27 Words.
Snowy Day at the BakeryGenre: Angst, School, Psychological
Summary: Some memories are often forgotten- sometimes because it was too irrelevant, and sometimes because the person we had it with left us with a lot of scars. Hitomi had such memory, no matter what she did, she couldn't remember the words that the late Kim Chaewon told her.
Word Count: 3040
Hashtag: #SSBB_Words
Words.
言葉 ~words~
Tw: Suicide, Bullying.
—color side
“Hitomi!”
Everything started at that moment.
The story of a young girl being bullied in a local high school, seems normal, isn’t it? But bullying has never been normal, and should’ve never been seen as normal by students. Honda Hitomi, ever since they moved to Korea, has always been bullied, all she did was to endure everything—and just like everything else, there was no way she could just bottle up all those pains and bruises from bullying. Like everyone else who couldn’t go on any longer, she planned to take her life in the worst way possible, she wanted to get a win-win situation at least. End her suffering and to make the people responsible guilty for the rest of their lives by jumping on a railway crossing.
Just as when she was about to jump into railway where a train was approaching, someone—the young strawberry blonde-haired Kim Chaewon, the leader of the bullies in the local high school, pulled her arm…
And she was the one who crashed into the approaching train instead.
Everything went into slow motion; her lips said the words she had always longed to hear but it was something she couldn’t remember.
All she could remember was tears began to fall the moment she read her lips as her body flew into the railways, there was a smile on her lips as she lies unconscious on the rail, beside the train that went into a full stop upon noticing her.
…
It was 7 am. She’s currently a student in a walking distance university while living in a cheap apartment nearby. Hitomi is running late for the third time this week, she’s been having the same dream since Chaewon’s fourth death anniversary. The young woman has been living her life quietly after their high school graduation.
It’s been years, why couldn’t I remember what she said? How did her words bring me to tears?
She doesn’t know. She couldn’t remember.
No matter what she did, there was nothing that could remind her of those words.
After eating her breakfast, dressed in an all-black attire—black oversized hoodie, and black ripped jeans, along with a pair of white nike sneakers, she tied her blonde hair in a high ponytail. Hitomi walked towards the mirror to check herself if she looks good, however, upon looking into the mirror, she saw Chaewon standing beside her.
She was wearing the same school uniform they had back in high school, her hair still strawberry blonde, the cream-coloured vest over her white blouse with the top two button undone, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her skirt still short, enough to show a pair of black cycling shorts underneath, the usual leg warmers, and red chucks. She was smiling, the same unnatural kind smile she had back when she hurriedly pulled her back towards the platform, throwing herself towards the approaching train in the process.
“Chaewon, could you tell me those words again? I couldn’t remember them.”
Hitomi went eye to eye with Chaewon, but there was no response as the latter slowly faded into thin air. The former sighed as she looked at the empty space beside her.
“As if some hallucination would actually answer.” She grabbed the bag hung on one of the nearby chair’s backrests and the netbook sitting on the table beside her uncleaned messy table filled with books and highlighted papers which she had no time to clean due to her hectic schedule. Grabbing the knob on her way out, a painful memory has made its way to her mind.
It was their summer term, she had to go to school for a few officer work since she’s a committee member, and there are meetings she had to attend to. Truth be told, this day maybe the longest day she has ever experienced. Back when she was younger, she once got trapped in a storage box—that was where her fear of enclosed and dark spaces began. She told it once to her class for them just to be aware that she is not comfortable in those situations, never did she know that those people she trusted will also be the ones to betray her.
Hitomi was on her way back to the council office after checking a few storage rooms for the festival in the coming semester. She could recognize their voices, the ones that locked her inside the storage room in the football field, those were her classmates, and one of the voices that was laughing on the background was Chaewon’s.
She kept on screaming for help, her cries were overpowered by the loud laughter of the classmates turned devils on her mind. In the end, Hitomi had to stay until the night locked in the storage room.
Sometime that night, Hitomi heard the door’s lock click, but the moment she opened it—
There was no one outside.
The cold door knob reminded her of that day.
She fell on the floor, curled up, crying in fear.
“Let me out. Let me out.” She whispered.
Tears began streaming down her cheeks, she couldn’t calm herself, her chest began to tighten, it was becoming hard for her to catch her breathing.
Every memory of her high school was painful.
…
Back then, Hitomi had attempted to jump off from the rooftop multiple times. But whenever she was about to take her shoes off, she kept on being reminded about the people waiting for her to come home every day. The family that loved her so much.
I have to endure everything until graduation, it’s all she could do. She never wanted to bring pain to her family.
Go back to Japan, witch. We don’t need you here.
That was the last straw.
She could no longer hide the pain.
She wanted to end everything at that instant.
She wasn’t welcome in this school.
Hitomi grabbed her bag and ran out of the classroom, her vision began to become blurry as she ran as far as she could away from that place that she once saw as a school, but is now a living hell before her eyes. Not one teacher made a move or helped her. There was no way she could leave that place unscathed.
She arrived in front of the railway crossing.
It crossed her mind once more.
I know you can’t take it anymore.
One step at a time, her mind begins to speak.
You’d rather end everything now, than to live eternally scarred, right?
That school was the one that brought her fear of interacting with people. No night passes that she wasn’t crying herself to sleep. The pain was too much she couldn’t fit it inside the bottle in her heart.
She could hear the sound of the train through the rails.
It’s coming. There’s no way I’ll survive this one. This is the better decision.
Hitomi slowly forces a smile on her lips, all she could see was the empty space in the rails in front of her.
I just can’t do this anymore.
She felt a hand grabbing her right arm, it had thin fingers, and the moment she turned to look at who it was—all she saw was Chaewon’s worried face.
Chaewon? Are you going to push me—
Please Subscribe to read the full chapter
Comments