five.

bầu trời quá xa, tôi không thể với tới nó.

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There's a blood rush in your ears like a waterfall (it washes down in your ears, but you can't hear it, downed out by cars and the sound of your own breathing). Your brain feels like a fire is set over it; you do something stupid and irrational. It makes you nerves fray from head to toe.

Hunger claws its weary way up your spine, up your throat, and dissipates into the air.

The nausea slinks up your throat as you run out of your apartments and find your way to the nearest supermarket. The lights overhead make your eyes feel like there's a thousand pins and needles shoved into your pupils. You ignore it with as much grace as you can. It isn't much grace at all, but you ignore it for the sake of hunger.

The hunger that claws its way into the wormhole of your stomach and all of your perfectly budgeted months-worth of food vanishes into beef bones, oxtail, basil, tomato paste, lemongrass, and wire racks. You are so hungry for a taste of home that you are diluting it to accessibility. You have almost enough garlic at home that you don't have to buy any. The onions that you were going to sweat out for chicken can be used for this, too. You can't catch your breath, it stings the inside of your throat. It sinks into your stomach. It burns at the emptiness. Acid drips into your throat like an IV line and you feel yourself burn. 

You work your way around the food. Hands shaking at the register. You payed rent. You have enough money—this is a bad decision, still. It's such a bad decision. It is always a bad decision.

Homesickness is migrating to your brain, it's making you sick in the head.

(You worry so often that you will lose that kid who laughed in the summer, that—the only thing you remember cleanly in your childhood is violence and hunger. Your only comfort is your mother's cooking, through every fleeting argument you remember this: there is no apology, there is only a bowl of the soup your bà would make when you refused to eat sitting on the table. The chopsticks you bought with your first paycheck sitting next to it. A wordless apology.)

Tonight, you apologize to her. To yourself.

"I'm sorry." She's sick again and you can't do anything, "I'm sorry, mà."

You are a disappointment. You're so, so sorry.

It sinks around your lungs and unravels in your ribcage, strangles your heart. You have such little control over yourself, you break so easy. Your mothers voice is so careful in your head, fragile.

Violence is a word that coughs up in your chest. Bubbling. Bleeding.

You explode at the slightest inclination of friction. A landmine. Like a bomb, fragile like a bomb and you want to break down and—

"Má," you laugh, it sounds hungry even to your own ears, "I don't know what I'm doing."

Your hands hurt and your eyes burn so, so much, like you should be crying. You don't want to cry, you're not supposed to cry. The headache that's been subtly persisting at the base of your neck—by the brain stem—screams in agony; thrumming painfully as you try to breathe. You want to break down, you want to eat, you never want to eat again—you need to pull yourself together, but it's so hard on an empty stomach.

"Má, I need your help—" you say. There is nobody there. There never was—only empty platitudes. Wordless apologies. Worried murmurs in the middle of the night what are we going to do with you? What are we going to do with you?

Your heart aches—you don't want to grow up—but you don't think you have much more to go. The cost of living is as steep as they come.

"Má—what am I s'possed to do?"

You don't get an answer. You don't think you ever will.

_

You board the bus with everyone else in the second-year COMPUTER department. You're friends with exactly none of them. It would feel almost cold— like you were an alien —if you payed any mind to it.

So you don't.

You watch the scenery change in rapid motion, cars racing in the opposite direction and the bus right beside you being filled with exactly one guy among a class full of girls—he looks miserable. What was his name? Jang?  You don't remember. 

You make eye contact with him, and you look away first.

You take your beaten phone out and you're even more busted headphones—only one bud that works—and listen to the same four songs you downloaded for your birthday on Lana's card on repeat. You got her one of those stupid BTS posters for her birthday in return. You should call her, you think. She probably has no idea what's going on.  

The bus stops, the departments mish-mash and hurry to get their necklace entry passes for the day. A couple of students take the complementary headbands and hats—the bow is the most popular among the girls in the FASHION & DESIGN and BEAUTY departments. The first thing your do when you get your pass is beeline toward the highest roller coaster. The line is obnoxiously long, but the fact that it fills up behind you in mere seconds tells you that you made the right choice. There's the tastes of ginger in your mouth and the ache for the soup in your freezer. 

(Heavyset memories of sleeplessness sits on your chip-ridden shoulders, but you'll live — you don't have a choice, but you will. You wont let it ruin you—not today.)

Being this high up in the air leaves you breathless—the sound of your heart pit-patting in your chest leaves you with a high you can't compare to any fight. Your lungs burn, your eyes are wide, mouth split wide open in a grin that nearly consumes you whole.

