"Ugh…"
Her groan cuts through the silence like a warm knife through butter.
Words and numbers inked into her grid-lined book begin to crumble and curl into themselves before her eyes, twisting and turning into caterpillars of confusion. Nai tries to scrub the fatigue off her face with balled up fists. It doesn't work.
My heart jumped but my head kept screaming why~
Gumi allows herself to chuckle, but it's a dry one, accompanied by a bittersweet smile. Her Eden playlist seems to have been taking advantage of her emotions lately, making sure that every song he sang was somehow "#relatable". She fiddles with the speaker, Eden's voice becoming even softer than it already was and tunes him out completely. Getting up to "this part" of the exercise and then "pretending" that she didn't understand the rest of it was on the agenda this blustery and disgustingly humid summer night.
Gumi dries off her upper lip and forehead of the perspiration that'd accumulated over the course of that afternoon up until now. As she writes, her she unconsciously strains her ears to pick up Eden's lyrics again, each line weighing her heart down into her stomach where it throbbed. Her hands ball up into fists momentarily, then ruffle her dampened and straggly locks, letting it cascade down her shoulder.
Why couldn't she just turn off the speaker? It'd end her miserable, lyrical torture would it not? It isn't like Nai has a choice. She's still supposed to study; she needs her music. She needs Eden to sing for her. She knows what she wants. Right now, it's to study hard.
Her pen twirls around her hand, pads of fingers smudged by the ballpoint dragging across them as her eyes glaze over her book. Her face is illuminated, aquamarines, royal blues and violets off her phone screen every minute. She's alone now, but she can picture faceless figures mocking her for even thinking that she'd have text messages to reply to. And while she'd rather not acknowledge a certain person that had once texted her no matter what ungodly time of the night (or morning, rather), her mind betrays her.
She's left with an uncomfortable feeling pooling in her gut as his face flashes in her mind. Once. Twice. Then his smile-
Gumi surfaces from her sea of thoughts, exhaling and squeezing her eyes shut as though she'd been underwater and the sting of sea salt had obstructed her vision. She is met by song lyrics again:
Do you care if I am breathing or am I insane…?
"Nope." It sounds like it was to be thought rather than said. Her hand leaves her phone. Tap. The next song that plays causes something to resonate within her, something that makes her muscles relax and her cheeks grow warm. It has a reminiscent aura about it, like there was a lot to think about behind the song. What is she to remember about this song?
"I'm sure your dad will apologize for saying all of this is your fault." His arm snakes around Gumi's shoulders in a weird bro-arm hug. She appreciates the gesture nonetheless. "The stress must've gotten to him because…"
"Because mom didn't stay." Gumi finishes with eyes still trained toward her lap, amused and happy with his attempt to choose his words carefully. She tentatively looks up. "Stay with me, please?"
"Okay." Gumi smiles. He returns it, pulling her closer.
Oh. She remembers now.
She's not interested.
Tap.
It's a random thought that pops up, but Gumi can't help but feel uncomfortable about it. She's been mastering how to 'pretend to forget' very quickly. Pretend to forget what? one might ask, but she wouldn't dare answer, even to herself. It'd defeat the purpose of forgetting everything, since she'd be required to remember it, obviously.
The hardstyle-esque bass of the next song has Gumi tapping her foot along to the beat, her right hand gliding across the edge of the desk as though she's at her piano, playing along with the song. The four minutes of it are productive, and she somehow understands the last few questions on her textbook. She quirks a smile as she packs up her belongings, satisfaction pooling in her stomach. Gumi pushes away from her desk, seated in her wheelie-chair, plopping her books in a neat stack in her bag. Her uniform is pristine, blouse and stockings ironed to perfection, tie tied as best as possible off an internet tutorial.
Independence feels great…it's kinda hard to manage, but it feels so..."Nice" is what Gumi would have liked to say, but something stops her. Well she knew what it was but pushed it aside as soon as it came to mind. A stab of annoyance followed, chastising her as to why she was thinking about all of it again. What she did was for her. He messed up. He's not her problem anymore.
Gumi's thumb wavers over the pause button on her phone, but she swipes out of it and confirms her meeting arrangements with her mother. The short Ok, has Nai's eye twitching and her free hand curling into her fist at her side. Giving a not-so-kind string of every insult under the sun sounds tempting, but for her dad's sake, she wants to be at least a little civil, and just doesn't reply after that. She turns her desk lamp off, but leaves her phone and speaker on before slipping under the covers of her bed.
