Fragmented Us

김 채 민: She (2)

“To forgive or not to forgive . . . are those my only choices?”

―Natsuki Takaya, Fruits basket

열하나 (Eleven)

Kim Chae Min [김 채 민]

February 21

As usual, Kim Chae Min was running late again. She had just returned from the secretary’s office with a bunch of paperwork to complete as a part of the student council; contrary to the belief, she could also be responsible when times needed it. Sure, she was chosen as a treasurer because her parents were loaded — her parents ran a popular clothing brand, after all — but Chae Min isn’t just all about money and fashion. She had amazing skill when it came to analytics, and her computer operating skills were unbeatable. The only thing that kept making trouble for her was her own clumsiness and poor time management.

And back to the reason why we are talking about Chae Min being her usual late self again. Chae Min wasn’t actually at fault here, it just so happened that when she was about to stroll her way to the secretary’s office, a random professor she did not know the name of called her to run a small errand for her. Turned out the errand was not so small after all and it made Chae Min miss her appointment with the secretary. So when she arrived at the office, Mrs. Ahn was already going on with her next scheduled meeting, who was a masked guy that seemed to be transferring classes. Their talk went longer than expected, and here we are, chasing after the little fashionista as she sped off to catch the class she was supposed to be in forty-five minutes ago.

God, how she wished she had wore running shoes that morning. Her foot kept slipping out accidentally from the pointed beige doll shoes she picked to match her outfit.

So far, her day was running off to its typical tradition of making a normal day challenging for Chae Min. But at least she found out where the missing wallet she lost last year in October was that morning. It was wedged inside a hidden pocket she forgot her bag had. Either it slipped in, or Chae Min placed it in there, then totally forgot about it.

Anyway, that doesn’t matter now. What mattered was that she reached her class in a matter of seconds, because if she didn’t —

The bell rang. In an extremely deafening manner, may I add.

God f*****g dammit. Chae Min slowly stopped in her tracks, breathing loudly to catch her breath with her hands on her knees as she listened to the sound of her school bell signaling the end of all classes. The hallway, which was silent and peaceful until the last moment, began to fill with the shouts and voices of hundred students all pouring out of their classrooms. And when Chae Min looked over to the classroom she was supposed to be coming out of, the classroom that was only three more meters away, she saw the staring and shaking head of her History professor, who was clearly disappointed at the fact that it was the third time she had missed his class in a week.

It was also the third time she had a one-to-one talk with him after classes.

Chae Min groaned, a long and dramatic one that made the people she passed look over to see who it was. She dragged herself towards the gates of the campus; perhaps it was the campus itself that kept giving her bad days. Maybe all she had to do to get her good ol’ days back was to transfer into a new school. She didn’t know. She’ll think about if she ever had the time to.

However, we can all agree that it wasn’t the campus that was giving her bad luck when she stepped out of the gate and out came a waving hand that hit the phone she had been scrolling i********: on. It flew into the air in slow motion, and Chae Min actually admired it float before her mind yelled at her to reach out and catch it, which she tried. She stretched out her arm, fingers splayed out in hopes that it'd hit a finger and bounce into her palm. Everything around her blurred, her eyes seeing nothing but the gadget that was slowly plummeting down to the ground. Her finger touched the bottom corner of the phone and her eyes lit up — Caught you, she thought — but just when it was about to bounce into her palm, her foot caught something, and then the phone went tumbling towards the wrong direction.

Then to add more to it, when she fell, she landed on something hard that had a soft feeling to it, sort of like a mattress. Her leg twisted around something; she heard a pop, and suddenly her right ankle was on fire. Chae Min screamed, from both the pain and the way she precisely heard her phone go c***k on the sidewalk, shrieking right into the ear of whoever she had fallen on, whom she recognized from just the night before.

“You?! Again?!”

_ _ _

(.6)

Math had always been a ‘meh’ subject for Kim Chae Min. And what she meant by ‘meh’ is that she neither disliked nor liked it. She was quite good with numbers, yes, but that didn’t mean she’d go all the way and get straight A’s, sucking up to become a pet to those math teachers. Chae Min was more of the type to roll their eyes and groan when they get homework but would later do it anyway because it’s not as if they had a choice.

