The walls feel crisp against your fingers. Cold sweat drips down your hairs. Just as you think the nausea has passed, your stomach gives another lurch and pinches of eggs, bread and a dash of acidic juice burn it's way down your throat. You pant out hot puffs which are oddly cold against your lips. Your nose fills with the scent of vomit and sharp smell of dirty toilets. Slowly stepping away so that your head doesn't spin further, you press your back against the door and listen to your racing heart. You can barely hear the cackles of classmates.

Slipping your trembling hand down the walls, you think: this is how must be like. The start of depression. It's subtle. But it's bold enough. You can just... feel it. Slithering in your brain and slipping it's ugly hand into your thoughts. You must be like those cliché characters on cheap angst dramas.

.

Time is a dragon. A blue-eyed dragon flying at Mach 5.

13 days.

No sign of Dai.

.

Perhaps, he is the reason your stomach churns and why sleeping pills don't work on insomniac nights anymore. Depression might just be a wrong assessment. Though, the heart doesn't calm from useless chatter, restless days are just restless. Sure it is, you decide, Dai is the reason.

(Even if it was or wasn't, what can you do?)

You remember blood stained tan hands and guilt eats at you. All this worry should go to Eunhyung. But there is no contact from her, not even Yooneun. And when you get passed the phone from her parents to her-for moments, you face a haunting, dark sorts of silence. (Your frantic, pretty 'hello's and 'how are you's are always prettily ignored.) Just when you think Eunhyung is about to reply, a booming 'CLICK' and silence wrings your hopes dry. It had been horrible, that day. You replay the silent body of hers, like a broken little sparrow, and the never ending despair in those eyes. As if she wanted to truly disappear, as if she was already—dead. Our parents don't know, Yooneun said at a minute visit. She doesn't even talk to anyone, or me. You shiver. Knowing, knowing acutely, the trauma isn't visible. But it's there. And it will someday turn into a storm. You can only hope to calm it... somehow.

You conjure up a possibility that this is how it might be for the rest of your life. Living so close to someone you care for, though never able to face her properly. The mere thought makes you shiver.

Mother, these days, talks about how nice the place you'll be moving is. She plans about everything. What will be moved when, what decorations she'd buy. You sigh at her zealous mood. There's no need to be so happy, you'll be the one doing most of the work for her anyways.

A(She gazes at you at those times, worry shining like rubies in her eyes. You know, she wants to talk. She wants to give you space too. And you're desperate for someone who'd listen. But it is true, that you are the one pushing her care away. This is maybe what's called... What was it again- yes, Mauerbauertraurigkeit. Wasn't that a vast accomplishment.)

You cough with a dry throat. Your little heart race wont stop and you can faintly hear the bell ring for class through hoarse breathing. The boys grunt in ire and leave with noise. And then it's all solemn. You glance at your watch. Gotta go to class. Groaning, you grip the sink. Sensei's going to yell again. You try and grip it hard enough pull yourself up.

You are half on your feet again. Before your hand slips and you're crashing against tiled walls. "Ack... shit."The pain pools in your back. Sure to bruise. You close your eyes tight, it's like your brain is sloshing against your skull. You can't stand, but you can't sit. This lightheaded feeling is a stubborn little horse.

You admire scenery through the ventilator. All sunny and sweet smelling trees. It looks peaceful outside, and you find yourself wishing you hadn't come to school at all.

"Hey!" It's not silent anymore. "You said you'd do it!" Probably two girls. Giggling and shouting as the sink flows in the back. There's nothing else to do, so you close your eyes and lean your head back. We shall call them girl #1 and #2. "No way! When did I do that?" Girl two huffs, you can imagine her cheeks red hot with blood.

"Come on, it's valentines. Please give it to him for me?"

"Nope. Did you see how Yoon Suh looks like? A real kidnapper! And those pimples, sheesh. I don't get what you like in him.."

"Come on, don't be such an ass..."

"And you should stop being a selfish bitch! Do you want me to get kidnapped?"

You do this often now. Listening to people. Probably stalker-ish, by normal standards. But you only do this now. After Dai had gone. What are you hoping for. A piece of information about him? (You are. You hope to catch a piece him. How is he? Does he miss me?) You assure yourself with fantasies of the future, a future without worry, a future without this burden on your shoulder.

Like all others, this will pass too. This will pass too. It's only the initial stage. He can't be forgiven, so he must be forgotten. He's nothing. (He is. He is the glittering snow-stars, galaxies which you visit at night with a blue spaceship.)

.

But it will all pass. It will pass.

This is your favourite phrase now.

You don't feel that hitch in your breath anymore, so you strut your way back to class with no thoughts of cigarettes and bleached gold hair.

But at the end, when you're tried of doing equitations thusly calming, very calming music bursting into your ears. And when your head is pervaded by ache and you're being lulled by cherry blossoms, you crash into your bed and stare at the ceiling. You're thoughts are arrested by the devil. Restless, for him.

It's always a while before you can sleep.

:

His wheat-hair is over your chest. Tan hands and cruel smirks that make your heart jump in stupid cupidity. You can't reach out to him; with your ivy twined hands and feet. Now that you look at it: all of your body is. Your constant screaming is muffled by a wad of cloth, reduced to pieces of disheveled groans are cries. Dai doesn't care, he moves down to your jeans and gives a sharp tug.

I want to touch you too, you desire to say. Let me touch you.

