Chapter Forty Five
You and Me: We're Dorm BuddiesI’ve spent the last few hours juggling the soccer ball against the broken brick wall, telling myself that it was all going to be okay.
My mother lay on the hospital bed, clinging on to the last bit of hope. Not exactly the thing I should be doing, knowing that they have just discharged me, about an hour ago. I will never forget that night. Our broken home in which terribly reeked of alcohol. That memory where the wretched man and his accomplice had pricked and punched through my skin. The glass shard. It was all so raw, real and painful. I felt vulnerable. My bones, every single joint of my body clearly remembered the abuse. Every single pain inflicted upon me. The scars will fade one day but the memories wouldn’t.
My heart and mind was hurting.
There were sadness warped around it. I couldn’t recall a single thing that happened before the night. It’s like everything has been erased. Wiped out. Blown away like the wind. I was at the point where the pages in my book had been emptied. The realities I see ended up suffocating me. My mother underwent treatment for her chronic fatigue, my father escaped after I blanked out and there was that image of Byunghun, crying by my side.
There was something missing. All of it. In so many ways, there were chapters in my story that inked itself away. Gone.
Gone, just like that.
“You don’t remember anything?” Jiyong questioned, trying to catch his breath. He has been running, probably hysteric to see that I have left the hospital bed.
I leapt forward, catching the soccer ball and plainly shrugged. “Nothing. Not at all, Ji.”
“You know you shouldn’t be playing. You’re recovering, In-Na,” he stirred with his words. His eyes were sad. His palm clasped my soccer ball, pulling it towards his body.
“Do you want me to remember?” I whispered, glancing warily. His eyes were narrowed, bottom lips twitched. “Whatever that happened before that night? Was there anything significant?”
He scrunched up, thinking over his words. I looked into his way with a helpless expression. I didn’t know what to say. I sat cross-legged on the ground where he joined me. Jiyong tried to regain his confidence, unsteadily somehow.
“Let
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