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The bathroom floor is cold. How long have I been sitting there? I vaguely remember creating that hastily stacked tower in front of the door. It’s so late at night, I don’t anticipate being interrupted, but I wanted to ensure that anyone who tries to come in will at least be slowed down. I don’t want to be caught. I just want to exist here, wedged between the sink and the toilet where the magazine rack used to be. Now, it’s been shoved in front of the door. Another obstacle among the rolls of toilet paper and fruit-scented shampoo.
It’s safe here. This bathroom looks much like other bathrooms. If I pretend, this bathroom is overlapped with all the other bathrooms I’ve been inside in my entire life… if that’s the case, then beyond that door is not the bunker, it’s Mint Eye headquarters. It’s easier this way. At least at Mint Eye, I had a role, a purpose, a mission. One I would die for.
Now, what’s the point? “You can live for yourself! What have you always wanted to do, Saeran?” I remember those words, echoed in many different voices. First from Saeyoung, then MC, and then Yoosung, as if they all got together to agree they’d say the same fucking thing to me when I asked them what I should do with my life now. Living for myself doesn’t make any sense. How can I do that when I never thought I’d have that chance? When I literally never have thought for myself, ever?
Mint Eye gave me purpose. And now that’s been taken away.
Sometimes, I wish I had never been saved. I wish I could go on hating Luciel like always, go on thriving on anger and hatred and self-denial. I’ve been overexposed to this thing called ‘love.’ It manifests in plenty of forms, but there’s one form I never thought I’d experience in my entire life. I’m not worthy of it, if I’m being completely honest...
It’s cold here. My fingers are frozen and I can feel the chill deep inside my bones. I rub at them to gain any type of friction and maybe create heat, but it doesn’t work. The minute I stop, they’re chilled again instantly. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I awoke and my entire body was encased in ice. I’m always fucking freezing. I’m even wearing that stupid, disgustingly simple brown sweater Saeyoung bought me. He didn’t deny me my old clothing or style but there wasn’t much left besides the one outfit he had found me in. I luckily still had my bracelets.
When I look at my wrist, I notice they’re absent. I panic for a mere moment before I locate them on the counter beside the sink. Right. I’d taken them off. When I look back down, I can see the slightly raised skin and the words the scars spell. Over the years, I’d written over it with my knife so often that it just looks like a garbled mess of letters but the most prevalent scar must be the question mark. No matter what I wrote on my wrist, the question mark was always applicable, so I’d retrace it out so I could see it in red.
It represents everything in my life; all the questions I’ve ever had. Why was I born? Why did mom hit me? Why did Saeyoung abandon me? Why did he leave me behind to rot? Why didn’t he love me? Why wasn’t I allowed to have a normal life growing up? Why did he rescue me? Why did he pretend to love me? Why did he let me get close to his friends? Why did he let me attack him? Why? Why?!
I wish I had something sharp right now. Instead, all I have are my nails. They’re much less accurate and less satisfying. With a knife, I could run it down my wrist and see the glint it made when it reflected off the unnatural overhead light. I could feel the way it sliced my skin with a mere touch, as if there was no resistance at all. I could see the blood bubble out even before I felt the burn. My skin had become so dead to any type of physical sensation that this was all I could enjoy, all I could feel at times.
It was a relief to inflict pain on myself. It was a statement of my autonomy. No one could hurt me more than I hurt myself. No one could ever take more from me if I’d already taken it from myself. Therefore, I chose to live in isolation, even at Mint Eye. My one goal: to destroy Luciel in the best way possible. To take everything from him.
How would I do this? Oh, I’ve thought about this a lot. I thought about finding those closest to him and torturing them, making them beg for the obscenest things I could think of. First, it was Yoosung. The boy who had the audacity to befriend Luciel. He reminded me of the person I was, and the person I never would be again. I knew Luciel saw it, too. I knew he fucking did because he treated Yoosung so… affectionately. He treated the other RFA members affectionately too, of course, but there was something so innocent about Yoosung that I wanted to destroy.
So, I spent most of my time fantasizing about hurting him. Injecting him with drugs in the same few spots so his skin would bruise. Playing with his mind so effectively that he confused our identities. Convincing him I was his beloved ‘Seven.’ Then humiliating him in every way I could. Watching the spark in his violet eyes turn dimmer and dimmer until it’s snuffed out completely, like smothering the flame to a particularly determined candle. Hurting him in the most diabolical ways.
It’s all I’m capable of, anyways.
I’m certainly not capable of love.
