“Wind in my face. Don’t stop now when it feels so great. You could run ‘til you slip on a sidewalk and the same bone that you pick gon’ break. That’s a motif.” – Wings | Mac Miller

Chaeyoung | October 26, 2018

Triangle points.

That is how they were scattered across the tensely bubbled room. They were like points of a triangle. Points one, two, three – although not a very good triangle because one point was not as firm as the other two.

Point one consisted of grief disguised as anger. Point two consisted of frustration laced exasperation. Point three consisted of thinly coated nonchalance but it was really just defeat.

The top of the triangle consisted of an agitated Nayeon. Swaddled up in white sheets and slightly propped up, she looked small but the emotions that flared from her were anything but that – anything but muted.

Two perked front teeth met her bottom lip in a vain effort to keep venom covered comments to herself. The comments were not for her company’s ears, it was not for her to hear. It was not to her but at the her that was hiding behind the younger girl – the one that was not present but still here.

Lightly bruised knuckles displayed white as lazily cleaned nails met the palm of both of her hands. Eyes glared hazily at the figure across from her with pain edging along the corners of them.

The second point of the triangle entailed an unimpressed Tzuyu. Standing in a posture that has been reduced to almost a slouch – a far cry from how she used to stand – with emotions burning from her that could burn but it was more bark than bite.

Her cheeks were puffed slightly, filled with hot air let out in an exasperated huff. Hands found purchase in the air as her arms were thrown up unceremoniously so in frustration.

She spoke curtly towards the one person she never thought she could lose genuine patience for, “unnie, can you please pull your head out of your for a second?”

Nayeon narrowed her eyes at the sentence, completely ignoring the edges of disappointment in the other woman’s tone. Biting around a scoff she replied, “you pull your head out of your Tzuyu. I don’t care where she goes nor what she’s doing. I don’t want to see her, I don’t want to hear her, and I don’t even want to hear her name being spoken.”

She sunk a little further into her mattress, almost entirely sinking into it. A sad mutter could be heard from the pile of sheets that consisted of her current existence, “I don’t even want to recall that she exists. Not after,” and she stopped to swallow because she hated thinking about it. She hated knowing about it too. She hated seeing it more.

“Not after what she did to us. Not after what did to me nor to herself. And certainly not after what she did to her.”

Like seasonal leaves, the words were left in the air but Tzuyu grasped onto every single one that moved past. “You can say both of their names you know,” Tzuyu said in a sad and desperate tone. “And you can’t blame her for that either,” she finished, talking over a petulant I don’t want to in the process.

“I can, I will and I know for a fact that Dahyun thinks that same thing. There is no one else to blame but her Tzuyu,” she replied in a manner quieter than anything she’s said in the last ten minutes of arguing with her friend.

Tzuyu gaped at that. At the knowledge that Dahyun thought the same of an unnie that the other girl always considered to be her favorite. Clearing from a lot of words that she wanted to say but couldn’t – wouldn’t – she settled for a pathetically watered sounding, “but she’s your sister. Jeongyeon unnie’s your sister.”

Nayeon in a breath at the name before jutting her hand to her side to press her mattress down all the way. She let her back fall flat against the mattress before struggling, painfully so, to turn on her side – waving Tzuyu off when she heard her shoes scuffling towards her.

“As of September 22, 2018, she is not my sister,” Nayeon finally replied, her tone vacant of any emotion. “She’s not anything to me at all.”

Tzuyu shuffled towards her again, “unnie-”

“Tzuyu-ah… I’ll see you later,” Nayeon interrupted, tossing her blanket over her head and ending the conversation.

Tzuyu whimpered a bit and sniffled once before she walked towards the door. She stood in front of it, with her hand on the knob and her eyes gazing at the space that occupied point three. Under her breath she murmured, “I love you unnie and take care” before departing the room.

The third point of the triangle contained a quiet Chaeyoung. She lost her voice a long time ago and it pained her. She watched her best friend argue with her eldest sister about her older sister and it pained her. She couldn’t say a word about it edgewise.

She met eyes with an unseeing Tzuyu as she left before she got up from her position on the floor where her back rested against the wall. She walked towards Nayeon where the sounds of tiny sobs could be heard more prominently.

She hovered her hand over the older woman, not to touch but just so her presence could be felt. She watched as Nayeon shivered a bit before she moved centimeters from her sister’s ear. I love you, she spoke out. It’s alright, she said as the crying got louder.

A painful sob intertwined with a “Chaeyoung-ah, I miss you so much.” And Chaeyoung could only answer the same, sad smile in place. I miss you too unnie. All the time.