There is a subtle tenseness to Gumi's muscles that makes her more like a mannequin in her bed than a human of flesh and bone. Her brain is a violent whirl of stupidity, trying to organize the chaos in her life. It seeks to discover a way to control the capriciousness of people, to acquiesce and please them so that her encounters with them are softer, less draining.
Sent at 1:24 am - I'm sorry... I'm still new to this.
Received at 1:30 am – It's okay…We both are.
Of course, the task is pointless, life is far too random for a human brain to take the billions of factors that come together to form just one day for one person. It feels like forever before Gumi feels drowsy, but just as she notices it, she realizes she forgot to turn the music off her phone. A little voice in her mind says to "stuff it" before she just closes her eyes anyway, willing for them to stay that way.
When Gumi wakes, she can hear echoes of one of her older songs on her phone, but can't see her desk...or her room for that matter. If she recalls correctly, she was still in her bed, ironed uniform hanging on her dresser and her bag was packed away (for once).
She hears waves crashing against something before she sees slivers of sunlight peek through ugly beige curtains at the foot of her bed. The cardboard sailor's hat and the 'activity catalogue' on her suitcase gives an air of familiarity. Gumi ponders as she sits up, eyes roaming around the room to find other things that'd jog her memory of her whereabouts. She spots a watch on the dresser all the way on the other side of the room.
"Thank you for still trying."
Gumi shakes her head, immediately searching for something else to look at. The gaudy red and green tinsel hung around the ceiling gets the gears to finally turn in her head.
But…she shouldn't be on her way to New Caledonia in a cruise ship now. That was over a month ago; she knows so because she can recall the feeling of going to her Kendo grading the same day they got back. She'd had 'sea legs'. He had laughed at her as she tried and failed to keep still, her body swaying in her stances as though she were still at sea.
A lucid dream then? She considers, Maybe. She flips the covers off her sock-tanned legs and draws the curtains, sliding the glass door open and padding outside. The air is bitterly freezing, and it reeks of sea salt. But Gumi is still entranced by the cerulean waves as they crash into the ship, sea spray strangely cool and refreshing.
It's a while before she realizes her sister and her father are nowhere to be seen, nor is anyone on the ship for that matter. Nothing strikingly emotional wells up inside of her like she initially thought. Perhaps she really was void of emotion for dealing with so much for so long, but she doesn't try to think further than that, distracting herself with the positives instead. It works.
She feels calm, at ease, safe. Alone, independent. Perhaps she's finally getting the hang of being independent. Living without thinking about...people... so often.
Depending on someone means getting too attached. And getting too attached means that you've lost yourself. She repeats these words in her head like a mantra, forcing snippets of memories out of her mind, and implementing more and more confidence behind her words. She realizes that she must because she isn't convinced, but still pretends to think nothing of it.
She marvels at the thought of being in such a realistic dream when the floorboards tremble beneath her feet. There's a sickening crack somewhere from below her. And suddenly it's tipping over, much to Gumi's horror; if there's anything she fears, it's the water. Nature worked against her every time she'd ever tried to go underwater. It robbed her of what kept her alive.
"You spend time with everyone but me."
"They're my friends…am I not allowed to talk to them?"
"No, you're not."
Gumi runs back into her room and out the other side of it, just in time to see the other side of the boat being drowned in darkened waves. They no longer looked beautiful; they looked like monstrosities clawing at the deck, oozing with evil that stained the boat, ate away at it like acid. She's seen enough, she wants out of this boat.
It occurs to her that her mind never wants to cooperate with her anymore, just as the windows and doors shatter into dust and a gust of wind manipulates the dust to dance around her bared feet and lift her up and take her outside. Higher, higher, further and further away from the ship, Gumi knows where she's going and knows she's dreaming but she can't wake up. She wills for something to shake her awake as she gulps, eyeing the way the waves snap at her feet. Gumi can only utter a shaky prayer before the glass-dust cloud disappears before her feet.
And she falls.
