Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stage 1: November 20, 2004

He remembers that day as if it had been only yesterday.

Maybe it was the way the book had felt too heavy for his small, undeveloped frame, weighing him down like fear weighs down an innocent man forced to believe himself a sinner; or the way it had hit the ground with the most satisfying thwack when he let go, over and over and over again. He remembers, clear as day, the way the gilded lining of the pages caught the sunlight in lines of disarray on the floor, more beautiful than the illegible, ominous black print stamped on their tender white insides like a deadly curse could ever be.

He'd torn them apart and relished every sweet second of it. He'd wanted to see if the pages would glow the same way when standing alone, or if their light would be diminished.

Indeed, the gold had barely glittered when he'd raised the fragments of the pages to the living room window. But the words- the words had stayed put, black and irate and evil as they had been before, staring silently back at him. It had terrified him to no end.

But that terror had paled in comparison to the one that had coursed through his little body when he'd felt a patch of his hair give way under a pair of cold, familiar hands; the fire burning through the sensitive skin of his palms. Over, over, and over again.

Sung Hanbin was three years old when he first gained conscience, when he was taught his first lesson as his mother's beloved pupil.

"You are not to touch the Word of God like that ever again, do you understand? He will punish you for this, Hanbin-ah. That's a sin, and sinners go to hell."

-

Stage 2: June 18, 2006

"Stop! Please, stop, Father! It wasn't me!"

"Then who else could it have been, Hana? You and Hanbin were the only ones to use the computer recently, and Hanbin couldn't have done it, now could he? He's too small to even reach the mouse."

He watches, detached, as the tiny, green automatic toy train zooms circles around him on the carpet floor, sputtering every now and then as if slowly approaching its fateful demise. It is louder than the stomach-turning noise of jingling metal in the distance, the chilling sound of leather meeting fragile skin. He doesn't take his eyes off it, even as the screams bleed through the closed door of his parents' bedroom door and flow into the living room in a river of black and blue.

He doesn't look away, not once. Not even when a familiar pair of pink slippers floats into his peripheral vision, completely still.

"Daddy loves you more than he loves me."

The train sputters one last time. Dies.

"No, he doesn't."

"He always punishes me. He never punishes you."

"That's because I'm good."

"I am too. I'm good too, Binnie, I try so hard. And I didn't break his stupid computer."

"I know. Don't cry, noona, please. Here, come play trains with me. I promise it will make you happy."

There's one last functioning toy train in the toy box. Hanbin pushes it towards her and reaches for the dead one.

He doesn't look up to see it, but he knows she smiles.

Hanbin is five years old when he first begins to fear his father.

-

Stage 3: March 8, 2010

He's never quite known how to offer comfort.

And he doesn't know how to now, either, as he watches his sister-in-law shake and tremble through the crack in the open door, silent even as tears stream down her cheeks at a rate he's scared could kill, because he fears tears do.

" 'What's the problem'!? You're asking me what's the problem now? Think, Jiyul, use that pretty head of yours for once. What could possibly be the damn problem here!?"

"I don't know, Seungho, I don't fu- I don't know!" she wails. "You're not telling me!"

Hanbin wonders how dense she can possibly be. He'd figured it out the moment she showed him the ultrasound.

"The problem, Jiyul," he hisses. "Is that the thing- the child on the picture is a- a...girl. I wanted a boy. You knew I wanted a boy!"

She folds in on herself in the rocking chair, defeated. "I'm sorry, Seungho. I'm sorry. I didn't know it would be a girl. I didn't know you'd be so upset. I didn't know."

He snarls, teeth dripping venom. "Whatever! I'll live, I guess. I have to."

Jiyul sobs. Hanbin can't watch any longer.

He doesn't care to return his brother's smoldering glare when he finally pushes the door open and walks over to her. He blocks out the screams, the angry sounds of fist meeting wall, and cradles the weeping woman in one arm, even though it's not yet long enough to wrap halfway around her.

He digs into his pocket with the other, fishing around for the Twix bar he'd received as a prize for outstanding reading level in school just that morning, and slips it discreetly into her apron pocket. It's a bit mushy after being left in his pocket for a couple hours, but he doesn't think she'll mind. Jiyul's favorite candy is Twix too, after all, just like his.

Hanbin is eight years old the first time he punches his brother.

-

Stage 4: June 11, 2011

As a small child, there had been nothing Hanbin loved doing more than watching cars with Hana. Specifically, the way the cars seemed to decrease in size the farther away they drove, until eventually all that was left of them was a tiny speck of color that vanished into the air in mere seconds, like the smoke that rose from the cigarettes of Sinners.

He doesn't know why he ever found it enjoyable now, as he watches his father's car roll out of the driveway and onto the main road, morphing into a dot of white, then smaller, smaller...Gone. Beside him, Hana sobs, and four-year-old Yujin looks solemnly on.

"I just don't get it, Binnie. Why? Why do the sinners need him more than we do? He's going to read the Bible to them and tell them how to get to Heaven, but what about us? Who's going to tell us now, Bin?"

Hanbin shrugs. "The preachers in church. Mom, when she's not busy. That should be enough, shouldn't it?"

"Well, yeah...But it's just not the same! This isn't fair! I want Dad back."

I don't, Hanbin thinks. If the tribespeople of Siberia are more important to him than us, then he can stay there and rot for all I care.

"He's just doing what God told him to do, Hana," he says instead. "God called him to be a missionary and spread the word, so he has to obey. That doesn't mean he doesn't care about us. He's supposed to put God first, and us second." He can't help the audible bitterness that crawls into his voice even as he says it, but he smiles. He has to, for them.

When he wakes up a ten-year-old two days later, Hanbin wonders if his father will call to tell him happy birthday.

He doesn't.

-

Stage 5: June 13, 2012

The words ring in his head, over and over again. Loud, louder, then louder still.

"You ruined my life by coming into this world! I wish you'd never been never born! Everybody's life would have been so much easier that way."

He doesn't know what possessed Doyoung to say those exact words. He knows high school exams are stressful, especially when you're homeschooled. He knows that Doyoung has barely been sleeping, had seen him through the crack in the door, bent over his mathematics book at 2 a.m., shoulders shaking with silent sobs and hands tearing violently at thinning hair in frustration. He knows all that, of course. He just doesn't know what he had to do with any of it.

All he'd done was defend himself against his mother. She'd yelled at him first, for leaving the floor wet after doing the dishes. He'd snapped at her, saying he'd tried his best, and that if Dad had been home he wouldn't have yelled at him that way for something so trivial. 

He'd fled upstairs before she could reply, face set in stone, his hands shaking. He hadn't once thought to look down, or anywhere but ahead.

He'd felt it give way and tear under his feet, but dismissed the thought before it could fully form. There were always random papers lying around the house anyway, what with six of the twelve children still living at home. There wasn't much of a chance it was anything more than one of Yujin's countless stray doodles.

He'd never expected it to be Doyoung's mathematics exam, of all things.

No amount of tearful apologies and cowering could have deflected the punch to his arm, the hurtful words following it. But none of it had hurt half as much as hearing his older brother's voice break at the end of all of it, seeing him turn his back the moment the first tear fell.

All he could say was "I'm sorry." All Doyoung could say in reply was "Just go. Leave. Die, for all I care."

He doesn't know how to. So he'd gone outside, to the old, rusty swing strung from the elm tree in the backyard that had been his refuge ever since he could remember. But for the first time in his young life, the squeak of the chains and rustle of the leaves above his head doesn't give him so much as a smidgen of the comfort he used to know. Instead, a new thought establishes its home in his mind, dark and heavy, yet not entirely unfamiliar.

He doesn't know how to die, but he does know how to make it hurt. Maybe if it hurts enough, or a little too much, it will kill him. Maybe then, Doyoung could finally be happy. Hana won't have a brother who never has the answers. Yujin won't have an example as bad as him to look up to as he grows. The rest of his siblings won't care in the slightest. He wonders if he'll go to hell for this. He doesn't know, and for once in his life, doesn't care.

So he takes a deep breath. Musters up all the strength in his little legs, filled out and sturdy from the kind of rough play boys his age are encouraged to indulge in, and propels the swing as high as it can go. Then higher and higher again, until he feels as if he's one with the birds above his head.

He waits for it to swing back. He knows it only takes a second, if not even less, but the world seemingly decides to freeze the time and speed up the colors, and suddenly he finds he's scared.

He won't back down without finding out if it hurts first. So he leans back anyway, to where he knows with surety the rocks and metal fence will meet him and hopefully grant what he desires.

It all happens in a blur. The scream, the sickening crack of bone, the white-hot pain shooting through his left leg and ribs, the stickiness washing over his face in rapid waves of scarlet.

He remembers seeing Doyoung's face hovering above him, hazy and swimming in the red like a hauntingly beautiful angel of death. He remembers his brother's anguished cries, wiry arms picking him up and holding him close. The familiar scent of nectarines and honey numbing the pain.

And then, words.

"I'm sorry baby, I'm so fucking sorry. I don't know what came over me. God, please don't go to sleep, Hanbin-ah. I'll rewrite the test and it will all be okay. Please, stay awake for me, okay? I'm sorry. I'll never yell at you again, baby, just please, please- hang on for me, will you? Hyung is so, so sorry."

The last thing Hanbin remembers before it all becomes too much is the scent of the chocolate cake he'd requested for his birthday, half-baked and wafting from the house out to Doyoung's car as he lays him carefully across the backseat. Funny, Hanbin thinks. Doyoung doesn't ever let anyone inside his car. Much like his father used to.

"Dodo?"

"Shh, don't talk, Binnie. Just stay quiet and focus on staying awake for now, okay?"

"Will Daddy come home for my birthday this time?"

Doyoung makes a strange sound between a laugh and a choked sob. "I wish he would, Hanbin-ah. I wish he would."

"Hmm. I'm getting blood all over your seats."

"I'll get it out later, when I have time. Now shut up and keep quiet, or else Dad won't come home next year either."

Hanbin spends his eleventh birthday rendered immobile in a hospital bed, and the rest of the summer on crutches, alive.

-

Two years fly by in the blink of an eye, and Hanbin finds himself standing in the driveway once again, this time helping Doyoung pack his clothes into his car before the older leaves home for college. He takes a peek inside when his brother turns to lift another box, tears rising to his eyes before he could stop them.

Doyoung never did get all the blood out.

-

September 10, 2014

He's thirteen, ditching the last forty-five minutes of English class in the janitor's closet with his best friend Matthew when he hears the word for the first time.

"Yo, did you see the substitute teacher's arms, man? When she had to get on her tiptoes to reach that spot on the whiteboard?"

Hanbin bites into his bologna sandwich, hard. "I mean, yeah, I did- but what about it? Why are you suddenly saying it in such a...conspiratorial manner?"

"English please, your majesty?"

"Geez, Matt. You have got to start reading more. Three books a week, at the very least, would do you some good."

"You can take your books and kindly shove them up your ass for all I care, Hanbin. Now, what was the question again?"

"The teacher...why are you being all weird and hush-hush about it? She's probably just gotten into an accident in the past, or something. Stuff happens."

Matthew gives him a look- the type of look he always gives Hanbin when he knows something the latter doesn't. Ten percent condescending, thirty percent confusion, seventy percent pity. "What? Why are you looking at me like that, Matt?"

"You know, you can be really dense sometimes, Bin. I almost envy you, in a way."

Hanbin frowns, tossing the plastic wrap from his now eaten sandwich into the bin right beside him and missing. "You don't have to get so damn cryptic every time I don't understand what you're yapping about, you know."

