A/N: So I realise that Aberrant 2 was supposed to be my last update, but I haven't updated this in a while... and I kinda always complete my fics before I post em... and then edit as I post chapters. Anyhow 'Insentient Paradox' has been completed for a while, and I kept forgetting to post the next chapter. I realised I kinda neglected this ongoing. So er... Hope you enjoy ~ *runs back to study*

~*~

I still take on customers, don’t get me wrong. I like my money too much, but it (the number of clients I have) has certainly dropped. I tell others (the ‘potential’ clients, I mean.) that I’m only focussing on my loyal, current ones. But, in my heart, in my mind, I know it’s not true. I feel there’s another reason, but I prefer to drift in my world of ignorance – ignorance truly is bliss.

“Unnie,”

“Mhm?” Muttering, I add a dash more cerulean blue to a picture-perfect sky of Seoul. A river, where Sooyoung and I used to play alongside when we were younger. The place was…wondrous. The way the butterflies floated in a humid heat, fluttering elegantly out of my clasps as we hurried to obtain the perfect ‘pet’. Oh, and the way the sun’s ray hit the water, set alight a million diamonds, each light almost seemingly sentient in existence, itself. Unlike me, an insentient paradox. God. I miss Sooyoung.

“Unnie.”

“Nae?” I turn, diverge my full attentions to Seo who’s waving a flimsy sheet of paper before my eyes. “What is it?”

“It’s Hyo and my official get-together party!” Why would she need that? Is it a common occurrence for people to do that? Have a party to celebrate the union of a couple? I mean, not something so casual, since marriage and all that … exists but for something so small. Does love truly have such a significance upon life?

“When is it?”

Joohyun extends the paper, I shake my head, and reiterate, “When is it?”

She shrugs, and begins to recite. “Next Saturday, at the barbeque place. All catering is paid for, just turn up and eat~”

Free food? Who turns up their nose to that? Damn idiots, that’s who.

~*~

Fast forward a couple of days, and it’s their goddamn happy-gay-party at the outside-set barbecue. I saunter in like I own the place. People greet me, left, right and centre. And it’s ironic, because almost 75% of these so-called ‘friends’ are my clients, or ex-clients. , I’ve gotten around quite a bit. I’m not certain as to if this … fact … is something I should be so proud about. But hey, any fame is good fame… or whatever that they say.

“Congratulations, Hyo, Seo,” I smile, pull either of the happy couple into an embrace that lasts for a maximum of two seconds. “I wish you guys a perfect life together.” Don’t laugh. I didn’t know what else to say!

“Taeyeon! You’re here?” I turn, see Sunny, and wave my hand. Me … and amiability is an odd concept, indeed. Such characteristics contrast with my own natural self, and I know … I know that it’s not me.

As Soonkyu manoeuvres herself I finish the extensions of my greetings and thanking of their invitation. Despite my career choice I’ve a well-versed knowledge of… social protocol.

“Taeyeon! I thought you wouldn’t come!” Why does everyone say that here? Mere moments earlier, Seo and Hyo had said the exact same line.

“What’s up?” I offer. ‘What’s up’? What the is going on with me?

“What’s … up?” Soonkyu then smirks, elation slipping off her mien as she lifts an eyebrow as a soft mischievousness pricks the curves of her lips. “Well, if I had a it would be.”

“ jokes.” I couldn’t suppress the grimace at the surprise turn of conversation. I’ve seen too many in this goddamned life of mine, “Ew.”

“Then, downtown is getting wet, if ya get my drift…” Soonkyu’s on a ing roll. I don’t even understand how she’s being so comical today. As I said… she has an odd sense of humour.

“Aw Jesus. Sunny!” I give her a judging look, and harshly whisper, “There are people here. We are in public! Have some decency!”

“Says the .” Soonkyu retorts, lightly but it hurts.

Ouch.

I flinch. I know she’s joking but, I can’t help feeling like she’s taken it one step too far. But I wonder, did I provoke this attitude? Was I too dismissive about what I am? Exactly what just happened?

“Hey, I’m sorry.” Soonkyu says, her fingers light at my shoulders. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay,” I whisper, and I take a step back. But it’s not. I’m so ing emotional, and I know I should have a clearer head, but all I see, is her betrayal dancing a demon’s trot across my mind. Had she thought like that all along? Had she thought… yeah that’s Kim Taeyeon, ?

