The Afterlife

34) The Battleship Advances

A cold ice mattress and a still stone bed were all there was to hold a fractured body.

The images and reports were sat on the nightstand for too long in the room that was terribly cold it could have eaten on the damaged bones if it could. The stacks of medications were all lined up beside the papers, and above them all, the unfamiliarity of the home sang louder than any other song.

There were birds chirping and rays from the sun intruding into the room, but there was no ridiculously loud ringtone to welcome the morning into its arm nor was there an endless chatter from the main area of the house sending its echoes back into the quiet room.

The penthouse was silent to its farthest corners, and it was cold, so cold as the worst nights of December had beckoned them.

Four months they were, long and quiet and harsh on every last one of those who made the penthouse their home. While it had always been the case, the home was so strange to the eyes and hearts of those who wanted it to be company, especially Sihyeon.

When she opened her eyes to the strongest morning of that December, Sihyeon could barely feel all of her body, not only those whose casts were recently removed. It was stiff with the cold that left not an inch untouched, and the winter caused a pain that made Sihyeon groan into the pillow before she turned to use the air around her.

She did not bother removing the hair from her face or moving any more than to sleep on her back and stare at the ceiling. To her side, she felt the small head that was resting against her spread arm; it was the right one, but it ached from the core with how the cold could have been marring it all night.

Sihyeon let her head alone rest to that side to look at her son; his hands were clutched to her arm, and his body lied close to hers. She stared at him for as long as she thought she needed enough to keep her lying were she was, but even when almost half an hour had passed with her on that that state, Sihyeon found herself moving, at last.

In hear ear, she no longer heard the thrumming of her heart, as it it had long its beat long ago. All Sihyeon could hear was a loud siren singing an alarm into her ears, that they were almost blown off. She could only feel the cold leeching on her skin simultaneously with a fire that raged beneath said skin.

In her eyes, there was only red.

Her hands removed Siwoo's, and she raised her head off the pillow, ready to face the momentarily blackness that came with the spinning of the world before she pushed herself completely off the bed. Where she stood, there was not much to consider, but beyond the door that stood between her and the rest of the world, Sihyeon knew there was going to be endless lot that was going to try and hinder her advance.

Regardless, Sihyeon could not bring her heart to beat in response. She did not try to, for in her head, she wanted one thing, and there was one thing she was going to achieve.

Her hands grabbed the closest clothes, putting on the darkest hue of a shirt and pair of pants without spending a second looking at them or herself. On her head there was solely what was left of her hair, and on her mind there was a picture of one person whom she wanted to see dead.

A small limp was evident in her steps, but there was one thing Sihyeon knew: she was not going to wait any longer.

She counted the days and hours of those four months like they were to bring about a new life with a new birth of a world where what made Sihyeon's memory did not exist, but in four months, nothing changed but the pages of the calender and the color of the walls when she moved from the hospital to her home again. In four months, Sihyeon managed to build nothing except for more rage inside her, and she was just ready to let it all explode.