UnReal

 

It was a cloudless day. A perfect day to go to the park and play with our dog Hyo but my parents made me come to a different kind of park.

I had never gone to that place. It had grass like the one on our street but it was filled with weird stones and my parents made me wear all black even knowing that I don’t like that color.

A lot of people were there, all gathered around a hole.

I didn’t know why we were there or why we left my little sister at home, but everyone knows that you should always obey to your parents even if they made you go to a weird park and not the one next to your house that you always go to.

There was a hole in the ground, like I said before, and they were lowering a box there. For a moment I wondered if it was some kind of time machine like the one that my teacher made, where everyone had to put something inside so that in the future, when discovered, people would know how we lived and the things we liked. I made a painting but Mrs Kwang forced me to put Yoong, my alligator plushy too.

I miss Yoong.

Some people were crying but I didn’t understand why. I looked up to where my parents were standing beside me and noticed that they were crying too, looking at the box being put in the hole. Tears ran down my father’s face and my mom’s shoulders were shaking and if you didn’t see her tears you would think that she was laughing.

I had never seen my father cry.

My father looked down and signaled at my hand, where I held a white rose.

I approached the hole carefully to not fall and threw the rose, watching it fall on top of the box.

 

 

---

 

 

13 Years later

 

(3^rd person’s POV)

 

“Wake up, we’re gonna be late”

The lump in the bed didn’t move.

“If you don’t wake up, I’ll give a cucumber sandwich to Yuri making you unable to kiss her for a week.” The voice threatened.

A groaned sounded from below the blankets and the lump moved around for a bit.

“I dare you.” The lump said.

“Jessi” the younger girl whined. It’s always the same thing She thought.

The girl had spent the last half an hour trying to wake her sister but every attempt had been proved fruitless. Shaking her, screaming in her ear, threatening to call mom, nothing had worked.

“Ok, ok. I’m up. Stop with the whining, it’s so annoying this early in the morning.” The girl from below the covers complained while slowly getting up.

20 minutes later, Jessica found Krystal, her little sister, on the kitchen, eating breakfast on the kitchen table.

Taking the milk from the fridge, Jessica sat on the table opposite to her sister.

“Where is mom?” she asked as she poured milk on her cereals.

“She left to a meeting half an hour ago.” Krystal answered flatly while texting on her phone.

Jessica munched on her cereals slowly while observing her sister. “Texting Amber?”

“Yes. She’s saying that she has tutoring this afternoon so we can’t go on our date.”

“Yuri and I will go to the mall this afternoon, do you want to come?” Jessica offered. Even if Yuri and she hadn’t had a date in almost a month, because of midterms, she didn’t mind to spend it with her sister.

“And be the third wheel? No thanks.”

Jessica shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

A few minutes later, Krystal put her phone down and huffed alerting her sister to her sour mood.

“So… how are you and Amber doing?” she asked.

“We’re doing great…even if we’re not spending that much time together lately.”

“Midterms . Yuri and I aren’t spending that much time together either. But think like this, in a week they’re going to be over and you’ll have all the time in the world to spend together… until the finals.”

“I’m so anxious for this week to be over”

“Me too…” Jessica agreed until a though ran into her head “but hey… without mom home, I don’t want you and Amber alone in your room, especially with the door close.” She warned.

“That is so unfair, as if you don’t close the door when you’re alone in your room with Yuri.”

“I am me… and you are you, so no closed door when Amber’s around. Got it?”

“Got it” Krystal grumbled eliciting a satisfied smile on Jessica’s face.

 

---

 

“I have to go buy something for my mom. Do you mind to wait here for a few minutes?” Yuri asked.

“No, go ahead.”

A few minutes passed and Jessica was distracted reading a magazine, still sitting on the cafe when an obnoxious laugh made her shift her attention away from her reading. The laugh had come from a large man but that wasn’t what caught her attention.

After turning to see where the noise had come from, Jessica had recognized someone that wasn’t supposed to be there on the crowd.

It’s that Amber? She wondered in confusion.

Krystal had said that Amber was supposed to be with a tutor that was helping her in school. That doesn’t seem like a meeting with a tutor.

Amber and a girl where sitting on a bench a few meters away from the café. They were sitting really close together and Amber was whispering on the other girl’s ear, an action that made a fire start to burn deep inside Jessica.

From afar, Jessica could see a blush appear on the girl’s cheeks and she smiled shyly when Amber moved away a little and looked her.

Jessica was furious. Who does she think she is to do this to my sister?