Matthew raises his arms in feigned shock, all too accustomed to his childhood friend's sudden irritable outbursts at this point. Prepubescent mood swings, happens to everyone their age but Matthew himself. "Relax, man. I didn't mean to make it sound like I'm talking crap about her, or something. All I meant to say was- I really don't think she got those in an accident. Do you seriously think scars that look like that are accidental?"

Hanbin stares intently at the wad of plastic wrap on the floor, just a centimeter too far from the bin. He thinks. The scars had indeed looked strange to him. He'd never seen any quite like them before- neat, calculated, artistic. For a second, just for a second, he'd wished they were branded onto his skin instead. "Well...no, I don't. But how else could she have gotten them, then? You think someone did that to her? Or are you saying she did it to herself?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying. Those are- they're, well- they're self-harm scars, Bin."

The uncharacteristic solemnness in Matthew's typically animated voice makes Hanbin turn around and face his friend at last, cocking his head to the side in question. "What are those?"

Matthew looks to the skies in desperation, wishing to be anywhere but here at this moment. Damn it, he shouldn't have opened his mouth. Come to think of it, he shouldn't ever, with Hanbin. "It's in the word. Literally what the word suggests, Hanbin. Scars that result from harming yourself. Cutting, for example."

Something lodges its way into Hanbin's throat, small yet deadly. "What do you mean by 'cutting'? Like, putting a blade to your own skin!? On purpose!? But...why? Why would anyone ever want to do that to themselves?"

Matthew shrugs. "My older sister used to do it, before my parents kicked her out. She said it made the screaming in her head go quiet. It gave her mental relief, I guess."

Try it. You should try it. It might help. "That's weird. I'd never imagined people would willingly do things like that as if they're...nothing." Just like the day he had tried to make Doyoung happy. But that had been different . There had been a fifty-fifty chance of it hurting as much as it had, unlike this.

"But it's not nothing, Hanbin," Matthew whispers, the air surrounding him now heavy. "It hurts. My sister said she did it because she craved the hurt. We may not be able to understand, but imagine the sheer amount of pain that has to reside inside a person's heart, how desperate they have to be to numb it that they turn to pain again, just in a different form in hopes the kind in their head will be outdone by another, less fatal one."

Hanbin doesn't respond, taken aback by Matthew's words and a side of him he's never known in all the six years they've been friends. He thinks that Matthew knows so much more than he's given credit for. He thinks, for the first time in his life, that his friend's sunny smile may just be nothing more than a well-worn mask for the rainclouds underneath.

He thinks about it as they make their way to the next class, as the last bell rings and he trudges home as slowly as he can make his feet go to make home seem at least a little farther than it really is, as he goes through his chores on autopilot. He thinks about it when his mother comes home from work and tells him the floor isn't clean enough, when Minho loses his voice screaming at a sobbing Yujin for "being a retard and not remembering his nines times tables" as the seven year old trembled in his seat. He holds his tears back and thinks some more, when he hears the lock in his mother's bedroom door turn before she starts to cry, when the first slap to Yujin's face sounds from the kitchen. 

And then he doesn't anymore. He locks himself in the bathroom, climbs under the shower and cries, letting the ice cold water wash the scalding salt off his face and down the drain. Damn it, Minho had used up all the hot water again.

It'll be Minho's razor he uses in revenge then.

Slowly, tentatively, the first stroke of the brush against the white, unmarred canvas of his arm.

Nothing.

He tries again- faster, harder. Again and again, until the canvas finally springs to life in vivid hues of scarlet. 

Hanbin paints until he no longer can, until the white is scarce and the art of his self-hatred is all that is visible on the skin of arms. By the time he cleans up all evidence of his first secret and steps out of the shower, he knows he'll be doing it again tomorrow.

And when, an hour later, Doyoung calls from college to announce he'll be marrying his girlfriend at the end of the year and moving away, Hanbin cries himself to sleep, knowing tomorrow won't be the last time he paints.

Chapter Text

Summer, 2016

Hanbin likes Kim Jiwoong and Shen Quanrui.

Not many people do, he's learned. And when he thinks hard about it, it does make a little sense. The two don't talk much, they smile even less, and Jiwoong doesn't laugh at all- not when he's without Quanrui- or Ricky, as he calls him. Not once in the four years that Hanbin had known the two had they been part of the many who'd stepped up to the Call Of Repentance. They know all the answers to the questions when it comes to Bible study, and yet they seem to know none when it comes to finding their place in the church. Nobody ever seemed to know anything about them, and everyone knows they prefer it that way.

For that, Hanbin likes Kim Jiwoong and Shen Quanrui, and so do Matthew and the new boy, Kim Gyuvin. Every summer camp for the last four years, Jiwoong and Ricky and Matthew and him had stuck together like glue, and now Gyuvin had joined the group, adding along to the sunshine Matthew used to be solely responsible for among the four.

It is quite an unconventional friendship, really- what with Hanbin and Matthew having been friends since elementary and seeing each other on a daily basis, Gyuvin only having moved to the area three months ago, and Jiwoong and Ricky being from the other side of the country- but they make it work. One full week a year, for them, is more than enough time to catch up. And besides, this is their last year at summer camp. Jiwoong, being two years older than the rest of them, had only managed to stay in this camp for the past two years because he'd gone through the trouble of taking on a Young Instructor role- all to be with his friends just a little while longer.

But next year, they all become proud members of their church's respective youth groups, and that in itself opens up opportunities to see each other so much more. Countless youth conventions, seminars, mission trips, camps- the possibilities are endless.

It's ironic, Hanbin thinks, that the only way they can reunite as a group is through church, when what had bonded them in the first place had been their unspoken skepticism of the faith and distaste for the church system.

He says as much, lower half draped over Matthew's lap and his head hanging off the edge of the bed, still damp from the shower he'd taken an hour ago after finally getting settled into his appointed cabin with the rest of his roommates. Matthew hums in agreement, absentmindedly playing with the hem of Hanbin's shirt. "Be honest, though, guys. Do you think we'd ever find each other in this lifetime if it weren't for church and all that?"

Gyuvin pokes his head out from the top bunk, hair splaying in all directions, and drops a gummy bear straight into Hanbin's open mouth below. "Probably not. I mean, the only reason my parents even decided to move up here was because they felt this church and denomination has more 'spirit' to it than the one we'd been attending for, like, a decade. Everything had been going fine financially; more than fine, even. They had no other reason to move. So, no, we'd probably not have met otherwise."

Hanbin stretches his palm towards the bunk bed, motioning for Gyuvin to share more of his gummy bears. Gyuvin begrudgingly obliges. "So, you're saying you don't believe in fate, Gyu?"

"I don't know. Never thought about it, really. It's a waste of time and mental energy. I'd rather think about what we're getting for dinner. Those hot dogs you said they'd served last year sounded like they were pretty darn good."

"Hm. You really don't believe in fate?" Matthew muses. "What if fate was the only reason you'd met Ricky?"

Hanbin stares in wonder from below as Gyuvin's ears flush red at cartoon character speed. "Ricky? What's Ricky got to do with any of this?"

"Nothing," Gyuvin snaps, disappearing into his bunk again. "Absolutely nothing. Matt's just being weird."

Unfortunately, Hanbin's never been the type to just let something go, especially when it involves the people he cares about, and now isn't an exception. "No, really Gyu. What's up? We've only introduced him to you two hours ago, and now any topic involving Ricky and you're suddenly a blushing mess. You couldn't even say hi to him when we introduced you two to each other, and that's completely out of character for you. You're awkward with him, and every time we bring him up in conversation you act like this is your future wife we're talking about."

Matthew puts his head into his hands and groans. "Lord, please don't tell me I have to do this again."

"Do what again, Matt? What am I unknowingly being left in the dark about again this time?" Matthew ignores Hanbin completely, pushing him off his lap and getting off the bed to climb the ladder to Gyuvin's bunk, where the boy sits facing the wall glumly , unmoving. "Gyuvin? Is everything okay?"

"I think...I think I might have a crush on Ricky."

Matthew sputters. Hanbin instantly starts choking on his third handful of neon blue gummy bears, wondering if he'd heard his friend right.

"Do you need me to come down and perform the Heimlich on you, Bin?"

"No- No thank you, Matt. What did- what did you say again, Gyuvin? A crush? On Ricky!?"

"You're saying that like it's a bad thing!" Gyuvin whines, completely and utterly embarrassed by his own revelation. "Have you seen the guy? He's so...so..."

"Unfairly, disgustingly good-looking?" Matthew supplies.

"Yeah, that," Gyuvin whispers. "More than."

Matthew only pats Gyuvin's back and smiles, while Hanbin feels like his brain is a second away from an earth-shattering explosion that just might be the end of him. "But- but- I don't understand. Ricky's a boy. Gyuvin, you're a boy. How can a boy have a crush on another boy? How is this even possible...this happens?"

"Of course it does," a new voice sounds from the doorway, low and gentle, yet firm in a way that sings songs of a childhood spent playing an adult. "Don't worry, Gyuvin; Ricky heard none of that. He's currently fallen victim to the cooking ahjummas and their overbearing displays of adoration, so you won't be seeing him for a while. They're bewitched."

"Rightfully so," Gyuvin mumbles.

"To answer your question though, Hanbin," Jiwoong continues, calm as always. "Most boys do like girls, but that's not how it always works. Girls can also like girls, just as boys can like boys. Yes, it's possible. Yes, it happens, and it happens much more often than you'd think."

"But- but why haven't I ever heard of anything like this then!?"

Matthew sends Hanbin an exasperated look from his bunk. "Because your mom goes through all your books to approve them, and because you're the only one out of all of us here that still doesn't have access to a phone and social media. Our people are not allowed to talk about it, Bin. The church says it's a sin. And in our denomination, it's considered such a grave sin that they'd rather not even talk about it much less mention its existence. Especially in front of us kids."

"It wasn't like that in our church," Gyuvin pipes up, turning back around to face his friends. "Not only was it talked about, it was accepted. We had lots of gay couples attending. Some of the nicest people around. There was one that would always babysit during communion so the mothers could participate freely, and the babies absolutely loved them. Why can't it be like that here?"

"Your family was part of a very liberal branch," Jiwoong explains patiently. "They're not nearly half as narrow-minded as the bigots we've got over here."

Gyuvin nods, solemn. "And that was why we moved. The more progressive the church's ideals became, the less comfortable my dad got being there. A gay couple getting married in the church had been the last straw for him."

"Good on him for moving over here, or else we'd never have met you," Matthew says. "But also, fuck him."

At this point, Hanbin can't even force himself to produce the usual dramatic gasp of shock that exits him every time one of his friends lets a curse word slip. His mind is currently in utter overdrive, courtesy of Jiwoong's explanation.

"We have half-an-hour till the dinner bell, and an hour to the annual head count after that," Jiwoong announces from the corner of the room where he's digging vigorously through his suitcase. "I think I'm gonna go out to the riverbank and smoke a little something before. Anyone down to come with?"

"Wait, isn't the river off-limits outside of swimming time?" Matthew frowns. "Supervised swimming time, at that. You'll get caught, man."

"I'll tell you a little secret; it's not off-limits if you're staff or an Instructor. Lots of them take the problematic kids down to the river during free hours for private counseling and shit. So, any of you down for some 'private counseling', boys?"

Hanbin stares intently at the strange little crumpled plant remnants in the small transparent box in Jiwoong's hands, at the rare glint of mischief swimming in Jiwoong's dark eyes- usually so dead for seventeen, the soft shine of his pink lips caught by the sunlight streaming through the curtains- and something in his mind clicks.