“I--.” She starts.

I turn.

And I run.

Ultimately, I find myself a seat on a boulder, and gaze at the setting sun amongst silhouettes of trees, whilst a dismal prospect burns shades of charred carbon into my hope. Yoona lied. People will always look at me… like a . No matter what I do… or say. I’m going to be seen as this forever. Judged because of something I had no choice about. Critiqued because I was a stupid adolescent girl who had let herself would be taken advantage of, let her innocence be whisked with those pelvic… ‘s’ that hurt too much, too much.

The colour of my thighs… I sometimes think I see the streaks of blood, and white stickiness on the inner side of them, even to this day… Oh god, why am I recalling this now?

Not now, not now, not now.

“Taeyeon-ssi.”

I blink, turn to the voice that seems dreadfully familiar. Balking, I scoff quietly at the woman who stands before me. “Yoona?” I don’t know why I hadn’t anticipated for her presence, Joohyun is our connection, after all.

She’s dressed in this gorgeous white form-fitting dress, her pale shoulders bared, the very tip of the crevice between her s visible, tantalising.  Her hair falls in a cascade of sleek tawny locks, wavy… and seductive. I realise that I’m staring and I cough, glance away.

What was I just doing…?

“Why are you sitting here…” She nods towards the rock, and then gestures back behind her, to the tables, the chatter and the people. “And not back there?”

“I don’t like crowds; I don’t like people. Believe it or not.” I say, offering her the millionth half-truth that I’ve given her.

“Right.” She says, and then sits beside me. I don’t move when her small hand rests delicately over mine; it feels as there’s electric sparking between the contact of our skin.

“Mind if I keep you company?”

“No.” And I’m not just saying it. I really don’t mind.

There’s a long bloated pause, one we’re not unfamiliar to, so it doesn’t instigate awkwardness. It’s… odd how that works, I think.

“What do you do in your spare time?”

“Art.”

“Oh.”

“You?”

“…I’ll show you…. If you’d like?”

It’s like a blink, and we’ve left the chaotic discord of a well-planned ‘wedding’ – of course, I passed on my goodbyes… “Yeah… we’re er gonna go for another therapy session.” Hyo had given me this look of knowing, but I don’t know what she was ‘knowing’ about. Joohyun had pecked my cheek, and, well, Sunny? I have no idea where she’d gone.

I’m sat on the passenger seat; whilst Yoona’s humming along to some pop tune on the radio, her fingers tapping a soft rhythm against the dashboard. She looks… pretty with the orange evening light striking the curves and angles of her face, enhances the porcelain doll structure of her cheeks, her lips… they looked… kissable.

“Is there something on my face?”

I avert my eyes away, sharply; feeling a heat singe furiously on my cheeks, neck and the tops of my ears. “I was just staring out from the view of your window,” There isn’t much to see, buildings and shops beginning to turn on their flashy neon lights. “It looked familiar, that’s all,”

“Right.” Yoona gives me a quizzical look.

The car journey is about … fifteen minutes? Maybe twenty. Yoona pulls up her little car at this little forest, greenery surrounds us – aside from behind, where the stretch of Korea – a lights and towering skyscrapers burn in the sky. “It’s pretty.” I say, exiting the car, slamming the door shut as I do so.

The gentle breeze pulls strands of my hair across my vision and I reach to pull them out of the way ---

---“No, not here,” Yoona clutches for my hand (it’s warm to the touch) and begins to lead me away. “There’s a better place,”

“Where?”

She doesn’t answer, and we walk. My hand in hers, and I’m staring at the way they fit together… that is… until Yoona looks back and realises my object of focus. She releases, and our hands separate, her cheeks colour a delicately pale pink.

Cute.

We walk, shoes against grass, twigs occasionally snapping beneath our treads, at some point our path converges onto the equivalent to man’s interpretation of the Garden of Eden. In short, it’s beautiful, countryside has always had a soft spot on my heart, maybe because my memories of it are so flawless – everything inimical happened in the city, after all.

