Chapter 1 The Aftermath
The Exchange ProgramYour world was all black. And not just that black when you can still detect light through your retinas despite your eyes being closed; your world was black black. You felt nothing. No connections and no attachments; like gravity didn't exist to pull you down, and breathing didn't matter. An onlooker would have thought you dead. That is, if you didn't live alone in your college dorm.
At some point, the irritating sound of your alarm clock burst through the blackness. You groggily opened your heavy eyes and waited for the blurry world to become focused. Eventually your eyes allowed you to fully make out the situation. You appeared to be under your desk, wearing yesterday's wrinkled clothes and reeking of alcohol. You looked around your disheveled dorm; it was ransacked. Clothes and papers strewn about. Blankets ripped from the bunk, even the mattress on the lower bunk was thrown out of place. What happened?
You sat up from under the desk only to bang your head on it in your haste. You cried out softly from the bang, but it came out as more of a croak making you aware of the scorching dryness in the back of your throat. You then wondered if the pounding headache had always been there or was just now coming from the desk. Probably both. You took a shaky step across the room and towards the small kitchenette.
You noticed several empty bottles of soju littered on the counter, and a few crumpled Cass beer cans lying on the floor. Combine that with the already ransacked room condition and it looked like a frat house had rented your room out for the night. You stumbled towards the freezer, opened it up stared blankly at the last Melona bar lying on the top shelf. You broke the staring contest first and grabbed it. You then sat against the cupboards on the floor while absentmindedly it.
You mentally thanked whatever luck still stood by you that you didn't have a roomate to be concerned with. At least not currently. And that brought up another wound that was still festering. It was this wound that caused you to drink yourself into oblivion. Your former best friend and dormmate, Eunmi, had been sleeping around with your boyfri-, uh, ex-boyfriend, Nam Woohyun; the perfect man for you, your one and only, had fallen for your best friend. You didn't even know how or when it happened. Part you blamed yourself for not noticing it, another part blamed them for turning everything into a catastrophe rather than address the issue the mature way. Yes, walking in on the two in a embrace is not the ideal way to find out about it.
Your temporary thoughts were halted by the faint vibrating of your phone. You heard it, but you had no idea where it was. You stumbled to your feet and staggered a bit before standing fully vertical. You could hear that the phone was close so you stumbled around the cluttered dorm just trying to locate and shut off the disturbing noise. You finally found it in the fridge of all places. You were about to turn it off when you noticed it was your brother calling. You then picked it up and held it to your ear.
"ugnh," was all that came out as your voice was thick with sleep and the cream from the Melona bar. You began to tune out your brother's tirade of questions by just responding with 'mmm'. Just as you were st
Comments