“It’s cold right now, I miss you for life. It’s not going away, I thought I’d be okay.” – Erase | Omar Apollo

Momo and Chaeyoung | November 18, 2018

To Momo, Sana was inconsistent. The middle sibling was one who was ruled by her emotions.

If she felt that she needed to protect someone, she’d protect them until the feeling subsided. If she felt that she needed to love someone, she’d love them until she couldn’t anymore. If she felt that she needed to give someone space, she’d give as much as she could stand.

That wasn’t a bad thing, at least to Momo it wasn’t.

The particular personality trait made her dependable. It made her the perfect person for emotional support and it made her the owner of one of the kindest of hearts out there. It made her considerate.

But, it bred inconsistency – within reason – because emotions were fickle and change as quickly as they came.

If she wanted to something, she would do it.

(She had asked Jihyo out because she just simply wanted to).

If she didn’t want to do something, she wouldn’t do it. That is, of course, unless someone – usually Momo or Jihyo, yet never Mina – made her.

(In fact, Momo once had to drag her and Mina to their own graduation. Sana was indifferent to going and Mina hated the place – Momo did too, but she was the designated responsible one sometimes – and being ranked numbers 3 and 1 respectively, didn’t matter to either girl).

If she was indifferent to a situation, to an event, she went with the flow of whoever would suggest a thing first.

(See: previous point).

So, it was no surprise to Momo to hear that Sana was inconsistent with attending her own therapy sessions.

(She was supposed to go three times a month, she goes only once and maybe a second time if she feels up to doing so).

When Momo sauntered into the psychiatrist’s office behind Sana, in lieu of greeting, the corporal woman was met with a “look who decided to show up to her session for the first time in a month.”

Doctor Miyauchi Haruka grinned cheekily at the eye roll she received from said woman she poked fun at.

(An old class mate of Sana’s, the interactions between the two were often friendly, borderline sisterly, in nature. The doctor had played therapist to Sana when they were in school together, it was only fitting that she’d be her actual one).

Sana meandered over to the couch that resided opposite of the psychiatrist’s desk. Plopping down with a good natured huff, she curled her legs into her seat.

Momo sat on the floor as per typical, her own legs being pulled up to her chest with her bare feet running along the carpet.

“Nice to see you too Miya-chan,” Sana said. She proceeded to chuckle at the narrowed eyes aimed at her face with the utterance of a nickname and not of a title.

Doctor Miyauchi removed herself from Sana’s sight for a moment, looking in the drawers of her desk for Sana’s file.

“What brings you here today Sana-chan,” she spoke from under her desk, tone dripping in professionalism regardless of the familial title.

“I can’t sleep,” Sana answered with mild hesitance. She bit back a small smile at her friend popping up from under her desk with slightly disheveled hair.

Miya eyed her weirdly, the mask of professionalism slipping for a moment, “what are you smiling at?”

Sana chuckled once and shook her head in place of an answer, not wanting to deter from what she was here for.

“You haven’t been able to sleep in quite a while Sana, what’s different?”

Sana shuffled a bit in her seat, buying her a bit of time before she answered.

“I was doing fine for a moment. The nightmares usually coming once to twice a week. However, for the last week, I’ve had them almost every single night. I think-,” she started, pausing for a moment to clear and organize her thoughts.

Speaking in a much lower cadence, “I think it’s just because Momo’s birthday passed and the feelings just kind of bubbled up more so.”

“What kind of feelings,” the psychiatrist said, eyes focused on the files in front of her but not on the speaking woman.

(Sana, for as emotionally upfront as she was, would still shy away if too much attention was put on her in the process).

“Guilt. Sadness. Longing. It’s mainly guilt though,” Sana responded.

“You never told me what you felt guilty for,” the psychiatrist inputted, tone softening considerably.

Sana started picking at her jeans for something to do, nerves prickling her skin.

Momo leant a little bit closer towards her sister, hovering a hand near the one Sana was using to pick at the seam of her pants. She didn’t move it until the small telltale shiver flowed through the other woman and she ceased her nervous habit in response.

