The dark and quiet car would occasionally lighten up with the automatic gate lamp. Informing of passerby arrivals. He couldn't figure out what was wrong. Wanting her to hate him; he acted hateful for more than a year or two.
Yet, seeing her indifference to him made him want to cling to her like the old times. Like when he wanted to be loved. When he didn't feel like a guilty thief for being loved. A time he dared to fight for love. Not against it!
After seeing her unconscious body, he felt selfish and regretful. While he was all happy about losing the luck he never wanted, she almost died.
Feeling helpless, he wanted to take action. First, he booked an appointment for marriage registration. Then carried away, bought a pair of rings online.
Talking to her after weeks made him realize just how much he missed her.
Carried away by the newly found reason he had now, he acted recklessly. When he saw the soft look in her eyes looking at the rings, he panicked. What if she likes me? What if I... The thought made him shiver, so he started saying whatever he wanted to say, the opposite way!
'You didn't do anything wrong', "You are not worthy of love.."
He wanted to throw up his life.. His guilt.. His greed.. His love..
"You crazy little dumb-ass. Where are your casts? " The old man who horridly came back from saying his last farewells to a dear friend, shouted to the young man who had been in the car sit for almost 4 hours.
"Who the hell allowed your crazy ass to get out of that damned hospital? You are sick! Do you understand? " The old man's voice shook violently. Still vividly remembered how he had just jumped off the rooftop without hesitation.
On his birthday night. In front of his two eyes.
If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn't have believed that he actually had done that.
A perfectly fine young man who had it all. The looks, the brains, and the wealth.
"Of course I allowed myself. Remember, I'm a doctor. And as a doctor, I diagnosed myself to be all healthy.. My injuries healed long ago! To worry this much about nothing, you are really getting old!"
The old mans eyes dimmed as he looked at the young man who looked perfectly fine on the outside.
" No, you are not! Which healthy human being just jumps off a building?"
"It was an acc-"
"NO IT WASN'T!" The usually collected and calm old man shouted at him with his all might.
"I wish I hadn't seen it with my own eyes to believe in your lies. Just tell me why! Why would you do that to your family? Is this how you're gonna repay their love?"
The young man's emerald eyes darkened. Looking at the old man with a sad smile, he started mumbling under his breath. Remembering, the fourteen-year-old boy, who lost all his family members to a car accident. The boy who never stopped blaming himself for their deaths as he heard relatives saying things like how he had taken away all his family's luck and survived.
Then when he was 18, got into another accident. It made him unable to play again. Making him stop believing in being lucky enough to have taken away luck from others.
Then, when he got discharged, reality hit him. Finding out that thanks to that accident, he survived a fire that burned away an entire mansion without a single survivor. A fire that took his loving grandmother also away from him.
"I guess I wanted to see how lucky I am..
Since I was told I was going to be unlucky, I wanted to see if I could finally end it.
You knew, the circle of sucking up other people's luck.. Like how I did to my parents and siblings... like how I did to grandma... like how I do to all the people who love me. "
Slap. The pain gave the boy two feelings other than the stinging warmness. The feeling of being alive and the feeling of being cared for.
The old man who never knew just how deep his scars were was heartbroken and angry.
"How dare you think like that! Do you think you are God? How could you take away other people's luck? How could you think like that of my daughter's treasure? You know what your mother used to tell me?
He is our bundle of luck! Since his birth, we have been the happiest every day. Do you know how sad your grandma would be if she saw this? Don't you know just how much she cherished you?"
He cried out questions, not wanting to believe just what his daughter's dearest son had been thinking of himself all these years. Burying his emotions under heavy laughers. Hiding them away from him.
How could he not notice the sadness buried under his always smiling face?
Touching the face he had slapped, he analyzed every small detail of his face.
" You unlucky poor thing. If you are lucky, who is unlucky? Do I look lucky? I also lost a lot of family members. Much younger than me, and survived!
Do you think I have sucked up other people's luck? No. But I stayed alive for people who love me and want me to be happy. Like your grandmother and your mother."
Then sighing deeply, his face crumpled, as if he was tasting something bitter.
"I promised your grandmother not to tell you this, but seeing how you are willing to cast away the life your mother has gifted you, I don't think I can honor that promise anymore."
The young man looked up at the old man, tired and confused.
"You see, the scar on your stomach? It's not that you were unscratched during that accident.
In fact, you were dying. A rod as thick as an arm had pierced right through your stomach.."
The old man glared into the young man's eyes as he continued.
" So it did through your mother. When you two got to the hospital, your mother was still conscious. When the doctors said that they could only try saving one of you and that her survival rate was higher than yours; she, your mother, my daughter, still choose your life over her own. Prying for your survival until her last seconds."
Framing the young man's crying face, the old man also let his full to the brick eyes to empty.
"My stupid and unlucky child. Your survival isn't because of your luck or anyone else's luck but it is purely because of your parents' love and prayers for you.
You should always be grateful and cherish your life to repay them instead of..
Promise me you will always protect yourself and never put yourself in the slightest danger again!"
The young man nodded his head. In shock and unable to accept, but not able to show it in front of the old man's tilted figure.
The young man had blurry eyes as he looked down at his knees. His whole body shaking. As if he only now understood the deepness of what he had done.
Remembering his mother's scolding face for the first time since she died. Tears poured down like an abrupt summer rain. Violent and cooling. A distant memory floating on the deep sea of his mind, landing on his brain's shore.
' I will not put myself in danger, Mother! I promise!'
A long forgotten promise he had made to his mother. He once had promised her when he was saying farewell while departing for the school trip.