• Every part of her felt broken. She could scarcely lift her neck as she was about to call out for help, but then stopped and let her scraped cheek rest against the rough concrete, barely wincing as the sharp surface pressed into the open wound. What was the point? She didn't need help. She had never needed help. At the moments that she needed them the most, people had always walked away, and she'd learned to make it through. Help just wasn't something that was there for her. She was meant to rescue, but never to be rescued.

    "Do you love me?" she had asked him, begged of him, willed with all of her heart that he wouldn't lie. How dishonest had his "Yes" been? Why was it that his soft lips against her smooth cheek made her believe? She was just a tool to him; it was obvious now. All this time, she had been nothing more than accessory.
    "Are you alright?" He was sitting on a thoroughly graffitied, wooden bench in the park with his face in his hands. The tennis shoes he wore were tattered and worn out, with the tip of his big right toe poking out. He emanated such a drastic difference in comparison with the prim and lively park, like a pile of dung in the midst of a peony field. The aura around him seemed to repel others. A mother quickly wheeled her stroller to the other side of the path, the old couple sped up their pace as they passed him. But his helplessness, his fear, drew her towards him, and she slowed her jogging pace to a stop as she passed him.