The small melodic beeping of my cell phone surprised me. In this bathroom, it seemed to echo, and for a moment I held my breath, afraid that perhaps the sound was loud enough to rouse Saeyoung or his fiancée. After a few minutes of listening to the blood pumping in my ears and the rapid beating of my heart, the doorknob hadn’t even been jiggled. No knocking, no faked concern, no grating voices talking me down from beyond the doorway.
More than one past episode of mine rendered Saeyoung completely pressed up against my door, as he spoke through small sobs, emotion laced tales of woe and ‘love.’ He’d always slide small notes with words on them, too. Sometimes pictures. Sometimes they accompanied his stories; sometimes they were just pleas.
I kept more than one of them for my wall. I didn’t know exactly why, except for the fact that Saeyoung created them. With a door between us, I didn’t picture Luciel, I pictured Saeyoung when we were kids; identical to the last time I saw him. I wish I could look at him all the time and see Saeyoung. I’ve known him as another person this entire time. I’ve built up an identity for him in my brain and there’s no room for overlap because if I allow that, then I must acknowledge they’re the same person.
The person who loves me abandoned me. How can I possibly unravel that twisted and sharp ball of emotions inside me? Each time I come slightly close, I find myself attacked by its defensive barbs. Not even my mind wants me to untangle this mess. I’d rather hold onto it, embrace it with my whole body and continue to allow the spikes to pull me deeper and deeper into the abyss of my heart. I enjoyed the familiarity of it. It’s probably why I usually chose to wear red and black; the colours of bruises and blood and, more abstractly, my emotions.
I pull my phone out of my pants pocket. It’s a little hard with my knees pressed against my chest, and my entire body snugly between the toilet and the sink, but I manage. I knock my elbow against the porcelain of the toilet, but the sting only helps reassure me that this is reality. I’m present and alive and oh so unfixable.
It’s a text from Yoosung. It’s a struggle to get my eyes to focus enough to read the message. I’m unbearably tired. Saeyoung has been giving me sleeping medication so I can sleep through the night but right now, it’s just making me feel woozy. I blink a few times before the words appear stationary, instead of wobbly like before.
[3:20 A.M.] Yoosung: Just lost that last game! Cheer me on next round?
I don’t know how we got into the habit of this. Apparently at one point, he used to text MC all this stuff until she casually deflected it over to me. I could only fathom three reasons for this: 1) she didn’t give a shit about LOLOL and was only responding out of politeness, 2) she saw the way Yoosung and I got along (That’s a relative term here. He’s the only one I haven’t actively threatened to hurt, and that’s only because I spent so long fantasizing it that it now feels inexplicably wrong to threaten him,) or 3) she knew something I didn’t.
Sneaky bitch. I should’ve chosen a less charismatic or weasley person to lure into the chatroom. I didn’t realize it would backfire on me this extraordinarily. I used to be in control, used to dominate the entire situation, used to be the antagonist of this little drama – but now I’m meek and unthreatening.
Before I can even respond to Yoosung’s text message, another one comes through.
[3:30 A.M.] Yoosung: Want to hang out tmrw
And another.
[3:30 A.M.] Yoosung: I miss u
And another.
[3:30 A.M.] Yoosung: Ah! N-no, I didn’t mean YOU… just, the bunker. Heh, yeah
I stare at the phone in case another comes through, then I set it to silent and put the phone down. Yoosung clearly wants something from me. I’m aware of that much. But I’m in no state to give it to him. Ever. If only he knew the thoughts I had about him.
Saeyoung had called Yoosung’s behavior ‘puppy love.’ Whatever that meant. All I could hear was the word ‘love’ and then my brain shut down.
Love is something I’ve been over exposed to as of late. It’s the polar opposite of hate, I’ve been told. All I’m able to do is hate; that must mean I’m the polar opposite of love. It’s not like I didn’t already know that.
I pull myself up from the corner I’d huddled myself in. My entire back and ass are chilled and numb. How long had I been sitting there? There’s no clock in this bathroom, so it could very well have been a few minutes or hours. Oh, I could check my phone, but that wouldn’t tell me anything, because I have no idea what time I stumbled in here.
I originally walked in to use the bathroom, but right after washing my hands, I made the mistake of looking into the mirror. When I did that, I felt two things instantaneously. I felt the presence of the person I used to be awaken. My hair is now completely red; I stopped dyeing it, but the reflected hair I saw was white and pink. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I couldn’t see a soft person in my eyes. All I could see was someone manic and unhinged, someone on the brink of a breakdown, someone barely holding it together. I thought no one else could see this. I thought I was succeeding at holding it all in. I had no idea I was so transparent.