"I'll go with you."

Jiwoong raises an eyebrow in poorly concealed surprise. "Hanbin? You...?"

"Why not me?"

"Good point. Come on, then. And you two- finish unpacking and make sure to get to the dinner line at least fifteen minutes earlier, or else there won't be anything worth eating left. They're serving pasta tonight, by the way."

Matthew whoops with joy from his place on the bottom bunk. "Hallelujah! Okay then, have fun guys. And please, be careful. Jiwoong, if you get caught with the weed, your future is over. Worse yet, if you get caught with Hanbin and the weed. There will be a target on your back forever."

"No need to remind me, Matt. No need to remind me."

-

The moment Jiwoong pushes apart the tall grasses they'd been straggling through for the past ten minutes, itchy and hot from the unmerciful sun overhead yet to set, Hanbin knows the ten or so burrs stuck in his socks and sneakers were worth it all.

He thinks that if he were to die young, the way he's always been meant to have done, he'd like to do it here. Bleed out on the grassy banks, let that lush emerald satin absorb his worthless blood and shelter him from the rest of the world as his heart stops beating, blinding him to everything but the blue sky and swaying willows overhead. Maybe he could hang himself from one of them, his back to the land and his face to the water, that still, peaceful water, mirroring the green of the willows above yet so clear he could count the pebbles if he wanted to- perfect for drowning.

"You come here often?"

"It's been my spot for a good five years now. Great place to get high off your ass when you need it."

Hanbin watches him jump over the rocks as if he were a lithe mountain goat in its natural element; which, Hanbin supposes, is true for Jiwoong. He trusts the water and sky more than he trusts humans, he'd told him once. The water betrays you quietly, the sky warns you of its fury in advance.

He stretches out a hand for Hanbin to take, a glint of amusement in his eyes as he watches his friend struggle to find purchase on the slippery surface. Hanbin takes it, sits down right beside Jiwoong. The two of them, now glued hip-to-hip, at the very edge of the slope, so close to falling yet not quite. It makes sense, the two of them like this. It always had.

Jiwoong takes out the blunt and weed, throwing a questioning glance at Hanbin. "Wanna hit?"

"You know I don't do that stuff, hyung. I'll take the vape."

Jiwoong digs around in his bag for a minute before protruding it at last. "Here you go. It's nectarine."

Hanbin takes it from his hands and takes a deep inhale, feeling the pleasant flavor invade his lungs, and, when he imagined hard enough, he could feel it tear them apart slowly, cell by cell. Nectarines. He tries not to think about Doyoung.

It doesn't work.

They sit in silence for a solid three minutes, the scent of nectarines and marijuana, summer and forest, forming a ring of mind-numbing haze around them before Jiwoong reads Hanbin's mind and sees it killing him. "This is stupid. You know what Bin? We need some music."

"Music?"

"Getting stoned is pointless without some good music, kid. Here, hold the joint for a minute, will you?"

"'M not a kid," Hanbin mutters, watching Jiwoong type something lazily into his phone. Since when are youth instructors allowed to have their phones on them, anyway?  "You're literally only two and a half years older."

"Mhm. Big difference, Bin. Huge difference."

Finally, the screen is pressed one last time, the phone is put down, and the music starts playing.

The crackling of a spinning record. Slow, reverberating drums. Old-fashioned synth; soft, steady drum- the melancholy sound of azure sky and a dying sun.

"Jiwoong?"

"Hm?"

"So, do you like a boy?"

Jiwoong doesn't answer immediately, opting to take another deep draw from his joint. He doesn't smile, or frown, or scream, or freeze. Just breathes. That's just how Jiwoong is, stoic and cold, yet so, so very fragile. Hanbin lets him take his time like he always does, inhaling more of the artificial nectarine-infused fumes into his lungs as he listens to the singer's deep, rich voice float over the water and drown. He vaguely registers the language as Japanese, his dazed mind latching on to a few words he recognizes here and there. "The blue wind brings back the amber feelings, while the sound of the projector resonates in the room..."

"I did, once."

"What happened?"

"He died a couple years ago. Hate crime."

The smoke in Hanbin's throat goes bitter. He breathes in more of it to make the bitterness go away, because there's not much else he can do when he's fifteen and broken.

"Nothing has changed in this sky, that carries our remains on the clouds"

"What was it like?"

"What was what like, Hanbin?"

"You know, liking a boy."

"Like, well....just liking someone, I guess. Liking a girl, liking a boy, whatever- at the end of the day, it's all the same. It's just...liking. Butterflies, lots of butterflies. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Wanting to be with them at all times, do everything with them. Their favorite pastime is running- and you hate running, it makes you want to die, but you run with them, because it's them, so suddenly you've always liked running. You don't give a fuck if it means you have to wake up at five fucking a.m., because you're seeing them at five-thirty. Kind of like that."

Jiwoong's eyes shine with something wet and unfamiliar, and Hanbin isn't sure if it's the smoke like he knows Jiwoong would say it is if he were to ask him. So he just nods and takes in another breath of fruity poison.

"In my confusing memories..."

"Hey, Jiwoong."

"Yes, Hanbin?"

He breathes. In, out. "Can I ask you for a favor? Purely as a friend?"

"No, you can't. Is that what you thought I would say? Of course you can, dumbass."

"I want to know what it's like to kiss."

At that, Jiwoong turns his head and stares. "Come again?"

Sinking deep into a dream 

"I want to know what it's like to kiss," Hanbin repeats, suddenly nauseous. "Kissing a girl before marriage is a sin, isn't it?"

Jiwoong looks at him as if he has just sprouted three heads. "According to me, it isn't. According to our church, it is. You know what's a bigger sin than that, according to our church? You kissing a boy, Hanbin."

"I don't really give a fuck. I don't...I don't think I'll ever want to get married to a girl, Jiwoong. I don't know if I want to kiss a girl, either. I just want to know what it feels like, without having to wait for the day I get married to a girl. Is that so wrong?"

"It's not that part that's wrong, Hanbin. The part that's wrong is that you're my friend. I like being your friend, Hanbin. I really, really do. I don't want to take any chances of that changing. I just... can't."

"Are you saying I might start liking you? Like how Gyuvin likes Ricky? Well, you don't have to worry about that at all, trust me. I'm not into older guys."

"Didn't know you were into guys in the first place," Jiwoong shoots back wryly.

"Hey, I don't know that I am. Yet. I just know I don't particularly like girls in the way I'm supposed to, you know? I didn't know I had a choice not to up until today. I just...I need to know."

"So you're using me as your test subject? A sexuality experiment?" Despite the contents of it, Jiwoong's voice is soft, warm. Hanbin knows he isn't truly angry. Just worried, like he always seems to be beneath the surface 

"Don't say it like that! There's just...no one else I can do this with, I guess? Matthew and I have been so close for so long that he's like a little brother to me. Just the thought of doing anything like that with him makes me want to puke. Gyuvin likes Ricky. And Ricky, well...again, Gyuvin likes Ricky. And Ricky scares me, frankly. Just a bit."

"He's a good kid, Hanbin."

"I know he is, you ass! I've been friends with him for years. I'm just not as close with him as I'd like to be, I suppose. And this year he seems to have grown even more distant." 

"He hasn't always been like this, you know. He's just...he's been really missing his parents lately."

"God. Where have they run off to this time?"

"Some business trip in Guangzhou this time, apparently. It's a long one again. Two months."

"Damn." Hanbin wouldn't admit it, but his heart has ached for Ricky ever since he found out just how often the boy is left without his parents for weeks, sometimes months on end, left with no choice but to fend for himself in the family's giant mansion with nobody but the maids to keep him company. Living in a mansion is nice and all, of course, but Hanbin supposes all that dazzling opulence loses its appeal pretty quickly when its walls begin to echo with loneliness and the floors creak with the heaviness and resentment that resides within every abandoned child's heart.

He doesn't want to think about it any longer than he already has, fearing what he might see in Ricky's eyes if he decides to look, really look in them the next time he sees him. "Okay, enough about Ricky. We're getting sidetracked here, and I want to get this over with already."

"Now you're talking about this like it's a punishment when you were the one who came up with the idea. Are you sure you truly want to do this?"

"That's not what I-"

"I'm just playing with you, silly. Come on, we haven't got much time."

Jiwoong shifts closer and angles his body towards him, waiting, and suddenly Hanbin's panicking and questioning what in the ever-loving fuck had possessed him when he had asked Jiwoong to do this. 

Jiwoong only sighs, amused. "Really, Hanbin?"

Hanbin's eyes burn, and in the background, the song restarts for the third time. "I'm sorry, okay!? I'm just... nervous all of a sudden. I've never done this before."

Hanbin half expects Jiwoong to laugh at that, but he doesn't. Of course, he doesn't. Anybody else would, but not Jiwoong. Jiwoong takes off his shirt instead. "I have a spare in my bag with me; you don't. I don't want you to smell like weed," he explains.

Hanbin briefly glances down at the exposed skin, and immediately wishes he hadn't.

"Nothing has changed in this sky..."

Jiwoong and him, they have always had a different kind of connection between them- a kind of quiet rapport between two wounded creatures, an unspoken truce of solidarity in their suffering. Jiwoong is the only person who's never commented on Hanbin's long sleeves in the summer heat. Hanbin never knew how to thank him for it in any other way than returning the favor.

He knows Jiwoong knows, and Jiwoong knows Hanbin knows. They'd never had to say it before, but Jiwoong has decided to do so now. Silently, gracefully. "Hyung..."

Jiwoong puts a finger to his lips, smiles. "Shh. You and I, we're the same, Hanbin-ah. You don't have to say anything. I know it all."

And then he leans in, and all Hanbin can do is shut his eyes and pray, but the words of the song keep mixing themselves in with the sacred, and all he can do in the end is accept his fate. 

"And lead us not into temptation...in my confusing memories I embrace you..."

Fuck it all, really.

Kim Jiwoong. He's always seen the boy as somewhat of an exquisite portrait flawlessly depicting the beautiful tragedy that is their caged youth; or perhaps a porcelain statue, god-like, the outside sculpted of the finest glass or cold stone, the inside hiding a beating heart of molten gold. A heart not many see, though it is hidden in plain sight. 

And when Jiwoong's lips, so soft and cold, melt into his warm ones at last, Hanbin wonders how others manage to miss it- that beautiful heart. It pours from his lips in wordless streams of love and care and gentle concern, pulses beneath the white marble of his hands as he holds Hanbin steady through it all. Let them all go to hell, Hanbin thinks when Jiwoong's tongue parts his mouth- is that what happens when people kiss?- so wet and slow and careful. Their God will always blind them to the beauty of the gods we can touch. Even those that may not be ours.

It's ten seconds later when Jiwoong breaks away, only to press his lips tenderly against the crown of Hanbin's head, the question in the gesture already audible before the words ever come. "You okay?"

"Perfect." And he is. He really, really is. His stomach might be coiling with some strange, unfamiliar flame that he swears has just opened up a whole new part of the forbidden universe hidden within him, but who's to tell him it's wrong if nobody saw it happen?

Jiwoong's head is cocked to the side as he studies him, pupils slightly dilated from the weed. Hanbin likes it, the way it makes his eyes, already the color of night, take on such an inky black they become reminiscent of two glowing onyx stones.

"I'm serious, Jiwoong. It was good. Although, to tell the truth, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Heck, I didn't even know the lips are supposed to move, not to mention the tongue."

