"that terrible night has changed me more than i ever thought it would"

When the screaming fight was over, Chaekyung turned to the radio in my car, not caring about the fact that I could see her tears glistening down her redden cheeks. It seems as if there's a cosmic coincidence. For the first station to play 'When You're Gone' by Avril Lavigne, I should have known what it meant at that particular moment.

Instead of being clueless, I focused on the road, too tired from the things that had happened, and I closed my eyes as I could hear her ranting again.

"I was just worried about you, Ryu. You should understand that I'm only looking out for you and those people wouldn't even bat an eye out if you ever shut -....."

You wouldn't expect for the radio to work after the crash. But it does.

The car is wrecked. The impact of a four-ton pickup truck going sixty miles an hour plowing straight into the driver's side had the force of an atom bomb and all the glasses rain down to the person in it. It tore off the doors, sent the front-side passenger seat through the back of the car. The vehicle was flipped, bounced across the road, and the engine was ripped apart like it was made out of fragile glass.

And there was so much noise.

A symphony of grinding, a chorus of popping, a series of explosions, and finally, above it all, the helpless repeated scream for a name.

The name so familiar that even if I'm so out of it, I recognise it as mine.

"Ryujin!"

It's from my sister.

At first, I figure everything is fine. For one, I can still hear Avril Lavigne's voice over the radio and there's the fact that my sister had strength enough to remove me out of the wreckage we found ourselves in. Then the second I was out there, crawling out weakly from Chaekyung's help, it is the sight of her looking like some dead doll that sends a rush of panic ricocheting through me.

I faintly exclaimed, "Chae?", and moved closer to her figure.

"Don't", I hear her says sternly before looking up at me.

I saw the entire outcome of this accident through my eyes.

The blood from her chest has penetrated her shirt, skirt, and sweater, and is now collecting like paint drops on the asphalt. The skin and muscle have peeled away on one of her legs, revealing white streaks of bone. Her eyes are red, and my her long black hair is wet and rusty with blood.

"Go. Go there. Please, Ryu..", She points to the part of the road away from her.

But I didn't.

I wanted to help. I wanted to remove her, to make her come with me to safety.

Then I heard something. It's the ambulance coming to the rescue. I didn't know how long I had been down there, crying and begging for my sister to follow me.

All I know is that she keeps shaking her head with her bloodied lips, and I just focus on that, on her ruined angelic face, until the last bit of life in the car dies and she goes with it.

"Chaekyung..no. No!"

Then, with the explosion of the car, my sanity truly left me alone. They said it sounded like the most heartbreaking thing they had ever heard from me.

I am crying.

I am crying because it dawned on me at last. I'm feeling not just the physical pain but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave me with damage that nothing will ever fill.

But I'm also feeling all that I have in my life, which includes what I have lost as well as the great unknown of what life might still bring me.

And it's too much. My chest is threatening to crack open as the feelings pile up.

And then I died.

Not physically, well, but every life in me has died since that night I lost my sister.