But if Chae Min were held at gunpoint and was asked what topic she liked and hated in math, she’d say that she liked division and that she loathed angles. Division was a fun thing to solve; you’d have to keep computing and multiplying until you get the answer — sometimes you could continue for hours and still, you haven’t got every single digit in yet. But angles? That was a hard nope for Chae Min. It was difficult enough having numbers alone to solve, and yet here comes the triangles and circles, their problems literally being a case of existential crisis. Is this triangle a triangle? Is this circle a circle? Which was stupid, of course, anyone could have validated that with a certain answer just by giving it one look. Did they really have to make them solve problems just to figure out if that shape was a triangle when, clearly, it was?

Chae Min never really cared much for math before. She wasn’t bad at it, but she hasn’t tried her best either. If she were given the choice to have math hated or loved, she’d probably pick the former.

But not now. If doing math would save her friend, Chae Min would gladly suffer from it. Even if she went mad from drawing infinite circles, triangles, and squares. So long as Jaein’s okay.

Twenty-four, Chae Min counted. Those were the numbers of feet she saw that came in and back out of the room Jaein was staying in. Twenty-four. If you add ninety, the measurement of a right angle, to that number, it’ll become a hundred and fourteen. Multiply it by sixteen, Chae Min’s age, and it’ll turn into 1, 824. Divide twenty-five to that, which is Jaein’s survival rate, and that would be lowered down to 75.96. Provided that you subtracted the remaining 75 from what was left off of Jaein’s survival rate, all that would be left is 0.96. Then if you counted the holes that decorated the chair Chae Min sat on and added a point zero before it, the answer would become 0.95. Subtracting it to the former results of earlier calculations would make 0.1.

Zero point one.

Maybe if Chae Min attempted more computations to create a result less than 0.0001, it would buy more time. For all she knew, visualizing a little bit more of number crunching like what she was doing would make time adjust for her friend. Stupid, yes, and most importantly, unbelievable, but just in case, just in case that someone was actually listening to the desperation running through her head, Chae Min would continue accumulating stocks of sum-ups.

She tossed her head up, tired of searching the floor for stuff to add to her calculations, and then proceeded to eye the lambent bulbs of the lights that were peacefully minding their own business on the ceiling. There were six in this corridor alone. If there were four corridors on each floor and the hospital was an eight-story building, Chae Min wondered how many light bulbs there were in the whole of the building. Should she solve it and multiply the answer to the previous figures? After which, ought she divide and subtract till she got what she wanted?

But then, what was it that she wanted, really? Other than hoping and waiting for a miracle that would save Jaein’s life? Other than hoping for something that would obviously never happen?

I’m insane, Chae Min thought, her eyes still locked unto the bulbs that glowed back at her unreflecting irises. I’m going mad. A small voice inside her thoughts were voicing out the continuous dissecting of the problems she had created just a moment ago, overlapping and mixing with Chae Min’s other feelings but strangely getting separated as well. Six multiplied by four is twenty-four. Twenty-four multiplied by eight is 192 . . .

Her father’s jittery leg is making the chair vibrate up and down beside her. Chae Min looked down and fixated her vision on it as a substitute for the eye-watering bulbs that were making her eyes go black at the corners. Should she count her father’s steps too? How about the number of times her mother let out a trembly breath? Should Chae Min include them too? Would it hike up the chances of her friend surviving an operation without any donors? Would her calculations be the solution to Jaein getting a chance to live?

Chae Min’s eyes were still fastened onto her father’s jumping leg. Up and down, it went, moving in fast motions that made Mr. Kim’s pant leg stretch. She didn’t know how, but Chae Min could also count the number of shakes her father’s leg was making, all the while still solving computations in her head. Three, four, five . . . 0.1 minus a hundred and ninety-two . . . Ten, eleven, twelve . . . 0.047 multiplied by twelve . . . Fifteen . . . Twenty . . .

Then just when she was about to count to forty-three and had reached the results of 0.087, her father’s leg stopped in its motions. Chae Min stared, waiting for it to continue. Only when she had raised her head that she realized why: Mr. Kim was standing, waiting patiently for the man clad in white that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere to start talking. Chae Min’s mother was on her feet too, but both adults had seemed to have forgotten they had a daughter waiting beside them.

They talked in silent whispers, so close-mouthed Chae Min couldn’t grasp a mere syllable. She also couldn’t exactly read the doctor’s lips since it was hidden behind a damned mask, so all she did was swing her feet back and forth while waiting for the grown-ups to remember that she existed.