Deciding that she would give Amber a piece of her mind, Jessica stood up and made her way to the two sitting girls.

“Yah Llama” she shouted when only a few feet separated her from the pair.

They looked at her. Amber smiled when she saw the older woman making the urge, which Jessica had to punch her, intensify.

“Hey Jess” she greeted.

“Don’t ‘Hey Jess’ me. What do you think you’re doing?”

Amber looked confused for a moment until she answered. “Hm… Talking to Victoria.”

“Talking? That doesn’t seemed like talking” an accusing undertone clearly showed on Jessica’s voice.

“Where’s Yuri?”Amber suddenly asked.

“Don’t even try to change the subject. You got caught and you have a lot of explaining to do”

Jessica’s temper was rising and her cheeks started to redden form anger.

Amber got up. “You need to calm down” she said as she approached the fuming girl, hands in front of her as if she was approaching a wild animal.

“No, I don’t. How could you do this to my sister? I thought that you actually loved her.”

“You have a girlfriend?” the Victoria girl asked.

Amber sighed and turned to face her a little.

“I’m really sorry. I’ll talk to you later and explain this whole mess, ok?”

The girl seemed sad and for a second Jessica genuinely felt bad for her, but then she remembered that she was trying to get her sister’s girlfriend and that feeling suddenly turned into anger.

“Ok. I’ll see you later” she said as she left.

“No, you won’t. You…” her sentence was interrupted as Amber roughly grabbed her arm and pulled her to a more secluded area where they could talk without people swarming around them.

“Stop it. What are you doing?” Amber asked. She looked really mad but Jessica could be bothered by it.

“No. What are you doing?” Does Krystal know what you’ve been doing?”

“Who’s Krystal?” the younger girl asked confused.

Jessica frowned. “Did you hit your head? Krystal’s your girlfriend. The one you’ve been dating for the last year. Do you remember her or that fake blond wiped your mind with her fake s?”

Amber sighed and calmly, to not aggravate the other girl more, said. “Jessica… I don’t know any Krystal”

“Really? That’s you’re excuse?”

“Jess…”

“No. I don’t want to hear it. I really like you Amber but I hope that she’ll dump your sorry so hard that you won’t feel it for the next millennium.”

As she turned around to leave, a hand grabbed her arm again holding her in place.

“Let go of me, Amber. Or are you afraid that I’ll tell her about you and your conquests”

Amber’s lips moved but before any sound could be voiced Yuri appeared behind them.

“What’s going on in here?” she asked.

“Amber’s been cheating on Krystal” Jessica said.

Because her back was turned to Yuri she didn’t saw how the girl’s eyes saddened but Amber saw.

“How about we talk about this at home?” Yuri suggested.

Jessica stared right into Amber eyes, intimidating the younger girl to no end. The intense stare contest lasted until, not handling it anymore, Amber looked away.

Jessica scoffed and left with Yuri, leaving Amber to follow after them.

Half an hour later, they reached Jessica’s house. The drive there was a tense one where neither Yuri nor Amber dared to talk for fear that it would set Jessica off.

“Is your mom home?” Yuri asked as they passed the front door.

Jessica looked at her wrist watch. “She’s probably on the office” she answered, pointed to down the hall absent minded.

Amber didn’t dare to talk, as Yuri looked at her pointed to the office without Jessica noticing.

“Go call her” she mouthed.

Jessica sat herself on the sofa, head buried on her hands. She didn’t know what to do and how to react to the situation now that she had some time to think about it.

She wanted to beat Amber up, to hurt her for even thinking that she could touch another girl when she was with her sister. But in another hand, she knew Amber for a long time, they were friends even before she and Krystal started dating, she really liked the short haired girl.

Yuri stood watching her girlfriend on the sofa for a moment, but after seeing the other girl’s shoulders starting to shake, she sat on the spot right next to her.

Feeling a person next to her, Jessica lied down so that her upper body was on Yuri’s legs, the later comforting her by running her hands through her hair soothingly.

A few minutes later, two sets of footsteps were heard on the silent living room, making Jessica sit up and wipe the few tears that had escape from the corners of her eyes.

“Jessica” Mrs. Jung called out softly, recognizing her daughter’s stance as one that she hadn’t seen in a while.

Fire started up deep inside the upset girl making her anger, which had subsided in the car ride home, increase tenth folds.

“You think that calling my mom here will save you from me” she said in a menacingly voice.

