hen Sung Gyu found her standing on the ledge of the high-rising building, hair flying in the heavy spring wind, lose fitting clothes flapping around her like looming ghosts, Eunji was trying to kill herself. Sung gyu couldn’t tell in the very beginning; not when her hair cascaded beautifully around her, not when her long, pale arms raised high and remained graciously against the wind. She looked so breathtaking at that moment. Sung gyu has always thought that she was one remarkably beautiful woman. He didn’t know her much, though they’ve been neighbors for as long as he remembered. She was the girl with minimal words; whose eyes spoke when her words didn’t. She had a wonderful pair of lively doe eyes. Her eyes had life, even if everything else about her didn’t. They’d reflect all her innermost emotions in the best way possible. Her eyes smiled when her lips didn’t, and when he’d pass by, giving her solely a nod in greeting every morning, her eyes would inflict something gracious which he couldn’t quite pinpoint. And this one time, when he accidentally picked up her grocery instead of his own while they picked up their post from the counter, Eunji gave him this look which chilled him to the bones. Not a word was spoken, not even a gesture with her hands, but scarcely her eyes, looking up at him as if he was a convicted criminal. Sung gyu had always thought that her eyes were incredibly beautiful. And if anything, he admired those eyes so much.

At that moment too, when nothing about her posture or her stance gave things away, her eyes did, as if they were mirrors to her soul. He couldn’t see them at first, because she had her back facing him, and also because she most probably had no idea that there was a man accompanying her at this fretful moment on the top most floor of the building, but something about that beauty of her at that time was alarming. It was her bare feet, turning pink against the cold cement floor, it was the fact that she wore pure white, it was the way her hands kept clenching and unclenching every passing second. It seemed to tell him something, something; and that’s why he rounded the corner, and from the sidelines, he saw her eyes.

For the first time ever, Sung Gyu was seeing a different emotion coming from her. An emotion which sparked warning signals all around him. They were red and raw, slightly swollen, and the usual glimmer was replaced by a thick membrane of fear and uncertainty. He took a double take and analyzed her posture once all over again in a matter of seconds, and then the reality hit him.

“Don’t do it” He said. His voice was soft and mild. It always was, and he hated it at times like this, because Eunji seemed to have hardly even acknowledged his presence beside her. He hated that things like this had happened to him much too often than not. How many times had he seen people giving up on their lives this way? If he would be perfectly honest, this was only his second time, and the first time he did, it was his own sister. And when he found her that fateful night, five years ago, a lonely bachelor and a freshly graduate, his sister was pretty much a corpse, barely taking a breath. She was announced dead the next morning, and it was a scar which stayed with him for life. And after that night, had he expected to meet a dying soul again? No he hadn’t. He had actually prayed for god, no, not again. He hated seeing death. But now, after five years had passed when he was no longer a bachelor (Yet lonely) and he was no longer fresh out of college, he was about to see death again. And he didn’t want to.

So he himself climbed onto the ledge and carefully folded the girl into his arms. She was warm, small and tender. She was a child, though she had never looked like one. In his arms, she broke and melted, and her small sobs broke is heart. Sung gyu was glad he didn’t let her die that moment, because when she cried, he could feel it that it really wasn’t what she wanted. Jung Eunji wanted to be saved. And he did. He saved her. She was safe. At least for this moment, in his arms, in his embrace, she very much was.

“Hey, I’ve got you. I’ve got you” Sung Gyu mumbled into her hair as she cried onto his chest, dampening the flimsy white shirt he wore underneath. He realized then, at that moment when he felt life still trembling inside her like a tiny, desperate child, that these were the words he should have said to his sister five years ago, long before she had decided to hang herself.

It simply was a cruel world.

