Make A Wish | PJM

Comatose

Hitori looks at a picture of his sister, staring at it with cold, blurry eyes. He grits his teeth every single time he takes a swig of soju; accentuating a burning sensation as the intensifying liquid cascades through his throat, dominating his bloodstream. The soju tastes awful, like water that's been out in the sun for days, boiling and simmering as the days go by, and the smell reeks like some fancy restaurant oriented cheese that was aged for months, maybe years, and yet, for some odd reason, he can't seem to part ways with it. He hasn't been since everything surrounding him started to crumble down, falling on him with full force. As he now examines the bottle of soju, he sighs at his decision. The house surrounds him with absolute silence. It makes his blood run cold and his temperature drop to the lowest degree. Slowly, he lets himself fall onto the ground, and lets out a sob that's been meaning to come out ever since he began to feel the alcohol dominate his blood stream. My sister wouldn't like seeing the house this; this gloomy and depressing, he thought out, shaking his head. He snatches the picture from the old desk, and eyes it carefully with his red, glassy eyes. It is a picture of his sister at a park's bridge, wearing denim, stonewashed overalls partnered with an extremely fluffy pink shirt while smiling wide at the camera, showing her fresh new set of colored bands that were recently placed on her teeth minutes before this photo was taken at the orthodontist.

He could remember the day before hell broke loose crystal clear. She was 16. He was 18. Her expression was pure and happy. She wanted her bands for her braces to be black, like licorice, as the color black, according to her, was under-represented.

"Black? Now, why in the world would you want such an ugly color, Yeona?" Her mother said, filling out the documents the orthodontist's secretary gave to her. Yeona frowned slightly, not very pleased by her mother's choice of words to describe the color black.

"I think it'll be a cute color for me," Yeona argued. She stared at anything but her mother as she felt her mother's eyes burn through her soul.

"cute color?" her mother asked with an eyebrow raised, "black braces will make your teeth look rotten and disgusting, Yeona. You're a young lady, too, not a reckless rebel. Get ahold of your place, and get a better color," her mother stated sternly. Yeona looked at her mom in shock. She did not know what to say to that. She never knew what to say to her mother. Her mother was clingy and attached; refusing to let go of her. She noticed that a while ago when her mother would always yell and chastise Hitori whenever he defended her.

"I think it's a good color for you," Hitori said. He interrupted his mother from uttering a single word of retort. His eyes remained glued to the magazine he held that day. Yeona looked at him with wide eyes and a big smile. She gasped, "Really? It wouldn't look that bad now, would it?"

Their mother looked at Hitori with narrowed eyes. She was not fond of the color, but the fact that he budged into her conversation with her daughter, made her feel a sense of disrespect. She swallowed her anger and accepted defeat at the fact that it was not her teeth anyway. Hitori looked at his mother with distant yet bland eyes. He never liked how his mother would always judge Yeona for her likes and dislikes. He knew that she loved and adored Yeona; the perfect daughter she imagined sat right in front of her. But he also knew that she was not able to live the perfect childhood and adolescence she wanted. Her husband left because he couldn't handle the life of being a father when Yeona came. So, she pushed it behind her mind, locked the memory inside a box with a lost lock, and endeavored to make Yeona live the best life she couldn't. He never knew that that pushed him out of his mother's heart. But eventually he realized that he was never in her heart in the first place, as he later learned that she had always wanted a girl, and just a girl. She had always never paid attention to him, but now she completely forgot about him as she did not want him anymore. She just wanted Yeona as her doll, and that was all.