Yoona treads further ahead, like some sort of fairy tale angel wafting through the grass and flowers, she turns back, and I realise I’ve been staring again. It’s been like that a couple of times, I stare, she catches me, and I fastidiously avert my eyes.

“So… this is what you do in your spare time?” I ask, taking a few steps, pausing to note my own reckless advances.

“Not quite.” Yoona replies, and she’s skipping through grass, my hand secured within hers as she’s dragging me off somewhere again. Through bushes and leaves, and god-knows what other types of vegetation, we arrive (for another time) at another opening. It’s nestled in a ring of tightly set trees, here, the sunlight hits the water just perfectly, sets it aglow with a scent of citrus upon everything, fluorescing with a kind of beauty observable only within nature. A pretty pebbled pond at the centre, and various varieties of dragonflies skimming across the pale water; I just about catch sight of an unknown but exotic-looking variety of butterfly flutters towards me, narrowly dodge it as it aims for my face.

“What I do in my spare time?” Yoona’s voice cuts the silence but blends in well with the scene, it’s like she belongs here. For a brief moment, she smiles at me, freely, blissfully, and crosses her legs as she sits upon moss. “I just sit by here, and … observe.”

“Right.” I nod, advance, take a seat upon the dry moss beside her. Fingers threading and fiddling with the shards of grass, a flower, violet, but I’m not certain of the species catches my eye.

“How is it?” Yoona asks after a moment. Do you think I’m weird? Are you going to laugh at me? Those are the questions I really hear.

I pause, gaze at her, the woman with the odd facets of personality. The woman with the nursery-teacher feel, the innocent ‘nudist’, the authority she evoked as a therapist…and the odd little new one that I’m still trying to get a grips with… that time she’d taken my hand and made me dance.

I’m most certainly incessantly perplexed.

“I like it,” I let a slow smile touch away the vestiges of reluctance. “It’s…cute.” You’re cute.

“Doesn’t it just feel like you can fall in love with this place?” She calmly inquires; she turns to squinting up at the sky, against the descending sun.

“Mm,” I nod, gaze at her. I think I prefer when she’s at rest like this. It’s … soothing, like ocean water, a breeze, or the first trickles of sunlight after a cold winter night.

Yoona smiles, and looks away.

~*~

[ Therapist-Yoona:

Session was scheduled last week for this Tuesday? Just texting to confirm that you’ll be attending?

Sent:  19:50 ]

I confirm this as I exit the elevator, and stride down the hallway, lined with a smooth laminate finish, that inevitably leads to my front door. Upon the handle, another bag of groceries.

Just who, the, , keeps leaving those there?

With the plastic hooks digging marks into my forearm, I unlock my door and head straight for the kitchen. Unpacking everything (the cucumber, carrots, bottle of green tea, and kimbap), I read the note:

‘To Miho,

Eat better, you look so skinny nowadays.

:)’

Admittedly, this note is a whole lot creepier than the others. Still… the worst case scenario is that I’ve got a stalker on my hands… A stalker … for a filthy ? Really? I suppress cynical laughter, and prepare for today’s set up of clients.

~*~

Night filters into my bedroom, moonlight following in upon tiny pirouettes (Insomnia’s a , don’t you know?). My mind flaunts with my errors, with my history, and my defilement. My peripherals, the borders, and all that it encompasses, scarred and rendered into pixelated images to which I cannot discern but, merely, only know of the pain that it embodies. Images of father, and mother. Sooyoung and Jessica. Every god-ing soul that’s left me in this ty skid marks of the world. I don’t know how long I’ve been lying on this bed, ‘tangled in sheets’, like I’m tangled in God’s ing hell hole. Remembering everything foul. Their smiles, to which there were few, their misery, to which I was and am infected with.

And their pain of life, itself, and that’s all that I know at present.

There’s something about the way the eventide’s silence swallows me up, melancholic, teetering on a sure path of destruction. There’s something about the way I know I’m being delivered into my own oblivion; that keeps me waiting, keeps me anticipating. It’s dreadfully ironic, all the same. Why do I look forward to my own demise?

Negativity is a drug unto itself, it seems.

I roll over, pull the thin sheets over my body and force myself into a semi-state of slumber. The forcing didn’t work, not so much. But I drift into a sleep eventually. However light it was.

