The room is spinning when she opens her eyes. Pain is the sister of time: slowly, slowly inflicting a burn that licks upon a maelstrom of wounds, until hands clasped together can bear the weight no longer and sink bruises into her own flesh. She supposes this is the price she must pay for a polished skyscraper towering over the clouds in Seoul, her father’s abhorrent smile, dirty hands counting dirty money. They build a home in her, watch it burst into flames, let herself commit to an eternity of this damnation. Equality has always been the sum of all inequalities. Here, she succumbs to the equation that had taken her world by the throat of its axis and flipped it upside down.
By the time the door swings open again, shadowed footsteps dipping into the midday glow cast on the floor, her breathing has gone from uneven to virtually absent. There is only the sound of the gentle sea, crackling foam, and a shuddering breath punctuating each cadence of wave against ship. Blurry countenances diverge, tired eyes making out one, two, three— the first one forces her to notice the knife in his hand, pungent scent of nicotine sinking hands into her lungs. Disgust paints her tongue. “Don’t touch me,” she hisses, but the words never make it past parched lips.
Skin rips apart at the already loosened seams, an ugly bruise shattering into patterned shards of red staining purple. It barely forces a whimper from her, instead makes pupils dilate, recycled tears streaming down the rugged sand dunes of her cheeks. Behind the man, she can see Youngkwang, deranged eyes lit up from the foulest of all cores in silent laughter. She shuts her eyes, heavy eyelashes a wet web of impassive surrender. This is what acceptance feels like. He is made to hurt, and she is meant to hurt.
This is how he says he loves her, all knuckles over hidden contours and a cowering frame, consuming selfishly and sinfully. Trying in vain to map out the cartography of her skin without crushing the bones that shake underneath. This is how he breaks and mends these bones in the dark, turning her into a collection of unfinished braille and fingerprints touched by ruthless greed. Morse code.
When she awakes, her breathing resumes its uneven pattern, hitches in her throat every so often, an instinctive wishing for a lull in time. Fear brings one to its knees, but prayer finds no rest on a bitter tongue. She wears the scars of last night’s nightmares on her face. She has traveled this far on the back of all her regrets. She doesn’t cry anymore.
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