"they are supposed to be happy."

painless

drabble | angst | pg | 512 words

The day is black as night - backwards, inverted, and wrong, all from the very beginning. He wakes up to the sound of nonexistent bird songs, a haunting silence sending chilling shivers down his spine. His eyelids beg to droop down, let's escape this stupid world, they say, to the realm of dreams, away from it all.

But he is afraid that if he succumbs to slumber, he will be harshly confronted with nightmares: incoherent screams, raging flames, the splintering of hearts... nothing better than the world of the conscious.

He cackles bitterly into the dark dawn; he is defying the heavens by simply breathing, living, existing. Hah, you will never get me, he taunts fate.

He tells himself there is no pain at all. It's only an illusion, a magic trick of sorts. He is happy. Happiness. True joy. 

It never occurs to him that maybe the reason why he no longer feels anything is because he has lost his heart to begin with. Destroyed, trampled, thrown away.

(Never mind that he had been hurting, that the aftermath of it all is still echoing in his wretched mind, but alas, he is too twisted now to notice.)

Dragging himself out of his mess of sheets and blankets, he walks dazedly down the hallway to the bathroom, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He smirks, admiring his swelling eye bags and tousled hair. This is what you're missing, he telepathically tells her, albeit with a hint of sarcasm. He has always been like that, anyway.



Down the hall, Soojung covers her ears with her hands, hiding under layers of blankets. She screams into her pillow, yelling curses at the world for doing this to her. 

Forbidden, she spats. Forbidden, you hear that?

Her heart wrenches in the most painful way, and she feels ashamed. This isn't how she is supposed to feel; she is supposed to feel accomplished and purposeful, having done the right thing.

There must be something wrong with her, she thinks. The more she entertains that idea, the more she believes it. A girl who has meandered so far from the path that she does not know how to get back (oh, how she wants to), one with warped priorities who always picks the wrong choices, the weak one who falls into every trap set for her.

So she cries. She cries for herself, she cries for mankind, she cries for her  torn teddy bear, she cries for her discarded violin, she cries for her lost childhood photos, she cries for everything.

But most of all, she cries for him -- him, her brother, her very own, blood-related sibling, her older brother, for heaven's sake.

Forbidden, she spats again, forbidden, do you hear?!

And down the hall, she registers the sound of glass breaking and ragged gasps of pain. An animal-like roar follows, reverberating throughout the hollow house.

Hollow, just like her heart, which she lets go of reluctantly, letting it fall out of her palm to the cold wooden floor beneath, shattering into a million little pieces.

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