CHAPTER NINETEEN

omen

Sehun had been lifting and lowering Rei’s right arm repeatedly, threatening and pretending to take a big bite out of it as if it was a baguette sandwich, much to Rei’s calm smile and sleepy eyes as she laid her head back on her chair. ‘For real, I’ll bite it.’

‘Mm,’ Rei kept muttering. Sehun pushed the sleeves of her shirt up to bare her lower arm. A three-year old boy was staring at them from a set of waiting seats a little farther from where they were, pestering his mother about Sehun. She glared at them and then went back to staring at her phone.

‘Are you seriously letting me bite your arm?’ he asked, for the fifth time.

‘I doubt you’d bite hard enough to penetrate my bones, to say the least.’ she replied. Giving up, Sehun placed her arm back on her lap and leaned back just as she did.

‘I’m really hungry,’ Sehun said, also for the seventh time. Soojung, who had been quiet throughout, perhaps due to exhaustion, stood up.

‘I’m going to check on Baekhyun,’ she said, leaving the two alone. Sehun slid lower, stretching his legs further from the chair. His stomach was starting to hurt from hunger, and eating a bar of chocolate to curve it only lasted for ten minutes.

‘As soon as Soojung comes back, we’ll get you food, alright?’ Rei straightened her sitting position, placing an assuring hand on his arm. Sehun glanced at her emptily, his lips curving into a frown.

‘Is music your hobby?’ he asked.

‘One of it.’

‘One of it. What’s your favourite out of all your hobbies?’

‘I don’t have favourites,’ she shook her head.

Distracted by his hunger, Sehun asked no more, and resumed to remain as quiet as his companion, although often to no avail.

Soojung found the bed where Baekhyun had lied on, empty. Chanyeol was nowhere to be found and neither was the doctor who had attended to them. Instinctively, she called Chanyeol. ‘They moved him to a different division,’

‘I thought he was getting discharged,’ she said inquiringly.

‘They can’t,’ Chanyeol sighed. There was a hint of anger in his voice. ‘They found the reason why he passed out in the first place,’

‘What’s wrong with him, then?’

‘He has an eating disorder,’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Soojung, Baekhyun has anorexia.’ He said. ‘It all makes sense. He doesn’t eat and he’s always running and he always makes comments about his body. The doctor told me.’

Soojung could hear the voices become blur inside her head, but she somehow managed to call the rest and tell them. When they went to the ward where he was held, they were only allowed to wait outside due to visitor number limit, but the waiting area was so close they could hear him yelling and screaming from the inside, even get a far view of what was going on.

‘You can’t make me stay here! I know what you’ll do. You’ll force me to eat even if I don’t want to and try to make me fat again, won’t you? And you’ll think that you’ll make me feel better but you won’t!’ he was swinging his arms and yelling accusingly at the doctor. Chanyeol was holding him back on the bed, his arms around his chest, muttering things into Baekhyun’s ear.

Jongin slipped in, hoping he could offer help. The doctor merely walked away, seeing as Baekhyun was incapable of physical threat.

‘Stop it, you’re disturbing other people.’ Chanyeol warned. ‘It’s no use making a scene here,’

‘I’ll make a scene wherever I want.’ Baekhyun snapped back. ‘If they can put me here then I’ll keep making a noise until they let me go!’

‘You want them to throw you in the psych ward?’ Chanyeol was losing his patience.

‘Chanyeol,’ Jongin grasped onto his arm. ‘You better go. You’re not making things better for either of you.’

‘And let him keep-‘

‘I said leave!’

Chanyeol snatched his arm away and left. Jongin looked at Baekhyun, who had his gaze low and was sitting on the bed. ‘Are you going to convince me that this is the best as well?’

‘No,’

‘Of course not,’ Baekhyun scoffed dismissively.

‘They want you to feel okay again.’

‘And fatter,’

Jongin did not know how to counteract him, although he was nowhere near looking what would be called as plump, let alone fat.  ‘Try to listen to them just for a bit. Maybe then you won’t have to stay long.’ He patted him on the back. ‘We’ll come tomorrow,’

The conversation they had over late dinner compiled of piecing back Baekhyun’s behaviour and spilling concerns. Baekhyun only ever ate biscuits and salads to curve his hunger, and drank a lot of water every day, perhaps even excessively. It was hard to say how much body image issues affected him, because Baekhyun always did voice his desires for a different body, but he voiced out everything else as well.