Her heart begins hammering in her chest, increasing in intensity and speed, like a bird trapped in a cage. Her throat burns agonizingly with the rising pressure of trapped air. She gives into the pressure and takes a breath of air only to engulf a gush of salty water. Icy cold water is thrust up her nostrils, a stream cascaded into the back of her throat and nose, sending jets of pain through her body.
In the movies, drowning is loud and there's a load of splashing, someone yells and waves their arms, they dip below the waves and come up in dramatic fashion while those on shore scramble to rescue them. Nai finds out the hard way that it's nothing but quiet, that movements are subtle, noiseless, and yet still takes the same amount of energy out of you.
Slowly, the commotion and chaotic sounds of her in the sea drowns out to a low hum, buzzing at her ears, gradually muting into silence, one with the darkness. Nai gives up on the screaming, on the thrashing. She allows the water to hold her body in a sustained position beneath the sea. As her vision blurs out and her consciousness falters, her body feels numb. She waits, resigned, eyes shutting as she tries to imagine the hands of death grabbing whatever is left of her.
Instead, her mind betrays her, a familiar song echoing through her mind. She would have commented on how stupid she was being, thinking about death. In a dream of all things. That is if she didn't register the song first.
But I'm not. Whatever you wanted.
Forever just wanting.
You.
"Please don't leave…"
"I'm done, Gumi. I'm freaking done, okay?"
Gumi awakens trembling. She shivers despite the warmth of her blanket. Her heart thumps against her chest despite being in the comfort of her bed again. The fact that she isn't dead is supposed to be more reassuring then this, she thinks, but she decides to appreciate the small feeling of happiness.
She's so preoccupied with her relief of not being dead via drowning that all she can do is blink owlishly when rivulets of tears snake down her cheeks, dribbling off her chin and into her blanket. Gumi's fingertips press to her damp skin before she remembers what's making her cry. Elements of her dream slam into her. The isolation, the water and then the pain following soon after, erupting from her throat in the form of a silent scream.
"I know I missed your birthday, and I didn't get anything back in July, but on the cruise, I found something. So, uh…here." Gumi practically drops the box in his hands before she looks away, cheeks burning. The tearing of the wrapping paper and the soft clanking of the tin doesn't convince her to look up to see his reaction at the watch.
"God, you're adorable."
Her eyes are comically wide as he swoops her up into his arms, her head fitting snugly under his chin. Her lips curl into an automatic smile as her heart swells in her chest.
"Thank you." He utters.
Gumi had cried over him before, briefly, but now there was a rawness to it, akin to the slow but unrelenting burn of an open wound. A fleeting thought of her hoping that her walls would build back up as quickly as they'd crumbled, her emotions barred behind a mask of coping. One she'd just wear it until everything was right again. She didn't know any other way. So, knowing that all her defences were washed away in those salty tears in a matter of minutes horrified her.
She'd like to think that it's because of her little dream-drowning catastrophe that she can't bring herself to shut all of them out like she had been since she broke it off with him. But really, Gumi felt like her conscience had gotten fed up with being ignored for all this time, and all her actual feelings and thoughts had just welled up to the point where they became impossible to contain.
"You spend time with everyone but me." Gumi finally manages through gritted teeth when they reach her locker.
His eyebrows furrow as he exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose. "They're my friends…am I not allowed to talk to them?"
It's a while before she says anything else. He pleads for her to talk, attempting to grasp her hand as a final straw. Gumi feels something snap and she slaps his hand away with all the strength she has.
It takes every fibre of her being to not look at his glassy eyes, at how he moves away, outstretched hand falling limply to his side.
"No, you're not." Gumi growls, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and striding off.
Gumi's sobs eventually turn into quieter hiccups, tears dry and sticky on her flushed cheeks. There was no way he'd ever talk to her again. She slumps and sighs uselessly, heart sinking as she curls up under her covers again.
I'm so sorry.
But you'll never know it. 'Cos I'm just way too proud.
Hide behind my ego. Block the whole world out.
And these words they don't come easy. And they don't come loud.
So, you'll never know it.
I'm screaming man down.
- EDEN (Man Down)
So uh... I like EDEN/The EDEN Project.
This is the story I entered into the Roly Sussex Story Award this year. I spent so much time writing it that I had to share it. Because wow I did ittttt.
The 'him' in the story can be whomever you wish/ ship with Gumi (Personally I'd have Yuma there) but yea :).
- Jae