Plip-plop; where are you now.
She blames the placement of her bathtub on the childhood that still visits her, still haunts and shadows her steps everyday. Some would see it as a lack of attention, others found it a need she had and couldn't control. Soojung just found their assumptions a "trying too hard to sound sympathetic" queer that this society conjured up and injected into the people's mind over copied out soap operas and steroid infused advertisements about mental health.
In her childhood, built and painted between four walls that made her home, attention was given without question. It was given in bouts of anger, often times leaving reds and blues on her skin - but of course, never where anyone but her mirror and mother could see.
Sometimes she wished she had a father to blame; could describe to the people who acted like they cared that he was a big man always with his leather belt at hand. But no. There was no father since her birth to blame. Just her mother and her poison laced tongue and fingernails scraping into her tiny wrists and pulling her away from the playgrounds.
After knowing her Jump…after the accident, she thought she'd been free. And now…-
Soojung had a thing for sitting horizontal to her bathtub's vertical placement to the door. Legs dangling easily over the right side while her neck remained proppped and contoured by the left, giving her a nice view of the chandelier hanging right above her ("when will that thing just drop…?"). It makes her feel orderly; in some bizzare way.
Other times, she reasoned with herself that it was because the knob was closer in this position, and that she could feel the hot water better.
Confusion and forgotten; just her semblance of executing control in the end.
It’s how Kai finds her eight minutes to 9pm. The only difference between this time and the times before, is that the water is still running (hot, now lukewarm) and spilling over the tub’s curved edges. Her shoes, bag, and the upper half of her hair are the only things not drenched, while her clothes stayed on her body.
There’s a wine bottle clutched to her chest - half gone - and drops of water dangling off her heel. She ignores the latter and takes another drag from the former before turning neither dead nor curious, just red rimmed eyes to him.
She held his gaze for a moment, remembering briefly how much curious she had been on their first meeting, before dropping it with a dry laugh.
“You know,” she said, tone dry and scratched, and holds up her wine bottle. “I read somewhere that you’re not supposed to drink while you’re taking a bath. Relaxes your body too much or something. And then you knock.”
The next laugh rings a little louder, a little more broken through the studio.
“I should be feeling so happy right now. She’s gone, and I don’t have to keep running around like a headless chicken, and that’s a great thing-...but. I’m sad instead?” Something between distressed and feral looks back up at him, holding out before dying out with resignation. “They asked me three times if i really wanted to pull the plug and I said yes the first two times. But the third…I nearly stopped them.”
Breathe for who and what.
“She made my life hell. Nearly killed me…and when I finally had the chance to be done with her, I hesitated…”
Three lines up her left thigh…a gash on her back; too many to count on her arms. If she had had a chance to be insecure, hadn’t considered each scar and mark a friend, she would’ve wondered what he thought of them.
She swallowed another mouthful. “I always imagined finding my humanity again by some-…/cliche/-esque situation. falling in love…rescuing a puppy…never by the person that forced it from me in the first place…"
