Let Down

Where … are you? You don’t quite know.

It’s so … quiet. It’s so … empty. It’s so … dark.

It’s like your eyes are permanently closed. You know you’re searching all around you, but all you see is the pitch black null. It scares you for but a moment, then gives you a sense of relief when you realize what this might be, before finally filling you with a sense of dread.

Is this … the void? Is this … what comes after death? It’s just … nothingness. You asked for this. You begged for this with your final words—with your final breath. And now, why do you feel so unsure about the result?

Where are you exactly? You don’t fucking know anymore.

Before you can devolve into an existential crisis of a panic, you hear it. The first sign of anything other than your own being against the infinite expanse of the void. It’s faint. It’s barely within earshot.

It’s a beep. And another. Then, yet another.

When the repeated pinging clicks in your head, the darkness parts like stage curtains as the light behind the veil is revealed to you once more.

The cadence of the hospital machinery next to you brings you to your senses with each timed beat. It’s all white, bright, and sanitized. After the first few blinks and your dried eyes finally readjust to the scenery before you, you take a deep breath. But no air comes. Your chest does not rise. Your diaphragm does not contract. 

You aren’t breathing. You can’t breathe.

You grasp for your neck and and collarbone to try and figure out why this is the case. But when your fingers pass through the tight column of your throat and all you feel is a chill at your fingertips, the truth becomes painfully obvious.

You’re dead.

You sit up and you feel an immense chilly sensation waft down across your back. Behind you, laying against the partially elevated hospital bed, head wrapped in more wads of gauze and bandage than you have hair, one arm hoisted into some sort of cast, your opposite leg in the same manner but lifted higher by dangling ropes from above, torso beneath layers upon layers of wrappings soaked in moist red, you see a figure of a man you can only hope you recognize.

That’s you. That’s your fucking body.

You’re not dead dead …? What is going on?

You get out of bed and are immediately shocked over your newfound nimbleness. You were never the athletic type per se, but you are blissfully aware of the different aches and pains in your body. Like the way you wrist flinches when you flex it too much, or the way your neck bends at an odd angle due to the years you’ve spent with bad posture, or the ache in your hip when you extend a step farther than you’d intended. But all of it—it’s just … gone. Like the status of your physique has been reset.

You glance down at your own hands and find it so odd—so bizarre—how … real it all is. How real it all feels. It doesn’t feel too different from how you recall life and living to be, and yet … it isn’t living. This isn’t life.

Where are you?

You whip your head around, scanning the empty hospital room, searching for it—searching for that sound. You swear you hear it. You swear it’s real. Not the machine. Not the drip of IV into your veins. No, it’s … it sounds human. At least you believe it’s human. And it’s—she’s—calling out. Calling towards you.

Calling for you.

“Baby?”

You make a run for it.

You burst out of the hospital door, and when you realize you just phase through it, you don’t even spare it a thought of surprise. You keep on going. Down the busy hospital corridors. Up the successive flights of stairs. You feel it. This tingle. This haze of warmth that grows larger and larger. That calls to you over and over again. That guides you towards where you need to go.

And finally, when you stumble through the final door atop the roof of the hospital—that normally would have been locked by the maintenance staff—you see it. You see her. Just at the edge of the balcony, looking over the edge of the rooftop.

And you fall to your knees.

“Ga- … Gaeul?”

You swear you can see her smile before she even turns around, but she keeps her position and crosses her arms. “You’re late! Or, actually, I’d say you’re early. Way too early. I never thought I’d greet you like this just yet. Not until you’re—.”

She gasps and is pushed forward, but leans her head back and melts into your embrace. “Did you miss me that much, baby?”

You can’t even fucking reply to her because your sorry ass is tearing up against the inner fold of her neck. She’s so warm. She’s so fucking warm. And you’re grateful that even as you are now, you are fortunate enough to be able to touch her again like this—to be able to hold her again like this. Closely. Intimately. Dearly.

But when you linger on the moment for too long, she pecks the sharp of your chin and signals for you to let go of her. Just for a while. When you oblige, she takes a deep breath, sighs, and gleams up at you. “We meet again.”

Her words should have brought you comfort, but the implication of it sinks hot rods into the back of your skull. “I-I-I …”

The first thing you look at are her arms. If you weren’t trembling already, you sure are now. Shuddering. Palpitating. And when you see how pristine and smooth they are, you can’t help but burst into tears again, falling to your knees, and sinking your puffy and moist cheeks into the small palms of her hands.

“I’m sorry … I-I-I’m so fucking sorry, Gaeul … I-I should have done something. I shouldn’t have … when you … when I realized … Fuck. Fuck me … FUCK ME—I was a coward, a-and now … still now, I’m … I’m …”

She holds you like she always did, and for a moment, you recall what it was like to be laying in her lap, seated by the window of her dingy apartment, just looking out into the horizon, staring at the setting summer sun. Together.

“You must have a lot of questions for me. I know you’re dying to ask them, so … go for it.”

She knows you. She knows you too well it fucking hurts.

So you forgive her for ignoring your folded ass and pick yourself back up, holding her hands this time and pulling her in. Just a little bit. Just enough so you are both within comfortable proximity but distant enough to respect personal space.

“Why … am I here? What exactly … is this?”

Gaeul squeezes your hands together to prepare you for what she is about to say.

“You’re not dead, baby. Well, not yet. Not exactly. You’re … sort of in between the realms. Between this one and the next. You haven’t really passed on, but at the same time you aren’t fully tethered here.”

Hearing this makes your shoulders go slack. “Not dead … Fuck, well … well fuck, I couldn’t even … then that means I couldn’t even kill myself properly …”

Silence.

Then you feel Gaeul fluffing your cheeks like she would a baby, like she used to whenever you were spiraling downwards rapidly into another episode. And you almost want to cry once more because, god, it’s been forever since anyone’s treated you like this.

“Think of it this way: you still have a choice.”

“A choice?”

“You have the freedom to choose what to do next. Whether to stay or to move towards the next life, that will be your decision and your decision alone, baby.”

You wish you didn’t have to choose.

The memory of your final moments hits you so hard that the whiplash shoves you backwards a few steps. Gaeul is quick on the uptake and holds you steady, not letting you go.

You remember it. The car whirling and smashing onto the asphalt. Your broken and bent body struggling to make it to Gaeul’s grave. The way the shards of glass pierced your guts. How peaceful and quiet it had all been as you spilled blood on the grass. How definite and resolute the sound of your skull cracking against the marble rung in your mind one final time.

You should have died. And yet, like most things, you fucking failed. You fucking failed and you ended up here—wherever this is.

You wanted the noise to just stop. It should have ended there.

But life had other fucking plans.

There’s a tug on your wrist and you glance up to see Gaeul looking very concerned. “Baby?”

“I’m sorry, I just … this is all a lot to take in, but, Gaeul why … why are you here? In fact, why is my room downstairs empty? Does that mean …?”

Something stabs at your throat upon your realization.

Nobody came to save you. Nobody fucking came to check up on you.

There’s a break in your smile. A maniacal one at that. Then you huff. Then you chuckle. Then you holler as you grab your stomach and slap your thigh, beads of tears streaking up and down your visage as you whip about, and Gaeul is just watching you break into a hysterical fit.

