For Whom the Bell Tolls

Beginning Arc: Before (Part One)

I'm not much of a writer, so I don't know how to start this.

How about this: Once upon a time, a girl lived.

No, maybe it should be: there was once a girl who died. The End.

(But wait, that wasn't the end.)

That's a no also, um, I should probably just start from the beginning.

(But where exactly is my beginning?)

I hadn't always been Ara Haan.

Hadn't always had pale skin and eyes the color of dandelions. Hadn't always been the youngest one in the family. Hadn't ever trained in any martial arts before.

(I was Li Meiling, the oldest child of six children, getting ready for college. I had sun-kissed skin blessed from constant exposure to sunlight and eyes so dark, they were often mistaken for black; at only eighteen years old, I was probably the ultimate pacifist in my whole veteran family.)

But it didn't matter anymore. I was Ara Haan and Ara Haan was me.

So, it didn't matter anymore.

(Really.)

Try as I might, sometimes, I just can't recall the faces of my family and friends, even though I held them so close and valued them more than my own life. They are like images seen behind blurry glasses. There is no clarity or precision.

(So easily forgotten, are you even trying?)

I think I remember how I died, though, at the very least.

There had been a robber on the loose with the police chasing him down. I had been listening to music, headphones jammed on and humming to my favorite song, hoping that I would have a normal dinner that night and not something that was too Asian for me to eat because my mother was stubborn about sticking to traditional cuisine.

I had not heard the shots. Had not heard the shouts of out of my way or I'll shoot! Had not even had time to react to a sudden jolt of force as it shoved me against a stop sign.

I only remember the spreading redness of my favorite white blouse—Happy Birthday, Meiling!—and the fact that it was so hard to breathe and that I was choking on something—can'tbreatheithurtspleasestop—

Ah...

Well.

I believe you can guess the rest.

My first memory here was...surreal to say the least.

One minute I was on the ground, bleeding and bleeding and bleeding—ohmygodwhyistheresomuchblood—and then the next I was screaming as I tumbled out of a bed.

That hurt, am I dead—what'sgoingon—

"Ara?" Someone whispered. "Ara!"

Then there were hands grabbing me and I let out another wail, hands forming into fists and trying to punch whoever was holding me.

"Ara, what's wrong? Tell your big brother Aren!" he tried to cajole me. "C'mon, you can tell me anything you know?"

"B-big brother Aren?" I stuttered in reply, too hysterical to realize the strange accent on his Chinese pronunciation. But I don't have an elder brother? I'm the oldest one in the family, what is this person talking about? I bit back my tears for the moment, blinking through the moisture as I peered at the person cradling me to his chest.

It was dark, so I could barely see anything. As my eyes wandered and my sobs gradually faded, I realized that I didn't know where I was. With a little bit of the light coming from the moon, I saw, across the room, a large dresser. On top of the dresser, there was a mirror. And, there, reflected on the glassy surface, was the face of a game character I knew all too well.

Ah.

(I wish I had some of my mother's curry before I died.)

Lips trembling, I smiled, even as more tears filled my eyes, hitting the soft fabric of Ara's—you are Ara—older brother's shirt. Then, in my clearest Mandarin, I said, "Don't worry about it, b-brother, I'm—dead, you're fucking dead and never going back, you fool—fine."

(There is nothing more to say. The dead can only move on.)

At the age of eighteen, I became a murderer.

I killed Ara Haan and replaced her.

When my tears abided and my sobs completely disappeared, Aren asked, "Did you have a bad dream?"

"Ah, well..."

'Meiling, you've grown up. I'm sure the first day of college will be fine.'

'My daughter, it's been a while, so I haven't seen you in person yet, but I'm sure you've grown up to be a beautiful woman.'

'Hey, sister, let's go play video games! Bet I can beat you in Mario Cart!'

'No way, sister promised to play with me today, right?'

"No," I bit my lips again to keep the tears at bay. "It was a good dream. A really good dream."

"Is that so?" he pulled back slightly to stare doubtfully at my still-wet cheeks, but then shrugged and patted my head. "Then, that's great."

"Uh-hm," I nodded against his shoulder, feeling really sleepy for some strange reason. I let out a yawn and he snorted.

"Hurry and go back to sleep, Ara," he watched me climb back on the bed and then headed toward the door. "Don't forget that we have training tomorrow."

"Yes." I pulled the covers towards me and laid down.

As soon as the door closed, I threw the covers off and made a mad dash for the mirror. Seeing the same pale face reflected back, I frowned. Immediately, I pinched myself and then gave myself a quick punch on the shoulder to be sure.

Ow. I blinked and rubbed the now sore shoulder. The person in the mirror did the same. I stopped and so did she. Giving up, I stepped closer and examined the body I now had.

