Prologue - Nonsense, Amongst Other Ramblings

Damaged goods wearing a smile on her beautiful face.

Beyond damaged.

Beyond beautiful.

Beyond broken.

So broken I could even call her damaged goods and it wouldn’t be an insult. Not even in the slightest. Not even the mask she wore was good enough to hide away her pain.

Not to me anyway.

Although, on second thought maybe it’s the smiling ones that are so damaged? Hiding their sorrow behind a joyful veneer?

That sounds plausible.

Definitely probable.

Not impossible.

Hmm, I kind of want to test this theory. So much so that I even make a V shape with my thumb and index finger like I’m deep in thought. Or like some clever detective solving a riddle.

Ah, wait. This is getting a bit too sadistic, isn’t it? People will start to wonder if I’m really a good girl or not. Don’t think of me as some bully. Honest, I’m not making fun of her. On the contrary, she is quite precious to me.

I would never intentionally hurt her.

But here. Let me take a step back and ask something.

What is a fatal wound?

Sure, sure. Squashing someone’s brain in, stabbing a person in the chest with a knife, blah, blah, blah. All are pretty effective methods. Pretty fatal too. But that’s not what I was talking about here.

I once read somewhere that a fatal wound is an experience so damaging, so devastating, that you are no longer human, even if you are. You are no longer able to live, even if you’re living. Instead, you just constantly beat yourself up to a pulp with the paradox of your own reasoning.

Yeah. That’s what a fatal wound means to me.

In other words: Failure. Utter and total failure.

And before you realize it, even when you fail, life goes on.

Living while suffering.

Living with agony.

It’s absolute insanity. You just don’t die after making a mistake, even though you feel like it. It just goes on and on, again and again, in an unending circle.

Alive even though she's already dead. Dead even though she's still alive.

It was that kind of thing.

That was Choi Yuna.

Anguish personified in the form of a human girl. Born from a fatal wound that wasn’t even her fault. A remnant of failure. Standing, walking, and spinning around the campus while wearing the clown mask on her pretty face.

Like she was someone else.

Like she was someone she was not.

It makes me sad remembering her that way.

When you think about it, life can be seen as a video game. But there is a fundamental flaw with that analogy. The flaw isn’t because there’s no “Reset Button” though. It’s because there’s no “Game Over.” Even if you’ve suffered a fatal wound, even when you know it was “over” long ago, the next day comes along. When the sun sets, it will just rise again tomorrow. Winter melts, spring blooms.

Ah, life is sure wonderful, isn’t it?

I laughed when I first read that. Not because I thought it was ridiculous, no. It was mostly because it hit a little too close to home. Right on that sweet spot that left a pit in my chest.

God, it was morbid. It’s like the purest definition of depressing.

On a semi-related note, I think I’ve been hanging out with SinB too much. It’s usually her that’s into this moody stuff.

I’m the cheerful one, I swear it! I’m the cute and bubbly ginseng of our university! The cutie pie meat ball too sweet to eat!

I know that.

You know that.

Everybody knows that!

“...”

Um. Sorry. Excuse my rambling. I’m getting ahead of myself again. I’m just delaying my inevitable embarrassment and I’ve never been good at telling stories

Especially when it's this one.

The one where we frowned and smiled together.

The one where we failed and succeeded everything.

The one where we hated and loved each other.

And…

Well… You know how it goes.

You can call it cheating if you want. I don’t care. I’m just going to continue playing life by my own rules.

I’m already suffering from that fatal wound and yet here am I, still in love.