A/N: Trigger warning for suicide

 

A stifled breath croaked out my throat at the desk. I was exactly in the place I was before the fiasco. Lisa wasn’t. Fright pinned her to the wall. I made a move towards her and she screamed. I froze. Her reaction confirmed my fears, I had gone into the pages.

To be completely positive I flicked through the sheets before me one by one. They were painted alright. The artist was the same as before. This wasn’t the work of Lisa or I. The comic wrote itself.

I shrilled a shaky laugh.

Is this possible?

Reading over the comic a few things struck me. Firstly and most obviously I acted the age I was given in the chapter. I didn’t have the brain of a fifteen year old. I was ten and behaved like a ten year old.

Another thing I noticed was that I didn’t know where my home was while I was in the comic. I had no idea another world existed but I also didn’t know the way the world of the comic functioned. This made me incredibly vulnerable.

I slammed the pages down. A new reality told me I was going to end up as all pathetic side characters did. I didn’t finish the chapter, I knew how it went. Light’s brother wrestled with him, he lost the map when we both jumped out of his way. Light lost the wrestling match and he was severely disappointed. He wanted more than ever to get to the wishing stone.

I wonder what happened with the map. He was supposed to lose it.

I went back to the pages to find the ending. Lo and behold, what came into my hand as I reached for the last page was the map. I knew this was it. It was exactly the same as I had seen it in the comic. It weighed heavy on my heart.

Lisa crept up behind me soundlessly and wacked my head with a fly swatter.

“Hey!” I protested. “What gives!”

“Shh, there’s a bug in your hair,” Lisa whispered, indicating to the back of my head. She smacked me with the swatter again.

“That hurt!” I cried, clutching my head.

A dead bug came into my fingers. Lisa squealed when I pulled it out. I stared at the cricket and laughed like a madwoman. Surely this was not a delusion I’d had. Everything was real, no matter how incredulous it appeared.

For Lisa to come out of her disgust, I had to dispose of the bug. I threw it out of her window and washed my hands in her bathroom before she dared to talk to me.

I sat on her rug and wondered what life was about. She sat next to me, watching me with great interest. Her eyes twinkled with fascination. Meanwhile I was as white as my mixed ethnicity allowed me to be.

“Are you really a comic character Hafsa? All this time I thought I knew everything about you but you turned out so different. What’s it like living a double life? I mean, apart from the fear of getting caught by someone. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to hide all of this from everyone. You must’ve been on your toes all this time. It’s okay, I’ll keep your secret, what are friends for!”

“I’m not a character of anything,” I said to her. “I don’t know what’s happening but that comic pulls me in there every time I try to draw it.”

“I wonder what’s in the map. Light was so secretive about it.”

“Lisa be serious! This isn’t a game. I’m literally scared, I don’t know why or how this is happening to me.”

Lisa put on her faux serious face. Sitting next to me, she folded her legs under her and drummed her fingers on her knees. “Okay, so you’re telling me that comic is putting you inside itself and drawing you as a character of the main story.”

I nodded.

“That is seriously cool!”

“No, it’s not. I’m constantly running away from monsters.”

“You mean the Erris. The Nore that was chasing you was so scary. I wonder, did it smell? I can’t smell through the comic.”

“I don’t remember.”

“What I don’t get it how the comic just called you and not me. I was drawing with you. One minute you were beside me and then you were gone. There was no magic poof or anything. You just left. I thought you might’ve gone to get water or something but then the pages started tracing and colouring themselves and then there was you. I thought I was dreaming, you know, the way you do when you wish your homework would do itself, but I wasn’t. You were in there, such a little cutie, and the way Light rescued you, I was totally shipping that. He even held your hand! What did holding his hand feel like?”

“I honestly can’t remember what Light’s hand felt like. I was focusing on jumping across the stream at the count of three.”

His hand felt like Baekhyun’s.

Lisa was getting way into this signal reading. She was trying to weave in a love line. That wasn’t going to happen. I knew that much. Light and I? That didn’t make sense. Besides I was sure Light would try to kill me the next time he saw me. I had his precious map, the same map he went on a perilous journey to try and get his hands on.

“There’s no future for us.”

“OMG, you said us! That means you definitely feel something will happen.”

“It can’t.”

“Oh come on, it so can. Light is an attractive guy and there are literally no girls around him to fall in love with.”

I pursed my lips. I totally had a chance with Light because he had no other options other than me? Was the chance of someone ever liking me that small?

Love was an iffy topic for me. When I was younger and everyone else started dating, I never understood it. It was gross. Now that I was a little older, I understood what being attracted to the other meant. It was too late though. All the decent guys were taken and only idiots like Cha Eunwoo were single because they swapped girls every week.

I had never been that girl that guys swarmed around. I tended to smell like fish. It was inevitable, somehow, in some way, the smell of fish got into my clothes whenever I was at home. Now that I spent more time at Lisa’s, I quit stinking.

I shook my head, what was I doing thinking about love. We were veering off topic.

“How do I stop myself from getting caught in the comic?”

“You don’t draw it.”

“Then who will?”

“I can do it. My horoscope encourages that I stick by my friends no matter what.”

Lisa, you’re a lifesaver!

I grabbed her into a choke hold and hugged her hard. Her words dissolved so many of my worries, I could have cried. She deserved the title of best friend.

*

My morning routine was pretty standard. My alarm rang, I hit snooze, it rang again and I complained I didn't get enough sleep. Grumbling I kicked off my covers and sat up groggily. There was something about morning that made my eyes blurry.

Squinting, I made my way to Lisa's bathroom and washed my face with soap and water. Now that I could see, I went to wake my friend who could sleep through a natural disaster.

Lisa was curled up in a snuggly ball. A smile played about her lips. I was sorry to disturb her slumber but school was a mandatory chore for everyone our age. I shook her hard. Her expression turned sour.

“Lisa, come on, or I'll use up all the hot water.” This was a timid threat compared to what I shot at my siblings. Lisa didn't seem to mind if I used up all the water. I took this as my cue to shower.

Lisa's mom had left us clean towels on the back of Lisa's study chair. I eyed it and then decided I'd come back to it.

I called over my shoulder, “Lisa I'm heading for the shower.”

She wasn't going to reply, move or acknowledge this. Lisa hated showering. She only took showers because she had to, not out of pleasure.

I'll skip the details of my long hot shower and how I lathered myself in shower gel, washed and conditioned my hair because it's a mu