Seeing Only Red

7

"She makes you happy, Chan. Keep her." He said looking at me knowingly.

"Oh, she's not going anywhere, Jisung. Trust me." I replied happily.

"It's good to see this side of you again. We missed you." He smiled back before pulling his head back inside his room and closing the door. I stood in the hallway for minute and thought about where my head has been for the last four years. Losing my dad made my life stop. The pain of losing a friend and a father had never healed, but Luna made it hurt less and I was thankful for that. I knew at some point I'd have to tell her what happened, but for now, things were good the way they were.

I sat down on my bed and thought about how I was going to tell her I killed my father.

***
LUNA
Leaving Chan's I walked home, it looked like it was the first snow of the year. It wasn't really heavy yet, but it was that kind of silent falling snow that hushes the normal sounds of the world. Even traffic from the nearby highway seemed more quiet. Maybe it was the weather, but maybe it was just that I got to see Chan first thing in the morning. I walked home with a smile on my face.

"Where the heck have you been, Miss Luna?" Bora joked as I came in the door in yesterday's clothes.

"It's not what you think, B, we fell asleep watching a movie." I said holding my hands up.

"Darnit. I wanted juicy details" she smiled as she threw her backpack on.

"Where are you going? It's Saturday." I said confused.

"I'm helping Seungmin with our math class. I love him, but the boy is hopeless when it comes to numbers." She said grabbing one last thing from her desk.

"Ok, I'm just gonna hang out here today, I'll see ya"

"No you're not, you know you'll see him later, don't lie." She laughed. Of course she could see right through me.

"Whatever, maybe." I tried to play it off like I wasn't already wanting to go see him again, even though I just saw him half an hour ago.

I laid down on my bed and propped my feet up. Throwing my favorite blanket around my shoulders I turned on the TV and found something else to watch. The snow kept falling outside my window as I decided to make a cup of tea quickly before jumping back under my blanket and settling in to watch the movie. Just as I got comfy there was a knock on my door. Groaning I got out of bed and set my tea down.

"Can I help you, sir?" I joked as Chan stood there shaking from the cold outside despite the fact that he was wearing a jacket.

"Let me in before I freeze.......please?" I stepped aside and let him in before closing the door behind him and looking down at my phone to see what time it was.

"You made it a whole hour and a half before you came to see me. I'm so flattered."

"Can we talk?" He asked as his mood was more serious than I anticipated. "I just have to get something off my chest before we go any further with this. I just know you're going to see me differently after I tell you. I don't want to lose you, but I don't want to lie to you either."

"Oook" I said slowly sitting down on my bed, "Do you want something to drink? To warm up?" I asked nicely while he took off his jacket and sat down next to me.

"No. I just wanna get this over with." He said taking a deep breath. I sat down next to him quietly before he spoke again.

"Let me get this all out before you say anything, ok?"

I sat there confused, wondering what he was going to tell me. The look on his face told me it was serious, but I wasn't sure what to think. He rubbed his palms along his thighs as he kept taking deep breaths and avoiding eye contact with me.

"Look, I don't tell anyone this. Ever. Jisung is the only one that knows and even he doesn't know some of the things I'm going to tell you."

"Ok." I said trying to be understanding, but he was starting to really worry me.

"I was driving home from a party one night, drunk, and of course I got pulled over. The officer saw it was something I'd never been arrested for before so he let me go with a warning. He called my dad and had him pick me up and drive me the rest of the way home. My dad and I were really really close. He was angry with me, but we agreed not to tell my mom. She doesn't take any news well, ever. Especially if she's drunk, which is 99% of the time."

He looked out the window and took a deep breath and continued his story.

"My dad figured I should probably get some coffee in my system so that I could look a little more awake when we got home. So we stopped at this convenience store that we always stopped at. Everything was fine when we walked in. My dad stayed near the counter while I went to the back and got coffee."

He stopped for a second and swallowed hard.

"These two men came in and I could hear yelling from the front of the store. Like an idiot I walked up to the front to see what was happening. They were robbing the store. They had one gun pointed at my dad and one at the cashier. The guy pointing the gun at my dad saw me and said something to the other guy. I still don't know what, but he turned to me told me to come closer to him. He started saying something about how he can't let all three of us go and handed me one of his guns."

The tears were starting to roll down his cheeks, but I tried to just stay quiet and let him talk.

"He said --"

"Shoot him or I'll shoot you." I said just above a whisper, remembering the dream I'd had a few weeks go. I hadn't meant to say anything to interrupt him.

"How do you know that?" He asked looking at me almost angry.

"I had a dream. I think I had a dream about this happening, Chan"

"Wait, what? How?"

"I don't know. It was the day you came and talked to me in the cafeteria." I said looking over at him as I shifted in my place on the bed.

"You...saw what happened?"

"I saw you didn't have a choice and did what you had to." I answered.

"I killed my own father." He said as the tears started running faster down his cheeks. He leaned his forehead into my shoulder and I wrapped my arms around him pulling him in closer.

"What else were you supposed to do? The man didn't give you a choice, your father agreed and told you it was ok. You didn't just wake up one day and decide to kill him, Chan" I rubbed my hands up and down his back to try and comfort him.

"The police showed up five minutes after he made me do it, if I had just stalled for five more minutes he'd still be here."

"You didn't know that though, they could have been ten or even twenty minutes away. If you stalled for too long you both could have ended up dead. You can't blame yourself for something you didn't know. Is this why you kept telling me what a bad person you are?"

"I am. I don't deserve you. Not after what I did." He cried harder into my shoulder.

"You're not a bad person, you were a good person in a bad situation. There's a huge difference."

"My mom still hasn't forgiven me. She won't even talk to me. If I go home, she'll look at me and walk away."

"Channie...." I whispered near his ear, "You're not a bad person, don't let her make you feel otherwise."

"I miss him...and it's my fault he's gone, Luna" He cried again, almost collapsing onto me. It felt like this was the first time he'd ever let himself grieve. The aching sobs and gasps for breath broke my heart. It physically hurt to hear him in so much pain.

"It's ok. You're ok" I said quietly as I wrapped my arms as tightly as I could around him.

Eventually, I laid down and made him lay next to me on the small bed. I wrapped my favorite blanket around us as he laid his head on my chest and fell sleep. Exhausted from the number of emtions that just flowed through his body all at once. I rubbed his head and brushed his hair back while he slept. After some time I fell sleep too with my arms wrapped around him and his around me.