The Wish of a Paper Boy

Part One

"I don't have much time."

I don't look up at her. My head stays down, my hands fist into my lap and just the small tension is enough to make my skin turn bold, luscious red with blood. Her hand reaches out without a word and she opens up my paper-thin fingers before gently placing a piece of tissue in the palm of my now-red hand. I still don't look up at her, for I know what is waiting for me the moment I do. I'm not ready to face the pain in her eyes, not ready to feel that desperate sense of helplessness overwhelm me and choke my throat in its tightening hold.

She calls out my name. Once. Twice.

But still, I keep my head down and focus on releasing the tension in my fingers. The blood slowly dries up, leaving a faded scarlet trail in its wake.

This stain will take forever to wash away. Last time had been almost disastrous when I'd tried rubbing it off with soap.

I swallow. The lump in my throat is thick, barely allowing my breath to steady itself as I force my stuttering heartbeat to calm down.

Why? I keep chanting inside my head, as if someone might answer my question if I try hard enough to scream it out loud. Why her? Why me? Why why why?

"Papier, please look at me."

And it's only then that I my eyes trail up to her face. Her beautiful, lovely scarred face that I've grown to love so much, no matter how hard she pushes me away when I come too close to her heart. But her seafoam eyes glisten, the sun's rays beating down on the back of her head and creating a golden halo around her figure, her hair woven into specs of light.

"Until when?" My voice is hoarse. I feel like I am barely able to keep myself together, as if my bones are made of jello.

"Six months. Eight, at most." she murmurs back softly and a shaky breath falls from my lips.

Six months. That's half a year.

Only 182 days to find a solution, or find another healer that can change her fate.

"Papier." she calls, and as much as I don't want to, I have to look at her. So I do, my grey eyes meeting her pale jade ones until something in my chest starts to hurt. I've seen her hurt for so many reasons, but this kills me. It isn't much different than stabbing a knife right into my heart and let me bleed out on the ground at her feet.

And I can if I wanted to. It is just that easy for me. Just a little prick at the delicate sheath of skin that surrounds my being, and my life is over.

I stand up so abruptly that I make her to jump. She blinks back at me, eyebrows furrowed in confusion as I make my way towards the door. Her voice calls out my name, begging me to stay with her, to stay safe and not do anything reckless. But I just shake my head, unable to look at her in the eye as I carefully grasp the door handle and pull it open, before quickly shutting it behind me to silence her pleas.

I don't look back when I carefully tiptoe away.

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Papier, my mom had named me the first time she had laid her eyes on me. It had been weeks after my birth, maybe even a month before she had finally gotten over the fact that her own child had been given the curse of the Paper Skin, a disease that manifests itself in an unborn fetus's DNA and somehow lowers the sturdiness of the skin cells lining the body of its host. The village hadn't had any victims of the Paper Skin since centuries, and for me to have been born seemed to be a sign, a curse that my mother was to live in doom for the rest of her life.