Cutout Magnolias

TRIGGER WARNING: Self-harm, gore, etc.

For the second time in the year, Jiyoon woke up facing the white ceiling. She sighed.

Another failed attempt.

“You… you’re so ing stupid, Seo Jiyoon.” She moved her head to see Tao sitting next to her bed, his eyes rimmed with red. She sighed, but didn’t reply. Tao shifted so he was sitting on the bed instead. “I thought I lost you.”

She shook her head, curling into a ball and avoiding his gaze as best she could. “You don’t understand, Tao. I had to do it,” she murmured, feeling tears of both regret and anger well in her eyes.

His entire body radiated warmth as he lay down next to her, wrapping his arms around her tiny waist. “What happened, Jiyoon?” he asked, his voice as soft as hers.

Jiyoon suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to throw up as soon as her mother’s figure disappeared from the doorway. “I… I need to use the bathroom,” she muttered, standing shakily from her place.

She locked the bathroom door behind her, ignoring Eunkwang’s desperate pleas for her to tell him that she was okay.

She was not okay.

Without thinking, she emptied the contents of her stomach into the toilet, feeling the burning sensation as she vomited. She coughed as she did, her tears burning her eyes like the acid burned .

She practically collapsed onto the floor afterwards, sobbing weakly.

“You are nothing but a self-serving, attention-seeking little , Seo Jiyoon. I didn’t raise you to be such a , and you know it. I am not a bad mother. I really am not. I just was unfortunate enough to receive the rotten apple of the family.”

Her mother was right, just like Xero was when he called her a , a , and every other name he could think of.

Jiyoon knew she was no good. She never had been.

Ever since she was little, she was like a poison. She ruined everything she touched. At least, that’s what her mother had told her. When she was younger, the words were drilled into her head, making her cry.

After hearing something like that long enough, Jiyoon started to believe it.

She believed that she couldn’t get any lower, that she was the scum of the world that no one needed to bother themselves with.

She convinced herself that if she just vanished one day, no one would even bother to look for her.

She convinced herself that if she died, there wasn’t a single person who’d shed a tear.

That was how she’d gone through her life, ever since she was in elementary school.

It was a horrible way to live.

As she looked at her reflection in the mirror of the hospital bathroom, Jiyoon didn’t see a beautiful girl with pale skin and small eyes, a thin body with nice hair, something girls would love to have.

No, she didn’t see that at all.

What she saw in the mirror was a skeleton.

She saw sunken eyes, raw and red from crying. A body in a thin hospital gown that practically hung from her shoulders. She saw matted hair that stuck out all over the place.

What Jiyoon saw was not beauty.

What Jiyoon saw was death.

She screamed, a bloodcurdling scream that could be heard down the halls. With strength she didn’t know she had, she ripped the mirror from where it hung on the wall, smashing it as she tossed it towards the other wall of the bathroom.

The mirror shattered, shards of reflecting glass falling to the floor with loud clangs.

“Jiyoon?! What the is going on in there, Jiyoon?! Open this door!” Eunkwang called from outside the bathroom.

But Jiyoon couldn’t hear him.

The only things that her brain focused on were the hundreds of new reflections of herself that stared back at her. She couldn’t take it, seeing those dead, defeated eyes looking at the girl. Not while she knew that they were reflections of what she looked like.

She picked up the nearest shard of glass, squeezing it.

Feeling the sharp edges cut through her paper thin skin, feeling the warm blood rush from her palm, she whimpered.

It hurt like hell.

But it took away from the pain she felt inside.

Jiyoon had never cut herself before.

She was scared to. She hated the idea of scars marring her skin, making her even uglier than she already was. She knew that she was ugly as it was. But for part of her skin to protrude, for her outside to show how weak her in