on the next spring | ✓

8

Tonight - Jin

The darkest summer of 1997.

That very same evening, exactly at two o'clock, I walked back to school. I didn't know why didn't I just head back home given it was almost past school hours by thirty minutes. I felt the urge to go back to the school's frontgate, reassuring everything was fine and collected. I might even bump into Mrs Yoon and bid her an apology for being rude earlier - not that I really cared but at least I wouldn't seem too blunt. 

Halfway through, I saw an ambulance drove pass me, whilst the other cars were paving ways for it to come through. My eyes were strangely fixated on the said vehicles. I watched as it drove pass the corner and disappeared before my eyes, it went my way to the school. For some reason, my heart skipped a beat. Something about it didn't sit right with me, and so I sped up my steps. Something about the ambulance felt important for me. 

As soon as I arrived, the first thing that caught my eyes was the picture in my imagination that had been lingering in my mind since the past ten minutes actually came true. I stood there stiff as I watched the ambulance parked neatly exactly in front of the building , and a wave of students crowding the school's frontgate. My vision barely caught anything, instead I heard how panicked the consumers were, I heard the paramedic yelling for oxygen machine, I heard the teachers ordering the students to make ways for the civil servants to do their job.

I saw the empty cart besides the ambulance, on which the door was wide open, waiting for the patient to get in. I saw a middle-aged woman crying just a metre away from the ambulance, as she cupped her mouth and shut her eyes closed. Instinctively, I took step by step closer. Loud noises could be heard, and as I grew closer and closer to the scene, I could see Mrs Yoon carrying a girl on her arm. I was supposed to apology to her, but I knew that wasn't the right time. 

Three steps away from the crowd, I heard things I wish I'd never heard, I heard stuff I wished I had misheard at the time.

"Who's the girl?"

"Senior Lee, she's the fifth year's student. Gosh, she fell quite tragically, though." 

"I heard her blood were all over the stairs."

I stopped, distant from them. Lee could be anyone. Lee could be that Rose from class 5-3, it could be Lala from 5-1. It could be anyone, it didn't have to be the Lee I knew -

"But the bleeding really didn't stop for over ten minutes." 

"Of course, silly. Ain't she the student who was diagnosed with aplastic anemia last spring? Excessive bleeding is one of the symptom."

But not any Lee had anemia.

I held my breath as I pushed the students out of my way. I heard them cursing at me, for I was cutting the queu to be in the front row of the scene, but I didn't pay them any attention. My sole intention was to make sure anything I heard was a joke. My mind kept on holding me back, telling me it shouldn't be true. For the first time in my life, I found my heart beating out of its usual rythm, I was panting inside for oxygen, for I felt suffocated by the feeling narrowing my chest.

Why would I felt this way? Why would my mind be out of focus, why would I felt like my heart would burst open if apparently what I heard was true?

For some reason, I was terrified to actually open my eyes when I reached the first row, I heard the paramedic's voices even clearer, as I was probably just a metre away from them. 

Second time in a day, I opened my eyes to see the exact picture I had in mind turned into reality. My whole body malfunctioned when I saw the familiar face, eyes shut with blood all over her body, most probably the result of the wound on her head. The girl was pale, exactly how she looked this morning when we were busy arguing each other. When we were busy saying mean stuff to each other. When we were cutting ties between us that had never really been acknowledged.

"Lee." That was the first time my mouth had ever uttered her name. When the cart entered the ambulance and the door was closed from inside, my mind snapped. I didn't realize my body was shivering, I didn't realize warm fluids were running on my cheeks, as I ran to the ambulance which had already drove away from the school's frontgate. The ambulance's speed increased and I was left behind after a few metres, but I didn't stop running. I kept on running and running after the ambulance, ignoring the eyes from behind that had been watching me, the murmuring wondering what was wrong with me. I didn't care. 

My feet ran as fast as I could, but it eventually slowed down and I ended up fell on the ground. My knee touched the tarred road as I screamed as loud as I can, in hope that that was all a dream. I could felt my chest tightened when the ambulance disappeared from my eyes. 

The last thing I said to her that morning came to mind just at the right time. I told her -

I don't need her.