It’s only when you glance back up at the evening sky that you manage to take a deep breath and sigh. “No one … no one cared enough to find me. No one—.”

Fingers come over your eyes to blind you for a heartbeat, and when they flutter away from your face, you find yourself back inside your hospital room, sitting at the foot of your own bed.

“What—?”

Gaeul smirks, sitting across you on one of the empty chairs by the window, and crosses her arms. “Surprised? I’ve been here way longer than you have. I’ve … sort of mastered what it’s like being here. You though—you have much to learn. And much to realize.”

When you furrow your brow, Gaeul holds up a hand to stop you from speaking. “The only reason why I’m here is because, well, because of you. In your final moments, you … you reached out to me. Across the barrier. And what do you know—they let me cross over. Just for a bit. Not for long.”

“You crossed over because you pitied me … I don’t know how to feel about that, baby.”

But she shakes her head. “I crossed over only because I was the closest one to you. Oppa, you know how far my home is from the city proper. It’s going to take anyone hours just to get to you—to get to this hospital.”

She has a point. You don’t even know what hospital this is. This isn’t your usual. That and the fact that she’s got a stern look drawn upon her appease your apprehensions somehow. “I guess so. Still, I … I don’t think anyone’s coming to visit anyway. Not … not when I’m like this.”

That’s a lie. You know very damn well that’s a lie. Gaeul knows it too.

In fact, she waves a hand to the side, just in front of the window, to prove her point. With but a gesture, the transparent glass is coated in a sheen of translucence, and she does the unthinkable.

She replays a memory. A memory of yours.

“Hey kiddo, you good back there?”

You just give your father a grunt. You’re pissed to hell at him. You didn’t want to attend the family gathering you were currently in, but he insisted anyways. You were never fond of all the noise and idle chatter. You just wanted to be at home doing your own thing. The only solace you had with you right now was your Nintendo DS and a fresh copy of Pokemon Platinum.

“Buddy … Mind if I join you over here?”

You shrug. You couldn’t care any less.

But it’s when he slides across you, leans over you, and points out the new Pokemon you just caught that your facade began to crack.

“That guy looks cool, yeah? What was his name again? Gary Busey?”

“Dad, it’s Gyarados. Gee-ya-ra-dos. How many times do I have to explain that—.”

“He’s the Water-Flying type, right?”

You pause, eye him from the side, and smile, placing your DS over his much larger lap for him to see better. “Yeah, and I need him for the Fighting Gym.”

And as the memory ripples and fades, you remember the rest of that moment. How he cheered you on to beat Maylene, and how you formed a core memory of your childhood—a moment you had, since now, completely forgotten.

“Seems like they really care about you,” Gaeul points out, placing her hands together over her lap now. “They’re probably on their way here. Any minute now.”

But you shake your head.

You’re not sure if you want to face them—not like this. Well, you aren’t really going to be facing them. They’ll be facing you. You and your fucked up little body swathed in bandages, still bleeding, and probably half-dead at this point. They are going to enter this room in utter disbelief that their son is admitted here, see your bruised and beaten-in face, and scold you at the top of their lungs. You just know you won’t hear the end of it.

And that’s why you shake your head. You don’t want your parents to see their child ruined like this. Broken. Ruined.

You don’t want your mom and dad to see the fucking let-down they raised laying lifelessly on his deathbed.

It’s morbid. It really is. But you hope and pray that your parents won’t show.

But even behind your thickest facade, you cannot hide the truth from Kim Gaeul.

“Baby …”

“Stop. I … I know what you’re going to say, and I … I don’t want to hear it.”

She nods, but you get the feeling she isn’t going to let this go. “You’ve always had mixed feelings about your family—about your parents—didn’t you?”

Before you can even consent to it, Gaeul waves her hand, and you hear something swish behind you. 

On an empty space of wall, like a projection being displayed before you, you watch as she goes through a handful of your encounters from the not-so-distant past.

Swish.

“Look mom! I got a ninety-eight on our finals!”

“A ninety-eight? Why couldn’t you have made it a hundred, sweetheart?

“But … I was just two points off though—.”

“Bahh, two points is still two points! In the real world, that’s way bigger than you might think! Better luck next time—I know you can do better than this.”

“Ok … mom …”

Swish.

The blaring car horn cuts through the dissonant music of the party so sharply that everyone’s got their eyes on the pickup truck stalling by the curb.

Your hand couldn’t have flown any faster across your face. “Fucking hell … dad …”

The horn blares out again as if to call your attention, to draw you towards it, like a lighthouse on the shore blatantly demanding for your appearance. To make matters worse, your dad stuck his head out the passenger’s window and is trying to yell past the other sounds. “HAVE ANY OF YOU SEEN MY SON? IT’S PAST HIS CURFEW ALREADY!”

“Dude, who’s fucking dad is that?”

“Who has a curfew at nine in the evening? Haha, I almost feel bad for them.”

You downed the rest of your drink and tried to hide your reddening face. Amidst all the name-calling and alcohol in your system, you just wanted to shrivel up and die right then and there.

Swish.

“Son—.”

“No. Just no. Don’t just … Don’t just fucking ‘son’ me like it doesn’t matter. You say that when you want to belittle my—.”

“Language, sweetheart. Jesus!”

“Mom, I—GOD. Can you just please listen to me for once?”

If the posters in your cramped bedroom were alive, they’d be staring holes into your body right now. Your parents—both your father and mother—are quite literally within arm’s reach of you, but you swore you’ve never felt them feel this distant from you before.

“I … I want to be a writer. I want to study creative writing, and learn properly, and not just write—I don’t know, fucking fanfiction, for the rest of my life. I want to draft real stories. Weave worlds. Breathe life into the ideas inside my head that have been aching to be born since I was a kid. I … I’ve never wanted anything more than this. I’ll struggle—I know. It will be difficult. This isn’t a goal with a laid out path, but … but I have to try, right? It’s my life. Let me … just let me live it. Please …”

“No.”

Your father’s answer was as clear as day, and you should have known what it would have been, but the shock to your system after hearing him utter that single, solitary fucking word boils the bile deep inside of you.

“What?”

“I said no. Your mother agrees with me on this, kiddo, but creative writing? What even is that? You’re going to go into debt with student loans just for a degree like that? What can you even do with it? What happens when you can’t find a job with it? Or write anything that sells with it? You can’t eat your diploma, son. You have to be realistic—.”

“Fuck … you …”

“Sweetheart! You take that back, right now!”

But you shake your head. “I … I’ve been doing everything you’ve wanted me to. Trying to be the son you hoped I’d be. But … enough is enough. I’m pushing through with my application to my first university of choice, and I will be a writer.”

Your father is ready to smack some sense into you, but it’s your mother that keeps him at bay. As you begin scrambling around your room and stuffing whatever you can into a sizable bodybag, your father groans out, “Darling, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. We poured eighteen years of our blood, sweat, and tears just for him to end up as—.”

“I won’t.”

Slinging the strap of your bag over one shoulder, you huff and glare at your parents from over it, clenching your fist tightly. “I won’t … I won’t fail. I’m going to prove both of you wrong.”