“I was- I was supposed to be home when Momo died. We- the three of us always went out to get dinner on Mondays because I would finish class and they would get off of work late. I would be finished around 9:30, they would be off by 10,” Sana began with shaky words that faded in and out of volume.

“This particular time, Momo wasn’t feeling too well so she went home early. She was there by 7:30. Instead of going out for dinner just the two of us, Mina and I decided to just go home. It takes me 15 minutes to get home from campus. 15. I would have been there by 9:45, 9:50 at the latest. I went to pick her up some soup because when she’s sick she forgets to eat so I wanted to make sure she had something.”

Sana in a breath. Her position at one point shifted to one where she was almost curled into herself helplessly.

“I was home by 10, Momo was dead by 9:58. That’s what they had said, that she was gone by then. Two minutes. Just two minutes. That was all it took and I- I should have been there,” she finished.

She lowered her head slightly in a bow of shame, the sobs escaping her were not as muted as she had hoped.

“I could have helped,” she began to spill out. Her words were lost between grief filled breaths and her own hands trying to physically contain the sounds coming from .

“I got home and she was just lying there on the floor. I- I was too late when I could have helped,” she paused to look up at her friend, distress ever present on her face as well as Doctor Miyauchi’s.

The older woman got up from her desk, moving to take a seat next to her more than distraught friend. Gathering the hysterical woman in her arms, she held onto her as she sobbed even more with her hand running along said woman’s back.

Miya hushed her softly but not before a disjointed, “Miya, she didn’t deserve to die alone” escaped Sana’s mouth.

It was around that broken sentence uttered that Momo stood up from her place on the floor. The abruptness of her movement caused her to falter on her feet for a moment.

The forfeiture of her balance caused her to dislodge a pocket of energy that resulted in a lamp almost toppling over from its place on the end table. The slight scraping causing the two on the couch to pull apart in curiosity.

Momo felt a surge of panic lodging as a lump in and she had no idea why, but she knew she needed to not be where she was.

She fazed through the door of the room and found herself in the waiting room of the office once again.

She walked to the opposite wall and found a place in a corner. She was close enough so that she could see whenever Sana left the room but she was far enough to be out of the way of others.

(Regardless of her being spiritually present, it was rather unpleasant when people fazed through you).

She sat in the corner as she had when she was in Doctor Miyauchi’s office, the only change to her position being that she tucked her head into the space between the top of her knees and her chest.

She closed her eyes tightly, phantom breathing in and out hoping to dispel whatever it was that stuck to her skin in a non-pleasant manner.

There were these images that flashed in her head that commenced when Sana started talking about the night that she had died. The images were odd, intrusive and they played in her head like a slideshow on repeat at a speed almost too hard to catch.

The images were of shapes bathed in a pale light: the first one was of a silver hoop and the second of a triangle changing form from right to scalene and back again. The occasional image of a jackal and moth found their place in the midst of the two.

She didn’t cognize what they meant but the hoop filled her with a sense of familiarity. However, it was the triangle that caused her to panic and she had no understanding as to why.

It was the exceedingly vivid sound of glass breaking in her ear that caused her to look up in an odd moment of frantic fear.

At this same time, a hand had come into contact with her shoulder and after the passing moment of fear left her, she locked eyes with someone gazing at her in concern.

Chaeyoung sat on the heels of her feet, making herself at eye level with Momo. The hand on Momo’s shoulder gave it a comforting squeeze while a thumb ran along it.

“Hey, what’s wrong,” Chaeyoung asked her, the resounding silence emanating from the older woman causing her to speak up.

She was not met with an answer as Momo searched – a few degrees shy of frantic – for what could have been the source of the glass breaking. The physical occupants of the room didn’t seem to hear what she had heard as none of them had a look to indicate so.

She once again met eyes with Chaeyoung as the younger woman had her hands framing Momo’s face with the silence of the moment marinating between the two of them.

“Hey unnie,” Chaeyoung said to her, concern exuding from her skin. She took in the frantic way in which Momo’s own eyes searched around the room, “what’s wrong?”

Momo kept her eyes locked on Chaeyoung’s for moment in an attempt to ground her thoughts, the previous fear still edging at the recesses of her mind.

