When you are young, you are meant to follow destinations. It's like a mandate and a purpose. Each and every single person fills you up with dreams to follow, paths to come across, you walk in eight legs instead of two, each running back and forth until you can decide what you really want.
But,
"I need you to be you. You are my bestest friend in the world and I just want you to be that. Stay by my side," that was Anna. She was the only one who used to tell me that. Even being the bestest friend of someone and staying by their side all the time - to be honest, felt kind of imposing and not mutual at times but, her first words carried a lot of weight. Even the day she passed away, just some hours ago she was repeating those same goddamn words. Till now, they kept on haunting me. I had failed to keep those promises. I failed to be the friend she wanted me to be and stay by her side all the time. It was a small task, compared to all others. But I even failed at that. What was I supposed to do?
Die?
I didn't know. Wanting to die and wanting to disappear are two different things. I just wanted to disappear, to a land where there existed no friend, no enemies, I just wanted to be myself. I could keep a part of her promise then. I could still repent for my sins there, alone, with no senses, in the ninth circle of hell, at least?
I killed my closest friend. And here I was, chasing after some nutjobs acting all lawful when I was one of them.
The irony.
What should be my punishment?
I stared at the human-ridden station. Only raindrops and unspoken agony filled up the space, still reminded of the human species in one way. I stared at the rail line for a while. A jester-like voice spoke with a yawning voice in my mind.
"I think you should do it."
Should I do it?
A ringtone came growling past the sound of rain. It sounded like the support of call while the raindrops clapped to the decision, supporting it too. Maybe I should do it. I just, effing, couldn't take it anymore.
I jerked my head. What was I even thinking?
"No, stop. It wasn't my fault. Anna was just there at the wrong time in the wrong place!"
I repeated those same words to the voice, the ones my friends yelled at Fiona as well. It was my only sentence of defense. In the court where I was both the lawyer and the judge, that felt so futile and came so profoundly to be laughed at.
I was failing at it too.
It was like a hypnotic effect that worked on me, working my legs to come closer to the rusting parallel lines. Whole my life that had been a parallel line, I waited for one non-parallel to come and cross me out, but this long wait had been so long. I was tired, I wanted no more non-parallels to come and save me because they never do. They're just as bad as mirages.
"Hey!"
"I know," I said to the voice in my head, "I should." It was right, always right. Even though I knew, I always fought back all alone. But now I wanted to give in and see for once if it was truly right because whatever I chose against until now was never right. If 'right' even existed at the other end.
"Y/N! Stop right there!"
I halted. It was not the voice in my head. And the sound of it was so familiar.
I turned around. In the haze through the bokeh formed by the rain, all I could see was a silhouette walking toward me. Slender, pitter-patter his footsteps, I could not get a grasp on his face. A second yell shot from his mouth had me perceive who it was.
Had it not been me in my own world of dismay, it wouldn't have taken me moments before I realized - what was he doing here? How did he know I was there?
He beckoned vigorously at me, drawing himself faster in a speed of light to reach where I was. The black raincoat he wore took away the sight of more than half of his face. Only his lips showed, moving, twitched to the side in a mood of anger as they did to let out words to give a microphone to his emotion.
"Get up from there."
"No." Was all I said, firmly.
"Get. Up."
I wanted to yell "Try me" at his face at the top of my lungs, but I was enervated. My body was, mind was, and I didn't want this one man to interlude my life right at this point.
I felt a strong force tugging on my arms, next thing I realized was my feet leaving contact from the rough surface of the ground between the railway, and I was in the arms of the man standing behind me.
"I told you to stop it! Stop interfering with my life!"
"It's all okay. Listen to me, everything's fine." He spoke in his most delicate voice.
"What's fine? What is everything that you are saying is fine? How much do you even know about my life that you are saying that everything is effing, fine?" I did it now. Every drop of my inner frustration came out roaring in the strongest thunder against the barking sky. He gazed at me with nothing but stillness in his eyes.
"Nothing is fine! This is. If I let this end, everything will get back to its place. The world will effing rest in peace, so just let me do it!" It was my words and tears mingling with the sky tears now. He wasn't supposed to distinguish them out, but he stared like he could, all drops of them.
"Why do you want to do this?"
"Cuz I've come to the point where I know I should have made the decision earlier. Years earlier!" I dropped to my knees, "Please. Just leave me alone. I...I can't take it anymore!"
There rested silence of the rain only for the time being. He didn't talk, and I couldn't. My sobbing was unheard and I was glad. The sight before me darkened after a minute or so and his face was drooping close to my eyes. A radiance of warmth cocooned me in an instant, my face got buried into the shoulder of a small yet loving man.
