Pain. Emptyness. Loneliness. Anxiety.

Those were the emotions that reigned over Jessica Jung's heart. Life had given her an overdose of cruelty. Never was she in a state of happiness, never had she ever had a smile on her face. Instead, she was always alone and had a big, black cloud over her heart; the cloud had never been cleared by the sun, and she knew that it would most likely not be gone for the rest of her life.

 

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"Jessica, I'm home," her step-father slurred out. A fourteen-year-old Jessica could smell the alcohol from the kitchen. She sighed and went to greet him.

"Hello, Siwon. Would you like dinner?"

Siwon looked at his step-daughter with hungry eyes. "Yes, I would."

Jessica sighed and nodded wearily. "I'll go prepare it right away."

She began to walk away when Siwon grabbed her wrist and said,"No... no need." He then pulled her onto his lap. "I've got my dinner right here, hun," he whispered in her ear and gave a smack to her buttom.

Wide-eyed, Jessica tried to escape from him, but he was too strong for her. He grabbed her more aggresively and began to kiss her neck. He traveled his lips upward, closer to her lips as she continued to struggle to get out of his hands.

"Stay still, Jessie. I want my dinner," Siwon said, tightnening his hold on her.

With his lips kissing her, Siwon slipped his hands into the Jessica's shirt, slowly creeping up toward her chest.

"Please, stop, Siwon," she sobbed, tears streaming down her face. She continued trying to stop him with no prevail. He continued taking advantage of the young girl until her clothes were all on the floor and she was before him.

 

---

 

Jessica Jung woke up with sweat streaming down her face. The nightmare had come again. Everynight, she would get nightmares filled with memories of her horrible past, reminding Jessica of how messed up her life was. She reached for her small razor on her nightstand. When she finally got a hold of it, she out the razor down on one of the few empty spaces on her upper left arm, and ran it through her skin. Red drops of blood soon followed and Jessica watched them roll onto her small blanket. The razor didn't even hurt her anymore. No, rather than hurting her, the pain from cutting herself gave her relief. Jessica prefered physical pain to the mental pain of her horrible childhood memories.

Jessica got to school late and walked in with a tardy slip in her hand. She murmured an apology to her teacher and walked quietly to her seat in the back corner of her class.

"She was probably late because she had a hangover from drinking  too much alcohol last night," she heard a girl say rather loudly.

The whole class laughed. The teacher never said anything; neither defending Jessica, or joining in on the teasing.

"Don't forget the guys she had with!" a jock said, laughing loudly.

"They must be really desperate if they had with her," his friend said, not missing a beat.

The class roared with laughter. Still, Jessica walked to her desk silently, not even batting an eye. By now, she was used to the constant teasing and the constant stupid assumptions. However, no matter how much she wanted to deny it, every comment, every laugh broke her inside. Nevertheless, she kept her cool stare and kept shut.

For the rest of the class period, she did her usual thing: she zoned out. It didn't matter to her anyways. She was a smart girl, with better-than-average grades, which surprised her teachers because they expected her to fail their classes. She occasionally got looks from her classmates, but she responded to them with a glare, with always scared them away. Sometimes, Jessica wondered if maybe, just maybe, she should smile, instead of glaring. Perhaps that way, she could befriend them, rather than scaring them away.

"It isn't like they'd want to be my friend anyway," Jessica whispered to herself.

The rest of the day was uneventful, not counting the handful of cruel, pathetic comments she got from her peers. When school finally ended, Jessica walked to the school library. Although it was only a high school library, the collection of books at her school was incredible. The school had a lot more books than a normal high school would, but it was unfortunate that no one really bothered to visit it. Oh well. All the better for me, Jessica thought.

Jessica walked through the numerous shelves filled with wonderful books. She loved to read because it would take her away from her pathetic life, and transport her to a new land with adverture and romance always around the corner, the two things she knew she could never have. Not to mention the fact she could sympathize with a lot of the characters' problems, because she had experienced a lot of them. Of course, some problems were impossible to relate to. Afterall, she had never been in a war with the Titans or been in a world where you had to kill others to survive. Besides those kind of problems, Jessica could relate to most any difficulties characters in books had.

After walking through multiple rows of books, the brunette chose three books to read: Thirteen Reasons Why, Fairest, and Looking for Alaska. When she checked those out, Jessica made her way to the rooftop. The rooftop of the school was a place not many people knew about, so it was always quiet and peaceful; it was the one place in the school Jessica wouldn't hear any nasty rumors about herself. She perched herself onto the edge of the roof. Jessica pulled out one of the books she borrowed from her book bag. She traced her fingers over the title. Looking for Alaska. It was an interesting title. As she more she read, the more she was pulled into the plot of it. She could almost hear the characters, Pudge and Alaska's conversations, as if they were standing in front of her. As she neared the end of the book, she heard a voice yell,"What are you doing? You're going to kill yourself! Get down from there!"

Before she could interpret what was going on, Jessica was pulled down from the edge of the roof, onto the ground.

"Were you trying to kill yourself?" she heard a deep voice ask.

She ignored his words and walked toward the exit.

"Wow, so no thank you to your savior?" Jessica heard her "savior" speak again. "Sure, no big deal. It's not like you were going to fall to your death or anything."

Annoyed, Jessica turned to face the talkative boy. "You didn't save me, you idiot. I was sitting there because I wanted to. I owe you no thanks."

The first thing she noticed about the boy was his hair. He had dark gold hair, which isn't common for students in Korea. The second thing he noticed was his height. He was freakishly tall. So tall, that she seemed like a midget compared to him. She'd never seen him around school, so she suspected he was new. Which explains why he spoke to me.

After giving him one last glare, Jessica spun around and walked once more toward the exit. She was about to open the door and leave, when he spoke again.

"Wait. Are you Jessica?" he asked tentatively. "Jessica Jung?"

She hesitated. "Yes, I am. Do you know me?"

The boy was about to say something, then shut his mouth. When he opened his mouth once more, he said five words: 

My name is Kris Wu.