PREWARN! ok, so this is my second draft. not the best (obviously). but bear with me here haha. ignore my tense issues throughout the whole of this story. because let me tell you. it. is. EVERYWHERE! and i know that - i really do. i just don't have the energy to fix all of them (i will get back to them eventually). that'll be all, enjoy :)

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PROLOGUE.

6TH JUNE 2021

Rain hammered against the windshield of Aaliyah's white car. She makes a turn and speeds up after seeing the time was nearing 5:21 AM. She saw a red circle sign passing with a big 50 in the middle, indicating that she should be driving at 50mph. Aaliyah looked at her speedometer and began to speed up. She watched as her metre jumped from 30, 31, 32 to 42, 43 until finally 49mph – the car was fast and steady.

"I'm 11 minutes away, Junnie. I'll be there, so you better wait for me." Aaliyah says to the phone, her sweet tone dripping from her voice. Before she could wait for the answer, she reached her fingers out to the hang-up button. Her shiny black nails press the button, catching the reflection of the light, almost gleaming in the darkness.

She glances at the rear-view mirror, her red lips standing out on her sun-kissed skin. Aaliyah quickly straightens her white blouse out and focuses on the road again. She was finally going to meet her best friends again after three months of isolation. They've been best friends since middle school, but most of all, she was more excited to see one in particular. Yeonjun Choi. Junnie. Her first love. Before him, her life was a mess. He was the boy who saved her countless times. And for that, Aaliyah was in debt to him.

Aaliyah's parents didn't believe she was suffering from long-term depression, so they locked her away to a mental health "retreat". Her parents wanted her to get cured. Aaliyah hated every single minute of it. At the "retreat", the staff had stuffed countless medications down Aaliyah's throat, forced her to sign up for sessions where the priest chanted and sprinkled holy water at her, and starved her. She felt like each psychoanalysis session was just the doctors' way of fulfilling their superiority complex. It was like they were trying to pry her head open with force and figure out the real reason as to why she felt like that. None of those treatments worked.

Of course, Aaliyah could never tell her friends about that. She told them she was going to a summer camp. Not once did she ever stop thinking about them, but she had no way of contacting either of them. They banned her phone during those three months. The staff at the "retreat" thought they were being lenient to her when they only offered her two calls a month for five minutes. Lenient, her ass.

Aaliyah made another turn onto a straight lane. She leaned forward to see what was ahead of her. The early morning was still dark; it was difficult for Aaliyah to see what was ahead of her. There were not many streetlights on to help guide her way; the only thing she could see was the bright moon ahead of her. But even the rain clouds were trying to cover that up.

The windshield wipers whipped back and forth over the window, attempting to clear away the large droplets clinging to the glass – but it seemed they weren't moving fast enough. Aaliyah suddenly felt uneasy as she was driving. Looking from side-to-side on both side windows, she noticed how the trees walled her in on both sides.

Just then, two blinding lights pierced the impenetrable darkness. Aaliyah jolts in her seat. She realised those lights belonged to a car that was speeding towards her, from the opposite direction, and was in her lane. Again, Aaliyah's eyes took in the wall of trees on either side.

Slamming hard on the brakes, Aaliyah swerved hard and screamed. The oncoming car crashed into the passenger's side. The sound of her car's screeching brakes and tires skidding on the wet pavement shattered the thick, heavy silence that had been pressing in on Aaliyah all night. Suddenly, her car spun out of control round and round. Images flashed across Aaliyah's mind - images of her friends and Yeonjun and all things good in her life spun past her. It was like a slideshow that was sped up. Aaliyah's heart pounded against her ribs, a cold sweat beading over her skin. She promised to come tonight to see Yeonjun and the rest of the guys, and she would.

Another blow hits the back of the car, and the world was whizzing, blurring around Aaliyah. The car tilted ... she went airborne, flipped over, crashed into the road upside down, and then flipped over again. An immense weight was thrown on Aaliyah; the last thing she saw was a waterfall of glass cascading down on her and a car headlight illuminating her. The sound of a car alarm rings in her ears. Before everything went black, spots clouded her vision, a horrible pain shot through her body, and the immense weight was lifted off her. Yeonjun was the only thing she could think of before exhaustion crippled her body.

With her final gasp, Aaliyah's world goes black.

published! FEBRUARY 3RD, 2022