Eyes closed but not fully asleep. I lay soundly, listening to the same old morning routine. Doors slamming, voices booming...the telltale sounds of yet another day commencing. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to wake entirely just yet. Instead I turned, my back now facing whoever would walk in within the next few minutes.

Today didn’t feel any different than any other day. I was reluctant to get up, unwilling to experience the same thing that I had been forced to live day after day for around four years. I didn’t know exactly how much time I'd spent in here. Anyway, why did it matter?
What I did know though, what I knew all too well was the feeling of complete and utter solitude. My time in this place seeming to be never-ending.

The sound of my door opening pulled me out of my thoughts for just a moment. I braced my self somewhat lazily for the heated outrage that would no doubt come since I wasn’t out of bed. That I wasn’t standing obediently in the middle of the room waiting for whoever it was doing the count today. To my surprise however, I heard nothing but a sigh followed by the sound of the clicker. Strange. Sneaking a squinting look over my shoulder, I saw that I was again alone. My door left open and the bright light above it now fading until I knew for sure the count had been finished successfully.

Unfortunately I was completely awake now so with a groan of dissatisfaction I sat up, running my fingers through my hair as a makeshift hairbrush before standing and stretching each tired muscle I had gained while sleeping. Without much thought, I grabbed a towel from the corner of the room and pulled it along as I left. It was only a brisk walk to the shower room and once I entered, I was surprised to see that it wasn’t full today. Usually there was a line out the door.
Frowning, I waited my turn outside the stall that I had always used since I first arrived. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long, the girl who was showering soon realised that I was waiting for her to finish and with a ninety degree bow, she quickly rushed out. I rolled my eyes as I noted the shampoo still in her hair before climbing inside and stripping off, laying my clothes neatly outside of the stall.

Feeling my eyes close as the still-warm water trickled down my face, I suppressed a moan as the water did wonders for my aching muscles. I would spend hours under the shower if I could, but I wasn’t going to be selfish. Quickly washing my hair and then towel drying it, I climbed out before wrapping the same fabric around my body.

It was all the same repetitive routine. Wake up, shower, get dressed….then go back to bed to read. It's what I did every morning. I was always eager to escape my reality by delving into another within whatever book I had chosen. It helped, it really did.

But for some reason, today I didn’t. Instead after dressing, I found myself leaving the room and walking down the now reasonably occupied corridor. My hands plunged into the soft, warm depths of my jacket pockets as I strolled, a small smirk showing at how my fellow inmates cleared a path for me. I ignored the whispering as I left them behind and continued on. I didn’t really have a destination in mind, I just wanted to walk. I wanted to look around and take in every detail.

Its funny. Although I had been here for such a long period of time, it amazed me how much I had refrained from observing the building that imprisoned me. I hadn't noticed how the steel beams above held just as much rust as they did dust, I hadn't seen how the walls weren't the colour I thought they had been. I hadn't observed how the floor contained specks of dirt or mud that were most likely completely irremovable now.
I examined each thing I came across for a while, taking it all in until the familiar sound of a whistle signified recreation was about to start.

As the routine commenced, I lined up and once outside, decided to take a seat at the many benches, one that wasn’t occupied but enabled me to watch over every single inmate that was in the yard. I studied each one, their behaviour, their mannerisms. Some were with the friends they had met here while some, like me, were sitting alone. I wondered about them, how much time each one had left. I wondered about their families - Would they have someone waiting for them when the cage doors opened, or would they walk away and cease to exist. Would they return?

So many questions that could have been answered by me simply asking them, befriending them. Only I didn’t want that. I had never wanted to make friends here, knowing that I could possibly have shared such a great bond with someone….only to have to leave them behind. Seeing someone I cared about in the windows, watching as I turned my back on them and disappeared. Leaving them in the hell that I had endured and somehow managed to escape from. I couldn’t do that, I refused to lose anybody and I in turn refused to be lost from somebody when my time finally came.

Freedom was a word I could never escape from. It was the one thought that would never go away, no matter how much I tried. It was the dream...inside the nightmare. 

I kept faith, knowing someday I would be free but I didn't know when, or how. I couldn't ever imagine that someone would walk into my life and try so hard to get me out of the place that had held me captive for so many years. But it happened. After that, freedom came like a flood and changed every aspect of the landscape of my existence.

When I first heard that they would cut my sentence down, that in a matter of months I would be free….it was as if I wasn’t even in the moment. It was like an out of body experience, completely and utterly surreal. But the real thing that hit me, was that when I was led back to my room….I had nobody to tell. I had no one to ring up and let know that I would be 'home' soon. My family were long gone. Friends? I wasn’t sure I had any.

The one main friend I had all that time ago, was Jessica. I met her, along with many other of my colleagues that I could work with comfortably but were so different than her. She and I trained together, got accepted into the police force together…we were never apart. I didn’t gain any proper friendships with the other members of the force, and maybe that was my mistake. Every ounce of my attention was put into her only for everything to happen on that one fateful day.
 

