Delving Deeper in Despair

"Why am I the only one who has to live with this?"

**Delving Deeper in Despair** is one of two 5-star focus cards of the *Passing White Butterflies* event. It is centered around Andrew Linh Huynh from first-generation group PARADOX.

The card art features Ophelia Minh Huynh.

## Card Story

6:58. Tick.

6:59. Tick.

7:00. Tick.

The sound of the garage can be heard faintly from Linh’s room. Sighs escaping Linh as he gets up from his desk. He started picking up whatever was on his floor and plopped it onto his bed, waiting for the call from his father to come down. “Linh! Come down here. Your sister is visiting.” His father yelled across the house.

“Coming!” Linh yelled back, trying to hide the frustration in his voice. He sighed, pulling himself off his bed. He was not feeling like listening to another one of his dad’s lectures, especially not after today. “I wonder what I did this time..” Linh said under their breath as he walked into the hallway. He found their dad sitting at the table with a yellow folder in hand. He shambled over to the table and sat down; rolling his eyes as he did so.

“What do you need, ba?” He asked, half expecting some bullshit answer unrelated to him. “We need to talk about your grades.” His dad said, sliding the folder towards Linh. His heart dropped. “What about them?” He tried to act like there was nothing wrong with them, but he knew what was coming. Ever since his sister left for college 2 years ago, his mental health had been dropping as he had only his grades to focus on and really nobody to talk to. As of recently, his band had been helping him a lot. He’d always put a lot of effort into the things he cared about. This meant that now he had something he enjoyed to focus on, he stopped focusing as much on his grades.

“You haven’t been spending as much time studying. You can’t just focus on that silly music group of yours, it won’t help your future.” Linh’s dad’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. “Ah, yeah, I know. I need to improve my health so I’ve been taking time to rest,” Linh said, slightly rushed. A white lie can’t hurt anyone. “Your grades are dropping, Linh. This is unacceptable. You know that you need to get into a good college in order to succeed,” Linh’s dad continued, anger lacing his tone. Linh stayed silent, a grimace forming on his face.

“This ‘music’ phase is getting annoying. You can’t give up on a perfectly good future for a hobby you know will be gone in 6 months.” Linh’s dad spat. He looked back down to the folder before bringing his eyes back up to Linh. “You’re failing three of your classes. I’ve let this go on for too long because god knows you’re not going to live up to anything! These hobbies are taking up all of your energy, it’s insane. What will it take to pull you out of your delusions?!” He paused.

“I can’t always be the one to pull you back to reality. You know damn well that one day you won’t have anyone to help you. You’ll be a man, and real men shouldn’t have to rely on other people.” He had gone from talking to borderline yelling, and Linh was having a hard time keeping his thoughts at bay. Linh bit back whatever bitter remark he had, desperate to not anger his father any further. Holding his emotions back like this felt impossible, so he tried for the next best thing: stopping it here in hopes his dad just forgets.

“Ba, I know you’re mad but chị will be here soon. Can we please talk about this later?” Linh let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. The words left a sour taste in his mouth, as if he knew he wasn’t supposed to say anything. It had become a routine for him to just sit there and take whatever his dad had to throw at him. He had long since learned not to speak over his father when he was angry.

“Fine, but you really shouldn’t be wasting all of your talent on something so futile. I need you to start focusing on what matters, or I might have to take things into my own hands.” Linh’s dad finished with a childlike sort of threat. Linh got up silently, hiding a scoff as he pushed his chair back and headed to his room. It felt as though it took much longer than it should have to get back to his room. Slamming the door, he pulled whatever he had moved from the floor off of his bed and allowed himself to collapse into his bedding. A choked sob escaped his lips into the sheets, anger turning to despair in his mind while he once again counted the days he’d have to wait to get out of this horrible house.

“...Why is it always me he chooses to push everything onto?” Linh said to no one. He let his emotions overtake him, tears flowing down his face and onto his bed below him.

**Why am I the only one who has to live with this?**