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My drunk father swung the knife threateningly.
「 You will die and I will die as well. Eh? Should we all die? Aren't we fucked up living together like this? Huh? Then let's die together! 」
My mother threw her body forward. There was a sound and my father's body collapsed. A knife dropped to the ground. Alcohol flowed from a rolling wine bottle.
I looked up at my father's face. How could he be smiling when he's about to kill someone? It sent shivers down my spine.
「 "Dokja. No! Put down that thing!" 」
I looked down at the knife in my hand.
「 "Dokja!" 」
I trembled as I stared at my father's smiling face. My small face was covered in tears. My father laughed mockingly and swung his fist. Instead of hitting my mother, my father slipped on the bottle. Then…
Blood emerged from his mouth.
「 If I immediately called for help, he might've been able to live. 」
I felt clogged up.
「I was the only one who could save him and I chose not to. 」
This accident changed our lives.
「The words I told the child weren't a lie. I was the one who killed him. 」
My mother took away the knife from the child who lost his mind. Then after a few deep breaths, she quietly woke me up.
「 "Dokja. From now on, I will read all of this again. 」
「 "Your father did something wrong and died. This was self-defense. Understood? 」
「 "No matter what, you must not forget that you are the victim." 」
My mother's voice permeated my ears while she tightly hugged me. Because of this hug, she couldn't see the wide grin on my face. I was ecstatic and felt an electrifying feeling flow within me. My mother was about to separate from the hug, so I quickly bit down on my tongue to force down my smile. I could feel the blood dancing in my mouth.
"..Kim.....!"
Huh?
"...Kim Dokja!"
Han Sooyoung's face appeared in front of me.
"What's wrong with you? Tomatoes are so unappetising that looking at them makes you daydream?"
I looked around and noticed my friends all staring at me.
"Oh... that's not a common occurence, may be an after-effect from the scenarios," I quickly responded.
"Right, makes sense. Anyway, don't do that again, you scared the crap outta us!"
Han Sooyoung, that'd only work if you and Yoo Joonghyuk stop shoving tomatoes in my face and making me eat them..
Speaking of Yoo Joonghyuk, he was staring at me with a frown on his face. I winked at him to show him that I was more than fine, but he just looked away. I thought I saw his ears go red.
That night, I tossed and turned in bed only to face my old friend, the ceiling, after long hours.
I could not get the image of the tomatoes out of my head. A knife cut the tomatoes and their juices spilt out, slowly accumulating and forming a puddle of red liquid. At the same time, a dark figure loomed in front of me. I squinted and looked up to see my father's face. I looked back down to see a knife in his chest. And my fingers were on that very knife. Red liquid gushed out of him as he stared me dead in the eyes. I felt the familiar electrifying feeling flow in me.
"Dokja, how dare you..! I curse you, curse you! You'll always be drowning in nightmares and never, ever waking up!"
My eyes lit up. Curse me more! Let me hear more of your desperate last words! I watched as my nightmare of fifteen years screamed in agony. So this was how he kept smiling while swinging around the knife. So it felt this good to kill. I looked at my dirty hands dyed with red. It was a satisfying sight to see. I pressed my hands against the walls, leaving red handprints everywhere. With this, the fact that my father was dead finally felt real.
-
At a distant hospital.
A group of people were gathered around Kim Dokja's hospital bed.
Crunch.
In the quiet room, the loud chewing sounds could be heard clearly, and the smell of the ripe fruit drifted to everyone's noses.
"Sooyoung noona, Hyung doesn't like tomatoes," Lee Gilyoung pointed out.
"So? It's not like the brat is the one eating it. He can stand some smelling it."
"Okay, noona.."
And with that, the conversation ended. Or it should have.
"Hey... isn't this blood that's dripping from his hand?!" Lee Jihye yelled in alarm.
Beep! Beep!
"Call Lee Seolhwa! His heart rate is dropping rapidly!"
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
"Dokja!"
"Ahjussi!"
"Hyung!"
Beep!
"DOKJA!"