Her Saviour

Chapter 37: The End?

Rin’s Point of View

Rin woke up feeling cold. Her body was in ache. She was not in her bed. As she fully opened her eyes, she saw the surrounding and remembered that she did not make it to her bed yesterday. Then as every memory about yesterday came back to her, she felt the heaviness in her chest arising. She tried standing up so that she can walk towards her bed. As she stood up, her legs were shaking. All her energy had left her after what had happened yesterday. She did her best and forced herself to get there. She reached her bed. She sat on it and opened the drawer of the bed side table. She took out her iPod and her earphones with it.

She stared at the iPod for a while. Then she remembered what her father told her yesterday.

“Rin. Meet the woman I fell in love with. Your new mother. We are going to get married soon.”

The scene replayed for a numerous time in her mind. She did not wanted to hear that. All she wanted was for her mother to be with her. She was shocked and could not believe that her father would do something like this. Her relationship with her father was not a very close one but she still called him “dad” and lived in the same house as he did. Even though he was never there for her mother, she lived with him and talked to him thinking that at least he loves her mother. She thought that was the important thing both of them shared. However, now he proved that wrong.

As her hatred for her father grew, she wrapped herself in her blanket. She did not feel like doing anything so she just stared at the wall of her room. She started to over think about all of the things that were happening to her. She could not do anything when her mother was alive. All she did was make it hard for her by crying and begging her to stay. She understood now that she was older, there was nothing her mother could have done when she made it hard for her like that. However her mother smiled through it and consoled her. She should have been the one to console her and say that she would be alright. However, all she did was cry. She felt worthless. Her mother was the only person she loved till death and she could not do anything for her. She really had been living for nothing for these past five years.  

After a short while, that sense of worthlessness spiked to a point where she began to question her own existence. As she kept taking long breaths, the pauses in between let her think all of the things she should have done. Now there was nothing else that could be done. She first hit herself with a pillow on the head, then came punching the bed, then came the tears. She started crying. Everything felt like it did not matter. And at this moment, it did not matter at all. As her crying went on, her rhythm of breathing also went off. She started to have a panic attack.

For the past five years, she handled all her panic attacks by herself. She had no one else to do this for her. After her mother’s death, she had started to have nightmares. And no one would be beside her when she could wake up screaming and crying. She was the one who calmed herself to sleep. When her mother died, her father cried at the funeral. He was beside Rin the whole time. At that moment, Rin thought that maybe her father would be there for her.

It turned out that Rin was wrong. When she was suffering, he was nowhere to be seen. He was always immersed in his work. She had given up thinking that her father would rush to her side once.

So, today too, she started to calm herself. Even though she was still crying, she made herself take long breaths and brought her breathing back to normal. After that, she slowly stopped crying. The whole time, she was hugging a panda soft toy that her mother had brought her. She slowly placed the panda back on her bed. Then she felt an urge to listen to the lullaby. She reached for the iPod and put the earphones on. Then she played the recording. Something in her felt like this would be the last time she listened to the lullaby. Tears fell from her eyes while she listened. She missed her so much.

After a while, the feeling of worthlessness was still bothering her. She had stopped crying and was calmer. However, the heaviness in her chest was growing. She felt both empty and sad at the same time. She felt like a big part of her was missing. In order to distract herself from these, she decided to go for a drive and then smoke a cigarette. However, she did not have a single piece of cigarette. She decided to buy a packet from the convenience store nearby. Without even washing up, she got up on her feet, she wore a hoodie that was on the chair and then picked up the car key from the bed-side table. Before she walked out of her room, she grabbed her sling bag and put her car key and her phone in it.

She had not checked the time, so she took out her phone and checked the time. It was 8:27 am. “Would the shops even be open?” she thought.

She put her phone back in her bag and walked out of her room. No one was in the living room or the sitting room. She put on her shoes and tied the laces in a hurry. She then grabbed the house key and locked the door as she got out of the house. She put the key in her bag. Then she pulled the hoodie over her head. Then she headed to her car.

When she opened the door to her car, she remembered that she had left her purse in her other bag in her room. So she stood there for a while in deep thought. It was not because she had to pay in cash to buy anything these days. She could do online transactions anywhere now. It was because she was tired to go back to get her purse for her driver’s license. She did not want to be pulled over by a cop and then not having a license on her at the moment.

She stood there with the door to her car open while holding the steering wheel still thinking of the number of traffic police she encountered on different roads, deciding which road to take and which one to avoid. She briefly thought about just going back into the house and getting her purse because that’d be so much easier. However, her legs had no energy. They were starting to shake. On top of that, it was becoming harder to handle her anxiety. She was not having a panic attack at the moment but it felt like she could have at any moment. She badly needed to smoke. It calmed her nerves down.