At that, Jiwoong smiles crookedly. "Hey, nobody gets it right on the first try. But what I meant was how did it make you feel?"

Hanbin allows himself to ponder for a moment, taking another draw from the vape. "Well, I think my heart was beating a bit faster than usual. But it didn't feel...it didn't feel the way people describe their first kiss feeling. There were no fireworks, or bursting hearts, or any of that, you know? My heart was beating faster, and my stomach felt a little hot? But yeah, that was it. There weren't really any emotions, I guess."

"Your stomach felt-" Jiwoong shoots a brief,worried look at his friend's crotch- now why on earth would he do that? Hanbin wonders- then looks up at the sky, breathing out what sounds like a sigh of massive relief. "Okay. But about the emotions thing. It'll come, Hanbin-ah. The moment it's somebody you love, it'll come to you."

"But why is it like that, though? I thought kissing in general is meant to feel good."

"It is. The thing is, it can feel good physically, but when it's someone you love, it's so much more than just a clashing of lips. It's the same with any kind of physical intimacy, really. When it's your person, it feels like being born again. Like being in the presence of something holy."

Hanbin stares out over the water, taking in the final draw of his vape as Jiwoong's words replay in his head over and over again. Holy.

What is holiness, anyway? He wonders if it has always been a word that could solely be defined by religion and naught else. Holiness, perhaps, has always been meant to be subjective. To his father, achieving holiness had meant leaving his family for what he believes to be a greater cause- saving the souls of people who'd never needed to be saved, to make himself feel as if he deserved better than his incompetent, graying wife and imperfect twelve children; this mundane, finite life that in his eyes only knows how to take. Holiness would earn him a crown of glory in the afterlife, a position of power the level of which he could never quite establish in his own home. To his mother, holiness is only a shorter word for Proverbs 31. And to Jiwoong, holiness is what's forbidden.

Hanbin doesn't know if he's found his definition of holiness just yet. Maybe it comes with age, or maybe, like one too many miserable human beings on this planet, he'll never truly be able to find it. He hopes for the first.

"Come on buddy, time to head to the dinner line," Jiwoong ruffles his hair, breaking his train of thought. "You don't want the pasta at the bottom of the bin, trust me."

He pulls on the spare shirt from his bag and discards of the old one in a Ziploc packet that he slips back into his bag along with the weed, sprays some cologne for good measure, and puts on a pair of thick frames- "just to be safe", because of course people would think Youth Instructor Kim Jiwoong went out to the river to smoke pot before dinner and would shine a flashlight in his eyes to confirm it.

Hanbin adores Jiwoong to bits, but sometimes he can be just plain ridiculous.

They make it out of the area and to the main camp territory in comfortable silence, with the occasional huff and puff here and there- mostly from Hanbin. He throws glances at Jiwoong now and then, starting to wonder if what Jiwoong had smoked had truly even been weed, because apart from the slight difference in eye color there was nothing in his behavior to indicate that he was under any kind of influence.

"I've purposely smoked only half a joint," Jiwoong explains when he asks. "Better safe than sorry, as they say. You just haven't seen me when I'm actually high, and I hope you never do."

"I bet you're fine. Anyway, which group are you taking on this year?"

Jiwoong scrunches his nose in distaste, and Hanbin hates that it almost makes him look cute. "Guess."

"By your expression I'm going to say you got the thirteen-year-olds."

"Bingo. Oh God, they're awful. Fresh out of kid's camp where they got their week of glory for being the oldest kids on the grounds so now they think they're all that. Keita was assigned to them last year and he said the chance of getting them to collectively shut the fuck up is as slim as our chances of getting to Heaven. Even worse is that there seems to be twice as much of them as any other age group this year."

"Hey, it can't be that bad. Yujin was with the eight year olds last year and they drove him to the point of tears because he was the only shy kid of the bunch. According to him the older kids are much nicer."

"I sure hope Yujin's right. But hey, even if he's not, at least I won't be alone this year. They're bringing in a new kid to help me."

"Finally. They should have done that every year. I swear those fourteen-year-olds had your hair beginning to gray last summer."

"Let's not forget that you and Matthew were in that group. But about the kid- they said the group is just too big this year and one teenager handling them all alone is a bad idea, hence the help. There's just one small problem..."

"I don't like the tone of that."

"Well, you're gonna hate what I'm about to say even more. First of all, I have no idea who this kid is because I can't remember his name for the life of me. Maybe I should have asked again. Yeah, I probably should have."

"What exactly are you trying to say here, Jiwoong?"

Jiwoong shoots him an apologetic look, and Hanbin prays he's not about to say what he thinks he's going to say. "Well...you know how we've managed to not get those two last roommates every year you and I and Ricky and Matt had been here?"

"...No. Oh god, no. Please."

"Apparently the kid registered last minute, and the only place left available was that empty bed in our cabin. I'm sorry, buddy."

Hanbin has to fight everything in him to not start stomping his feet and letting out the most petulant whine of the century. This is their last year in summer camp, a week they'll never get to relive ever again, and the memories now have to be tarnished by some weird, unwelcome stranger who is not a part of their friend group and, considering he's a Young Instructor, is probably a holier-than-thou religious fanatic at that, because The Exceptions (other than Jiwoong and his old friend Keita) have gone extinct years ago. This is bad.

Jiwoong must have read every word going through his mind, because he instantly tries to change it. "Listen, Hanbin, I get you're upset. I get that you wanted the cabin left to the five of us and the five of us only. I can't say I'm the happiest person in the world about this arrangement, either. But the boy has got nowhere else to go. He's here for no other reason than to help me; the least I can do is give him a bed to sleep in. A bed that was meant to be slept in, mind you. There are six beds in these rooms for a reason."

Just as they turn the corner of the path leading away from the line of the girls' cabins, a loud burst of laughter sounds from one of them and Hanbin's mood only sours further. "We won't be able to do anything fun now, will we?"

"Hey, you don't know that. There's always the off chance he might be our kind of person. Or maybe he won't be in the cabin that often. Remember Jisung from year five? The only time we'd gotten a fifth roommate and the only time he hadn't been outside had been to shower, change, and sleep. Let's not assume things about a person we don't even know. Speaking of knowing, they'd said he's completely new to the denomination. Rumor has it his parents had left a liberal branch years ago and hadn't belonged to any church up until last year when the father finally succeeded in starting his own. It's small, but it's growing."

"Even better," Hanbin can't help the sharp sarcasm that seeps into his voice. "His father is one of those 'you all are believing it wrong and only I'm believing it right" nutcases. He'll definitely enjoy watching us play Bloody Mary as he reads Leviticus before going to sleep."

"Dammit, Hanbin," Jiwoong shakes his head, a hint of exasperation seeping into his voice. "Just play tame. You don't have to put on a whole new angelic persona for him. Just enough to not give him reason to raise alert about us- don't cuss around him and don't shit on the church and keep an eye on Gyuvin around Ricky. Why are you so pissed about it anyway? We can always just come down to the river to kiss and stuff, you know."

Hanbin can feel his ears start to burn, totally having forgotten about what had gone down at the riverbank mere minutes ago in light of the horrible roommate information . The gravity of what had happened for some reason is only hitting him now, and it's hitting pretty damn hard. "Don't bring that up again. Ever. I don't know what had come over me when I asked you to do that. And besides, the hell you mean by 'always just come down to the river'!? I got the impression that this was a one-time thing."

They round the last of the rows of cabins, and Jiwoong puts a finger to his lips in a hushing gesture, motioning at the seemingly infinite line of children and teenagers in front of the cafeteria now in view. "It was. But I have a feeling that somewhere deep inside, you had the audacity to think that wasn't the end of it."

-

Dinner is, for the most part, uneventful.

Hanbin and Jiwoong are able to single out and make it to the rest of their friends in record time- something Hanbin still has no idea of how Jiwoong manages to do, what with the crowd amassing up to two hundred plus teenagers and adults, all so compact in the small room that there's barely any space to move your elbows without meeting someone else's. They're even lucky enough to find sufficient space for the five of them at one table, though it happens to be located smack in the epicenter of all the noise where the only way to carry a conversation with each other is to shout over the din to be heard. Which they won't be doing, of course, because there's not much they can discuss at that volume without eliciting judgmental stares from the group of adult instructors sitting less than a meter away.

So, because there's always a solution to every extant problem, they choose to huddle close like a bunch of conspiring football players losing their match instead (Gyuvin's idea), their heads collectively forming a crooked ring of black over plates of food. It was an emergency (according to Gyuvin)- some bad news, it seemed.

"Did you hear? The Zhangs are coming"

He's met with four blank stares in response before Matthew shakes his head slowly and says, "Zhang…Doesn't ring a bell."

"Same here," Hanbin shrugs.

"I would say the same," Jiwoong frowns. "But I could swear I've heard that name more than once in the past few days."

"You guys are unbelievable," Gyuvin huffs, incredulous. "How could you not have-"

Ricky snaps his fingers loudly out of nowhere, startling the ever-living shit out of his seatmates. "I remember! Are you talking about the Mr. Zhang that was a really hot topic in every church in our branch, like, a decade ago? I don't really remember what he did though."

"Yeah, him! His family used to be a part of my old church," Gyuvin whispers a tad too excitedly, and suddenly Hanbin's reminded of the ladies that crowd his mother after church service ends to discuss the condition of her tomato plants and whether she washes her curtains with Borax or lye soap (and "is your husband staying home for longer than three days this Christmas?"). "I was around five when the whole thing happened, but I guess I remember it pretty well because people there never stopped talking about it. I don't even know why he kept attending for as long as he did, the way he hated us all with such burning passion. Rumor has it that he'd done it for his wife because she'd grown up in that church, but whatever. The last Sunday he was ever seen there, coincidentally the Sunday after the Sunday that made my father start planning to move because of you know what, he gave a whole freaking sermon where he aggressively spit out every last little thing of what was wrong with us as a whole. You should've seen the people's faces, man. After he was done he took his wife and sobbing son, walked straight out the door, and never came back."

"Wow," Matthew breathes through a large spoonful of ravioli. "Your old church needs a book written about it or something. I never realized just how goddamn boring our church is."

"Yeah, ours too," Jiwoong mutters. His face has that look on it, Hanbin notices- that weirdly adorable, comical look that screams wait…hold the fuck up.  "He has a kid, you said?"

"A son," Gyuvin clarifies. "Again, I was like five when it all happened, so I don't really remember his name. People preferred to talk about the parents, you know. He must've been only a year or two older than me, 'cause I vaguely remember us being in the same age group in Sunday school for a while. He was a real smart kid- teacher's pet and everything."

"Do you know when he'll be getting here?" Jiwoong asks.

"He's an Instructor so of course he has to be present for the head count and annual announcements, but I've heard another Instructor say they drove out pretty late, so they'll be here at the end of the ceremony if their car decides to grow wings. But probably around midnight if they drive normally, though. Oh, and he won't be coming here alone. There's a couple more kids from his dad's new church accompanying him. Don't know what crawled out the man's ass that he's finally letting his church integrate into the community, but I suppose the kids are over the moon about it. What's even more interesting is that Zhang's son is the one driving them. Only around sixteen or so and driving a bunch of kids a full five hours by himself. Isn't that insane?" 

Jiwoong mutters something under his nose that obviously isn't meant for another's ears, but Hanbin manages to catch five words, the only five he needs to know this summer is, indeed, already ruined.

"It's got to be him."

