The coffee sears the tip of my tongue. I should have waited to drink it but I needed something to do. I needed somewhere to look other than at the man across from me.
"Did you burn yourself?" Nam asks, fuzzy eyebrows like little caterpillars scrunched together in concern.
"No." I mumble, tongue sticking out unconvincingly.
Nam looks at me like I'm crazy before bursting into laughter. He brushes back his hair behind his ears, trying to compose himself. I've never seen him like this before. The age difference feels smaller with each beguiled smile he casts my way.
"There's something I've been meaning to ask you." Nam gives me a sly smile, drinking his own cappuccino. "I'm not really sure how you'll feel about it."
My heart beats nervously in my chest. Please, don't let this conversation go somewhere I'll regret.
I tighten my grip on the coffee cup, bracing myself.
"You know how I teach a section of intro psychology, right?" Okay, this was not going where I imagined. Maybe I overreacted. He brushes his hair back again, a nervous habit I started to notice, before giving me a crooked smile. That was the smile he used when he asked for favors. "Well, I was wondering if you'd be interested in tutoring some students?"
Definitely not where I imagined this going.
"Like, one on one?" I ask, relaxing the grip on my coffee.
"No, no." He waves his hand. "A weekly recitation. I'll give you all the material, and you'll get credit for it."
Credit.
My eyes widen.
"Yes, please!" I try not to jump out of my seat. My hand finds his, gripping onto it in gratitude. "Yes, I'd love to do that."
"Okay, great." He smiles, putting his hand over mine. I want to pull it back, the moment of excitement quickly faded as his thumb brushes gently over the skin of my knuckles. "I'll forward you the email from the coordinator."
We talk more: about his research, about my work with Professor Yoon. I try to find a moment to pull away my hand but it never comes, and instead I let myself be soothed by the softness of his palm.
...
My mother told me never to go to bed angry.
I would regret it, she always told me, if something were to happen. I would regret if my last thoughts were those of anger.
I could feel the fury and rage boil through my veins. In line at the corner store I wanted to punch the guy standing next to me. I wanted to run over the grandmother walking too slowly in the street. I wanted to tear my skin from my bones and gnaw off the muscle until I was nothing but bone. I wanted to be zapped into dust by alien invaders because I could no longer handle the discomfort of breathing.
My mother told me never to go to bed angry so when I get like this I let my wet eyes burn holes in the ceiling until the sun slowly rises and sets the world on fire.
I slump sleepless and cranky over the edge of the couch as I hear the doorbell ringing. The television drones on continuously in the background. I'd been watching it for hours but couldn't say what shows played. All the actors and comedians melted together into one generic smiling face. I didn't bother yelling for Jimin to get the door, not since she'd taken refuge at Jackson's in order to avoid me. She knew that I had a tendency to treat others like cardboard people when I was having a bad day.
(Bad week, bad month, bad year.)
Peering through the peephole, I braced myself as I saw Hanbin and Bobby. I smoothed back my hair and sucked at my teeth, wondering if I'd brushed them that morning.
"Just a second!" I yelled through the crack in the door, running back to my bathroom to freshen up as quickly as I could.
I want them to leave.
I want them to turn around and go somewhere far, far away.
I know I could convey that to Hanbin. It's the first in a while I've felt like this but he would understand. But not Bobby. He would have too many questions because he doesn't know. He doesn't know that I'd found a way to encompass all of the range of negative emotions into one phrase. That I could say 'I don't feel well' and it could mean anything and everything. He doesn't know, so I put on clean underwear and brush my teeth.
I open the door with a deformed curl of the lips meant to convey a smile.
Bobby smiles brightly, throwing his arm over Hanbin's shoulder. Hanbin looks at me, the half-smile falling from his way as his eyes meet mine. He purses his lips into a thin line, silently understanding the dark circles under my eyes and t-shirt put on inside out.
"Are you busy?" Hanbin provides an easy out, with a quirked brow. He turns to Bobby. "We should probably come back another time."
"She looks like she's been sleeping all day." Bobby asks in tactless confusion.
"It's fine." I lie, letting them in.
Hanbin follows Bobby into the apartment with apprehension written all over his face. He looks to me too many times, to the point I find myself avoiding his pitying gaze. Bobby throws himself onto the couch, making a comment about the show I don't know the name of.
"You okay, Hayi?" Bobby asks, looking over Hanbin who made a show of sitting between us.
I nod. Another lie.
The people on the TV look like Impressionist paintings, blurry groupings of dots and lines I can't recognize. I keep my hands in my lap, nails digging into the skin.
It's not something I could explain to Bobby, not something I'd ever even want to tell him. I'm sick, my brain works differently than yours. The chemicals in my body don't do their job. I grit my teeth.
I don't want the well-intended pitying gaze.
Hanbin gets a phone call, looks at it, swipes left and puts it back in his pocket. His phone vibrates again and he looks to me. I'm starting to get sick of his puppy dog eyes and compassion.
I stare ahead at the television as Hanbin takes the call in the kitchen.
"I have to leave, but I'll be right back." Hanbin promises.
