Before Her Very Eyes

Chapter 22

Jeonghan was awful.

Arin hated him with every fiber of her being.

He yelled at her for no reason, made her do meaningless work just to torment her, overworked her, let her live in bad conditions, made personal attacks against her looks and her love for Chilli.

Her self-confidence was shattered because of him. She felt like a clumsy, ugly, low-class servant with mental issues, as Jeonghan had often put it.

At one point, Arin could no longer take it. She wanted to die. She wanted to put an end to her misery once and for all. She often considered jumping off the rooftop and plummeting to her death.

~ seemed to sense that.

One day, ~ came to visit. It was just minutes before Arin had planned to jump off the roof.

"Arrie, I have a gift for you," ~ said. "A risky gift."

"What?"

"I'm afraid of showing it to you. I'm afraid it will..."

The gift didn't stay a mystery for long, because it writhed itself out of ~'s hoodie and onto the floor, meowing.

"Meemo!" Arin burst into tears and ran toward her pet. It had been months since she'd last seen her, and Meemo had now grown into a full-sized fluffy cat.

~ smiled. "It didn't work!" she said as she watched Arin hold Meemo.

At that point, Arin was too overcome with happiness and relief to understand that ~ was talking about Meemo's name.

-

The guy looked startled by her gasp.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Arin rushed past him to the front door of the building.

"What did I do wrong?" he asked.

Trembling, she placed her finger on the sensor.

"Arin, please, just hear me out, okay?" he said as he trailed behind her.

The door opened, and she slipped in and closed it, half-expecting he would force himself inside with her, but he didn't.

"There's something you need to know about Hyojung!" the guy yelled through the door. "It's important!"

Arin heard him, but didn't dare say anything. She just leaned against the door frame and waited for him to say more. She was curious, but her anxiety overpowered her desire to know what he had to say.

Nothing good could come from someone working for the witch who cursed her. No matter how nice and timid this person appeared, he was still in cahoots with a person that Arin knew for sure was evil.

"Tell me," she murmured through the door. "What do you know about... Hyojung?"

"She's trapping you in here so she can control you," the guy said.

"She's protecting me."

"That's what she wants you to think," he replied. "But think about it! What has she done for you but trap you in this building to work in an awful place? She made herself seem like she was keeping you out of danger, but that's not true. She's just using you to stop magic. She doesn't actually care about you. Look, if you just let me in, I can explain everything..."

Arin didn't need to hear anymore. Everything was already sufficiently spoiled enough for her not to care. She just wanted this torment to end.

Out of habit, she headed for the stairs, but then abruptly turned to the elevator instead. She wasn't afraid of Jeonghan anymore, and the faster she made it to the rooftop, the less time she had to be troubled with her thoughts and questions.

She arrived at the rooftop and called for Meemo.

Meemo didn't appear, and she became anxious. The sooner she found Meemo and entrusted her to Woozi, the sooner Arin could end her mess of a life and finally rest from such a volatile and dangerous world where there was absolutely nothing going for her.

"Meemo!" her calls became desperate wails soon, but Meemo was nowhere to be found.

She went down to the eighth floor to ask Woozi, frantic, worried, and anxious.

"Meemo's here, don't worry," Woozi told her when she came knocking on his door. "She was very cold on the roof, because there's no heating, so I brought her down here. I tried to text you, but your phone was off."

Arin let out a sigh of relief and said: "please take care of Meemo forever."

"Forever?"

"She's yours," Arin said. "Don't let anything bad happen to her, okay?" She then turned her back to him.

"Wait, where are you going?" Woozi asked her.

Arin didn't want to explain herself. He would find out soon enough anyways. Maybe he would even see her falling from his window.

She didn't answer him and went up the stairs to the rooftop.

Now that Meemo had another caretaker, it was a weight off her shoulder, one less thing to keep her attached to the world. Meemo had once been the only thing that kept her going. Her sense of responsibility for Meemo had always trumped her hatred of life, and gave her a reason to keep living. It was good to know that someone else had stepped forward to take the burden. Arin felt free. Finally.

When she got to the roof, she noticed the drops of Jeonghan's blood on the ground, and the broken glass that had injured his head. She was not going to fail like he did, she thought. She was finally going to liberate herself from that curse which only brought her fear and misery, and from the constant anxiety over who to trust.

It was surprisingly easy to stand on the outer wall and look down to the place where her body would crash. It was a long way down; she would certainly die.

"What the hell?!" came Woozi's voice when he came up and found her standing there.

She jumped.

For a moment, she thought she was going to die. But as she fell forward into certain doom, an invisible force worked against gravity to bounce her backward.

She found herself falling backward. Not just falling, but being hurled backward with the lost force of the plummet that never happened.

Woozi was there to break her fall. As she toppled over him, she heard Woozi's glasses fall and break from the impact.

The strange rush of air that she had just experienced made her feel lightheaded. It took a moment before she was able to regain her balance and stumble to get off him.

She wasn't hurt at all, but he seemed sore all over his body, and the skin around his elbow was scraped against the floor, and he was bleeding. He groaned in pain as she shifted from on top of him.

"What the hell is wrong with you!?" Woozi hissed with pain as she stumbled to get off him. "What were you thinking?"

"I..." Arin trailed off, blinking as she stared at the place on the wall where she had just stood.

She was supposed to be dead. Gravity was supposed to have pulled her down to the ground and killed her, but there she was, having worked against the laws of nature.

"What the hell happened?" Woozi asked as he struggled to get up himself.

Arin didn't know either. She only knew that she jumped, and fell the opposite way from where she was supposed to fall.

It was magic.

And then it hit her: the building was enchanted, and she could not leave until ~ lifted that enchantment. And jumping off was a way of leaving.