. . .

Hyoyeon saunters into my room, bearing an arrogant smile. “I saw you.” She smirks, and places her handcrafted leather handbag upon one of the hooks of behind my front door. “I saw the way you look at Yoona, you saucy minx,”

“I …” I don’t know why I feel flames my cheeks, my chest; and my temper breaks short, under the pressure. “We only went and had a small therapy session.”

“Where?”

“…somewhere.” I mutter, and head towards the kitchen. “Want a drink?”

“Hiding something, Tae?” She’s smiling, but I take it differently. I shouldn’t, but I do, inadvertently.

“What’s it matter to you, Hyo?” I snap. “You never told me, when you and Seo got together.”

Hyoyeon blinks, shock ading her casual nonchalance. “Jesus it was only a question.”

“Well,” I glower, and pour myself a large glass of cheap red wine. “I don’t care to tell you.”

Hyo looks at me coldly, with a generous, generous, slash of hurt. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

Just as I think she’s about to leave, a pair of thin wiry arms encircle my waist, makes me balk with the surprise; erases my irritation with a surge of confusion.

“I’m sorry Tae.”

“W-why?” Stammering, I place my finger awkwardly against her forearms – I’m not unused to skinship, certainly not in my ‘choice’ of occupation, but I most certainly am unused to true affection. I guess they did grant me a lot of it before, but I never took it that way… somehow, somewhere along the way I began to appreciate their presence…I just haven’t got the ability to .. tell them yet.

“I know--.” Hyo whispers; and I feel her shrug against my shoulders, her entire slight frame lifting and dropping. “---Sometimes I forget.”

It might not seem much, but it’s like the tension seeps away from me. I guess sometimes I worry people will forget that I’ve gone through so many … tribulations; and it’s nice. Nice to know that people can give me special treatment, because of my pain. It sounds greedy, I guess; maybe a little egoistical, too. I guess I just want a little thought, while I spend my life thinking of others.  

“I know you like her---”

“---No I don’t.” Hyo’s arms around my waist tightens slightly – tells me to cease my interruptions; I shut up.

“You do,” Hyo insists. “Maybe not as a romantic interest, but you’ve certainly taken a liking to her.”

“O…kay.” I draw out, give a choked chuckle because something from her words has abraded me.

“Think about it, okay?” She exhales.

“Yeah, yeah…. How’s you and Seo?”

“Good,” I hear the smile slipping into her voice. “We’re great.”

“Great~” I smile, too.

~*~

Two knocks. I answer the door. Smile without looking, and bow. I’d assumed it was my next client.

“Hello, nice to see you again… Taeyeon-ssi.”

“Hi…” I half-stammer, as I raise my eyes to meet the dark ones gazing at me. “Yoo-Yoona?” Why am I acting so… awkward around her? I deduce that it’s clearly the surprise of her sudden presence.

“I just… really wanted to see you.”

Im Yoona topples over, left foot catching right foot, and falling into my instantly-there arms. My heart jerks in response to our closeness, or to her words I’m not sure. Upon her breath, the stench of alcohol batters my nose; erasing the fragments, the buds of something that shouldn’t exist in me. She’s drunk. God. She’s ing drunk. Why is she here?

I gaze down at her nonetheless, admire the fresh realms of unconsciousness seeping from the pores of her skin, the way that even artificial light accentuates her every aesthetic asset. She’s so beautiful…even drunk.

A heat burns at my cheeks, picks at the rest of me with a persistence. I give the thermostat a quick check from where I stand, it’s at moderate levels. , why do I feel so … hot?  I must be coming down with a fever, but of course!

I take Yoona in, leave her in my bed, before I retreat to the ‘makeshift studio’ area. It felt too stifling with Yoona in the same room.

So here I stand, a stranger in my own home, biting upon the flesh of my lower lip as I resist peeking at the sleeping woman. She’s a whole lot more tolerable asleep. Nothing like the persistent, pesky disposition she so likes to impose upon me during her wake. But then, then, she’s not as bad I thought she was before.

I sit beside the window, grasping the armrests with a death-grip. I need to rid myself of these feelings. This is weakness.

This, is, weakness…

. . .

“Taeyeon-ssi.”