Amber felt a shiver run up her spine. Jessica always had a way to scare her, either with her cold glare or just by her silence, but never in all the time that they knew each other had she ever talked like that and now Amber was seriously thinking about running away and hiding somewhere where the other girl could never find her.

“What is going on in here?” Mrs. Jung asked.

No one answered.

Mrs. Jung watched her daughter closely. She had her fist clenched so hard that they were turning white and the fact that she had refused to turn to face anyone in the room was alarming making the mother start to conjured way to calm her daughter if needed.

“Jessica” she called softly.

“It’s nothing, mom. It’s just that Amber is a…”

“Jessica” Yuri called out interrupting her girlfriend before she could say something that no child should say in front of their mother.

Jessica turned and made her way to the silent girl. Amber swallowed in fear and prayed that the other women in the room wouldn’t let Jessica kill her.

“I’ll just tell Krystal what you’ve done and hope that she rips you to shreds” she huffed and climbed up the stair, leaving the room and all its inhabitants.

She was so blinded by anger that she didn’t notice the shocked look on her mother’s face, as she exited the room.

Reaching the hallway that led to the bedrooms she called Krystal but no one answered her calls.

She entered her room and found her.

“Krystal”

The younger girl was sitting by the window looking down at the street and the cars passing by.

At that moment a knock on the door made Jessica jump in fright, but she didn’t move from the place where she was standing looking at her still sister.

“Jessica” a voice came from the other side of the door.

No one in the room answered, so the owner of the voice decided to enter anyway.

The door opened slowly and Amber entered.

“What gave you the idea that if I don’t answer it means that I want you to come in?” Jessica said.

Krystal turned around for the first time since I walked in the room.

“Amber” she mumbled.

“Jessica” Amber started.

“I don’t want to talk to you”

“No, we need to talk about this”

“Krystal can you take your girlfriend out of here”

“Krystal’s here?”

Jessica closed her eyes.

“Amber, you’re seriously pissing me off right now, so stop with all this games.” She shouted.

How can she keep saying that? Her sister was right there.

Amber tried to approach the girl but before she could reach her, Jessica moved away and sat by the window next to her sister.

“I can’t…” Amber started but Jessica interrupted.

“Krystal. You know how you told me that Amber had tutoring today? Well, while I was on the mall she was there with another girl. They were really ‘friendly’.”

Krystal’s face remained impassive while Amber looked at the ground.

“Who knows how many times she lied so she could go behind your back”

Krystal rose from her place by the window and moved to stand next to her girlfriend.

“Jessica” Amber mumbled.

At that moment the bedroom door opened again.

Mrs. Jung entered, passed the still looking down girl and sat with her older daughter by the window.

She was sniffling as if she had been crying. The older woman turned to her daughter and put her hands on top of the others, squeezing them.

“Jessica, you need to know something. Krystal’s not here” the mother said, her gaze remaining on the joined hands.

Jessica looked at her and frowned. Her sister was right there.

“You were 5 and you had gone to school. Me and your father knew that it was getting close to the end and we didn’t want you to be here to see it” the mother looked at her older daughter, tear running down her face.

 She reached her hand to touch Jessica’s face. “You were so little, how could you understand… at midday she stopped breathing, we tried to bring her back but…” sobs filled up the room.

“No” Jessica shouted.

“You went to her funeral, but I don’t think you realized it because as we were going home you kept asking as to pick her up and bring you both to the park on the end of our street.”

“Stop it” Jessica got up and went to the other end of the room, away from her mother and the things that she was saying.

“We put you on a psychologist that said that it was normal and that you were so little and that it was normal, that you were too young to understand that she wasn’t going to came back.”

Jessica shook her head, trying to will her mother to stop talking.

“She was two”

The daughter turned to her mother. “No, you’re wrong. She’s 16 and she’s right here.” She said pointed at the space next to the still motionless Amber.

“She died 13 years ago.” Mrs. Jung stated. “Krystal’s dead”

It had been so long since the older woman had said her younger daughter’s name. Even after so many years, she still had a hard time saying the name.

“No. Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to make look like I’m crazy? I’m not crazy and you’re wrong. Krystal right here and she’s 16 and she’s dating Amber even if she’s a cheating, lying ” she ended sending a dirty look at Amber.

Amber sighed and looked at Jessica. “Jessica… I never dated Krystal because I never met her”

Jessica didn’t know what to think anymore. Everyone was telling her that her sister was dead and had been for a long time but she could see her. She was right there and no one besides her could see her.

