I'm sorry i love you | k.jd

iii

Beep beep beep beep beep. I hear noises coming from those machines in medical dramas that always determine whether or not the patient will live. I can sense that the noise is not from the machine measuring my life, because mine would be on my right, not my left, but from the machine measuring the life of the patient next to me.

"How's the patient?" I hear, and my eyelids fly open to see three people peering down at me. Two of them are in doctor's scrubs, and the other is wearing a black dress, and looks like a girl in her late high school years.

One of the doctors shakes his head, and walks over to the bed next to me. "We have to see how this one is doing as well."

I know that I'm not supposed to yell in hospitals, but I do, "Hello! I'm awake!" The doctors seem to not hear me, and don't pay any attention to me.

Frustration rises in me. How can they ignore a patient like this? "Hello? I'm awa–" I'm start, but I'm interrupted by the person in black that I saw earlier.

"Alright, alright. Stop yelling already." The girl in black snaps, annoyedly.

"Who are you?" I ask.

The girl in black pushes a piece of her brown curly hair behind her ear. "I'm Kim Sae Ron." She introduces herself.

I raise my eyebrows. "Are you a doctor?" I question, wondering the reason for her strange clothing.

Sae Ron laughs, her laugh sounds cold and harsh. "I wish, but no." She answers. "I'm an angel."

I nearly choke on my spit. "An angel?" I laugh.

Sae Ron rolls her eyes. "Yes. Why are you humans always so untrusting and doubtful?"

"Because angels don't exist." I state, bluntly.

Sae Ron rolls her eyes again. "Fine, believe what you want, that doesn't affect me." She retorts sassily.

I blow on my hair frustratedly. This—whatever she is—sure is difficult. It's almost like dealing with a moody teenager, and I guess she is one. "Fine, say you are an angel," I begin. "But why're you here?" I ask.

"Because someone died." She answers.

My eyebrows shoot up. "Who?" I question, but suddenly I remember the patient next to me. I walk over to them, and say, "Hey, is the pa–" but I stop mid sentence when I see the patient's face. It's Jongdae. His eyes are closed, his skin is pale, and there's a few beads of blood running down his forehead.

My hand flies to my mouth. "J-Jongdae d-died?" I shriek.

Sae Ron shakes her head. "No." She replies, making me feel extremely confused. "Your friend—Jongdae as you call him—is perfectly fine. His body is just in shock, and I predict that he'll wake up in one to two hours." She tells me, and my racing heart calms down.

Then who died? I wonder, and I voice my question aloud. "If it's not Jongdae, then who is it?"

Sae Ron smiles, but her smile seems a little sad and slightly lonely. There's no mirth accompanying that smile, and it seems all wrong. It makes me feel confused, scared, and lonely all at the same time. "The one that died..." Her voice trails off. "...is you."

...

My initial reaction is to laugh. "Is there like a hidden camera, or something?"

Sae Ron frowns. "Does it seem like there's a hidden camera here?" She asks me, her voice sharp. Then she points to the one of the doctors. "Go try to tap his shoulder, see what happens." She instructs me, and I walk over to the doctor.

I reach out to touch him on the shoulder, but my hand goes through. Panic rises in me. "H-he could be a hologram, you know all that crazy technology that's being invented these days."

Sae Ron rolls her eyes. "Fine, go over to Jongdae, and try to pat him on the head or whatever."

Feeling very stupid, I make my way to Jongdae, and try to pat him on the head, but my hand goes through his head. I try to sit down next to Jongdae on the bed, but fall straight through onto the ground.

Sae Ron walks over to me. "I told you," she says smugly, "you are dead."

I stubbornly shake my head. "No. No, this isn't true. You're lying to me. This is all a dream!" I yell.

Sae Ron grabs my hand and brings me to the hospital bed that I was lying on earlier. "Look," she says, "it's your body."

On the bed, lies a woman with discoloured skin, blue-ish purple tinted lips, and her right arm dangling limply on the left side of the bed. The woman is covered in blood, and the expression of fear is frozen onto her face. "W-what is t-this?" I screech, frightened. I stumble in shock.

"It's your body." Sae Ron simply restates. "And you're a ghost."

Half of me believes her, but the other half is desperately trying to deny it. The denial feels fake, and that's when I realize that what Sae Ron is saying is true. I give up trying to fight my own reasoning.

"Please explain." I command.

"Do you remember the car accident last night?" Sae Ron quizzes me, and I nod. "Well, Jongdae was there, watching you for whatever reason," she starts, and I glare at her for the sarcastic tone when mentioning Jongdae's actions.

"And then you walked into the street to retrieve your chapstick, and there was a car coming. Jongdae tried to save you, but by the time he made it into the street, it was too late. You were already dead. You died on the scene." She explains quite bluntly, and shock registers in me, completely numbing my body.

"I—um—did the driver compensate Jongdae?" I ask, thinking about his financial situation.

Sae Ron nods. "Yes." She answers.

"Oh." Then curiosity strikes me. "All these people walking around being guided by people in black, are they all dead too?" I question.

Sae Ron nods. "Yes, all of them are dead."

I gesture at the number of people there is—you'd think that especially at a hospital, there'd be a lot more people that died. "How come there isn't a lot of people here?" I ask.

"Because either they've physically gone outside of the hospital, they've already gone to heaven or hell, or they've committed suicide." She replies.

"Huh?"

"People that commit suicide don't go to either heaven or hell, their spirit just immediately ceases to exist, because they took away their own life." Then she shifts in her position. "Once you've died, then you mill around the earth for exactly three years as a ghost. After the three years are over, depending on your actions when you were alive and your time as a ghost, it'll be decided whether you go to heaven or to hell." She explains.

Understanding dawns to me. "Oh." Then Sae Ron gets up. "Where are you going?" I ask, not wanting to be left alone.

Sae Ron points to a black book that I didn't realize that she was holding. It's glowing and vibrating so much that I wonder if we have to perform an exorcism. "Someone else is about to die, I have to do my job." She tells me, and she's about to leave, but I hold onto her wrist.

"Is your job hard?" I question.

Sae Ron looks taken back, and stares at me oddly, as if this is the first time that she's been asked this question. "What?"

"Is your job hard?" I repeat my question.

"Sometimes, but it's just what I've got to do." She replies. Then she smiles, a true, genuine smile this time, one that fits her better than her smug smirk. "I've got to go," she says, and she vanishes into thin air.

I realize how she didn't say 'see you around' or 'I'll catch you later,' or anything along the lines of that. Although she seems quite cynical and sarcastic, if you really talk to her, she gives off this kind of sad aura, making me wonder if she's used to this—announcing to dead people that they're dead, and not having time to make friends, or time to warm up to anyone.

I sigh. That's one problem, but now there's another: what do I do for three years, now that I'm dead?