Before I knew it, they had already called me crazy, throwing punches and kicks. What happened? I thought they were my friends, and we were building sand castles. Do other kids do this do? Start fighting without any reason. There’s a faint voice at the back, which I couldn’t make out very clearly, saying they were scared of me or something.

Someone screamed at us. Another kid. A skinny, short kid. He told them to leave me alone, and that it’s bad to beat people up. He was nice, but helpless. They laughed at him and pushed him away. But he tried even harder. They were kids, they didn’t want to take things too seriously, so they left.

He came to me with a worried face, picked me up from the ground, patted away the dirt on my clothes, checked my bruises, and took me to wash up.

If we don’t count those bastards that beat me up, he was my first friend. His name is Do Kyungsoo.

Later I found out, he’s also my only friend. Other people are just terrified of me. I never understood why. But sometimes, for a split second, my mother too has the same look at me. Even though she always tries to act happy and tell me I’m okay, sometimes I hear her cry.

I have another friend, a bad friend. His face changes every time I look at him, but his voice remains the same, a squeaky voice, a mix of an infant’s cry and an old man’s whisper. He always tells me to lock myself up in the closet and that he wants the best for me. I listened to him once and almost got suffocated. On the verge of unconsciousness, I heard Kyungsoo’s voice gently reaching out to me, waking me up, urging me to open that door. That’s how I survived.

That squeaky voice isn’t my friend, but I’ve been living with him for so long that I call him my friend out of irony.

I do badly in school, not because I don’t want to study, on the contrary, I spend most of my time indoors trying to. But every time I read a book, the lines just turn into centipedes and crawl on my skin. My mom says there’s no centipede, but she’s not the one that feels hundreds of legs creeping on her. Every time that happens, Do Kyungsoo would point to the words and read them for me, he tells me if I can just endure the centipedes, he can help me with the rest.

That, too, makes centipedes my ‘friends’.

I have quite a few ‘friends’ like that. Some are not so bad, sometimes I have little mice visit me in my bed, though they soon would start munching my flesh, but at least they look cute when they chew.

It didn’t take me long to realize the “real world” where other people live in isn’t the same as mine. They don’t hear squeaky voices, they read books without seeing centipedes, they don’t fondly look at mice munching their flesh. They say those things are not real, and that I’m just crazy. But I don’t know, I act like I agree, but how would I know if I’m not one of them and none of them is me.

Even as a kid, I never really enjoyed the things kids do, the things adults think we should be doing, the things we thought we like doing. It’s ok if I sit still for hours and stare at the window, the plain, unchanging scenery makes me happy, in fact, anything that doesn’t constantly changes or moves makes me happy.

Sometimes I spend a ridiculous amount of time gazing at Do Kyungsoo sleeping while he rolls up like a cat, looking absolutely unbothered by anything in this world. That’s when I realized, he is the most certain existence I can ever witness. They can tell me my whole life is fake, but I still believe Do Kyungsoo is real.

Often when I tell my mom there are maggots in the food, she would patiently took the time to explain that it’s just my imagination, but one time she lost it and yelled at me with real anger. I didn’t say anything back but still couldn’t gulp down that food. She smashed the dishes on the ground and I tried to clean it up but she got even madder. Then she hit me like the kids I used to call friends.

I kept calling Kyungsoo to help me but he didn’t answer. After that day I didn’t see him again.

So, like my mother, I also lost it.

I heard the kids at school were happy they finally got rid of me, because I can no longer go to school, I can’t even make it to the door without feeling terrified of everything.

I locked myself in hoping one day everything would get better, I would get better, Kyungsoo would come back, and my mother would stop hating me.

But that didn’t happen.

My mother also hopes for the same thing. We all ended up freezing our lives in these four walls with hopeful lies.

Until one day, Mr. Squeaky voice came to me and said there’s a simple solution to end all of our sufferings. I was so glad to hear that.

When I woke up in the emergency room, the very first thing I saw wasn’t anything else, it was the long-waited, comforting look of Do Kyungsoo. He held me tight in his arms with the strength I could never expect. That was the first time I saw Kyungsoo cry.

That was also the time when I realized, there’s no one else I would rather be with.

The doctors were aware of my condition and I got the medical treatment I needed, the world became less scary and there were less things to be anxious about.

My mother also admitted that she never knew I could be cured, somewhat, with medicine, that simple thing.

It takes a long time, and a lot of effort for things to start falling into place.

But the better it gets, the more afraid I become. The mice have paid less visits to me, the centipedes also looks a lot more like text, that’s good, but what if one day Kyungsoo disappears too?

Would I get mad again? Or would I just become a normal person?

I stare at the pills in my hand, hesitating to put them in my mouth. My hand starts to tremble as all I want to do is throw them away. I’m not just afraid of the world I’m stuck in, but also afraid of the world they promise me would be better.

Kyungsoo held my trembling hand, looked at me with a reassuring smile.

“I’m here”, he pointed at my chest, “I will always be here.”

I wanted to hold him so tight that he would really sink into my chest, but it kept aching as I took my medicine.

I looked at him for a long time, trying my best to carve everything I know about him into my memory, to remember the exact feeling I have when I’m with him.

Were your eyes always so beautiful? I never really noticed.

Do Kyungsoo touched my cheek with his warm, soft hand.

“Find me again, Jongin, find me in reality.”

A light struck me.

I never thought about it that way. I never thought there could be another Do Kyungsoo in real life, not in my fantasy.

But the more I think about it, the clearer it gets. The first time I met him, he was there, real with a sounding voice and touching hands.

I have to heal, so that I can find him.

Kyungsoo slowly fades away as my medicine starts to come in effect.

But I don’t have any regret.

.

“I heard you’ve just come back to school”, a familiar voice calls me from the back, “I’m new in class, my name is Do Kyungsoo.”