𝗦𝗜𝗗𝗘 𝗦𝗖𝗘𝗡𝗘 ⨾ vernon

19 | 𝗵𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗹

Seconds after Darren lands his fists back on my despicably relieved face, I sit on the ground with my head hung low.

"The sky looks better. Normal." Sanghee reports.

"What's up with you two suddenly? Did y'all dissociate to the transformative realm of fantasy magic land or something?" Darren chugs down his water, implying a ridiculous British accent. He has been practising it since forever but we never got the opportunity to visit London. Once when we both used to be comrades, our parents had decided to take us out to see the world. Now we see dust and holographic skies, what a bummer.

"We have been hypothesising as such." Sanghee opens the door and lets herself out to check the roads. A few people pass by the door, and she sighs. "Looks pretty clear."

I show her a tired thumbs down and she sighs.

"What the hell is going on?" My brother shrugs and sits down on the dusty couch. "I am definitely missing some drama. Come on, spill some beans, I wanna be included." He adds a little bit of sarcasm to the included.

Sanghee exchanges glances between me and him and again him and me. I take a big gulp down before trying to stand up when Sanghee starts speaking.

"We are not real."

Silence with occasional clock ticking.

More silence with some clock ticking.

Just clock ticking.

"Yes, and?" Darren scowls.

"You probably don't care that much, but it's true. We are not real," I say with equal amounts of rhetorical disgust.

"You don't have to be so mean to him about it. Explain properly." Sanghee interjects.

"What? He's been mean to me my whole life?" I put my hands on my waist, "I don't want him to get up in the morning again and keep playing victim 'oh I'm not real,' 'oh my life has no purpose more than even an ant,' 'that gives me the permission to steal my brother's money'. Sanghee, I know him—"

"Wait a damn minute. You are the one who steals my money—"

"Shut the fuck up, I know who did what and when and I have all the records, I keep track of every penny that my wallet loses at the end of the day, don't you dare—"

"Oh come on now is it fair that Dad decides to give more money to you than to me? You come up with the most horrendous excuses and try to cut my supply." Darren stands up too and points a finger at me. Sanghee covers her face up.

"Is it not known enough how you abuse the money that is given to you? Do you think you are responsible enough even at twenty-three? Ask Dad how many times he has broken down in front of me, he couldn't even mourn her death because you chose to fuck us up. And do you know what hurts the most? I don't even remember why Mom had to die."

A hot minute passes by before I realise I had started tearing up.

Darren sits down with his hands on his head, defeated, totally stunned. "I didn't want to remember," he whispers. His eyes shine and a little drop shows up and down to his thigh. "I wanted to forget."

"I did not." I cry, "I still forgot it all. As if it just happened and we had to accept it."

"Right? Whatever happened to Mom, did, and whatever is happening to Dad, is. I am all but aware about anything that is going on in my life, what a bitch."

"You are." I sniff up a sneaky little slur.

"Vernon," Darren looks up, his eyes red, "I don't know what got over me."

"I know."

"I don't know why I kept trying to lose myself."

"I know."

"Why?"

"I don't... know that."

I look over to Sanghee and see her quietly taking all the information in. I never speak to her about my family. It must come as a shocker to her.

"You must be really annoyed." Darren smiles at Sanghee.

She shakes her head, "This is kind of what I meant when I said we're not real."

"Explain," Darren replies, with a hint of seriousness in his voice.

"So, um," Sanghee clears her thought, "To make things easier for you to understand, and also to not sound like a douche, just think of your existence as something minimal. It's there, but it doesn't have a meaning, unless you are connected in some way to two people that are our friends—Yeonhee and Wonwoo."

Darren nods but his face doesn't really seem convinced. "You mean to say that, if I exist, and I don't have any connection to those two, my existence is not really important?"

"Yes, mostly."

Darren starts walking up to the door, "Where are they? These two?"

"Stop!" I hold him back and take him back to the couch, "it doesn't work like that."

"How does it work then?"

"All we know right now is that, us being conscious like this," Sanghee demonstrates by moving left and right, "being able to do what we want and being able to say what we want, comes with a moment in a day where we lose it. This consciousness. In that moment, we are literally playing a scene in which we are actors and we are acting for the sake of, um, those two."

"But how do we know he's conscious?" I ask Sanghee.

"He is, he got back to his senses." We both look at Darren and he scowls, "Okay, maybe not."

"How many times have you experienced that? How does it feel? Like you're doped up?" Darren asks.

"No, it feels like things are getting out of our control. We do things that we are not exactly wanting to do."

"Like your personality changes?" I think of the time when Yeonhee acted really friendly to Sanghee and recall all the scenes. My brother's right. Our personalities change too.

"Yea! Yes, it does." I exclaim.

"It would explain Wonwoo's fight. He would never do that usually." Sanghee sits down on the ground in front of Darren, I sit beside her.

"I don't know what y'all are talking about, but exactly." He nods his head with concern.

"I am scared, Hansol. What if one day we just lose this and become totally controlled." She gently touches my palm, I hold it.

"We were controlled before. Not anymore."

We smile and try to let each other know we are there, when Darren breaks the silence with his dumb ass question.

"Are we characters in a book?"