In the end, they all came to a conclusion that none of them could have guessed unless they experienced some kind of chance encounter. It happened right under their noses and they could have remained in the dark, never to see that Baekhyun was being eaten up by his insecurities the way acid could corrode metal; mentally and physically.

‘So what do we do?’

‘What can we do? Force him to eat?’

‘He just needs to realize that what he’s doing is bad, and stop complaining and do what the doctors tell him.’ Chanyeol sounded the most impatient. ‘It’s not like there isn’t any better way to do it.’ He stated the obvious.

‘He does know,’ Rei offered. ‘And he’s probably tried everything in his willpower to get what he wants. He thinks there’s no other way to it.’

‘Can it kill him?’

‘There’s always a chance,’

‘He’s not going to die.’ Chanyeol gritted his teeth, pressing the side of his fist on the table. The act placed everyone on a dangerous edge, and no one said anything else. Soojung and Jongin accompanied Chanyeol back to the dorm once they snuck back onto campus. Kyungsoo spotted Rei taking another direction from the end of the school field.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Taking a walk.’ She called back out to him. ‘Come along?’ she glanced at both Kyungsoo and Sehun, who joined her.

They passed several school teams practicing outdoor for upcoming competitions. The school ground was very much alive; students were in and out of the academic block, most of them busy with extra-curricular activities. Incomplete decorations could be visible in numerous places. The trio settled at an exercise ground, where no one was, but not secluded from others who were still out at this time of the night.

‘Will they let him out once he’s cured?’ Kyungsoo asked.

‘They’ll usually monitor his weight and all, but they won’t hold him in there until the disorder completely wears off.’

‘Has he always felt that way about himself?’

‘As far as I remember,’ Rei replied. She hoisted herself up on a monkey bar, and like a light, elastic thing, effortlessly sat on top of the bar. Hooking her legs in between consecutive bars, she bent her body backwards, surprising Kyungsoo. Her skirt folded over, revealing slightly of her black shorts-like underwear.

Sehun did not bat an eye at all. ‘You know if you keep doing this, Kyungsoo might turn straight again.’ He joked. Kyungsoo averted his eyes and cleared his throat, embarrassed. Sehun laughed harmlessly. ‘How’s it going with Jongin, anyway?’

‘You guys know?’

‘The way you look at him, cupcake, the whole world does.’ Sehun proceeded to do as Rei did, and they hung upside down next to each other.

Kyungsoo began kicking the ground. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Blunt and always checking out another guy,’ Sehun answered monotonously. Rei hit him on the arm.

‘Not that. Jongin has never committed to a relationship before.’

‘He’s never had a boyfriend?’

‘He has, but he’s never had “real feelings” to actually want to be with them all the time.’ She explained. ‘That’s what he said.’

‘I thought that was because-‘ Sehun’s voice trailed off as he turned to Rei for answers. She cocked her head, closing her eyes as she drifted into a trance of thoughts. She bent back upwards, then leapt down to the ground.

‘Talk to him,’ she told Kyungsoo. ‘He’s not exactly a locked cupboard. He just doesn’t talk unless he’s asked.’

‘Like you?’ Sehun remarked. Rei shrugged.

‘Come on, let’s walk a bit more.’ She prompted and she walked in the middle of the two boys with her arms each in theirs, the three of them taking a slow, relaxed pace as they rounded a large park. The wind begun to blow and silence was taking the most part of the air. ‘So, what’s your romantic experience like?’ she asked Kyungsoo.

‘I had a crush before I moved here, but I can’t really say I miss her.’ He sounded more sad than he was relieved. ‘I don’t know, it’s really weird. I used to watch her every single day. I know this sounds obsessive or whatever but my class was really close to the school entrance and she didn’t always come early.’

He remembered her very clearly, although it felt as if he had spent an entire eternity in his new school. She had light blue hair, Kyungsoo said. Tall and with a fierce look in her eyes, she always looked as if she could stand up to the big bullies in school – which coindcidentally, she had several times. She was in his History class, and did not speak much, except to her friends.

‘You didn’t talk to her?’

