Ch. 18

“What am I doing? I’m not a bed-invader. How did this happen?”

Sooyoung jolted underneath her friend. “Lena-ah!” she cried as they knocked heads.

“Ow!

“S-sorry!”

The younger girl rubbed her temple absently as she wondered, “What the heck, yo?”

“I, um, I-I ...pulled you on top of me... after ...you, um, fell asleep,” Sooyoung muttered, not yet fully awake.

“What?! Why?” Lena pulled away from the taller girl but not completely.

“It wasn’t like that! I did it because... Iknowhowscaryitistobepinnedunders-someone, w-withthosethoughtsinyourhead, a-anddidn’twanttodothattoyou... Don’t you remember?”

Lena peered down at the brunette, who was avoiding her eyes. “That, that was fast. Was that Korean? ...You mumble too much; buuut, of course I remember!” She grinned. “You made me dinner, a romantic Italian dinner, no less. ...Hey, you’re not one of those jerks who thinks just ‘cuz he— she!— made a girl dinner, she can take her to bed, right?” Her eyebrows wiggled jokingly.

Sooyoung gaped at her friend in undefinable horror. “How can you joke about that?! After- after-”

“After what? Oh, G- We didn’t really, did we?! There’s no way! ...Did you put something in- What the-”

“NO!” Sooyoung pushed Lena off of herself as she flailed to get away from her. “I’m gonna be sick,” she declared before got up and ran to the bathroom. Hollow-eyed, she returned a moment later.

“So, you really didn’t, huh?” A full-body shake spread through Lena; she gave herself a couple slaps on the cheeks. “Doesn’t feel too good to have that insinuated, now does it? Ahem, are you okay? ...Did you get sick because you cooked dinner? That’s not gonna happen to me too, is it?”

“I cooked days ago, Lena-ah...” Or had it only been one? the older girl wondered to herself. 

Completely ignoring that answer, Lena continued shaking her head like a dog ridding itself of water. She rubbed a hand over her face. “Oohoohwuh.” 

“What-” Sooyoung laughed in spite of herself. “What are you doing?” Then she winced.

Lena noticed. “Hey! What happened to your cheek? Were you clumsy in the bathroom just now, and I missed it?”

“No. I... already told you! I fell and hit a doorknob on the way out of my house because I was rushing to get back over here.”

Staring at Sooyoung in disbelief, she asked, “When? Wait, ...you ...fell, at your house. And hit a doorknob... with your face.” All else vanished from Lena’s mind; tunnel vision fell away.

The taller girl averted her eyes. “That’s ...what I said yesterday.”

Lena frowned. “I thought you weren’t athletic, Sooyoung-ah.”

“What does that have to do with anything?!”

“You must have been running pretty damn fast to get a bruise like that from a friggin’ doorknob, no? You must have amazing doorknobs too. I guess I wouldn’t know, being low-class and all. Ssh! Ah, I do so wonder what your house looks like. Must be huge to give you the space to pick up the kind of speed you’d need to do that kind of damage. ...I wanna see it! Let’s go to your house today.”

“No! No way!”

“And those magic stairs. They must be at your house, right? Ooh, this is so exciting! I finally get to-”

“You’re not! You’re never coming over to my house!”

Lena grinned almost maliciously when she asked, “Am I not welcome? You can come here, but I can’t go there? ...Am I too shoddy? Don’t want raggedly old me dirtying your nice things?”

“That’s not it at all!”

“Then what is it?” 

“It’s- it’s just-”

“Don’t worry. It seems like a dangerous place, but I’m not clumsy like you are, only there. I have nothing to fear, right?”

“You can’t come over!” Stubbornly, Sooyoung crossed her arms, digging her chin into her chest and her heels into the floor.

“But I wanna be just like you when I grow up, Unnie. I’m gonna go over to friends’ houses uninvited... Hey... Unnie... I got a great idea! Let’s take the kids over! You’re their one shot at seeing how the upper class lives- Ssh! Oh, the little girls will love seeing your palace, Princess.” Lena watched mixed emotions overtake her friend’s eyes with dark satisfaction in their own. “And the boys could really use a male role model; you know their fathers- Your brother’s perfect, right? Field trip!” she pushed harder, even feinting jumping up to go fetch her neighbors.