“I- I don’t know,” she finally answered, albeit a little distracted and with a tone shaking. “Did you hear glass breaking?”

Chaeyoung, with a subtle head tilt, looked at her questioningly, “no. I didn’t.”

Momo moved her hands up to rest on the ones that resided on her cheeks, “Chaeyoung-ah, I think I’m losing it.”

The two’s conversation came to an end before it could even begin with the sound of a door opening.

Sana stepped out into the waiting room with a relatively peaceful look on her face – amid eyes lightly tinting red and a face that was only a little more than flushed.

Momo followed her sister’s steps with her eyes as she chatted briefly with the receptionist to schedule her next session – (that she’ll actually show up to) – and get her prescription printed.

Whatever Chaeyoung was going to say to the older woman was lost in the wind as they were once more interrupted, this time by a name being called into the room that Sana left from: “Son Jeongyeon?”

Momo patted the hands under her own to garner the younger woman’s attention. Eyes locating the other pair for a third time – this time with neutral looks devoid almost entirely of their previous emotions.

“I believe that’s our cue to skedaddle,” Momo spoke, removing her hands from Chaeyoung’s. “I’ll tell you what happened next time I see you. Deal?”

Chaeyoung removed both of her hands from the woman’s cheeks. She paused for a second to tug gently at the aforementioned woman’s right ear, “deal.”

She helped the seated woman up with a hand before pulling her into a quick hug, Momo ruffling her hair – per typical – when they pulled apart. Chaeyoung only grunted to show her distaste before walking towards the closed door that her sister went behind.

“I’ll see you soon unnie,” Chaeyoung said before she materialized behind the door to Doctor Miyauchi’s office.

Walking into the office, she spotted Jeongyeon sitting on the couch across from her psychiatrist.

Her sister sat in her seat, position ramrod straight. She shifted her legs in various crossed positions –shifting between crossing her ankles and crossing her legs. On top of that, she would hardly make eye contact with the woman at her desk.

It was Jeongyeon’s very first session and Chaeyoung could tell that she was extremely nervous – so much so that Chaeyoung doubted that she could even get near her without freaking her out further.

She walked into the room fully, choosing to sit on the space of the floor in between Jeongyeon and her psychiatrist – (Chaeyoung looking over to note her name as Doctor Miyauchi). Mainly facing her sister – although she could still see the psychiatrist with her sideways position – she sat slouched forward, hands resting on the space of floor between her legs.

“Hello Jeongyeon,” Doctor Miyauchi spoke out. Her tone was a lot warmer than Chaeyoung had expected it to be.

Jeongyeon raised her head momentarily – from the bowed position she had found herself in – with a shy “hi” escaping .

The doctor looked at the younger woman with a soft look, “are you okay to talk” she asked in wonderment.

Jeongyeon finally met eyes with the other woman because of the remark, “what do you mean?”

Keeping her patient’s focus, she answered the inquiry, “I mean are you up for talking? You’re shifting a lot in nerves and you seem to be uncomfortable. That and the fact that you didn’t make eye contact with me for five minutes and are seemingly only doing so now out of respect, regardless of the difficulty you’re having in doing so.”

Doctor Miyauchi chuckled in a borderline fond way at the slight widening of Jeongyeon’s eyes. “I apologize for the psychoanalysis, it’s sometimes hard to shut off. The point is, you are free to not talk here until you feel like doing so – if you ever do.”

Jeongyeon looked at her in puzzlement before asking her own question, “are you supposed to tell me that? Like, isn’t that your job to make me talk?”

“It is and it isn’t,” the psychiatrist began, she bent under her desk for a moment to pull out a seemingly blank file.

“It’s my job to make sure you’re comfortable enough to talk. It’s my job to make sure that when you do talk, there is someone listening to you always. It’s my job to make sure you know there’s someone always in your backing corner. It’s not my job to make you do anything you don’t want to. Safe space and what not.”

Jeongyeon giggled for a moment, a sound that made Chaeyoung beam in her direction having not heard it in a long while.

Doctor Miyauchi smiled at Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung thought that she could like her. “What? Was my speech not convincing?”