My eyes feel swollen, aching; still I couldn’t catch a bloody wink of sleep. I have all my s for sleep, seriously.

“Taeyeon-ssi.” I look, open my eyes against something that enshrouds my vision in a brilliant white. It fades, slow, falls away until I see her. An angel. But not really, not quite. Flaws of a human enhance an angelic beauty; makes her… dare I say it… Loveable? No, no… likeable is a far befitting word.

“Yoona. You’re up. Hi.”

“Hello.” She replies, shifts her weight between her feet, trembling as she scratches her cheek with an index. “I … err…”

“You didn’t do anything, didn’t say much.” I say, despite the fact that she kinda did— of course, I refer to the ‘saying’ bit.  “Literally just crashed into my arms when I opened the door.”

“Oh.” Shyly, she flutters her lashes down. “How unprofessional of me.”

“S’okay.” I mutter, suddenly feeling as blushed as she looks.

“I… how much should I pay you?” She suddenly spouts, and then clutches at the edges of her shirt, the hemmed material crumpling in the clutch of her fingers. “… for staying the night.”

“What?” I raise a brow. “We didn’t even have . What are you talking about?”

“I… took your bed for the night… that’s… that’s why.” Yoona mumbles.

I’ve never seen her so incapable of conversation before. She’s stumbling and stuttering on all her words. She resembles an infant, a timid child with the threat of being scolded digging red marks of burden atop her shoulders.

“It’s fine.”

“If…if you’re sure.” She reluctantly manages.

“Yeah I’m sure.” How can’t I be sure if we’ve done it? Aish.

And the two of us awkwardly fiddle with our clothes, standing stiffly. I... I think I despise the unnerving silence between us more than I abhor the biased ‘chatter’.

“So…”

A distinct noise, chiming, bells, signals for our attention – or rather mine, but had captured both of ours, instead.

“The doorbell,” We simultaneously say, and then we both move. She lets out a soft laugh; and then I make my way towards the door. When the door opens…

“Unnie!” I smell and feel Joohyun’s embrace before I have any chance to see her. A burst of an uninhibited chuckle frees itself from my lips, and I wrap my arms around the excitable woman.

“How are you?”

“Fine, you?”

“Good.”

“Oh. Hi Yoona-unnie!” Joohyun smiles, lifts her fingers into a more tame greeting. “Am I intruding in something?”

She gives me a look, a knowing one – much like Hyo’s (they really are two peas in a pod), but it’s not really a ‘knowing’ one, since there’s nothing to know. There’s nothing between Yoona and I…other than the professional relationship… and never will be anything more.

“Of course not!” I exclaim, and glance towards Yoona. She’s nodding a confirmation, albeit… slower than I. Alas my imagination wreaks havoc in a situation that it is not called for. I should… stop being so …yeah.

“…I’ll… get going.” Yoona manages before streaking out of here, prompt, almost faster than my eyes can catch.

Joohyun nudges me with an elbow. “So… you and her?”

“Me… and her?”

“Unnie…” Joohyun sighs, almost exasperatedly, “Was she staying over…? Are you guys… together?”

“No!” My reply is too eager, too zealous, and too angry. Joohyun smiles. “You don’t need to deny it unnie. Let people in, let her in.”

... Let … her in?

Let her in … where?

~*~

Two nights. Maybe more. I merely sit at home, fatigue spoiling in my blood, restlessness decaying my lungs. All that I’d ever known to be, all that I ever thought I was. Falling into ashes, into dust. It’s these moments of insanity that I conceal myself away from the human world – as if I was not as human in the first place, but I feel… as if that’s so now.

. . .

“ing .” Mother coughed, hacking forcefully through a cloud of potent solvent scent. I don’t know what drug she’s concocted up this time. Meth, coke… some hybrid? Ah I don’t know.  I just knew I shouldn’t inhale too much, or I’d end up like her. A slave to a chemical.

“Mother?” I questioned, keeping my eyes lowered, but my spatial paranoia up.

Swipe. I narrowly missed my mother’s attack, fingers grazing against my cheek. “How dare you!”

“Why are you hitting me omma?”

“You’re a lazy piece of , that’s why.”

