What if...? || Markhyuck

-x-

[2 years earlier]

[minhyung]

I've never attached much importance to the natural world around me. A few bushes, a few clouds, a nice lawn in front of the neighbor's house. I saw all this every day and didn't feel the need to over-praise the existence of similar qualities.

They say we won't appreciate what we have until we lose it. I gave this statement full rightness and acknowledged its truthfulness.

I sat on a chair with fused fingers on my stomach. I looked ahead at the blue wall with white spots. I have been in the center for a month without being able to breathe fresh air. I spent my free time staring stupidly at a miserable substitute for heaven, which was more like a frame from an animated fairy tale than a reflection of reality. However, this frame was the only link with memories of normal life. Even if it was an illusion in itself, the sky remained a paradoxically constant element, though in motion.

Statically real.

Dynamically changing.

Paradoxes.

Even though I was already accustomed to any surprise attacks, I could never stop the shiver of shock that accompanied me. As usual, Luke emerged from nothingness. You could say that he was the shadow of my shadow. He sat almost silently at my table, staring at me with his intense, amber look.

"Why are you still looking at this?" He asked. "After all, it's fiction."

"Just like that" I shrugged. "Reminds me a little bit of the real one."

"You like to fool yourself, huh?" he asked, scooping all the crayons that had been scattered on the table, under his nose. I didn't answer him.

I began to wonder what I can do to get out of here. I was filled with hundreds of fears. The strongest fear filled me with the vision that I could become more like the people who are here. I didn't want to be a crazy person. I strongly questioned my stay in this center but over time I noticed that my protests didn't help much here. Finally, I realized that I was in a lost position anyway because I had no power over my life.

I was nobody.

I was crazy.

I was incapacitated.

I glanced at Luke again from the corner of my eye. This boy was fascinating. Kind of normal and aware of his own deeds but at the same time completely crazy and requiring specialist treatment in a closed room. I was afraid of him, wanting to get to know him better. At first glance, my roommate seemed to have his own separate consciousness. He was incredibly intelligent, somewhat defenseless and seemingly fragile in his small stature. He spoke thoughtfully, rethinking his speech, as if his mind was in no way disturbed by the medication he was taking. On the other hand, I have already seen what happens to him if he's not taking these drugs and I was afraid of that Luke the most.

Brunet sat slightly leaning over the table top, sticking crayons into a blank sheet - one by one, breaking free of graphites. I frowned, wondering what he wanted to achieve. Was it some form of rebellion again, or was it simply the result of boredom. While spoiling the crayons, he didn't anger the staff at all. Because of him people who need it for therapy, won't be able to simply take it and if it happens again, no one will ever give us any drawing instruments.

"What are you doing?" I asked slightly broken up. In my free time I used the patents I learned in the drawing course. In this way, I killed eternal time and released overwhelming images from my head.

"I am preventing evil," he replied quite seriously, deepening the furrow on my forehead drawn from lack of understanding with his words .

"In what kind of way?" I choked in disbelief.

"I saw them in our room, Mark," he whispered, looking at me closely. His tone suggested that I had just done something very bad and he kept it secret for me and loyally warned me. However, I had to raise my eyebrows to show Luke that I really had no idea what he was talking about. "Pictures," he said.

"What about them?" I asked.

"I'm saving you from the falsehood you create, Mark" shook his head sideways in worry. "The curved memory of your old life won't let you start a new one. This past will kill you here, "he confessed. "It'll tighten its tentacles around your neck and you'll continue to desire it so much that you lose the rest of your senses."

"How did you come to that?" I was surprised by his words, which nevertheless had some unclear depth, hidden truth. "These are just drawings," I continued, although I wasn't sure myself that what I was saying was completely true.

"Because you see..." he began with a quiet sigh, supporting his chin on open hand. "When the memories are blurred and you let them go, you are free," he whispered melancholy and reflexively looked into the corner of the room on his right, where Peter was sitting. The boy constantly drew only circles of different colors on his sheet. He always did the same, hypnotizing others with the monotony of wrist movements. "But when images of the past begin to merge into one, and you have no idea which is real, you lose your mind because you want to recover them all. You don't let them go, so you go astray. You get lost in your own life, unable to break the carousel of absurdity, which makes your life nothing but a blurred drawing. "

Carousel of absurdity.

Destroying something what was meant to create.