Accept Me

Chapter Seventeen

KIMI

I start writing letters to Jae in my head, wishing I could hear his voice and see him.

I dream about him at night, mostly dreams of things we did or that I wanted to do. I'll wake up, though, and feel Jae lying next to me and feel so strongly that Lim Tan and the kidnapping are the dream and Jae is really there. At those times the breathlessness and tingling sense of paralysis in my limbs returns and I feel hopeless and as though the world is unbearable.

I try to convince myself that once I'm home things will be the same as they were and then I realize that things will never, ever be the same. I'll never be the same.

As much as it's a joke weeks later when Lim Tan calls me his Lady Hostage, he's not off base. Sometimes I think he says it to remind us both that we aren't in a situation we picked and we aren't friends because we wanted to be.

We're trying to be nice and have a good time, and we succeed mainly. However, the power imbalance hangs between us and it's immense. I'm his hostage no matter which way you spin it. Intended to be or not, I'm here and he's what stops me from leaving. Once I leave the power reverses and he ends up a sort of hostage of mine. The dynamic is odd and we've navigated it blindly but pretty successfully.

He jokes when I make snide remarks about being a hostage that I should be happy it wasn't a deserted island I was dropped on or I'd be dead by now. I usually reply that he underestimates my will to live but then I end upheaving to admit that it would've been murder instead of kidnapping if the island had been deserted.

We've developed a healthy respect for one another. Swiftly built out of necessity, but there nonetheless.

"Here," Lim Tan says, walking into my bedroom one afternoon about a month after my arrival. He approaches where I'm sitting in the middle of my bed, and hands me his phone. "Talk to him."

I take the phone slowly, trying to read Lim Tan's face but he's impassive, there's nothing there to read until he rolls his eyes at me and goes to sit on my little couch. Exasperation then, maybe.

"Hello?" My stomach flips a little at the responding hello?, I assumed it would be Jae I realize as Arthur's voice rings in my ear.

"Arthur?" Of course I know it's Arthur I just don't know what to say.

"Are you a prisoner?" He asks me and I choke on nothing.

"No, I'm not a prisoner," I look over and raise at eyebrow at Lim Tan who spreads his arms across the back of the couch and leans his head back, looking up at the ceiling. "I'm on vacation."

"Yeah, right," Arthur scoffs, "Then tell me where you are, I'll come get you right now. Do you have any idea how fucking crazy shit has been? I don't believe for a minute that you just left on your own for over a month without telling me. You switched apartments and told me immediately because you knew I'd freak the fuck out if I didn't know where you were. There's no way you're wherever you're at because you wanted to be. You're kidnapped, you asshole."

"Uhm, well, yes, initially kidnapped. Now I'm just hanging out with a friend," Lim Tan lifts his head up and gives me a sardonic look. "My brand, new buddy. Friends, friends, friends." I say in a singsong voice and wag my head back and forth which makes him give me his you're fucking crazy look.

"Have you lost your fucking mind!? What the fuck Kimi! Where the fuck are you?"

"Calm down Arthur or I'm hanging up," I snap.

I don't have this in me, I realize now. I don't have the reserves to be strong in this moment. I'm a mess and I'm glossing my mess over in my mind to keep myself upright.