“but…”

I felt her palm slam into my cheek, the inner flesh colliding and lacerating on the precipices of my own teeth. Tears sprang to my eyes. And a hollow sensation trembled within the cavity of my chest.

. . .

Jesus.

Why---. I gulp, and realise that I’m back into reality. I despise these kind of blips with an abnormal emotional fallacy.

“What are you doing, Taeyeon? Hurry up…I’m almost there…”

I blink; I’m midway through servicing a client. . Not good, Kim Taeyeon, not good! Just how did I allow myself to become so lax? I renew my endeavours until the woman comes into my mouth – mildly tasting, neither satisfying nor disgusting. She’s always been that all round middle. After, I hurry her out from my abode – unlike my typical choice of letting them spoil me.

“, , .” What the is going on with me? I pummel the pillows with a violence not strange to myself, I am a monster after all. Violence comes as easily to a monster as goodness to an angel….

But, god, I’ve never, ever, in this godforsaken life, once lapsed midway through a session.

Flash.

Brown hair.

Another flash.

Bright smile. Her teeth, so white. So pretty.

“Urgh, .” I hit my own cheeks, lengths of my fingers slashing dull aching pains across the thinner expanse of skin. “Quit it Tae, quit it.”

Quit it.

~*~

When light touches the last vestiges of the night’s darkness, I rise from my bed. I hadn’t slept well. I hadn’t slept much at all these past few goddamn days – but, then, I think…. had I ever? I simply can’t comprehend the burning flicker in my mind, my chest. It quakes, like a sack of shrunken skulls capering down a cragged path.

I really… Don’t. Enjoy. Feeling. Like. This …. So, ing, helpless.

With a yell of frustration, I launch my pillow from the bed, watch it crash into the door, and slide down, deplete of all motion force. I feel, as attenuated as that cotton object.

And that’s the exact problem, I realise at this moment. Since when, when, have I ever felt so much emotion all in one go? Virtually never.

I want a cigarette.

, I really need a shot of nicotine in my system right now. So I do just that, obtain a light, and give myself a little indulgence. It goes a long, ing way, keeps me trekking like a soldier. But I’m nowhere as noble, my intentions are to serve myself, and, in an abstract sense, I’m serving others. Concurrently breeding lust and hedonism into naivety propelled by the strong human – no, animalistic instinct to procreate.

Once I’ve inhaled every tar-filled toxic gas into my lungs, I head out. Decide to drink away the pain, the sorrow, and the happiness, too. I am intent on swallowing up every morsel of my identity in alcohol. I’m tired of being who I am, what I am… and everything that I come from. With every single spirit, liqueur, beer and wine to surge through my system; I want alcohol to run in dismal chaos through my veins. death, alcohol poisoning. I’m more resilient than that.

…

That’s the alcohol talking.

I’m better than that. I swear.

Midday, and I end up calling Sunny to drive me home. She doesn’t say a word when she sees me, when she drives me or when she leaves. Silent as a mouse. I think I felt something called … paranoia? (Is that it?), throughout the entirety. Maybe a slash of shame too. Alas, I always think too much.

~*~

I (metaphorically) crawl into Yoona’s office, sit in the usual seat opposite of her. Everything’s usual, everything has sunk back into the claws of routine again. There’s a slight adjustment, sure, but it’s only one hour of my week. Yet, I scorn to admit so, I think this is the one hour of my week that I anticipate. Although… I wish to hell that I knew why. I mean, doesn’t Yoona irritate me? I know I hadn’t imagined that I would begin to enjoy her presence. And yet… the dreadful realisation is that this is quite possible, indeed.

Well… everything is normal… until she starts to veer into a topic … I don’t want to venture into.

“Why do you let your past control you, Taeyeon-ssi?” Her words hit, an arrow to my chest, bulls-ing-eye.

“And, what gives you the right to critique me, anyway, Yoona?” I splutter, incredulous. I don’t like our moments of conflict, and I can feel a strong one, about to enrapture us both, a tide of devils and the fallen.

“I know about your past, Miho. I heard what Man-sik did to you.” The word, that dreaded name I shouldn’t hear from Yoona out of all people, fell from that very ’s lips; hammering in the nail that hurts the most. Only a few knew about that. They probably sold me out to attain themselves another shot of heroin, another drag of meth, another toxic contaminant to which the lower filth are plagued and graced by.

