11
The Beginning

‘Don't you know what happened to the Prince when the Witch found out about him?’

Taehyung shrugged his shoulders as a response and Hyemi who wasn't expecting anything made a false disappointed look on her face. 

With a frown creeping on her pink lips, she wrote to him, ‘He turned blind.’

Her legs were heavy. She didn't want to go out and find Taehyung. She didn't want to see him because her imaginations were already enough to break her heart. 

She felt like staying there and rot.  

But she was responsible for what happened, she told herself. After a while of struggling to stand up, she managed to reach her room to find her keys. The cold keys on her palm stung her but she endured it. 

She inhaled – what she figured was – the familiar air in her room for the last time before she first set foot outside her apartment. Then, she realized the said air was now anything but familiar; they smelled of tears. Even outside of her room, the air was filled with tears, and sorrows. There was also guilt hiding behind her, ready to drown her. Her legs were chained to her fears. She wanted to run away from the ocean of guilt through the air of sadness, but the chain of fears made that hard for her to do. 

She didn't like it. She could feel the pressure of being watched despite no one being there. 

“Taehyung… Taehyung…”

Her mind and heart were both voicing for him and they were left unheard like a letter in a bottle, floating in the middle of the ocean and only with a miracle would have it reached its’ recipient. Her lips kept saying his name as though she was afraid they’d forget how to say it. 

She was afraid. 

She was afraid of losing him.

She was afraid of losing herself. 

Running out of the elevator, she skimmed the ground floor that was filled with people who lived in the same block. It was noisy as people were all discussing about what happened. She noticed the ambulance hiding behind the crowd and there were the sounds of  paramedics calling out to each other and asking for the people to give way. 

“Taehyung!” She shouted but it was engulfed by other noises. Devastated, she pushed her way through the crowd, her little body against the large group of people. 

She managed to be in front, out from the shelter and was slowly soaking before the light rain, behind the long banner that says ‘KEEP OUT’. Police officers were forcing the crowd not to go anywhere near the heart-wrenching scene. She could barely see a body, being carried into the ambulance and she knew it was him at first sight. 

She shouted for his name and he didn't respond to it.

“Taehyung!” She cried. “Let me through! I need to see him!” 

A young-looking officer, wearing a black, plastic raincoat, noticed her and, although a bit hesitant at first, he let her in the restricted area. She thanked him but before she could go anywhere further, he pulled her by the arm and asked, “Are you the resident living on the fifth floor, room no 22?”

She pulled her arm away from him. “If you’re about to arrest me, do that later!”

“We just want to ask you some questions,” he told her, almost shouting. 

“That’s the girl! She’s the ghost I have told you about!” A familiar-looking man pointed at her — it was Jimin. He was talking to a female officer, under a black umbrella. “She’s the murderer! I’m sure of it!” 

His statement have almost all eyes looking at her, mouths speaking about her, and that felt so familiar to her that it hurt. She wanted to hide somewhere but she was in the open, under the dark sky which was raining upon them. 

They were judging her. 

It was like this back then too. 

“Let her go!” 

She turned towards the voice and found the old janitor coming forward. “Bogum, you may ask the questions later,” he looked at her, “Dear, you must come with us. The poor boy needs you.”

She was speechless and so did Bogum, the officer who held her. 

The janitor insisted to drive her to the hospital. They were at the back of the ambulance, following it and were praying for Taehyung. The janitor’s wife was also there. The wipers kept cleansing the transparent screen before them, clearing it from the rain. There was a flash of lightning that suddenly appeared in the clouds which triggered a memory to Hyemi. 

What was it that he tried telling her? His words that didn't reach her, his words that she could only respond with a smile… 

Also, what did he lie to her about?

“Thank you for this ride,” Hyemi voiced as they were still on the road. The couple stayed quite for a few seconds. 

Then, the man spoke, “I hope you’re not blaming yourself for everything that happened and is about to happen.” 

Hyemi was at the back seat, at the end of the left side, so it was difficult for her to see the elder’s face as he said that. He continued to look on the road before him, his wife quiet as she was also listening to him talk, “No one should be blamed for since mistakes are made together. In this episode, it was my mistake for lending that scaffold, it was his mistake for deciding to do a daring action, it was your mistake for whatever you did to him that made him do it.”

“Then I shouldn't have been so difficult,” Hyemi stated the truth. She was to blame for, she thought.

The woman responded to her when she noticed her man was out of words, “But not even one of us knew what was about to happen; we were all so into the present that we have forgotten all about the future.”

Then, it hit Hyemi. She remembered what Taehyung had told her. She mumbled something softly and the couple, curious, asked her what it was. 

“The present is the future,” she told them. 

The couple turned to her as they looked at each other with question marks. Then, the man looked back onto the road, “That doesn't make any sense.” 

She recollected back her words from before. Her face quickly turned into a weary one. “Yeah, you’re right. It doesn't.”

It was quiet again. There were still other cars driving in that late hour and the ambulance they were following were a few cars ahead of them. Every one of them were blank; there was nothing in their minds but emptiness. They didn't know what to think especially what to hope. 

But that statement was only what they felt because in truth, they were thinking but their thoughts and expectations and imaginations were too much that they scattered all around their minds, and left them feeling rather empty-minded. 

“He’s going to be alright,” the man assured his passengers, in attempt to break the silence. 

Hyemi stared at her hands which she made intertwined with each other. “He is alright. Now and then, he has always been alright,” she whispered to herself.

When they reached the hospital, they were forced to wait outside the emergency room and it took them hours. Hyemi was nervous; she couldn't stop moving her feet and her body was stiff. 

The janitor’s wife – who was sitting right beside her – couldn't help but notice the girl’s behavior. She clasped gently onto the girl’s shoulder, pulling her into an embrace. The woman lovingly have Hyemi’s head on her lap and Hyemi – at first, hesitant – agreed to the action. She laid her head on the elder’s lap, looking to the side where the janitor was standing at the corner, checking out old magazines in its’ stand. 

“He loves you. He loves you so much and he’s in there fighting for his life to meet you,” the woman suddenly said, her curly hair up. 

Hyemi could feel her heart tightening. “How do you know if he feels that way for me?” 

“He wouldn't be in there to begin with if he doesn't.”

Her lips shut, tears were starting to crawl out from her tear ducts. The woman holding her her hair gently. The said action felt something that she have longed for and it touched her. 

Not a while after that, the three of them could hear harsh footsteps coming towards them; heels which made a loud clang whenever it strikes on the hospital tiles. It was an aged woman with short chestnut hair that winded up as she moved forward with a blaze. Her eyes were furious, and her red lips moved to shout in the quiet abode, “Where’s my son? I have to see him! Is he in that room? The emergency room? How bad was the accident?!”

The male nurse that was chasing after her from behind tried to calm her down but she shook him off in a spiteful manner, “How dare you ask me to calm down when my son is-!”

She immediately stop herself when she noticed a familiar face in the room; her eyes were on Hyemi who was in a sitting position, stiff due to all the sudden commotion. She walked towards the shocked girl.

And slapped her. 

Shock and silence were the only things there. Only after a few seconds did Hyemi could feel the burning sensation on her cheek where the woman had slapped her at. Her hand reached and caressed it as she turned to view the woman she believed she have known so well. Yes, she knew who the woman was.

The woman was the mother of Kim Taehyung who asked her to stay away from Taehyung’s life. She could see in Mrs. Kim’s ferocious glare that it was over between Taehyung and her.

But a part of her was also saying that it was just the beginning.

Yes, the story’s not over. I’m sad too. 
I need an editor — my grammatical errors are triggering me. XD