0.006 . . .

She peeked back; they were still talking.

0.003 . . .

Back and forth, back and forth; her legs were getting pretty tired.

If they don’t tell me anything, I’ll turn completely mad from counting. I’m sure of it. Then I’ll have to live my life as the ‘Mad old woman who counts backward’, then get harassed by mean kids in the neighborhood.

It was actually just a few seconds — not even three minutes — but to Chae Min, it had been eternity. So, when she felt her dad’s hand pulling on her arm, she had never felt so grateful before. Chae Min stood up, tagging along beside her parents as they followed the footsteps of the doctor that went ahead. She casted a brief glance at her father’s face; he had a look on him that rendered him expressionless. Chae Min couldn’t see her mom’s; she was on her father’s other side.

They turned left, straight into an elevator that led them two floors down. It was stifling in the lift, with the dark aura that surrounded the grown-ups slowly suffocating Chae Min as they went on. The usual jingling music in the lift that always annoyed Chae Min was all clammed up. In these types of situations, Chae Min would have welcomed any kind of distraction, but it turned out they were not on her side today.

The elevator doors pinged open, and out stepped the doctor. Chae Min had also made the motion to follow, since her mother went right after, but her father pulled her arm back. She looked back, confused, then without a say, Mr. Kim bent down and picked her up in his arms like she was a mere five-year-old. It took her by surprise; after all, Chae Min was already at the age where any teenager would, on any occasion, shy away from their parents, even if it were just a touch on a hand. She was turning sixteen in a few more months, and her father was past forty years old. Even though her father was a former taekwondo coach, he still was past his prime, and Chae Min was too old to be carried around on someone’s hips.

But still, Chae Min wrapped her arms around her father’s shoulders, securing herself. Normally, she hated the fact that she was short of height for her age, but today, she felt good about it. Her legs dangled from her father’s arms in a comforting manner, almost as if they were home, and her arms enveloped the base of Mr. Kim’s shoulders. Chae Min felt safe and consoled as she briskly buried her face in her father’s neck before turning to keep sight of their odd little group as they trudged forward into a cold room at the corner of the floor.

Somehow, as the man they had been following slowly turned the doorknob of the room they were about to enter, Chae Min felt as if none of her parents were breathing. Just a deadly silence that sluggishly treaded among them.

Inside were two beds. Lying on top of them, with their bodies covered in white sheets and their faces pale and bare, were Jaein’s parents.

The silence, if possible, became more placid than it was before. Mrs. Kim let out a trembly breath, clinging on to Chae Min’s father as she covered her mouth in dread. Mr. Kim was expressionless, but his eyes were dark.

Chae Min, on the other hand, couldn’t process the scenery in front of her. Her mind froze, like one of those annoying moments when your computer began to slow down and you would have to restart just for it to work properly again. It took her forever — eternity, even — to realize that it wasn’t just Jaein’s parents on those beds. Three more laid beside them, all unfamiliar, all corpses. All dead.

How? Her thoughts were rumbles of different thoughts, flashbacks, and questions. Why?

Chae Min kept wondering. She kept thinking. The voices in her head that were once doing calculations had screeched into a stop and were replaced instead with the knots and jumbles of myriad questions. Why? Why were they there? Weren’t they supposed to be waiting upstairs with them, praying for their daughter to survive an impossible relapse? Why were their faces bleeding and disfigured into disgusting forms, looking as if they intended to die along with Jaein?

Why?

And how?

What now?

_ _ _

열둘 (Twelve)

February 21

Okay, this might not be entirely true, but the man beside Kim Chae Min had to be the biggest, most annoying, and selfish jerk of all time. He had to be. Chae Min would have awarded him right there and then if she could. She had never met an outrageously selfish man in the 17 years she had lived. He'd probably be the number one in everyone's burn book, if those still existed today. Could Chae Min would have been that unlucky that she had not only encountered this man once or twice, but thrice?

In fact, as the nurse that checked Chae Min's sprained ankle left the ward, he had the audacity to look as if he was the only one stuck in the stupid situation they were in.

