Kalon

Chapter 40

Two months into summer break, the sky looks like a flawless blue canvas, the sun shines just a bit brighter.

The weather has turned so hot you feel drenched in sweat as soon as you step outside.

Y/n doesn’t like it. It hasn’t rained in three weeks and she just feels lost.

How can it not rain? She’s not sure if she wants to be living in a world like this.

Maybe she should just move to England. Don’t the people there always complain about the rainy weather?

Everyone else seems happy, though. The people seem to have come alive together with the temperature rising, pulling out their colourful and playful clothes, girls wearing pretty summer dresses, guys showing off their muscles. Y/n can hear music and laughter and screaming from the summer funfair that was set up a week ago all the way into the early hours of the morning.

And maybe all that sun and warmth and the happiness in the air surrounding her isn’t all that bad, because Y/n starts to make progress.

Just tiny little things, like feeling a little proud when her story ends up getting published in that book, when her friends throw a party for her, when everyone claps her back and she can see the genuine care and love in their eyes. How they’re all instantly ready to fight when Y/n meekly says she just got lucky.

When she gets a message from Hyunsik, her stepdad who only ever texts her when Y/n fucked up again, telling her she did well. That he’s proud of Y/n.

Hyunsik has never said anything remotely close to those words to Y/n, and when Y/n reads the message, she’s unable to leave her apartment for the rest of the night.

Y/n doesn’t text him back, but she also pretends she’s not holding back her tears as she eyes those words over and over again.

She even gains a little weight but Lisa says she still looks like Jisoo could snap her in half if she tried. Y/n pinches the skin on the inside of her biceps for it and Lisa, with tears in her eyes, promises to never make a comment like that again.

The negative thoughts are still there, and they still tear her down, but there’s a glimpse of positivity here and there, moments where Y/n will be faced with negative things in her life but where she deliberately choses to focus on the positive.

So yes, maybe she feels a little proud of herself.

When she tells Dr. Kang, she smiles and says she’s doing good. She’s getting better. And Y/n doesn’t know why she blushes, but she feels like she did something right for once, and like maybe she can turn her life around and stop feeling like she’s going to suffocate by just… being.

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?”

Y/n jumps a little, only now remembering that Jihyo is with her.

They’re at the park, sitting in the shade under a tree, watching (judging, in Jihyo’s case) all the different people passing them.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” Y/n asks, pulling a little on her shirt where it’s sticking to her torso uncomfortably. It’s too hot.

Someone needs to save her from this country.

She put on sunscreen but her skin still gets red and irritated from the heat and the sun. Y/n should just stay home until the whole summer is over.

It sounds really, really inviting.

Jihyo rolls her eyes, leaning back to lean on her elbows, her eyes squinted together to protect them from the bright sun. “Wasn’t important.”