Nothing prepares you for being present at the death of a loved one. The emotional enormity of the experience and the rarity of its kind. Her death was something that you would only expect to see in the plot of a film, something completely unbelievable.

Sometimes, I'd imagine just that. I could picture the audience hushing at that part. There would be no laughter, no jokes just…complete silence. As the plot would unfold, each one would stare at the screen, mouths agape. Half in wonder, half in terror. Wondering how a person could be so evil and how such a man could laugh at what he was seeing in front of him. How the screams of finality were drowned out by the ultimate ending. Tears would fall, the reaction of the woman who had lost everything in that one moment being the final scene. The audience would wonder how she would live on, that surely there would be some aspect of psychological trauma for the rest of her life. 

But then the credits would roll. And then the list of people's names next to their characters would come. It wasn't real. They would laugh at themselves for being so silly as to cry at something that was make believe. It was just a movie. 

But for me, it was very, very real. It had been like my world had stopped spinning. All sounds had stopped, everything frozen. All that was there for me to focus on was the death of what would have been someone that I'd spend my entire life with. How do you get past something like that? 

The answer? You don’t.

You don't get to start over. You don't get to wipe the slate clean, forget every moment, every second that caused the once searing pain that is now only emptiness. It doesn't work like that. The trauma stays with you, it consumes you. Every waking moment is spent just as it was when you saw the tragedy happen. Everything stops. 

Watching a loved one die peacefully when it's their time to go? That's closure. Watching a young woman that had only just begun living getting her life ripped away from her and being unable to stop it from happening....that is different. You don't get closure. You don't get to say that 'that's the way she would have wanted to die' because, that would be the furthest thing from the truth. 

It's different. 

For many years, I didn't know I was capable of smiling anymore. What reason did I have to actually do it? I was locked up, abused by the staff, spent every other week in solitary and kept repeating the same moment in my head over and over. That was until she came along. She was someone who I treated inexcusably. The last person I could call a friend.

The way Jessica died was similar to the way I felt when I realised I no longer had anyone. It felt like I had a bomb within me…that every burst of anger I had given out had made it tick down faster until finally it exploded just like the one that had taken her. Only I was alive yet still unable to pick up the pieces, unable to fix things as already I had pushed everyone away.

**************************************

Officer Kwon was the one who came to me. The one who called my name and number without so much as a smile. I couldn't say I blamed her. I knew what her issue with me was, and I completely understood why she thought she had to glare at me every now and then once Tiffany had left. I would have done the same.

"Hands behind your back," She ordered, grabbing the bag that was filled with my possessions from my hands before motioning for me to go to her. I obeyed, not missing how the handcuffs became tighter and tighter until I was forced to grunt to tell her to stop. She then pushed me to walk in front of her as we went to a part of the prison I vaguely remembered being in when I was first brought here.

Time passed, Kwon pulling on the chain between the handcuffs every now and then so they would dig into my wrists painfully and would no doubt leave marks. It was most likely something to remember her by. I bit my tongue as I stood, when finally my number was called again and I, along with a few others were loaded onto the prison bus.

Still cuffed, Kwon was to sit next to me and make sure I didn’t do anything that could make my stay at the prison a longer one. Although I knew she would indeed love that, I was on my best behaviour.
Noises were amplified as the bus started up and pulled off, travelling to an unknown destination. I didn’t know how all this worked, surely they couldn't just let me go straight away. Clearly not, the bus didn’t approach the solid iron gates that stayed shut for the meantime. Instead it travelled to the back of the prison, stopping and letting off other prisoners at different units until it was just I and three others left.

All of a sudden I felt a jab to my side, my cue to follow Kwon to the entrance of the bus once it had reached its end target. My legs felt almost like rubber as I stepped off the bus, perhaps because I was walking in an area of the prison that had previously been forbidden to me. I was led into what looked like a holding room where I, along with the others stood and waited.

It was like an endless waiting game. Soon their names and numbers were called, and then finally it was my turn. The handcuffs were taken off and my property bag was shoved into my hands by the ever-friendly Officer Kwon, and soon I was ordered to take out each and every item. Making sure nothing was contraband, the people in charge wrote down what it contained and then handed it back over to Kwon while I was handcuffed yet again.

It only got better as I was pushed and locked into a room with the woman herself, and then ordered to strip. Trying to contain myself due to the looks she was giving me as I shed my clothes, I clenched my jaw while she performed the degrading acts that apparently were necessary if I ever wanted to leave. Not one to argue at this point, I did as I was told albeit with shame and once over, quickly got dressed while she continued to look me up and down.

Everything became a blur as I was whisked away from room to room, my photo and fingerprints taken, forced to change clothes in front of many members of staff until finally…the words I'd been longing to hear.

