Voiceless | Nomin

Chapter 2

The world freezes, a thousand of thoughts storming through my mind. You just have to go to the front for a few seconds. Just don't look at them, Jeno. You can do it. And with that I slowly rise up, my eyes fixated on the naked ground as my feet are kissing it. Keep walking. One foot after another touches the ground, but suddenly I'm stuck. The soles of my shoes are glued on the same spot, my feet moving like they're on a treadmill. One step after another, and I'm still stuck on the same stop, falling back with every step I make forward.

What is happening? Everything around me is pitch black, no dazzle of light hitting my features nor any cold breeze kissing my skin. Stuck in darkness. Everywhere I look I see darkness, it's covering me like a second skin and suddenly, my legs are noodles, my head a throbbing explosion and my breath hard as a stone. Anxiety is covering every single part of my body as I try to catch my breath, inhaling and exhaling sharply, in order to provide my lungs with oxygen without any success.

Anxiety is stronger than I am. It has taken control over me, possessing me like an evil demon and pushing me even deeper into the hole of seclusion.

And then a memory flashes before my very eyes. There was this one time,this one time when I had exactly felt like this before.

It had occurred in my very first week of freshman year. During that time I was filled with so much energy, in the hope that maybe high school could be better than middle school, but man, I was wrong.

I was just showering the shampoo from my hair after swimming lesson,the cold water kissing my skin and providing me with goosebumps. I closed my eyes, totally enjoying the coldness running down the skin of my face and continuing its way down to my neck, my stomach, further down to my legs until it kissed the floor, soaking the white tiles with its wetness.

The door suddenly fell into his locks. A horrendous silence was floating the air, covering the oxygen and stiffening every vein in my body. No water touched the tiles anymore and no voices found their way to my sensitive ears, it was quiet, way too quiet. I ran a hand through my hair, my body shaking under the coldness which was hugging my bare body, painting me with coolness. Where's everyone?

And then it hit me. Lee Dong Hyuck. I had to see it coming somehow, but I didn't so there was I. Not even a towel covering my body and coldness increasing with every passing second. I hugged my own upperbody with my hands, moving to the corner where I had left my towel before wrapping it around my chest in order to avoid supercooling.

It was just the first week of high school and I had already been locked in the boys shower-room, my exhausted body sitting on the ground, hugging the thin, navy towel as my skin was painted in goosebumps. My heart was almost thumping out of my chest, but I didn't lose hope. Even if the entire situation scared the shit out of me, I kept holding on, trying to be as strong as possible. Someone will find me. They have to.

And they did, exactly 3 hours later when my I was already deep asleep, my head touching the cold tiles and my body filled with coldness.

Those memories are like little pieces of a puzzle, some I still know clearly but others seem to be faded somewhere deepest of my mind, disappeared forever. I can still smell this strong, vanilla-like smell, which entered my nostrils when someone had carried my away, a deep voice floating my ears. I had assumed it was my dad, this vanilla-like smell was way too familiar, but I could have been wrong.Maybe it was someone else, someone I didn't even know.

But at one point I didn't care. All I wanted was to escape the endurable coldness covering my entire body and the suffocating feeling sucking all the oxygen out of my system. – All I wanted was to escape all of this and take a deep breath again.