-

Waiting for the opening ceremony to start is always the worst part of the first evening at camp- it's an unspoken rule. Camp before and after the opening ceremony might as well be two different worlds, and currently, they're all stuck at the border crossing.

Hanbin couldn't care less about camp activities finally commencing, now that he's learned this cursed sixteen-year-old enigma with the last name Zhang is perhaps only a few hundred miles away from ruining his last chance at a memorable summer in this place. No, he isn't excited in the slightest; he just wants the noise in the room to finally stop.

Even his friends' voices are beginning to grate on his nerves, because Jiwoong announced the roommate news before leaving to prepare for the ceremony and now they just won't stop talking about it, which is the last Hanbin needs right now- more Talking About It.

He doesn't know why he's so pissed, to be honest. No, he's aware of the root cause, of course, but the extent of his anger goes too far and he knows it. Everyone else had taken the news well- obviously nobody was thrilled, (except Gyuvin, because Gyuvin jumps at any opportunity to make a new friend), but they'd all just shrugged it off before jumping to argue about whether they should give him a different bed or not. So why was he the only one who couldn't stop sulking like a dejected dog?

He can see the group of instructors approaching behind the door, and he shifts in his seat restlessly, and then Matthew leans in and asks "What did you and Jiwoong do at the river anyway? Neither of you look high" and Hanbin knows he has to leave before he explodes in an angry ball of red in front of the two-hundred-twenty-six people in the room with him. He pictures it in his head- the people's shocked screams and pale faces as his skin tears to bits and his body burns up in the air as it falls to the ground, his blood and insides staining the snow-white walls and curtains crimson, never to be washed out again.

Yeah, he has to leave and he has to do it now. Fuck the ceremony, fuck his friends, and fuck motherfucking Zhang.

"We just talked. Which one of you has the key from the cabin?"

"I do," Matthew replies, his brows furrowing in concern. "You going to the cabin to lie down? You don't look so good."

"Yeah, I guess my stomach's a bit upset. Should have gone easier on the pasta."

"But you barely finished half the plate."

"I always feel sick after camp food the first couple days."

"I have Advil if you need it."

"Nah, it's not that bad. I just need to lie down and it'll pass."

Matthew searches his face for a lie and Hanbin panicks inwardly, because Matthew sniffs out lies like politicians sniff out oil in the Middle East, so he puts on his best pained expression and prays to whatever divinity exists that it looks genuine enough. Which it probably does, because if he isn't sick now, he will be if he stays in this suffocating fucking room a minute longer.

"If you say so," Matthew says, still not looking entirely convinced, but he fishes the key out of his back pocket and hands it to Hanbin anyway- a win (now, that's new). Sung Hanbin, one; Seok Matthew, zero. "I'll ask Gyuvin and Ricky to write down this year's clubs, and I'll write down tomorrow's schedule for you, okay? You go and take that rest while the cabin's still empty. You sure you don't need that Advil?"

"Nah, I'm good. Thanks, Matt." He gives his friend a quick pat on the back and tries not to break out into a run as he crosses the room in the direction of the exit, feeling Matthew's concerned stare drill holes through his back. Hanbin feels somewhat bad for lying to him, knowing how quick he is to worry, but he'd rather not take the chance of ruining their moods with his sour face as the evening progresses. That's what he does best, his mother said- ruining people's good moods.

He passes Jiwoong on the way out, who winks at him, and he looks so dumb doing it that it makes Hanbin laugh. Christ, maybe he should actually go and take that nap instead of brooding aimlessly around the room, waiting for them to come back. Yeah, that's what he needs- a nap. He might just wake up feeling better after.

So when after a brisk, pleasant three minute walk through the evening breeze he gets to Cabin 009 and unlocks the door, he decides there really is no better solution for his inner turmoil at the moment than a nap. The sky outside has faded to perfect dark blue, the kind that desperately hangs by its fingertips from the purple and the gold, it's feet just barely dipping into the black void of night beneath. It's the perfect color for dreaming, Hanbin thinks. No nightmares would dare show their face in the presence of such beautiful skies. And just in case they really would have the guts to, because you never know when it comes to nightmares, he grabs Jiwoong's lavender oil spray from where he'd put it on the desk- trust Jiwoong to always have plenty of that fancy scented stuff on hand- and sprays it abundantly all over his pillowcase. Jiwoong won't notice if he uses just a little, and even if he does notice he won't mind (hopefully). It smells too good not to share, anyway.

He puts the spray right back where he found it and starts taking off his socks and shoes with growing excitement, unable to believe his luck. A nap, an honest-to-goodness fucking nap- something he couldn't even dream of having the privilege for back home. No screaming, no crying, no constant loud talking and stomping jerking him back to his morbid reality two minutes after finally nodding off. Nobody to tell him "Well, you should have just slept at night" when he complains about it. Why, this is heaven. This is the real deal.

He crawls into the bed slowly, just to drag out the anticipation of the moment his head would nestle into the ultimate comfortable position on the pillow and the covers would swallow him up and lull him to sleep with their downy warmth. Life is like that when you think about it- relishing the details of the small moments leading up to the climax is the only way to get the most pleasure out of it when it comes.

His hands and right leg are on the mattress, left still raised in the air and about to follow when he hears it.

It's nothing abnormal, just the familiar sound of suitcase wheels rolling crunchily along the gravel- a new camper, or perhaps they're only bringing their luggage in from their vehicle now, not having had the time or desire to do so before. Sure, the sound comes to an abrupt halt right outside their door, but that could happen for a number of reasons, reasons that aren't any of his business. Zhang's son won't be arriving for a good few hours anyway.

His right leg makes it onto the mattress, his thighs, his torso, and then-

"I think this one's mine, Rui. The ninth."

His first instict when the door opens is to freeze.

However, if there's one thing Sung Hanbin can boast about when it comes to his brain, dark and rotten and aching as it may be, is that it is clearest in moments of panic. It's always calculated the potential outcomes of his choice of reaction at phenomal speed- a skill he's had no choice but to master from his experiences at home. If he gets up now, it will lead to confrontation. If he can wrap the blankets around himself and fix his body into a more or less natural-looking sleeping position in the ten or so seconds it will take the newcomer to get to the room from the entrance (maybe longer if he has trouble lifting his suitcase over that stupidly high threshold), it gives him two benefits- one, no premature confrontation; and two, a chance to observe and get a feeling for the boy's true self when he believes he isn't being watched.

He doesn't know how he manages to carry out the second decision as fast he did; he's pretty sure he's set a new record for himself, perhaps even higher than that night last weekend when his mother had been seconds away from seeing him half-naked with the blade to his forearm at 4:00 a.m. He's proud of this new development, to say the least, but what he needs to focus on right now is the boy. 

So as soon as his footsteps round the corner, Hanbin's eyes fly shut so fast it makes his head spin and he needs a moment to return to himself before squinting them back open. 

Perhaps he does it half a second too early. Goddamit, he should have peeked when he was positive the boy was moving in the direction of his own bed, not when the room suddenly grew suspiciously silent. But he's done it either way, now, so there's no going back. It's not like the boy can see he's got his eyes a fourth of a fraction open in the dark- Hanbin's mastered it down to perfection and he's more than confident about it.

It's just that he didn't quite expect that face.

It's staring right at him, like the boy can see he's not truly asleep, though Hanbin knows for a fact that that's impossible. And yet there he stands, rooted to the ground in what Hanbin supposes to be surprise at seeing someone else already in the cabin when they shouldn't be here. He just... stands there, unmoving, unblinking- and in the dark blue light Hanbin can't see all of him, but he sees enough to not have to force himself to hold his breath.

Hair, dark and fluffy and curling far past his ears ever so prettily- a sin in the church, because boys are meant to be men, rugged and homely and virile. He's got an unfairly sharp jawline and delicate, feminine cheekbones Hanbin would kill for; a strong, elegant nose; thick, wide lips- perfection trapped in a boy's body. The only thing Hanbin can't make out through the darkness and his limited field of vision is the boy's eyes, and he's not so sure he's entirely ready to. He waits with bated breath for the stranger to move- an arm, a hand, a leg, anything before he begins to think he's flown completely off his fucking rocker and begun to hallucinate.

Fortunately, ten seconds (and a shallow, embarrassingly desperate attempt from Hanbin at breathing in at least a molecule of oxygen) later, the stranger turns on his feet and tiptoes noiselessly in the direction of the empty bed, dragging his suitcase along behind him. Hanbin continues to watch him from afar with eyes fully open now that the boy's back is conveniently turned to him, his curiosity ultimately peaked as he observes with a sudden sense of guilt the way the boy tries so hard to open the zipper on his suitcase without making any noise. It's sweet, in a way. He tries to imagine Matthew or Gyuvin going to such lengths all to not wake him and barely manages to hold back a giggle. 

Maybe he should stop caring so much about awkwardness and confrontation and introductions and just let the boy know he's awake, so he can at least turn the lights on to see better, but in the end he doesn't. Cowardice makes itself known- a trait Sung Hanbin inherited from none other than his father, the biggest coward in Hanbin's life. No matter how hard he tries to tell himself otherwise, he'll be a slave held captive by its cerrated, decaying claws till the day he ceases to exist, so all he can afford to do in the end is stay silent and continue to watch the boy struggle.

He doesn't know how long he observes that lithe, graceful shadow work its magic in the darkness, now pitch-black save for the moonlight, but he remembers the dreams that come after. Darkness, nectarine smoke, cold lips, scarred arms and dead boyfriends. Darkness, bloody walls, Bibles, Doyoung in a wedding suit, Yujin crying, darkness. Darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness...

When he opens his eyes again, morning embraces him and weeps.

Chapter Text

When Hanbin wakes up, the shadow is no longer there.

He can see Ricky out of the corner of his sleep-crusted eyes, crouching in front of his open suitcase, still in his red print pajamas and visibly conflicted on his choice of outfit for the day; Gyuvin crouched beside him, trying to give his (probably unsolicited) advice. He hears Matthew belting the Korean national anthem in the shower and Jiwoong mumbling his lesson plan over and over under his nose until it begins to sound like some cursed incantation from a horror movie. The soft drone of the noise instantly puts him at ease- just them being there, all existing in their own special, beautiful ways. No spontaneously announced strangers, no unwanted intruders- just Matthew and Gyuvin and Jiwoong and Ricky all together in their own little cabin, the way it's supposed to be.

He stays in bed a little while longer, blankets draped over his head as his mind unwillingly wanders to The Boy From Yesterday once again. What is his name? What do his eyes look like in the light? And why isn't he here? He should stop, seriously. He should be dragging himself out of bed to go wash up and change, because the clock the nightstand and the schedule Gyuvin's taping up onto the wall announce they don't have that much time before breakfast. He just suddenly can't seem to find the energy in himself to do it after the nightmares, may those fallacious blue skies be damned. Maybe the shadow had cursed them with its appearance last night.

"Oh, Hanbin's up!" Gyuvin exclaims, face splitting into his signature wide, puppy-like grin. "How was that nap?"

"Phenomenal," Hanbin replies, half-rolling and half-dragging himself out of bed at a snail's pace as he does so. "I had such a nice dream, too."

"Hmm, what about?"

"Can't remember it anymore. It's all kind of foggy. Oh, speaking of. Where's the new guy off to already?"

"Believe it or not, he actually got up at 5:45 for the special Instructors' Prayer," Jiwoong calls out from the hallway. "By the time we came back from the ceremony he was already under the blankets, then he left first thing in the morning. We saw nothing of him but the back of his hair."