“NO! I already said no! You’re ...acting like a child!” Not knowing what else to say, Sooyoung blurted, “...You were a really cute kid, though... But so different-”

That worked better than anything else could have. Lena stopped dead in her tracks. “What the? How would you know?”

Relief washed over Sooyoung. “I met you when you were a baby. You were a baby yesterday... mm, this morning.”

Foreboding horror and desperation switched hosts. Failing at keeping the tremors out of her voice, the high schooler demanded, “What do you kn- th-the hell are you talking about? What kind of dreams did you have last night, Weirdo?”

“It wasn’t a dream, Lena-ah.”

“Yes, it was! I think you made yourself sick with the food you cooked, Sooyoung-ah...”

“Lena-ah! That was days ago!”

“What-”

Soft knocking echoed from the door. It opened haltingly.

“U-unnie-deul? Are you awake now? We heard-” Sulli tip-toed in, hand crushing and being crushed by Luna’s. The pair took in the scene before their eyes.

“Are you feeling better now, Unnie?” Luna whispered.

“I’m... fine,” Lena asked more than asserted.

“Are you really?” The two little girls rushed forward and squashed their neighbor to the bed. “You’re okay! We prayed for you all night, Unnie! Oh, thank you, Jesus!” They sat up to kneel. Hugging each other, their outer hands folded together in prayer, their words poured out like torrential rain. “Dear Jesus, thank you so much. Thank you, God. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you! In Jesus’s happy name, Amen!” Their sparkling eyes opened, and they kissed the older girls on the cheeks. “Thank you too, Sooyoungie-unnie!” As one, Luna and Sulli jumped off the bed and dashed out the door. “Guuuys!” they called.

Not one minute later, Hyoyeon came charging past them with Ryeowook on her hip and clutched to her side. The little ones hadn’t let go of each other in almost 24 hours. The kindergartener glared at Lena before slapping the older girl across the face. 

Three people’s hands flew to their mouths while Little Wookie’s hands grabbed his big cheeks.

“Don’t you ever do that never, ever again, Lena-ah!” Tears prickled in the small girl’s eyes. She let the frightened toddler be taken from her with only a little fuss. Her empty hands scrabbled for and found something to hold onto as she shook her neighbor roughly. “I hate you. I hate you, I hate you!” she sobbed. “I love you. ...You made me cry! It’s not fair! I hate to cry!”

“I know...” Lena numbly wrapped her arms around the five year old. “Me too.”

~*~*~*~

“You’re crushing me.”

“Good,” Sooyoung and Hyoyeon muttered, pulling the three who had been getting up back down flat again.

“I can’t breathe!”

“Then you’re never breathing again-” 

“Ever, ever-”

“Because we’re not moving.”

“Did you two plan that?”

“No, now shut up and stop breathing, Unnie,” Hyoyeon hissed.

~*~*~*~

Two more people arrived at the doorway. They would not look inside; one boy’s eyes fixed on the other. “Come on, Kids,” the bigger boy told the wall, “we’re going to the park today.”

“We don’t wanna!” the littlest girl shot back.

“Well, that’s too bad!”

“You’re not the boss of us!”

“We are too! We’re the biggest and you gotta listen to us. Come out of there right now!”

“You’re not the biggest, Lena-unnie is! She’s the boss!”

“No, she is not! Not anymore!” Kangin insisted. 

“Then Sooyoungie-unnie is!” Hyoyeon pushed on the oldest girl’s shoulder in an attempt to get her to say something.

Her cousin shook his head. “We don’t know these people.”

“Woon, Hyo, stop fighting,” a voice spoke dully, dreamily.

“I said you’re not the boss of us anymore!”

“Then I am,” Leeteuk said gently. “Let us take the kids to the park, Lena-noona. You need to rest. Come on, Kiddos. These two need grown-up time.”

