The Afterlife

3) It's 5 a.m., yet I don't miss you.

There was no easy way to shrug off a heavy day, a day in which one weight after the other clung onto its being's shoulders.

There was no easy way for Sihyeon to rid herself of the constant cracking of her back, the uncomfortable grating under her skin that signed the day's name, yet Sihyeon did not think of it as invincible.

There was the faint light from the glass wall, the soaring skyscrapers that never dared challenge the moon, the feeding warmth that left traces on all there was of her home, and ther was the right quiet that vowed for a new morning to come - they all saved her back from breaking in two.

Sihyeon, however, always ended up standing, watching the world. It did not matter if it was a hospital, a police station, or a death bed that clipped her to its sheets - Sihyeon always had a panorama, and a panorama was sometimes the least she wanted.

While she swore to steb back and allow the world to fail, she realized that it was not where she stood that created the most scenery, it was wherever she stood that there should be born a scenery, for it was her own head and sense that carried them, and it was her own eyes that were never not curious to see.

While she stood at the farthest corner in Paradise Grove once, eying the patients with much inquisitiveness and hankering for exploration and experiment, she also walked down a bloodied path in her life as a police officer.

Sihyeon did not just pull her cases out of their times of need, but she looked with raging interest at them and what had pushed them too far and too wrong.

She herself had a wall burgeoning on her back, sending her to the farthest ache for blood, a thirst she had never stopped thinking about, and it brought her to laugh while the pain before her multiplied. She never learnt to let go of that thriving lust in her chest, yet she set it aside with the mere belief that if she was to ignore it for too long, the wind would slowly eat it away.

With that day grew another needing instead - a question to which the answer would turn Sihyeon's world whole. With that day bloomed a fire which Sihyeon had no way to let out, and she sang repeatedly, would anything have ever changed?

Had that fire been extinguished rather than stimulated, had the car kept its rising metals and falling wheels safe, had the world granted Sihyeon just one more chance and given her parents back, would she have not grown into the woman she stood looking back at in the glass window?

It was that one dream, that one damned dream that drew a false picture on her walls, and instead of a mere pen, there were detailed edges engraved, and Sihyeon could not stop thinking about that look, that voice, that touch, that closeness that was her mother and those seconds that stretched into days and months where her reading room was still sane, and where Mia was president of her class and life.

Then she would open her eyes, and then and there the dream would end, and Sihyeon stood before the same scenery again.

There was no easy way to shrug off a heavy day, yet there was the slight weight that leaned on her shoulder, the frail touch that rolled into her palms, and the warm breath that clung to her thighs, and while she sat, unguarded and with the least number of thoughts, all there was of her family was all there was in the world.

"I love you," Mia's half-closed eyes looked up at her sister, and with a smile, she left a kiss on Sihyeon's cheek, a move too bold and too rare from the older girl, but one too desired and never had enough of,  "I am off to sleep."

Mia's hand slowly slipped away from Sihyeon's, the latter smiling with a nod while her head leaned back against the wall. They were all sat on the floor of the balcony, and while Mia dragged her tired body away, the three others sat still, watching her yawn the day away.