Our Beautiful Escape

It's Simply Illogical

[Are you perhaps their family member? I'm sorry, all of the people inside the car were declared dead upon arrival.]

It has been a year since Chaewon received the call which turned her life upside down. Her parents, even her elder sister and younger brother; dead, after a car crash took their lives on their way to eat dinner with her. She hasn't seen them for months, being too busy with her own life. Little did she know that the time they're supposed to meet is the exact same time they're going to leave her, forever. Everything was taken away from the girl in a blink of an eye.

She had tried to live her life as usual as if nothing was wrong. Drowning herself in work and alcohol at night, spending time with her friends and giving them smiles, smiles so fake that she wants to throw up.

She was living.

Yet she has nothing but emptiness in her heart.

It's their death anniversary, the day they left her, the day everything changed, the day that Chaewon died.

Puffing out the smoke from her mouth, she let her eyes wander around the area in front of her. She was leaning her forearms on the railing of her balcony, gazing down the ant-like people scuttling about seventeen floors below where she is. Her workers insisted that she take a day off and so, she got a boring day off she never needed. A day where she does nothing will only make her want to kill herself.

What's the point of living... of breathing and letting your heart still beat when you don't even see your purpose anymore?

Finally finishing a stick or two, she went inside her room, straight to the kitchen where the refrigerator is to get some beer yet immediately realizing the absence of her cold cans of pleasure, she sighed in disappointment.

Chaewon quickly grabbed her coat and wallet to head towards the nearest convenience store, which is a few hundred meters away from her flat.

She parked her car in front of the building and immediately went inside to buy her drinks and a few snacks. As she was about to head back inside her car, she heard a girl's shout.

"P-please let go!"

She clicked her tongue when she saw a random girl tearing her bag off from a rather familiar kid's hand.

"Hey, kid." She boredly called out.

"Ah." Letting go of the stranger's bag, the young boy ran towards Chaewon with a smile.

"Noona— Ouch!" His small bony hands held his forehead, eyes watery after it was flicked by the older girl.

"Didn't I tell you to stop forcefully asking for money or food to strangers like what you did to me weeks ago?"

"B-but I'm really hungry... grandma and I haven't had a meal today at all. And I haven't done this since you helped me..." He was on the verge of crying when Chaewon suddenly gave him one of the bags in her hand.

"Take these snacks then. And here," The older handed him some papers from her wallet. "Help yourself with this. Go home already."

The little guy beamed and hugged her. "Thank you, noona!"

She gave him a small smile as she gently patted his head. "Noona has to go now. Don't ever do it again, okay?"

Earning a small nod with a pout, a silent airy chuckle escaped from her mouth. The kid may be doing something considered as a small crime but she had witnessed him doing his best and taking care of his grandmother once before he tried to beg her money out of desperation. She knew what the kid has been going through so she gives him food and money every now and then when she sees him.