Ditto, True Beauty.

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX Hwa-Yeon's Perspective
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     Fragility comes in the form of memories.

     Though, the ones contained within Se-Yeon's room was not owned by myself, however. Everything was paper thin. The furniture, the study notes, the certificates, the clothes, the computer. In some ways, they were in a form of a tissue, and I felt that whenever my eyes flittered across and towards every object within the bedroom, everything would tear into pieces and dissipate.

     I could not bear to be within his room any longer.

     To even think about how my brother had laughed and cried, lived within the room that I was sat in, was just a reminder that he could not do that in the present.

     Fragility comes in the form of the past.

     Physically, every inch of my body had never gone through such unpleasant affliction before. It only worsened when I tried hoisting myself upwards, my lungs feeling as though the could erupt into a blazing inferno. They tried their hardest to steady my breathing, since my exhales and inhales grew irregular after trying to suppress a weeping that was beyond my control.

     My socked feet slipped multiple times on the wooden flooring, as I staggered towards the door, my palms clutching the frame. I leant on it for briefly. Though, I noticed that it would not open all the way. Something blocked the back of the door.

     I stopped, turned around to see what it was. Puzzlement polluted my thoughts as something, or rather a collection filled my sight.

     Cassettes, videotapes lined up all against the wall. They were all VHS tapes, black and grey.

     "1994?" I mouthed in a volume that was almost inaudible, voice-box inflamed from trying to contain my weeps within my throat.

     They never dated before 1994, only afterwards. Beside the years, there were scrawly sentences written in permanent marker along a white strip. Nu-Ri's letter to the future. The beginning of it all; my love and I's history. A light gasp fell from my lips. "Mom?" I questioned no-one in particular, I couldn't think properly, and instead I watched myself pick that tape out.

     It felt cool to the touch, for nothing warm has held it in perhaps years. The thudding of my pulse enhanced in sound once more, though, it reached the walls of the room, and beyond the drums of my ears. My palms were aquiver. I didn't move for two whole minutes, only my pupils did as it flickered across the plastic case. She held this before. My mother.

     I could feel a pounding emerging from my skull, and it started off minutely. Everything was tumbling in at once. My brother's room. My mother's tapes. Within the moment, I could not focus on either, let alone my own breathing.

     I could only follow what I desired, from within, despite the fact that there was a voice in the rear of my mind, pleading for me to stop.

     I still held onto the plastic VHS cassette as I rushed into the living room, not caring about the fact that I had knocked few over, and they crashed onto the rug like dominoes.

Petrichor stained the air, and it diffused into the living room through the billowing lace curtains. The transparent fabric was long, so it flowed before the television, but not long enough to touch it. It poured and poured outside, and I thought, almost, how coincidental it all was. On any other day I would have thought about the kitten I met that day, but I was about to tackle my own storm. I was sure that the kitten was perhaps struggling under the downpour too.