~*~

Kim Sung Gyu, a lonely banker, newly divorced and a single father for a four-year-old, lived in the metropolitan towers, a suburban apartment complex which was only a few blocks away from where he worked at. After having gotten married to the first girl who ever said yes to him, Sung Gyu had thought his life had just taken a perfect turn. She was a beautiful girl. Though she was a few years of his junior, she never really acted like one. Hayoung owned a perfume boutique named ‘La belle vie’ which was in the same building as the branch of the bank he worked at. They had run into each other a few times, said hellos and goodbyes, shared smiles and a slight wave of hands whenever convenient. It was solely a work-place acquaintanceship which never really meant much in the beginning. Things escalated, somehow, after that one time when Sung Gyu first went to the perfumery to purchase a gift for his girlfriend at that time for her birthday. Hayoung had approached him, graceful and polite, with all smiles and sparkling eyes, assisted him with selecting the best and the most expensive bottle of perfume for his girlfriend, and had left him with a slightly side-tracked heart. The girlfriend of his dumped him on the very same night, which was a great heart-break, not because he had loved this girl immensely, but because she had left him feeling like a fool. Love never seemed to work out for him, and it was always him who got dumped. Always. But then, that night, when he sat on the bench near the fountain of their work-place with the expensive gift still untouched in his hands, Hayoung from the perfumery walked into his life in all her perfect ways. He asked her to be his girlfriend two weeks later, and after another six months, she was pregnant with their love child. They had to have a rushed wedding at that point, and she moved into his small pent-house apartment in the metropolitan towers. They lived in all the love and glory for three years then. Hayoung gave birth to a beautiful little girl whom they named after his late sister ‘Miru’, and they lived a happy, beautiful life. But then as all the beautiful things in the world did, his life as a part of a happy family lasted as long as three years. Somewhere during this time, some salty bastard called Myung Soo had to walk through the doors of the Metropolitan plaza with his piercing gaze and a cheeky smile. He was handsome, so much so that you could mistake him as a walking-talking magazine pictorial. A travelling journalist, was what he said he was. Sung Gyu wasn’t certain why a traveling journalist had to live in an apartment house the first place. But then when his dear wife was swayed by his very existence, and everything came crumbling down and lied in a heap by his feet, Sung Gyu realized what this jerk’s true intentions were. This Myung Soo (bastard) had somehow lured Hayoung into accompanying him on an expedition of finding natural exotic scents for her perfume production, and the next thing Sung gyu knew was that he was dumped, yet again, by the woman he loved for a man with a face of a run-way model, and this time, adding to his lonesome misery and self-loath, he had a baby.

Jung Eunji had been his neighbor from the first day he moved into the towers. Although he hadn’t really thought of it much, he has always felt that she’d been the silent bystander, giving sidelong glances at all the drama going on in his life. She’s seen him moving into the apartment, carrying all his bags over the stairwell since the elevator was out of order that day (to be gone off after giving him one of those looks of hers), she’s seen him bring a number of girl-friends to this apartment, she’s seen him getting dumped and coming home stinking drunk, sliding down to the floor by his front door and breaking into very unmanly tears. The day he first brought Hayoung to his house, Eunji was crossing the corridor with a wash basin in her hands, looking completely unfazed by the sight of him kissing her against the door. And the day he announced of their marriage, she was also there, looking bored and seeming like she hardly gave a single ounce of care to the world. Eunji was in the lobby of the plaza, looking slightly alarmed when Sung Gyu had to carry Hayoung down the hallway when she was having the baby. When Miru was first brought home and when all the neighbors visited her, Eunji did so too, maintaining a straight face as if she wasn’t a slightest bit swayed by the arrival of a new member to the neighbor family. She got baby Miru an adorable little knitted shirt, which she loved very much so. Then when Myung Soo walked in to the complex with all his shine and glory, Eunji had passed by, giving Myung Soo a scrutinizing look, not one bit shook by his striking beauty. (And she was probably the only one, because Sung gyu himself was incredibly dismayed) The day Hayoung left the building, giving fake promises to everyone that she would soon return, Eunji had just stood in a corner with her laundry in a basket and an ever-straight face, the only truthful gesture in the entire ordeal. The moment Sung Gyu saw a photograph of Hayoung in a flimsy bikini, lying on the shore somewhere in Italy, a hand draped around (Bloody) Myung Soo, captioned ‘Freedom’ with a flying leaf (what did that mean, anyway? The leaf, that is) underneath and broke down to tears (yet again) while sitting in the darkness of the lobby one night, finally the realization that he’s really been dumped by his wife hit him, Eunji had been sitting among the shadows, listening to music but her gaze fixed on him like he was a sight hard to miss. It was strange that Eunji’s been the silent onlooker of every significant detail of his life and still she didn’t mean much to him. It was strange that he never even knew her, not even enough to know that all this time, hidden behind her tight-lipped, quiet demeanor was a girl in constant suffering, desperate to be saved from herself.