God, why did I have to look? I was so tired I forgot, but I’m usually smart enough.
The second thing I saw was Saeyoung. I saw our identicalness reflected. I had spent so much of my life trying to look different from him, so I didn’t need to see another person every time I looked in the mirror. I’m not even my own person anymore. I’m just a copy of Saeyoung; people expect me to be like him, jovial and light. I’m neither of those... and Saeyoung isn’t, either. It’s just a mask. I just wish I had perfected mine like he has. I never had to before. No one at Mint Eye expected me to be happy, they just expected me to complete my task.
In the mirror, I could see both these identities overlapped over one another: Unknown, the persona I allowed to control me, and Saeyoung, the brother who abandoned me.
Is this all that I am? Who is Saeran Choi? If I’m not at Mint Eye, if I’m not defined by my goals, then who am I?! I have no identity.
Suddenly unable to deal with this revelation - one that, admittedly, shouldn’t have surprised me in the least - I tried to hide. I created that haphazard barricade in front of the bathroom door and I slid between the sink and the toilet. Being small like this makes me feel safe. Being in a space like this is comforting because the physicality of my world ends before that doorway. There’s nothing besides this space I’m wedged in. The world can’t possibly hurt me or even find me when I’ve carved out a niche for myself and absolutely no one else. She can’t hurt me when I’m here.
I learned early on at Mint Eye that she never disturbed me in the bathroom. I don’t know why, maybe it was a courtesy she held onto from her time in society, but it had become a haven for me. It still is. She’s far away; she’s a mute in Alaska, but she’s still a threat. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe again until she’s dead.
My phone rumbles in my hand. I check it again, selecting the messenger app so I don’t have to stare at my phone background (Saeyoung had changed it to a photograph of him dressed as a woman, and I didn’t care enough to change it to anything else,) and opened up the text message thread between Yoosung and I. But it was a phantom rumble. More wishful thinking on my part, perhaps.
I barely respond to half of Yoosung’s texts, but he still keeps sending them, like he isn’t bothered by the fact that they’ve essentially hit the abyss. I’m not sure what he’s trying to get out of these messages. Does he just need someone to listen to him? Or does he literally not care if I respond? Does he just not care who he sends these messages to?
Though my fingers are trembling, I punch out a message:
[3:56 A.M.] Saeran:Why ru doing this
Almost immediately a response comes. Wasn’t he starting another LOLOL round?
[3:56 A.M.] Yoosung: huh?
[3:56 A.M.] Yoosung: doing what?
[3:57 A.M.] Saeran: this
[3:57 A.M.] Saeran: stop trying to be my friend
[3:57 A.M.] Yoosung: but I am your friend?
[3:58 A.M.] Saeran:no
[3:58 A.M.] Saeran:you’re nothing to me
[3:59 A.M.] Yoosung:that’s not true!
[3:59 A.M.] Yoosung:you already told me it wasn’t true
[4:00 A.M.] Yoosung:why are you doing this again
Yoosung already seems to understand my patterns. This is Yoosung’s fault, really. If he didn’t insist on befriending me, none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t have to see my mood swings. He wouldn’t be present the times I locked myself in my bedroom and refused to come out.
He wouldn’t see the way I attacked my brother.
[4:06 A.M.] Saeran:because I hate you
[4:06 A.M.] Yoosung:stop lying!
[4:07 A.M.] Yoosung:pls Saeran
The phone is vibrating so much in my hand that I can’t see any more of the responses Yoosung is typing. It’s just a black screen. I must have locked it, but it still hasn’t stopped its incessant buzzing. I try to tune out the vibrations until Yoosung gives up on texting me, and have almost succeeded by the time I realize it's a phone call.
I hesitantly accept and hold the phone up to my ear. I don’t dare speak, and couldn’t if I wanted to. My own tongue feels unresponsive.
“Saeran? Saeran, thank God,” Yoosung sounds exasperated and panicked. “What’s wrong? How can I help? Do you want me to call Saeyoung?”
Any mention of Saeyoung was enough to pull a response from my lips.
“No!” I yell and grip the phone even tighter. “No…”
“Okay, okay,” Yoosung’s voice is so soft and soothing. It only makes my heart race faster. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to die.”
“What?!”
“We’re all going to die, eventually, right? So, what’s the difference if it happens now or later?”
