Death Formula | KTH ✓

9. Damage Was the Sibling of Pain

Pathetic.

I felt pathetic just as his loathed face turned up in front of me, a certain kind of lust beaded with his eyes that I abhorred so much. His disgusting hands went up to choke me with all his might.

Instinctively, I closed my eyes, unable to bear witnessing his hostile yet leering face.

Hopelessness. Pain. Lament.

A wave of emotions crashed into me as I wriggled. Pushing, punching, panicking, doing everything in my might to get myself out but he mercilessly pinned me on the wall.

Malicious eyes, bore into my pleading ones, "Please... Please l-leave me." I choked, kicking my legs momentarily.

"Not today, chicken. Not today." His low pitched voice that grumbled like the thundering sound of the clouds, caused me to flinch involuntarily.

Disgust. Hate. Regret. Terror.

"You foolish girl! You've got no friend of yours who'll help you today!" Every venomous word that he spat felt like a sharp needle inside me.

"Die! Why don't you die?!" He yelled.

Why don't I die?

Blackness surrounded me, pulling me into its nothingness and I saw myself falling. Falling deep down. Falling into the dark.

Lightning jagged across the night sky ripping the once peaceful sky like paper, consequently jarring me out of my nightmare. I was sweating profusely, my breath uneven as I coughed, gasped, and tried breathing again.

A quiet sob escaped from my mouth as I brought my knees up to my chest, hugging them as the sky outside began to terrify me endlessly. With each lightning that struck with the ambient sound, I flinched spontaneously.

Again, I hate every season.

When the entire city slept peacefully underneath their warm duvets, I was wide awake. Alone. Hopeless.

"Soa?" Even the faint voice of Taehyung caused me to jump, panic-stricken.

What is happening to me?

"Soa, you okay?" His soft footsteps came closer to me in the darkroom and I edged away, etching like a stiff board.

My muscles tensed when I felt his hand on my shoulder, gently rubbing his hand on it. In the darkness, I couldn't perceive his face yet I could sense the worry in his eyes. "Everything will be fine."

No. Nothing is fine. I know it.

Streaks of blinding incandescent lightning crackled against a stormy blanket of grey, filling the sky with undying flashes of radiance.

I hated it. I hated it.

I felt him wrapping his arms around my quaking body and I reluctantly accepted it. His big protective arms seemed like a shell that was desperately safeguarding its pearl.

The way he wrapped me in a warm swaddle of his chest and arms, I didn't want to leave. It was a kind of hug of gentle arms that gave me the space to breathe. A space to feel relive again. A space to cry. It felt as though when I was in his arms all my pain went away for a while. The gentle strokes, the gentle caressing, all seemed to heal me.

Will it work or will it be temporary?

The damage was already done and I knew nothing in this world could ever heal it.

Damage was the sibling of pain.

Damage wouldn't stop at one person, it would roll down generations, would roll down to everyone connected with the victim who suffered the wrath of damage. It was an emotional tornado that would ruin lives yet to be called into existence.

Taehyung pulled away and instinctively, I missed the warmth radiating from his body. He sat on my bed and brought my head to lay on his lap. I curled up into a ball. My hands unknowingly found his warm one and intertwined our fingers and with his other hand, he caressed my hair, gently brushing with his fingertips.

It was soothing.

"Sleep. I'll tell you a story." He whispered and I felt like I became a child again. Curled up in the arms of my father who would lull me every night, making me fall asleep eventually.

"There was a little girl who was always unhappy. Unhappy with her life. She thought nobody understands her. She thought that she would be alone forever. One day she was walking on the streets under the bright sun when suddenly she saw a bookseller. She went up to him and looked around the collection of books. None of them seemed to get her attention. The man inquired which book was she looking for and then she said innocently that she wanted a book that could teach her how to never be alone. The man frowned. Looking into her eyes you know what did he say?"

"What did he say?" I asked, engrossed in such a manner that the thundering sound outside as well as the pitter-patter rain didn't scare me. And if he was telling me the story to distract my mind from the weather outside then he was clearly excelling in it.

"He said, 'my little child. You never walk alone. Look behind you. Your shadow is always with you. Wherever you go, it follows you.'"

"Bullshit," I scoffed, tracing the lines on Taehyung's palm as his other hand continued to stroke my hair.

"I don't think so. Shadow here is compared to the people around you, who care for you, who are always beside you just like your shadow. They know you very well. Indeed we don't acknowledge them that is why we say we're lonely but the truth is we are never alone."

I yawned. My eyelids began to feel heavy, gently pulling me into my slumber and even in the rumbling night outside, the darkroom of mine was filled with an eerie silence. Gradually as I slept on his lap like a pure infant, unknown to the cruelness of this world, I swore I heard Taehyung say at the end,

"And I'm your shadow."