Malignant Sadness

LEVI'S POV

I turned my head to the window on my right side where I could see the students passing by through its transparent surface—a boy and a girl with elated faces holding each other's hands while walking on the school hallways. My lips twitched as I got myself back to the book I was currently reading.

"Aren't they aware that doing PDA should not be seen around the campus? They're obviously violating the 500-meter-away rule from school campus! How annoying!" I mumbled to myself as I turned the book's page next.

"Ige mwoya?" What's that?

I glanced at Caius; my seatmate, buddy, and my dormmate. His eyebrows arched and his neck was getting long by looking outside the window as he asked me in Korean which I had come to memorize its Filipino translation. He would ask me that question everytime he would feel curious—no—much more like being a gossip monger.

"Stop asking me in Korean, will you?" I whined.

"Aigo!" Aww! he said teasingly, "A Levi feeling envious."

"Shut up!"

He chuckled. "Ne, alget seum nida," Yes, I understand, he said as he bowed his head. Feeling so irritated, I snorted.

"Tsk!" 

I raised my hand and acted to hit him, but he just laughed as I tried to focus on reading again. After a moment, he leaned on my shoulders as his eyes landed on the book I was holding.

"So, you're now interested about lucid dreaming?" he said after he saw what I was reading that time.

I nudged him and said, "Stop bothering me, okay? Go away!"

"Nappeuda neo," You're bad, he pouted.

"Neorang yaegihago sipji ana," I don't want to talk to you, I replied as I looked over the pages.

"Jeongmal motdwaesso! Jinjja!" You're really mean! Seriously! he shouted.

"Dwaesseo. Dwaesseo, o?" Enough. Enough, okay?

He just stuck his tongue out on me several times as he crossed his arms. So childish!

"Make sense, Caius."

"Alright. Typically," he suddenly said, then sat properly on his chair, fingers on his chin, "when we dream, we are not conscious that the dream is not real. As far as I remember, there is this character in the movie Inception quite aptly puts it, "Well, dreams, they feel real when we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up, then we realize that something was strange," pretty cool, right?"

He got my attention.

I immediately closed the book, then looked at him. 

"By any chance, do you experienced lucid dreaming?" I asked.

"Me? Yeah, once," he said as he nodded. "It's when I wanted to see my mother who took away her own life when I was still a kid," he added.

His words struck me with a sudden pain in my chest. I could suddenly feel the same pain I felt years ago. 

"S-sorry," I stuttered as I cleared my throat. That was awful.

"Geokjeongma," Don't worry, he said, "It's okay. At least, I had come to know her reasons to end her own life," he added as he looked at his wrist watch. 

"Anyway, I'll be right back!" he said before leaving the classroom.

"Caius! Is it—ugh!" I shook my head. "His mother took away her own life to end the pain, but the pain for Caius has just started after it happened. I wonder if he's really okay now," I mumbled to myself as I kept the book inside my bag.

Was it the only last resort... lucid dreaming, a way to know what would be the reasons of a certain person that happened to take away their own life without giving any hint? Was it the only last thing that we could possibly do? Like what Caius did, it was my last option when I lost my mother when she jumped off of a 10-story building of a city hall and died.

Every eighty-five minutes, someone in the United Kingdom had taken away their own life, but what do you think would happen to those who had left behind? The aftermath of it? Nothing could take away the pain of loss—I was thinking—It was killing me how your mind could make you feel so worthless. 

I was thinking, what could I've had possibly done to help you? So, before you go, was there something I could have said to make your heartbeat better?