away from what he was doing down there. That’s the first thing I saw. That teddy bear. And then last night…it was just sitting there on the shelf and I couldn’t…I just couldn’t…”

“I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have brought it if I had known. Do you… want me to get rid of it?

“That’s my childhood. I struggled for so long last night because I couldn’t bear to throw away my last shred of innocence. But at the same time it’s nauseating to even look at it.”

“Your childhood and your innocence are not locked into an object Nayeong. You have an innocence about you, something I never retained. Despite everything that’s happened to you…you’re still so loving and guileless. I adore you for that. You’re like the better, wholesome part of me. Don’t let anyone, including yourself, tell you otherwise.”

“You adore me?”

“I do.”

“You got Jaesung to say the L-word for you but you can’t say it to my face?”

“I’m coy?”

“Pffft! Coy? You?!”

“Hey! I can be a girl too you know…sometimes…”

“…”

“…”

“I…I can’t bring myself to do it…could you? Get rid of it? Please? I don’t care what you do, just…just never let me see it again.”

“Of course.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Naeyong…please don’t ever scare me like that again…we’ve both…we’ve both lost so much in our lives. Let’s not add to each other’s pain. Please-please-please, I beg of you, stay with me. Fight it…”

“It’s not a surprise if I say this isn’t the first time he’s done this to me, is it? When he was put away and I finally could breathe and start to live my life, I was so scared it would all come crashing down on me again. It took me a long time, but I pulled myself out. Deep down though, there was always this underlying fear, no matter how deep you bury it, it’s still there. I know you know what I’m talking about. And then I do fall again, and it’s so much harder to pick myself up. It feels like all that confidence and hope I had were badly and foolishly placed, and I don’t know how deep I have to dig to find the strength to try…all over again. How…how did you do it?”

“Nayeong, in all honesty, you had it worse than I did. I didn’t have to grow up as a child with the constant fear and pain of being abused by people who were supposed to love me. I was thankfully taken out of that environment rather early. I found a family that loved and cherished me. My hardships were mostly the lost of loved ones. My pain was the result of accidents, cruelties of fate, and self-choosing. Yours is the result of a purposeful intent to harm, coupled by your complete helplessness. There’s a futility in that that I can’t even hope of understanding. I’ve always, always had someone to fight for, to pull through for. You had no one. I always had Lexi, and now I have you. It would be selfish of me to lay that pain on you.”

“But how do you stay so normal? That night I met you, you didn’t seem affected at all. Even in the days following, no tears, no aversion to touch, no nightmares. And I would know, I checked up on you in your sleep. How do you do it?”

“Normal? Seriously? Is that what you think I am? Normal? I’m infuriating, purposely provoking, rudely sarcastic, extremely distrustful, hard to live with, and the biggest control-freak to live on the face of this pitiful piece of rock we call a planet! When I act invulnerable, I feel invulnerable. It’s a defense mechanism. And PTSD doesn’t always manifest in such obvious psych textbook 101 ways. You’re right, I don’t have nightmares, but only because I have trouble sleeping in the first place. I lay there for hours before I fall asleep, and even then it’s light and discontinuous sleep. When you come check on me, I’m not even close to sleeping. I function everyday on four to five hours of sleep. It’s been like that for years. But I take it all in stride because I won’t throw away a life that has the tears, sweat, and blood of my loved ones poured into it.”

“Then why do you do stupid things such as underground fighting? Why do you continually and knowingly place your life in danger? Why the hell would you do something as stupid as fighting that demon of a man?!”

“…Cause I got your back…homey? And…cause I’m not normal? Di–”

“Don’t you dare lay this on him! Jaesung told me nothing! Do you take me for a total ?! You have a bruise the size of Pangaea on your face! I can put two and two together Pancakes!”

“Hey-hey! Don’t use terms of endearment with such spite!”

“You! Yo–”

“Look! I don’t want to argue with you! What’s done is done. So know this, whether there was a better way of going about this, I did it my way. I got hurt as a result, but it was for you. It was a lot of sweat, and a tiny bit of blood. Would you deny my efforts?”

“You’re trying to guilt trip me now?!”

“Well would that force you to give a damn again?! Because if it does I’ll gladly play the roll of the jerk! It’s not like that’s new to me anyways!”

“This isn’t like I just start giving a damn and then everything’s all bright and shiny again!”

“I know…but it’s a good start Nayeong.”

“I just…I ju–”

Tiffany stopped Nayeong from going any further by crushing the older girl to herself in a brea