He’s only had coffee a few times in his life and he’s not quite particular to tea. Caffeine and teenage habits never really quite mixed well together. He’d been clean for the past three days, he assumed it was safe enough to have a good ratio of chocolate milk and coffee after two pills due three days ago. A tall black cup of coffee sat right in front of him, the smell was heavy and overwhelming at such an hour.
It was two thirty in the morning.
Jinyoung couldn’t quite sleep all that well recently. Not that he knew why, nor did he ever want to find out why. He was simply trying to occupy himself, with miscellaneous thoughts as he sour taste of coffee lingered in the back of his throat. He was wearing Met’s baseball cap, his favorite team that was now number one in the National League East, they lost yesterday. An old grey sweatshirt his sister bought him years back, she somehow knew that it would fit him as soon as he’d finish growing. Jeans, he cut holes in them so they’d look cool, possibly with the ability to have the look of wear and tear, which didn’t work.
His shoes were expensive. Timberlands, the name stuck to him for some reason, maybe because they cost him two deals. They were heavy duty, made him look good, and saves his toes from two hundred degree beakers of boiling metallic fluid.
He was out of things to think of, so his eyes began to wander over a dark cafe. It sucked for the girl behind the counter, a shift that was probably the least avoidable.
At eye contact, he smiled.
Poor thing, she probably wanted company. Though, Jinyoung’s just walked in the door.
Morality slips through her fingers. A little like inevitability. Like water. Like sand. Impartiality is a skill that is polished with practice. Indifference an emotion you cultivate before you can reap. Her patience is stretched over the years, laid flat and even by blood-stained hands. Each case is different, some sliver of special between slabs of uniformity, but the process remains the same. Gradual and personal, proud then undignified, bravery then tears. Monotony is good, the beat to how she works is rhythmical but avoids dramatic crescendos. A step by step process of stripping them bare -- secrets exposed to arid air, sins forming plaque over trembling skeleton.
This should be easy.
(Wrong.)
The girl should be no different from the rest. It is similar, how her lanky limbs struggle against their manacles, joints bent into awkward angles to no avail. She is so tiny, with her little wrists and breakable ankles, thin neck that seemed too easy to wring and snap. Choi Eunsang is only sixteen. Youth sits at the base of her tear-streaked, sweat-laden epidermis and blooms -- saccharine and pure. (How tangible.) Her entire body trembles in fear. (How terrifyingly fragile.) This should be easy.
(But you’re wrong.)
This is starting to feel familiar, isn’t it?
Eunsang is a blank sheet built on breakable bones, the kind of fragility that should be kept safe within glass box security, away from the same entanglement of sin her Mother had so foolishly jumped into. It begins and ends with please. She is locked in a facility underground screaming until her vocal cords are raw, gurgling on the choke of blood. Sense is lost within cries for mother while Sumin carves Choi Hyewon’s dept onto pale canvas skin. A victim of someone else’s calamity, a daughter that pays for her mother’s debt. This is starting to feel familiar, isn’t it? This is how she remembers: she was fifteen when Father lets men’s filth infested hands cease her by frail arms, feet scraping against the floor, limbs flailing, heart on her sleeve. Fifteen when she learns that father breaks more promises than he keeps and the word please is useless. Between choked utterances of Please and stuttered n-no more do Sumin’s hands tremble.
(Whose shoes have you put on?
You’re no different in the end, aren’t you?)
And even when it commences, her hands are still shaking. Choi Eunsang is staring at her when they wrap her up, blank-eyed and unrelenting. An endless abyss of pitch black (she had implanted that there), unblinking even as they take her away -- this is all part of her job, to take a thing and make it broken. Irreparable is a tragedy.
Objective: let Choi Hyewon remember her mistakes trying to breathe back life into her daughter’s lungs. She’s not dead but she will be reminding her mother everyday of how she wishes to be. Something curdles at the base of Sumin’s tongue -- bitter and acrid. Familiarity is invasive, she recognizes the same feeling of betrayal swirling in her dilated pupils. Suddenly it’s back to square one and Sumin is insignificant again, dirt rubbed into her skin until it stains.
Her fingers do not stop tapping against her knobby elbows. Evening air in September bites more harshly and brings a chill that settles even in the hollowness of her bones. In her head, Choi Eunsang is still looking at her. (Sumin needs to disappear.) She lets her eyes flutter shut, head leaning against cold concrete walls. White ghosts of a shuddering breath slips past her parting mouth, her fingers are tapping against the lit screen of her phone, she searches for the driver’s contact before pressing on the call option.