Officer Kwon came to me, my bag in hand which again was shoved into my arms with unnecessary force. "Here's everything you have, Kim. Books, sketches, the money you had left the commissary as well as a cheque from the Inmate Trust Fund. Now..." She paused, looking down on me for I hoped would be the last time. "Get out of here."

 It was then that I was led to those same solid iron gates, and I witnessed them finally… after all of this time begin to open for me. There were no words I could say as I saw what was beyond the place that I had belonged to for more than four years of my life. My body began to tremble as I found walking was not easy anymore. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other but the sensory overload of seeing the mountains in the distance, the roaring of engines, the sirens and then the wind blowing forcefully against my body was enough to make me collapse.

Squinting to see all that I could while the sun shone down heavily, I flinched as the gates that were now behind me began to close. Shutting me out of the prison forever. That was a sight I would never, ever forget. Watching as Kwon and the other Officers in turn watched me until we could no longer see each other. It emitted a shiver up my spine yet I couldn't quite stop the urge to lay my hand on the metal, as if to say goodbye.

I must have spent a few minutes doing just that until I was disturbed by someone clearing their throat, obviously aiming to ruin whatever moment I was to trying to derive from the action. Turning my head, I realised there was a car parked just a few feet from the gates. Whether it had just pulled up or had been there through my momentary loss of mental function was a mystery, but when I saw the figure that was being shielded by the rays of the sun walk closer, I couldn't help the smile I gave when I recognised her and everything she had done for me.
 

Bora.
 

She was the one who had made all of this possible. She had helped me through every problem my case had held, she had taken everything that was thrown at her and turned it into this incredible result. More tears fell as she approached until she was standing just in front of me, her and Kwon's features almost identical through blurred vision.

"Kim Taeyeon." She smiled, opening her arms wide to show what we had accomplished together. "This is it, huh? We finally meet outside those walls!"

"I guess so." I chuckled, still fighting to stop the flow from my eyes as I took in everything around me.

"What are your plans? Where do you want to go?"

And then everything came into focus again. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I perhaps had enough money to stay at a hotel for a few days, but not enough to survive for the long term. Do I stay in Seoul? Or do I go back to my hometown, despite not having anything left for me there. I suddenly had the weight of the world in my hands. I needed to find a job, yet what employer would hire somebody who had been in prison for four years. I was….lost.

'Humans are social creatures; you can tell yourself all you want that being alone makes you happy but there will come a time when you want somebody there, right next to you.'

I'd never taken in the full magnitude of her words until now. She was right, yet I had completely ignored her because I of course was in control, I didn’t need to listen to a word she said because I had plenty of time to think about what I wanted to do when I left prison. Yet here I was, everything had happened in a whirlwind and I hadn't made time to plan my future. I was lost and  alone.

"Taeyeon?"

Looking up at her, I suddenly felt self-conscious at the fact that I had absolutely nothing to offer her for all she had done for me. "I uh…" I bowed my head , unable to hold it up high any longer due to the embarrassment that I had become.
 

Bora watched my behaviour thoughtfully before placing her palm on the small of my back and pulling me along with her. Confused, I began to ask where she was taking me.

"You're coming with me," she smiled, opening the passenger side for me where I was half forced into the leather seat.

"Going where?" I asked, uncertainty etched into my features. "I don’t-"

"Its fine." She said as she walked around the back of the car and relaxed back into the driver's seat. "Trust me."

They were the last words spoken before we set off on our journey, the destination unknown to me.

*******************

I had never been in a car capable of so much speed before. The feeling of driving fast was like nothing else I had ever felt. It starting as we sat waiting at the traffic lights, my heart beating faster as if I was preparing to run in a race. Sliding my fingers down the smoothness of the car as my hand hung out the window, I looked over to Bora and could see she was experiencing the same feeling. Tensing up, perhaps in excitement as we awaited the green light and when it finally did happen and she hit the gas pedal…our eyes grew wide as the car accelerated. And when I closed them for a split second, suddenly it was like we were travelling at the speed of light. It was an experience like no other.

It took all I had to stop the smile from taking over my face. I sensed Bora watching me now and then, taking in my reactions to even the simplest things and because of that, I turned my head away from her where my facial expressions could not be seen and scrutinised. Despite what we had been through together, I still didn’t trust her enough to let her in completely.

"I bet you cant believe this is real, huh?" She suddenly asked, again looking over. "Seeing the outside world again. It must be strange…"

"Something like that." I murmured, looking nowhere but out the window.

"Any specific place that you really wanted to go to once you were released?"

Now that, was a question. Was there? I remember the topic coming up once or twice when Tiffany was around… but I don’t think we touched on it again after that.
All I dreamt of was freedom, there was nothing in particular. There was no place that I longed to go, nothing except outside those gates.

But then upon seeing the beautiful scenery pass by as Bora drove, I remember