Help || Hwang Hyunjin

FIVE

"What's that", Hyunjin said while gently caressing a dry wound on my shoulder which was previously covered with my hair.

"Nothing", I said before swatting his hand.

He was caught off guard. I don't think he expected me to do that.

"Sorry", I muttered before looking down at the book that I held. I didn't continue to read. I couldn't. He didn't either.

"You know, if something is bothering you, you can always talk to me, yeah?" he said with a pair of genuinely concerned eyes, staring right into mine.

I was shaking and he noticed that too. What he did next, puzzled me out of my wits.

His hand engulfed mine, still looking into my eyes. His concerned look intensified when he saw how my pupils were shaking.

He had taken my hand so that I would stop shaking and I did, I did stop shaking.

Self-abuse had become a habit for me, since two week. Yes, it was only recently that I had started with this pernicious quirk. In the past week, my mom had seen gobs of scratches on my forearm and a bruise on my arm. I tried covering up a lot of the scratches but some were impossible to hide and the bruise was stubborn too. I got away with excuses that I hadn't cut my nails for quite some time. My mom was extremely suspicious at first, but later, she was convinced that those scratches were caused by me scratching my itchy forearms with my long nails while I had hit something by accident which caused the bruise.

I was pretty surprised when she actually believed that, knowing the fact that I played the violin. It is nearly impossible to play the violin with long nails. I never grew my nails for this reason.

The more lethal marks were the ones that were usually hidden by my clothes, like the one on my ribs, the one on my back and the duet on my shoulder which now, for the first time, had been touched by actual... skin.

I made a modest effort to pull at least a single word from my mouth, but I miserably failed.

The brakes were put as we reached the school and we all followed the same routine of hurtling into whatever stood in front of us. The only difference was that Hyunjin and I, unintentionally, tightened our grip over the other's hand.

My heart stopped beating. For a few seconds, absolutely no thought came to my mind.

When I realized that everyone was either getting down the bus or staring at us, I got up from my seat, as nimbly as I could, letting go of his hands.

It didn't feel any better when I felt the effect that he had on me. As soon as I let go, the familiar frosty sensation was rebuilt in my hands. No more did they have a leash and hence, the shaking restarted too.

"Thank you!" I squalled and flew out of the bus, leaving a perplexed Hyunjin behind.

---

Yuna herself didn't know about how extreme my eating disorder was getting. Yes, she was aware of the fact that I had anorexia nervosa, but about purging? Self-abuse? All the fighting and tension in my house? No. She didn't have the least knowledge about any of that.

And Hyunjin, whom I learnt about only yesterday, was already stumbling upon all these facts. This thought daunted me even further.

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Four periods had passed and now it was time for lunch. I walked with Yuna, trying to sound as excited as I could so that she wouldn't find hints of something off-beat with me.