A light breeze caused the short low grasses down on my feet to rattle like wooden windchimes. I could see people from spectator seat started holding their breath in silence, sitting in the corner were my parents, then the teacher and fellow club mates.

Bathump

This was the first time for my school archery club to finally have the chance to win a championship. My heart was beating like crazy. If I had to say the pressure was almost felt like I was standing on a needle while the floor was lava and I still had to carry an elephant on my back.

I started inhaled a deep breath and let it out to lessen the pressure... it doesn't work.

Bathump Bathump.

The beating of my heart only went louder and faster. Once again, I closed my eyes, tried to relax the muscle on my body and took a very, very deep long breath... it worked this time. My hands finally stopped trembling and the beating of my heart slowly went weaker. Feeling somewhat relaxed, I patiently stood still, waiting for the signal from the referee.

"I can't mess this up." I thought on my mind. The final was a best of five match, and the score right now was 2-0. I was the one with a leading point. Maybe because of the pressure of losing two times in a row, my competitor only scored 21 out of his three chances. While I already scored 20 just from two chances.

"Just one more arrow." Just one more arrow, and I was sure I would get a scholarship. And not like I was planning to become an athlete, but from what I knew, the winner of this tournament was usually getting recruited for doing this professionally. "I don't need a perfect 20. Just hit it on the edge and this will be enough."

As I thought that, the referee started blowing his whistle. However, I didn't hear any sound come from him. I just felt my heart skipped a beat but I still somehow managed to nock my arrow and draw the bowstring. This was a routine I'd done for hundreds of time, but even with all that training, once again, my heart began not to just beating again but racing.

Bathump Bathump Bathump Bathump.

The anxious beating of my heart grew louder. My throat was tight; I doubt I could even force a word out even if I tried. I just stood there, motionless, listening to the pounding of my heart. I wanted to say something to the referee, asking for some medical help but my vocal cords felt like they'd been stretched beyond the breaking point.

I knew this was against the rule but I put my bow down and reached up to try to massage my chest, but this only sent spikes of blinding pain on my chest. I could only gasp in pain. My whole body froze, save for my eyes, which shot open in terror.

The beating in my chest suddenly stopped, and I went weak at my knees, dropping my bow at the same time. The world around me - the target with its 10 evenly spaced concentric rings, the dull blue sky, the spectators - all these fade to black. The last few things that I remembered before slipping away were the voice of someone shouting for the medic and the light breeze from the wind caressing on my skin.

When I opened my eyes it was to the hospital room, which was as devoid of beauty as I am of hope. Its walls were simply cream, not peeling or dirty, just cream. There was no decoration at all save the limp curtain that acted only to separate my room from the outside view. It was perhaps once the kind of green that reminds people of spring-time and hope, but it was faded so much that the hue is insipid. The room as an undertone of bleach and the floor was simply grey.

The man in white came in and gave me a smile. He seemed excited, but not very. It was like he was trying to make an effort to be happy on my behalf. My parents were also here.

Before the doctor opened his mouth, he did some kind of a ritual. He took his time, sorting his papers, then setting them aside as if to make a point of the pointlessness of what he just did. There he casually sits down on the edge of the bed next to mine. He looked me in the eyes for a moment.

I felt like I died when the doctor said the name of my disease. Arrhythmia and congenital heart muscle deficiency. Two strange words. Two foreign, alien one. The kind that you didn't want to be in the same room with. A rare condition. It caused the heart to act erratically and occasionally beat way too fast. It could be fatal.

Apparently, I'd had it for a long time. They said it was a miracle that I was able to go on so long without anything happening. Was that really a miracle? I guessed it was supposed to make me feel better, more appreciative of my life. It really didn't do anything to cheer me up though.

My parents, I thought, were hit harder by the news than I was. They practically had two haemorrhages apiece. To them, it was all fresh. From their expression alone I could tell they were willing to sell our house in order to pay for my medical expense... and knowing this only made me felt guilty.

I still remembered the wooden expression from my father when the doctor handed a sheet of paper to him.

"So many..." He said as he quickly read it.

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I took it from his hand and took a look myself, only to feel numb. How was I supposed to react to this 'essay'? The absurdly long list of medications staring back at me from the paper that seemed insurmountable. They all blended together in a sea of letters. This was insane. Side effects, adverse effects, contraindications and dosages were listed line after line with cold precision. I tried to read them, but it was so futile. I couldn't understand any of it. Attempting to only makes me feel sicker. "All this... for the rest of my life, every day?"

Of course, none of them was a real cure, as they only lessen the symptoms of my... condition. And because of the late discovery of this, I'd had to stay at the hospital, to recuperate from the treatments.

When I was first admitted, it felt as if I was missed... For about a week, my room in the ward was full of flowers, balloons and cards. But, the visitors soon dwindled and all the get-well gifts began trickling down to nothing shortly after. I realized that the only reason I had gotten so many cards and flowers was because sending me their sympathy had been turned into a class project. Maybe some people were genuinely concerned, but I doubt it. Even in the beginning, I barely had visitors. By the end of the first month, only my parents and my siblings came by on a regular basis.