Sung Gyu was glad beyond words that he went up to the rooftop that morning, even if it was to hang his baby’s clothes to dry before he went to work, because finally, finally, with one tiny gesture coming from him, after all these years, he was able to break down all the high walls around her.

After he successfully brought her down the ledge, across the rooftop, leaving the half-done laundry basket for later, Sung Gyu brought Eunji into his apartment. He knew it was a bad idea, because he’s always been wary of bringing strangers home, since he felt the sight of his personal space gave a deep insight to his personal life. But Eunji had just tried to kill herself, and she still refused to speak. She hadn’t many neighbors who were friends with her, and the memory of seeing Sung Gyu’s sister hanging in her bedroom five years ago was still fresh in his mind; It was the only way.

Four-year-old baby Miru was sound asleep in her room. She was no different from her father, and ever since her mother left, the need to be neat and tidy had long flown out their window. All over the floor were her toys strewn about, and if you happened to walk bare feet, you’d step on Legos and squeaky toys and half-nibbled crayon sticks half a dozens of times. Sung gyu led her through what was seemingly a battlefield, removed a pile of unfolded clothes from the sofa seat and made her some space to sit down and calm herself. She was appalled, slightly traumatized by the events of that morning. Sung gyu realized, with a pang, that suicidal people, when suicidal, were not really themselves; and when they were truly back to being themselves, they were horrified of what they previously were.

Eunji clasped her hands tightly in her lap and looked around herself, alarmingly disoriented by the new surroundings. The messy apartment room might not pull off as the most therapeutic sight to someone as herself, but he felt that having someone beside her at a moment as this might be helpful for her, at least to feel a sense of security, at least the knowledge that there was someone to stop the vicious demons from consuming her whole would make her feel safe. Sung Gyu stood there for a moment, helplessly just watching her, unable to figure out what to say or do. That time when his sister committed suicide, he hadn’t much time to say anything to her before she took her final breath. He had cried and cried out her name numerous times, the only question he could ask was why. Why did she do this to herself? Why did do this to him? Five years had passed since, and he never really got the answers for his questions. Why she did that was still a mystery, and the only answer he had was that she was a deeply sad and miserable person. And could he have helped? This particular question killed him every time he’d recall that day. Yet, as he stood there, after having stopped a girl from doing the same thing as his sister succeeded in doing back then, after having done the one thing he couldn’t do for his sister, Sung Gyu was miserably failing in conducting the saving process. What should he do now? Hug her again? Tell her things would be alright? Give her a speech on why she should value her life more? Call the police? Call the Samaritans? He was at a complete loss; therefore, instead of touching the sensitive topic to begin with, he cleared his throat and asked in a small voice; “Would you like some coffee, Eunji-Ssi?”

With a nod, she approved that the only thing he asked was a good start.

The only sound in the house for the few minutes which followed after was the whirring of the coffee machine. Even while he was in the kitchen, Sung Gyu made sure he had his eyes on her, keeping her out of harm’s way. He wasn’t sure if she preferred her coffee with cream, or she’d like some sugar in it, and he was a little disoriented himself to ask. So he boiled some cream for her, poured some sugar into a pot, set it all on a tray with a couple of milk cookies and carried it into the living room. Eunji was sitting in the same spot he left her, hands hidden in her long sleeves, face concealed under the long curtains of hair on the either sides. He brought the mug towards her and patiently waited until she moved. As the clock ticked, her moving like a real living being seemed more important to him than anything else. He wanted her to move, to speak, to do anything. The one thing he feared the most was for anyone to be the lifeless corpse his sister happened to be the last time he held her.