Points one, two, three – Nayeon, Tzuyu, and Chaeyoung – except, nobody knew that Chaeyoung was there. That Chaeyoung was always there.

---0---

She’s been doing this for weeks now and she still wasn’t used to it – it’s not like she ever questioned what was going on with her anyway. It was just weird to be able to exist outside of herself. It was weird to be able to be around people without an issue. It was weird to be able to listen in on any conversation that she wanted to and no one would know.

Right now, was different. Right now, was pain.

She felt like she should not be here at this particular moment. That she should not be here and listening to Jeongyeon cry her heart out into Tzuyu’s shoulder. It was abrupt how it started. How she walked a few blocks before she just disappeared into thin air and wound up in her recently discharged sister’s room.

It was tiring enough, so she sat on one of Jeongyeon’s unnecessarily bright bean bag chairs in the corner of the room while said woman sobbed and whimpered in their mutual friend’s arms – Tzuyu trying her damnedest to hold the woman together while being mindful of the sling that comes with her.

She should not be here.

But she was anyhow.

“I didn’t- I didn’t think that she could hate me so much Tzuyu-ah.” The sentence was said intermingled with sobs so painful, what she heard in the hospital from Nayeon paled in comparison.

Tzuyu wanted to say that Nayeon didn’t hate her, but she wasn’t sure if that was true. A lot of things changed in the last few weeks and that was one of them. There was simply too much pain for her to see otherwise.

Jeongyeon’s breath hitched and it interrupted her thoughts.

“And it’s all my fault too,” she said in words almost entirely drowned out by Tzuyu’s sweater.

It’s not.

Tzuyu raised her head to the ceiling to blink back her tears. The day was exhausting and it was only noon. Honestly, every day was exhausting. It didn’t matter what she was doing, really.

In the most delicate, feather soft tone that she could use, Tzuyu responded with “it’s not. It is not your fault.”

See, told you.

Both Tzuyu and Chaeyoung were startled by the hand that connected with the former’s shoulder to push her back – both heads snapping to attention to the blonde girl standing in front of her incredulously.

“How- how can you say that,” was said to Tzuyu in pure disbelief.

“Jeong-”

“No, Tzuyu. How can you say that? How can you say that it’s not my fault? Because it is. I’m the reason that Nayeon is going to be in the hospital for much, much longer than a month. And she might not be able to walk out on her own when she does finally leave and that is my fault,” she began to rant. She started wiping harshly with her right hand at the tears and its tracks on her face as she continued.

“I- I’m the reason that Chae-” and she stopped because she couldn’t say it. It made it real if she did – reality became different when said out loud.

She swiped harder at her face, hissing lowly when her nails connected with the scar that was now attached to her. Tzuyu surged forward at the noise of pain, grappling the older woman’s hand in her own. She backed them up until they were both sitting on the bed in the middle of the room. She muttered out a faint “stop that” as she checked her friend’s face to make sure she didn’t dislodge any of the stitches.

“I-” Jeongyeon started as distressed eyes locked onto the ones to her left. “I blame myself. There’s no one else for me to blame. I blame myself. And- and Nayeon blames me too. Dahyun, and she thinks she’s being subtle, blames me as well. I’m sure my family does too. But, but why won’t you Tzuyu?”

The younger woman relocated the hand that rested on Jeongyeon’s cheek to the woman’s hair, patting lightly in the process. “Because unnie… why would I? The only person who should be blamed is the truck driver who was on the wrong side of the road.”

Or

“And if Chae was here, she’d also blame the city for not fixing the barricades on the road like they were supposed to have done months ago,” Tzuyu chuckled at that, the sound watery to both – all three’s – ears.

Chaeyoung couldn’t help but raise a fist in the air, smirk fixed in place at the comment.

The younger woman lightly traced the scar that held a home on the side of Jeongyeon’s head before finishing in that same watery tone, “I would never blame you for trying to keep your sisters safe. I would never blame you for trying to avoid running head long into a truck much bigger than your own. And I wish-” Tzuyu stopped to swallow back the beginnings of a sob.

“I wish it worked out better than it did in so many ways. God, I wish that it did. But, I don’t blame you for it because there was only a second alternative that could have been much worse,” and she paused to make eye contact with the woman next to her.

“I could be mourning for three friends instead of just one.”

The two sat in silence after that statement for a while. Tzuyu removed her hand from Jeongyeon’s hair and skootched back a bit to watch the older woman.

