March 2009

            One night, Sehun and I had decided to settle for a home-cooked meal. For the most part, home cooking was rather entertaining, but cleaning up was a pain. However, I never mastered the art of cooking. Most of the time, Jong In would do the cooking. But that all changed after he moved out. So I have become more skilled with cooking.

            But I still couldn’t cut my vegetables without almost chopping off my fingers. And I just so happened to be cutting the bell peppers, that the tip of the blade just whizzed by, penetrating my skin. Upon contact with my injured finger, blood began oozing out at a mile per hour. I was watching the redness flow out and drip into the blinding white sink.

            The two colors contrasted so vividly that I was blinded for a slight moment. Fascinated, I continued to apply pressure onto my finger, allowing my blood to drip off my finger. It was déjà vu. I remembered the days I would use a dull knife to cut into my wrist. Those scars are still very much there, which contributes to why I prefer wearing long sleeves over tank tops. It was that mindset of mine that motivated me to continue cutting myself. I was always interested in art – red and white were entirely different colors. It was just beautiful to see when they were right next to each other. It was like creating a painting within itself. The act of cutting was just…beautiful behind a mask of enmity.

             Aware of what was happening, Sehun returned from the restroom with a first aid kit in hand. With an annoyed look on his face, Sehun scolded, “You need to be careful. What do you think you were doing?” Sighing, Sehun led me to the kitchen bar and tended to my cut.

            “Can’t you be any more careful, Hana?”

            Mute, I could only shake my head. I couldn’t find the words to speak. I was just taken back that I was still very much interested in cutting myself. The action of doing so just excited me. But Sehun could only look at me in such a way that I felt he was degrading me. He didn’t understand me. The only person that did was…Jong In.

            But he was long gone, just like everybody else.

            “You know, I went to therapy for suicide prevention. They used to teach us that cutting was never the way to go. Then again, they said hanging yourself was never the way to go either. At first, I thought that was just stupid. None of the therapists could understand us. But some of them had gone through the same situations as us. In fact, some were treated by other therapists before becoming some themselves.

            “And I still remember the last day of my therapy session, one of the therapists killed herself because she was still haunted by the past. I mean, even though you may have recovered from the state of being suicidal, there’s still a prospect that you can become suicidal again. Who knows, we may all still be suicidal still.” It started from that very moment when I began to view Sehun in an entirely new light. It was one of these rare situations that he would open up and tell me how he really felt.

* * * *

            There was one night when I found myself looking through the albums Jong In happened to leave behind. I had intended to return the albums to Jong In sooner, but I never got the chance to see