Chapter: You have Waited So Long
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What a night to die. The moon is bright, hanging up there like a camera's lens.
My body lies on a street in the middle of this old city. The inhabitants of this god forsaken place—my kind, human—gather to watch the holes in my body. Eyes showers me as if I'm a piece in an art museum.
I was never this popular.
Is it really that entertaining to watch a man grasping for the last air in his lungs?
No, don't think so.
If I want to watch something fun I'd go to a movie. Then why are they here?
Flash.
A group of high-school girls discreetly taking shots of the art.
Soon others follow.
The more they feed their phone's gallery, the colder my body gets.
The clicks stop.
Now they're making a face.
Guilt masked them.
Maybe they're asking themselves whether to lend me a hand.
No, you don't have to feel that way. Go on, take some more photos. Here let me flip it to the other side. I'm a lot more happy to hear my dead body ends up becoming a topic in your social circle rather than wherever they're going to dump me soon.
I'd say all that if my mouth can stop groaning in pain.
Time goes on.
The crowd shrinks as if my suffering has lost its spark to their eyes.
Take me with you, shit is boring down here, too.
My legs don't listen to me any more.
Lost a lot of blood… and still losing.
I wonder if I ever had another chance to prevent this from happening.
Who did this to me?
Great question.
Actually I'm not sure.
Probably one of the hundreds of people I hurt. You know, if I knew this would happen, I'd save my killer some trouble. Jumping off a cliff doesn't sound that bad.
This, though, is bad, because it hurts so much.
I had always imagined dying old, full of sins. I am now just twenty-five and...
Wow, I'm still going to hell.
My heart yells. Or is it crying? Am I afraid? No, of course not. This is just how any human body is programmed to act in these situations, trying to keep itself alive.
But the wound is too deep.
And I don't want to try.
A whisper.
'Think I'm done playing the game we call life.'
Where is it coming from? My thoughts? Memory?
No, it was her.
For the first time in life, my heart feels free. As if I longed for this feeling. Makes me question why we tried so hard to keep living. Maybe those people who offed themselves were onto something all this time…
Chuckle.
Always wondered how'd I win the game we call life. Should have realized the answer when you last stared at me.
Death. You won when you met her.
The darkness is closing in. The moon and stars stop mocking me.
The noise is moving away. I can hear the ambulance coming. Luckily, they are too late to do anything.
A touch.
My arm is grabbed.
Someone is trying to move me. Must be the people from the hospital.
Go ahead and try to fix a corpse.
Huh, aren't your hands too cold? Is this how people deal with corpses nowadays?
Grip.
Too rough. I know I'm already dead but this is just rude—
Drag.
Gah!
Burn. My skin burns. My soul burns.
Who's this? There's no way a trained medical professional would be dragging a body across the street. Let go.
Stop this.
What's happening?
I force my eyelids open.
Below my feet is a body getting carried away on a stretcher.
That person on it, I recognize him.
Of course I would, that is me.
Then, what the fuck am I now?
My eyes search up, a pale hand on my arm.
Further up, a black-haired woman dressed in a black suit.
We're closing in a door.
A door without buildings.
Just it and the air.
Its knob is glittering.
Somehow, that feeling creeps up at me. Something that I haven't felt for a time since I opened the door to her ward.
I need to stop her.
But I am unable to do so. My mouth is full. My lungs are full. I couldn't breathe—no. I can't. My mouth is gone. My lungs, gone. What I was, gone.
And my surroundings… As we move closer and closer to the door, the people, the cars, the stars, the moon, the body, the stones, the street— fading away.
Fading away… and away…
Until what is left, us and darkness.
"From the deep abyss of time…"
A voice. Sweet, like a song my ears have waited for. Loud, as if it's coming out straight from my head. And lonely.
"We have found you."
My head feels… elongated, as if thousands of hands are squeezing it. I can feel my eyes blinking.
A blink, time passes,
days,
weeks,
months,
years— a decade passes.
I have my eyes open all this time. Why? There is nothing much to look at.
Until there is.
White.
A single line of it, moving.
When it had already stopped, it had turned into a shape.
Another line is born out of nothing.
Making circles, triangles, and rectangles.
Color seeps in, spreading through the void as paint drops into water. Red, green, and blue.
Outlines, colors, combine.
And so a window is created. One that is holding a soft orange sky and puffy white clouds.
The creation continues.
I wait there as the world is being painted.
Until I find myself in a corridor; at the end of it is a door. Its knob is glittering.
My body? Where are the red holes? The blood?
The sound of footsteps enters my ear.
The woman is gone, now replaced by a pink, low-ponytail girl dragging me forward.
Talking.
She is saying something.
Her voice is soft and friendly.
The door. Closer.
My feet are the culprit of that.
Have I been walking all this time? Was I not limping on the ground?
H— hold on.
I stop them.
Think.
What. What happened? What is going on here?
Stab.
A sharp pain. My head suffers. My thoughts snap.
*
All right, need to calm down. I know this is your first time meeting them, but try to stay cool-headed. You can't afford a bad first impression. Take a deep breath and… phew. I can do this.
Prove to Maria that her big brother is someone she has to be proud of. And that plan, too. Prove her it's not stupid. Hah! Can't wait to find out the look on her face.
Focus on the matter at hand. Behind this door is the only special class at this high school. Inside lie the students I've heard so much about. And these special people need a new tutor. Here I am with my six hundred credit black suit, ready to take that position.
It won't be easy to convince the four girls that I can do it. No worries! No matter how flawed they are, I believe… I believe…
*
I believe that I was supposed to be dead. My body bled to death. So how? How the hell could I stand? Blink? My finger twitches? Sweat forms? Lung expands? What is this? Why is this happening?
Stab.
*
Sohee trusted me. I can't—
*
Stop—no more.
It's making me sick to hear more of these thoughts. You are not mine.
Ears ring—head throbbing.
My hand slams on the glass, trying to keep me up.
I want to throw up.
But it won't help.
It's not in my stomach. But my brain. Like a worm, there has to be one digging in the flesh right now.
Get it out.
Stab.
*
I was the third-best student in the Center a few years ago.
*
No, you are not a worm.
*
I'll be different.
*
You are me.
I get it now. This is not my body. You: my mind, making a place in this brain, eating out his memories.
You want us to have this body as our own.
"Sunbae?" the voice of the girl.
A warm hand touches my shoulder.
"Sunbae, are you okay?"
I'm not. And not the person you think I am.
I was dead. Surely dead. Holes in my stomach.
Now none.
Maybe that was never real.
But the pain... it still stings even now.
No, that was real.
Have I failed to die?
Hah... Haha...
And now I'm back with the living? Is someone pulling a joke on me? The gods did?
How am I supposed to make sense out of this?
"Sunbae?"
Sunbae? Is that supposed to be me?
Why are your eyes beautiful and pink? Why are you making a face as if I'm the weird one here?
Maybe because I'm laughing? Ah that must be it. I guess I should stop doing that. Yet, you still look at me funny.
Maybe you want me to talk? What were your questions again?
Oh, right. Sure.
Whoever put me here probably wanted me to say this anyway.
"Yeah, I'm okay," the first words out of my mouth in this body.
And they were lies.
*
1st Loop: 1st
*