Better

[Amber]

She didn't know when the nightmares merged with reality.

The two different realms were colliding, crashing, mingling. Imagination with actuality. Imagery with the truth. They mixed like black and white paint. A cocktail of confusion that created a murky grey hue.

At that moment, her mind had detached from her body and she stood feeling more lost and confused than ever. But also aware of the feeling of deja vu that spread through her system like a slow killing poison.

They circled her, their gaze burning her skin.

Amber was a pessimist.

And she would always be one. In a life as unpredictable as hers, pessimism prepared her. It provided her with the mental ability to cope with the most horrible of situations. It provided her with the ability to accept and breathe through it all.

To Amber, it was always better to torture herself mentally, than to tortured in reality.

The tears that flowed down her cheeks would be lesser in quantity if mental Amber had already cried once. The wounds to her heart would be a little less severe if she knows when to block the attacks. Her mind would accept any situation if she already knew what to do next.

Pessimism made her prepared, and in that preparation, Amber was strong. But her pessimism was like a double-edged sword. For while it prepared, it also made her-

The shadows were anonymous, their features swathed in veils of dark shadows.

-Afraid.

She cared a little too much of the consequences of her actions. She cared a little too much about how others viewed her. She cared a little too much about what her every action would do to them. It made her want to run from because, in her mind, every problem could escalate.

Everything that was swathed by the shadows of the unknown and hidden from plain sight was to be feared in her world.

She spots the eyes of one. Cold, icy, devoid of emotions. The lips of another stretched into a leering grin filled with disgust.

To Amber, it was better to sail on her boat rather than dive headfirst into the water. There was too much to consider in her pessimistic mind, and so she closed her eyes instead of looking head-on in a single direction. She hadn't understood the implications of how her actions, of how her mistakes, could stack up too high and too fast. But when it did, it was already too late.

Amber, Minnie. Minnie, Amber. She's the girl I was telling you all about! The girl I love!

She stood alone on a swaying high rise made of wooden blocks.

It was easy to topple a tower that was lacking in its foundation. No cement or even the shittiest of glue to hold the fragmented pieces together. A player could pull at a block from the furthest end, clumsily ripping out an important piece to the structure.

They didn't know it would be her downfall. They didn't know how much it would hurt her. They didn't know that the tower jolted and tilted when they pulled at a piece. How could they when they couldn't feel the tremors beneath her feet? They did not stand by her side and so as the tower toppled, they laughed, and they smiled.

Sieon...You said it was for your girlfriend...

She had struggled to keep the tower from falling.

She could have fixed it, perhaps. If given the time to put back each brick. If time had stopped at that very moment and she could speak to each member. If she could just explain herself so that the look in their eyes hurt a little less so that their words were not as poisonous. She could have fixed it all together, pushed back each wooden block one by one. But time never stops for anyone.

Not even the lost.

They whispered, their voices melding together into a cacophony of sounds.

The truth spilled from her lips.

A flood of rushing waters from a broken dam that she cannot hold back.

It was information that one could barely wrap their heads around and it was information with no proof. Confusion and anger was never a good mix. Betrayal? She might as well be sailing in a sea of giant fucking sharks.

Seven soulmates to one girl.

She had fainted from that knowledge when she knew. Perhaps, she could have dealt with this better. A love confession maybe to assure them the place they had in her heart. Maybe she should have taken Oliver's offer to retreat into the safety of their bedroom. But here she was sailing over the waters, and the current was too strong and it took her under. She had given her last shot, a hook thrown towards shore as she teetered at the edge of the cliff she had made for herself.

JieMi. Please, JieMi tell them.

A betrayal that Amber was not sure if she should have expected otherwise.

She did in that moment when she looked at him, and into his beautiful doe shaped eyes. He had been beautiful. The cuts of light from the window swathed his skin in a honeyed glow that curved over his features. Those eyes had trembled in his bewilderment, glistening with the light of a thousand stars that spoke of another world with him.

She really believed he would stand up for her, just as he had in the lecture theatre, just as he had against her bullies. She believed he would save her.

She should have known that she would be alone.

His expression had twisted, and he had scathingly given her the words she did not expect. Those stars in his eyes had disappeared into pitch-black tar. The black colour like the death of fiery embers on the hearth or the last hush of a melted candle.

Pessimistic Amber had disappeared in that moment, maybe bewitched by his beauty. So his spat out 'Fuck Off's had been stabs of a sword to an armorless chest. He had caught her off guard, a push against her back at the top of her tower from the one person she trusted.

She had lost her balance then.

She realised then that despite his actions he never had the intention to help her from the very start. JieMi wanted nothing to do with her. Just as he had told her the first time they met. He wanted her out of his life even if it would mean severing her connection with the others. Even if it meant destroying her.

She's thrown, tossed aside by the shadows. There's a bang of a door, the beep of a lock and she's forced through a silver gate.

MinJae had always been the figure in her nightmares, the devil in her garden of thorns. He was her worst-case scenario and nobody, not even the most pessimistic, ever really believes that their worst-case scenario would happen.

It was the bottom line, the breaking point, the end. The limit to the situation. The one thing that should have been described as a situation that you thanked God did not happen. But it happened.

I'm calling the police and they are going to fucking deport you back to your country!

His voice had always been beautiful. A gentle sweetness brought out by the tang of masculinity. It was warm, pretty and soft, but tinged with a mellowness that spoke of something more. It had lulled her to sleep and drifted in her best of dreams. It had been her lullaby, his voice, and that voice that soothed her tears.

MinJae has always been her muse. But right at that moment, the voice that escaped her angel had been that of the devil.

Why do you think someone like you would deserve us?

A mocking look, his eyes flashing with sparks of his hatred. The dance of embers in the fire, the drip of lava in a volcano. His voice had risen with each word spat from plump, beautiful, beautiful lips and Amber felt herself taking steps towards the edge of her already falling building. The harsh winds blowing in her hair as she stood on the crumbling bricks.

YOU DON'T!

It was a lightning bolt through her chest. A tremor up her skin. It was chills in her bones and weakness in her limbs. It was nausea and horror. It was the inability to breathe or move. It was pain. It was nothing.

She didn't know how to describe it, really. It crippled her and her mind. All she could see was herself, standing on the edge of that building.

YOU DON'T DESERVE US! YOU'RE FUCKING WORTHLESS.

Maybe it started as an insatiable fire that burned, eager for all the oxygen in her body. It took everything, fire and heat that roared. It swiped through her, consuming her whole until all that was left were the ashy flakes of her soul.

Then it became nothing.

An emptiness that brought with it ice and cold that coated her insides. It was frost and snow that bit and ate into her, digging into her and transforming her.

She couldn't feel.

In her mind, she's locked in a room with four white walls. Then the water rushes in from pipes in the ceiling. It spills and floods to her chest, calm but quick, gentle even when it laps at her chest. She doesn't struggle to swim. She doesn't make a move to breathe just before the water reaches her nose. Her four limbs were chained to the floor by his words. Words that the overhead speaker replayed over and over even when the water rises above her ears, even when she's submerged in its depths. A camera sits recording her as she stared into the blinking red, a documentation of her life ending life.

She fell.

And then she closes her eyes and accepts death, which seemed to taste so much sweeter than living.

It was really too bad that nobody could see the tears that spilled from her eyes when she sat deep within her watery chamber. The salty liquid mixing and disappearing into the cold icy water. They wouldn't know that when she closed her eyes, all she could see was her seven soulmates smiling as they gestured to her.

Come here, Amber. Come here.

She laughed, and she runs towards that false reality. Free in the lies that she had conjured up in her head.

Maybe, that was for the better for a slut like Amber.