Lookism: What Am I Even Doing?

Chapter 71

*NOTICE: From this point forward, the story will be covering some very heavy topics. So, you know, this is me advising you*

(Ila's POV)

You'd think that after how car accidents are portrayed in the media that it would've been quick and efficient. In reality, it was so painful. I didn't want to take that step in the first place but I was at least hoping that it wouldn't hurt. That it would just be a moment of pain and that would be it.

Death wasn't even on my mind. If I died then I died. Like the coward I was, I just hoped that I didn't have to feel it.

As a cruel and sick turn of fate, I was awake the whole time until the ambulance got there. For some reason, I couldn't hear or say anything. It was like my ability to hear and the wind from my lungs was knocked away from me. So even though I was in so much pain, I couldn't express it.

I was left there with my body twitching, small jerking pulses of fading life. Then came the people. They stood on the sidewalk with their phones out like I was a spectacle.

I HATED EVERY SECOND OF IT.

Every fiber of my being wanted to reach out, to yell at them to look away from me in my pathetic state. Even the people who ran forward to check up on me, I wanted all of them to turn away from me. This was a moment of vulnerability and shame. One that I wanted to spend alone so that I could pity the little humanity I had left in me. The little bit of soul I had left to give.

Instead, I was surrounded by blinding lights. Was this what it felt like to be a caged animal? Always watched, always exposed. It felt so disgusting against my skin...being used as a damn spectacle.

As blood pooled around my body, drowning me in churning red, I rolled my eyes over to the driver. Why couldn't you have driven a little bit faster? Why couldn't you have tossed me further down the pavement? Why...didn't you kill me?

And starting from that moment, I could feel something violent and hateful growing inside of me. Not against the demons that put me in this situation, not myself for being so damn weak, but for the common man who wished for something to see. Because apparently their lives had a little bit too many fucks to give about whether they had it on video of whether I died or not.

How. Fucking. Pathetic. We. All. Are.

When I finally woke up I didn't know how to feel so my brain decided to feel nothing at all. The sun was out, pouring in through the thin pane of the window of the right wall. Outside I could see countless other buildings in the skyline, just beneath the sun.

I stared out of the window, not really focusing on one thing in particular. I wasn't interested, I had nothing else to do.

What else did you want me to do?

Get up and run out of here?

Cry?

Scream?

I had enough of all of those things. My body was exhausted. And even though running seemed to be the greatest option, I don't think I'll be running anytime soon. I glanced at my right leg as it hovered from the bed from braces, wires, and large pins that poked through my body. I felt like a strange machine in an assembly line.

Chin-hae had hurt my knee a lot. Back then I wasn't able to access the damage for obvious reasons. Though the cracking sound of my body was still clear in my mind. The car crash probably made my condition worse. My foot was decorated the same as my knee with its fancy bandages and needles, dangling from the ceiling.

The rest of my body was in pain. Serious pain. But...I couldn't find it in me to complain. I didn't even want to acknowledge the countless scars and stitches that ran along my body. Including my face. When I was younger I thought scars were a sign of strange character.