The New Student

Paradox

I was cold and empty. He was gone? There was no way! Why would he disappear? I was unable to focus on my studying as I called Hansol more than 56 times. What was he doing? Stanford had been his dream school for such a long time and he had finally been admitted! He had been so engrossed with Stanford when we had been dating...there was no way he would run away...unless...because of me?

I stared at my phone in horror. He couldn't have run away, or when considering a worse case, he couldn't have killed himself? Because of me?

The worst case scenarios started running through my head. I imagined his funeral, his body, never hearing his voice again and broke down. He couldn't have. Please...no.

During class, I fainted during my professor's lecture and found myself in the infirmary when I woke up. I grabbed for my phone to see if there were any returned calls from Hansol.

None.

But there was a notification from CNN...

"Stanford student found dead..."

I stopped reading after that and flung myself off of the small, hard bed in the infirmary, running. I gripped my phone in one hand and sprinted up the staircase to the roof of the main campus building.

I slowly walked towards the edge of the building, feeling nothing inside. Why did Hansol have to do that? Why couldn't he have accepted the fact that we were never meant to be? Then I bit my lip, condemning myself for being a hypocrite. I had never accepted the fact that we were never meant to be either.

Wind brushed through my hair and fluttered through my shirt as I stepped onto the edge of the roof. I inhaled deeply and hugged myself before plummeting off the tall building. "Hansol, this is for you..."

Several hours later, Hansol was notified on his phone about a student suicide at MIT. He had purposely intended to disappear, only for a day to relax his mind from the stress, ignoring all phone calls. He knew that it was stupid, but here he was, sitting in a canoe in a deep lake, suntanning. One of his classmates had committed suicide already, he knew that. But now another one? This soon? At MIT? He thought about Mari and immediately opened up the notification. His face grew pale as he continued to read through the article. Mari?! Why would she do something like this? Nothing added up. The police didn't have any suggestions as to what may have caused her suicide, but they had found a cracked phone beside her. He suddenly checked his phone log and found 56 missed calls from Mari. Oh no. He pulled at his hair. She did this because of him?! Oh Mari...What was he supposed to do now? The guilt growing in his chest was already suffocating him and he stared into space blankly, unable to formats anything in his mind besides the word 'Mari'. In the midst of his depression, he forgot about the steep waterfall that his boat was heading towards. It fell with a crash and splintered into pieces, Hansol drowning in guilt and water.