Sulli spoke up for once. “They’re not grown-ups!”

“No leave Nana-noona!” Ryeowook spoke too.

“Do you want us to go, Unnie?” Sulli met Lena’s eyes. They were blank. “She’s sick again!” the little girl yelped.

Sooyoung hurriedly rubbed the child’s back. “No, she’s not! She’s just very slee-”

“Get away from her!” Kangin charged in, grabbing Hyoyeon and Ryeowook around the middle and forcefully extracting them from the catatonic teen. 

Hyoyeon screamed and kicked while Ryeowook merely cried and held his hands out to Lena. “Noona, Noona!” he sobbed. 

“It’s okay, Baby.” Sooyoung kissed him as he was hauled past her.

“Grab the other two,” Kangin ordered Leeteuk. “We are leaving!” he shouted. 

The little ones howled all the way down the hall.

Leeteuk hesitated, but with last kisses, the Luna and Sulli came on their own. He took them each by the hand. “I’m sorry,” he addressed Sooyoung. “This... just really upset him.”

She smiled wanly. “It’s okay. I understand. I was upset too.”

“You’ll take care of her, right?”

The two small faces that had been looking backwards the whole time lifted their pleading eyes to Sooyoung. “Right, Unnie?”

“Of course, Angels. Don’t worry about a thing, okay? You kids go on ahead. We’ll meet you there. ...I-I’ll definitely be there, anyway; Lena-ah might want to rest,” she said with more confidence than she had.

The girls dropped Leeteuk’s hands to run back and kiss Sooyoung again. “Okay, Unnie. We believe you.” 

Their eyes told a slightly different story, but Sooyoung still felt the trust that she knew they put in her. “Thank you, Sweet Peas,” she murmured as she caressed their cheeks.

~*~*~*~

“What do you think I’d do if you told me the truth? What are you so afraid of?” Lena grunted a short time later. She had only distanced herself slightly from Kangin’s rejection and was able to come back to herself just minutes after the children had gone. But neither she nor Sooyoung had any patience left. “Why won’t you- Was it me?” she asked in the same tone of voice, masking her fear. “Have I been- Is that why you-”

“No, of course not,” Sooyoung bit out. Fine. “I’m afraid that you’d try to get in the middle, like you did with Hara-ah.” She too tried to burn holes in the ceiling with a glare.

Lena scoffed. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“Yes, Lena-ah. You could get hurt.” The ending “duh” didn’t need vocalization.

“I wouldn’t notice, Sooyoung-ah.” 

“That’s what’s so dangerous! And anyways, I would!”

“So, you’d rather lie to me, all day, every day.”

“That’s- Fine. Yes.” The older girl nodded once, hard.

A flash fire raged in the smaller. “Flip it around, would you?!”

Once more, Sooyoung shrank away from the fury in her friend. She drew herself into a ball, mouth shut tight.

Lena refused to be deterred. “Yes, stay out of my reach. I’m not kidding.” She stared down at the side of Sooyoung’s scrunched up face and thought this was how her friend must look to Siwon. That and the bruise did pushed her over the edge. “Think outside of the box that you idiots have forced you into! What would you do if you knew someone was beating me all the time?! Shut up! Don’t even- Would that be okay with you? Would it not bother you to see me battered day after day after day? Would it not bother you if I thought that you were a fucking blind retard or didn’t trust-” 

The blaze fizzled with no fall of rain. Lena buried her face in her knees. “I, I don’t understand. We really must not be good friends after all. I’m sorry I ever thought we were and apparently tried to force a friendship on you. I guess... You can go if- I don’t know why you pretend like that's something you don’t want; I-” Lena shoved Sooyoung’s uninjured shoulder without looking up. “Just go.”

The soft music of brokenness echoed all around and within the two friends, likely from them. 

“Lena-ah, please stop. I’m sorry. Please.”

One instrument gained accompaniment, but the melodies didn’t match up. Soloists played side-by-side as if the other was not there.

