Chapter 22: It needs courage to peek into people’s past…especially your own
It was winter. It was snowing. And it was lonely.
It was the kind of loneliness that made me want to go away rather than join in. As other people fell into winter festivities, the ward was pretty much deserted.
I could hear the sound of celebration from other rooms and the nurse’s station. It was like the quiet policy was being discarded at that time. But thanks to that, I had a chance to sneak past the complaining nurses that would rather go home to be with their family than be with a bunch of sick strangers.
Tip-toeing to the stairs, I climbed up to the rooftops. To this day, past my own death, I still had no idea where I had the strength to go through all those flights of stairs.
Perhaps that moment of loneliness made me a little bit depressed, and felt like I had nothing to lose. I couldn’t remember anymore whether I arrived there properly, or through crawling and heaving and regretting anything.
But I did reach the rooftops, miraculously.
And whatever state I was in that moment held no importance. Because there was snow in front of me, and the moment that tiny coldness touched my skin, there was indescribable happiness inside of me, like a dream come true.
A fleeting dream. A foolish dream.
I remembered standing there, at the entrance of the door, mesmerized by the chill and the falling snow, the countless white dot that seemed to be glowing in ethereal light.
I remembered a reprimanding voice, a tall figure rushing at me from the other side of the rooftop.
It was only after my gradually blurry sight shifted that I realized my body was falling down. The voice kept shouting, and my stupid brain only thought about how sweet and gentle was that harsh-sounding shout.