So, Hanbin really did turn out to be right in the end- the kid is brainwashed like the rest of the lot; and worse yet, committed. Overly so, even.

"I saw him," Matthew's voice pipes out from the bathroom, gargled and barely intelligible around the toothbrush hanging from his mouth by a thread. "I woke up and had to take a leak about the same time he got up, and when I came out I bumped into him. He has a name, by the way. It's Hao. Zhang Hao. Kept saying 'sorry' over and over even though it was my fault. He seems nice. Really good-looking fellow, too."

Hao. What a funny name, Hanbin thinks. Doesn't "hao" mean "good" in Mandarin? Probably depends on its assigned tone. Anyway- funny.

"Is he Chinese?," Ricky asks, excitement very much audible in his voice. "He has to be, with that name. Or Taiwanese, at least."

"He is in fact Chinese," Jiwoong confirms. "Didn't you say you missed having someone to talk to in Mandarin, Rick? There's your chance!"

Ricky only smiles giddily, and Hanbin can't even find it in himself to judge the brief flash of stars in Gyuvin's eyes at the sight. Happiness looks almost absurdly good on Shen Quanrui, rare as it may be to see him wearing it.

"Anyways, I'm going out to set up the classroom," Jiwoong yells, one foot already halfway out the door. "Make sure you all go to breakfast. Hanbin, you too- no excuses." The door shuts after him then- softly, because Jiwoong has never once banged a door shut in all the years Hanbin has known him.

Gyuvin rolls his eyes fondly, shaking his head. "He's such a fucking dad."

A dad...

If only Hanbin's father had been like Jiwoong, would his son have turned out the way he had? Maybe he would learn to like eating breakfast, look forward to lunch and dinner, even allow himself the luxury of snacking throughout the day. Jiwoong wouldn't come home once a year and tell him he missed him the first day only to watch his food intake like a hawk and ration it for the next six. Jiwoong wouldn't call him a cow and proceed to laugh at it as if it was nothing but good-natured teasing, because it isn't for Hanbin; it never was.

Maybe, if Hanbin's father had been like Jiwoong, he wouldn't want to tear his body to shreds, bite the skin off his own bones when he gets hungry until there's finally nothing left to look at in the mirror and hate. Maybe, if Hanbin's father had been like Jiwoong, he would actually go and eat breakfast.

And because such will never be the case, he doesn't.

He wills himself to stand in the lunch line for a full five minutes (yes, he counted) and then begins to make a show of fidgeting and restlessly tapping his foot on the floor for a solid minute before he decides the lie is fully ready to make its debut.

"Guys, I gotta go to the bathroom real quick, okay? Don't wait for me."

This time, he's smart enough to start moving before Matthew can begin to question his intentions. He doesn't know exactly where he's going, or what he's going to spend the next forty-five minutes doing before he has to head to the chapel for getting assigned to his Bible study group, but he'll figure it out.

God, he wishes he had a phone. Everyone else in his friend group has one- well, except for Matthew, but he has a laptop to compensate for it, so that doesn't count. Wandering around wouldn't feel half as lonely if he had music to listen to. Christ, he deserved that much.

But alas, he hadn't had the guts to ask Matthew for the key this time around, so all that remains for him to do is wander around the campgrounds in awaiting for the next scheduled event. If he could have at least fifteen minutes longer, he'd wander the pathway east that leads deep into the woods, or the westward path that winds into the mountains, but there's just not enough time. Maybe later. Maybe with Jiwoong, if he won't be too busy. Lord knows the rest of his friends will be too nose-deep in every activity this year to want to accompany him.

He doesn't blame them, though; it had been his idea for them to go all out at least once, after all. Now that this is their last year here, why not challenge (more like paradoxically clown) themselves to get those high ranks and dumb little prizes for "Outstanding, Exemplary Behavior"? It's just that now he's lost all motivation for it, though he's not quite sure why.

Oh, well. Screw the music. At least his brain isn't as half as loud here as he knows it would be at the breakfast table.

-

Bible study time rolls around at last, and for some strange reason, Hanbin finds himself missing Yujin.

There's a sudden influx of new faces in his group, and they're all boys and they're rough and they're immature and vile, and all Hanbin wants is to teleport to his little brother and hug him as hard as he can without suffocating him. To protect him from the evils of this world, from the possibility of his pure, innocent heart getting wreaked havoc on by society like theirs.

It's embarrassing to be a fifteen-year-old and sit in a group with your "cool" peers, missing your baby brother while they talk about cars and Mr. Beast and girls' chests, so he sucks it up and stares off into space instead, willing every potential thought to stay unformed until the Instructor makes his long-awaited appearance. Spoiler- it takes him way too long.

But then he opens his mouth, and Hanbin instantly regrets his past sentiments, wishing it would have taken the man longer.

"Good morning, boys and girls- well would you look at that now! Silly me, I forgot the lads and lasses were divided by groups this year. Though, that one over there, with the frilly black blouse. You seem a bit... out of place here. You sure you're in the right place, honey?"

Hanbin doesn't have to crane his head towards the last row like everyone else is to instantly know who the man is referring to. His blood boils at the off-handed comment and sound of tittering filling the room, and yet he pushes down the anger in favor of sending Gyuvin beside him, who's been strangely agitated since the moment the man walked in and now appears even more infuriated at the remark than him, a firm shake of the head that spells out "don't do anything stupid".

Ricky can handle it himself perfectly well.

"Am I? I'm not so sure, now that I'm here."

Dear Jesus (or whatever great deity had sculpted Ricky with their own two hands), thank you for endowing the boy with a deep ass voice to go along with that godly face, amen. He makes a mental note to keep an eye on Ricky later, though, just in case. He may not be close enough to the boy to know if words like that hurt him at all, but what he does know is that words chip away at more than the human eye can see most of the time, no matter how numb or immune one thinks they might be to the erosion.

So, as soon as the teacher reverts his attention to fiddling with his stand and papers, Hanbin turns his head to the back as discreetly as he can, but finds he is unable to meet Ricky's gaze because the boy's head is now hanging low, eyes fixed on where his fingers are fidgeting with his slacks. Damn that fucking bastard, whoever he may be. 

"So, I am aware that I happen to be a new face for most of you here," the man says, and Hanbin swears he can feel Gyuvin practically explode on silent beside him. "Well, allow me to introduce myself. I am Pastor Zhang of the newly formed church Paradise. You've probably heard of me before. I will be your Bible study instructor throughout the following week."

It takes all of Hanbin's willpower to not whip around in his chair and see Matthew's and Ricky's expressions at the revelation. He can probably do without them though, honestly- Gyuvin's chilling death glare is enough entertainment to last him a full month or two.

"Now, before we begin looking into today's lesson, I would like us all to introduce ourselves to each other, learn the names and all. You know as they say, teamwork makes the dream work!"

Oh, Matthew's definitely gagging somewhere behind him.

"I would like you all to bring your chairs to the front of the room and form a circle, so we can all see each other better and remember each other's faces, okay? Just hurry up; we haven't got much time on our hands."

"Yeah, 'cause you spawned what, like, twenty-five minutes late to an hour-long lesson?" Gyuvin mumbles under his nose as he heaves himself up to follow the command with the rest.

"He probably just got here."

"I don't care! I don't give a flying frick," Gyuvin hisses, slamming his chair a little too loudly onto the ground- no doubt on purpose. "How did he even get here!? This motherfricker-"

"Just say the word at this point."

"- he's insane! He's nuts, Hanbin! I see his face and I break out in a cold sweat remembering that entire freaking sermon from a decade ago!"

"Hey, the dude can't be that bad," Matthew whispers from behind them (how did he and Ricky even get there that fast?). "If they appointed him to teach, I mean...it's gotta mean something."

"Who do you mean by 'they'? This conservative freaking branch that makes people like him out to be heroes? They might as well insert his name in the Bible alongside David's with that kind of ideology! Did you hear the way he talked to Ricky literally off the bat!?"

"I'm fine though," Ricky says lamely. "It was just a joke."

"I didn't see you laughing though."

"I have no sense of humor, Gyuvin."

"What-"

The sound of obnoxiously loud clapping and overly guttural throat clearing interrupts Gyuvin and Ricky's bickering in an instant. Hanbin realizes much too belatedly that they have been standing quite within earshot of the bastard this entire time. "Well, now that that's done and we're all sitting down, let's start with the introductions, shall we? Starting from the boy to my left and ending with the boy to my right, begin!"

Just as it does every year, the introductions take a good long while and then some with the addition of five or six more students to the usual dozen or so. Hanbin zones out for most of them, only summoning his presence of mind for Gyuvin's and Matthew's to send them unsolicited telepathic support. Ricky and he are near the very end of the circle, and needless to say he is not looking forward to his turn. Unlike everyone else, he never seems to have anything of interest to say. It's not like he has any hobbies or passions, or anything. He doesn't actively hit the gym like Matthew, or play five sports like Gyuvin, nor is he capable of painting breathtaking portraits like Ricky or spend hours studying Japanese like Jiwoong. He just reads. And he's been doing it less and less in the past two years; after his mother finally decided to send him to school he'd had less time for it.

He just exists. Hates himself for existing. Continues to exist. Hates that he continues to. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

But then Ricky nudges him out of his self-deprecative reverie, and he realizes everyone's been waiting on him for a good half-minute while his head had been worlds away.

"Oh, um. I'm Sung Hanbin, I guess."

"You guess?" Matthew mouths incredulously. Gyuvin facepalms. 

"I've recently turned fifteen. I like to read." And think about boys- that way. And vape. And cut, and skip classes, and starve myself. "That's about it."

"I see," Mr. Zhang says, and that's that. As much as Hanbin dislikes the man already, at least he doesn't grill him to say more like every other instructor over the years has. 

Maybe he should have said more though- he forgot Ricky's going after him. 

"Next!"

Lord, please give the man an unforeseen bout of severe diarrhea this second so he'll call it a day and let us leave. For Ricky's sake.

Ricky appears perfectly unfazed though, like Ricky always does, and goes on to deliver his lines. "I'm Ricky Shen, fifteen. I like art and singing, and some other things. Usually I just like to sleep."

"Of course you do. Which dude with?" someone yells out, and everybody else laughs, because apparently that was meant to be funny. 

Ricky's mouth opens in surprise, then slowly shuts. His jaw juts out in that particular angle that screams a little more than annoyance, and Hanbin is this close to getting up out of his seat and calling it quits. He won't do it just yet though, not before he can get them all to shut their mouths and stop fucking laughing.

"Your name is?" His voice comes out louder than expected, and just a tad too sharp for his liking.

"Kim Taerae," the stranger answers, one thick eyebrow shooting up into his mop of dark hair as if in a dare to challenge him. Hanbin takes a second to study him first- the god-awful combination of tight, dark green jeans and an oversized red t-shirt, the thick round lenses perched almost unflatteringly high on his nose, his long fingers threading through his hair in a gesture that appears almost nervous.

"Well Taerae, I advise you to keep your mouth shut from now on if you've got nothing of true intellectual worth to contribute to commentary concerning your teammates."

Beside him, Ricky chokes on air, and now it's Taerae's turn to look surprised, though Hanbin isn't exactly sure why he would be. Had he planned this ahead with sure confidence that his behavior would be allowed to slide without any reprimand whatsoever? Although he may had, considering the Instructor indeed has yet to say anything on the matter. Why hasn't he said anything yet? Isn't he supposed to be berating Kim Taerae for such inappropriate remarks, teach a lesson on respect and decency like every good teacher and conscientious adult does?

