Dance of the Shards

I am Hyun Ae. I am the younger sister of Kim Soo Ae, the famous idol. I am not as pretty as she is, not am I as talented as she is. I am also not as fortunate as she is. 

In truth, I am only the half-sister of Soo Ae. We have different fathers, but the same mother. Soo Ae's father met Mother first, and they got married. A year after Soo Ae was born, Mother left her family and met Father. They never officially got married, but they were together, though it was only a short period of time. But within that short period of time, I came to earth. Mother only dated Father for money. She never loved him, nor did she love me. After I was born, she left with almost all of his money, leaving only a letter and me behind for him. Mother went back to her original family and lived a happy life with them. Soo Ae had both of her parents, while I only had my father. He raised me, cared for me, loved me, up until this very day. He is no longer alive, but I know he still loves me. 

Soo Ae may be the idol singer in our family blood, but I am the dancer, just like my mother. My mother was a ballet dancer when she was young. I ended up following in her footsteps and becoming a dancer myself. 

Next week will be the International Ballet Competition, and I'll be competing. For the past 4 months, I've been practicing day and night for my performance. I was confident I would win first place. I was definitely sure I would win. 

I was in the studio, practicing the routine over and over again, when suddenly I stepped on something sharp. I lifted up my foot and found a glass shard on the wooden floor. I frowned, throwing the shard away in the trash and continued dancing. A few minutes later, I found another shard, then another. 
I began to get scared, I didn't know what was going on. It was the next event that scared me even more. A glass shard came flying at my face, creating a small cut on my cheek. I was too scared to stay any longer. I grabbed my belongings, dashed out the door, and drove myself back home.

When I got home, I dropped everything I had and crawled into Father's bed. The memories of when I was younger and I got scared started coming back. Before, whenever I got scared, I would crawl into Father's bed and he was comfort me. Now, all I have is his bed left, but that was enough for me. I curled into a ball and hugged the covers, my eyes started forming tears. Just then, I noticed a piece of paper stuck under Father's nightstand. I quickly pulled it from underneath the nightstand and looked to see what it was.

It was a letter. A letter written by Mother. 

"Honey, 
I won the regional championship. I'll be going on to the nationals next month. Isn't that great? I guess my plan to bomb Saemi with glass shards worked fine. My rival has now been eliminated from the competition, and whoever will be my future rivals will suffer the same fate. I must win, at all costs.
I hope you are proud of me. 

Signed,
Kim Min Ah"

As I finished reading the letter, my blood began to boil. My mother was never the best dancer. She just used her evil tactics to win. She cheated. 

Suddenly, at the bottom of the letter, some writing just magically appeared. I read them slowly.

"Your mother hurt others. Now it is time for her to pay. She is dead now though, and since her debt has not been paid yet, you will pay it for her. Enjoy."

I didn't understand. What was going on? It was then that I realized that because my mother was already dead, they couldn't torture her and have her repay the debt. So they came to me instead. The gods wanted to torture me instead. That's why they sent the shards, they wanted to ruin my career like how Mother ruined the career of many others.

But why me? Why not Soo Ae? Why me? I figured out I was the unlucky one, and there was nothing I could do about it. 

For the rest of the week, I continued practicing for the competition. Even though by the end of each practice, I'd be covered in cuts and scratches, I didn't care. I couldn't stop them. But then, I realized... That I could learn to dodge them. Within 2 days, I learned how to listen for them and dodge them while dancing. By the day of the competiton, I was ready.

I was wearing a black dress that went down to about half of my thighs. The top portion of the dress hugged my waist and was strapless. I put on my ballet shoes and tied my hair into a neat bun for the performance. Applying a bit of makeup onto my face, I looked at myself in the mirror. I can do this. I will survive. 

The curtains went up as the music began to play. My feet and body started moving to the music, gracefully leaping, twirling, twisting, and more. Shards began flying at me, but I dodged each and every one of them without disrupting my performance. I just made the dodges into a part of my performance. Each shard that came up to me I was able to dodge. It just whizzed past me and shattered into even smaller pieces when it fell onto the ground. The audience thought all of these shards were just special effects and props that I used to make my performance more interesting. In my mind, I prayed that the shards would not hit me or hurt me. It worked, not a single shard has hit me. I continued dancing, and I heard the music coming to an end. I slowed down, following the music's tempo and dynamics. The music stopped, and I bowed to the audience. As I got up, I found myself clutching my heart as I fell to the ground. A shard had flown at me at the end of my
performance, hitting me right in the heart. I clutched my bleeding heart and fell onto the ground, tears flowing down my cheeks. 

"The debt has been paid."

Those happen to be the final words of the late Lee Hyun Ae, first place winner. Her beautiful dance routine became world known, and was named, "Dance of the Shards".

My first post. I was just looking through my pictures when I found these pics, and I thought these would make a really nice little banner. So I made it, and bam! This is what I got. I titled the piece "Dance of the Shards", and wrote a little oneshot to go along with it. They're just made up names, just saying. 

My goal is for every graphic/edit I make, I write at least a little drabble that goes along with it. And vice-versa. 

Oh and here's a b/w version of the banner for the oneshot:

-03/24/13