forget-me-not || lee dohwa

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐕𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐭

The Curious Case of the Vanishing Vomit

Regardless of whether you throw up from sickness, bad food, or just pure, unadulterated panic, you don't expect your sick to disappear. It's not supposed to evaporate without any trace, erasing all signs that someone had been here, throwing up their guts.

But Gyeoul had fallen to her knees after puking, pressing her mouth to her jacket sleeve. Her eyes were shut tightly to keep her head from spinning. The myriad of problems that had risen in just half an hour plagued her. My boss stole my characters. She threatened to ruin me. My home is gone. My brother doesn't know who I am. I don't know where to go. How did I get here? Please, I just want to go home. I don't know where I am.

When she opened her eyes after adding I need to clean my mess up to her list of concerns, she found herself staring at the spotless wooden floor of the library.

What.

Gripping the edge of the table, Gyeoul hauled herself up. There was no sign that she had thrown up. There was nothing. Even the burning in her throat had subsided. That's not possible, she thought to herself again, I know I was sick. I always throw up when I'm anxious.

Biting her lower lip out of nervousness—because what else was the world going to chuck at her face?—Gyeoul walked down the library to peep between the shelves. Maybe someone was here? Maybe they could tell her what was going on?

Despite the library being large and spacious, she still managed to hit the back of her hand against a stack of books placed dangerously close to the edge of one of the tables. "Ow," Gyeoul mumbled, rubbing her knuckles and turning to pick up the fallen books.

Only to find them as they had been—piled one on top of another like a tower.

"Must've been mistaken," she said, not wanting to believe otherwise. But just to rest her already jumpy nerves, Gyeoul shifted the stack to the other end of the table. "There," she said to herself, "now they won't fall."

Gyeoul blinked.

And they were back in their original place.

She stared again in muted horror, lurched to a side, and threw up again.

☄

Kyung had spent the morning scanning all the photographs and documents that he could find in his house. There was no extra room that had been used. No new additions either. His mother's ring was where he had left it—in his closet, safely in the box he had kept in one of the many drawers under his coat rack. He had observed the way his father and that woman spoke, giving no indication that someone by the name of Baek Gyeoul even existed.

Twins, she had said.

What the fuck was she on? He wanted to ask because she couldn't have been real. There was no way a new sibling could have spontaneously sprouted up in his life. He didn't need another Joonhyun breathing down his neck.

But the doubt had still remained. She had told him things about them with such conviction that he was ready to welcome her as family. This tiny, desperate voice in him had begged him to let her in because the aloneness was tearing him into shreds. The Writer could've drawn her, he had tried to make sense of it all after the Scene had changed, Number 13 appeared again so the Writer could've decided to drop her in the middle of the story as well.

Once his Stage had ended and he slunk away from the humiliating walk he had been made to do as a member of the over-glorified A3, Kyung made straight to the library.