Help || Hwang Hyunjin

THIRTEEN

It felt like I had actually committed a crime while Hyunjin sat in front of me, playing the role of the interrogator.

Even if my gaze was no where near his, I could feel his eyes literally penetrate through my soul.

"Care to explain?"

Yes I did. I cared and I definitely did not want to tell him about it.

I couldn't tell that out loud. So I decided to go with the good old way of keeping my lips sealed.

"Are you ignoring me?"

"No! No." That just came out of me so quickly but when I saw Hyunjin's face, all that beamed was satisfaction. He sure knew how to pull my strings.

"Speak up," he commanded.

"You saw it with your own eyes..."

In fact, he did. He had seen every thing and was startled for obvious reasons. You don't always expect a girl to be used to seeing blood when she gags, do you?

"It's not about seeing. I want to know what is happening with you, Eunmi."

I started feeling a little more relaxed when his expression slightly softened.

"Well...," I started, "you know that I have an eating disorder and it had become habitual for me to sick up a meal at least every other day. Three weeks back, I started puking every single meal that went in me, for seven days. By, I guess, the eighth day, I could really feel my chest burn... and when I puked that day, I first saw like this tiny bit of  bright scarlet-colored blood but I ignored it and continued. Then I felt the pain was really bad and and the next thing I vomited came the way it did today, as in, there was so much of the brownish-red shit..."

"Why aren't you going to the doctor, idiot!" he suddenly squealed making me flinch.

"We-well," I stuttered at the impact at the sudden noise, "I had read loads of articles when my eating disorder was getting severe and you could say that I was more or less warned of this... It's nothing but GERD. So I stopped doing it on my own now. I don't induce vomit on my own anymore but sometimes, like today, it kind of comes on its own."

"So you're telling me that you have ruptured your oesophagus."

Wow. His way of saying it was perfect. It was hard to agree after hearing that.

"Ye-yeah, you can say that. Maybe you can," I tried not to scare him while I was lowkey scared myself.

"You and I are going to the hospital tomorrow."

What? Where did that come from?

"Hey, you can't just take me to the hospital out of all places like that. It isn't like you are my brother or boyfriend," why did I have to say that? Why was it so hard to stop my stupid tongue?

"Let's just say I'm a boy who is somewhere between a friend, a brother and a boyfriend," he smiled.

What the actual fuck?

"I mean, I did see you naked," he smirked, "more like, you stripped for me on your own."

"Hey! I didn't exactly strip for you!"

Oops.

---

Believe it or not, I was able to convince him that I didn't have the need to visit a doctor. Only because I knew exactly what was happening and promised to be cautious.

I was in my bedroom, sitting on a yoga mat placed on the floor, with my violin on my left shoulder.

Everything that happened on the previous day was flowing out in the form of notes from the instrument that I played. I won't say that I was a pro and all of it was effortless because I was still a learner but I didn't mind that. The instrument was very dear to me.