Tick tock, tick tock goes the clock. She could hear it, her heavy, masked breath and the sound of the wall clock ticking away. They grew louder into her brain, she swore it was threatening her to die, she swore those sounds were demanding her to lay dead. Then her sight came back, slowly, painfully. The bright white light of the dispersed sun breaks into her eyes and though it was all a blur, it was a vision of time she had not recognize. A sunny one. 

Then as the blur cleared, she saw Hwanuk, by the side of her white sheeted bed. His hands were tangled around hers and his lips curled into a sweet, calming smile. It was so bright for her, she can’t see through him, through the walls and anything else. But she could see his smile glistening in the day and though it was unfamiliar, she was glad she stayed alive.  

“Hey,” she said, pulling his sleeves and taking his hands. Her yearning for his touch was insatiable, she wanted his warmth close to her again. But that was when she saw it, a red ruby ring.

Etha’s ring. 

Hey hun, said her mother. Hawol opened her eyes and through the clarity of day, she saw Etha by the side of her turquoise, hospital bed. With green walls and a vase of a dying rose, it was so different from what she thought she had woken up to. 

A deafening agony ruptured across her body, one that was kept safely inside her heart. It was reality. She did not say a word and while she struggled to fake one decent smile, a stream of tears struggled to roll down her cheeks. She could not control it, her pain, her sorrow. They overflowed.

He was gone. 

Etha just quietly rubbed her hair, wiping her daughter’s unending tears silently. She knew how painful it was for Hawol, to experience such a loss at such a young age, at such a raw age. But she could not imagine the hollowness, the loneliness her daughter was experiencing. It was so unfair for both of them, for that poor boy she thought. He was a nice boy she thought, a loving child that was swept away by time. A boy she managed to see through her daughter’s courageous eyes. 

Hawol stayed in the infirmary for days, and for the first three she could not speak. She stayed under her blanket, drenched in sorrow and sweat and Hwanuk’s n