A rustle came from the direction of the bedrooms, followed by the soft padding across the carpet floor. Sung gyu knew that sound all too well. It was as if she was coming to save Sung gyu from the awkwardness of the situation. Baby Miru emerged from the corridor leading to the bedroom, eyes squinted, pouting her lips. Her soft wavy hair stood in all directions and her baby blue pajamas were crooked. Sung Gyu smiled at the sight of her, naturally and went over to pick her up in his arms before returning to the sofa set. Eunji had finally moved, which was a good thing. She was looking up at the baby with straight face, but her eyes have changed, like they always do when they come to life. They sparkled, and they were so much alive than they were earlier that morning. Sung gyu was relieved.

“Who is this?” Miru asked rather rudely, and Sung Gyu had to hold her chubby hand to prevent her from pointing.

“This is Aunty Eunji. She’s staying for breakfast with us” Sung Gyu said with a smile, and took a wary glance at the subject in question, whose eyes were saying that now, she didn’t approve something so completely unheard of.

“Really?” Squeaked the little girl, her sleepiness wearing off as quickly as her moods changed. “But why?”

Sung gyu frowned. “Because I asked her to”

Miru huffed her cheeks. “But why?”

“Because she’s a nice lady”

“But why?”

Sung gyu let out a sigh. “Mimi. Go wash your face, Daddy will be there soon”

Just as she was told, Miru slid off her father’s lap and skipped her way into the bathroom. She might be four, but Miru had pretty much grown up enough to take good care of herself. It was as if she understood that she’d have to grow up without a mummy (because of Sung Gyu’s complete inability to prevent all the women he loved from dumping him) which was good and saddening at the same time. Once she had disappeared into the bathroom, Sung Gyu turned back to their visitor, who was now staring down at her hands rather stiffly.

“Y-you should have something to drink…” Sung Gyu muttered, encouraging her to have her coffee since she still looked very pale. “You’d feel better”

Eunji nodded and slowly reached for the mug of coffee. Just as he had assumed, she liked it with cream and sugar, just like he himself did, and it made him smile for an odd reason. Hayoung never liked coffee, not with cream, nor sugar, not in any form or way. She liked tea. Preferably green, and tasteless, mostly aromatic. She thought coffee was for sad people. And now he knew what she meant.

After a few sips of coffee, Sung Gyu decided that it was his cue to gradually touch the problem. But as he wracked his mind, looking for the right question to start with, Eunji placed her mug down and said in a small voice. “She’s adorable”

And it took him a moment to realize that she was actually referring to the child.

It was his first time after so many years that he was actually hearing her voice in such a proximity. Eunji hardly spoke a word while her eyes completed that part for her, and she never seemed like she had much to say. The rumor had it that she was deaf and mute, which spread across the apartment until Eunji herself stepped out and cleared the doubts for everyone. She was basically a quiet ghost, looming within the shadows and judging everyone with her long, scrutinizing gaze. Although she might not look like it, Sung Gyu was certain that she knew everything about everyone. But what she clearly seemed to have missed out was that, even though she was isolated from the rest of the world, she was still a part of them. And while she was, everyone felt and acknowledged her presence as much as she tried not to let it happen, which also meant that she could never, ever disappear completely, from the face of the earth.

“Uh, y-yeah…” Sung Gyu nodded rather awkwardly, wishing that this conversation wouldn’t lead them to talk about Miru’s mother.

And it didn’t. Eunji continued to sip on her coffee, Sung Gyu continued to watch him. It was way past seven in the morning at that time, and Sung gyu had to drop Miru off at her kindergarten school by eight. Nonetheless, at that moment, he didn’t feel like leaving Eunji alone with the demons inside her. He was simply so afraid of having another one of his sister in his life. So he took the matter into his own hands.

“Eunji-Ssi…” he said, looked up and moved closer so the conversation remained between themselves.

“Eunji-Ssi, I understand that you’re in great deal of pain right now” he said in a mild voice, and Eunji stiffened at his tone, hands rigid, grasping tightly onto her mug. Sung Gyu continued. “I might not be the right one to be doing this, but I’m willing to reach out to you, to help you…and we can solve this one together…”

A moment of quietness passed, and Sung Gyu could catch the slight tremble in her arms. He had gotten to her, somehow, which was good for now. But then she wouldn’t let him continue any longer.