This body was probably no older than six, judging from the height and the baby fat left on the cheeks. Golden eyes stare back at me, and I realized that huh, no more glasses for me. Ara's vision was 20/20, so much better than the vision I used to have when I was this age. I sat on the dresser, mindful of the thin silk dress that Ara had been wearing to bed, and clenched my tiny hands into fists, only to sigh and wrap the surprisingly long limbs around my body.

"I'm alive," I spoke aloud, but it was in English so no one would understand even if they heard me. "Hey, gods or goddesses, I'm alive, but I don't want to be here."

Turning to the moon, I reached out a hand, as if to brush the craters on the surface. "Hey, I'm really sorry if I'm bothering you, but I-I just want to go home. Please, I-I won't ever ask for anything else, so c-can I?"

As if mocking me, a shooting star flew across the sky at the same time another tear fell from my eyes. Can you? it seemed to laugh as it streaked in a brilliant splash of color across the dark night sky. You know the answer already, don't you?

And I did.

(For whom the bells toll, time marches on, you know?)

I would've kept on mourning, but I stopped.

It was unfair.

Because while I could mourn for my own death, but who would mourn for Ara's?

(And nobody ever would know.)

I did say before that I wasn't much of a writer right? Well, that's because I was a drawer. My hands were unnaturally always steady and my drawn lines clearly straight, often without meaning to be. My mind just picks apart at the small details in every single person or thing.

Oh, that man that came to the park yesterday cut his hair by at least two inches.

Wow, that woman's lipstick is clashing with her clothes because it is a shade brighter.

Hm, did that blade of grass just grow by half a centimeter?

But, if I had to draw my first scene here, in this world, I don't think I would be able to capture the despair and shock and tears and that gut-wrenching pain—

Ah, sorry, I went on a tangent again. It happens often.

Like I was trying to say before, though, my favorite hobby was drawing. Whether it was little comics or just random doodles on my notebook, I drew everywhere and everything that caught my worn-out eyes. My art teacher often said that I had an eye for beauty, and maybe, I think, I did. When I think back on it, my first drawing had been at the age of seven years old, too young to actually draw a pretty sunset, but I had tried.

I had tried.

I drew dewdrops on morning grass, moonbeams through my window pane, and a single star that had been crowded out by smoke from the factories. I soon learned that there were two types of beauty. The first type was like my sunset, warm, gentle and soothing to the soul. A classical representation of beauty. Another was a type I learned much later, at the age of nine when there were fights and harsh words thrown at each other by my parents every night for weeks. There were tears and screams and it was so ugly, but still, after the divorce papers had been filed and the signature officially put, I saw it—that terribly ugly beauty.

A type of beauty that can't be always be seen, but from the way my parents' faces no longer had that strained, tired look and the way their faces light up at their prospective freedoms, well, I think there might have been beauty in that.

A broken, but still striving to be seen, beauty.

(I-I... I can't.)

I know all this rambling about beauty probably makes no sense right now, but you'll understand.

(You'll understand.)

Elsword was a game I occasionally dabbled in. I think I might have started because of the animation that caught my attention, though I soon grew bored of it. Sometimes, to amuse my younger siblings, I participated in dungeons and arenas with them and complained together about the mean people in-game when they suddenly quit a dungeon or match in the middle. Other times, I would skim the official website to see that a new character was coming out, get excited and create one right then and there, only to quickly grow bored of them after playing a few dungeons or matches because either they really didn't suit my style of playing or I simply didn't like them as a character.

Ara Haan had been one of latter.

Don't get me wrong, I was pretty good at playing her (if you don't count the many times I was too lazy to combo and just spammed X). Still, despite her faster speed and cool awakening mode, I couldn't get into her mindset. I suppose it was just the fact that she bothered to go and try to turn back her brother, who probably would've personally slaughtered her, all the while blaming herself because she just wasn't strong enough to protect the village or something.

As a person who loves to study psychology, I cannot even say how twisted Ara must have gotten when she realized that she couldn't even do anything in the end. It was really unhealthy, and I was glad that no one else in my family could see that.

As such, when I returned to bed, I tossed and turned and wondered about what to do. Ara had three paths; I had to choose one. It should have been easy. After all, I knew the backstories for each one. Yet, I dithered and pondered because there were so many variables I didn't know about. Take Aren for one. But, in the end, when the moon was fading, this childish body of mine gave in to the urges of sleep, letting darkness overtake me.

I didn't have a single dream.

A/N: Just in case you don't know what an SI character is, it means a self-insert character. In this case, it means the author imagines inserting themselves into another world and writing much about what they'll probably feel like and do within their character if they had known the plot and etc. So, yes, it's kind of like me in there.

(I'd feel terrible if you can tell, lol).

It's kind of vain, and I can see why many people don't like these kind of stories, but I'm going to try this out. Sorry, if you had been waiting on updates for my other stories. I've been continuously changing them over and over again, but I'm not satisfied with any of the chapters I've written. Until they do, I'm just not going to put them up because I'm a perfectionist, lol.

The biggest question is: Why Ara?

My answer: I have no clue. Probably because I was playing on SD and had an idea.