"Great," mumbled Jong Seok, giving himself a quick exasperated head scratch. It messed up his hair, and much to Chae Min's annoyance, it made him two times cuter than when his hair was fixed. The guy--who not only wasted the other day's movie night but also broke Chae Min's phone and cracked her ankle into two--gave her a snappy glance before crossing a leg on his knee from where he sat on the empty spare bed just right beside her. He had a bust on his lip as a souvenir from earlier's proceedings. It seemed that Chae Min's forehead hit him full in the mouth when they fell.

Chae Min tried to make herself comfortable from how she sat on the bed, but the brace they had on her made it impossible. She attempted a few more tries, but then eventually just gave up to instead let out a loud groan. "Why? Why is it that when something happens, you're always there?! First, my noodle soup, now my leg and my phone?"

Jong Seok's eyebrows scrunched down. "Okay. First of all, it's not my fault. You bumped into me. I didn't exactly intend to catch you or whatever."

"You didn't have to butt in and act like a prince charming."

"I told you I didn't mean to. It was literally your fault."

"Well, someone hit my phone. I had to catch it. Basic human instinct."

"Well, someone was falling into me. I had to catch them. Basic human instinct."

As much as Chae Min hated to admit it, Jong Seok actually had quite the point here. And although she wanted to come up with a comeback that would be considered harsh enough to cut that oh-so-gorgeous hair of his on the spot, Chae Min found herself drawing a blank. Instead, she crossed her arms and harrumphed like a kid who didn't get what they want, biting her tongue as she scrutinized the humming air conditioner at the corner of the room where it blew the beige curtains around in soft sweeping motions.

Deep inside, Chae Min knew she really was at fault, but blaming herself wasn't' exactly her forte. She'd rather blame than be blamed.

Jerk, Chae Min thought, chewing on her tongue far more furiously. I'll get you back soon, you'll see. She peeked back at the said jerk, who she caught observing his busted lip using the black reflective screen of his phone.

Suddenly feeling guilty, she closed her eyes, breathing as she did so. Okay, I'll apologize. After all, why not, right? Why stick to pride, right?

Chae Min summoned all her strength, courage, and zen to utter the two-word sentence she had always hated saying. A big gust of air drew past her lips as Chae Min took the deepest breath she could. Her chest expanded as she held it in, her mouth gaping open as she readied herself, but as her words of apology escaped her shiny glossed lips, they somehow turned into strings of curses incoherent and inappropriate enough to scare the nurse just outside the ward into thinking it would be better to leave the two alone for a while.

Jong Seok, however, like the arrogant little prick he is, paid no mind, seemingly more interested in his wound. If profanities could summon devils, Chae Min would have already brought the whole of hell along with Satan himself. Jong Seok held back till the last of Chae Min’s curses turned into nonsensical words before heedlessly lowering his phone down on the white sheets of the bed he sat back on. The casual look on his face was enough to make Chae Min’s trap shut reluctantly.

“Done?” he asked, but he did not wait for Chae Min’s answer anyway. “Alright.”

The bed Jong Seok was on creaked under his weight as he pinched his wallet out of his back pocket. He rummaged through the wallet for quite a while, then, without a word, he stood up and hoisted his bag from the floor.

Chae Min didn’t know what he was doing, but she knew there was absolutely no way she’d let him leave her in that hospital without him paying for all the things he did, even—yes, even—if it wasn’t exactly his fault in the first place. “H-hey, where do you think you’re going? We’re not done here yet. How am I supposed to leave for home now?!”

The jackass did not meet her eyes. With his back now properly shouldered on his back, he continued rummaging through that wallet of his. He took a step forward, looked directly into her eyes with the most patronizing look one could ever give, then placed a handful of cash atop the cast on her sprained leg. Jong Seok also patted it, pairing the action with a smile that could have blown Chae Min’s wig away if she had been wearing one.

Her brain short-circuited, unable to process whatever it was that was happening. “Wha—?”

Jong Seok’s fake grin made his eyes disappear. “There, there,” he crooned, petting her on the head as well before the taunting sneer he had on completely slipped away. “Such a nuisance,” was the mumble she heard him whisper before he turned for the door.

“Hey! I heard that!” Chae Min felt her rage peaking once again. “Come back here and say it to my face, you big, dumb, annoying jerk—I’ll beat that face of yours—!”

But if Jong Seok ever heard her, he probably decided to ignore it instead.

The door slammed shut.

_ _ _