“I won’t let you down.”

Swish.

Lo and behold, where did that get you? Where did that all get you?

You blink. Twice. You spend a moment to just stare at the now once again empty wall before you, taking in the sight of the hospital room as it is. “That … I …”

Gaeul’s behind you now and is rubbing your back, helping you to calm down. When she caresses both of her hands over your shoulders, she leans against the back of your head, resting her full weight on you. “Sorry if that was a bit sudden. This whole memory thing—it’s a bit tricky for me too.”

“Can you just … pull my memories out of my head and play it out for us like that? Sounds like heaven might not be so bad after all.”

She pinches your cheek because you know that’s not the point she’s trying to make. “Stop trying to change the subject, silly. I know it’s a bit touchy, and we never really properly talked about it before, but … do you want to?”

“Right now?”

She nods, joining you by your side and taking a seat right next to you. Automatically, her fingers interlace with yours as she drops the back of your palm into your inner thigh. “I thought you’d maybe want to. Now that … now that we’re here. Together again.”

Your lips purse tightly against one another, squeezing her hand. You both were, indeed, together again. Before you speak, however, you take a moment to just … stare. To stop and stare. At Gaeul.

You’ve been around each other for the better part of what feels like an hour now, but this is the first time that you’ve taken her form in.

It’s shimmering. Literally, it is—she is. There’s a glow to her. Like some sort of aura or halation. She very much feels real to you. You can touch her, hear her, feel her. But there’s a sort of … slipperiness to her. A semblance of impermanence. A certain … translucence to her being. Like she might just slip away if you aren’t careful.

So you make sure to dig your fingertips into her knuckles to stop that from happening.

“I … I don’t know where to begin, honestly. There’s so much I could tell you, and I … I don’t want to waste our time together just ranting. Isn’t very fun, is it?”

She crinkles her nose. “Mm, but it’s you though. I wouldn’t mind.”

Your heart does a somersault, and before you’re even able to find the right words to respond to that you just flash her an awkward grin. “I … I don’t know. What do you want to hear? What do you want to know more about?”

“Anything, baby. I just … I just want to hear you ramble again. Talk and talk, yap and yap. Remember what we used to do while waiting for the bus?”

“Oh, for sure. You’d never want to listen to any music. Something about liking my voice?”

“Hey, you sound like you’re mocking me! I love your voice though. It’s why I never bought any audiobooks.”

You bite your lip and recall the nights you spent in bed with your fingers threading into her hair as she listened to the way you’d read paragraph upon paragraph of her latest novel for the week. “Yeah … Anything?”

“Anything.”

You shrug. When given the ultimate freedom to just unload, you never really considered what exactly you might want to get off your chest. There’s a certain numbness spreading throughout your body. Not because you don’t care about your ex-girlfriend, but because you’re apathetic to it all.

What’s the point of even relaying all of this past shit to Gaeul? You’re already dead. You’re already about to cross. What’s the point of still being hung up about it? You can just … let it all go. That was the point of killing yourself, wasn’t it? No attachments.

No more fucking attachments.

But you love Gaeul. You love her more than anything, and the last thing you want to see is her looking disappointed at you. Even in death. Again.

You take a deep breath, and when you finally let it all settle in the pit of your stomach, you slowly exhale and feel the air tickle your nostrils.

Then, you begin.

“Is it weird that I’ve thought of them dying before?”

There’s no hint of judgment on her face. Just the steady comfort of acceptance for what you have to say to her. “Your parents?”

“Yeah … yeah my parents. Dying,” you repeat, and when you verbalize it a second time, there’s an acidity on your tastebuds with the following swallow and inhale. “I just thought that, if they were gone, maybe … maybe I wouldn’t have felt so … pressured. To be something. To be someone. To be … successful.”

Your thoughts begin to materialize, and even Gaeul is surprised now, as a mirage of a memory plays out on the floor next to you both.

Swish.

“Mom, I really can’t talk right now. I’m busy with … a project.”

“Project? Oh, did someone hire you to write for them already? Sweetheart, that’s huge! That’s your first one, isn’t it? How’s it going?”

You glance at the bright screen beaming light into your face within the darkness of your apartment. Your fingers can barely stay in place as you scroll through the different tabs on your browser: LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, even fucking Craigslist and Reddit. But there’s nothing.

There’s nothing.

“Really well, and listen, I … I want to sit around and tell you all about it mom, but I’m being pulled into a meeting now, so if we could just maybe … pick this back up again when I’m freer?”

There’s a pause, followed by a sigh. “You’re never free these days, but I guess that’s a good thing.”

Your eyes trail over to the calendar by your desk, at the rows of red cross-marks you’ve etched over months upon months of repeated failures. “Yeah … yeah, I’ll call you when I can. I promise. Love you mom.”

“Love you too, sweetheart. Dad and I miss you—!”

The call ends with a beep, but the voices in your head begin with a bang as you slam your forehead into the keyboard of your laptop.

Swish.

“I … Was that you?”

Gaeul looks just as confused as you are as she shakes her head. “No. Actually, that … wasn’t me.”

“Huh,” you utter, rubbing your fingertips against the inside of your palm in thought. “But … yeah. You already know this, baby, but … They’ve been hounding my ass for as long as I can remember. And I know—I just know that they only want what’s best for me. Trying to push me to my ‘highest potential’ and all that bullshit. Just parenting things. But … they never asked how I felt about any of it all. It wasn’t until—.”

You’re choked up on your words when you remember. You reach for Gaeul’s hand and grip it before continuing, “It wasn’t until I met you that I really felt free. From everything.”

She rubs the back of your hand with her thumb. “Don’t say that. Your parents loved you. They do, and—.”

“Don’t … don’t say that.”

Gaeul freezes up, but she doesn’t intervene.

“You … god, you don’t even know the half of it, Gaeul,” you retort, head shaking. Whether in palpitation or in frustration you aren’t so sure. “They fucking … they fucking made me question my worth whenever I couldn’t meet their standards. They always kept me on a leash, a-and then started wondering why I couldn’t stand on my own two feet when I grew older. They … they never beat me, or abused me, o-or even remotely harmed me, but—but their words, Gaeul …”

You clutch your stomach with your free hand like there might be shrapnel still lodged in there as you fight the urge to vomit. “Their words …”

Where the puke would have splattered now formed the makings of another projected memory.

Swish.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it, kiddo? Told you you wouldn’t regret coming along with us.”

You stuff your hands into the pockets of your hoodie as you walk with your parents from the venue of your family reunion towards your car. Your dad won’t shut the fuck up about having met his brothers and their own families again for the first time in years. “Who would have thought your cousin Ethan had it in him? When you two were younger, he was always the one following you around at the playground. Didn’t have good grades either. Wasn’t much of a social type. And look at him now! One of the youngest lawyers in the country!”

Somewhere between his ramblings and your mother’s glances, you just wanted to take the keys from your dad and run him the fuck over with his own pickup, but you resolve to just swallow your misgivings down with a gulp. “Yeah …”

“Can’t wait for you to show up to the next reunion like him, son,” he remarks as he opens the driver’s seat door. “I know you have it in you. To be your own man, you know? You just … you just need to focus. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life—.”

