“I know you are confused just as I am… please, don’t let either of us go through this alone.” He pleaded; his face still voids of expressiveness yet his voice telling me too much. I softened at his words thinking about how lonely it must have felt to be going through such a phase – alone. I don’t know what else to tell him and my body sat itself back on the bench. I was innately telling myself to stop and get up, to just go but my own body refuses me and I end up back at square one.

For the first time, Seunghyun sat facing me, hiw two strong hands holding my shoulders, turning me to face him. His eyes were knowing and dark, almost so sure that I feel exactly like he does. I am denying but I felt somehow maybe I am like him. Instantly, I turned my sight to the ground, unable to hold my head up. So many things were whirling in my head, thunderstorms, ravaging on the insides of my ribs. I had so many questions that only seem to be even more unanswered, the more time I spent with him. I was still in my own tired, noisy thoughts when the same callused hand held my chin, pulling my face up to face him. 

"Tell me, Aurora, what do you feel?" he asked and I wanted to give him an answer. To put into worlds the hurricanes in my body, the avanlanche destroying my very humanity in my modified body - but I could not. There were no words at all for the things I felt and immediately, I was so ashamed of the thing I was changing into.

My body did not feel like mine, the emotions that rush through my being felt like a thousand truck running me over and over and I am awake and I am alive but it hurts me so badly. I have never felt this surge before. For so long, I had had questions but I had always repressed myself putting my father above anything else, above whatever else, including myself. I was made his daughter but I was also made a being of absolute, unquestioning servitude. This tremor in my chest ony delineates the coming of something new within me... and I do not want it.

"I don't..." I could not even say what I wanted, choking on my sobs that I had forced myself to hold back. Tears... there were water streaming down my face from these eyes and I did not ask them to come out. They just flowed and I don't have a reason why it did. The pangs of pain that suffocated me only became even more intense and by now, I was beyond afraid. 

Before I knew it, a pair of arms I have never felt before covered me and embraced me and I did not want to admit it but it comforted me. I opened my tired eyes and I saw Seung-hyun hold me. As if saying, he knew my plight, that he had been here before and if I needed him, he would be with me.

"Aeron!"