Deep Waters ↬ jjk [IN PROGRESS]

1; decisions are not for the weak-minded

My eyes caught the color purple, a color that we barely get to see in the village of the thousand shades of grays.

Sounds quite far-fetched if you asked me. However, it's nothing but the truth.

This morning's facade of clouds was unusually reflecting a deep, lilac color, the beautiful shade contradicting the gloomy atmosphere that ghosted between the walls of the houses in the outskirts of Seoul.

The faint light of breaking dawn illuminated my sister's face that peacefully slept closely next to me. Trailing my gaze down to her delicately, thin wrist, I squinted my eyes in order to decipher the numbers on her watch whose display was fogged from the inside.
She has gotten that watch at the factory, as she had said, so all the workers keep their working pace intact.

Four in the morning, to my surprise. Waking up between five and six was my usual routine.
Today was unsettlingly different. Even the color of the sky says so.

A series of muffled coughs escapes past my mother's lips who rested next to my sister on the edge of the bed.

To be quite sincere, you couldn't truly label this piece of furniture as a bed; a closer description would be a mattress balanced on a poorly constructed bedframe that tended to move from side to side due to the uneven legs that barely grounded themselves on the cold, concrete floor.

The coughs became alarmingly vicious. Hana next to me sighed and shifted in the small space between my mother and I without opening her eyes.

"Mijun, mommy is coughing again."

Yeseul, the third daughter among us and with that the youngest of the family, whispered faintly into the darkness.

She was cuddled up on one corner of our deep red furnished sofa, wrapped in endless amounts of blankets, denoting a strong sense of vulnerability that caused my body to shiver.

"Yeseul, go back to sleep, it's not time to wake up yet." Noticing her exposed feet lurking from underneath the blanket, I added, "And put on a pair of socks, damn it. You're going to get a cold again."

The youngest cocked her head to the side and swung part of the blanket over her feet. She refrained from responding, and instead uttered out a muffled sigh.

My mother's coughs turned into a throaty growling, causing Hana to abruptly being pulled out of her slumber. She leaned her petite frame against the cool wall that served as the head of the bed, while the back of her hand found her eye to rub her vision clear.

Now that I figured the entire family was awake, gripping the curtains and exposing the dimm light of dawn appeared to be the best solution.

It was the breaking point between fall and winter, the time when the leafs on the ground that came in all shades of warm colors were replaced by snow, the time that offered us two choices; using the energy supply for the heater, or light. Not both.

After experiencing multiple episodes of power outages, we invested the energy supply into our heater. Us four developed the common belief that heaters will do better for us, since the temperatures during typical winters in South Korea fall below zero degrees. We only need to ration our supply on candles to substitute our light source.

The tiredness in my limbs became apparent as I swiftly climbed off the bed to shuffle towards the medicine cabinet in our narrow kitchen. By medicine cabinet, I meant the miniscule, wooden box that was large enough to accommodate maximum four bottles of remedies, all four belonging to my mother, who has had health complications pretty much her entire lifetime.

The financial crisis that had everybody suffering in this indigent and destitute community was undermined by the upper-class, privileged people that look down on our poverty-stricken district. I convinced myself that they have never adapted the word generosity ever before. We have been left on our own to survive in this famine, left in the dirt to die.