He's got the whole world in his hands | Jeongin

Chapter fifteen

When she walked back into her house, Minsi thought she was off the hook, but she should have known better. The stillness and silence didn't last for long when her mother burst through the opening of the kitchen.

"Where have you been, young lady? Do you know that I almost called the cops? No note, not a phone call, not a-"

"I literally sent a text message to your cell phone. You know, the phone that you have. The one that's not a landline and the one you should start using. Maybe if you unlocked it every once in a while, you would have known where I was."

Nari's lips pinched together in displeasure. She couldn't remember the last time that her and her daughter weren't in some kind of verbal argument. It was infuriating to deal with. Her hands went to her hips, hot pink bathroom cinching in the process. "You still could have left a voicemail."

"I don't have the number for the landline phone. You changed the number, remember?" Minsi shifted weight from one leg to the other. "You shouldn't have been so worried, I'm grown."

"I can't help, but worry about you. I worry about you more ever since learning about Suki's death. That poor girl was probably strung up by the devil and choked to death. I talked to Suki's father, he says she wasn't suicidal."

Minsi's gaze went towards the living room. Her eyes went directly to the golden frame that sat on the back wall, the one behind the TV. The photo was of Minsi when she was five. Her mother and father sat behind her and all three of them were smiling.

It had been a long time since the photo had been taken. She didn't remember what her father's voice sounded like. Her brain discarded that information quite a while ago. He always used to smell like a mixture of cheap cologne and nicotine. It was some green plastic bottle of masculine musk and pricey name-brand cigarettes.

She couldn't help, but wonder why her father always smoked so much. Maybe he was dealing with inner demons or maybe her mother stressed him out too much. The one thing Minsi could remember was how much her mother nagged her father. Go do this and this, don't touch that, blah, blah, blah.

She was always jumping him about how smoking was bad for him, but her father didn't seem to care. Minsi always secretly wondered if he wanted to die and she couldn't help, but wonder the same thing about Suki.

Everyone had inner demons, rather well-known or not. Some were too overpowering and too painful to keep inside whereas others ate their way through the brain. Always clawing through brain matter and finding substance from the darkened thoughts.

The last time Minsi knew anything about Suki was during middle school. The last time she remembered holding a conversation with Suki, the pair were about twelve. The memories were muddled and their friendship didn't last long. Nothing bad happened, the pair just seemed to drift apart after a while.

She didn't respond to her mother's voiced thoughts. She wanted to tell her that her father didn't know what Suki was going through. She wasn't wrong, Suki lived on the campus too. Minsi saw her occasionally and the pair even took the same history course the previous year, but they sat on different sides of the room. Nothing was the same as it was a decade ago.

Minsi didn't want to believe her former friend hung herself. It was strange to watch someone you knew disappear from your life. Even if they didn't talk, she still knew about Suki. She saw her wear her denim skirts and pair them with thigh-high boots. She knew that ever since they started college, Suki always kept her hair layered at her shoulders. It suited her round face pretty well.

The idea that it had something to do with a demon, it seemed believable at first. Back at Minho and Han's apartment, the idea wouldn't stop bothering her. It burrowed into her skin, but the heavy dose of reality kicked in, along with her psychology courses.

When death occurred, people tended to deny it. Nobody wanted to believe that someone they loved died. Furthermore, they didn't want to accept that Suki's death was a suicide. The idea that you knew so much about someone and yet you couldn't save them from the burden of their own thoughts, it was insufferable.

Nobody wanted to carry that guilt around for the rest of their life. Maybe if they had tried to talk to them more. Maybe if they invited them out instead of letting them caged in their own thoughts. The what-ifs could be vicious and reality was sometimes hard to deal with.

The truth? If Suki killed herself, it wasn't anyone's fault. Sure, maybe some people's actions and words contributed along the way. Maybe insults warped her view of herself and maybe actions caused self-hatred to kick in, but Suki acted on her own accord. At least, that's what everyone assumed for now. Nobody would know for sure until the cops rounded up their investigation.

Minsi wasn't sure why shutting down campus was the best way to go about this. The frat house was a crime scene, yes, but it was off of the campus. The administration sent out an email and said the building would be shut down until the police were done investigating Suki's cause of death.

Interviews had to be given and the cops already investigated Minsi. Han and Minho revealed that they were also interviewed by an officer, but it didn't lead to anything either. The three of them were tipsy that night and all together. They were probably interviewed because Minsi gave their names to the officer that interviewed her. The cops wanted to get their whereabouts straight from that night.

"So where were you?" Nari asked.

"I was doing exactly what you wanted me to do. I was talking to an official and transferring all my records over to the religious college that you wanted me to go to. I actually brought the phone number of the staff member I worked with." She reached down and took a piece of paper out of her pocket. Stepping forward, she handed the crumbled piece of paper to her mother.

"If you don't believe me, just call and ask."