“Definitely avoiding any police” she murmured and got into the car. She put the keys into the ignition and started the engine.

Then she checked the time once more. It was now 8:39 am and then she started driving. She drove around going to shops which she usually bought cigarettes from but had her driving for longer with no luck as the shops were not open at that time. There was not a single convenience store which was opened for twenty four hours along the area she lived in.  

She finally got to a shopkeeper opening his store around 9:04 am. Then Rin quickly parked nearby and got out of her car. She walked fast to the store and asked the shopkeeper for a packet of cigarette. He handed her a packet. Rin then told him that she would be doing an online transaction. She put the packet of cigarette in her bag and took out her phone. She transferred him the money.

By then, Rin was losing control of her emotions and almost burst into tears in front of him. She hurriedly thanked him and in that she could hear her voice cracking. As she got back into the car, Rin’s hands were shaking and could not stabilize herself with her grip on the steering wheel. She decided to not drive and got out of the car.

She saw a six-storied building near where she had parked. She remembered that there is a café on the top-most floor and they could smoke on the balcony there. She walked towards the building and into the main door of the first floor. She saw the elevator and she walked towards it. She pressed the button and it opened. She stepped inside and pressed the sixth floor. She was glad that she took the elevator because her legs were starting to shake to the point that she could not have taken the stairs.

When she reached the top floor, she saw the “Open” on the door of the café and quickly went inside. She directly walked towards the balcony without saying anything to the receptionist nor the waitress who was a bit taken back by their first customer of the day. As Rin unpacked the cigarette packet and took a piece out, the wind was blowing strongly and blew out her light. She struggled for a while but got her cigarette lit. As she was taking slow and steady drags, she started overthinking about everything that was happening.

She remembered everything that happened yesterday and most importantly her mother. Then few tears fell out which soon became a silent cry. Before she knew it, she was already on the other side of the balcony about to fall off of the ledge. Holding the railing and facing the café. When she realized what she was doing, she did not start to panic. Instead she heard herself say, “Everything will be over soon and then I will not have pain. It will be better this way. I can even meet my mom soon. Yup. This is for the better.”

She was still silently crying and suddenly took a deep breath and let her hands go the moment a waitress screamed and slid open the door to the balcony. As Rin fell, everything slowed down. She remembered her mother. The happy times she spent with her. The times her mom sang her to sleep. The many times she would get hurt but still would not have a single scar on her body. The time she had spent with Haru.  

“If only I could have spent more time…”

That was her only regret. When she was young, she had always loved it when her mother narrated to her stories of a prince and a princess. She had always wanted to fall in love. Or maybe she was in love with the idea of love. Whatever it may be, she wanted to fall in love. She wanted to spend time with someone who would love her as much as her mother loved her. She wanted to give so much love to someone as how her mother had given her. She wanted to feel how it would feel to live for someone. She wanted to know how it felt when you see the person you love be so happy. However, she would not be able to do that.

She did not die on impact and was internally bleeding. She was bleeding heavily and everything should have been painful but she closed her eyes and smiled.

“Maybe next time…”

She opened her eyes slightly and saw a silhouette floating down towards her slowly. A ghost? “Am I dead now?” she thought to herself. She lost her consciousness before she could make out the identity of this figure.

*After a while*

She could not open her eyes but she could hear bits of people talking.

“Are yo…mes.ing…me?!”

“I’m posit…fell from…”

“She was ev…bleedin…”

“Then why am I…why…she…”

Rin frowned and tried to slowly open her eyes. She succeeded but a bright white light flashed and she quickly looked away from the light.

She was confused and tried to make sense of the environment. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she looked around. She saw various kinds of equipment around her and felt a sting on her hand. She lifted her hand and saw an IV drip connected. Just then, there was a whiff of a strong chemical and a person approached her.

As she looked up, she knew the person was a doctor and based on the equipment, she understood that she was in the hospital. There were four other nurses behind him all dressed up in full blue scrubs and operation outfit.

Rin was confused at this point but the doctor looked more confused as he asked her “Are you okay? Do you feel any pain at all?”

Then Rin recollected her memories that she had jumped off of a 6-storied building and should have died. She even remembered bleeding and feel her life slowly fade away.

As the doctor asked her again, “Are you okay? Do you feel any pain at all?”

She tried to see if she felt any pain but there was no pain that could have been there after jumping off a building. She felt exhausted but she felt completely fine. So she nodded at the doctor.

As soon as she did, she slowly started to fall asleep.