Jeongyeon, for her part, dried her eyes – albeit it being useless as she was still crying but not as much as before. She than began to rub at her temple – finding it extremely annoying that her left arm was restricted so she couldn’t rub that side either.

Tzuyu kissed her temple and stood up when she noticed both that and the fact that she had class in an hour.

“Get some rest unnie. That’s too much stress on your head,” she said. Jeongyeon nodded and fell back onto her bed in response, lightly grunting at the bit of pain that rattled in her head.

“I’ll bring up a bottle of water and your pills before I leave,” Tzuyu said in voice that was surrounded by exhaustion.

“Okay. I love you kid, study hard,” Jeongyeon said as she sluggishly moved into a more comfortable position and attempting to kick off her shoes on the way.

Tzuyu gave her a soft smile that was missed and then rolled her eyes at the lazy manner in which she tried to remove her shoes. She threw an “I love you too unnie” over her shoulder as she left the room.

The sound of her breath hitching at the sign that indicated Chaeyoung’s room – which was across from Jeongyeon’s – was lost to the woman on the bed but not on the one that hopped up from the bean bag chair with difficulty.

Chaeyoung bumbled over to where her sister laid – sans one shoe – on her bed.

She laid on the space next to Jeongyeon once the other woman finally laid still. Her eyes were on her sister’s face, eyeing every inch of the skin in front of her. She took note of a pair of very sad and red stained eyes to pouty chapped lips to a jagged scar that started at the top of her forehead, running past her left eye and landing in the middle of her cheek.

“Chaeyoung-ah,” Jeongyeon said in a pleading voice. Chaeyoung was a bit more than spooked because Jeongyeon was – unknowingly to her – making eye contact with her as she said her name.

Yes.

The older woman took a deep breath and closed her eyes before saying something into the air that she hoped would carry to her baby sister. “What do you call a Mexican in the 1970s?”

Chaeyoung just looked at the face in front of her with a smile that held so much – pain, adoration, amusement, and sadness. I don’t know, what do you call them?

“A Hispanic! At the Disco,” Jeongyeon finished. She chuckled for a little moment before the small bout of laughter gave way to sobs.

Chaeyoung met her with an unheard chuckle before she started shuffling around at the sound of the sobbing. She shoved herself as close as she could to her older sister without touching her – but fitting herself into a position reminiscent of how they used to lay around.

“I’m sorry. Chaeyoung, I’m so, so sorry,” Jeongyeon whispered out amid broken sobs.

It’s alright. There’s nothing to apologize for. Please know that it was not your fault.

And she stayed there curled into her older sister, whispering reassurances and an I love you that would never be heard, until Jeongyeon cried herself to sleep.

---0---

She found her place at the entrance of a university that she only got to attend for a month. She was trying to decide if she wanted to spend the rest of the day sitting through Tzuyu’s various literature lectures or Dahyun’s World Studies one.

Both sounded unbelievably boring.

Her attention was taken away by someone who deliberately avoided walking into her – or rather through her. Most people moved between her, not sensing her presence. Occasionally, she came across one who oddly moved around where she stood and often looked back in interest at the same spot.

It was interesting every time. It was even more interesting when a voice suddenly addressed her in a voice marked by both curiosity and boredom – in a way that only said owner could probably pull off.

“How long have you been dead?”

She jerked her towards the direction of the voice with a surprised look plastered on her face. Her eyes focused on the owner – a woman who stood a couple of inches taller than her with the nicest jawline she’s ever seen.

She wondered how the woman was talking to her but she understood when she noticed that the woman stood out more prominently against the dull background of the people that surrounded them.

One, two, three. She blinked once, twice and a third time before she found her voice to answer.

“Are you- are you supposed to ask that?”

The other woman kicked her bare feet against the sidewalk in a blasé manner. She shoved a hand into her sweatpants’ pocket as she shrugged uncaringly.

Chaeyoung sighed softly before she answered the question, “for about four weeks. How long for you?”

The decidedly pretty woman pushed her circular glasses that were perched on her nose up with her index finger as she answered with a soft along the corners tone – but it was otherwise dismissive, “four months.”

The newly met duo stared at each other for a moment.

Mirth danced behind the taller woman’s eyes in a choreography always known to her but not only belonging to her as she watched Chaeyoung gape at her in wonderment. It couldn’t be helped as it was her first time meeting someone like her.

She cleared before moving through a stutter, “I’m- I’m Chaeyoung.”

The other woman raised an eyebrow before a small but kind smile encompassed her face, “they call me Momo.”