I say goodbye when I really want to tell him to take Bobby and not to come back.
"You really okay?" Bobby asks again.
I bite into the soft flesh of my lip to keep me from saying anything.
He keeps pushing, keeps prodding, with each it's fine it's okay no really I'm fine.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
I pull him into my room, as if the extra closed door will provide more privacy in the empty apartment.
"Let's talk about it." I snarl, teeth gritted against each other, narrow eyes focusing in on him like a laser. "I know, alright? I know that you only started talking to me because I'm Lee Chaerin's little sister."
"Hayi..."
"I'm not fine, I'm not okay." I continue voice raising. "I can't even hate you for doing a bad thing because I know you're a good person. You're a good person, but you really fucking hurt me."
"I'm sorry, Hayi." He apologizes in shock, face covered by his open hands like a cage. "I had no idea we'd actually become friends. I'm so sorry."
His fingers lift from his face and I see the wetness forming at the corners of his eyes, spilling lightly onto his reddened cheeks.
"I liked you." The confession rolls off of my tongue in a fury, each syllable flinging out like carefully sharpened daggers, the blow only softened by its past tense. "A lot... Even when you hurt my feelings, I still liked you."
"I'm so sorry I used you." Furrowed brows, more tears. "I don't deserve your feelings, your sincere feelings."
If I'm crying, too, I can't feel it. My whole body is a vessel of rage.
"You should leave." I snarl. He looks up like I'd hit him with a whip. "Then we can be friends again. Leave and then I won't like you anymore."
...
Humanity, whether ourselves or others, should never be treated as mere means and always as an end in itself.
Immanuel Kant's Humanity Formula.
Bobby broke it: he used me as a means to his end. I remember thinking it was all a lie in my Philosophy class. How could the Humanity Formula could be applicable when it was broken all the time?
Human beings are selfish at the core. We use, we lie, we hurt.
I wasn't any better in the end, I know that. Didn't I choose to selfishly like him when there was nothing to be gained? I liked him without caring about anything else.
...
If Jimin comes back to the apartment it's when I'm sleeping, either through the day or night.
I curl into bed, letting time bend around me. I sleep for days and then spend hours awake with bloodshot eyes, peering out the window to a starless dark sky. I don't shower, a film of sweat and dead skin forming on my body. I change in and out of underwear when I remember. I'm either eating too much or not enough, a box of pizza on my bed next to my feet.
My hair becomes a greasy, knotted mess.
Hanbin texts every day, even the days I don't get up. I wonder, does he know it's the only thing I look forward to in between waking and falling asleep? Each time I turn over to check my phone, I have an unread message.
Chaerin comes over, expletives softly falling from her lips. She holds me, even though I stink. She kisses me on my unwashed cheek and strips my bed.
She turns on the shower and locks me in the bathroom. When she returns she makes my bed without a word, the trash disappears from the floor. She vacuums. The smell of decay slowly fades into a field of lavender as I lay like a starfish on the fresh white sheets.
"Come here." Chaerin beckons me quietly, a towel in her hand.
I move over to her, sitting at the edge of the bed in between her legs. She throws the towel over my head, wringing out the wet hair. Her hands fall from the towel, her body twists, and the hair dryer whirrs to life, abandoned on my vanity. Chaerin gently dries my hair, the hot air feeling good against my damp skin.
I lounge on a chair as I watch Chaerin cook in the kitchen.
She sets the pan of pasta on the table and serves me. I pick at it, only able to eat small amounts without upsetting my stomach. I sip my water. She watches me with glazed eyes, silently understanding that my body is a fragile ecosystem recovering from a natural disaster. We eat slowly, until the pasta goes cold on our plates.
Before bed, Chaerin brushes out my hair. She carefully braids it into a tight plait, reminding me she learned from watching our mom.
"When you came home from the hospital, wrapped in the pink blanket they gave us, you were so tiny." Chaerin whispers into my hair, her arms wrapped around my body. She adjusts the white down comforter over our bodies, nustling her face into my neck. "You're still so tiny."
Over and over, she tells me this is nice, we should have sleepovers more often. Her arms tighten and tighten and tighten around me.
I wonder if she thinks if she lets go I'll fade away?
...
I should feel better but I don't.
I don't remember the last time I'd been to class. Hanbin emailed me all the notes, but I never bothered looking at them. He still texts, every day. Sometimes I have the control to save them without reading, only to overindulge by reading them all at once. Other days I read each message as it comes, craving more like an addict holding out for another fix.
I should be feeling better but it's not Bobby's or Chaerin's fault. It's not even my fault. I just don't feel well. I'm sick. I try to remind myself of that, looking up over at the full bottles of pills on my vanity.
I sink into the bubble bath, my arms sticking out over the edges of the tub. I take turns between feeding myself wine and puffing on my cigarette. The tobacco burns at my throat, the smoke swirling upwards into the fan on the windowsill.
I sip at the wine, drips of red spilling into the bath water. I let my head fall against the back of the tub, sleepiness weighing down my eyes.
I take another puff, my arm hanging back down over the edge, cigarette dangling in my fingers.
I should feel better, but I don't.