Lights Are Missing (PART 1)

14.

It took me a little while to finally pick myself up out of the gutter. I ran out of the mall to see if I could still see the guys. Sure enough, I did, but they were already gone on their bikes. They were all riding down the road together back the same way we'd come.

It was hard for me to watch. Seeing them leave me all alone like that made me heart broken. Did they leave me angry at each other? Angry at Yeonjun? Or even worse, angry at me. Yeonjun was the only one who was mad at me, surely.

And yet, they still all left together. Maybe they were actually more mad at me than him. Which almost made me even more mad, more upset. How was he going to persuade them into making me the bad guy? What was wrong with him?

Was he doing it for attention? Did he actually believe that I was a bad person? Did he want me to feel bad for him? I had no idea. No idea whatsoever. I was just so tired of the day. I knew I should've stayed in my bed.

Angrily, I grabbed my bike and ripped the lock off as quickly as I possibly could. I threw myself over the bike and got a wobbly start. I fell.

My foot got caught on the pedal so I couldn't stop myself from tumbling down into the cement. It was my last straw. I stood up, feeling some tears building up in my eyes. I grabbed my bike from the ground, my hand on the seat and my hand right beneath the handles. I took it and just threw it.

I wasn't paying attention to where I threw it. How far I threw it. What it hit. I just threw that bike. It hit the ground the second I felt a tear roll down my already flushed cheek.

Everything I'd been hiding below the surface, the things that got under my skin, for the past few weeks were finally being projected outwards and I couldn't do anything about it. I just had to let it take its course. Even if it was messy.

"You suck!" I shouted at the bike. I didn't mean it. I'd loved that bike, given it my trust and faith because it had never once let me down. My poor bike did nothing to make Yeonjun mad.

My bike had landed in a grassy spot next to a tree. Maybe, subconsciously, I was aiming for the grass to limit the amount of damage that would've been done to my bike. But maybe I was aiming for the tree, hoping it would do some serious damage to the bike.

I was still standing next to the bike rack where I'd fallen over, where my bike had let me down. With a defeated huff, I dropped to my knees. My hands were on the ground in front of me, helping to keep me from falling forward.

Breathing heavily, I kept trying to suck in my tears to prevent them from falling, but something about the way the back of my throat got all tight, something about the wretched feeling that came with the tears just made them more willing to fall.

It was hard for me to hold back the tears. That was clear. I knew, as the tears began to pour, there was no point in trying to hide it anymore.

Nobody was going to walk by me or check on me, and if they did I could just ignore them because who even was I to them? A stranger. Nobody helps a stranger.

Except Yeonjun, when I used to be a stranger, then I was something more.

Rubbing my eyes, trying to use my sleeves to soak up my tears, I felt achy. My bike continued to just sit there next to the tree and I knew there was this darkness over me, like a rainy cloud that started to drip and drip.

But then it really did start to drip. And sure enough, before I could even blink, it was pouring rain and I was soaking wet. That didn't help me a ton, but I did know that surely the guys hadn't gotten home in time and they were probably just as soaked as me.

Maybe, if they had slowed down because of the rain, I could have caught up to them. So all of the tears, all of the raindrops, all of the bad thoughts that had flooded my whole person suddenly dissipated and I jumped to my feet, stumbling forward to grab my bike.