Revenge [Ryujin x Hyunjin]

(13). Regret

The dark monitor turned on as words quickly moved across its screen.

Ryujin tossed and turned in the dark. She was having a nightmare. Suddenly, her eyes burst open. It was a little past 4 AM. Her pillow and the bedsheets were completely soaked with sweat. It felt incredibly uncomfortable.

"……"

It was only a dream. Whenever she felt that the old memories from 10 years ago were fading away, they would return as nightmares. They were clearly burnt into her mind as if they had happened just yesterday.

She opened the refrigerator door and took out a bottle of water. She downed the whole bottle in one go. Click, her hands trembled as she lit a cigarette.

"Whew…"

She opened the window and leaned out so that half her body was outside. She breathed out the smoke with a long sigh. A light sheen of water covered her face due to the drizzling rain spraying down from the sky.

Even though it was cold, it made her feel better. The weather was disgustingly sticky all afternoon, but it seemed that it was only because of the coming rain this morning.

"Huh? Mom, look! A rainbow."

Her mother had been tending the flowers when she turned around at Ryujin's call.

"If you spray water like that against the sunlight, a rainbow will form. Isn’t that cool?"

"Yeah! I wanna try too."

Pssh, pssh. A clear rainbow appeared amidst the water particles.

"If you spray that much, you head will get wet."

"You’re so pretty, Mom."

"In my eyes, my daughter is the prettiest."

The setting changed, and she was no longer outside the house. Her smiling mother now had blood running down her face. Collapsed on the floor, she didn’t make a sound and merely mouthed the words.

"Go…Run… Ryujin, run…"

Her white nightgown was drenched in blood. Her mother had fallen down the stairs. Her breaths stopped, her eyes still open. Ryujin remembered her mother’s face so clearly as if this had all happened yesterday.

The rain dripped onto her trembling hands, and the cigarette light went out as it became damp. Ryujin  brought the damp ciagarette up to her lips and bit down.

"There should be a kid on the 2nd floor."

"It’s summer break, so she should still be in the house. She might have hid after hearing all the noise."

She was about to go on a camping trip with all her friends from school in the United States. The quarterback she had a crush on from her school football team was also going to be there.

However, her parents forbade her from going, saying that it was too dangerous. She was extremely upset with them. She was already fourteen  years old, and the fact that she was stuck at home and treated like a child was embarrassing.

So she left home in the middle of the night, holding nothing but her cellphone, and went out to complain and vent to her friend in the United States. She told her how annoyed she was, how she wished her parents just disappeared.

The last words she had said to her parents were her angry shouts as she screamed at them to leave her alone. If she knew that those would be her last words to them, would it have changed anything?

Ryujin looked up at the cloudy night sky and laughed. Her wish was granted. Her parents died, and now she could live her life the way she wanted to.

The tiny rain droplets became bigger. The raindrops splashed onto her cheeks and trickled down to her chin. It was still going to be a long time before the sun came up. The sky remained dark.

No star could be seen in the Seoul night sky. She occasionally saw the orange taillights of the cars crossing the Han River Bridge. In this city that never slept, nobody knew who she really was.

Fourteen. Shin Ryujin basically died at that age, and she was what was left in this cloudy, dark city. If she suddenly disappeared, nobody would be sad. If she killed someone, she would be blamed and reproached. But she didn’t care.

An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. She was only living her life according to Hammurabi’s code.

🐾🐾