Silence

Chapter Forty Three - In My Heart Forever

AN:- Are we all enjoying the direction of the story so far? Please let me know if there is anything I can do to improve and as always enjoy the next update 😁

Saying that he hung up the phone with a devastatingly welcomed click, the final words of ominous silence that he had uttered stupefying me speechless.

Another beloved... A heartbreaking goodbye...

My eyes watered with grief, my heart at once understanding who he had been referring to. My heart knew that kindred soul like it knew no other, our bond so strong and unbreakable that even though they had passed I still felt their presence in my life as if they were even now still to this day stood by my side; proud and unwavering, strong and resilient, cheerful and boisterous.

"Appa..." My eyes hollowed painfully, his memory burning an itch of wanton wanting despair in my heart. "Oh, Ap-Appa..." My voice stuttered, lips shaking like frail leaves dangling on a loose branch on a freezing cold windy winters day.

Before the time that I had been pregnant with my triplets my father had been extremely ill and was a regular patient in and out of the hospitals. During those hard days, we had just begun getting acknowledgment and praise for our work as an idol girl group and were still very much on the long winded, hard trekking path to success. My team members and I weren't as close back then, there still being an awkward barrier between us three as we didn't exactly want to accept that our fate was within one another's.

With strenuous times at both work and home, I had been an extremely sullen person to be around and would often find it hard to smile or be pleased with anything. Most of my days would be filled with silence as I did all that I had to do like a lifeless and manufactured robot with no self will or choice towards anything. The only time that I would force myself to be normal is when I was with my father and just being in his presence was nothing short of a miracle as even on his death bed he knew how to make me laugh and smile till my sides ached and my eyes ran a riveting flood with happy tears.

He was special he was. So so incredibly special.

I still remember to this day one of the very last conversations we had before he was going to be taken away for his surgery. It had broken my heart as it had been the first time that I was seeing such despondency and hopelessness at what his fate had reduced him to; a mere rag doll of bones and flesh with no will left to keep on fighting for survival. He had been fighting to be strong for so long and when his time for recovery came near he seemed to deflate and give up, even his eyes losing the twinkle and light they once used to always have. That had been enough to shatter my own hope and God knows how long it had taken me to pull myself back up after seeing that staggering realisation hit home within him.

My eyes closed in grief as that scene came to mind like a vivid flashback of the cruel past that had once long ago beaten upon us...

*

"You'll take care of your mother for me won't you?"

I should my head vehemently, looking up at him with fiercely flashing angered orbs. "Andwae!"

Appa coughed lightly, his palm going up to cover his mouth that had begun to quiver. My eyes raptly followed his every move, my heart in my throat the entire time at his preciously precarious state and lack of healthy wellbeing. My anger dissipated instantly, worry clouding over as I wearily took in how much that small cough took out of him, seeing the pale and pallid colour of his skin and the harsh ways he was inhaling every intake of breath. His worrisome state put me into a haze of the hurtful words of the doctors I had met before entering telling me about how short his chances of survival realistically were. That torrid scene of words was playing like a stereo on endless repeat in my numb and paralytically frozen mind. I was lucky in a sense that my mother had called me at that time or else I would have resorted to yelling and screaming at the professional before me.

"Why should I take care of her when it's your job to do so?" I pressed with a shaky tone, my eyes watering as I looked at his unstable and rocky state of health.

He smiled weakly, moving back his stained palm to reveal soft splatters of blood on his fingertips from the sheer force of even his small and seemingly harmless cough. My lips parted in adulterated horror, a gasp of pain emitting from the depths of my vocals at what I was seeing.

"B-bl... A-ap-"

"Shh." He raspily cooed at me, his thumb rubbing circles over the flesh of my cheekbones.

"M-mianhe Appa, mianhe, m-mianhe!"

My eyes sorrowed over in guilt, the longer I stared at the blood, droplets of long held in tears smattering out my heavy eyes. This was just utterly torturous to see. I hated seeing him so weak and defenseless. Looking up into his warm gaze, I took in a shaky breath and forced a hopeful smile onto my face, wiping my tears carelessly away with the back of my hand.

"Appa..."

"Ne, my sweetheart?" His gaze was as loving as ever as he looked tenderly my way.

"It's gonna be okay." I whispered, taking his hand in mine to clean the blood off of it with a gentle caress. "I'm going to get you out of here." I focused on looking down at the blood rather than his face knowing his smile would shatter me and I would be reduced to tears again.

He smiled once more my way, my heart knowing he was even as I trained my stare towards his frail palms. "I know sweetheart, I know you will but promise me one thing hmm?"