“Please” she whispered, and with trembling hands, she rested the mug on the table before them. “Please…don’t”

Sung gyu nodded, but his heart was telling him to go on. Don’t listen to her. It was the demons speaking, while the tiny, distressed life inside her, trapped under the all the surrounding darkness, wanted to be saved, desperately. She was crying out in misery, holding up a hand in vain. And it was this little person he was reaching out to.

“Please don’t…what?” he whispered back, searching in her eyes for an answer. Hers met his for one fleeting moment, and he could see the agony in them, a scorching fire, burning inside her. “Please don’t what, Eunji? What do you want me to stop?”

Her hands kept trembling, and Sung gyu had this fiery urge to reach out and hold them in his own until her nerves calmed down. It wasn’t the moment, however. He didn’t want to scare her away any further. She was already horrified of herself.

“Stop…asking, stop doing…. just stop” Eunji breezed in an alarmingly painful voice. It held so much of misery that Sung gyu could almost feel the apathy she must be feeling inside her. That desperation to escape from this endless, boundless tunnel of excruciating misery. He couldn’t understand her, but he could feel her through the look of her eyes. She was in so, so much of pain.

“If I stopped…” Sung Gyu gulped and raised her head. “If I stopped now…. nothing’s ever going to change…”

“They never do….” A soft, miserable denial. “T-they never do…”

Tears began to roll down her eyes then, and sung gyu reached over to the pile of clothes and snatched one of Miru’s baby soft napkins, still scented of talc and detergent, and slowly pushed it into her fist.

“You wouldn’t know, unless we try…”

Eunji picked up the napkin and covered her whole face with it. As she breathed, and as the scent of Sung Gyu’s baby filled her lungs with every breath, her shoulders began to relax, the hands slowly softened, and she finally found the courage to cry again. She was crying her heart out to the rainbow and flower prints, tears dampening the material and darkening its colors. Sung Gyu decided to leave her for her moment, stood up and ruffled her hair, allowing his fingers to tenderly tangle up through her thick locks.

“Take your time”, he said, and disappeared through the corridor into the bathroom.

~*~

While giving his daughter her morning bath, completely aware that there was a suicidal person out in the mildly messy living room of his house, Sung Gyu thought of the things he could say to her. He had never done this before, not even if he had been a brother to a suicidal sister for twenty-five years. The truth was that he hadn’t ever really confronted her suicidal behavior before, conceding that it was a rather sensitive matter to touch. And she had a therapist. She had her pills. She had her visits to the counselor every two weeks, yoga sessions every once in a week and also a husband to look after her. In fact, Sung Gyu never saw the need of her to talk to her brother of her condition. To his perspective, everything about his sister were under control. She had to continue the medicine for another six months, the doctor had said, and with all her counselling, yoga and therapeutic sessions, she was seemingly making quite a bit of progress, and both his mother and himself had a heap of blind faith on her. The both believed that things were finally taking a better turn. And that’s why he had never had to talk her down a ledge of a building. She had never attempted suicide that desperately, not as much as she spoke of it, and he believed that it was good that she did. Sung gyu even listened to her. He believed in her. And he never ever has thought that she would act upon it. That’s why, sitting in the bath with his baby girl playing in the bubbles, Sung Gyu couldn’t figure out what he could possibly say to a girl whom he had just spoken down from a fall to her death.

As he toweled Miru dry while she babbled on about something she’d seen on the TV or the other, Sung Gyu thought of the last time he spoke to Hayoung. The very last time, which was more than six months ago. She had phoned him up one evening when he lied in bed in utter misery and self-despair while Miru played with her Lego on the bedroom floor, and she told him the one thing which stayed with him until this day. That one thing which led him to broke into tears again, and also to wipe them off on his sleeves rather bravely, gather his daughter in both his arms and tell her that he’d love her forever. Miru hated affection. She hated being kissed and hugged and being told that she was loved; for whatever reason, he could never tell. But at that moment, she just allowed things to happen. No crying. No . No battling out of her father’ arms. Instead, she just nestled against his chest, put her arms around his neck and asked him to take her on piggy back. And that was that.

