She tells herself to look away, look away, look away.

But as always, her eyes refuse to be torn away from the blinding words on the laptop screen. It felt masochistic, as if she wanted to feel the searing pain of the words she drank up like bittersweet poison. But it was far from pleasurable and it hurt. They said what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but she thinks all that is left behind are open wounds. 

"Will it hurt her to just put a little effort and enthusiasm into making it seem like she actually wants to perform? She's barely even dancing and she keeps spacing out. It was so painful to watch such a terrible performance."

The words ink themselves permanently to the back of her head as they lacerate, linking arms with the fragments of hurtful words and sentences that have been going on and on like a tape on replay, everyday, every waking hour. Even in her sleep, she hears the whispers that taunt her in her dreams, leaving laughter and short termed happiness clouded in grey, muffled and blurred. Sleep tight, sweet dreams darling. She wishes her mother could be by her side, to tell her, "Darling, it's alright."

"She's a total joke... Is it really so hard to just smile for a few minutes on screen? All she looks like is someone who's forced to sit on the show when she doesn't want to. Sorry, but it's her job to entertain and she sure as hell is failing badly at it."

She reads the words out loud, forcing them through , one syllable then the next. Her voice is hoarse as the words get stuck between her chapped lips in barely there whispers. She feels like a clown, with a painted on mask of happiness. She cries on the inside, yet on the outside she smiles because people only see the clown, not any of the heartaches or the frowns. Clowns aren't allowed to cry, so the girl that sings and dances in the day, cries herself to sleep some nights. The joker mocks her because this time he isn't the joke, she is. 

"Krystal's facial expressions today looked pissed off the entire time. She has such a poor attitude and she is making it so obvious."

She curses at herself for forgetting to smile, forgetting to laugh. Because sometimes, under the glaring lights and the boisterous noises of people around, she forgets. But they are always watching, they never forget. So sometimes she sits in the darkness, and smiles, forcing her upper lips to separate in a painfully slow motion from her lower lips. Her gleaming white teeth reflect what little moonlight there is in the room and she tells herself to smile, smile, smile. Of course, she is human and sometimes unknowingly, smiles dance their way across her stoic expression. But since a long while ago, she has forgotten when she smiles with her heart and when she smiles with .

"I never want her on this show again. Her reactions are just plain bad. I honestly wonder why she bothered coming on this show if she's going to half  it like this."

They are the directors of her life, the playwright, the audience. As the credits spill across the pages of her life, the inked black lines continue into eternity. They are living her life, so is she alive? She ponders over the question and realises that she doesn't know. They tell her how to act, how to react like a marionette bounded at the limbs by long taut strings. They yank her in all different directions, all at once and she figures that one day she will be torn up into pieces, if she is still intact at all. She waits silently for the play to end, with nothing else to say. 

"She's here to make money so she should watch herself and work hard. There are so many people who don't have the opportunity to come on such shows or perform for three minutes on stage. She's so full of herself."

She looks down at her trembling hands and wills them to stop shaking because she feels her own fear so strongly that it feels nauseous. She's slashing at the demons with her sword held high, but she isn't winning because she's fighting the wrong war. The demons, they had invaded her mind. She wonders, as she looks down at her slender arms, if there is anything left under all that flesh, blood and bone, that have held her together for so long. She wonders if this was the dream she had been chasing after, wasting away her teenage years, only for it to warp into a nightmare, deep and dark. She feels tiny, tinier than ever before. 

"Don't let the haters get to you! You're beautiful in your own ways, stay strong!"

She wishes she could do it too, she wishes to believe in the words, loving and oh so comforting. Krystal could get past the hate and move on but she is Soojung. She isn't the one in the spotlight, the one who always knows how to make things right. She is just plain old Soojung, afraid. She is fighting the urge to self destruct, to detonate the bomb that's been ticking away because they've been choking her with their callous words, poisoning her with their toxic blame, breaking her with their urge for change. But she holds back the pain.

Soojung gently wipes away the streaks of tears down her face, the last bits of tears she's allowed to leak. She combs through her brownish blonde hair, going through the knots till it's smooth and sleek. She puts on the costume layed out, because she's not allowed to pick. She closes her eyes and tries to breath. 

Then Krystal sets foot out of the room

And the masquerade begins.