a misty gashed aperture

crazy one, there is so much more but good night, good night

A/N: IMPORTANT!! This chapter contains physical/emotional traumatic experiences and drug use so please skip to avoid any triggers. 

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Lisa heard the door close and the car drive away. The smile Roseanne left on her lips remained for a few more breaths before tears of sadness resumed their falling from the corners of her eyes to the floor.

She gently stroked the back of her right hand where three thin scars, long and short spread, the longest from the first knuckle of her thumb down to the crease of her wrist, the other two parallel against each other, stretching diagonally from below the rightmost base knuckle to the center. Her eyes shifted toward her middle and ring fingers where scars stretched across the first and second joints.

The scars were not invisible but almost unnoticeable, as if somebody painted them almost the same shade as her skin. But now that she remembered the traumatic episode, they suddenly became more visible she could even feel the cold metal plate and screws inside.

When she asked Jisoo about what happened to her hand several months ago, her black-haired friend said she slipped while in the studio and leaned her hand to catch herself in an awkward way. Lisa chuckled at the memory now. She should have known Jisoo made that up and was not being herself because the Jisoo she knew would have come up with something very stupid, and creative, for cover. And that was something so ordinary for one.

"Jisoo, you were very supportive when I asked you to get Chaeyoung as my new muse despite..." Lisa looked at Jisoo with a small smile.

Jisoo chortled. "I would say sorry because it may have triggered this, but I damn wanted you to reunite with your real muse, and look where you are now. But this guy?" She pointed at Top with an annoyed face. "Gave me a hard time when I told him. Good thing he was in New York!"

"That's the reason I was away," Top said. "Jennie's locked up in New York and can't go back here anymore. I made a deal with her boss."

Lisa shoved her bangs away from her forehead as she expelled a cool breath. "Tell me what happened next."

Top's eyes drooped. "While you were making out, I had to go back downstairs. I didn't know how it led to things being thrown and you bawling because you never got to talk about that after it happened but," he paused to light another cigarette before speaking with quieter intensity, "I came upstairs and saw Jennie strangling you."

Hearing that made Lisa touch her neck as if tracing the mark where Jennie's hands were. Some lump with uneven edges got stuck in her throat and she could not swallow it hard enough to breathe. It was happening all over, and her body was shutting down from the chest and up.

The throbbing on the side of her head was getting more severe as more of the incident was getting revealed. There was the unsweetened peril on her tongue, and all the whiskey she consumed was going back up, undigested by the acetic paranoia in her gut.

The suffocation almost killed her then. But hearing the dark incident in the present deprived her of air just the same. She gasped, gripping her chest as she consumed too much of the cold wind that could not seem to reach her lungs.

Her brain was losing oxygen.