One hand gripping the phone, the other gripping the bathroom sink. I can’t look up or else I’ll see my reflection, so I just stare down at my nails. My cuticles are ripped and sore from incessant picking. I paint my nails black almost daily to fix the coat I inevitably ruin. Nervous habit. Can’t shake it. Even when nothing’s wrong, even when I’m sitting in my bedroom staring at the ceiling, I can feel it inside me.
Him. Unknown. He wants to control me again.
I say this like he’s a different part of me, when all he is in reality is a defensive mechanism. He’s the strong persona. He’s the one who takes over when weak Saeran can’t handle it. Lately, I’d much rather let him take over. That must be why I saw him in the mirror earlier. He’d been leaking out of my pores and into my aura until he’d slowly enveloped me.
The coldness of the sink reminds me of the gun.
I’m transported to that moment; the last time I felt strong, the moment before I shot V, my scapegoat. The person I had blamed for all my problems, both real and ephemeral. The person who I always perceived as holding the Saviour back.
Should I regret shooting him? I don’t. He could have saved me, but he didn’t. He allowed her to hurt me for years, all the while meekly protesting. He deserved more than what I gave him. If you ask me, he got off lucky.
What I do regret, however, is not shooting myself immediately after.
It would have been so simple. What baffled me was that I wasn’t praised for my actions. Instead, the Saviour crumpled like a paper doll and screamed. It wasn’t what I expected at all. I wish I hadn’t lived to see that. I wish I had died thinking I had done good.
Now, I have to live with the fact that I don’t regret a murder. I have to live with the fact that Yoosung has no idea. He thinks I’m a good person. It’s almost fucking laughable. I wish he’d leave me alone so I didn’t have to see his face when he finds out I’m a monster.
He’d been speaking into the phone all this time. I can hear his voice, slightly high pitched and uneven like he's about to cry, but it’s droning and distant to my ears. It’s because I’ve set the phone down.
I must be going crazy. I must be losing it. I mean, part of me already knew I wasn’t normal, but there’s no way this is real. There’s no way I’ve been blessed like this. If God existed, I’d be praising him right now, but now I’m just happy that I’ve finally found a solution.
We’re all going to die eventually. If I have a choice, I’d rather it be now.
I press the gun against my forehead. The steel barrel feels cold and reassuring against my temple. The leather grip feels intimately familiar. I can almost compare it to the feeling of being tucked into bed by someone you trust most. No more worries, no more pain, just sleep. Eternal sleep. God, do I crave that.
My fingers fumble to find the trigger. It still feels the same as it used to. I can't hesitate. I don’t want to say goodbye to Yoosung. He has no idea what is happening, but I can hear him screaming into the phone because I’ve stopped responding. His words mean absolutely nothing. I’m not a good person, Yoosung. I never was and I never will be.
I caught the way he looked at me. I caught the shy glances, or the way he looked away as soon as I’d catch him, pink in the cheeks. He looked at me so thoughtfully, like he was analyzing everything there was about me; like I was a book and he was reading between the text to the true meaning behind my actions, the true Saeran Choi. He never pressed me. He always gave me space to be myself. He never made me feel anything less than normal and wanted.
But I’m not the person he thinks I am. I am a murderer. The sooner he knows that, the better.
Saeyoung said to me once that just because the world didn’t give us what we want in this lifetime, doesn’t mean that it’s never happened. He told me he believes that there’s multiple universes, and while we suffered in this one, there’s one where we lived completely normal lives. I wish I could switch bodies with that Saeran. I wish I could carve out a piece of myself and claim it’s my identity. I don’t even know who I am. There’s no way I can ever hope to love someone.
If I switch with a Saeran capable of romantic love, then he can love Yoosung for me.
“Let’s start over,” I say, however I’m not even sure the phone is picking up my voice. “If we meet at the beginning, maybe I can love you.”
A little more pressure on the trigger is all it’ll take. Then I’ll be free.
On the count of three.
One…
Two…
Three…
Bang.
There’s a moment of silence. I’m not holding anything, am I? My limbs feel weak and my knees buckle underneath this realization. I was so ready to die. Now, what? I grip onto the sink to keep upright but my arms fail me as I wobble and then crash to the floor. In that split second, however, I look up to the mirror. Another bad choice clearly, but I wanted to discern who I was in that moment; was I Unknown, or was I just a copy of Saeyoung? It’s baffling that I saw neither. Who I saw… this person is shocked, destroyed, and… relieved?
I’ve finally found the first piece of my identity. Saeran Choi is relieved; he wants to live, and…
He wants to love Yoosung.