Deal with Him | Lee Heeseung

5-The Devil's game

If life is a game meant to play with, outside the box of one's own mind, she couldn't tell. Maybe she should just call out the truth in her very head and not be digging for excuses as to hide what shaped her into what she now is.

Maybe, but the nights don't allow her to, as much as she may wish to-although she doesn't. Brown pupils are wide awake and stare at the ceiling as Evelyn faces her reasoning behind past choices.

The wind blows and throbs on the glass window of the one-level, small and tidy house, growing roots on Clover Street, no. 13. Oneonta city lays asleep, its roads travelling the hills and the empty boulevards and finally arriving at the eerie house of Evelyn.

The constant wind wrecking on the large glass with its frame painted a sad gray, keeps Evelyn awake along with her thoughts and the dreadful silence of her bedroom. Memories linger her consciousness still, as she trudges her head to the digital clock, mounted sternly on the white nightstand-the clock her dad sent her on her 20th birthday, this year.

The 6th of February went on in a disappointing manner, her walking to the post office to pick up the so very kind gift she didn't want. She needed a clock, yes, but not the consequential circumstances it included.

The blue and black hour guide beeped, alarming the passing of midnight. Evelyn sat, paralyzed. Her almond-shaped eyes shut in unison to the rush of chill air entering her nostrils. Her dots-filled pajamas stay loose on her tall body and rustle loudly at the moving of her hands, to shift her pillow below her.

The crystalline glass of water stands beside the flickering clock-probably, having gained a fresh and thin dash of dust at its edge and probably needing to be thrown away. Evelyn, however, doesn't find it in her to change it as she digs in a sip of the liquid, scrunching her nose.

Her mind must be playing tricks on her. How could the sound of clicking white and black keys echo through her house at such an hour? Her mind may be deceiving at times, but this doesn't seem the case. Too tired, yet, to figure out whether the soft music is real or not, she shoves her head back into the sky-blue cotton.

The music stops. Heeseung must be messing with her, she figures out. The rusty piano in her living room had only been touched by her tips of finger for the last two years, since her leaving neighbor decided it was no longer in use for her. Ms. Elliot was very kind at the moment to hand such a precious thing to her and Evelyn cared deeply for the instrument. So she couldn't help but feel a bit invaded, but, all together, not bothered enough to get up.

...

The night passes, the clock hitting one am, then two am and even three, and Evelyn's eyes are still fixed on the white concrete, above her. But she could stand it no longer-not the tiring past reflections and not the present ones. Picking up her ash-colored coat, she slips into her knocking boots and steps out of her room. She passes the sleeping Heeseung, raising an eyebrow as she peeks at the seemingly untouched piano. Well, everything is not what it seems.

Heeseung's unconscious face looks somewhat puzzling, his clear-of-smirk features and slightly parted innocent-looking lips-yet being anything but innocent-seemed inconvenient for a presumably evil entity.

As she opens the front door and steps on the sand-like door rug, the thought about this evilness hits her, striking as hard as the freezing air of late fall does. Her eyes close for a brief second, content for the moon hasn't gone away.

And the wicked character she supposed Heeseung would have sneaks back inside her brain. He doesn't look like he actually posses it--the cruelty and inhumane slyness--but that doesn't make her trust him any more than she would, normally. She can never slip, never.