I was hurt and I was running. I was running away from all those faces that were watching me: some painted with pity, some painted with anger, some having no feeling written on their white cheeks. Apparently they had nothing in common. But they were all watching me. The me who was running, trying to keep the rags around my bruised and bleeding body.

Where were I, I did not knew. The darkness was cold and unfamiliar and the road ahead was nothing but a long thread made of dirt.

It is said that there is no darkness without light, just like there is no coldness without warmth, yin without yang. But fear – it resides all alone and its nest is almost impossible to be destroyed. And so I ran and ran and ran. Away from all the faces watching me, the lips moving, releasing bad words over and over again.

Why did I move? I was a bad girl.

Why did I slip down and fall? I was a bad girl.

Why didn’t I waited for the rice to cool down? I was a bad girl.

Why did I hurt my hand? I was a bad girl.

Why did I took the doll? I was a bad girl.

Why didn’t I wrote down the lines assigned? I was a bad girl.

How could I open the window?! I was a bad girl.

“No more!” I finally broke down, covering my ear with my palm, praying that the voices would just stop that everything would just… fade away.  “Please, stop. Please leave me alone,” I would beg the many faces that came surrounding, enclosing me in a circle of mental pain and fear.

But there’s no darkness without light, right?

Maybe someone came to be my saviour…

×  ♣ ×

A blink of an eye and I woke up surrounded by sunlight, in a room so familiar that it actually made me pull the rags closer to my shivering body. It was impossible to understand how from all the places in the world, I would land in my old nightmare, the very on I ran away from, trying to build everything from a scratch.

And there it was, the little girl with long black hair and curious eyes. She was sitting on a chair, her small palms resting on her knees in a posture made for old people and not for kids like her. The girl was looking straight at me and yet…

“Who are you?” She whispered.

A dirty tomboy stepped out of the darkness behind the closet and posted herself in front of the other girl, her hands resting on her hips, giving out her bossy attitude.

“I’m a girl, just like you,” the one with short hair answered, no apparent intention to reveal more than that.