Since I got home, I haven't left my bed. I haven't eaten anything. I haven't done anything. It'll be dinner time soon.
My hand hurts. My head hurts. Even though I'm here, I can't stop staring at them.
I can't. I can't stand it anymore. Why? Why did I do something like this? I-it wasn't me. It wasn't me. I wouldn't do something like this. Especially not to a girl.
That wasn't me. It wasn't me, but I remember it from my perspective. I did it.
Shortly after we got home, people started calling the house phone. It might have been the school. Thinking about it makes me sick. I'm scared.
I don't know what to say to Dad when he gets home from work. What should I say? He probably already knows everything. I'm scared. I won't be able to face him.
I don't want to hear him scream. As a kid, I was already afraid of him doing that. He didn't go too far because my grandmother calmed him down a bit, but after what he's been through...
I don't want to see him.
I understand that he's angry, but if he yells at me now, I'll probably cry. I don't want to cry, much less in front of him, and since he's so grown up. I don't mean that he's an adult yet; I'm still a kid, but I'm aware enough not to want that to happen. I guess that's why I ran away in class.
I often say that I shouldn't have done something like that, but could I have done anything else? Even now, I'm still upset, I still feel bad. I couldn't have done anything. I couldn't.
But then, how could I have made everything worse? Can I only do something if it harms me? Can I only do evil? Am I too powerless to do good?
Even if I had said something, would it have changed anything? I know perfectly well who's wrong. If I had spoken, I'd only be proving that neither of us was right.
Whatever I did, because it was me, that reason would become reality. I've proven them right, even though they weren't right, with actions, not words. One piece of proof is all it takes to change everything.
One mistake is all it takes to ruin everything. Many say they learn from them, but what if they're too big to make up for?
How can I learn from a mistake I can't bear? It weighs too much on me. If I can't accept the fact that it happened, how can I even learn from it? What do I have to learn?
Should I stop hanging out with people? I wouldn't be able to hang out with them in the first place anyway. People would shy away from me just by looking at me. I'd be the odd one out, the person everyone points at but no one sees.
Do I have to apologize? And how can I do something like that? Since I'm the one who did it voluntarily and consciously, am I going to go back to her and say "I'm sorry"?
Holy crap! How could I?! First of all, I wouldn't even accept it. Who in their right mind would? Only someone who cares more about others than themselves would. Anyone else wouldn't forgive something like that.
If it were just an accident, if it were really a mistake, if I could calm down, think, and then breathe, it could have been an accident. I could have just run away without doing anything else.
People would still see me in a bad light, but maybe they'd think they'd gone too far. "She's still his sister, after all," they'd think. And in time, they'd learn through word of mouth what really happened. They also have no proof of why I would do something like that. They didn't have any either. Now they can think whatever they want.
You can see me in a thousand and one ways, and half of them will be true. You can tell a hundred stories, and most of them will have happened.
Deep down, that's just the way I am. I always explode at the worst moments. And if I don't, then I'm not doing anything. It's always all or nothing, isn't it?! You always have to give it your all!
I'm useless even at that. I give everything to take something away from others. I give everything to break something. Whenever I give everything, I ruin everything. That's all my best effort can do.
It would be better to do nothing, but I can't afford that either. At some point, I'll have to do something. I can't bottle up that desire forever; at some point, it will pass, and once it's passed, there's nothing I can do to stop it.
That's the only thing I regret not being able to do. Not being able to stop. Not being able to control myself, to take it out on something else. All I do are mistakes, I don't learn from them, I don't correct them.
That's why, if I give it my all, I'm just bringing all my mistakes and flaws to light.
If all I have is that, then I'm the one who made a mistake. I should learn from myself.
But if I learn, I fix it, and you can't fix a mistake. Nothing can ever be the same again…
I spent the whole afternoon lying in bed. I didn't feel like doing anything. I'd felt this way several times before, but at least I could have distracted myself with my phone or listened to something, but I was just lying on my side, thinking. I couldn't even understand what I was thinking.
It was as if I were speaking another language. I heard the noise of a voice, but I couldn't hear it at all. It was all static, noise, static, voices.
My room felt bigger than usual. My house is like any other, neither big nor small, and it was Western-style. It's rare to see Eastern houses around here.
For an ordinary room, it was big enough to lie on the floor and still have plenty of room to sleep, and now it felt twice as big. I felt like if I got out of bed, whether to go to the bathroom or get a drink, I'd fall because I didn't measure the distance between my feet and the floor correctly.
I feel small.
Ironically, just mentioning "bathroom" and "water" made me want to both go to the bathroom and drink water.
I didn't know if it was worth ignoring both of those things and continuing to lie down, or forcing myself to go. I figured it would be better not to focus on holding on; the time I waste doing that will be more annoying than the time I'm wasting now.
I got out of bed as soon as I decided. Because I was impatient, I ended up feeling dizzy almost as soon as I got up, and to avoid making things worse, I lay down again…
"…"
I stared up at the ceiling. I was still a little dizzy, and I preferred to wait for it to pass rather than try walking like this. The best thing I could do would be fall.
"…"
How could I have been like this for so long? I wondered as I stared at the white painting above.
I, who am the first to always want to be doing something and try not to get bored at any moment, have been like this for so long. And I've done it without getting bored? No, I'm certainly bored, but then why do I stay like this?
Oh, that's true. I don't feel like doing anything. What can you do?
It was nighttime. I didn't have any lights on, so the only thing illuminating my room was the moonlight.
More than helpful, it was annoying. I'd grown accustomed to the darkness, so I could see perfectly, or at least well enough.
I only had self-doubt. I felt as if all those hours had never passed, since I didn't remember anything. I only knew what had happened before I got home.
Obviously, that was the reason why he was like that, I guess. Or was he unmotivated because he was afraid of my father? Did he think of it as a punishment?
It was etched in my mind. Every second. Every glance. Every voice. Everything. What affected me the least was the video. That was irrelevant to me at the time. I now see that image in my head a hundred times every hour.
And so, I forgot about my needs, and closed my eyes, hoping to fall asleep.