“It was, it was,” Jeongyeon said, small smile in place. “The ending just changed the tone abruptly.”

“Fair, I get that quite often actually. But in all seriousness, take your time. It’s your first session and I don’t need to know your whole story right away. Your pace, okay?”

“Okay,” and with her reply, Jeongyeon allowed herself to slouch in her seat somewhat and uncrossed her legs. She took a moment to gather her thoughts.

Chaeyoung took that same moment to think over her last few days. She’s found a sort of solitude in reflecting, it was something that Momo told her she did a lot.

Speaking of said spirit, she wondered what was bothering her. She had never seen the other woman looking as rattled as she had since they had met somewhere around a month ago. Even when the older woman was fading due to exhaustion, confused and forgetful, she didn’t seem nearly as disturbed as she had earlier.

She hoped she was doing okay and as selfish as it sounded, she hoped it was something exclusively about her and nothing that occurred for being a lingering presence for as long as she had.

(Hoping that it was not an experience that she would ultimately deal with).

Momo had been a lingering spirit for about five months now, if Chaeyoung did the math right.

That was a long time to be in a place that you exist in every way but in actuality. That was a long time to exist without any clue as to why. That was a long time to exist without ever knowing how you died in the first place.

With at least the knowledge of how she died, Chaeyoung already had more of an understanding than Momo did regardless of the amount of time that she was “alive” in comparison.

She’s been around for not even two months and it, to be frank, . She was in all honestly excited to go into the light or whatever clichéd “passing on” motif that would get her out of here.

Watching your family fall apart and your friends try to keep themselves together was not her definition of a good time. Watching them fall apart over you being gone when you were right there was horrible.

It was some weird form of hell she found herself in and she didn’t know why she was here to begin with.

She groaned in dissatisfaction and a mild form of distress, before listening in on the voices of the background, a very confused sounding Jeongyeon taking the lead of the two.

“How do you get through grief,” Jeongyeon asked in a voice unstable and unsure.

Doctor Miyauchi considered the question for a moment, fiddling with the dog ears in a nearby file. “It depends on a lot of factors. How long was the event that inspired said grief?”

It was an open ended question and the psychiatrist seemingly had more to input but Jeongyeon answered anyway, “almost two months.”

Doctor Miyauchi nodded before asking her next question, coupling her hands together in front of her. “Were you close to the person that was involved?”

“It was my baby sister.”

“Do you want to get over your grief?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you think you deserve to?”

“No,” and at that Jeongyeon paused. She shook her head vehemently before repeating herself, “no, I don’t think I deserve to feel anything other than despair about it.”

The psychiatrist leant forward on her desk a little bit, a knowing look framing her eyes. “Why don’t you think so?”

“Because I was driving the car,” Jeongyeon began, her tone fluctuating as she spoke.

“I was driving the car when it jumped the barrier because I was trying to avoid going head first with a truck on the wrong side of the road. My little sister died because of it. She was twenty, just started university, the best little sister that anyone could have ever had and she’s just gone.”

Her hands shook as she spoke, trembling in a mixture of emotions.

“My older sister is paralyzed from the belly button down – temporarily or not – because of it. She likes being active, she ran every morning. She can’t even sit up without the help of a support brace that she can only wear for twenty minutes because it’ll hurt her otherwise.”

She moved a hand up to wipe at her face, being mindful of the stiches adorning her skin.

“I got this glaring scar that takes up a quarter of my face because of it. I have to wear special glasses sometimes because I can’t always see out of my eye. All of that happened, all of that pain and loss happened because of me,” she finished.

The emotion in her voice alternated between spilling too much and not spilling enough.

“Jeongyeon, that’s a lot of responsibility to take on,” Doctor Miyauchi responded in a pillow soft tone.

Jeongyeon shrugged, “responsibility is all I know. That was my job, to look after them even if I was the middle child. Nayeon is an amazing older sister but she’s flaky sometimes and has a carefree attitude that rivaled Chaeyoung’s. Our parents told me, before we got in that car, to drive safely and I completely messed that up.”

