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CHAPTER TWO ( Curl Up & Die )
JAEHWA DOESN'T REMEMBER how she died. She remembers being torn apart to some extent, knees bloody and head spinning the way it would when she rides a carousel — Not that she ever remembers riding one — The smell of gasoline that permeates her lungs, and the deafening screech that follows after.
It must have been a car, Jaehwa reasons to herself. That's the only logical explanation.
She imagines herself a lifeless corpse splayed on the asphalt, fumes from the exhaust pipe filling her deflating lungs — A painter's vivid imagination is her nightmare, and Jaehwa shakes the appalling thought from her mind.
The scar that pulses an ugly rhythm in the back of her head stays a reminder of what Jaehwa had lost. Her fingers constantly itch to soothe the burn that seeps beneath the stitches, squirming its way through her brain and devouring all that Cha Jaehwa is.
It is that same pain that tears her away from the arms of slumber, twisting her already misshapen body into a tangled mess of damp sheets and sticky flesh.
Like routine, Jaehwa peels the bedsheets off her sweaty body and sits up. Her feet land on the cool wooden tiles, and she brings a hand to further heat her warm face.
Seventeen brings along everything it shouldn't — Headaches and frowns and an all too familiar feeling that Cha Jaehwa doesn't belong.
Bitter resentment holds Jaehwa warmly, too warmly for a morning in early September, and the teen feels the back of her head prick again.
Maybe if she ignores the sweat that crawls down her shoulder blades and the hand that gently caresses her scar, Cha Jaehwa can fall back asleep and pretend that she is fine. But everyone knows she is not, and that is something she must learn to live with.
The settling pinpricks of perspiration begin to cool and the hairs on Jaehwa's arms stand as a shiver wracks her body. Days muddle into weeks, weeks into months, and before Cha Jaehwa knows it, August molds into September, and the unforgiving heat cools into something chiller. The change in temperature seeps in through Jaehwa's body, but at night, it feels as though August still sets its palm against her, and she cannot escape the burns it leaves upon her slumbering fuselage.
Morning greets Jaehwa's freshened body with kisses that bite at her cheeks and nose and rub her face a shade of red that is none too befitting of her pallor, and later on so does Cha Si-woo with his brutish smile as he wears a frilly pink apron and cooks her breakfast.
She points at the sight and laughs, and so does he — Eyes crinkling, face scrunching, and joy ringing through the apartment — And Jaehwa feels slightly more normal.
Si-woo looks over his shoulder for the first few minutes, after the laughter has died out and only silence is left behind to fill in the gaps of their conversation, as though his daughter wouldn't be there when he looked back for her.
