Guilt

Althea rode her motorbike along with the bustling street as tears silently rolled down her cheeks.

She thought she found hope.

She thought she could finally be who she was and not some doll that embodied her mother's or anyone's idealism of who one could be.

After all, didn't people say to search for one who would love you for who you are?

'Bullshit.'

Althea's silent tears slowly turned into sobs.

There is no one who would love you for who you are. No one.

Not your family, not your lover.

Althea halted her negative thought, thinking of her best friend. Karin was always there, but Althea was scared to reach out deeper than what she thought she could.

Karin was the brightest and kindest person she thought she would ever meet in her life, but entrusting your heart which was broken to pieces entirely is just hard.

Which made it even weirder that Ray somehow managed to give her that confidence to slowly hand over the shards of what's left in her.

He reassured her that he won't leave, that his feeling would never change, and a lot more which convinced her to entrust her heart to him.

But any more of it only hurt them both. She was expecting too much, and it seemed that Ray was too burdened by them.

Maybe her real self was just bad after all. Maybe she was just not meant to have someone else.

Maybe it was best for her to just obey and fulfil what others expected her to be.

It might be best that way, but...

'But it hurts.' Althea smiled bitterly.

She barely knew what kind of character she had, and yet when she thought she could finally unravel it and find herself again, she was reminded that she's unaccepted as she was.

It hurts to know that Ray might as well just wanna get his control over her like her mother.

Althea shook the fear of escaping her mother's idealism only to get into Ray's and told herself that they're entirely different.

Her mother is her mother. Ray is Ray.

Althea stopped her bike at the side of a quieter road she passed by. Furiously wiping her tears, she forced herself to smile and think positively. This obviously didn't work so she ended up thinking of nothing at all as long as she could act normally.

No imperfections are allowed in front of her mother, and she knew well enough she wouldn't be able to take another hit by her mother now; mentally and physically.

"It's okay, Thea. Things might be chaotic now, but it'll be better soon. Hang on. Hang on." she told herself as she curved her lips to form a smile.

Seeing she looked somewhat okay through her rear mirror, she nodded and continued on her way home.

***

Five hours after she went home, Althea was dazing off in her room.

After doing chores and housework, her mind had cooled down from her emotional outburst.

She hadn't got any message from Ray and it helped to morph her anger to disappointment for the first few hours before morphing again into guilt afterwards.

Just like how she always was, she regretted saying what she wasn't supposed to say. She didn't mean to say it that way.

Well, maybe she kinda mean it as she partly knew what she said would hurt him badly. In her rage, she wanted to hurt him as much as she could to compensate for her mixed feeling of disappointment, injustice, and others she couldn't name.

And this realization made her feel worse about herself.

"Ray, I'm sorry for what I said this afternoon."

She sat on the edge of her bed as she scrolled their chat history and saw her messages which haven't been read by Ray.

She had planned on waiting for him to chat her first, that she's not supposed to be the one who backs down and apologize so that he knew how much it suffocated her to be ordered around, but the long wait wore down that resolution.

"Ray, if you're here, would you please open my chats and reply?"

Ray hadn't opened his app since the last reply Althea got before she went home and it drove her mad with worry now.

"Ray, please be safe." Althea was on the verge of crying again.

She remembered the last time Ray and she had such an argument, he got a high fever to the point of paralyzing his body. Not to mention that today's argument was even worse.

"Dear, I'm sorry about what I said."

She sent again. The anger she had fully replaced with regret and guilt.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, really."

'I just wanted us to talk properly.'

"I was just on edge lately and we were talking about sensitive issue for me and--"

Althea left a string of messages for Ray. She waited another hour before giving up to the fact that Ray might really fell unconscious right now.

Unable to sleep nor study, she just cried silently as she laid hunched on her bed.

She knew she was one who used to have a bad expression on her outburst of emotions, but she had been suppressing it since her mother 'taught' her a good lesson not to.

And yet today she couldn't.

That night, the nightmares which hadn't haunt her since Ray came appeared again, as if rejoicing in her guilt.

Tomorrow is Monday, and for the first time in awhile, she wasn't ready to face it.