What she said to him made so much eloquent sense, and it meant so much to him, while the entire world had failed him miserably. It was that one phone call which stopped him from breaking into pieces every time he’d think of Hayoung and the misery she had left him in. In fact, it didn’t hurt him at all when he would think of her, which wasn’t as often now. It gave him a sense of accomplishment, even though he knew that it shouldn’t. Nonetheless, he knew that he had finally come to accept the reality more than anything else. That phone call from that night mattered.

That’s why, once he had toweled little Miru, powdered her and carried her to the living room to get her dressed from the pile of freshly dried clothes lying in the sofas, Sung Gyu said to Eunji who hadn’t moved an inch from where he left her, in a distracted voice; “I don’t know what exactly you feel about yourself, but personally speaking, I feel that people who try to jump of buildings have decided that they don’t want their lives any longer…”

Miru looked up at her father, her tiny eyes furrowed in confusion, and Sung Gyu gently eased her into her favorite T-shirt. “You get what I mean right? When you don’t want something, you let it go. And sometimes, even if you do want something, if you feel you’re not good enough to take good care of it, you still let it go. That’s just human nature I think…. people are just afraid to love things that they’re afraid to lose, because they’re scared of the pain that comes after. And to cope with this pain they assume would come, they just let things go…” He sighed, picked Miru up and helped her into a pair of polka-dotted tights. He was quiet as he pulled the tight material up her tiny feet, and while he was distracted with this, Eunji had somehow moved closer to them, and the moment Miru lost her balance and clutched onto Sung Gyu’s hair, Eunji moved forward and caught her right in her arms.

“Careful…” She whispered. Sung gyu looked up, and smiled when he noticed how alive her eyes seemed that moment. They were dancing in blue flames, amounts of all sorts of feelings gathered in those dark eyes. Miru looked up at Eunji for a split second, then down at where she held her. Eunji was flustered for a moment, and her hands slowly left from where she held her. Miru quickly put her arms around her father’s neck, and he followed her silent request by picking her up and resting her on his lap. Then he proceeded to pull on her skirt over her head.

“After Miru’s mother left her, she called me up one day, many, many months later, to tell me this” He said, and arranged the skirt on the girl’s waist before he looked up at the other. Eunji just sat there, quietly watching what the other had to say. A silent engagement. A wordless approval. Sung Gyu carried on, quoting the exact words he heard over the phone that day.

‘Take good care of Miru for me. She’s my whole life, and I’m afraid if I wouldn’t be a good mother to her so I decided I should let her go. When she’s with you, she’s in better hands. I trust her with you more than anything else. I entrust my life to you, Sung gyu’

A moment of complete silence passed, and the both of them watched Miru as she eased her feet into a pair of glossy, pink ballet flats. Afterwards, she flew off to complete the rest of her morning routine, which was to grab a hair brush from wherever they’ve stashed it and wait until her father did her hair.

“D-do you…?” Eunji started, then. Her voice was breezy, soft and beautiful. “Do you think I am not taking better care of my life, Sung Gyu-Ssi?”

Miru flew back into the room and sat on her father’s lap. As he spoke, Sung Gyu distracted himself with brushing the girl’s soft, wavy hair. “Is trying to throw it down a ten storey building a better way to take care of it?”

“Maybe it is” Eunji breezed out, and this time, it was strong, rigid. “Maybe it is, for me. Because this is my life, and as it seems to me now, the right thing to give my life right at this moment, is an end to it”

“Do you really think that’s what you want, Eunji-Ssi?” He pried on, giving her a long look of concern. “It isn’t. it’s never so for a person who tries to die. Or to just about anyone. We all want to be saved, be loved, and live a good life. And trying to lie to yourself like this is nothing but a big mistake”

“How would you know?” Eunji muttered through her gritted teeth. “How would you know anything? Have you ever even been there before? Don’t be ridiculous and stop even trying…” She took one trembling breath and looked down at her hands which tightly held onto one another. “Please…just stop”

