“H-how d-did yo-you kn-know?” The panic is gripping Irene now, making the walls of the room loom in at her like speakers trembled at an unbearably loud sound.

Wendy looks up at Irene and a faint note of alarm resonances way inside the muffled corridors of her mind. The voices crowding in her head become insistent, thrumming against her skull. “It wasn’t hard to figure it out.” She swallows rapidly, trying to force the monstrous voices out of her head. She can’t let them control her at this moment. “You haven’t been consistent with your responses.”

“What do you mean by that?”

The brunette winces a smile. “Your words don’t match your facial expressions. Whenever I mention Ayumi, you try so hard to sound neutral. You don’t like Taeyeon interacting with me. You said I’m your favourite patient and you invited me to your house to celebrate Christmas with your family.”

“But that doesn’t prove anything.”

Wendy doesn’t give an answer. Quiet starts flooding the room. Far too long for Irene’s liking.

“Irene, I’m sick.”

“You’re progressing, Wendy.”

“No,” Wendy shakes her head fervently, “you don’t get it. You can’t fall for me,” she urges, thumping the “can’t” in her sentence.

“Why can’t I?” Irene asks – demands.

“Because,” Wendy sighs, breathing out her frustrations, “you’re mistaking that for sympathy.”

The psychiatrist rakes her fingers through her tresses in exasperation. “Sympathy? Really, Seungwan? I’ve been your psychiatrist for close to a year and that’s what you think of me?”

Wendy falls silent and memories of her first few therapy sessions swarm into her mind. But the voices flit back in a shoal of shadows. Her fists begin to shake. Please not now, she begs the voices.  “I don’t want you as my psychiatrist. I want someone else to take my case.”

“Please, Seungwan,” the psychiatrist pleads, “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m not comfortable having sessions with a psychiatrist who sees me more than just a patient.”

“If you’ve managed to decipher my feelings for a while, why are you only uncomfortable with me being your psychiatrist now after confronting me?”

Wendy gives a nonchalant shrug. “I don’t know.”

The psychiatrist senses that something isn’t right. She pulls herself up to her feet and rounds the desk. She bends down slightly, eyes trailing to Wendy’s trembling hands. “You’re shaking,” she says, reaching out to the brunette’s hands.

Wendy flinches in reflex, drawing her hands away from Irene’s gentle touch. “I’m going home.” She moves her chair, but Irene holds her back.

“You’re not going anywhere without my permission, Son Seungwan.”

The edge in Irene’s voice causes a flicker of defiance in Wendy’s eyes. “You’re breaking every rule of your association’s code of conduct with the way you’re treating me now.”

A flash of pain passes over the psychiatrist’s face and she releases her grip. She doesn’t understand Wendy’s hostility. “Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t drag yourself down with me,” Wendy mutters before charging out of the room.

Irene stands, immobilised. Her feet refuse to cooperate so she watches the door slowly closing, helplessly. Her sister’s words ring in her head, like warning bells have been set off:

“You can’t have her, you know that.”

Wendy remembers the advices Irene has given her on how to deal with the voices in her head. Every door of the kitchen cabinet is flung open as the brunette desperately looks for her medication. She combs through every item, panic rearing up wildly inside her. It’s making her extremely anxious. She can’t remember where she has last placed them. She finds it hypocritical of her to be calling out Irene for the latter’s lack of consistency when she herself has been lacking in that department as of late.

Your efforts are going down the drain, Wendy.

“Shut up!”

Silly girl, you really thought you’re making progress?

“, shut up! Just shut up!”

Around the kitchen dark shapes are rousing, unfolding themselves like monstrous, poisonous blooms. The voices are snickering, mocking and scorning, getting ready to gale her. She feels powerless. The shadows are moving towards her, wafting like smoke, swirling across the ceiling tiles as a tingling sensation works its way up her arms. She attempts to move but the feeling clasps her tighter, its fidgeting fingers creeping their way up towards her neck. The darkness is nearly upon her, strangling, suffocating, stars sparking on the edge of her vision.

“Please, just let me live,” she whimpers.

The cold fingers are clutching her and drawing her back to chaos and darkness again. The pallid girl slumps against the kitchen cabinet. She’s beginning to lose hope -- in herself. The voices will never go away. They will follow her wherever she goes, like how her psychiatric records will permanently stay.

She feels the bubbling and the soaking and the beginning of agony. The sparks that have been spiralling and fizzing on the extremities start to burn the kitchen away and the floor tips and gapes, ready to swallow her into the blackness beneath. So she closes her eyes, preparing herself for what’s to come.

At least she’s not attempting suicide. Or having suicidal thoughts. That’s an improvement, she tells herself.

Improvement.

Her eyes flip open. Whatever initial helplessness and feelings of defeat dissipate as she feels a sudden boost of confidence. She levers to her feet and her head flies up, eyes alighting on the right of the uppermost cabinet.

Found it.

She eases two pills into , before putting the bottle back into its rightful place. She stumbles the living room, and plops down on the couch. A thick wave of exhaustion washes over her, but before she gives in to sleep, her face stretches in a smile.

I’m getting there.

A ray of light s its way in past the translucent curtains. Wendy peels her eyes open and stifles a yawn. Her gaze flicks to the clock hung on the wall. Eleven in the morning. Her eyes linger around the hands of the clock.

Hours, minutes and seconds, she realises, are random things, invented to make p