"It's all right." Jimin's voice had its own serene nature, "Cry it all out. Scream if you want. There's no one to judge, no one to hear you. Do what your heart feels satiated at."
And I cried.
I cried with the memories rushing and having a fight with each other, of my father's funeral, of the news of my mother's death, the time when everyone left me out, and then Anna leaving me too. Why did everyone have to leave me like this?
When I was young, a group of people told me I was cursed so my father died this so young. Was I really cursed? Was I really eating away the life of those loved ones who were close to me? Why was I like this? Why is everything wrong with me?... Just why?
"Why did it have to be like this? I am sorry, I know it's all my fault. It was because of me Anna was there, I shouldn't have told her all those shits in the first place. I didn't...mean...to...flee like that from the place..." I sobbed harder, clutching his shoulder, "I didn't just know Anna was there. I just couldn't do anything to save her that day. I'm...so...sorry...I'm sorry...I really am...I am so..."
"If you couldn't do anything about it, then perhaps it was supposed to happen by fate."
"What fate? Are you a goddamn religious moron now?" I pushed him, "If fate had her going away like this, had me pass my days as nothing but her murder like this, then I better choose my own fate and end it here. Is that what is written in fate too?" I smiled bitterly, "It must be. Of course. It's all written by fate!"
"Stop thinking about all that now. Look at me." He cupped my face softly and pointed at the sky, "Anna is looking at you from there now. She knows it all and it's not your fault. Do you want her to suffer in agony up there too being a sobbing mess like this?"
I took an intervention to my weeps, toning them down to silent ones.
"Who was she to you?"
"She is my best friend."
"Do you want your best friend to be happy up there too or not?"
"I do..."
"Then do you think seeing you sad will keep her happy?"
I bit onto my lower lip. Jimin looked at me tenderly in the eyes, "Then will you listen to my words and get up from here now? You'll get a cold otherwise."
"I don't want to." This rain made me feel like I was at my place. Even in the agony, it was hanging onto me so close, I didn't want to leave.
"Then what do you want to do?"
"I wanna run away."
"Take my hand."
I looked up at him extending his hand out to me.
"What?"
"You heard me right."
It felt like a herald, a wave to respond to. Once I hold and lace my fingers with him, I will be gone to the land I wanted to be in. I could be myself without my senses, in my punishment, I could still be me.
"Do you wanna run away? With me?"
And I did. It all felt so out of place and hazy, yet in the place where other things couldn't fit in. I was dazed when I held his hand. He let out a small smile and held onto my hand tight. I didn't know where we were going. I didn't want to.
The sound of rainfall reverberated into the small space. The sunshade was giving meaning to those small sounds amplifying a thousand times, muffling all other noises from around. The place felt shabby and clammy. Rested a thick blanket and a mattress to a side on top of the gathered canes, a water bottle beside, and a half-used-up candle, it narrated that someone lived there, not because they wanted to but had to. Perhaps they were homeless. But they weren't here right now, no signs that they would be coming back soon in this heavy rainfall either.
The frostiness had started to get to me now. I had stopped crying, was feeling embarrassed about it that I cried like such a baby in front of that Park Jimin. He didn't need to see all of this. Now he knew my weak side. I didn't want him to be the one to see it.
He got rid of the raincoat and turned around. His eyes with interludes traveled down to my tip to toe. I looked at him and looked back at myself. Immediately the embarrassment flashed hues on my pale cheeks.
"Are you cold?"
"No. I'm fine."
"You don't seem so."
"You don't gotta worry about me." Nobody needed to do that for me.
I turned to the opposite side and tried to free the shirt from clinging to my body. It was freezing, only my mind was numb enough to actually feel the frostiness. When the brain departs to a melancholic state, it likes to get free from everything. The outside world, contact with people, the urge of body to hold enthalpy. Suddenly they crave for the lack of temperature, that gush of light becomes unbearable. Right now, I wanted to get frozen. I wanted to get rid of the burns over scars done inside and if ice could help me with that, then so be it.
It was the opposite of how Anna felt it. Those flames of fire still flashed so vividly as if it was from my imagination rather than reality. How must have she felt then? Physically, mentally - suffocation, betrayal...
I held my hand out to feel the sirimiri. Even if the opposite could get me feeling somewhere close to her, then...
They were right, they were all right about me. And I knew I deserved all that I was feeling right now.
Two burly arms wrapped around my waist pulling me backward. I shivered by the touch. My body jerked as a reflex.
"What are you doing? Stop it."