After the first month or so, I asked the head cardiologist every time I saw him for a rough estimate of when I'd be able to leave. He never answered anything in a straightforward way, but told me to wait and see if the treatment and surgeries worked. So, I idly observed the scar that those surgeries had left on my chest slowly change its appearance over time, thinking of it as some kind of an omen.

Before I knew it, it had been four months since my heart attack. In that whole time, I could probably count the times I'd left this hospital room, unsupervised on one hand. Four months was a pretty long time when you were left alone with your thoughts. But, even though I'd had plenty of time to come to terms with my... condition, I never did.

And from my experience, the hospital... was not really a place I'd like to live in. The doctors and nurses felt so impersonal and faceless. I guessed it was because they were in a hurry and they had a million other patients waiting for them, but it made me feel uncomfortable. I still asked the head cardiologist about leaving, but my expectations were low enough now that I was not disappointed any more when I didn't get a reply. The way he shuffled around the answer showed that there was at least some hope.

Then days became increasingly harder to distinguish from each other, differing only by the scar that slowly healed on my chest. It felt like time blurred into some kind of a gooey mess and I was trapped inside, instead of moving within. A week could go by without me really noticing it. And sometimes, I'd pause in a realization that I didn't know what day of the week it was. Other times, without any real reason, my chest would start to feel sharp, burning hot and the heaviness in my chest would become so hard to bear that I had to just lay down for a while, looking at the ceiling as if I was going to cry. But that happened only rarely. And I couldn't even cry.

At some point and what I mean by that is today. I stopped watching TV, playing with my phone, and reading books. I don't know why, I just did. Maybe it was the wrong kind of escapism for my situation. There was nothing interesting on the TV anyway, no one and friend that I could talk with except for the few friends that I recently made on social games, and I didn't like to read books that much in the beginning.  So today, instead of just sleeping on my bed, I wore my casual clothes and decided to take a stroll around the hospital. I did this out of desperation. I just felt like one more second in this room and I would go crazy.

I only walked to the front door and I already felt tired. I wanted to protest. I wanted to blame this lack of strength. I could easily yell out something now. But, no. I didn't say anything. The fact was that I knew by yelling that would fatigue myself more. So I just I looked around the hall, feeling very tired of all this and strolled my way down to the first floor. It was of course, after exhausting myself walking to the lift and waiting for the lift to deliver my helpless body onto the ground floor.

As soon as the lift door slid open, I stepped out and looked around, partially so I wouldn't have to meet the curious gazes of the nurses, which I bet already remembered my face.

The ground floor was pretty spacious; the ceiling was unusually high and there was lots of space left over around and in between the path. An entire wall was taken up by a digital screen and the high, old fashioned paintings only make it seem larger.

I stopped walking for a while, leaning on the wall while trying to organize my breath and my heartbeat. While doing this I faced the other patients. Most of them looked normal, almost healthy if I had to say. But then, why would they be here? They were probably like me and had something wrong with them, only it was just not immediately obvious.

I noticed a flash of dark hair and saw that someone was looking at me. A girl with really long, straight hair that was pretty eye-catching... after a few seconds of staring into each other eyes, I just found out that she was blind.

Then there was one boy with a cane leaning against the chair at the rear row. It was weird seeing someone so young with a cane... but mine was not so much better.

Another girl was spinning the wheel from her wheelchair, a blanket was covering the bottom half of her body. I never gave it that much thought, but how could she still happily humming even when she was on a wheelchair?

A boy seemed to be making some weird hand motions. Sign language? He peered at me over the rims of his glasses, then went back to whatever he was doing.

Another girl with blue eyes and short... talking to the sign language boy. I remembered when her hair was longer though, but I never talked to her. I just.... didn't know the topic that I should talk with someone like her.

Then there was a man without arms, an old man that had a weird 'S' curve on his body, a girl with I would call as only skin and bone, a sick looking granny that heavily coughed, the nurses, several doctors and a girl with knee correction braces just came in from the lift... alongside with her was two of my siblings.

My youngest sister was waving her hand, stepping out from the lift, readied to charge anytime soon... but she got stopped by my other sister as she grabbed her by her collar.

Then... a weird pattern started glowing out on the floor. Did my.... condition also come with hallucination?

I heard many shouts of surprise at the same time, then the world twisted, walls shifting and changing, and with wide eyes, I found myself standing under the blue sky. The polished sparkling floor had turned into the soil of dirt.

This place was incredibly lush, filled with green and the smell of grass entered my nose every time I shifted my head to take a better look at my surrounding... One thing that I knew of, was that this situation was 100% didn't make any sense. 

"What the..." I stopped opening my mouth as I panted in pain. Clutching my chest, my hand could feel the strong and fast vibration that my heart made because it couldn't handle the surprise of my current predicament.