"I have a key to suicide; the death formula."
***
BOOK ONE OF DEATH SERIES
In which, an unfamiliar boy attempts to guide Kang Soa out of depression and from her intentions to commit suicide only by a formula.
A mysterious boy,
A depressed girl,
And...
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Later that day, when I reached the apartment, I saw Taehyung.
I gasped incredulously. Not because his presence surprised me but because of what laid in front of my eyes.
Myriads of painted sheets scattered everywhere inside the room carelessly and sat in the middle of the countless parchments was Taehyung, a paintbrush in his hand as he made a pink stroke gently on the paper before him.
I picked up the painting lying in front of me, flipped it and saw that it was a painting of cherry blossoms. I fetched up another one lying beside it and turned out that it was a cherry blossoms painting too. One after the other, I recklessly scooped up a pile of these similar paintings and grating my teeth, I threw it across the room, landing it squarely in his line of sight.
"What the hell is this?!"
His head turned to finally acknowledge my presence. I marched towards him. "Cherry blossoms? Really? So many cherry blossoms painting even after I told you that I hate them?"
In all candour, I didn't know why I was seething, displaying my acrimony towards him although I knew he was barely to be held at fault as the entire week's anxiety burst out through me like an eruption of an angry volcano.
"And where in the fucking hell have you been all these days?! The last time I saw you was when I encountered Hyunwoo and after that, you disappeared again! Why the hell do you keep on disappearing every freaking time?! I thought we are friends! When mum fainted, I had expected you to be by my side as a friend but you disappeared like a tremulous person! I had to get her admitted to the hospital all by myself! And you have no decency to at least ask about how she has been because she isn't fine! She's going to die, Taehyung! She's going to die soon and my fucking life is just getting ruined every single day! And here you are, spending your sweet time in painting these useless stupid cherry blossoms!"
I tried to hold back the seething torrent of tears that had been building up since the moment I was angered but all went down in drain when the walls that I had fenced around myself so securely, shattered and fresh hot tears stroked down on my face perpetually. My emotions all over the place as my knees gave in and I slumped down on the floor. My lungs rummaged for oxygen, and my sobbing had the same force of someone drowning. The flesh under my ribcage throbbed.
Time didn't run in straight lines and logic was a circle. They'd never make any progress until they would figure that out. Forwards could only happen when the loop was fixed, when the energy had somewhere to flow. And that was eternity. But my mother's death was written, her loop was not too far and I was dreading the day it would come down crashing onto me like a bolt of lightning.
I heard shuffling of feet until two foot stood before my crouching figure. "Breakdown can shatter you into a person barely capable of surviving, Soa and the one who can rebuild you is yourself."
The soft thumps of his footsteps became distant when I felt a whisk of light air that told me he was retreating. I didn't dare look up as relentless sobs escaped from me filling the eerily silent air. In the end, I heard him say.
"The last rule of death formula; do not expect things from anyone because you don't know when you'll get disappointed in them."
A soft sound of the door being shut told me that he was not mad at me.
Suddenly, the guilty of scathing furiously at Taehyung took over me as I rolled on the cold floor, tucking my chin into my chest as I brought my knees up to it and with the fall of night, I cried myself to sleep.
