There are a lack of temporal markers for a reason

It was cold.

Bitterly cold.

Hallways turned into alleys of ice, people sliding along noisily. Have they always been like that? Have they always been so loud? Or is the noises, the screaming in her head that made her ambience so loud?

The people were cold. Looks of hatred, looks of jealousy, looks of envy. Looks of disgust, looks of dread, looks of fear. Did they always look like that? Or is it that the one expression that occupies her mind now encompassed all those?

Her surroundings were cold. People were shivering. Or was it just her? Maybe it was just her. Were they, no, her, shivering out of coldness? Chilliness? Fear? Maybe all three. Or maybe none.

It was cold. As cold as a tropical summer could be.

The mind, the face, the soul, the one person who was occupying her mind stuck like a leech, refusing to go away, seeping the lifeblood out of her. Face wrought with pain, with hate.

Could someone feel both pain and hate at the same time?

Maybe, no, definitely, they could.

Perhaps add in a sprinkling of regret.

Of desperation.

And you’d be pretty close to what Shin Hyejeong was feeling.

Who was Kim Seolhyun to the life out of her?

Right, when it was her that did it first.

She recalled the figure slumped against the seat the first time she announced she was leaving. The face of desperation, inviting sympathy, inviting pity. The face, so well developed in all the right places. The soul, so intelligent yet dorky, so mature yet childish. The looming threat of something worse. And so she caved.

She recalled the only decently-smelling body out of the sea of men (and women, too) that reeked, if not of alcohol, then of desperation for cheap . The initial attraction she felt to something forbidden. The reliance she felt for someone that should have never been relied upon. The cute face that tempted her more as the day passed. And so she caved.

Was this a test? They said that people feel pain, feel loss, feel sorrow, whenever they left home for somewhere else. But what about those who had nothing to lose? Those who felt their home was somewhere else? What would they feel?

Pain, too. Clearly. Because deterministic fate will arrange something to make home, home.

Dreams didn’t need to be painful. Love didn’t need to be painful. Success didn’t need to be painful. So why everything that Hyejeong lived for, everything that Hyejeong did, become so painful?

Cruel, cruel fate. There is no other way.

-----

Cruel. How else could you describe the expression on Seolhyun’s face, on the first Monday, the first day back in class, after her final declaration of independence (ha. ha. ha.)

Effortlessly cruel. Haplessly cruel. Hyejeong knew that those doe-like eyes, those kind beats of her heart and pulses of her brain could never deliberately do something to hurt her. But the blank look on her face told Hyejeong of a life drained of life, drained of meaning, devoid of hope. The prayers to desperation, dancing at the corner of her lips, told of a blind trust in a naïve dream—the same dream that Hyejeong would never grant—and the immutable emotional crash that would come after its failure to come to fruition. And yet, dominating, was the look of puppy, first love on her face. A dreamy, idealistic happiness from being with the girl, your longtime crush, the person who you had entrusted your heart to a long time ago, who just agreed to be yours. The anticipation of the next date. The next kiss. The next cuddle. As if all that had transpired between them the past few days had never occurred.

Is this what heartbreak felt like? Your heart breaking, not because you couldn’t get what you wanted, but because the person you loved couldn’t get theirs.

“Seolhyun,” Hyejeong called out, barely arresting from attaching a cute, girlfriends-only suffix to said person’s name, or the liquid in her eyes from breaking out from their prison in her eyes.

The eyes flickered to life for a moment, as if delighted that her girlfriend had acknowledged her, as if imagining that this would be their moment of reunion, that Hyejeong would have realised how silly this all was, that this was all just a bad daydream and Hyejeong was now waking her up from it. Before realising that her surroundings were filled with students, this was a class, and Hyejeong was wearing a particularly stern expression on her face. And that glimmer, a momentary glimmer of life, flashed away once again.

“Yes, teacher?” she replied, in as cold a tone as she could possibly use.

“Read..read” Hyejeong was taken aback by how frosty Seolhyun sounded, “read out page 58, the second passage.”

Barely regaining her footing on the barely solid floor, barely balancing herself on the reassuring solidity of the desk, before Seolhyun’s lyrical voice—rich with desperation, rich desire—knocked out her senses.

“Cover for me,” Hyejeong exhaled lethargically as she collapsed back into the swivel chair at her desk. The chair—trash ergonomic design replete with the most uncomfortable upholstery ever—had never felt so reassuring.

“Eh?” her fellow colleague (who also taught English, and was the only one in) Krystal replied, looking up from her work. “Cover what?”

Hyejeong wiped her brow, and couldn’t muster the energy to give a response. Cold air blasting from the air-con vent right above her head, usually a source of annoyance, now seemed so homely.

“You cheated on expenses? Lied to the principal? God forbid, spread rumours about someone?” Krystal pressed on curiously, not noticing the obvious source of Hyejeong’s troubles.

Not like Hyejeong had the energy to correct her idiocy anyway. “Cover for my class for the next week or so?”

“You’re going away?” Krystal enquired curiously, before shrieking, “your dream Ivy League school is asking you to go over now?”

As a matter of fact, she did have the option to leave now.

(But she decided not to take it up as leaving home now would be simply too painful.)

“Just cover for me?” Hyejeong wearily asked. “I’ll make it up to you next time.”

“Silly kid,” Krystal responded, as if she had just made an intelligent deduction. “If you’re leaving for the States now and never coming back, how will you repay me?”

If she was going there early and could never come back, why had she not resigned first?

“I’m not going anywhere, Krystal.”

Krystal seemed to get it for awhile, and looked over to her calendar. Hyejeong sighed with relief—she couldn’t even begin to fathom the thought of staying in this school and seeing Seolhyun, in as wrecked a state she could possibly be in, every day, and not feel her conscience treating her the worse for it.

“No, sorry,” Krystal replied, looking back up. “I’m busy.”

Sigh. She could have just said so at the start.

-----

It was hard to keep her face straight.

Actually, it was hard to keep anything straight. Her expression. Her emotions. Her heart.

In fact, she felt like lying on the bed all day, not getting up to go to school. But those two evil lovebirds raided her house and dragged her out. Brushing her teeth for her. Feeding her. Changing her clothes for her. Dragging her out. Calling a cab for her.

And that’s why she was in school that day. Well, physically at least. Mentally, she was all over the place.

Was this how breakups felt like? Not people lying on the ground, crying pitifully, weeping in despair, feeling like it’s the end of the world. But numbness. Just numbness. Weightlessness. Lifelessness.

The will to be carried up into the air, no, to be the air, flying across the world, with no meaning, no soul at all. Because if you had no soul, then your soul could never be hurt. Numbness.

Mixed, of course, with the slightest tinge of hope and desperation.

The girl, who she had held in her arms so tightly the nights prior, who she had shared the deepest emotional connection with, now just her teacher. Her senior. Another person, no, passenger, in this land of dreams