Apparently not. Apparently, Taerae's not the one in need of that lesson at the moment.

"Sung Hanbin- I believe that is your name, correct?"

"Yes, that's me."

"You are aware that insulting your teammate the way you just did shows great impertinence and general lack of respect? This sort of behavior goes completely against what we are taught to portray as God's chosen ones. I'm sure you know Jesus would never have stooped that low."

"Would Jesus have said what Taerae said?"

At that, the class collectively "oooh"s, and for some stupid reason it only serves to irritate Hanbin further. Matthew notices it, overly familiar with that uncannily stony expression and what follows it by now. He shakes his head in warning, but it's too late. If there's anything Hanbin ever refuses to back down from, it's fighting tooth and claw for his friends, especially when their honor is at stake.

"Well, Hanbin, of course Jesus wouldn't have said what Taerae said. And Taerae was indeed wrong to say that. It was a very...immature joke. But Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek when we're being insulted, not to fight back. And especially not to talk to our friends like that- Matthew 5:22 says 'Whoever says 'you fool' shall be guilty enough to go into fiery hell.' I'm sure you've read that verse many, many times before."

By now, Ricky's nervously clutching at Hanbin's sleeve, the sharp dig of his nails into Hanbin's skin silently begging him to just forget it, just let it go. It's not worth all this: I'm not worth all this. But it is. He is.

Hanbin is fully aware that he's talking through his teeth now and that he's probably coming off as overly aggressive, but he cares about as much as his father does for him. "First of all, Taerae isn't my friend. I've had the great pleasure of being his acquaintance for a full five minutes at most. Second of all, you're putting words in my mouth. I never called him a fool. I never insulted him. He was the one who insulted my friend by making an inappropriate remark, but sure, it's my fault that you're an incompetent, bigoted coward with outdated ideals who only cares as long as it's someone who lives up to your unrealistic, fanatical standards. Okay, I see how it is."

There's a gasp or two, a whisper, and then there's silence. Grave silence.

It's the kind of silence that suffocates him, takes his lungs by the fragile muscle and yanks them out violently, only to stuff them up his throat and into his brain, filling it with poisoned black air until it's on the verge of combustion. Until he feels as if his mind is his body, and his body had never truly been real. All he can see is his father before him, screaming into his face with one hand fisted in his shirt and pulling it over his head with the force of it. That anger; that savage, blinding anger of a man directed at him and his soul because he just couldn't keep his mouth shut again. All the eyes on him, eating through his flesh like deadly parasites, reminding him he exists. 

He can feel the panic spread its spiked glass tentacles inside his chest, obstructing his airway and crawling up into his throat, slowly, slowly... Say something. Scream at me. Slap me, call me Satan. Anything to shatter the glass so he can breathe before he bleeds.

Nothing. And yet, there is everything he needed to hear, skillfully interwoven between those ten words, so even and composed.

"I would like you to leave the classroom for now."

So he does.

He puts on a show while he's at it, too. No one would be able to smell the blood on him if he walks with his head high and his shoulders wide, if his eyes are stone and his footsteps are swan's down. He may be killing himself on the inside, but on the outside he's the winner who takes it all, artificial as the facade may be.

The sun can see right through him, he's sure. The second he steps over the threshold, it hits him in the face as if in chastisement for his childish display of hubris- "you see yourself as God, don't you? Perhaps that's exactly why you hate Him. Doling out your unsolicited judgment on every man that dares go against you, thinking you did something. How pathetic, Hanbin. How utterly, disgustingly pathetic."

"Fuck you."

He feels slightly better after cursing the sun, though it continues to stubbornly hang in the sky, beating down on him with just as much force as it has a moment ago. It's just like him, he realizes- trying so hard to maintain its haughty appearance as if nothing happened and it wasn't just cursed to damnation. It makes him feel the tiniest bit bad, so he makes sure to whisper a humble "sorry" to it before he goes.

After all, the sun does much more good for the planet than he ever will.

He waits for a moment, just to make sure the chances of that panic attack that had threatened to make its appearance in the room happening are fully eliminated, then sets off towards the cabins.

He's not really sure what to do with his remaining fifteen minutes of free time. He'd already exhausted the last of his curiosity after walking aimless circles around the camp grounds during breakfast, and of course, he doesn't have the goddamn key. But wait... Who's to say the door's the only way to enter? He doubts the windows are built to open from the outside for this very reason, but it couldn't hurt to check. He has nothing but time to kill, anyway, and the results of his discovery might prove to be valuable throughout the week.

If he'd be asked about this in the future, he'd confess that he still doesn't know why he made a run for it that day. He blames...there's nothing and no one to blame except for himself, really, because when will he finally learn that nature has never been on his side and never will be? It's only ever fucked him over, and he should've known it wouldn't fail to do so now, all because he wanted to run instead of walking for once.

His ankle is the first to feel it, followed by his sides and finally, the tender meat of his palms. The rocks show no mercy, slashing through his skin with reckless abandon until the initial shock of the fall is overpowered by white-hot pain that his teeth gritting and his vision momentarily flashing black.

All that leaves his mouth is a weak whimper, but as he lies there, he imagines it's a scream. In his head, he screams and screams and screams, until his voice gives out and his throat is scraped raw, because everything keeps going wrong for him here. This week was supposed to be his getaway, his one attempt at paradise. It was supposed to be good.

So why?

If only he knew. He supposes there's no use in lying there, feeling sorry for himself and asking the universe pointless questions. Life goes on. What happened isn't even all that tragic. A bad day- every teenager has them. It's just that he's been having one too many lately. But who cares? The choice is up to him- he can continue to lie on the ground, wallowing neck-deep in his self-pity as his wounds fester; or he can suck it the fuck up and drag himself to the cabin so he can look at one of those papers Gyuvin had hung up this morning to see where he could find this year's camp nurse. It's not the pain or the thought of scarring that bothers him most; it's the fear of it getting infected. Lord knows he was in too much of a hurry to pack a first aid kit for himself before leaving.

But we digress- he picks himself back up like he always does and immediately hisses from the pain pulsing through his ankle when he puts the weight on it. Son of a bitch, this camp has been around for ages and the budget is far from small, so what the hell is stopping them from paving the fucking pathways? Asphalt wouldn't have hurt half as much.

He doesn't how much time he spent hobbling down the last two paths leading up to Cabin 009- "hobble" being a strong word- but he manages to reach it without dissolving in tears from the pain in the end. It even takes him a minute or two faster than he expected it to take with his injured leg, which honestly surprises him. He didn't think he has it in him.

What Hanbin definitely doesn't have in him at the moment, though, is climbing through that goddamn window in his current state. Luckily for him, it turns out they do indeed open from the outside. But as he stands there, looking up at them, he realizes he didn't take into consideration just how high they are from the ground. He might have been able to jump and heave himself up in three tries on a good day, but there's simply no way that's happening now when his ankle feels like it's hanging on to the rest of his leg by a measly thread of tendons, bone, and damaged muscle.

Impossible or not, he'll be damned if he doesn't try. And if his ankle decides it's had enough and falls off midway through the process, so be it. He'll throw all the blame onto Pastor Zhang for kicking him out of class in the first place, if that's what it comes to.

But maybe, just maybe, the planet momentarily felt something akin to a semblance of guilt at the cruel joke it had played on him, because the second he's about to raise his throbbing ankle off the ground, he notices it.

The door is open.

Not by much- only by a sliver, but it's open. A million thoughts flash through Hanbin's head at once along with the initial shock and relief- why would it even be open? Matthew, having been appointed as this year's token key-bearer of the cabin, had been the last one out the door for breakfast- had he forgotten to shut it, much less lock? It could be any of them- maybe they used a different, faster route to get there? Jiwoong is the only one besides Matthew who has access to a key; maybe he'd left his lesson to retrieve something he'd left in the cabin, as un-Jiwoong-like as that would be.

Whatever the case may be, Hanbin's got to hurry. He estimates there are less than ten minutes left until the next point- club activities. He'd heard one of the options is book-binding; he has a diary he desperately needs to camoflauge, so he won't be missing out on that for the world. He's got to find that nurse and get her to slap a couple bandages on him, at least, though after giving his injuries a brief overlook once more, he has the sinking feeling it'll have to take more than that. Oh, well. He could always attempt to get the club to take him in tomorrow, if so.

He puts his ear to the open crack of the door and listens for a good half-minute, just in case, but hears nothing except for the fluttering of the curtains. Matthew really must have forgotten to shut that door. Must've been the sleep deprivation.

Well, here goes nothing.

Hanbin slowly pushes the door open with his elbows, peeking into the hallway in advance as he does. To his relief, there doesn't appear to be a single soul in sight. The lights are off in the bathroom, too, so that's out of the question. Granted, there's still the bedroom down the hall, which was conveniently built to be out of sight of the entrance. But again, it's simply too quiet for someone to actually be there unless they're sleeping- which, logically, nobody could have had the time to achieve if you do the math.

So, because there's nothing else left to do, he hobbles down the hallway towards the corner rounding into his final destination- the bedroom. He almost (almost!) trips over one of Gyuvin's stray socks as he does so (how Gyuvin's socks made it so far down the hallway he has no idea), but manages to catch himself just in time. The last thing he needs right now is two sprained ankles. 

One step, two steps, five- and there it is, The Paper. It's taped up right next to the schedule, on the part of the wall adjacent to the hallway, facing towards his and Matthew's bunks and Gyuvin's bed, away from Jiwoong and Ricky's bunk and the empty bed- now the stranger's. It's in the perfect location, meaning he can see enough of it if he cranes his head around the hallway corner just so, and actually entering the room won't be necessary. But he takes an extra step or two further into the room anyway, not willing to take the chance of his legs giving out in such a precarious position.

The Instructors, the cooks, the night guards...the cleaners, the counselors...ah there it is, at the very bottom of the list. The nurse.

The bracket next to it, however, appears to be empty. Not exactly empty, per se, but the name written in it was scribbled over with black sharpie, which can only mean one thing- the appointed nurse isn't on camp grounds. Hanbin groans quietly; just his luck, for something like this to happen. Forget it, he'll just wash it all with hand soap for now and hope for the best.

He's about to turn around and leave for the bathroom when he notices something written above the sharpie-scribbled line in microscopic cursive- a name. Hallelujah! Whoever was originally appointed to be the camp's nurse was replaced for whatever reason, meaning Hanbin can finally get his injuries treated and go on his way like he'd wanted. He does a double take on the name, frowning when he realizes he can't even begin to make out the first three letters, much less read the thing. And Mom says my penmanship is as bad as it gets.

He tries a third time.

He tries a fourth, and a fifth, and then...

Creaaaak...

Hanbin freezes.

Fuck. 

The wind. It must've been the wind that made the bed behind him creak the way it just did; he'd left the window open before coming inside, after all. There's no other plausible explanation.

But then he stands even more still, listens even closer, and decides the wind doesn't breathe. Not quite like that.

Hanbin isn't sure if time does a drastic slow down or speeds up dramatically as he turns around. Maybe both, maybe neither. And maybe, he thinks when his eyes land on the source of the noise, time had never even existed at all. 

He's never seen anything like him, in a world where a spirit as evil as time reigns over the human fate. He asks himself if he might still be dreaming; if he's reached a point in his nightmares where there couldn't be any more blood and his world couldn't get any darker. If this is where his dreams take a turning point; the cataclysm in his imagination he's been aching for, the one that magically bridges Hellfire and Paradise in a world where he could never achieve the latter if he tried.

