"And was that it?"
"Yes, that was it." Replied Yeji, lightly patting the child's head. She was curling in on herself now, leaning into her with her duck plushie snugly pressed against her tiny chest. Her eyes were growing a bit droopy from her tediously long storytime, and Yeji herself was surprised the girl managed to sit through it all.
"What happened next, miss nurse? What happened to the older girl?" Asked the child as she looked up at her once more with those wide, curious eyes which Yeji found hard to resist.
It was quite peculiar for a child her age to enjoy such a sad story. Didn't normal kids usually enjoy fairy tales with happy endings?
"The older girl tried her best to live her life without the younger girl," she continued, giving the girl a gentle squeeze of her cheeks, which she responded with a delighted giggle. "But sometimes, even that was hard."
"Miss nurse, I don't understand." She interrupted, brows furrowed like she'd just come to an unpleasant realisation. "Don't stories normally have happy endings? Why is this one so sad? They are in love, but why can't they live happily ever after like the princesses in my books?"
Yeji smiled. There it was, the childlike innocence. "Those are stories, little one. This, however, was reality." She paused then, unsure if she should finish the rest of her sentence. A moment later, she decided to proceed. "Reality isn't always happy. Once you grow up, you will know."
"I know, missr nurse. Whenever I fall in the garden and my knees get little scraps, they hurt so much and it doesn't make me happy." She responded with a pout, leaning back into the pillow. Yeji could only chuckle. "Really? I'll make sure to replace the garden floor with foam mats so you'll never be hurt again." Her words were met with an excited exclamation.
"But tell me, tell me. What happened next?"
Yeji's smile lightly faltered, but it grew twice as wide before the little girl could even notice it. "What happened next, was reality."
YOU ARE READING
Under the sky in room 553 I discovered you and I
General Fictionthis is a adaption from a story in Archive Of Your Own (credit goes to them cus this masterpiece got me crying, throwing up) This is about a hopeless love story of two childhood best friends who didn't realise what it meant to have each other until...