And he could have. He could have. He could just conclude this is the end of trying and maybe she’s not worth a try because thinking that the best way forward in this was to disregard everything and jump to the very end was a very, very stupid way decision making and also because she was uncharacteristically very stubborn for someone who’s needing help, but no, he didn’t. Sung gyu didn’t want to stop and walk away like he did back then, trusting her decision, thinking everything was going to be alright because the very attempt of talking someone around was so taxing for him, because he didn’t want the same thing from five years to repeat. He didn’t want to walk into through the building doors one day to see the police surrounding it, questioning everyone because one of the tenants had killed herself. He didn’t want to be the man who sat by his sister’s grave, stunned, silenced, traumatized that he never really did anything to save her. Sung gyu wanted to save her. Save her from the monsters trying to consume her against her will. He wanted things to end for her in the best way possible. And this wasn’t it.

“If I stopped” he said, and reached out behind Miru who still sat on him to place his hand on top of hers. Miru squirmed, stood up and ran away from the both of them. “If I stopped now, nothing will change, and all I would have in the end is regret”

Eunji shook her head at this, stared up at the little girl who definitely had everything in her life going on so much easier. A stray tear began to roll down her pale cheek. “It’s not that hard. It’s easy. It’s so easy…”

“You’d think that it is, but it isn’t” Sung gyu said, thinking back to the day he sat before his sister’s casket, his head in his arms, thinking why, and why until the quietness of the room provided him with the answers. “Believe me, I know”

Eunji sobbed loudly and clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white. “No you don’t”

“And I have gotten myself in this already, and there’s no way I’m walking away now. Not with you, like this…”

“You can just leave alone” She suggested, but her tearful voice didn’t exactly coordinate with what her words meant. “People do that all the time”

“I might not be one of those people, then” Sung gyu responded eagerly, watching as his daughter scurry across the house, looking for her bag which she must have put wherever. He then turned to look at Eunji, a new resolve coming to his mind. “I just save your life, Eunji-Ssi. You owe me that much”

Eunji’s tight lips implied that she wasn’t a least bit impressed by Sung Gyu’s failing attempts of persuasion. She shook her head and simply stared down at her feet. Sung gyu thought hard and long then, wondering what else he had left in his abundant list of nice thing to say to a sad, suicidal person, which wasn’t even a thing to exist. Then he looked into her eyes, the eyes which were again, slowly, losing its their life. He wanted to see them come to life again. Because he absolutely loved it. So he said to her the last of which he had left to say to her, even if it might not pull off as the most reassuring thing to say.

“I picked up what you wanted to throw away now, didn’t I? And you know what happens when people pick up things other people no longer want to keep?”

Eunji’s years perked up, and she turned to him, slowly, a look of confusion and what suggested that she had a deep impression that he might be losing the good sense of his mind etched across her face.

“W-what…?”

Sung Gyu smiled, and watched as Miru crawled out from under the kitchen table with her school bag in her hands.

“They keep them. Finders, keepers” He said and turned around to give Eunji one of his gentlest smiles. “What would you like for breakfast, Eunji-Ssi?”

~*~

At the end of the day, Sung Gyu happened to fail (bravely) in many, many things. He couldn’t persuade Eunji to reconsider not taking her life, but she said something about him having killed the mood for it and disappeared into her own personal confines without even accepting his request to stay for breakfast with them. Sung gyu didn’t have the heart to let her on her own at that time; all sorts of possible scenarios happened to wash into his mind. After having fed Miru her favorite cereal, bread with butter and some cold apple juice, and after having filled up on the same himself, he carried her against his hip, her school bag dangling behind her and her feet hitting him above the knees, went and knocked on the door next to Eunji’s and asked the quirky old lady to keep an eye on her neighbor for him since she was terribly unwell. She accepted, and he went to drop his daughter off to school, went to work good thirty minutes late, got told off by his boss, had a terrible start for the day and spent a good half of it, regretting the bit where he failed to get Eunji’s telephone number, the same ill scenarios from before were repeating in his mind. That evening, he picked up his daughter from the day-care center while she was asleep, bought dinner for the two of them and went up to his empty, dark apartment, which to him always seemed like a pitiful innuendo to his somewhat hollow lifestyle. Miru refused to wake up for dinner and continued to sleep even as he gave her a bath, put her in clean pajamas and put her into bed. After all the strenuous bits of his daily after-work routine was completed, he washed up and got into sweats and a T-shirt himself, picked up his dinner and planted himself in front of the TV. He watched the news segment, habitually skipped on the sappy romantic dramas, leaned against the sofa while he sat on the floor. Then he reminisced the good and bad times of his life.