You know that’s a fucking lie. He always has.

“—and you have your own things on your plate—.”

And that’s a fucking lie too. He never approved of your relationship with Gaeul.

“—but if you want to make something out of your life, you really have to make some sacrifices. You can’t always live slowly. You can’t always live comfortably. You need to really … put yourself out there, you know? Mae the tough decisions for your own betterment—for your own good. So, no more distractions, you hear me?”

His words echoed in the back of your mind for years to come—you just didn’t know it yet. “Yeah … no more distractions.”

Your dad doesn’t know it yet, and he never will, but he’s the bloody fucking reason why Gaeul’s dead.

Swish.

You need a moment. You need a moment to breathe.

Gaeul’s deathly silent by your side, and you can tell she’s racking her brain trying to find the right things to say to you, but it just never arrives. You don’t blame her. You don’t even know what to say to yourself now that this memory blossomed into your mind once more. All you manage is a sigh. “You’ve seen it now. You’ve … you know what I mean. Can you really blame me for wishing them dead? For wishing them to just … disappear? But when I think about it, looking back? God … I am such a fucking coward.”

You still are. You still fucking are—you know it.

“When I think about it, I only really wanted them dead because … I wasn’t strong enough to grow out of their shadow. If I had been strong enough … if I’d been serious enough—about my life, about my craft, about my future—then maybe … maybe I could have been something. Maybe they could have at least seen me trying instead of just … ‘taking it easy’, ‘going at my own pace’ or … or just ‘trusting the process’. And look … look where that fucking got me …”

Swirl.

“So will you or will you not be attending the transfer interview?”

The dean of humanities is seated right before you, and he’s a grizzled man with a well-kept beard that makes him appear as a well-worn stoic type, but you can’t help but feel the gurgling of your gut each time his gaze meets yours. Like he’s pressing. Like he’s actively trying to push your buttons. Like he’s sniffing out what you’re made of. If it’s worthy enough.

Your lips tremble, quivering like the string of a bow in the hands of an amateur archer. You aren’t so sure about this transfer in the first place.

What lead you to this moment? Several things, really.

Your first two years of undergrad wasted trying to ‘explore yourself’. The nearly failing grades you received each semester over the subjects you believed you were enjoying—but then again, you now realize, the enjoyment of a subject does not correlate with your performance in it. The whispers of your coursemates over the quality of your work. The whispers in your own mind about the sincerity of your efforts. The doubt creeping into the cracks and crevices of your soul that start to fissure it and make you see that perhaps you were a fool. Perhaps wanting to be something was not enough to actually become that. That efforts will not always produce or guarantee outcomes. That sometimes, maybe dreams are meant to be faraway to remind you that some things in life are just that out of reach.

You shift between your ever-tangling fingers on your lap and the stern expression of the dean behind his desk. Like you’re looking for answers. Like you’re looking for reasons. Like you’re looking for excuses.

But there are none. There’s just you and your history of bad decisions compiled sanctimoniously in the form of your student record on file.

You let time creep up on you. You filled the hours of your limited days with drivel. You can’t get sentimental over it now. Seven hundred and thirty days. Seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty fucking hours. All that time. How much work? How much writing? How much actual progress?

Less than a hundred. Less than a bloody hundred.

Did you really expect to become something—anything—from just that? Don’t even think about going beyond the bare minimum for your classes. Don’t even think about spending ten thousand hours to master a skill. Don’t even fucking think about all the precarious procrastinatory plans you’ve cooked up over those two years to try and ‘get better’ or ‘improve fast’ to try and make up for lost time.

You fucked up. You genuinely fucked up, and now, you want to shift courses. You want something stable. You want something clear-cut. You want something handed to you with an instruction manual so you can blame something else if things go awry. 

But beyond that, you wanted to shift courses because you wanted to start all over again after fucking up.

Is that the same reason why you dated Wonyoung?

Swirl.

Gaeul catches you by your sides, and even though her frame is smaller than yours, she’s able to right you back up and stop you from collapsing. Once you’ve steadied your breath, and you catch but a glimpse of the memory dissipating from the polished floors of the hospital, you part yourself from her out of guilt and take a few steps away.

“I-I-I … you … fuck …”

“It’s ok, I’m just here to listen. You don’t have to explain yourself. You … you don’t have to worry about anything. I just want you to—.”

“Gaeul, I fucking resented them because they … they … all this time, I felt that they were the reason why you died—.”

There’s motion. Through you.

When you finally register what it is, you see two figures rushing past the door, away from the uniformed men and women giving chase, flinging their bodies against and over the stretch of your bed.

It’s them. It’s your mom and dad.

Gaeul looks like she wants to say something, but she holds her tongue when you begin to drift over to the two of them like a ghost. They can’t see you. You know this because you’re right beside your father, and you swear this is the closest you’ve been to each other physically since god knows when, but he doesn’t react.

You just watch.

You watch as your mother presses her face against yours, tears streaming down hers, and you wonder if this is what it was like when she held you for the first time in her arms. Except she’s on you now, and you’re the one in the hospital bed, and the tears flowing from her are those of sorrow or regret and not joy. You note the wrinkles across her face that narrate the tales of her stolen youth. She had you young, and you don’t recall her ever telling you anything about herself from before your birth. You glance at the way she holds your hand—you can’t feel it in your current form, but you sense something between comfort and desperation in the way she caresses each of your fingers—like she used to whenever you and your father got into a shouting match with each other.

You watch as your father grips your arm like it’s the handles of your old bicycle. You remember that day—the day he taught you a harsh lesson in life. You thought he would always be by your side for the rest of your days, smiling and laughing next to him with the sun in your eyes and the wind against your skin. Until he let go. And you had to scramble like a madman without your training wheels trying to balance the weight of the world between pedals. Then you crash, and wound, and bleed. But he’s right there, next to you, cleaning you up, telling you some sort of life lesson that just enters one ear and exits the next. You note the gray in his hair. He’s not old enough to be having flecks of silver like that yet, but you know what years of overtime and sleep-deprivation can do to a man. He was always stubborn, always proud of his work, because you realize that’s all he ever had. His work—and you. He never got the luxury of going to parties, or blasting music in the living room in his underwear, or worrying about girls liking him enough to say yes to a prom-posal. You note the way his eyes sag—and you mean really sag—upon looking at you. He’s always got this sharp gaze. Always trying to present himself as firm, unmoving, and impenetrable. But with you, you always noticed he’d soften up, even just in the slightest bit. Maybe that’s why you can wound him so with your words, with your actions, with your being.

You watch as your parents are crushed before you in the same way—if not worse by a tenfold—that they have crushed you. Not physically. Not even with your words this time anymore because there are none. But rather, by your decisions.

By your being.

There’s a word for a child who lost their parents. You longed to be one once before when your parents really made you feel like shit back in sixth grade. Orphan. But what do you call parents who lost their child? There isn’t really a word for that. The ordeal must be absolutely fucking devastating. And yet, there isn’t a coinage for that phenomenon.

You wonder about it because you realize that’s what’s about to happen to them right now.

They’re about to lose their only child.

And it hits you. For but a moment, it really hits you.