“Do you know what you said to me a few moments ago when you started speaking,” the psychiatrist asked. When she was met with a watery pair of confused eyes she elaborated further.

“You said that you were trying to avoid going head first with a truck that was on the wrong side of the road. There is another actor involved with that accident that is not just you or your sisters. There was a driver on the wrong side of the road and none of what happened would have happened if that driver was not an active participant.

Simply put Jeongyeon, it was not your fault. You did what you could do in that situation. Some part of your subconscious identifies with that because one of the first things out of your mouth was showing that. Guilt will bring you to your knees if you let it. And so far, it hasn’t. You’re here and you’re talking to me candidly about it. You deserve to move forward. You’re doing well – today, yesterday, the next day – you’re doing well Jeongyeon,” she finished.

The psychiatrist gave a soft barely there smile at the sobs coming from her patient, the other woman sounding fairly relieved. And yeah, Chaeyoung decided that she did quite like her.

---0---

It had been a rough couple of hours for the two of them, Jeongyeon more so than her, but Chaeyoung was glad have some form of solace in a fairly desolate diner down the street from the psychiatry building.

(Plus, having to tune out too many sets of voices would cause her to expel too much energy that she didn’t really have to spare today).

She sat at the table to the right of her sister – (she figured she wouldn’t get away with pulling out the chair across from her without creeping her out).

She watched as the older woman absentmindedly pulled at the pieces of her sandwich, occasionally stuffing a piece into . There was an abandoned cup of coffee resting next to her plate – her appetite was seemingly gone.

A body sitting in the chair directly across from her, startled Chaeyoung. Removing her attention from her sister, she came face to face with Momo. “Unnie?”

“Hey kiddo,” was the reply that she was met with and the sight of a mischievous smile. “Did I startle you,” Momo asked, words surrounded by a chuckle.

Chaeyoung huffed in displeasure, a “just a little” escaping begrudgingly.

Momo only laughed a little harder at that with an insincere “I’m sorry” leaving her. The laughing woman feigned wiping a tear from under her eye.

Chaeyoung rolled her eyes in playful annoyance of the movement but the action did raise a question in her head. “Hey, wait. Unnie, didn’t you have glasses on the first time that we met?

Momo paused for a moment in curiosity. She touched the space beneath her eyes again and felt nothing but skin. “Huh, I guess I lost them when I had transported from the roof. I honestly hadn’t noticed.” She chuckled once before finishing, “well, something good came out of me dying. Good eyesight.”

Their conversation was once again interrupted by someone sitting in the chair across from Jeongyeon which startled said woman from her revere – and by extension Chaeyoung, yet Momo remained unflinching.

The woman now seated across from her held two cups in her hands – occasionally tapping her fingers on it, so Chaeyoung assumed that they were hot – coupled with an apologetic smile.

“Hi, I apologize for startling you and for how weird this may seem to you. I uh, you didn’t look like you were having a good day so I figured that you could use a bit of kindness today,” the unnamed woman began.

She extended one of the cups in her hands towards Jeongyeon, giving her a sheepish smile as she did. Jeongyeon gave her a curious look in response, not yet taking the cup being given to her.

“I got you a cup of coffee, a flat white with two sugars I think I heard you say earlier. I presumed you needed a fresh cup,” she finished, smile never diminishing from her face. She jiggled the cup in enticement before relinquishing it as Jeongyeon finally reached for it.

“I’m not going to lie, that’s a little creepy,” Jeongyeon said, tittering at the manner in which the woman’s eyes dropped and her face flushed in obvious embarrassment. “But, your eyes look kind so, thank you.”

She took a sip of the drink that now occupied her hand, giving a smile in appreciation. “I’m Jeongyeon, by the way.” She extended her free hand out, waiting for the woman opposite of her to introduce herself.

The woman reached for the hand and took it in her grasp, “I’m Sana.”

---0---

Sorry for the delay, studying for my master's exam surprisingly takes up all of my time. The next chapter will probably be just as delayed so I apologize for that too. But, I hope you enjoyed this. This was one of my favorite's to write. **Also: I rewrote the last two chapters. They have like an additional thousand words almost but they're essentially the same, just new and improved dialogue**