reality (or the persistent illusion) - 3
- - - part 2
~*~*~*~*~*~
There are more than 30 missed calls listed when Sehun gets to his phone later, and four voicemails. All of them are from Soojung.
He finds a quieter spot away from the store where he part-times and listens to her angry voice ranting about him not keeping promises and being a shitty boyfriend. He sighs. Of course he loves her, he really does, but he thinks sometimes he needs time for himself and his friends but somehow she refuses to understand that and expects him to come running whenever she calls.
Again, Sehun presses his phone to his ear for the fourth voicemail, half-expecting to hear more of her yelling. However the voice that’s coming from the receiver does not belong to Soojung, though the number is hers. It belongs to a woman he doesn’t know, in the most sombre tone he has ever heard, and it doesn’t take the whole thing to make him start running, literally.
“I’m calling from Seoul University Hospital. Miss Jung Soojung was involved in a traffic accident and is currently undergoing surgery. This number is first in her speed dial and also the last number she dialled, so it would be much apprecia―”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Her first track meet is two weeks later, and as Krystal lines up with the starting line she sees Minho in the crowd, looking completely fit in place with his athletic wear, jumping up and down in the stands with a glittering smile that challenges the bright intensity of the sun.
She can feel the adrenaline rushing through her, knowing, for once, that she’s actually up there somewhere in this competition, when the gun starts and her feet push forward on their own accord.
It’s like she is alive all over again, the wind her only obstacle as she pushes forward, flying past the other runners. Krystal eyes the red finish line in her reach and pumps her legs faster, and when she sees Minho’s face at the finish line, jumping up and down like a child, Krystal breaks out into a smile and thinks she might be flying.
She crosses the finish line with a call of her name from the announcer, and runs far ahead until she finally reaches a slowing point.
Minho is waiting for her when she is finished, a bottle of water in his hands and a towel draped over his shoulder. “Look at you go, queen of the mammals,” he says, laughing, and even when Krystal protests he leans forward to press a kiss against her sweaty temple. “I’m proud of you. I bet you even broke your own record this time.”
Krystal laughs, falling against him as he leads them to the stands, where they wait for her next event. “I hope so. I feel amazing.”
She expects, for some reason, some biting remark, some sarcastic response that would make her and him keen over in giggles, but instead Minho just smiles, kisses her again. “You are amazing.”
His eyes shine with a sort of spark that she doesn’t recognize and Krystal realizes, then, why it looks so unfamiliar. This isn’t her. This is too… perfect. Bland, almost, in the way that Minho gives her everything she is expecting, without a single trip or stumble, a straight line that she has trouble walking down because she is still hungover from last night’s uncertainties.
Her heart races but she doesn’t think it’s because of his tight grip on her hand, or the way he smooths her bangs back out of her face with that loving gaze in his eyes. Krystal wonders briefly if this is even love and if what Soojung wants is the same thing Krystal does. If they are even the same person, anymore.
Forever passes and Krystal finds herself holed up in her apartment, an unfamiliar box filled with abnormalities and she wonders when it was that this world became a nightmare.
Minho calls her later one weekend, says he misses her, and suddenly she is dressed in jeans a t-shirt for the baseball match between Doosan Bears versus the Lotte Giants and she doesn’t even know who these people are.
He doesn’t kiss her when they meet up and the car ride to the stadium is silent, but that everlasting smile is still pasted on his face and she thinks maybe it’s her turn to wonder how it is that he was so unluckily pinned with someone like her.
Krystal doesn’t really understand baseball, and so for the most part she says glued to Minho’s side, yelling when he does and eating most of the popcorn and fried chicken the vendors pass out. Minho is cheering so loudly, on his feet the whole time, and as Krystal eyes the game blankly she remembers thinking how much Sehun hated baseball.
Sehun held contempt for every sport that wasn’t soccer, and she thinks back to their one and only baseball game together, how she had won free tickets and dragged Sehun to the game with her despite all of his protests. They had ended up with seats right under blazing heat of the sun at the very front, both of them complaining the entire game.
It sticks out in her memory, then, the giant camera that pans in on them as they are bickering over who has to refill their soda bottle after the fourth inning, huge hearts and lips pasted on the monitor around their faces, how Sehun had looked at her with a red face because neither of them were really used to kissing in public, how Soojung had shifted away slightly but had been unable to deny that he was her boyfriend, that the shouts of kiss, kiss, kiss! weren’t falling on deaf ears because maybe it would have been nice if had just kissed her, and she can almost hear the chanting, clear as day as if it were happening right-
now.
The yells are somewhat deafening and Krystal glances over to her side, sees Minho with his trademark grin and feels as his hand goes up to cup her face, sweaty fingers against her sweaty cheek. She remembers penning this in, the lines of Sehun’s jawline, strong and smooth and leaning closer to her just as Minho is right now, because he was supposed to kiss her, just like Minho is doing right now-
Krystal doesn’t scream when his lips press against hers. She muffles her whimpers and waits until the commotion dies down before standing up, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.
