This is all we've got

Chapter eight: talk to me, I'll talk to you

After class, with no Kyung in sight, Sixteen ended up walking alone back to her sanctuary.

There was a crash that caught her attention, a loud one, and Sixteen followed her ears to a part of the library where people were quickly scattering like mice. She was both surprised and unsurprised when she discovered who it is – Baek Kyung had a certain aggressive reputation, after all, but she had thought that he had shown that that was merely the character given to him.

She watched frozen for a few seconds as Kyung punched the wood of a bookshelf and tore books off of it just to dump them at his feet or hurl them over his shoulder. A book skittered by her feet and it was when Kyung started opening the books and ripping out pages that she was startled into movement.

"Hey! Baek Kyung!" Sixteen yelled as she ran over to him, dodging flying paper to grab his arm. "Kyung! What are you doing?"

"It's not like it matters. The writer will fix everything and it'll be like I didn't do anything in the first place," he spat back, not even flinching at her sudden appearance.

When he looked down at her, she was so alarmed by the raw emotion written angrily across his face that she forgot about yelling at him for the book damage.

"Hey, Baek Kyung, what's wrong?" she said softer this time.

Kyung dumped the book he was holding on the floor and looked around at the wreckage he had caused. Sixteen followed his gaze before looking back at his face, watching as he slumped back against the bookshelf behind him, everything draining from his featured

"I'm just- so angry, all the time," he breathed. "He is, the Baek Kyung from the manhwa. Angry about his father who treats him horribly, angry about Danoh who he's forced to be engaged to, angry that she keeps getting worse and always ends up in the hospital, angry that there's nothing I- he can do about it. And it's all me except now I know it's not. It's all a character. Yet I can't help but be drawn into his emotions, into his anger especially, and it hurts so much. I don't... I don't understand why the writer had to do this to me, to him. It just feels like I, like he's being backed into this corner and it keeps getting worse."

Kyung sank to the floor and Sixteen followed him. For a moment she hesitated between sitting in front of him and sitting next to him before settling on next to him. She pressed her shoulder against his as she waited for the rest. When it didn't come, she nudged his shoulder.

"What happened?"

He sighed heavily. "That Eun Danoh, she keeps trying to meddle with the scene. She keeps bringing in this other extra – Haru, she calls him. I can tell they like each other, the real Danoh likes him. The scene one is still in love with me."

The mention of Haru caused her to bite her lip.

She looked back when she heard a soft thump and sees Kyung's fist hit his chest where his heart would be as if he was in pain there.

"The scene Kyung, the one who's so angry, is also in love with Eun Danoh. You were right. But that idiot can't- he can't just go out and say it. He's got too much pride, too much anger. And so it hurts, really badly, every time Danoh brings that guy onto the scene. I feel everything he feels so strongly, I don't even know anymore. Whether it's him or me who's in love with that girl. Whether it's him or me who's really the angry one. Aren't we the same? Everything keeps bleeding over and I can't tell anymore."

"Maybe you do love her," Sixteen offered quietly when it was clear Kyung had nothing left to say. "It's possible."

"No," he said tiredly, heading falling back against the wood. "I don't."

She decided not to push the subject even though she wasn't so sure he was right. When you're forced to spend as much time together as he and Danoh had it's possible. Lines bleed and real feelings can grow. Although she could imagine the confusion.

Still, that wasn't the only anguish he had mentioned.

"I don't think the anger is yours," she said firmly. "I- You're never angry when you're with me. I don't see it as part of you. That anger is from the Kyung the writer made that way."

"But I am angry. Maybe not in the same toxic way, but I feel it all the same. I'm angry at the writer for making us this way. I'm angry that I can't choose the story I want. I'm angry that the only choice I have is to accept what I'm given. And I'm angry that I feel this way. Maybe if I'd never become self-aware... Or not, maybe that would have been worse."

"I know," Sixteen said numbly.

"Aren't you angry?"

She blinked at him. "What would I be angry about?"

"That you were given nothing, that you're expected to exist for the sake of others, that you don't have a choice?"

"What right do I have when I'm freer than you?" she replied, meeting his eyes. "Everyone lives for someone else, for the people they care about. I wasn't given any so I have the story. And because I have nothing, not even a proper character, I don't feel anything. Not anger, not happiness, nothing."

"Really? Nothing?"

Sixteen gazed down at her shoes. "Maybe not nothing. I feel sad, sad that things are the way they are. And I feel pain when the people around me are hurting. It's the price of caring."

"What about happy? Have you felt happy?"

She thought about standing in the glow of a fish tank, walking in the night and feeling the warmth of someone beside her, sitting in the library and listening to a low voice read out loud, sharing smiles after a scene, the sound of someone calling out after her.

"Well," she said. "I suppose happiness might have been there somewhere."

"Good," he said. "I'm glad."

"But you know, you're allowed to feel angry."

She felt Kyung regard her for a moment and she ducked her head under the attention.

"Sometimes it feels like I'm the bad guy if I let myself get angry," he said slowly.

"No. You're not," she told him. "Be angry. Yell at the sky if you want to. Just don't take it out on the books, please."

Kyung chuckled and Sixteen smiled at him.

"But don't spend too much time being angry," she continued, catching his gaze once more. "It takes way too much energy. The writer's not worth it. The best way you can spite them is by being happy despite it all."

"Okay," Kyung said softly and Sixteen was struck by how beautiful this smile of his was. The relaxed one, the same one she'd seen at the pet store in a glow of blue and green.