Яна Стивлорк
The Insomnia Girl ( Teenage Insomnia K Drama )

Dedication

All my stories are always devoted to you, D…

“Of course, you can call her at any time of the night. Binna never sleeps anyway.”

Prologue

Why is it that when you are in trouble, everyone seems to negate something is happening to you?

‘Nonsense. You just confused the day with the night! How can you not sleep at night? The body needs rest. It’s because of the constant night work and stress you’re just used to going to bed in the morning. Drink Valerian for a few days. And eat well already! And do not sit at your computer at night! Blue colour stimulates the brain! Nothing terrible happens. You always exaggerate!’

The white noise… Shshshshsh…

The curtain falls. Applause.

Chapter 1 – The family really matters.

What can be worse than a day when you grow up in a family of alcoholics? Only night.

They do not seem to have time to destroy your child’s psyche when the sun’s up so that they will try it at night.

‘Binna, get up, bring this, bring that. Binna, sit down and talk to me. Binna, you are growing up so worthless! You are not good for anything! All you can do is read your silly books and cannot keep the household!’

Listen to opinions and black, venomous torrents of abuse pouring on you all night long. You are afraid to sleep because they might call you, and if you do not hear it, it will only make it worse. You cannot sleep because of the fears and constantly whining voice in your head give rise to the all-devouring monsters in your mind. You don’t want to sleep. Because you can enjoy moments of blissful silence, when they are too drunk and tired to even regard your existence, and the disgusting moments of the day, when every second you have to fight for a normal existence without reproaches and mockery, finally disappear under the powerful veil of the night sky, illuminated by the moon, which you can trust with all your secrets.

Chapter 2 – The outhouse is always more salubrious.

How intoxicating is the air outside the prison walls! It is cleaner, like it is healing the lungs with some great potion, and you want to live again! How astounding it feels to come out of the water and take a breath of fresh, slightly tingling air after jumping into the tarn! How weak the legs are from inhaling the smell of cherry blossoms in full bloom at the end of May!

They are there, and I am here.

They are powerless here.

‘Binnaaa!’ they shout.

I do not hear. I do not hear anything. I’ll be where they are, but not now.

In the meantime, maybe I can sleep.

Right here, in the open air?

Right here, by the tarn?

Right here, by the cherry tree?

‘Binnaaa!’ they shout.

‘Coming, coming… .’

Chapter 3 – And it was pitch dark.

‘This is where we’ll live, dear,’ my mother mumbled with a weak, strained smile.

I looked at her incredulously. She was pale, broken, and unsure of herself, doubting she did the right thing by leaving my father. She was not sure that this battered two-room apartment in a two-story old house that slanted slightly to the left would be better for her and her daughter than at home, there, at home.

‘I can’t believe it’s true.’ The silence jarred on my ears. I was not used to this. I was sixteen, and this was my last year of school. And I would spend it in this blissful silence? I did not believe it.

‘And yet it’s true, my dear.’ My mother put her arm around my shoulders and added, ‘No one else will hurt you anymore. You’re perfectly safe here.’

‘I’m so tired….’ I muttered, putting a million meanings into the phrase.

‘I know.’ My mother’s eyes filled with tears. ‘But everything will be all right now! We’ll live like queens, right?’

I smiled, more out of solidarity.

‘Yes! Yes,’ said she. ‘I’m going to go find some stores, buy us something… delicious to… celebrate… that we’re… alone now… without your father… .’

‘Mom.’

‘Alone now… ’

‘Mom.’

‘Okay, Binna. All right, we’ll get through it. Mom’s just a little scared, you know? I’ll go look for some stores and buy us something—’

‘Delicious to celebrate. Yes, mom, you already said that.’ It hurt to look at her.

‘Yes, that’s it. I will find us some goodies. And you stay in the house. At home, that is. I’ll be right back.’ And she ran out of the house as fast as she could so as not to cry in my presence.

I entered the sparsely furnished room that was meant to be my home and, for the first time in years…

It was pitch dark…

Chapter 4 – Stultifying effect of love.

Whether by my own will or against it, a girl has to meet the “bad guy,” who would determine what slope her life would go down if she falls in love with him.