‘I didn’t know how to. I wasn’t really involved with other people except my group of friends, and I don’t think she was either.’ He sighed. ‘But to be honest with you guys, it feels as if it’s been such a long time since.’

‘What made you move here?’                                                                                  

‘My cousin suggested I go abroad. He always liked coming up with these ideas. He said I wouldn’t have to listen to my parents ramble about school and I would get to paint however much I wanted. So here I am,’

‘I thought it was the thrill of urban life.’

‘That was another reason I wanted to move,’

‘Well, maybe this weekend we could bring him around.’ Rei suggested. ‘Legally.’

‘This weekend?’

‘We’ll take a train to town and spend an entire day there. There’s an art gallery I saw the other day. We could go there.’

A smile lit up on Kyungsoo’s face. ‘I’d like that,’

Kyungsoo’s passion for art had been there with him for as long as he remembers; he had learned to always have a pen, pencil or crayon and a paper wherever he went as early as he was five years old. Both of his parents supported his hobby, but never saw it practical, and they made it evident when Kyungsoo reached high school. It was an amazing hobby, but not something to be pursued seriously.

Kyungsoo had never felt so disheartened and hurt in his life. He stopped showing his arts to his parents and bottled up his discontentment until the day his mischievous cousin triggered an interesting idea. The cousin had always got his ways by rebelling, often discreetly but never bothering to cover up every time he got caught.

He believed that Kyungsoo had to get away, if art was truly what he wanted. His parents would only continue to discourage him. ‘Why don’t you go to Seoul?’

‘Seoul?’

‘Go out to the big city. Get out of here. Just convince your parents you’re doing what they want you to do. Look for a good school or something – a place that also has good art classes. That way, they won’t bother you and you’ll get to do whatever you like without them knowing.’

Kyungsoo had never been a rebellious spirit, but what harm would it do to fly away to a good school? He would still thrive in his studies, and that was what his parents wanted. It would not do any bad to pursue his art too, would it?

That was how he had ended up there.

He was unsure about moving to a country he had never been familiar with, but the unfamiliarity excited him. Furthermore, Kyungsoo was confident in his French and it was worth a shot. At least he would enjoy the benefit of a new experience, and so far, it had been a thrilling and rocky experience.

On the way back to his dorm room, he found Jongin standing near the top of the stairs with another guy whom Kyungsoo was unfamiliar with. He caught the look on Jongin’s face; it was undoubtedly one full of intended flirtations. Kyungsoo made himself hidden within the darkness of the unlit hallways and retreated to his room.

It was odd, but Kyungsoo felt no hurt at all.

He expected a spark of jealousy to ignite, but his feelings were as steady as a lake. Chanyeol had already fell asleep. A look of anger is faint on his sleeping face.

Kyungsoo fell flat on his bed, taking deep breaths.

High school had been ingrained inside his mind as images of students who never knew how to look up and spent more than half the day at school while secretly being ually tensed. But the things he learned here was nothing like it. He had gotten used to it, and yet felt himself in an odd place whenever he thought about it.

Maybe it was the city, maybe it was something else.

The memories in his mind were being challenged, by a boy in the hospital struggling to eat, another who uses the tricks of attraction to get certain rewards, a girl whose eyes could glow as dark as the secrets she knows of this school and a gloomy tragedy that binds them all.

In the silence of dark corridors and disciplined students pursuing a better future, Kyungsoo knows there is more than just the pleasing appearance of this place.

On the other side of the building, Rei might have just seen another darkness that loomed over the school.

It was in the form of a young girl, sitting in the bathroom. Her sobs were echoing inside the enclosed space, so sad and full of grief. Rei stood there as still as a pole, and her presence caught the girl off guard when she opened the door. Her eyes, surprised, were dark with a look of shattered glass within them, and her cheeks were wet.

Soojung walked pass her as if oblivious.

Obeying her decision, Rei ignored her for a while. She left the room after washing to meet with another friend of hers. When she came back, Soojung was still awake, and it was then she asked Rei to hold her.

Rei did not inquire or speak at all. Only her hands Soojung’s hair and she let the latter cry earnestly, her face buried into the crook of her neck. Soojung cried a lot, and it was as if she could have cried a bucket of tears altogether.

High school; the peak era of to-be adults, filled with a horrid mix of lust, love and tears – maybe it was all just darker than it appears.