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As soon as I stood up, my chest felt tight, I couldn’t breath- fuck
I shivered,
it hurts-
I couldn’t move.
My chest felt like it was being crushed by an invisible weight.
I felt my stomach twist and turn violently, burning inside out.
Every breath felt like my last.
I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, echoing like a drum festival counting down seconds I couldn’t survive.
I could feel nausea climbing, clawing, twisting inside me.
Was it Joowoo? I didn’t know..
‘I need a bag’
“……bag”
“what?”
‘I need a bag please!’
“bag, please…”
Voices. Footsteps. The scraping of chairs. Someone handed me a plastic bag
‘shit.. it hurts’
I kept clawing on my chest, trying to make my heart calm down.
I couldn’t bear it anymore. I put my fingers of my other hand into my mouth and forced myself to vomit what I had eaten before.
Someone pressed a hand on my back. But everything was distant, muffled, unreal. I tried to call out, to say something- anything- but my throat was dry, my lips unmoving. My body wouldn’t obey.
I didn’t know what was happening. Nothing made sense.
My head spun.
My vision blurred.
My body, my own body, had turned against me. Why was this happening? Was I sick? Was it the food? Was it stress? My mind raced, scrambling for an explanation, for some anchor in the storm, but there was nothing. Nothing. Only pain, only panic, only fear.
I could hear their voices, frantic, urgent, but they were so far away. Joowoo, Cheonghyeon, Seongbin, Kiyeon…
Their presence felt like a fragile lifeline, but I couldn’t reach them. I wanted to tell them I was okay. I wanted to tell them I could handle this. But even that was impossible.
my thoughts spiralled deeper.
And then manger nam’s face floated into my mind - that infuriatingly careless face, Watching me to make a mistake, always screaming at me, making me feel like I had to earn his right to live, making me dread each day I woke up. Smiling in his mind while my body collapsed because of his petty obsession with superiority. My stomach churned harder, my chest tightened, and for a terrifying instant, I felt like I might actually die. And if I did… what then?
Would anyone even care?
My sister. My sister who might be gone. Who might already be dead, swallowed by the world before I could even try to see her. Maybe she was already gone and the system was lying and I didn’t even know.
The thought made my chest ache, my stomach twist tighter. And now here I was, powerless, lying on the cold floor, barely clinging to consciousness, while my mind whispered all the things I hadn’t faced, all the things I couldn’t change.
I tried to move. Tried to lift my hand, my head. But my body wouldn’t obey. My vision flickered, darkened. My chest tightened until I thought I might shatter. Every heartbeat felt like it could be the last. Panic clawed at me from the inside, sharp and relentless.
Someone laid me on the ground, and shook my shoulder. I could feel the motion, hear voices, but I couldn’t see it all made my head spin, couldn’t act. I wanted to scream, to fight, to claw at system itself, to demand answers - but there was nothing I could do. I was trapped in this body, this burning, trembling, collapsing vessel.
‘my heart…’
‘it hurts..’
In the back of my mind, that awful, familiar thought crept in: Maybe she’s gone. Maybe she’s already gone. And now… maybe it’s my turn.
I wanted to fight it. I wanted to resist the darkness, resist the panic, resist the thought that I might be so fragile, so alone. But everything inside me had given up. The nausea, the fear, the betrayal of my own body - it all pressed down, suffocating, relentless. And I could do nothing. Nothing but lie there, trembling, afraid, and completely, utterly helpless.
Maybe this is it.
Maybe I really am dying.
No one’s fault. No miracle coming. Just me, the floor, the pain.
And maybe that’s okay.
Because what am I, really? A mistake the world forgot to erase. A noise people learn to tune out. A burden the system carries because it has to.
If my sister’s gone, then maybe I was just supposed to follow.
Maybe this was how it was always going to end,quiet, unimportant, unseen.
I’m sorry everyone
I’m sorry Spark
I shouldn’t have tried fighting dead from the start.
The thought should have scared me. It didn’t.
It just… settled.
The fear burned out. The fight burned out.
All that was left was exhaustion.
So I let go.
The voices around me blurred into static. The light dimmed, slow and distant. My chest ached, my heart stuttered.
And for the first time in a long time-
I stopped trying to survive.