The Last Miracle

VII

"By any chance, do you know who I am?"

I stood before Park Tae Sung entrapped by his wit. His voice echoed in the empty auditorium and my heart. His eyes were bloated with water that could burst at any moment. The secret that he risked his life to protect, bare in front of me. He seemed like a kid, who had been turned and in and out and left with nothing but an empty shell.

So frail that it felt like he could collapse at any moment. His lips parted, as he took heavy breaths like he already knew my answer. I wanted to convey that I really didn't want him to know. I wanted to apologize even though it wasn't my fault that I found it coincidentally on this very place we were standing on.

But the only words that came out was, "Yes". I closed my eyes and lowered my head.

Tears spilled from his closed eyes as he let out a painful groan like he has been stabbed repeatedly in his heart. He leaned on the stage for support, his hands shaking and his body confused and hurt. 

My kindness made me want to help him but I took a few steps back thinking about how I don't stand in any of this. It was completely his life's matter, not mine. But I was surprised at myself concerning what I was feeling for him. Worry.

I didn't wanna admit it but his pain was contagious to me. From the beginning, it was never right for us to be entangled so thoroughly with each other's lives. We played with each other's emotions like it was nothing. Like we were supposed to treat them like children's toys only to find out that it had devastating consequences.

We wanted to rule the hell we lived in, but ended up getting consumed by hellfire.

Overcome by my own guilt, I chose to run away. Like I always did. Turning my back on him felt like a thousand knives in my whole body, the worst of pain felt in my chest. I wondered and wondered, several times in my brain, whether I was taking the right decision. 

But I had never believed in myself and knew that I would have to deal with the suffering later. Nevertheless, I figured that he too would be needing some time alone to tend to himself. So, I walked out the door, leaving his fragile and brittle heart.

Time flowed like water and I was never in the sane mind to think about anything but Park Tae Sung. There were times when Da Hyun and Ji won had been fussing over a topic only to be encountered by my bewildered face because I wasn't listening. They asked me several times if I was okay or something was going on. Yet, I just said I was okay. Which I was not.

Tae Sung didn't come to class the following day, which made me more restless. I was out of my mind all day and the professors wondered what could have possibly gone wrong in my life, when they asked me a question I couldn't answer. 

All types of rumors went around the college about his absence with people coming to me accompanied by related questions. I dodged all of them and returned to my room, when I decided not to contain myself anymore. I had to meet him now.

That evening I went to his apartment and ringed the doorbell. Figuring that he was not home, I decided to wait. Sitting aside, I pondered over the various thing's humans can do when they feel like they are completely ruined and tried to associate with Tae Sung. But on cases like this, he had been too unpredictable and so all my efforts were in vain.

Two hours was really a long time to wait, with me dozing over my phone when he finally showed up, "What are you doing here?"

I lifted up my head. The color of his skin has gotten better and his usual expression has returned with a bit of softness to its edge.

My eyes shined, "Me? Just..."

 He reached out his hand to help me up.

I took it, "Nothing. I was just wondering why you didn't show up in the classes."

He opened his door, "Just leave."

As he walked inside, I stopped him, "Tae Sung. Are you okay?"

Tae Sung sighed and closed his door, thereby leaving us outside, "Why are you curious about that?"

He caught me off guard, "Huhh?"

He stared at me the whole minute waiting for my answer when I spoke, "Me, well, I just--"

Interrupting me he continued, "Are you, perhaps worried about me?"

"Who is worried about whom?" I folded my hands, "I am dying in my own life and on the top of that, is that even a valid question?"

"Yoon Seri." He advanced towards me as he uttered, "You like me, don't you?"

The volcano that had been swelling in my brain erupted in full force. His eyes were staring deep into my soul and the words it spoke scared me. I didn't know myself anymore. I was floating within him. My soul was bare and my mind was bare and my body was bare before him. 

This explains why my heart raced and my eyes shined all this time when I was with him. How my frame was comfortable these days when he was around me.

That I didn't even realize my own emotions because I made so little effort to actually know them. Because I believed I was made for greater things, and was not meant to live like a weak human being, relying on emotions.

Instead, I chose to flee, "You really have lost your mind, haven't you?" and walked out.

"You don't have the confidence to bear the truth, right?", his words stopped me. 

He resumed, "Even you find it impossible to believe that you deserve it"

I turned towards him crookedly, "So what if I like you?", taking a few steps in his direction, "What if? What comes after that? Dating. Then? Marriage. Then? Having a family."

My smirk got deeper and deeper, "Did you perhaps think that people like us are allowed to be in love? The people who achieve their goals at the cost of other people."

I approached him, "Don't kid yourself. People like us have no right to feel love. We threw away that accessory a long time back. And after all this time you think you can come back to claim it. What makes you think we deserve that? What makes you think we will be forgiven?"

His sad smile heaved at his heart as he lowered his face, "From what I know, at least it's better than pitying your own self."

That sudden blow of truth. That renders you helpless. I closed my eyes and prepared the plan to take off because standing here for anymore minute can be concluded as really fatal for me.

"Come to your senses, Park Tae Sung. That's all I can say right now."

As I walk out of the apartment, my insides pray that what I felt was everything other than that one damned thing coming to screw me up.

Attachment.