There is something so mind-gutting about a free fall—you haven't been on a roller coaster in a very long time—not since your mà got sick—or maybe even your bà. Free falls make you hold your breathe; you feel the bump in your stomach when you land. Guns go off in your head but your ignore the how it reminds you of bottles cracking on the floor and screaming and what are we going to do with you ?— because you're having fun. So much fun. It swells in your chest, rabidly.

You end up roaming around the park alone for the most part. The day fazes by in awkward segments, but that's besides the point. You get some potatoes, free of charge, and end up on a lot of the kids rides when the lines seem to stretch out of forever.

"Huin!" Someone calls. You flinch at the sound—that's Park Hyung-seok The Worse Half; you try to subtly Get The Fuck Out Of Here. 

It doesn't go as planned—well. It sort-of-does? You're not quite sure, because he gets stopped, and starts bothering Choi in place of you. You apologize to her mentally. For having to deal with Park Hyung-seok, you care of course, but not enough to save her skin. 

(To save your own self above all is simple math: you hold yourself above her simply because there is no other choice. You need to skin your own flesh for profit, for love, for your ba and mà and you can't do that without skin at all. You are selling your body and time for their happiness and you're fine with it. You have to be fine with it.)

Skin; bloody and raw. You have devoured yourself in your worst: you have given your best capacities to money. Sharpening your teeth with the way they grind; silence is your best friend and your worst enemy.

Foreboding drips on the curve of your ribs.

Foreboding: deeply ominous, telling of bad things to come— your birth is foreboding, a foreword to yourself of all the worst to come.

(Mà, you think, I am tired of being angry. I am tired of being scared. Mà I miss you. I miss home, please come back and don't apologize, just make my favorite soup and say nothing, please, please please― your heart might break in your mouth with the amount of force it's exerting. 

Fear is your god. It sounds around your soul, and anger is your only weapon. It turns violent too quick. Always too quick.

It becomes all teeth and fists and blood and what are we going to do with you?)

You have fun, though. Some countryside kid gives you his leftovers potatoes to throw away, busboy, and you gorge yourself of the leftovers. How hungry must one be, until embarrassment means nothing? Until nerves are only smoke and the names of friends you can't remember in anything other than watercolor?

The roller coasters whirl overhead, and you manage to avoid everyone in your class and that Park Hyung-seok in your wandering form ride to ride. Free samples make up your lunch until the school gives out its sandwiches and milk. Today is so bright and lovely—you feel yourself relax into your skin. Your shoulders loosen; your breathe calms; you stop looking over your shoulders for a second. 

You think that Somsak would have loved this, Lana would, too. Some dumb, unruly part of you wishes that they were here instead of trying to find work—like you. You think that youth may be fleeting for these classmates of yours, but you never really had that—or maybe it got caught in the uglier parts of life: beer bottles and mourning and plane rides and hunger. Most of it, you guess, got caught in the hunger. Or the wanting—the wanting swallows everything.

It is a consumption in its own right. You consume yourself when you have nothing left, and even through that—you think; at least you are thin, because being seen as too thin makes you ugly, but not as ugly as the other end of the spectrum. You think of CVS Hyung—you think of how his face was swollen and his eyes tracked down at every look directed at him. You think of Choi, how she is so nice, under that bitter anger that seems to trace her. You think—perhaps too much, because you bump into someone without really meaning to.

Cold floods you, suddenly, at the sight of her― she's all black hair and big black eyes and skin so clear you couldn't imagine it in your dreams. Moon-kissed, moon-kissed girl of the night, you skin yourself of hope. The red night burns gold in your eyes ―she is the prettiest person you've ever met. You know her type, and she is the night made mortal; she looks at you like you're something to make grand and something to pity. There's a curve of something wrenching inside of you that you can't name. If you name it, it becomes real. If you name it, you get attached. If you name it, it will come back.

If you name it, it's yours.

"You," she says, and your eyes catch the man behind her, all sunglasses and faux lax posture and something familiar, "follow me."

(You heard of him, of that tattoo that wraps around his forearm. You know him because of the way his feet stay steady on the ground. You know what he is, and suddenly, you're aware that you're in so much trouble. You know—irrevocably—that you cannot afford trouble.)

You run. He chases you around; thus is a game of cat and mouse so complex that you're wondering: who is who?

Nature is steady like this. Nature, that garden. You think of the mango tree in your bà's backyard. That sweet fruit in your mouth. Sticking to your cheeks. Sticking to your fingers, too sweet. How, then, can something be that sweet? Sweet―like that summer before everything went wrong; before you saw the rot festering under the house; a secret that nobody thought to hide. Sweet, like honey flavored nostalgia—if you close your eyes you can taste the summer, hear pretty bôbô in hushed whispers, feel someone running wet fingers through your hair, but you can't because you're doing what you do worst: running. You're a fighter at heart, at the base of your being. Made for split knuckles and broken bottles and empty houses.

