Death Formula | KTH ✓

7. And Hope is the Bittersweet Lie

"You did it again."

I heard a faint voice, a sound enough to bring me back to my senses and right when I snapped my eyes open, I regretted it as the irritatingly bright sunlight pierced through my eyes like painful needles, blinding me with its glare.

"Please shut this light!" I screeched, my voice feeling strange to me as I shielded my eyes from the torture. How did I turn this way?

Taehyung nodded and to my relief, the drapes were pulled together, welcoming me once again into the familiar arms of the darkness.

"Why did you do it?" I heard Taehyung question me but I showed no signs of taking heed of it as I shut my eyes tight, going back into my world of thoughts.

Why didn't you die? Why didn't you die, Soa?

"I'm asking you something," he pressed like a stubborn, demanding parent. His voice felt like an irritating, obnoxious cavilling to me.

Then seconds of silence stretched to minutes of quiet and still moments. Only the light sounds of the ticking clock entered my ears. It was eerily serene. The ticking noise was a periodic thing, tick, tick, tick, one leading to another and you wait for the next tick to be heard, a sort of guidance it was. It would calm your mind when you'd know what would come next, what you would hear next, the following tick and then everything would return to the same place, back to square one.

"Soa," I sensed him squeezing my cold hands lightly, his thumb stroking the back of my hand softly and soothingly.

It felt nice. A lump formed in my throat as my eyes brimmed with tears again. Fuck these tear glands, I wish I never had them.

My lips twitched and trembled as my hands began to jerk in an odd rhythm. My eyes were still shut tightly, fearing that the moment I would open them, I would catch a glimpse of the light again. I was terrified. The fear sat on me like a pillow over my mouth, hindering my breathing as I found myself again in the helpless state that I was in.

"Soa, everything is going to be fine," I felt a light brush of his hands on my wet cheeks as if he was dabbing the endless streaming of the salty water.

My face twisted, a disdainful grimace surfacing at the top as I retorted back with my bleak and despondent voice, "I don't believe you."

"Trust me, Soa, when all this ends-and it will end-you will find yourself happy again."

"Life is never that way," I sobbed, "it never allows you to be happy, at least not to the ones who don't deserve it."

"Everyone deserves happiness. The worst guy ever alive on this Earth deserves happiness at one point in his or her life. Now, open your eyes," he instructed and I reluctantly agreed.

Peeling my pallid eyes open, I saw an anxious Taehyung crouching beside me. I didn't know why but a sudden relief poured down into my heart as I managed to somehow sit upright, legs crossed under the sheets, my hands still in his.

He smiled.

His beautiful and comforting smile blossomed a flower of hope within me. Without saying anything, his arms draped around my fragile body as he pulled me in for a comforting hug.

Hope.

Hope was a lie. A lie that promised you that light of fortune would insooth prosper in your sullen life but I knew, I knew that hopes brought nothing except pain and regret, hurt and grief.

As a human, we all would tend to develop hopes for someone or something in our hearts. Hopes that we would keep from the ones we trust, unmindful of the fact that the hope that was joining us together, a bridge unasked, unspoken would be the reason for us breaking apart.

I too had hoped for Aera to come back but that hope brought me nothing except agony. I too had hoped that my dad would come back home that day after work but he never showed up. I too had hoped that my mother would stop drinking one day but that day certainly never came just like I too had hoped that Hyunwoo and his friends would never bother me but in return for all of this, what did I get?

Hate. Suffering. Remorse. Damage.

Hope is a bittersweet lie.

The more you serve on it, the more your life would become dependent on it and one day without your permission it would shatter you.

And I had broken myself once. I didn't want that history to repeat.

I would never let Taehyung be my hope.

Pulling back from the hug, Taehyung laid me back down on the bed as he tucked the covers around me gently, wrapping me like a burrito as he grasped the door handle and went out, leaving me in the dark alone. The dark that I started loving, that I began feeling addicted.

Taehyung would never be my hope.