Tears of anger and frustration were accumulating on her eyes, ready to fall.

She surveyed the room.

Her mother was crying, soft sobs escaping her lips from time to time.

Amber was just looking at her, her eyes showing concern and pity.

At the door she saw Yuri.

Her girlfriend was also crying while looking at her.

Jessica neared her.

“Yuri… You believe me, right?” Jessica asked the broken girl.

Yuri lunged at her, hugging her tightly as if she was afraid that the girl was going to disappear.

“I love you. I love you so much” Yuri whispered on Jessica’s ear.

Jessica knew that the girl wanted to believe her but that she couldn’t. That notion made her hug the broken girl even tighter.

The doorbell rang making everyone flinch but Jessica.

“I’ll go” Amber said as she passed the still embracing couple.

“I’m sorry” Yuri whispered. “But always remember that I love you”

Footsteps were heard coming up the stairs.

Jessica broke the hug as she saw her dad appear on her door way.

She hadn’t seen her dad in months. After her parent’s divorce when she was little she only saw her father a few times a year and see him at that moment filled her with dread.

Behind her father two men all dressed in white uniform and a woman with a lab coat followed.

Jessica started to walk backwards trying to put some distance between her and the two men that were approaching her while her father and the woman remain on the other side of the door.

“Get away from me” she shouted at the men but they didn’t stop.

In panic, she jumped on top of the bed.

“Mom, please make them stop. Mom” she shouted but her mother didn’t even look at her.

The men were getting close and while one was trying to grab one of her legs she kick him in the face breaking his nose. Blood started to pool on her bed.

She tried to take advantage of the man’s distraction to jump out of the bed but the other man notice it and grabbed her by the waist.

She struggled but the man was really strong and not even her kicks made him let her go.

The woman entered the room and as she was getting close, Jessica saw a needle on her hand.

She waved her hands and kicked hardily to stop the woman from approaching the needle to her skin but the woman grabbed one of her hands.

She felt another hand on her left arm. The man whose nose she had broke was holding her arm with the hand that wasn’t holding his nose. She felt the man’s blood on her skin.

“No” she screamed. “Please, help me” she pleaded for someone in the room to help her but no one did it. “No, stop it”

She felt the needle on her neck and she screamed louder.

Her vision became blurred and she felt drowsy.

She stopped struggling because her muscle had lost all its strength.

She saw her mother, no longer at the window but standing up next to her father. She was crying still but now was crying on his shoulder.

Her father was looking at her with a sorrowful gaze.

She turned her face and saw Yuri.

Yuri was sitting on the floor, back to the wall, her knees were pulled to her chest and she was freely crying.

Amber was sitting by Yuri comforting her, silent tears sliding down her face.

Jessica felt a hand on her cheek and turned to look at her sister.

Krystal was looking at her sadly while caressing her skin.

“Krystal”

She succumbed to the drugs looking at her sister’s eyes.

 

---

 

 265 days later

 

Two persons were sitting on the bed that was situated on the middle of the room.

“Do you think that they’re going to ever let me out of here?” Jessica asked.

“If you took your medication, they would” a voice answered her.

“They make me feel sick and not myself” Jessica said.

“They seriously should paint these walls. White is so depressing” the voice stated changing the topic.

Jessica scanned the room.

All four walls were painted white, with only a grey door on one of them and a small window with grey bars on the opposite side.

The bed had a white bedspread.

The room looked really clean and plain, a thing that had peeved Jessica to no end because it made her remember what she had left at home, a room so much colorful, but after awhile she got used to it and now she didn’t even cared.

Jessica felt a nudge on her shoulder and shifted her gaze to her side.

“You’re really quiet today.” Krystal said.

“Yuri visited me today.”

“Oh? What did she said?”

“That she would wait for me, for as long as I’m here even if it takes forever for me to leave.”

“That’s commitment” Krystal commented.

“It makes me think that I should commit too, that I should make everything in my power to get out of here.”

Jessica opened the palm of her hand and looked at it.

Two pills were inside.

“Are you going to take them?” Krystal asked.

“I don’t know.”

“They make you sick”

“I know”

“I have to leave if you take them” Krystal informed sadly. “You said that you’d never leave me alone. If you take them I’ll be all alone”

Jessica loved Yuri.

 Yuri was her first love and the person that she wanted to spend her life with.

But Jessica loved Krystal too.

Krystal was her little sister, the one she promised to never leave.

Jessica pondered as she looked at the two little pills.

Two little pills that could change everything.