Around ten o’clock in the night then, his mother called up like she always did to check up on him. She did this every day, as if Sung Gyu was a lousy, pitiful loveless bachelor who needed a constant amount of love and affection to go on living. The phone call consisted of the same old, same old things. How was Miru? She’s fine. How are you? I’m fine too. How was work? It was fine. How was school for Miru? It was fine, I guess. Did Hayoung call? And just as naturally, Sung Gyu would go quiet at this point, wishing his mother would stop asking this question, which she never did and have continued to ask him for the past year, even after he had clearly laid it out to her that they had decided to go on separate ways. He didn’t want to push her any further, nonetheless. His mother has had lots of things going on in her life. Ever since his father died when he was only fifteen, in a cardiac arrest, it was her who took care of both himself and his sister, all with the courage and will she had to go on further, all for the sake of her children. She had been the pillar to him at moments when Sung Gyu felt like breaking into pieces and stopping, entirely, in going on living. She wasn’t the kind of a woman who’d give up that so easily, a trait which hadn’t, tragically, passed onto both her children. But Sung Gyu was glad that they at least had each other. Every time she would take their phone calls as an opportunity to lecture him on topics varying from single parenting to finding love again, Sung Gyu wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t complain, or urge her to cut off the line and leave the topic to be discussed on another time. He listened. He just listened. And once she was done, he’d tell her that he loved her and then the conversation would be gone, only to begin the next day.

On this night, however, things were rather different. Sung Gyu didn’t go on to fill her up on the events from that morning because, ever since his sister died, death and anything associated with it had been a highly sensitive topic between them. Instead, he let her tell him about the nice lady she met over at the dentist today who had planted a golden tooth on her jaw like he himself had and how she thought the two of them would make quite a terrific match. It wasn’t the first time she had done this, and it wasn’t the first time he was listening to her telling him something like this so he listened to her patiently, quietly, although he had absolutely no intention to get married to a girl with a golden tooth in her jaw, all until the alarm of his front door began to ring.

In the beginning it was calm and regular with a ten second interval between the first and the next rings. During this time, Sung Gyu took a glance at the door and then at Miru, worried if the sound would wake her up and returned to the phone call while making his way across the hall. The next time the bell began to ring again, it was almost frantic, going on and on like a police siren, a desperate call which was alarmingly strange at a time like this. Immediately, Sung Gyu thought of Eunji. Eunji on the top of the tower, Eunji with her arms held up against the wind. Eunji with her tears staining her cheeks, Eunji trying to die. He hurried towards the door then, and to the phone he said; “Mum, someone’s at the door, I have to go, talk to you later, I love you”

He couldn’t even wait to hear her saying that she loved him return because the frantic ringing started again. He wanted to see if it had woken up the child, but at that moment, checking the door seemed to be more important. He unlocked it, wrenched it open with such intensity that he himself lost his balance and almost flew off his feet. He left it open completely, and standing before him, her face stained with tears in the same manner it was in the morning, was Jung Eunji, a look of appalling distress clouding her eyes. The look in them was so adamantly disturbing that it took a moment for Sung gyu to adjust his eyes, also his mind to understand what was going on at that moment. Eunji raised a hand then, to wipe the tears off her face. What was left there when her hand dropped, then, took Sung Gyu by utmost terror.

His heart stopped, and he took a cautions step back as if the distance between them would make the dreadful sight go away. “Oh my god...Eunji”

“Help me” Eunji sobbed, a tiny desperate cry which shattered his heart to pieces. At that moment, who spoke to him was the trembling little life inside her. “Help me, Sung Gyu-Ssi...I don’t want to die”