How much can you fault your parents for the shit that’s happened to you? For the shit you’ve been through?

You are their only child. They didn’t have any practice or experience before you. You can argue all you want about how unwise it must have been for them to be having sex recklessly like that to produce the abomination that is you. You can fight them for the nth time again about how you never asked to be born, so why the hell should they expect a boatload of greatness from your sorry ass? You can curse the world for all your fucking misgivings—about how unfair it is to be born into a lower-middleclass household, about how unfair it is to not have the same luxuries as others, about how unfair it is that you could have made it ‘if only’ or ‘if things were different’.

They’re human too. And for all that it’s worth, you realize that maybe they were more than just decent humans. More than just decent parents.

You were loved. Gaeul’s words ring true in this moment for you. But you have to ask yourself yet again.

When do you draw the line from blaming them for your bullshit, and when do you start accepting that maybe, just maybe, this is all your fault.

All you.

“Baby—.” Gaeul calls out to you but you don’t even hear it. It sounds so distant. So drowned out by the cacophony of noise and grunge reverberating in your mind. She tries to reach for your hand again, and you don’t even notice you’ve let go, but you don’t feel her touch against your skin anymore.

You hold up a hand to your face and notice how more flimsy it appears. How further intangible it’s become.

“I … I don’t want to be here,” you beg, walking out the door. And you hear Gaeul ask you where you’d like to go, and so you just mumble, “Anywhere … anywhere but here. Anywhere away from here. Please …”

With a snap of her fingers, Gaeul gestured towards one of the windows of a room adjacent to yours. The surface of its pane shimmered before presenting the all-too-familiar ethereality of a memory.

But Gaeul doesn’t wait for it to finish rendering to completion. Instead, she leads you by the hand and you both leap into it.

When the initial flash and shimmer of it fades away, the first thing you notice is the salt in the air.

You’re by the sea.

“This …” you begin, taking your first few steps along the stone and sand of the shore. “This is where we went to. The summer of sophomore year?”

“I’m surprised you still remember. You’ve kept this memory locked deeply in your mind. I was worried it was already lost to you,” Gaeul replies, following shortly behind you. You get a good glimpse of the way the sea breeze blusters against her, how she tightens her focus to shield her eyes, how her hair cascades in ripples behind her like the ebbing tide. “Is this place good enough for you?”

“Anywhere with you is good enough, baby.”

She responds to your sappiness by inviting you to take a seat. The thing with being dead is that you don’t really give a flying fuck about how you plan on getting all this sand out of your clothes when doing the laundry later this weekend. There is no more laundry, and there is no more weekend. You simply just plop down beside her, dig your palms and fingers onto either side of you, and just lean back. Just relax.

You remember what happened here—on that day. And like a scene from a movie, it plays out before the both of you.

You watch as a younger version of yourself chases after Kim Gaeul, who with nowhere else to go, rushes into the sea. The water’s up to her knees now, and then her waist, and a part of you is worried her fragile form will be swept away by the tides, but she’s turning around to meet you now. And for a moment you believe she might collapse backwards and sink into the ocean like a siren would. But she’s got this big smile—this wide genuine grin—that tells you she is happy.

She is truly happy with you.

Before the rest of the memory, or rather, the context surrounding it, begins playing out as well, you terminate that thought, and as if on command, both of your forms dissipate into freckles of sand.

“This place—this form—it makes less and less sense to me,” you mutter, trying to clear your head. “How does … how does that even happen? That? All of this, really.”

Gaeul just shrugs, oblivious to your sense of confusion. “Did life make any sense to you at all?”

“Fair point. But I’m not giving you that one.” It’s then that she jabs your side, and you’re threatening to throw sand into her face, and then you’re both giggling and smiling like idiots with your backs planted against the shore.

Gaeul hasn’t changed. It’s comfortable. It’s scary. You noticed it earlier, but the way Gaeul looked back then is exactly how she is right now beside you. You’ve changed. For better or for worse, you’ve changed. A lot. And yet, Gaeul remained this way.

Is that one such affliction of death?

She’s beautiful. God, she’s so fucking beautiful even as she fights a sneeze and tries to check her nostrils for any sand or dirt in as ladylike a manner as possible. And she’s fortunate. really. She’s fortunate she hasn’t aged a day, lost her luster, crumbled into a curmudgeon. But at the same time, the thought tugs at your heart.

That’s because she couldn’t live anymore.

If you were to die today, if you ever so much as decided to die right now, what would your form in the afterlife look like? Would it be this? As you are? Would it be your bandaged and fucking demolished appearance back in that hospital room? Can you choose a point in your life? A certain age and time that you want people to remember you by? You wonder if that’s the case at all.

Because when you think about it, no one really gets a say on when and where or how they die, do they?

“What was it like for you, baby? What was it like … crossing over?”

As grating as a record scratch, Gaeul’s joy is immediately stripped away from her. It’s as if she didn’t expect you to ask such a thing. Her expression draws tightly around her lips as she lifts up into a sit and tries to answer your query. 

“Do you really want to know?”

Do you really want to know?

It didn’t occur to your dumb ass until now that you’ve just asked your girlfriend who … you know—died—what it was like to … well, die. There’s probably no easy way to put this, but you’re a fucking idiot. Who even asks someone that? Let alone a loved one?

But curiosity runs deep in your veins, and the undertone of morbidity simply circulates the blood deeper. “Sorry, I just … I wanted to know if it was alright. For you. Life was … I understood later on that life was really difficult for you, Gaeul. I just wanted … I just want some reassurance that beyond that, things got better.”

You’re not sure who you’re asking that for: yourself or Gaeul. Nevertheless, Gaeul is quick to reply.

“Yes, and I guess no?”

She embraces her knees, pulls them to her chest, and sinks her chin between the peaks of them, lips pursing. “When you died, did you feel it? Did you experience it? The void?”

“Yeah. I did.”

“It was scary, wasn’t it?”

You’re not sure how to reply. But Gaeul doesn’t wait for a response. “I thought that dying was just that. Emptiness. Disappearance. Just being wiped clean off any woes. Just eternal darkness, floating around, existing but at the same time not existing. That feeling when you close your eyes and it’s just pitch black everywhere? Like that. Exactly like that. When nothing else exists, and I can just … properly end.”

“But you’re … but you’re here …?”

She nods. “Yeah. But I’m here. And so are you. But I’ve exceeded you. I’ve crossed over to a place where time doesn’t exist. One of many concepts we have, actually, that no longer exists. It’s … hard to explain. It’s something that you can only really understand when you experience it yourself and—.”

“Can you take me there?”

She falls silent.

“Can you take me there, Gaeul …? I think … I think I’m done. I really am. If anything … between our conversations and the whole … memory thing? I think I’m through. With life? I think I’m … I think I’m ready to cross—.”

“WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?”

The skies darken as large thunderclouds suddenly cover its expanse in all directions, stretching out into the horizon. The sun fades behind it, eclipsed by the brewing storm that manifested overhead. 

“What … what was—?”

“Ma’am, we kindly request you calm down. It’s not advisable for the patient to—.”

“I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOUR RULES. HE’S MY FUCKING BOYFRIEND AND I NEED TO SEE HIM—NOW!”

