hide your fires | ✓

iv. you're not the same as them

but your death, it won't happen to you
it happens to your family and your friends
– the 1975, i always wanna die sometimes

• •

it was that day.

an absolute wreck of a day.

every year, it was the same shit. lisa bought flowers, went to the grave, sitted there in front of the tombstone.

she didn't talk, because that was stupid, no one was going to answer her back. there was no one but her, her thoughts, and bones inside a casket deep under the ground.

she would stay for an hour being completely still, and when the hour was over, she would leave.

time was up.

when she reached her car, she turned up the volume of the music she's playing. it had to be sad, full of anguish. it wouldn't take long until tears overtook her.

she wept.

after she wept the constriction in her chest loosened and she would drive again.

a few hours later she had drank herself to numbness, when she could barely feel her face, she stopped and she got picked up by a woman, in which lisa fucked in the bathroom of the bar.

fucking did not get rid of her sorrows, instead she felt worst.

"fuck," drawled out of her mouth as she made her way outside of the place into the uber she got.

soon lisa found herself in the tub, stripped of her clothes, her wounds bare, and she opened them one by one yet again as she travelled from memory to memory.

all the people she loved died, all the people she touched died, god, lisa was a curse you brought down to earth and she knew.

she knew of this because she wasn't blind.

seokjin— her best friend, he died because of her.

this was why she could never risk it, she had the kiss of death.

park chaeyoung, the love of her life, deserved better.

she put the half-finished cigarette between her lips and took a drag.

she thought about chaeyoung's eyes and how they brighten whenever she found something wondrous, or her smile, she thought of that smile.

then the peace she had been searching for her came.

park chaeyoung, her angel.

she wondered if god gave chaeng to her to balance the curse she got, but then she remembered... chae wasn't hers.

if she was, lisa won't be this—disgusting, hard to swallow, an object of desire but once she's used she was discarded, thrown into trash.

she put the cigarette butt into the ash tray, then submerged into the water and stayed under there until her lungs burned, she resurfaced and gasped for air.

she began to cry and she screamed.

can't someone love venom, can't someone love broken shards of an empty bottle, can't someone love lalisa manoban?

she hit her chest as her breath got stuck in her throat.

"fuck, fuck, fuck..." she gasped, she closed her eyes and thought of chaeng's eyes, her nose, her lips, her laugh, her voice—then the calm, it returned.

she gotten out of the tub and wrapped the towel around her, she wiped her face and tried to stop the tears, she took her phone and called chaeyoung.

"baby?"

"i need to hear you, i needed to hear you." lisa breathed out.

"i'm here, what's wrong?"

"nothing, baby, really—" fuck, rosie, i love you, i love you!

"hmm, i miss you. it's been a week since we hang out. work sucks, huh?" lisa can hear the smile in her voice.

she drowned herself in work, didn't take a day off, their chef told her to slow down, instead she picked up the pace.

"yes, it sucks." lisa agreed, "i miss you, so fucking much." she sighed and put rosé on speaker.

"can we facetime?" rosé asked and lisa quickly got dressed.

she activated her video and she smiled seeing chaeyoung's face.

the rest of the night, panic did not come for her anymore, she was at peace that during their video call, she fell asleep with a smile on her face.

on the other end, chae whispered: "i'm so in love with you."