Young Sara Myeong has only known hard work and pain her entire life. With her and her father living from paycheck to paycheck in the city that never sleeps, she could only hope that her kindness and patience would bring her good karma.
Instead it br...
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Sara never understood a child's fascination with adulthood. She knew it must've been the freedom that every child ached to have but Sara was neither dumb nor blind. With a single immigrant father who struggled every single day for the entirety of her life just to put food on the table, Sara knew that adulthood was no picnic. She understood the struggles and crippling anxiety and depression that clouded her father's heart. Sara Myeong was many things but naive was not one.
Sara liked to think that her father's struggles was what made her into such a kind and charitable person. She tried her best every single day to give to the community and pray that good karma would finally come for her and her father.
It didn't.
On her eighteenth birthday, her friends had invited her to spend a night out in the city. Deciding to not worry about the problems in her life for once, Sara had accepted the invitation and thanked the gods that her birthday had fallen on a Saturday. She wished she had declined instead.
Getting a tattoo was a stupid, stupid idea but a friend of hers had offered to pay for it and she could get whatever she wanted. So, they went ahead and made their way to the tattoo parlor with so much carelessness that it would give her poor father a heart attack.
Tattoos hurt and she knew it would but something was not right because this tattoo hurt. Each trace against her skin burned and itched; her pale hands had begun to redden while her knuckles stayed impossibly white because of how tightly she held onto her knees. She closed her eyes and begged, begged, for the pain to end quickly. And then it just did.
At least for her it did. While the pain in her wrist had quickly faded, her friend had shrieked with pain and gripped the same exact spot her tattoo was getting done. Sara had thought it was an odd coincidence but her friend just wouldn't stop screaming. And then she had begun to get a headache from it and when the headache faded, her friend's screams had worsened. Her screams had gotten so bad that the rest of her group had no choice but to call an ambulance in fear for their friend's life.
Sara swore she could still hear her screams over the loud sirens.
Sara had spent a whopping $200 on a tattoo she hadn't even wanted in the first place and left with no one but herself. The carelessness from earlier in the night had disappeared completely and only left a horrible pit of dread.
Two days later, black energy started swirling around her fingers. She had been draped across the couch, two beautiful slices of meat lovers pizza set on a large plate that had been sitting on her lap. And she forgot to turn on the tv. She groaned and sighed and jokingly held out her hand towards the remote that had been sitting on the coffee table, a foot too far.
And then a black energy had started flowing out of her finger tips, wrapped itself around the remote, and slowly brought it back to the palm of her hand. She had stared at the remote for a good ten minutes, her pizza had gotten cold before she decided to push the problem aside for another day.