A wave as tall as a three-story building rises from the sea and chases after the two of you now. In the middle of the rolling and towering water, you see through its translucence a scene playing out.

It’s Wonyoung. She’s pushing past hospital staff and doctors alike in an attempt to get to your room.

“Won- … Wonyoung, she’s …”

Gaeul grips your hand and points to the incoming wave. “Still remember how to swim?”

You chuckle. “What’s the worst that could happen? I’d drown?”

And as the crest of the wave kissed the shore, you allowed the force of the water sweep you away, feeling your body get thrown into the world’s largest washing machine, until you are spat back out onto the hallway of the hospital once more—just outside your room.

When you get up, you see Wonyoung at the door. You feel a string of guilt draw tight from your chest to your gut.

You can’t even look at her. You don’t want to. Not … not after all that’s happened.

Not while Gaeul’s right next to you.

But your ex-girlfriend pushes the small of your back, as if to lead you forward, and you resist. No way in hell are you going to watch your current girlfriend curse at you for being an idiot and getting yourself into this mess. But when Gaeul pushes you forwards again, this time, her hand passes through your stomach, and you get this innate sense of urgency and dread.

This feeling that you might be running out of time to decide.

So you throw caution to the wind—fuck it all—and just … phase through Wonyoung to view this scene from inside your room. From closer to your actual person.

Your parents, who have never left your side since their arrival, turn to Wonyoung in utter confusion. Your mother is the first to speak, and you know why—she’s being overprotective. “I’m sorry dear, but … who are you? Are you one of his  … one of my son’s … m-m-my son’s … friends?”

Without thinking twice, the first thing Wonyoung does is to bow. Down to her waist. Hands pressed firmly against her stomach. “Good evening. I … I’m Jang Wonyoung. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m … Your son hasn’t introduced me to you yet, but I’m his girlfriend.”

Everyone in the fucking room—in varying degrees of intensity—feel something shift inside of them.

“Girlfriend …?” your mother repeats as if to make sure that she heard the right thing. “Girlfriend, you … you’re dating … him?”

You want to scold your mother for fucking wording it like that. Of course that’s what dating means. But did she really have to sound so in fucking disbelief about you dating someone like Wonyoung? “Yes, ma’am. We’ve been dating for a while now.”

“He never mentioned you. Not at all,” your father replies, and there’s a certain disappointment in his voice that makes you feel even worse; but also, there’s a tinge of hope splashed across it somehow. “That boy … He’s only ever mentioned—.”

“Gaeul? Kim Gaeul?”

It’s ironic, but Gaeul is the only one who reacts here—she gasps. Very audibly.

“Y-Yeah … her. His—.”

“Ex-girlfriend?” Wonyoung finishes once more, coupled with a sigh and a shake of her head. “I’m aware. He’s rarely talked about her to me directly, but … I found out from other people. I didn’t want to pry any further since it seemed very … personal to him.”

Gaeul phases through Wonyoung as well but only to reach for your arms. She presses your wrists together, and you worry that she’s the one who wants to leave this situation, but instead, she insists you take a seat. So you sit down. She does too next to you. And you both listen to this interaction unfold.

Your parents both look at each other, trying to find the answer in one another, but when they realize they have nothing, they part from your bed. It’s your mother who invites Wonyoung over. “He’s … he’s barely stabilized. They managed to perform the surgeries successfully. And … he doesn’t seem to be in some sort of deep coma. It’s … It’s all up to him now to wake up.”

“May I say a few words to your son?”

You scoff. ‘Your son’. She could have said ‘my boyfriend’, but she chose ‘your son’. That’s not even out of respect anymore. This whole bit seems so fucking transactional. Like for show. And you know it deep in your guts, which is why you’re struggling to stay still in your seat. You want to leave. You don’t want to hear anymore of her drivel.

But Gaeul holds you down and keeps you at bay.

Wonyoung takes gentle strides towards you. None of that pompous sounding clacking of her heels. They’re unmeasured and out of step now. Unable to find the proper cadence. Because how could she? Despite everything, she’s still a woman faced with the potential loss of her boyfriend on his deathbed. Anyone would lose their composure.

But you don’t expect what happens next. Not at all.

Wonyoung cries.

And this is the first time you’ve seen her cry.

She does not hold your face like your mother does to swaddle you in despair. She does not grip you like your father does as if to steady your resolve. Instead, she weeps across your chest, caressing your neck downwards in loving strokes, as she holds you like a lover does.

As she holds you like a girlfriend does.

And the ghosts of the past come to haunt you like dancers waltzing across a ballroom. Memory after memory playing out in this small hospital room before you.

Swish.

“Do I really have to meet you every night like this? It’s …”

“It’s what?” she wonders as she stirs her iced drink with her straw, peeking up from her work laptop. “Tiring? Repetitive? Boring you?”

You sigh, rubbing your nape as you eye the ring of moisture around your own drink. “I … It’s not like that. Don’t be like this, Wonyoung …”

“Can’t I meet my boyfriend every night like this? I worry. Do I not have the right to?”

You chuckle and shake your head. “You have every right to. You also have every right to pay for my—.”

“Such a romantic,” she groans, sliding you her card with a smile. “Seems like that presentation drained you, babe. Get something to eat.”

Swish.

“Not clear enough.”

“What?”

She shrugs, grape still between her teeth mid-crunch while she lounges on the couch, scrolling through her phone. “You spent how long on this draft? Five weeks?”

“Six, if you count the revisions, but—.”

“And it’s still this shoddy? Babe, you’re going to be presenting to a panel this tie. This is important. You’re going to need to sound more concise than this. Like, why do I need to know all of Carl Rogers’ backstory—?”

“To give context and nuance to his branch of humanistic psychology.”

“And why do you have to dedicate a section comparing humanism in psychology to—what did you call it—behaviorism and psychodynamics—?”

“Babe, because I’m comparing him to his predecessors and contemporaries. Look, just … these are discipline things. I get why you might not understand—.”

“I don’t, but your panel would already know this. You’re just re-explaining to them the basics. Cut to the chase and revise from there.”

You don’t know what annoys you more: the way she’s absentmindedly scrolling through social media with one leg crossed over the other as she says this, or the fact that what she actually says has more merit than you want to give it credit for. Either way, she just plucks another grape from her bowl and munches on it. “When you’re done, let me hear it again. Hopefully, it’s more focused this time.

You pinch your nose and sigh. “Ok, Wonyoung.”

Swish.

“Really? Do we have to talk about this now?”

“It only makes sense to. I mean, why are we both still in this relationship if we aren’t going to talk about potential marriage. You do want to marry, right?”

Did you?

You’ve never really thought about being tied down like this. Not yet at least. Not while you still had something to prove. Not while you were still figuring the fuck out of yourself. Not while you still lived paycheck to paycheck in your downtown apartment while your girlfriend is living upstate in her penthouse suite. 

Did you want to marry? Did you want to marry her?

Because the last time you checked, you’ve never really considered marrying anyone unless it was … But you let that thought go. Let it slide. It’s just a relapse. It doesn’t, shouldn’t, can’t ever fucking touch the actual heft of your psyche.

