Drowning in the Distance

XI | Y/N

I bang open the door to my room, the loud crash as it smacks against the wall not even phasing me. Yeji's drawings that cover the wall all blur together in front of me as all the pain and the guilt I've been shoving down inside me, deeper and deeper every day, for a year rears its ugly head. A yell of anguish escapes my lips, a noise that didn't sound real. My ears ring, my own sobs sounding muffled and obscure. My knees buckle under me and I crumple onto the ground, tears streaming down my face, fingers clutching at the cold linoleum floor as I hear my mother's scream ringing in my head just like it did that agonising morning. 

I was supposed to be with her, that weekend in Arizona. But, as always, CF found a way to ruin that. I was struggling so hard with my breathing the night before our flight that I had to stay behind, I tried to convince my parents to let me go, that I'd be fine but they refused. It was supposed to be her birthday present. The only thing she asked for was a trip away for the weekend. Our first trip, just the two of us. I apologized over and over again, but Yeji waved it off, hugging me as tight as she could and telling me that she'd be back in a few days with enough pictures, videos and stories to make me feel like I'd been there with her all along. I believed her. She always came home. This time, though, she didn't. That morning, I remember hearing the phone ring downstairs. My mother's sobbing, my dad knocking on my door and telling me to sit down. I didn't believe him. I shook my head and I laughed. I fucking laughed. This was a sick joke. It had to be. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible. I was the one who was supposed to die, long before all of them. We were all ready for that. We were all prepared for me to die. Not her. Yej was practically the definition of alive. 

It took three full days for the grief to hit me. It was only when our flight back was supposed to land that I realized that she really wasn't coming home. I waited at the airport, at the gate. I watched as all of the passengers got off the plane, suitcases in tow and big smiles on their faces. I waited. Yeji would be there any second. She'd turn the corner, a GoPro in one hand and her suitcase handle in the other. I waited. And waited. I was there for six hours before my father found out where I'd gone. When he called Karina's house and her mother informed her that I wasn't there, he knew. He showed up. A few inches from the exit of the gate, I stood, my eyes wide as I stared unblinkingly down the corridor, muttering to myself.

"She'll be here any second. She's just running late. She'll be here. She will." He had to drag me away.

After that, I lay in bed for three weeks straight, ignoring my AffloVest and my regimen and my medications. When I finally got up, it wasn't just my lungs that were a fucking shipwreck, drowning in their own mucus. My parents couldn't talk to each other. Couldn't even look at each other. The house was dead silent all the time. I'd seen it coming. I'd prepared Yeji for what to do to keep them together after I was gone, knowing them and their stubborn ways. What I hadn't expected, though, was to have to be the one doing it. 

I tried so hard, so fucking hard, but it was all for nothing. If she came up, a fight always followed. If she didn't, her presence suffocated the silence, drowning us all. They were separated after three months, fully divorced in six. We all 'lived' together until recently, but that only meant Dad was sleeping at a friend's place most nights. In the year since Yeji's been gone, nothing has changed. My lung function tanked, my parents still can't look at each other and the hole that she left behind hasn't been filled. It's like I've been living a dream, every day focused on keeping myself alive to keep them both afloat. I make to-do lists and check them off, trying to keep myself busy, swallowing my grief and pain, drowning myself slowly from the inside out, so that my parents don't drown in theirs. 

Now on top of all that, Lee Donghyuck, of all people, is trying to tell me what I should be doing. What my life should be. As if he has any concept of what living actually means. The worst part of it all is that the only person I want to talk to about it is my older sister. She'd listen and she'd understand. She wouldn't berate me or judge my decisions. I angrily wipe my tears with the back of my hand, hauling myself from the floor and pulling my phone from my pocket. Fingers tapping, I text the only other person I know who will understand.