“Y-you told me that he was a man of God. You said that he loves the Lord and lives his life a-according to- You said that he- You- ...Why did I believe you? Why do I trust- when you- ...You pretend like you’re stupid and you say it so much- you’ve been trying to convince me, not you. Not you. ‘Cuz in reality, I’m the stupid one. I fell for it. So many- How many- ...You hate the truth; you won’t give it and won’t listen to it. I’ve known that from the beginning. ...I knew that. ...I hate this game!” Lena finally did rip her own hair from her head.

“This isn’t a game! You’re wrong, Lena-ah, please!” Sooyoung broke through at last, both her hands locked around Lena’s wrists. Her empty cast rustled. “Stop-”

Lena heard but didn’t listen. “I know this game. How could I-” A brief cloud of fury marred the younger girl’s features. It hardened into false detachment when her eyes met Sooyoung’s. “This is too a game and we both damn well know it. I do! I'm not nearly as stupid as you th- pretend to think you are. ...It’s not like I haven’t heard it all before. ‘I fell.’ ‘I tripped.’ ‘I didn’t notice the door there.’ ‘I forgot that I moved the table.’ Oh, and my personal favorite: ‘The smoke detector fell on me.’ You must think up the least plausible things that you can!”

Sooyoung opened her eyes to beg, just as she would with Siwon. “I’ve never said those things!”

Lena looked away from her in frustrated disappointment. “It’s not only you, Sooyoung-ah. She used to say that shit too.”

“Lena-”

“She did! She said it right up until the day my stepfather beat her to death! No, even on that day! She tried to feed the paramedics that shit too, like they— we— couldn’t see the destroyed furniture and pool of blood around her. Like they just fell out of the sky.” Loudness and softness rose and fell like the waves of the ocean.

Sooyoung didn’t give herself time to react. “I-I-I’m sure your mother was just trying to protect you-”

“She didn’t say it to me! I was there every time that- She said it to the neighbors when they asked. She didn’t have friends either. He made sure of that.”

The older girl tried to pull the younger into a hug. “Lena-ah, I’m s-”

Lena broke Sooyoung’s grip in wrenching away from her. “Don’t tell me that you’re sorry! When you say it too many times, it means nothing! I’m sorry! You want to know what I was doing while he was killing her? I was laying down, fucking kicking back. ...Okay, I had broken ribs, but still! I could’ve gotten up, but I didn’t. And. She. Died!”

“L-”

“So of course I’ll stand between you and someone trying to hurt you! There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, Soo. I can’t let you die too.” Volume plummeted. “You’ll die too. If you let this continue, then you will. It’s the only way out if you don’t stop it.”

Sooyoung said nothing.

“Let me kill him! Please, Sooyoung-ah. I’ll do it! I’ll do it for you. You don’t have to do anything but stay out of the way. I don’t care if I go to prison. I’d be glad to. Then I can meet him again and kill him too!”

It was a full minute before the taller girl could get her silently opening and closing mouth to say something. “That’s crazy! You’re not a killer! You can’t let the violence continue with you, Lena-ah! You can stop-”

“No, I can’t! I never could... You’ve seen me. Yuri-ah even said that I- And these last- ...The only way it ends is if someone dies. I’d much rather it’d be your brother than you.”

“And what if it’s you that dies instead?” Sooyoung screeched.

“Then that’s fine! I didn’t die when I should have! I didn’t get to!”

Sooyoung shook with tears. “How could I possibly live with it if you died for me, Lena-ah?”

“That’s just the price you pay when- I’ve lived with my mother dying for me. You- even friggin’ that girl said that I was a good person, and she can’t even see you! ...I’ve had a good life here; you could do it. I think that you know very well how to live with the absence of people you care about. ...You’re so strong, Sooyoung-ah. And yet, there’s no darkness in you. ...That’s why you’re my hero. You’ll always be my hero,” Lena said softly.

Trying to pull her tears back into her eyes by massaging her temples counterclockwise, the brunette grunted, “Lena-ah, please shut up,” between sniffles.

