read between the lines.
@dhxsnow
adelaide did not cope well with restlessness. to her, being cooped up is synonymous with feeling trapped--like she is living inside a prison, caged by anxiety and the fear of being caught by people waiting for her to make a mistake; people who sought a pound of her flesh to sell for money and a tally mark on their check list. up here, in this grandiose apartment in olympus towers (olympus, how fitting a name, how noble and elitist--just like the mask she dons in public), she’s surrounded by the incessant tick tock of a clock--time mocking her with every slow flick of its minute hand--and four walls. it feels suffocating, as though at any minute the walls would cave in on itself and crush her to death.
her imagination wanders under falsified serenity and her momentary peace is shattered by endless scenarios of the ways she’ll be found or discovered (would she be caught when she steps outside for one second and dragged back to that hell hole she used to call a house when she was young and naive? would she be caught when she drops her guard for a split second and come home to a small army of security, waiting to ambush her? would she be caught when she was fast asleep and taken prisoner? would her so-called family catch wind of her now and take steps to destroy everything she has worked for? so many questions and not enough time to answer them, much less dwell on) and dealt with.
you see, she’s never been good at being left alone, isolated. it is only when she is alone with her thoughts, do the voices begin to chime, chatter, taunt. they spit curses at her for being a failure, mock her for believing that she could experience freedom for a fleeting minute, scream at her for not being good enough, condemn her because what kind of idiot torn herself apart to create a monster from her own ripped flesh and broken bones – what kind of person would sell her body, her soul, in the name of vengeance?
the only answer she has is: herself--and maybe every other anti-heroine in the literary world, struggling to live right by themselves.
maybe it’s why she ends up in donghwa books (on a day when taemin’s not there to distract her from the little things), operating on autopilot: her feet carrying automatically to the neatly shelved rows of books, bypassing the bestsellers aisle, and finds her preferred niche in pulp fiction and contemporary poetry. adelaide easily picks out three books, settling them into the crook of her arm, when she hesitates on the fourth. the only reason being the cover is bent slightly on the corner. frowning in disapproval and mild distaste, she slips down the aisle in search for an employee and manages to spot someone just around the corner.
“excuse me,” she calls as quietly and as gently as she can without betraying an ounce of her irritation, “can you help me?”