And here I was, Binna Lee, a sixteen-year-old nerd without a single friend of my free will, standing and gazing with infatuated eyes at the local “celebrity” – the bad guy named Dae-jung. The bad one without quotation, because the everyday life of this popular, handsome young lad comprised conflicts at school, loitering about the streets with friends as dubious as himself, with mandatory alcohol drinking and getting involved in fights.

Since then, my goal in life was to draw Dae-jung’s attention to me, and I spent all nights planning where we might “accidentally” run into each other. We have entirely different lifestyles, and meeting me at a late-night disco or some local party would be the breaking news in town. However, I still managed to cross paths with Dae-jung – on the way to the store, when he was surrounded by a noisy drunken company, sharing some small change, determining who would go next to beg from the saleswoman for alcohol. Or in the streets, I would break into an awkward smile and mumble “Hi” if he passed by with another “drinking buddy.”

Dae-jung was handsome. But heartless inwardly. And it was not surprising that after a while, he did notice me. Not because he liked me, but because he found out that I was naïve, ready to do anything for him, fool.

‘Why are you wearing those ugly jeans?’

It was the phrase that started our conversation with Dae-jung.

‘Excuse me?’ I maundered as I walked past Dae-jung standing next to my house with his openly laughing drunk friends.

‘You’re Binna, right?’ he asked haughtily.

‘Right,’ I confirmed.

‘I’m Dae-jung. This is Sung-ho, Yoo, Soon, and Yon.’

‘Right,’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘So why are you wearing those ugly jeans, Binna?’ he repeated the question, and I winced.

‘They’re not ugly. I like the casual style of clothing.’

‘It doesn’t suit you.’ James came closer and whispered in my ear, ‘You have such a beautiful figure, long legs. Why are you hiding them? You need normal women’s clothing – skirts and cleavage.’

I did not know how to respond to such impertinence and just stood there, staring into his eyes.

‘Do you want to go out with us, Binna?’ Dae-jung asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

‘I’m not—’

‘I know you do. And I want to see you every day. And every night.’

It was this last sentence that determined the course of my senior year. Every night I, Binna Lee, a sixteen-year-old nerd in a short skirt and a low-cut top, in the questionable company of my free will, walked with a local “celebrity” – the bad guy named Dae-jung.

Chapter 5 – Chronicle with patience.

And I was happy. No matter the change in the lifestyle, I was radiant with happiness. I was in love with Dae-jung.

We spent every minute together. Dae-jung took me everywhere he went and demonstrated himself not only as an indifferent bloke, for whom a girl is nothing more than an ornament to his beloved self, but as an attentive and caring boyfriend, who cared not only what I was wearing, but whether I ate well, how I felt and how my day at school went. In general, my assumptions that with dating him my quiet life had come to an end were not justified, and my risky decision to follow my heart did not bring only disappointment. We visited a huge number of spellbinding places – we went to the aquarium and the zoo, went out of town to open-airs and various parties; many times Dae-jung took me to the cinema and cafes, and even once for dinner to an expensive restaurant famous for its excellent cuisine. I was at his house and met his father, who turned out to be a taciturn man of a kind disposition and calm character, and besides, an excellent cook. Many times (and unsuccessfully), I tried to fix Dae-jung’s affairs at school, but he always remained on the verge of being expelled for skipping classes and a short temper that left no chance of good relations with teachers.

But there was also a lot of fretting. Dae-jung, although he was not stingy with compliments, never told me about his feelings, and I was lost in guesses when his behaviour was contradictory and illogical. He was not afraid of losing me and never indulged in emotional conversations, arguing that “I already know everything,” and to my direct questions about whether he had any feelings for me, he preferred to either dodge or close my mouth with a kiss.

Often his so-called comrades came to the rescue, who answered for him that “Hey, Dae loves you, you don’t seem to see,” or “Stop nagging, the guy is already yours, you are the one and only for him.” But this was catastrophically not enough for me. We did not have much time for dates because of studies and Dae-jung’s numerous friends who jealously took him away from my already rare moments alone with him, and all this, overlapping one another, made me an insecure, constantly afraid of betrayal girl who, no matter how she asked, was never awarded any confirmation that her feelings were not unrequited. I knew a lot about Dae-jung, but nothing at the same time. I knew everything about his family and character, dreams and fears.

