"These are the hands of fate

You're my Achilles Heel."

I know I did wrong. But do you know the sense, the feeling that comes, when you know you did wrong, but you don't regret it? The crushing, the bitterness, that small bit of hate you have for yourself for not regretting what you did? I never did, because I believed I did nothing wrong.

That is a terrible flaw, a flaw too big to ignore and yet I have never known it to exist until now. It's strange, to look back on your life, and see what you did wrong, and remember thinking that everything was right. Remember thinking that you hurt this person because you had to, and you ignored two boys, no older than you, being pushed and bullied and tormented simply because of who they loved, because you believed that you would not help, and it was not your problem, and thinking that you did no wrong. That everything you did was right. That you, in your actions, was justified by reasons that only made sense to you, and you alone.

My reasons only made sense to me. But now I must've changed, I must've become a new me, for I don't understand those flimsy excuses now. And now I look back, with a heavy heart and a certain hovering disgust for myself, for ignoring the boys that I had, once, before we drifted apart, had been the best of friends with. For lashing out at the girl, for just tripping and scalding me with coffee because she had too many books to carry and was positioned in a angle where she couldn't see where she was placing her feet.

I did wrong, and I realize it, but I do not regret it. And that scares me. That scares me, and disgusts me, that I don't regret pushing my dongsaeng even more into the darkened corner, that I don't regret screaming and losing my hold on my mouth and my brains. I wish it would leave, I wish I could believe I was the perfect human once again, but I've found my Achilles Heel, and it's too vital, now, for me to ignore and push to the side. 

"Do you believe what you said, Cheondung?" The voice is so quiet, so shy and unexpected that I jolt, my eyes scanning the room that had been darkness the moment before to land on the source of the voice that sounds almost guilty. Byunghee. He walks toward me, the sun setting in the window behind his torso so he's outlined, ever so slightly, in red and orange and yellow.

"What?" I ask him, scrambling to climb out of my thoughts to join the world once again. I blink, once, twice, to clear my blurry eyes and push myself up slightly. 

"What you said to Mir. Do you believe it is true?" 

I hesitate, my regret of not regretting coming back up to surface. Finally, after a stretching silence, I say the only safe answer I know, but one that is all the true. "I don't know." 

He nods, as if accepting up the answer, but still his eyes, unsure and somehow afraid, are glued to me. It looks like he's fighting back something he doesn't want to say, but he doesn't want to keep to himself. "Can I ask you something?" I'm stunned, for Byunghee's never asked me for advice, but I nod. 

"Would you take what Mir has as your own?" He asks me in a rush, words tumbling over each other, but when he sees my furrowed brow, he tries again, slower, clearer. "Would you put yourself in his place? Would you be kidnapped, tortured, be invaded with demons if he could not? Would you take all this pain, all this weight that he's carrying, as your own, and let him go free?" 

What an odd question, what a complicated notion, but by Byunghee's shifting eyes, he's thought about this a lot. Too much, maybe. Because disguised in this question is another: How far does your love stretch? How much are you willing to give up, to sacrifice, for this boy that only has a talent for rapping and somehow landed here? Would you let a boy, just a boy, run carefree in return for a dark mind, full of mirrors and dead ends and monsters, for yourself? 

"I don't know," I say to him, and it's the truth. I don't think any of us could truly answer this question, until we were faced with this question, which is impossible. It's impossible to take away the pain from another and make it yours. It's impossible to make empathy, a figment of your imagination, to real, physical feeling of the other's pain.

Finally, after a long pause, Byunghee nodded, and started to make his way out. He paused, one hand on the doorknob, head bowed. "I know," he said, his voice desperately close to breaking, and left.  

~~~

The grass here is long, brushing against my hip and trailing across my stomach with feathery tips, but I don't mind. I just keep wading, wading through this sea of grass, this sea of life, lit with the bare light of a cresecent moon so dieted it's just a sliver, too thin in the enormous sky. The moon's light is enough to see by, but just so; no details, no colors except for black and grey and blue and tan. Who am I?

I don't know. I don't know, because for years, I've been the leader. I've been the hyung, the one in charge. I was the leader of MBLAQ. But now I'm not. Or I am, but I'm just the leader of nothing. Of nothing, of something that used to be, and now only speaks of sadness and broken dreams and regret, regret. Wishes. Wishes of us, wishes of me, wishes of them. And who wants to be the leader of something so sad? 

I would. I do, because it is better to be sad and pitiful and know who you are, what you're here for, why you drag yourself out of bed every morning for. It's better to be fighting a losing cause than to be fighting for nothing at all.

At least for me. 

And suddenly I'm crying, and I need to stop, I need to sit down and hide in this waving sea, so I find a bare patch of sand and collapse, suddenly broken, weak, and so tired. I wince as I do, for it feels like I've sat on a bed of rock instead of sand, but that doesn't stop my tears, my tears that have resurfaced after so long of being so strong. So strong, in sake of my members, to show them that even when everything else in their world in changing and rocking and trying to throw them off their feet, that I would be their pillar, the one that will always be steady even in the midst of tossing waves. 

But even the sand is turning against me.

That thought gives me a burst of bitter, bitter laughter, but that only makes my sadness worse, so my tears, the ones I've held back through the heartbreaks and ups and downs of the life as an idol, the life of a leader, just coming pouring out. Like I've been building a dam, from when I auditioned at CUBE to now, and it finally broke, and all the water and all the tears are rushing past this barrier, and I've nothing to stop it. 

And so, finally, I let myself cry. I let myself be weak, be just another person, just another one with a heartbreaking story to tell. Just one in millions, but when it's you, it makes all the difference.

When I can finally pull myself together and piece back the dam, I stand up, wobbly, unsteady. It feels like years have past, with me huddled on this clear patch of sand, so many that I should be old and grey when I return to that house, that house that has trigger so many tears, but not mine. Not mine, until now. I brush off my hands, but pressed into my palm is one of the sharp offenders, few in the sand. I hold it up to the moon's light. It looks like a shell, a stretched oval, a thin half. I toss it aside, trying to wipe the evidence from my eyes that I was crying, but I don't think it works. 

I take a deep breath. I need to be strong, I whisper to myself. They need me, they need me to be strong.

So I'll be strong.

~~~

He turns his head;

spits to the side.

Then he strides up to me,

a picture perfect example of complete relaxatation. 

He squats in front of me, 

And holds out a cashew to me,

the shell flicked somewhere 

off to the side.

"Here," he says. 

"Eat."

So I eat,

because food is a blessing in itself.

He grins, and takes out another unshelled cashew.

"I love these things," he confides to me. 

"Can't stand a day without them."