Page 59 of When Worlds Collide (Between Worlds #2)

T hat night in bed, I tossed and turned until eventually, I got up, not wanting to keep disturbing Jihoon, who already didn’t get enough sleep.

I crept out of the bedroom, quietly shutting the door behind me, and made my way over to the sofa, taking my laptop with me.

I don’t know how long I spent there, curled up on the cushions with a blanket pulled over my shoulders as I researched breast cancer. Everything seemed to depend on what stage my mum was in, but the overall prognosis was generally good.

I came away with more questions than answers, though.

What stage was she in? Was it a double mastectomy, or a single that she was having? What kind of chemotherapy treatment was she having? Was she going to wait the recommended thirty days post-op, or were they starting on it sooner?

All those questions, and not having the answers was unbelievably frustrating, made more so because I couldn’t just call her to ask.

I looked down at my watch; just after 6:20 am. I’d been up for a couple hours, but it wasn’t even midnight for them. I couldn’t call them for hours.

I tossed my laptop aside, careful to at least aim for a pile of cushions so I didn’t accidentally break it in my frustration.

I didn’t know what to do. I was here, they were there, and I felt so fucking useless.

I dragged my hands down my face, feeling the slight burn as my fingernails got a little too close to my cheek, and I dropped my hands helplessly back into my lap, idly listening to the ticking of the clock on the wall.

It wasn’t long before I started to hear rustling coming from the bedroom.

Even on days where he didn’t need to get up early, he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

Years of being busy, of red-eye flights, and hours of gruelling practice before a full day of engagements had permanently altered his body clock.

It conditioned him to rise long before most people were even awake.

“Kaiya?” His voice, still deep from sleep, called from the door, and I looked over to where he stood.

His pyjama bottoms were rumpled, and I knew that if I ran my hands down his chest, he would still be so warm, and all I’d want to do is wrap myself up in the comfort of his body.

But I didn’t. I felt snarled up in myself, and I worried that if I touched him now, I’d scratch him with the thorns I felt growing from my skin.

I was a dark, twisty version of myself.

“Have you been awake long?”

He walked towards me, and even as I wanted him to stay away, I craved the nearness of him.

“A while,” I muttered, not trusting myself to look at him.

He seemed to hesitate, made unsure by whatever he saw on my face, and I thought he’d step away, maybe busy himself in the kitchen, but then he walked towards me with purpose.

Before I knew what he intended, he’d stepped in front of me, scooping me up in his arms as easily as if I were one of the sofa cushions.

“Hey!” I said in surprise, flinging my arms around his neck to anchor myself, but he only sat down where I had been a moment before, arranging me in his lap so I sat against him, my ear pressed to his chest, where I could hear the steady thump-thump, thump-thump of his heart.

He was just as warm as I’d known he would be, and for a moment I allowed myself to relax into him. He didn’t complain once as I curled my cold fingers against his warm skin.

I thought he might say something, some comforting platitudes, but he didn’t. He just held me close, allowing me to block out some of the noise in my head and replace it with the steady beat of his heart.

Today was Saturday, and we had plans later with the rest of the group to have dinner together.

But I already knew I couldn’t face it.

I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about my mum, and I equally wasn’t ready to put on a brave face and pretend like my world hadn’t just been smashed into by an asteroid so large the resulting debris was blocking out the sun.

“I don’t know what to do,” I mumbled, rubbing my face against his skin as though that might block out the traffic in my head.

His voice rumbled through his chest. “What do you feel like you need to do?”

I was scared to say it out loud.

I was scared to keep it silent.

In the end, the words were wrenched from me.

“I don’t know how to not be there, with them.”

Jihoon’s hands stilled their soothing journey across my back, leaving trails of cold where his hands had been, but now were paused.

“You want to leave Korea?”

I could tell he was trying to keep his voice calm, and measured. I could always tell, because his accent became more formal, more clipped, less easy. It was as though he had to put more thought into the English words.

“It’s not as simple as ‘wanting’ to leave.” I began, the frustration I felt creeping into my tone, “I just feel so useless here.”

“What could you do if you were there?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question, and rationally I knew that, but I wasn’t rational right then, and the words were like flint to my tinder.

I pulled back to look at him, feeling the sharp way my eyebrows fell together, the pinch of my lips.

“Probably nothing, but maybe more than I can do here. Stranded.”

His eyebrows pulled together in what I imagined was a mirror to my own.

“Is that how you feel? Stranded?”

The bite in his voice, the spark of hurt that I knew damn well I’d put there, only seemed to fan the spark growing in my chest, and I pushed away from him, needing to be away from the heat of his body. It suddenly felt less comforting and more suffocating.

I was too hot. I needed to cool down. I got up and paced away.

“No. Yes! No, fuck! I don’t know.”

I pulled my hands through my hair, trying to take a breath.

I felt, rather than heard, Jihoon rising from the couch, moving towards me.

I turned to look at him. He stood a few feet away, but he didn’t try to reach for me.

“I understand you want to be there,” he said – carefully, as though I were a wild animal that might lash out at him. “But being there won’t help.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Truthfully, I don’t think there was a right thing. I turned away, heading towards the sliding doors that led out onto the balcony, desperate for a breeze to cool my heating skin.

“Kaiya – if you leave… they’ll cancel your Visa application.”

“I know!”

I spun on him, and it felt like my eyes were spitting fire, a burning rage, a total, incomprehensible volcano of incompetent rage and fear bubbling up inside me, desperate for release.

“I know that! I’ve been counting the days until my pass expires, but ENT haven’t exactly been prompt. It expires in a week, anyway! What’s the fucking point? I’ll be kicked out in a week, so maybe I should just go now! God!”

I spun around, feeling the sudden urge to push my hands right into the plaster of the wall, dig it out with my bare fingernails and smash it against the floor.

Silence fell behind me, as deafening as a clamour of bells, and I… I was too ashamed to turn around. So I didn’t.

I held myself together with the tips of my fingers, staring out the glass-paned doors to the high rise across the road, boring holes into the side of the building with the intensity I poured into not… turning… around.

“I’m going to the gym.”

I didn’t bother replying. Didn’t move from that spot, not when I heard him move away, not when I heard doors in the bedroom slamming.

Not when I heard him pause in the living room, and not when the front door shut behind him.

But I’d wanted to. The moment the door closed, it was on the edge of my tongue to call out to him, but I didn’t.

I didn’t move until I fell down where I stood, pulled down under the weight of my own anger as it fell down my face in rivers.