He started bite his lower lip as Ha-Ji went closer towards him and let him handle the mask.
"But they don't even ask me if, I am okay."
"You just wanted to be found? Unfortunately, not all people around you could do that. You as a person, you better find yourself or it might with the people you didn't appreciate."
She went closer and support him to lift his weight up from the comfort seat. Minutes later and they reach the bench. He take his seat immediately.
"Or plant your own tree before waiting for someone to give you a fruit." She once again said, before making her way back to the house.
He's seating there alone, a cold spring of air that gives his body a relaxing sensation. Small noises that coming from the leaves that hitting the path way. Singing birds that rounding in different sides of nowhere and the movement of the leaves from trees; plants that swayingㅡgiving a clamorous sense on him.
"How was your class doin'?"
An immediate voice that pop-up on his right ear, coming from few inches distance between them.
"Alex? Right?"
"Yeah, it's been a while."
"Why you just pop-up or pop-out all of a sudden?" Confusion mark on his face.
"You better lower your voice, because your sister might heared you speaking alone."
He gulp his won saliva and tried to lessen a bit of his voice pitch. As his both brows puckered down. "Are you a ghost or invisible alien?"
"I'm from different from you, so in the University, you're the only one who could see me."
"So, you're not the same nerd woman who approached me before I met you?"
She turn her protrusion on him and a mild smile imprint on his lips, immediately. "Yes, I'm not that girl but I saw what have you done."
"That's why you're weird."
"I'm a soul, just got comatose and now I'm everywhere I wanted."
He hang for a bit of seconds. "Should I be happy or scared? Like? I'm talking to a ghost-"
"I don't think that I'm a a ghost, since I believe that my body is still breathing."
Suspending his sight from opening on to a blind and full of darkness sight. As he said, "Will you still bring me back to my real estate of life?"
"Learn first, what you need to learn."
"It's hard to study, it's very boring."
"Well, I thought you don't like having the presence of people around you?" She crossed her legs and added, "That you can even leave by yourself."
A few minutes of silence, as he doesn't even know what to respond. Despair and guilt spring out on him, as he just look down for a moment.
A lightweight soft hand was placed on his back as he felt it. Alex caress his back for few times and tap his back, twice.
"Don't be sad, you will find a light someday."
He felt a sudden pull closer to her comfort, his heartbeat skips, a sudden warmth that he never felt before and a burst of completeness puzzle up his heartㅡunexplainable.
"You need touch the thorns, in order to understand the pain," she mumbles.
First day of October. Eleven seventeen in the morning, Dae-Jung hurriedly get downstairs due to the loud voice that his older sister did.
"Just calm down, it's hard to walk, if you just know!" Dae-Jung exclaimed and let out a pregnant of laughter afterwards as he reach the first floor of the house.
"Hold on, Mom. DJ is here," she said, as she made her way closer to him.
She took his right hand, letting him open his hand, as she put the phone on it.
"It's DJ, how's you two there?"
"Your dad and I are completely fine, no need to worry. How about you? Ha-Ji told me that you're feeling unhappy most of the time."
He rest his weight against the last step of the staircase, whilst placing the two crutches, in order to incline it on the post of the grillage.
"I'm not just used from it."
"Are you making friends?"
His mouth remain zipped, as there's no thought appearing on his mind.
"Oh, I think I know the answer," said his mother. "It's okay, someday you will."
A brief pause from him as he thought of, How come that everything change all in one go? My classmates aren't the same as before. The professor's aren't the same. No one is interested or said to be curious 'bout me or giving an applause to me. Is it because they felt too much? Did they get used before, in this kind dimension?
"It's fine, it doesn't matter at all." He gulp bitterly, pretending that everything was wholly fine. "Well, I gotta go, I still have to attend my next class this afternoon."
Without any pause to listen on her mother's response, he lead his arm infront, indicating that he want for Ha-Ji to handle the phone.
Few minutes; he felt the phone loosen from his grip and completely handled by his sister.
"I'll just bring your lunch upstairs," she said.
Just a filtered smile engrave on his lips, whilst gazing out of nowhere.
Times passed and he sat on his chair, face the laptop after being assembled by his older sisterㅡearlier, book infront of him with little holes that stand as his sight to understand the activities direction, that he cannot be seen in the screen and an another laptop as an instrument to have his attendance in the school, a zoom meeting call, in short.
The way how he could just see those academics as the easiest part of his life, is how it's like being opposed in his current situation.
Almost one and half hour has been passed and the class will get dismiss for few more minutes, as the professor asked for the last time.
"Since, I told you all to study some quotes from Authors. I wanted to know if you really do, who among of you could tell answer me this time.
"She once said, 'Don't start with writing a best-seller.
Start with writing a good line.
Don't self-publish, hoping to get rich.
Do it, hoping to find 10 readers who will become stalwart fans.'
"Who is she?"
Dae-Jung immediately tried to retain what he have reviewed yesterday, unfortunately, a voice from his computer's speaker come across to his sense.
"Sir, it's Ms. M.J. Rose"
Everyone applauded and he remained silent from those moments, until the zoom meeting just stopped.
He propped his two elbows against the book's cover and support his forehead as he rest it on his pair of hands.
Abjuring some breath through his nose, as he shut his eyes.
"Try next time," Alex softly mumbled.
"This is so frustrating, I feel so dumb. I cannot retain my knowledge like before-"
"Now, you know how it feels like to be left behind?" she intruded. "When you do your best, but at the end it still not enough?"
"I was supposed to answer the question!" he shouted.
"We're not perfect."
"No, I didn't able to do so, because of what have you done to me!"
"Can you please lower your pride, even once?" Her veins against her skin throat was too much visible that moment, as an uncontrollable anger burst out on to her. "Why you kept thinking of your own, as always? Why can't you let other people have their chance to shine?"
"Because they will see me as a loser! A trash! That whenever they see my imperfection, it's a biggest sin they've ever seen!" A split of crystal clear liquid drip down to his cheeks down to the paper.
"It's your mindset. You're afraid to lose, because you care to what other people says." She turn her gaze towards him in parched expression and said, "Which means, your confidence doesn't come from you, but from the people who 'just' appreciate you, because you can do something they're amaze to."
That struck his soul in a very deep well, a solemn laxity bring out his first realization why he was in that kind situation.
Alex was about to go, but unexpectedly, his words stopped her from doing so.
"I'm sorry for being selfish."
The heavy embodiment on her face lightened, as she turn her protrusion back to him.
"What happened today, is just the reflection of you before, being so good at everything, not giving a chance to other. Slapping them that there's no way they could defeat you." She exhales and step forward, closer to him and said, "You need to open help with everyone, because no one exist to be perfect."
He push a shire strands of forehead-length bangsㅡbackwards and return his sight come into view. "Is this how weak those people feels like?"
"Not really, that feeling you're in, is what this situation of life reflects to every people."
He turn his protrusion on the right side, right brow puckered down and asked, "What do you mean?"
The left side corner of her mouth, curved slightly upward, as she responded, "You're here, because you need to see the importance of the things you haven't yet seen."