Lena lowered her gaze to pick at the stray threads of her comforter. “You wanted to know.”

After a long silence, Sooyoung felt a need to know growing until she could no longer resist. “...Did, did your mother know what your stepfather did to you when you were a little girl? It was him, right? Did he ever stop b-before-”

Lena squeezed her eyes shut and curled in on herself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She flinched when Sooyoung took ahold of her shoulders.

“Please, Lena-ah! Just tell me. How can you get mad at me for not wanting to tell you things when you don’t like to tell me either? Please.”

“I... don’t know what you’re referring to. Honestly. Little bits and pieces are coming back, but ...I’m so confused,” she whispered.

“He or someone hurt you ...in bed.” Sooyoung pressed on despite hearing a sharp intake of breath. “M-more than once, I think. Maybe habitually. You ...cry about it when you sleep. ...D-did you always, or was it ‘cuz I scared- ...I-I kept thinking that you were asking me to let go of you, but you weren’t, were you?”

Lena groaned. Muffled by her comforter, she said, “I take it back on this whole liking you being straightforward thing.”

“You’re remembering! Come on.” Not getting a response, Sooyoung played dirty. “Did your mother know about it, but just-”

One light-brown eye opened to glare at her. “No, she didn’t. Not until that- She would never let that happen!”

“Then how did it happen?”

“She thought that she was protecting me. It wasn’t just him. Mama left me with other people to keep me away from him as much as possible; ev- most things about me bothered him when I was little. But I wasn’t much safer with them. ...They were his friends, of course.”

“Is he the one who- with the cigarettes and the belt?”

Lena regarded her friend for a moment. “Yes and no. The cigarettes were his friends mostly; ‘cuz I didn’t want- ...I cried when they-” The girl shook her head hard. "It is you who does not realize what you mean to me! I can't lose you too. Please. I love you like- ...That man took ‘family’ from me, Sooyoung-ah. ...He wasn’t really attracted to my mother at all, other than to the fact that she let him do whatever he wanted to her. That’s why he- you know, with me. ...So, that kept me from ever having brothers or sisters. And, the last time that he- with me, he was out-of-his-mind drunk. He couldn’t get, um, up... or in and used a- well, suffice it to say, I can never be a mother now... Then he took my mother... ’cuz she found ...found out.” Her eyes stared at, through, and nowhere near Sooyoung. “No one was ever supposed to know...”

“...I’m sorry,” Sooyoung whimpered helplessly.

“I told you not to say that.” Lena again retreated under the covers to the foot of the bed. She refused to be drawn out, to do or say anymore.

~*~*~*~

Sooyoung went to the park without Lena to fulfill her promise to the children. It took a long time for them to calm down and believe that Lena was okay. They came back to a note high up on the locked door, too high for any of them but her to reach. 

It read:

Dearest Sooyoung,

I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I’ve tried to stop hating and wanting them dead, but I can’t. I’m dangerous and only getting worse. Don’t deny it. Their infection is in me, and I can’t get it out. The only way is to bleed it out. The only way this ends is if someone dies. I can’t let it infect you and the kids too. You especially are too close to dying already. And now you know the same thing that got my mother killed... Please tell my neighbors and Halmeoni that I had to move suddenly. They’ll understand. It’s what I do and I warned them of it from the start.

And I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I thought I could, but I can’t. It’s up to you. I believe in you.

I love you, 

Always and forever,

Lena

Sooyoung wrenched the doorknob counterclockwise, flung the whole thing open, and dashed into the apartment. No one was there. She threw open the bathroom door and saw hollow eyes once more. She saw next the tub filled with red, silly teddy bear jammies stained crimson. She fished out and squeezed Lena’s wrists, but they dripped only because of the water and gravity. Her friend was already dead.

*You knew this was coming, right? It couldn't end any other way ’cuz Lena's not in the original story and no way in heck would she just move and leave Sooyoung with Siwon... Sorry?

*Stick around for the epilogues?