He told me how his mother died of breast cancer and how his father, a mechanic, almost went crazy with grief, trying to accept the loss of his wife. Dae-jung had been working since the age of nine, delivering newspapers and working part-time with his father, repairing cars to somehow make ends meet. Dae-jung himself did not like cars at all; he preferred motorcycles and saved for his own, hoarding every spare penny. The loss of his mother hurt him endlessly and, cursing everything around him, he abandoned studies and, as soon as his father got back on track, threw himself headlong into parties, belatedly pouring alcohol over his grief.

He said that he did not care about the opinions of others as long as they did not hurt him with at least some poorly thrown word. That is, fights and skirmishes, as it is understood, have never been avoided. Dae-jung was very handsome, and conversations about his appearance, ranging from classmates sighing for him and ending with envious comments from guys, always went by the ears, but poisonous phrases like “Where is your mom, why not at the meeting?” or “Hello, half-educated mechanic, you are only destined to fix cars” always ended with the separation of the fighting and calling the unfortunate father to school. Dae-jung had never dated a girl in the traditional sense of the word. He was seen with one, then with another, and with none at the same time. And when he publicly announced that he was dating Binna Lee, everyone’s jaw dropped. This told me a lot but still did not give me much hope – I was always afraid of losing him.

And there was so much I did not know about him – where he spent time when I was not around, with whom… Why he never shared anything about himself willingly and why all his life, no matter how close I was to him, remained a mystery…

And yet, I was in such a relationship for half a year, at the same time being the happiest and unhappiest girl in the world. And at a moment when I never expected anything like this, I heard the most terrible thing:

‘Why are you looking at me like that? Go away!’ Dae-jung’s half-drunk voice brought me to a standstill.

‘I-I don’t understand, Dae-jung,’ I blinked, my eyes filling with hot tears. ‘Why do you say that…’

‘Are you deaf, Binna? I said, go away. I’m tired of you.’

‘What are you saying? Are you breaking up with me right now?’

‘Yes, Binna! Do you hear it? Now, just please go away and do not come wheedling to me again.’

I pondered these words painfully, veering between apathetic torpor and hysteria. Dae-jung was sitting on a bench, waiting for his friend, when I approached him. The weather was so incongruous, sunny, and warm that the thought of the world laughing at me made me feel sick. I did not understand what had happened, what had changed, why he had suddenly treated me like this after several months of dating. He talked to me like I was nothing, and I should have at least slapped him, told him what I thought of him, and walked away, maybe even spitting in his face for the way he treated me. Or whatever they do in movies.

But here I was, humiliated, in tears, and I felt pinned to the ground. I feared him ever breaking up with me, but like that? With no reason… No explanation… So sudden. After a year of being together?

Dae-jung kept hissing me away, but I did not even hear him anymore. I felt like I was underwater. Now I would come up with a breath of fresh, slightly tingling air, as in my childhood, after jumping into the tarn and wash away all this dirt.

I do not have to answer him. His insensitivity infected me enough. I’m coming up to the surface.

‘Binna! I am begging you, just go away!’ Dae-jung yelled, furious that I was still in front of him.

‘I heard you,’ I uttered, flabbergasted, and turned to walk away.

Chapter 6 – Feigning reluctance to take your gift.

To say that I was depressed is not to say anything. I wanted to die. I struggled with the desire to kill myself, with a sense of humiliation, along with my mother’s daily instructions to inculcate a good and useful moral and education on the path of truth. I was shocked at the sudden breakup. He did not reason it, did not give me any motive for it. Everything was all right between us. Why would he shun me away like that?

I was sick of the world. Or maybe the world was sick of me.

I could not understand why Dae-jung broke up with me in this manner. I missed him. My head was full of him. He threw me out of his life so effortlessly, yet I had to keep on my lacklustre existence all alone… Without him… I could not accept that. I lost all sleep; I was fading and dwindling. The very thought of nightfall made me hysterical. At night, to get rid of bad ideas, I listened to the radio and swallowed books in a vain attempt to stop thinking of Dae-jung. The worlds they composed seemed to drown me in their adventures, and I forgot myself. Unfortunately, not in the dreams I longed for. I forgot myself in daydreams that might destine me to find a happy ending, find my Prince, and be beautiful and loved forever.

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