One, Two, Three, Fo--  I break, shatter and fragment. My hard work, my life’s work of concealing everything. Into pieces.

“How dare you search up about me,” I feel fire burning in my stomach, fury clouding my vision, I’m so irate I nearly see red. I feel like a bull, charging, furious and suddenly, I’m on my feet. I aim to slam the knuckles of my free hand into the nearby wall, and I’d misjudged, have to objectively watch my fist collide with the mirror, until a thudding, splintering pain reverberates through me, strikes me all the way through my bones, my spine, to my skull. I strangle the cry of pain; I don’t want to give Yoona the satisfaction. It’s nothing, pain is nothing, I repeat like a mantra. Turn my eyes from the shards of glass, the blood, the tiny flabs of skin, the flesh.

(Ten.)

What gave her the right? That’s my past, a past should remain untouched, because it’s the past, and so it should stay that way. She’s the same as every, other, ing, social worker I’ve had to deal with. . . . But then, I think, then I should stop letting Man-sik’s shadow from beleaguering me everywhere I go.

But I can’t.

I can’t just forget.

I can’t.

I envy the one who can.

(Nine.)

 “I’m your therapist,” Yoona answers calmly – although I sense her beginning to shatter. “I only want the best for you, so I tried to understand your situation. I merely came across that information whilst I questioned those other… es,”

(Eight.)

 “The best for me?” Mirthless, I smile disparagingly, “Please you just want Joohyun’s money. You want to make a profit out of my sorrow, privately laugh at my chaos of a life with your other therapist-friends. You’re a leech, and that’s it. That’s all you are.”

(Seven.)

I smash my fist back into the mirror, feel the pain afresh, burning devouring, consuming my emotional pain with something transiently … a distraction.

(Six.)

But I’m still too torn up. So I want to tear others up, so they become twisted, deceitful and hateful, like me.

(Five…Four…Three…Two…One!.)

Finally, Yoona stares from the bloodied mirror, to me, silent. As if I’d physically stabbed her, as if I’d betrayed her. “So…” She whispers, eyes low, shoulders dropping, “All this time… I’ve done nothing to help you?”

(Ding, ding, ding! K.O!! Im Yoona iisss out!)

I stop. The anger’s gone, gone.

But why?

She assumes my silence for agreement. Tears… wait, are those actual tears? Glossed doe eyes, her lip wobbles, teeters and I don’t want to make her cry. I don’t want her to be sad, because it makes me inexplicably sad, too.

“…I…” I stop myself. What were those words I was going to say? “… That’s right.”

She holds my gaze, so tearfully, so brokenly.

Well done. You win, Tae. You succeeded.

But why don’t I feel joy from this? I had the power, the ability, to destroy her, bring her to her knees. Why do I feel emptier after all my efforts? Why does my ‘win’ feel so depriving? Why is the world suddenly turning a dull grey, descending upon me like the deathly mother’s embrace?

“I never cared for you.” I rise up, “Why? Did you even think I did?”

“I…”

“Exactly.” I slam my bloodied palms into the mahogany, glare down from above her. “Don’t delude yourself. I’m a ; don’t have feelings. I don’t know what you imagined the entire time you acted as my ‘therapist’, did you think I’d magically become best friends with you? Did you? Well, I didn’t, miss Im ‘I-will-support-you’ Yoona. You’re a liar, and a pathetic excuse of a human.”

Yoona’s in tears, silently, they stream down her eyes. She looks devastatingly beautiful. From her sorrowful eyes, to the subtle flourish of her lips; she’s beautiful like that … but I’d rather see her happy face. What have you done to me, Im Yoona? What the have you done?

“Go away.” She whispers, voice breaking, cracking.

So I do; despite knowing I should stay.

And when I close the door behind me, the ensuing of her free sobbing strums along the strings of the discordant instrument in my chest.

I crumble, beside the door, and for the first time, in a long, long, long, time, I cry. I’m fortunate that this place is rarely visited by people. That would be… mortifying. Goddamn I’m so ing human nowadays. I don’t like it. The destructive chaos of human emotion, I don’t like it one bit at all.

~*~