“I guess so.”

“You guess so?”

“Yeah, I mean … we’re barely even thirty, Wonyoung. I’m sure there’s a lot we both want to do, and—.”

“I kind of want to settle in already though.”

You raise your brow, and you ready to part your lips in response, but Wonyoung waves you down and pinches your ear, reminding you of how you were both still naked in bed, covered only by a thin layer of blanket. “Never mind. Maybe it’s still too early after all. We’ve just been dating for four years. What’s another four more?”

Her last question sinks the final blow into your gut.

“Wonyoung …”

But it’s too late. She’s already turned her back towards you, pulled half the blanket along with her, and now all you can see is the bare column of her nape stretching down to the middle of her ribs.

You shift your gaze back up to the ceiling and sigh, wishing you weren’t so much of a fucking ass hat.

Swish.

When you return to your senses, Wonyoung’s whispering something to your ear—to your actual ear. Of your actual body. You take a step forward because you want to hear what she’s saying, but you turn back and see Gaeul sitting rigidly as she takes this all in too. You’re about to tell her it’s not what it looks like, but she just puts on her best smile and encourages you with a nod.

You wish she didn’t have to be here. You wish she wasn’t this kind. But for better or for worse, you leave Kim Gaeul behind for just a second before wafting over towards your girlfriend.

“—going to kill you …”

Off to a great start. Off to a terrific start. You believe you’ve heard enough and are ready to return to Gaeul, but then she continues.

“How … how could this happen to you …? I-I … I did the best I could to keep you alive. To make sure you’re alright … It’s not fair … It’s not fair at all … I’ve spent all these years loving you, a-and … this just happens … Life is so … cruel to me … taking you away from me—from us—like this … I know, babe … I know more than anyone—more than even your parents—that … you’re carrying so much … A-And I can’t … oh gosh, I-I-I couldn’t … couldn’t even do anything about it …”

She wipes her reddening eyes against her sleeve—not even with a handkerchief that she normally carries around with her—and chuckles hysterically. “They said you … they found you. At the cemetery. Did you really think I didn’t know you were headed there? You’re a fucking psychologist, so did you really think … after all these years, I wouldn’t have picked up anything? About the anniversary effect? About grieving? About … loss? Did you really think I didn’t understand your pain?”

You’re trembling. You’re a fucking ghost, and yet you feel so … cold.

“I know … and I’m sorry … I-I-I … I … I’m sorry. The only way I really know how to love is … what I can give you. So I … I let you go visit her. Every time. Because I know she’s the only person who can make you feel that way—make you feel secure. Make you … feel loved. I just … I’ve been telling myself I’m not just some substitute to you, but … but I think I understand now that I … I’ve been hurting you more than helping you by trying to f-fill the hole in your heart that she—oh god, oh god.”

Wonyoung collapses onto her knees and weeps into the fold of your arm, and your parents are rushing to help her up, but she swats them away. She fits her small and precious face into the palm of your lifeless hand, fixes the medical tube attached to it, and kisses your cold unmoving fingertips. “I know it’s too much to ask … because I know—I just know …—that if it’s between me and her, it’s … it’s her. So if you really have to go … if you can’t stay here anymore … just know that you … you are loved. I-I-I love you … I really, really, love you …”

You can’t take it anymore.

The thought of rushing out of the room is only outsped by your form’s ability to phase through materials. You keep running and running and running, that at some point, you begin to question why the hallways seem endless or where you were even headed. Until you realize that you’re looping. That you cannot escape the sanitary confines of the hospital. That you are perpetually tethered to your body. And that Gaeul knew this all along.

“Hey …”

You don’t want to hear it. Your form feels so fucking heavy now that if you had the ability to breathe still, you’d be suffocating at this point. “What … what the fuck was all of this for? You said I have a choice, Gaeul. You never told me when to make it. Why … god, why didn’t you ask me for my choice earlier?”

“Because I … I thought that you might—.”

“Might what?” you retort, and you know you’re raising your voice now, but you don’t fucking care. “Might change my mind? Do you even know what’s in my mind right now? Tell me. I’m begging you, Gaeul. Tell me what the fuck is on my … mind …”

You fall to your knees, bow your head low, and don’t dare look up. Not after your fucking meltdown. “I-I-I’m sorry …”

You recall the way your mom and dad held you in their arms. At the way you let them down as their son.

“I’m so … so sorry …”

You recall the way Wonyoung crumpled in half beside you thinking she was the worst girlfriend you could have ever ended up with. At the way you let her down as her lover.

“I’m so … fucking … sorry …”

You recall the way Gaeul’s been lingering around you this entire time. Trying to present you something you can’t fully surmise. Trying to tell you something you don’t even remotely hear. Trying to make you feel something that your numb ass can’t even begin to sense.

And you start to sink into the floor.

It’s heavy—the dread. You’re empty, and yet, it feels so fucking heavy.

You sink through the floors beneath you, past the ground floor, beyond the basement and the underground structures of the hospital, deeper than the drainage pipes and sewers, lower than the dens of rats and pests, continuously now until all you see is an endless streak of metamorphic rock and dense layers of earth.

Until all you see around you is the darkness of the void.

Maybe this is your response.

As you sink deeper into the core of the earth, the void speaks back to you, reflects your inner mind, and projects those thoughts to you on loudspeaker like a twist of fucking fate.

Your time is up. Give up, kiddo. You’re already washed.

Maybe in the next life, sweetheart, you’ll … become something more.

Babe, are you really going to roll around in the muck like this? It’s pathetic.

Is this all you can really achieve? I didn’t hire you to be mediocre.

This isn’t a story—this is the idea of a story. Ideas aren’t good without execution, and frankly, you struggle with the delivery.

This is all you will ever amount to.

This is all you will ever fucking be.

This is what you are.

This is what you are.

A fucking let down.

It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt anymore.

Whether that’s thanks to your current form or because of years of suffering, it no longer hurts you. You just allow yourself to feel the weight of all your mistakes, all your misgivings, and all your misfortune swell up to the size of a gargantuan boulder, and let it crush you like a bug deeper and deeper into the ground.

Baby …

“No … please … don’t …”

Baby, I—

“Please, Gaeul … just let me go … just let me fucking go …”

But you know her better than you know yourself—she won’t let you go. Not like this.

And so when you see a column of light spiraling downwards through the dirt and soil, you reach a hand out for it and allow it to beam you forwards, back into the light of day.

Then, you find yourself back on that rooftop. Atop the highest floor of the hospital that’s only accessible to those with the key, or beings such as yourself and Gaeul, in between the border of the realms.

She’s brought you to the exact position you two once were in when you had first met here hours ago. But this time, her back isn’t to you. This time, she’s got wings. And this time, she’s not looking over the balcony—she’s looking at you.

Just at you.

“We don’t have much time,” she says, and every word tries to cleanse the filth and grime from your being because she is so goddamn angelic that you can’t help but feel her warmth in each word—in each touch. She holds your face with one hand even if you try to look away, and calls you forward—calls you home. “Your form, i-it’s already beginning to flicker.”