“You aren’t,” she begins, and Minho is still smiling, she just wants to wipe that stupid smile off of his face, “you aren’t real. None of this is real.”
They skip the rest of the baseball game.
Minho doesn’t try to explain anything, and Soojung - she isn’t Krystal, Krystal doesn’t even exist - wills the tears to stay inside. She’s just so confused, and so heartbroken, and she just misses Sehun. She just wants Sehun, wants his dumb face and his late arrivals to all of their dates and his rude jokes and mean remarks. All she ever wanted, she guesses, was Sehun.
“I have…” Minho starts, breaking the silence, and he glances over at her for a brief second, “I have something to show you.” The tilt of his lips is gone and Soojung supposes that was her fault too.
Just like all of it was. A useless pen and a wistful imagination and a broken heart.
Her room, Krystal’s room, appears to be as identical as Soojung’s the moment they step in. It even smells like coffee and cinnamon; stale chips in an open bag near the bed, wooden panels of her dresser and the mirror bordered by pictures of Soojung’s closest friends from high school and, at the same time, they all appear to be strangers. The desk has its own flowery lamp, a sketch pad on top of the table, and two of her favorite running shoes below, a Nike and a Converse, and it dawns to her how Minho is horribly right about one thing.
“I’m… Krystal.”
Minho nods solemnly. “Yeah.”
“I’m Soojung and Krystal,” she says, her voice trembling without her forcing it not to. She has to stop panicking. “This is my story. This is my manga, I made this!” She turns to him now, observing every line and faint erasures from the first time she could’ve sketched him alive. Minho looks so unbelievably surreal now, so evidently. “I made you,” she quietly adds, and Minho stands there, not as stunned as the first time they’ve met but, still reflecting Soojung’s stoic reaction to the whole thing. She is, after all, his creator, and she’s truly as smart as he knows she is.
“That is correct,” Minho responds.
She moves to her table, fingers going now on the pad. Still uncertain how all at once, it just hits her now, how stupid of her to realize as she flips the pages, that everything about Minho, the noodles they ate the first time, the movies, event the track meet - they’re pieces of scraps she combined to perfect her manga, to create the perfect boyfriend, the flawless relationship she and Sehun can’t seem to ever achieve.
Sehun. Her real boyfriend.
She flinches at the last drawing she sees, and jerks her hand away at the unfamiliar. It appears to be a girl, attached to tubes and machines, asleep on a bed, surrounded by flowers of Soojung’s favorite kind. Another character sits closely, clasping her hand. He waits for the impossible, the words on the tiny boxes said, holding on to a promise that he won’t ever leave until the girl awakes. He has tears in his eyes, almost begging. In the last panel he swears, and breathes silently as he switch the lights off, “Come back to me now.”
“Did you draw this?” She calls Minho to have a look, and he shakes his head, eyes widening in surprise.
“I scanned the whole thing before I decided it’s time I show it to you,” he replies. “That’s not possible, is it?”
Soojung stares at the heavy lines, the shadows, the highlights, even the captions are all not her work. Someone else must be adding all of this in, but who? The boy shedding tears in the drawing stimulates a mental image of someone Soojung has once sworn will never cry. But now he is, worried sick, definitely fighting the urge to tear up but still fails to do so, and it counts as somebody important. Important to her.
She licks her lips, before finally concluding, “It’s Sehun.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Sehun glances at her through the small window on the door. He’s been here every day since the day of the accident, but no matter how many times he looks at Soojung’s frail body lying helplessly in the hospital bed, his heart still gets crushed.
“So you’re saying it’d be impossible for her to stand on her feet again?”
“What I’m saying is that the chances of her mobility to get back to how it was before is slim at best, but there is always hope and especially if she’s willing to work hard. Rehabilitation takes a lot more than just being physically determined to become better. She’ll be in for a difficult time mentally and emotionally as well.”
He exhales a heavy sigh. Dr Kwon’s explanation on Soojung’s condition is ringing in his head. The crash left the most impact on the bulk of her spine due to how she was positioned when she fell. As a result, there is some possibility that she would be paralyzed from the waist down if-no-when she wakes up. Imagining her reaction to this was difficult enough to fathom, but the very idea of her not waking up was even worse. Sehun would take the former rather than the latter any day, ever.
The petite doctor gives Sehun a comforting pat on the arm and he manages a smile for her as she walks away. Once she’s out of sight, he quietly enters the room again and collapses to his knees. His shoulders begin to shake and immediately his mind begins to berate every little thoughtless thing he’s done:
If only he drove her back. If only he didn’t break his promise. If only he answered her calls. If only…
At this point, all Sehun can do is cry.
- - - final part