His eyes are oceans and cackles of seagulls, you think. They're deep. They're scary to a fault.

Dai can't be seen properly in this lighting from your laid-back position. But you don't need to look and see that: he's watching. He's watching and scheming and psychoanalysing and... And yeah. He's watching me.

.

Dai. Dai... Dai-

.

"It's like, the more you know him.." the deuteragonist speaks back, "the more you dint understand him."

It's true.

It's so true you wanna cry.

Cry tears of blood and vitriol.

.

Dai is all around you. Over you. In your mind, in your hair and in this label washed dirty tin you call a life. In This there's a small assurance:

"I'll come back as a pine tree over that hill," he mumbles as his hair obscures his eyes, "you could be the light house. So we'll always face each other."

(There are so many options. Days are ocean-sandy helix. A corridor with thousands of oak doors. You are confused. Curious. Tempted. But like Alice, there is only one door for you. And the key is a gold named 'Dai.' Only obsatcle: he's too far up.)

.

And at morning, your alarm screams and you're awake from haven.

It's all grey and red.

It's too grating.

.

(I miss you.)

:

20 days. No Jaehee.

.

It's hot outside. But your room is cold. Cold is good.

—PING!

Dudes from the gang text often, calling you to hellish max. In the morning, evening-in the middle of night. They wake you up from the light dozes you have, it's getting annoying to the point you simply want to bash the thing into the ground. You can just turn it off; but you don't feel like it.

Plus, it's hilarious how the fuckers use a few thousand emojis.

You can hear mom and one of her bimbo's laughter. Quite a feat, considering the spacious home. Apparently, the bimbo recently had another son. So she came to show it off. (Yooi spent some time nagging you about it, and you can't help a small bit of joy when he was defeated.) It's a wonder to you, how old and shrivelled hags like her can still have babies, and go absolutely nuts over them. Or maybe it is because of their old age that they can be like that, who knows?

What's so good about babies anyway. They whine, can't do anything right, they drool. Most of all, they're parasites, especially for the mother. Sucking all the nutritions the mother consumes for itself.

And there's never a guarantee that they wouldn't grow up to be like you and conquer the world, or something. People choose to ignore it. You scoff: 'Cause they're buncha sissies.

Jaehee and you are sure to-you decide one evening-never have kids.

There's a book on your lap. All white and a chick glaring at the sun. Her heart-glasses are half past blue eyes, teasingly sucking at a lollipop with her red lips. Vladimir Nabokov-Lolita. This is one of the books you found on Jaehee's desk. It looked interesting; lying so innocently like that. You took it.

For someone naive like Jaehee, you'd think this was a pretty scandalous thing. A no-life pedophile's memoirs of a sultry, devastating affair with a minx. A sly book, too. And how real it all feels... Like a thousand worms and ants crawling over. You blame it all on the narration.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

It's a nice snippet. You graze your fingers against the spine of the book. It reminds you of Jaehee. (The goody-two-shoes Jaehee rubs off on you. As you rub off on him.) So you made up your own paragraph.

Not the exact one. But still, as "poetic" as someone like you can possibly make.

Jaehee, my copy, my lover. My brawn, my brains. He is me. Jae-hee: lulling the tongue to the tip of tooth and to the underside of tongue, but not touching. Never touching. He is plain Jaehee, my Jaehee, hair swept by wind with summer-night black eyes. (You take a moment to remember that word. What did Jaehee say it wasn't? Sen-something...) Sensuous lashes curling against rosy cheeks in morning light. He is mine. So he should stay by my feet.

The last lines were probably out the blue. Rustic, something so very amateur. (And here is the one who reads manhwa and not novels written by pansy-ass old farts.) Real cheesy too. But you like it, and Jaehee would like it too. So it doesn't matter.

This is not the only one though. You've made almost a hundred of them. Between dinner, in sleep, shimmying up to gran as she blabbers, rambles her sweet nothings. It's comforting and irking. Yooi looked at you at those times once, a creepy expression on his face. You quickly 'sent him away' so you're not feeling that strange pinprick on your back. And you're back to the start. You unfurl your mind: "he's looking at me"—"his hands are so cold"—"I want to munch his beautiful eyes off"—"hoping he'd be safe"—this is hardly your mind anymore.

You wonder, when playing billiards and smoking won't be as effective: what would it be like if he hadn't betrayed me? What if that chick hadn't wondered her sorry as to the lair?

You don't continue. Because if you think up a line, it'd turn to a screenplay. And before you know it, it'd turn into a whole drama. A drama full of pink princesses and blood. And Jaehee is no hero of a cheap drama.

It's useless though, you always go back to mid-summers' night eyes and hot sand.

.

I'm going crazy.

.

It always comes. At night, in particular. A red-eyed snake lifting its head from the bog. You stay to watch as it bites you with poison teeth. You feel cold and so fucking hot.

(I tread on water with my ninja shoes.)

You assure yourself: He's mine, so he doesn't go to anyone else. He's my dupe so he'll realise himself and come back. He's my little honour student, smart too, so-yeah.

I want to scratch his face and pull out his heart. Press it beating against my cheek. And sew it back together, and then we can lean on each other and watch the sun setting on ocean waves.

This will pass. It will be alright.

It is alright.

.

(It's not. It never is.)

:

But after a few wisps of day-like smoke, it is.

It's all okay when he teases:

"You can hang out with me if you come to school!"