CHAPTER TWO

I'm taking a shower in a bathroom of one of the many lounges this building has. The doors to the bathrooms are frosted glass so you can see the silhouettes of the people inside but very rarely are the lounges used so I am safe from wandering eyes.

I sit so that the water hits me harder. I can't seem to stop crying.

"Marcy?"

How did she find me? There are literally more than a dozen lounges in this building alone...did she go to all of them?

I close my eyes, and focus on the sound of the water drumming onto the top of my head. She keeps calling out to me, but I don't respond. I can't respond. I'm afraid, of how I feel, of how she might feel, how she probably does feel - disgusted, outraged, pity, uncomfortable - how did this happen?

When we'd first met, we hadn't gotten off on the right footing. If anyone had told me then that I would feel like this in the future, I would've scoffed at them for being so insolent, how dare anyone say that I would want anything to do with Princess Bubblegum, as I'd used to call her.

THEN

"Well...shit."

It was my first day in the most prestigious art program in the western hemisphere, and I'd already managed to get lost trying to find my classroom. Making my way around with my head buried in the program brochure had probably not been the best idea.

I looked around the hallway to find some clue as to which building I was in. On both sides of me, there were paintings, portraits, sketches, and works of mixed medium, of various sizes, all hung up in the same 3' by 5' oak frames. I found myself getting distracted by a few of the drawings and after finding a pattern in them, realised they'd been drawn by the same person. There wasn't a signature on any of them, but they all had the same recognisable strokes, and bubbles in them, somewhere, and though the drawings had different themes, the bubbles didn't seem out of place.

"Admiring my handiwork?" Startled by the proximity of the voice, I turned to find a girl clad in pastels; pale pink sneakers and tennis skirt, pale yellow t-shirt covered by a pale blue bombers jacket and a pale purple visor - even the gum she was blowing a bubble with was a pastel pink - standing right beside me. The only things that weren't pastel were the translucent frames on her glasses. I looked from the drawings to her. There was no way that this hipster chick was the artist of these drawings.

The drawings depicted fantastical warriors and unicorns and oddly enough, although the drawings were coloured in light, almost faint, colours, you could feel an intensity coming from them, as if they were stories you'd been through. One even had a vampire in it that I could see myself being - long flowing dark hair, carrying an axe. No way she drew this.

"This is your work?" I pointed to the drawings, not even trying to hide the disbelief I could feel forming on my face.

My skepticism clearly annoyed her; she crossed her arms, tilted her head to the side, looking as though she were trying to size up what I said, all the while chewing obnoxiously on her gum. "What do you mean is this mine? Is it because I look a certain way? I can look cute and have talent, you know." She cocked her head back as if she'd just proven a point.

I shook my head, laughed, and started walking away. I had no time for Princess Bubblegum over there.

"If you're looking for Professor Petrikov's class, it's this way."

I turned right back around. How did she -

"Come on, first year." She smirked at me, turned, and headed towards the glass doors at the end of the hallway. I rolled my eyes and followed her. She was going to be a pain, I could tell.

NOW

She's still a pain, but for different reasons now. She's been sitting outside the door of the bathroom the whole hour I've been in here. I'm going to turn into a prune if I keep this up, so I turn off the water and reach for the towel.

"Marcy?" Her voice is timid now, with none of the feist and cockiness I'd heard in it when we'd first met.

I don't answer. Not because I have nothing to say, and not because I can't, but because I don't want her to know I'd been crying. My nose is stuffed up and I know if I try to talk to her now, she'll hear it, just like she did the night... Well, just like then. She'd know.

I get dressed slowly, giving my nose some time to clear up, and when my eyes are no longer red and I can breathe through my nose again, I open the bathroom door.

She stands up from where she's been sitting, and lifts her chin up so her eyes are full and round and on mine.

"Why do you keep avoiding me?"

She knows why. I know she knows why.

I shove my hands inside my pockets to keep myself from reaching out to her. She is so close. So painfully close. "You have a showcase to be at, don't you?."

I can feel her anger, can almost feel her tremble from where I'm standing. She doesn't say or do anything for awhile, just sighs heavily. I close my eyes, to the sound of her exhale. She takes a few more breaths before I hear her walk away. When I've finally opened my eyes, she's gone.

I wanted her to stay. It didn't matter that I was making her angry, it didn't matter that it was killing me to be around her. I just wanted her to stay, where I could see her, hear her voice.

But what I want to do is different from what I let myself do. My feelings are my responsibility. I refuse to plague her life with how I feel. That's what he had done. That's what monsters do. I won't be a monster. To stay in her life, I can't be a monster. To stay in her life, for now, I have to stay away.

Hello Readers!

Just letting you know, I will not ALWAYS be using the flashback method, I just found it really fun to do for this bit.

If you've left a review, I want to say thank you again! It's really motivating knowing someone is actually enjoying what I've written!

Remember to check me out on tumblr at hyuntokki ~

Yours after a long night,
HYUN토끼.