His frozen, pink flesh of lips lingered down the bare skin of my neck. "I'm cold too. Warm me up."
"I said stop." I pushed myself out of his hold.
"Sorry...if you don't like it." He murmured.
"I am glad you understand," I said, sarcastically.
He sat down as I did under the sunshade with the intention to perhaps continue an easy conversation.
"You want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Okay." He said, "I guess the day went rough on you." Added he, "But you shouldn't take such a rash decision like...taking your life...that's-"
"Stop talking like you know it all about me."
"I don't. And I know that."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome?"
"Tell me something. What are you even doing here in the first place?" I snapped my neck at him with interrogative eyes, "Were you following me?"
"No. I was calling on your phone though. You weren't picking up."
"That doesn't explain how you are here."
"Manager-nim told me. And I just happened to reach the station at the right time."
"Happened to reach the station at the right time? What are you, some angel sent by God?"
"Why are you interrogating me in such a manner? Are you angry at me because I brought you here?"
"Well, yes."
"Then you were the one to follow me."
"You asked me to."
"And you were the one to do it on your choice. I have your fingerprints over mine, know that, ma'am."
At this point, I was spitting out nonsensical words in this trivial fight that even I didn't know where I was gathering from. It was just I felt irked inside. It could wipe away those blaming thoughts inside temporarily.
He brought himself closer, snuggling to my side while pouting his lips cutely, "I missed you."
"Why were you calling me?"
"I said it just now."
"You saw me like just three hours ago."
"Not in that sense. You see, it's raining and I felt lonely and..." He prodded his small fingers against my cheeks, "I wished to see you by my side."
"Coming from you who has been taking me to be some invisible microscopic organism for the past few days, you know you sound so unimaginably fake right now."
"Were you angry about that? This means, you were missing me too, weren't you?" He peaked a silly teasing smile, "I knew it."
"No. Just stop. Stop with your cringy words and freak off. You're being a snot."
"Wow, someone's in a bad mood today." He held up his hands in defense playfully, "I really missed you though."
"I didn't."
"I can see that. That's why you were crying like that crazy in the station."
"Stop talking, please. I am not in the mood of bickering and playing right now."
He shushed.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have...talked about that so lightly."
"But," He put his arms around my shoulders, whispering softly into my ears, "You know, I'm always right by your side when you need me to."
"Don't you just get what I'm trying to say?" Tears forming pearls beneath my eyelashes just wouldn't stop, "I don't need it. I don't need you, you all are so fake. Just what do you want from me? You are no different than him. You, all, are, the same!"
He stood stiff there with hurt in his eyes, his lips about to shape to an 'o' diminished to an 'e' of nothing. That was when I realized I was talking too much and my mind was too loud.
"Who is this he?" He asked nonetheless, "You went to meet your old friends tonight, didn't you?"
I didn't reply.
"I get it now. Lemme guess. It's that freaker guy you told me about who used to take photos of you?"
I gasped. He remembered still now. Why did he?
"Did he do something else? Tell me about it."
"Stop."
"No." He held my hand to turn me around, "I want to know and you're gonna tell me about it."
"Why should I and who are you?"
"I-" He took a pause as if to contemplate himself, then looked at me in the eyes, "To you, who am I?"
And I halted after him. There was a prolonged gazing session continued, his demanding eyes speaking more than a thousand voices could speak and mine were lowered as low an innocent in the court box would upon knowing they could tell the truth yet decided not to. He was the judge who would listen to no one.
"Who am I to you?"
"Which Jimin do you want to be?" I said.
"I want to be the Jimin whose shoulder you can lean on." That he spoke so confidently.
"You are the Jimin who I see on stage shining like a star, even brighter. You know you can always look up at Venus and admire it, you can never touch it. Can I touch you, Park Jimin?"
He briskly grabbed my hand and put it on his left chest.
"Touch me. I will come down with the stars showering, even if that's what's gonna take me to come closer to you. I want to be that. I am doing that, now take me in."
I paused.
"I can't." I pulled my hand off his grip.
"Why not? What's holding you back?"
"You really wanna know?" I turned back at him. Inches of my body gobbled in sudden wrath. I still felt guilty, but a part of me wanted to still defend those same words back one more time - "It wasn't my fault. She was just there at the wrong time at the wrong place."
Was it really what had happened? I wanted to dive back and take a look from another perspective. Maybe, maybe -
"I'm afraid of love. And I'm afraid of people like you, who have everything. A part of you reminds me of him. You are like him, in one way or another. And you don't know what it takes to - " I stopped to take a look at his face.
"I will tell you."