You don’t need to look at your own figure to realize it. You’re fading in and out of existence. You don’t want to think about what will happen if you don’t make a choice. You don’t want to know if there are fates worse than damnation. “Well, I have my answer. But you’re the one who won’t let me say it. Gaeul, I don’t want to fucking live anymore. Why can’t you see that?”

“Because I know that’s a lie.”

She stands before you with her hands curled towards her chest, wings beating with each passing second like it might mimic the beat of your heart, eyes fixed on nothing and no one but you. “Do you know why I begged for this chance with you? Right here, right now? Do you know why I walked you through all of this?”

“Why …?”

“Because when I was thinking of killing myself, I just … I just needed someone to be there for me. Someone. Anyone. To talk to. To … to even for a second make me feel that life is still worth clinging onto.”

“Gaeul …”

“I showed you all these memories of your past not to rub it in your face again, but to remind you that … it’s not easy. It’s never easy. But that doesn’t mean it will be that way forever.”

“Gaeul, I-I—.”

“I did all this to hopefully change your mind about wanting to leave this world behind because … because I wish someone did this for me too. But now, I don’t have that choice anymore. I can’t turn back time o-or bargain for a second lease on life. But you? Baby, you still have that chance now.”

Before you can devolve into another whimpering mess, she holds your hands tightly to steel you. “If there was one thing I could have done for you as your girlfriend, it would have been to remove the doubt from your mind. Baby, you are such a wonderful person. Your heart is full of whoever holds your affection and interest, and anyone inside it would be fortunate to be there. But learn to let people in, please? Like you did with me. You have people who love you, and sometimes that’s harder to see when all that’s inside of you is … the bad stuff.”

She’s crying now. Gaeul’s crying now, and you have to hand it to yourself for probably being the first person to have ever lived—or died—to make an angel cry like this.

“Baby, you’r enough as you are. I’ve tried to tell you that—make you feel that—every single day, but I don’t do that just to make you stop pursuing things o-or to stop trying, or to be satisfied with what you have. I tell you that so you can be secure. So you might never forget that when the going gets tough, you’ll always fall back to the thought that you are enough. That you might try again, and again, and again from there.”

“I … But Gaeul, you know … you know that you’re all I have—.”

She glares at you, and you shut the fuck up. “Say that again. I dare you.”

“Sorry … Maybe … Maybe I have one or two people who might care.”

“At least three. Don’t forget Wonyoung.”

“Right … Wonyoung. About her … I—.”

“Love her.”

“What …?”

She nods firmly and crinkles her nose as she repeats herself. “Love her. She loves you. She really does. I’ve … been watching. Beyond just today. She’s good for you, you know that? She’s charming, skilled, very receptive at that too. And she’s … baby she’s healthy—.”

“Stop …”

“She’s … she can give you everything I wished to have given you but my … my mind wouldn’t let me. You have to start treating her properly—like a proper girlfriend. It hurts me to see the way I left you leave a mark on her too. So don’t leave her now, ok? Return to her.”

How?

How could you ever have gotten to a point in your life when your dead ex-girlfriend’s ghost, or angel, or whatever the fuck she is now, is telling you to move on? How can you move on from every fucking thing in this goddamn plane of existence when the one thing—the one fucking  person—that you have learned to continue living for is gone?

How could she say that?

“Gaeul …” you try to reply, but it comes out so feeble and shaky that it’s more desperate than it is sincere at this point. “Don’t you ever … fucking … say that again … I don’t give a shit if you were unhealthy. I don’t give a shit if we were broke o-or if we were barely surviving, or if we were … we were just lost in our own little world. I just wanted you. I just wanted you … You were more than enough for me … Why couldn’t you have understood that?”

“So when I say that you’re enough, you don’t believe me. And now that you say it to me, I’m supposed to somehow make it connect?” she teases and shakes her head, shaking off some of the tears that come along with it. “But message received. I just … I just want you to keep going, you know? It’s not perfect—this life. Far from it really. But … moments like these? I can’t have them anymore. Not with you, or with anyone else, or at all. But you? You … you can still have these one day.”

She waves a hand at the sky, and soon, you witness a gallery of memories you have yet to make play out simultaneously before you.

A graduation. 

A new job. 

A wedding. 

A family. 

A reunion. 

A memorial. 

A celebration.

And you think to yourself that nothing in this world other than Gaeul could keep you tethered to it. But for a moment, you think that maybe—just maybe—it isn’t so bad out there.

“Keep on. Keep moving forward, baby. Because I will always be right behind you.”

And before you can even react, she pushes you away, and you sink backwards through the roof of the hospital, and she’s smiling down at you as her wings help her take flight to fly up and away from you.

And as you’re falling down through the ground, through the floors, in a desperate final attempt for your soul to merge with your body again, you see it. You see it all.

A hallway of memories.

The first time you went to school and had to receive a bouquet of kisses from your mother to reassure you that it will be alright. 

The last time you ever had a bottle of beer at the local pub because Wonyoung found out about your alcohol problem and decided to intervene directly. 

That time when you were sitting on a park bench with your dad talking about life, love, and the woe of having a face full of acne at your age. 

That time in the workroom when you thought no one else was left behind other than you and you sang that one Taylor Swift song at the top of your lungs only to realize the janitor was still there singing along with you.

All of it. 

Each and every moment of your life comes back to you. Ushering your spirit back into its physical casing. Guiding you back to yourself. And you see it.

You see your mother hovering over you, hope planted deep in her eyes.

You see your father gripping your hand, faith straining in each muscle.

You see your girlfriend beckoning for you, love coating her every word.

And then you see the feather of an angel, fluttering downwards to your face, and when its ruffles tickle your nose, you hear the melody of its owner laughing in the distance.

Then there’s nothing. Nothing but silence.

Then there’s a beep. And another. Then, yet another.

When you come to, you remind yourself to breathe. This is the real world. You have to actually do something now to keep yourself alive. Your eyes are fucking dry, so it takes a few rubs to really see what’s going on.

Your parents are on one side, calling for the hospital staff to check on you now that you’re awake. Your girlfriend’s on another, holding your face in her hands as she tears up in relief.

And you look at these people. At the people who fill up the entirety of your little world. At how they might feel about your return to life. At what they might curse at you after you’ve recovered, ridiculing your foolishness. At what might be in store for the lot of you in the future.

For the first time in a long time, you feel it—fear. Fear that you might, in fact, lose them for good. Fear that you might, in fact, lose it all if you were to die.

Fear that you might never live again.

It’s noisy. It’s so fucking noisy.

Between the return of your heartbeat against the monitor, the rushing in of medical professionals, the way your mother and father call the rest of your family to announce you’re alright, and the way your girlfriend is just staying by your side as your rock, you can’t help but shed a tear.

This is life. 

It’s messy. It’s confusing. Fucking senseless. And fucking loud.

But this life? It’s yours.

As you close your eyes, you let all the emotions overwhelm you one final time before you pass out from fatigue.

Where are you? You know. You damn well fucking know where you are right now.

You’re where you need to be. You’re where you’re meant to be. And you’ll be on your way to wherever it is life decides to take you next. You know it—one day, you will grow wings, and it will take you far away from here. At long last.

But for now? You know where you are.

And this time, you’re not going to let anyone down.