The blood pumping in your ears is singing you something so unique you can't recall a single word, the letters sting against your ribs. Gasoline sings under your skin, and for a moment your heaven sent in the crowd of overzealous teenagers looking for an adrenaline rush. Then, Sunglasses finds you.

(Fragile, and you think, again: like a bomb. When she means like a flower.)

Then, it's over―he grabs you by the collar of your shirt, then by the hair. Tight, pulling, tearing. Fire soarks in your chest and your hands shake and shake and shake. You are a child but nobody calls you bôbô anymore. Lungs stained with kerosene and ash like you are.

Hope is dead in the name of an exit. You go down kicking and screaming and biting. Hissing. Teeth gnashing on Sunglass's forearm. You draw blood, you know, you can taste it. It coats your teeth like a badly made shield.

"Boys," says the moon-kissed girl, "stop fighting, Gun, put him down."

You smile, blood on your teeth. Something sharp on your tongue. There's this burning inside you like a caged animal and you feel the match hit the floor. Fragile like a bomb. Like empty beer bottles and wordless forgiveness. Grief swallows you whole, "Who―what's happening, what's happening? Who are you? Why―"

"Too many questions for a brat your age." Says Sunglass's, Gun, you want to break his nose like you broke Dawin's. He's looking at you with eyes you can't quite decipher before he puts his sunglasses back on—when did they come off? You don't know. "Shut up and listen."

"I'm here to.. offer you a job, so to speak," she says, and she's so perfect, you want to rip her open, watch her organs rot in the orange sun, "do you agree, Huỳnh?"

You feel the way blood pools from your nose to your upper lip, the way your eyes start swelling around a bruise, the way your cheek pulses with an ache. Your mouth burns with every word you've never said, every promise you made to your mà and ba. Your chest aches with misuse and mistrust; how far is too far? Who is the cat and who is the mouse? What are we going to do with you? It's no wonder when your parents are scum—

"Do I even have a choice?" Your voice doesn't crack, but it's a near thing.

You know the answer before she says it, "Not really."

And you are so, so tired of being hungry all the time. 

"Then," you cough up red around the words, your spit mingled with blood, "I hope it's a pleasure working with you, miss. Could have offered me a job the normal way, instead of with yakuza boy here."

(Your mouth slurs around the words, you know what they are but not how to say them. You know of him, but only by name, only by way of half-open doors and hushed comforts. War hero uncle had a war hero father had a war hero father, too, and they were in Japan during that war—and business only goes smooth when it's family on the line. Blood money is still money.)

She smiles, then, she's so pretty you want to grind her into ash and rest her weary soul in the part of Seoul where the sun hits just right. You want to watch her suffer like never before. 

You ruin that moment of reprieve, "What about the pay?"

She—you still don't know her name—taps her perfectly manicured nails against her chin, "How about—you want to work in computer's—a programmer. So, let's get you on that salary." She's typing out how much does a coder make monthly in Seoul, South Korea on her phone, probably, "Seventy million annually sound good?"

You blink. That—that's fifty million eight hundred a month. You gulp at the concept; the image of that kind of money weighs in your minds pocket. You go through the five stages of grief in five thoughts and one phrase. 

You think: I can do this without help.

You think: How dare she?

You think: Mà is sick again.

You think: I'm going to be late on rent this month.

You think: I have sold myself for less. 

You say, teeth bared and mind made up: "When do I start?"

The moon-kissed girl smiles, eyes half lidded, and it's all teeth and smugness, "Next week. Monday, eight-am sharp. Wear whatever, we're going to have to get you a wardrobe change anyway."

She hands you a business card and walks away. You're bloody and bruised and your mouth is swollen with greed. You become your father in the way of curved spines and calloused hands; you become your mother in bitten lips and fidgeting fingers; you remain yourself in your anger, in the rage that swallows you in its entirety. 

That feeling from when you saw her slinks its way into your chest, and you are found wanting. It's acidic in your mouth but you swallow it; you cannot afford attachment, you cannot afford to name this, to feed it, to lend your body to another cause.

The card says an address so deep into the city you'll have to wake up sometime near four-am to make it on time if the train doesn't delay. You're going to wreck yourself with something vile like this. Still, you might make yourself something that your parents can be proud of. You might become something more than empty rooms and empty stomachs and empty dreams. 

You might be something, and you are so, so tired of wanting but never having. 

You think, in equal measure, that blood money is money and that you are so, so tired of being hungry.