After the café fiasco with Michel, Rianna's feeling was all over the place she couldn't just go to her job. So she strolled a bit around de Dam, before she took the tram that brought her to Bijlmer. She came 10 minutes late to work, flustered, and distracted. She misheard some orders, made the food in the wrong orders, and dropped things occasionally. One hour before her shift ended, she even managed to pour hot oil onto her left wrist when she tried to clean up the deep frying pan. Her manager, who had enough of her mistakes, sent her home early. Even though she is still allowed to write a full hour on her sheet, her manager made sure that she got an earful of scolding before dismissing her to the first aid room to get her wrist properly treated.
Now she sits in her room, eating the chicken tender left over with a plate full of spaghetti bolognese. Not a good match, but who cares. Lately eating has been a chore for her. With the physical job she has, she needs to eat. She used to enjoy eating, to travel long hours just to try new dishes on the other side of the country. Now eating has no more meaning to her than just pure biological mechanisms. Shove, chew, swallow. Shove, chew, swallow. Until there is no more food to shove into her mouth.
But today, she cannot go past her third mouthful. She is hungry, but somehow chewing costs her so much energy and time and it becomes tiring. She wonders maybe it was why she stopped eating when Cathy died, because there was just nothing left in her to do anything. She asks herself how she escaped those dark moments. She barely remembers is like it was from a distant memory, even though it was only half a year ago. She only remembers how her trembling hands reached out for her mobile phone and dialed 113 after she swallowed her entire supply of sleeping pills. She remembers a sweet soft voice of the operator on the other side of the line who guided her to calm down, reassure her, and then call 112 for her. The rest is just a bundle of muddled memories.
She wonders now, while she stares at her spoon, if there's someone who helps Jimin. She stopped him, but stopping him yesterday doesn't mean that he's going to stop trying next time. Maybe she should call help for him? She wasn't much help to him, she didn't even give him a chance of telling his story last night.
She remembers grabbing his hand all the way from Leidseplein to Bijlmer, afraid that if she let him go he would jump unto the tram, or traffic, or the bridge they walked through. She remembers how slender his hand was, and she is wondering if he even eats.
- "6 months ago, you wouldn't even ask if I have eaten"
She shouted that to Michel. She hadn't eaten at that time, sometimes for days. There was a week when she ate nothing but a cup-a-soup. She couldn't help it, it was out of her control. But Michel didn't bother to ask her about it, and it hurted her because she felt that he was giving up on her, like she was a lost cause. How about Jimin though? Is he waiting for someone special to him to ask him that very question? Did he reach out to someone? Does he even know someone else besides these shitty housemates of his?
The worst thing to do to someone who is lost is to pretend that you don't see them, to pretend that it is okay. Michel did that to her, and she's not going to repeat his mistake. So she stands up and climbs the stairs to the attic for the first time since she moved here.
There's a door on the end of the stairs, a door painted pitch black, unlike the rest of the door in this house. She knocks three times, and waits. She doesn't hear anything.
She knocks again, and this time she hears some rustling from the inside. Jimin opens his door slightly and peeks his head between the door.
"Hey.." he mutters. He looks like shit. It looks like he hasn't slept since last night or maybe even more. Rianna sees dark rings under his eyes,, his shaggy hair are messed up, his stubbly chin is unshaven.
"Hey, have you eaten yet?" she asks.
Jimin opens the door a bit wider, his eyes look more awake now, his mouth slightly open in disbelief. He takes his time to answer her, but in the end he shakes his head.
"I have spaghetti bolognese and a couple chicken tenders. Wanna eat together?"
***
They sit in silence in the living room. The couch is made for 2 people to sit next to each other, but now it feels awfully small. Their elbows touch each other, and everytime they move their fork their elbows will touch again. That's because Jimin is left -handed.
"Maybe we should switch?" suggests Rianna.
He shrugs. "I don't feel like eating anyway."
"When was the last time you've eaten a decent meal?"
He shrugs.
"Then eat," says Rianna imperiously. They start eating again in silence. "It sucks that we have no TV here. And no dining table either."
He shrugs again. "Nobody used the living room up until now. Nobody is interested in eating at the dining table either."
"Hmm…"mutters Rianna. "It changes the whole thing, you know. Dining table and TV, I mean. It makes eating feel less like a chore."
He nods in agreement. The silence falls between them again, only the sounds of fork and plates clattering, and occasionally the sounds of chewing and swallowing. It's awkward, both of them realize it. But at least they finish their chores: They eat.
Once they both finish their plates, Jimin stands up and offers to take her plate and wash it on the sink. Rianna grabs 2 glasses from the cupboard and fills it with water. They drink in silence after the dishes are stacked up neatly on the drying rack.
"Thanks." Jimin breaks the silence.
"Tomorrow night I'll have to go to work till 11, so make sure you eat something."
He shrugs.
"Eat even though you don't feel like it." says Rianna while she refills her glass with water. "Drink water, and go out for a walk. I know it feels like chores, but maybe that is our chores. If we decided to continue living, we might as well give it our all. I will not say it will get better, I still need to see for myself if it will get better for me. But I believe it will, and I believe you will."
He smiles, for the first time since Rianna sees him. "I haven't decided if I want to continue living."
"Oh yes you have." Riana taps his left shoulder. "The moment you climbed over that railing, you made your decision. You have 30 minutes to push my hand away all the way from that bridge to here, but you didn't. You could not answer when I knocked on your door, but you did. You could reject my invitation to eat dinner, but you didn't"
Jimin doesn't say anything, so Rianna continues. "We sometimes underestimate how stubborn our subconscious is to keep us alive. Even right now, your heart is working hard to pump every drop of your blood to keep you alive. I might be the one who stopped you that night Jimin, but if you didn't have a grain of doubt, it wouldn't matter. You could have ignored me and jumped, but you didn't. So find that grain of a doubt within you and nurture it. Deep down inside you want to live, we just have to find out what it is."
"We?" Jimin raises his eyebrow.
"You don't have any choice."