Tangled locks the color of the trees in winter, barren and vulnerable; thick, rosy lips and slender, tanned hands; a long, delicate neck and the gracious slope of an aquiline nose and strong, dark eyebrows. Eyes- chocolate and warm and so, so gentle, sinking straight into his until he can no longer take the beautiful absence of storm in them, forced to turn away.

"You're bleeding all over the carpet," it tells him softly, uncrossing its legs.

"I know," Hanbin says. He didn't, really. He's noticing only now.

"Do you need-"

"I'm looking for the nurse," he blurts out, panicked beyond reasoning. This wasn't part of the plan. He's supposed to be with Jiwoong. Why the fuck isn't he with Jiwoong? "I, um, couldn't read the name up on that paper. I'll try asking around. You can have the cabin to yourself now. Sorry for bothering you. I'll be going now. Okay. Bye."

"You must not have been informed, then," the voice says, and somehow it's even softer now than it was a moment ago. Hanbin wants nothing more than to run as far as his legs could bear to take him. "I am the camp's nurse this year. You are at the exact place you need to be, Hanbin."

Hanbin...Hanbin...Hanbin...Say it like that again. Please. Say it like that ten more times, fifty, a hundred. "Where...how do you know my name?"

"Your friend Jiwoong told me about everyone. I've met Matthew, and you don't look like a Gyuvin or Ricky."

"Oh."

"I'm Zhang Hao."

"I know."

"I know you know. I just don't know what else to say."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Hanbin watches him as he inches over to the edge of his bed and reaches under it with one hand, appearing to look for something.  He's rather quick with it, protruding a bright red First Aid box after only a couple seconds of blind searching. "Do you think you could make it to my bed so I can treat you?"

I've walked the whole way here myself with this fucked up ankle, Hanbin wants to tell him. I was even planning to climb through the window so I can fall flat on my stomach again and get my second ankle shattered; but no, I don't think I can make the ten steps to your bed. Something about the way Zhang Hao is looking at him though makes Hanbin regret even thinking about being sarcastic with him. "Sure."

"Hm. I don't doubt it. But I don't want you to put any more pressure on that than you have to, so go sit on your bed and I'll get over to you in a moment. It's closer to you than mine is."

Hanbin doesn't understand what the point of the question even was then, but obeys nevertheless, too tired to argue. Now that he's completely given up his hurry, the pain seems to flare up twice as strong and he can no longer restrain the sharp gasp of pain that leaves his mouth as he sits down.

Hao immediately looks over at him from across the room where he's disinfecting his hands, eyes wide. "Does it hurt badly?"

There's so much concern, so much compassion in the boy's voice that it makes Hanbin ache. He's overwhelmed, still reeling both from the shock of the fall and Hao's unforeseen presence in the room, and now he's being cared for by the same boy whose existence he's so viciously loathed without even knowing him up until this moment. It doesn't feel the same as being patched up by a nurse; there's none of that methodic, practiced professionalism focused solely on getting the job done and sending the patient on their way as soon as physically possible. It's care- just genuine, authentic care, and he doesn't know how to feel about it. How should he, when the word has been such an alien concept to him ever since he could remember?

One thing Hanbin does know for certain when Hao approaches his bed and kneels before him, his open first aid kit balanced in one hand, is that he still cannot make himself look into Hao's eyes. And now that the boy is so close that Hanbin could reach out and touch him if he wanted to, he isn't sure he can look at any of him at all. He hopes Hao doesn't take notice and potentially misunderstand.

"Is there anywhere else you're hurt? Besides your hands and ankle?"

"No," Hanbin lies through his teeth, because he's not sure he could handle him touching his hands without wilting at the speed of a mimosa pudica, much less anywhere else. His ribs ache with a piercing pain every time he takes a deep breath, and he's positive his sides are bruised a nasty black, but he'd take biting his tongue and toughing it out over feeling any closer to breaking down in a stranger's arms than he is right now any day.

Hao glances up at him like he doesn't quite believe him but lets it go and reaches for the cotton pads and alcohol peroxide beside him. "I'll start with your hands first, okay? Technically, I'm not supposed to use alcohol on scrape wounds of this degree as it can irritate the tissue. Cleaning it with soap is better, but the bathroom's pretty far from here and you appear to be in pain when you walk, so it'll do. I'll warn you in advance though- it will sting. Let me know if you need a break."

Hanbin says nothing, internally marveling both at the boy's soft and eloquent way of speaking and his apparent knowledge in this area. Knowing proper first aid isn't that impressive of a feat if a feat at all, but Hao somehow makes it sound like it is. 

Hao sets to work, dousing the cotton pads generously with peroxide and fishing out some fancy antiseptic solution from his box, completely silent as he does so. It unnerves Hanbin for some reason; granted, he himself is far from being the most talkative person on the planet and sometimes he just needs to be alone, but he's also not an introvert nor shy. Not initiating a conversation where there is time and space for one, even with a person he isn't all that keen on getting to know, just feels wrong to him.

So, he takes the initiative. 

"How come you're into medicine?"

"Huh? Oh. It's fun, I guess."

"I see. Does anyone in your family practice by any chance?"

"My mom," he mutters, beginning to swipe the pad carefully against the scraped skin. It stings like a bitch, but Hanbin is nothing if not used to it. 

"Is she a doctor?"

"Nurse."

Okay, so he isn't going to be making this easy. Maybe Hanbin should just take the hint and fuck off; he was the one who had interrupted Hao's peace and quiet, after all. Hao doesn't seem to be in the headspace to talk, or maybe he's just innately quiet and a bit terse with his sentences like Ricky. Whatever it is, he obviously doesn't want to talk to Hanbin, so Hanbin resorts to silence.

He lets his eyes roam the room as the sting penetrates further into his skin, intent on focusing on anything but the tenderness of Hao's hands against his. Nobody's touched him quite like this in a while, and though it's exactly the kind of gentle touch his skin and heart have been starving for far too long, he can't accept it from a stranger. He fears what might befall him if he does.

His gaze falls to the bed where he'd first found the boy sitting, on which he only now notices the Bible lying face up on the blankets, surrounded by half a dozen gel pens of various colors. Upon looking a bit closer he can clearly make out verses upon verses highlighted in either pink or yellow, little annotations above certain lines, notes scribbled rather haphazardly in the margins and what must be close to a hundred mini sticky-notes bookmarking random pages. Dedication. He's everything Hanbin's father has ever wanted him to be, the kind of person Hanbin would rather tear apart than entrust with his heart.

"Do you truly enjoy reading that?"

Hao startles at the sound of his voice, catching himself in time before looking up at Hanbin in inquiry. "Huh?"

And Hanbin- Hanbin forgot how close Hao is standing. He shouldn't have turned his head as fast as he did. For a second, he forgets how to breathe.

God, but he hates those eyes with a burning passion. One look into them is enough to cast a curse on him- the kind that nobody's ever succeeded casting on him before. They seem to disarm him of every remaining drop of his anger, the one feeling he needs so desperately in order to survive, the one thing he clings onto like it's his last breath because he has nothing else to call his own.

They're supposed to have the opposite effect on him, if anything- in those eyes lie the depth and warmth and goodness he knows deep down his own are so visibly devoid of. It doesn't matter if Hanbin's only known him for the better part of ten minutes; Hao's eyes hold everything Hanbin's were ever supposed to, and probably never will.

"Enjoy reading what?" Hao repeats, and Hanbin jolts back to reality, instantly averting his gaze elsewhere.

"Your Bible. It looks like something you love." He's staring at the bed again, determined not to catch Hao's eyes a second time, but the slight shift in their light at the question is palpable nevertheless.

"I have to."

"Have to? Says who?"

Hao doesn't reply as he reaches for the gauze beside him, but Hanbin doesn't need an answer anyway. He's met Hao's father already.

Hao proceeds to bandage his hands with the same unwavering level of gentleness, while Hanbin fights every last impulse to look at him again, knowing he won't be able to tear his eyes away until he gets the answer he needs. It's been a bad habit of his ever since he'd gained consciousness of the world as a child- looking into the eyes for the answer, rather than demanding the words. Eyes, he finds, always tell you everything you'll ever need to know about someone. Eyes disclose age-old lies, reveal carefully hidden truths buried so painstakingly deep into one's soul, send silent warnings and break down ancient walls of stone. A mouth can lie; eyes never will.

Maybe that's why his mother always avoids his gaze when she says she's happy with her life and doesn't regret marrying his father. It's also the reason why Hao's eyes won't meet his after the mention of The Book. He's a liar, Hanbin realizes; a bigger one than all the five of them combined. It intrigues him to no end, yet begs him to stay put and watch his tread at the same time.

Neither of them say another word throughout the rest of the procedure, and Hanbin finds he's rather comfortable with that after his last try at breaking the ice. Try as he might to resist it, the softness of Hao's touch against his bruised and broken skin flooded him with a long-needed sense of comfort and security, leading him to completely forget about the events prior and the unpleasant consequences no doubt awaiting him. All that exists, as Hao's fingers exert their healing powers on his injuries with nimble expertise, are the four wooden walls that enclose them and the wonders inside.

As Hao moves on to his ankle, Hanbin stares at the white curtains on the window, marveling at the sunlight streaming through the gaps in broken lines of golden light much as he used to do as a child. He watches the wind gallantly offer them its hand for a playful dance, twirling them around in a chaotic waltz to the sound of another fleeting, infinitesimal summer.

At one moment, for but an ephemeral second, the sunlight breaks through their billowy whiteness just far enough to reach the boy at his knees and bathe him in an ethereal canopy of light, setting his hair ablaze in a perfect halo. It strikes Hanbin as something magical, renders him speechless further.

When, inevitably, Hao raises his head to look at Hanbin once more at the end of it all, his eyes catch the last remnants of sunlight and glow, every lie and deadly secret in them a fleck of gemstone. They pierce their way right through Hanbin's unreadable, acerbic ones; those eyes that refuse to steal the sun's sparkle lest it makes them beautiful, lest someone looks into them a second too long and desires to ask for the key to his heart, the one he's lost so many years ago and no longer knows where to find.

This time, he is unable to look away. Somewhere deep inside his withering bones, his heart whispers to him ever so softly; and for the first time in years, he listens.

Cursed. Cursed. Cursed...

He doesn't know it yet, and won't know it for another long, torturous two years; but the moment he'd made the mistake of looking into Zhang Hao's eyes that second time was the moment his soul was bound and sold to the fallen angels, never to belong to him again.

Chapter Text

Hanbin has always been far too quick to jump to conclusions.

He wants to hate himself for it, as he does for everything else, but there's not much he can do when the habit has been ingrained in his subconscious ever since the first time he'd made a mistake. For him, it is a means of survival; the way to dodge the bullet before the trigger is even pulled.

Ninety-seven, maybe even ninety-eight times out of a hundred, it saves him. But once in a blue moon, like every man-made strategy, it will backfire on him. He'll assume the worst about something, or someone, only to turn out to be wrong- so wrong he'll wonder if the real Sung Hanbin died and was reincarnated into a new, upgraded version with infinitely better luck.

He ponders this as he heads back to his cabin from swimming hour, his towel-clad campmates laughing and dripping water all over the gravel behind him. Hanbin hadn't joined them this year- nor the last, or the one before that. He could have taken Jiwoong's example and gone in with a long-sleeved shirt and pants, but he doesn't care much for the questions, and cares even less for the inevitable presumptuous mocking from his peers about "trying too hard to be modest". He'd rather they just assume the truth at that point.

But what he does care for is the fact that this week, unlike he'd initially assumed, is slowly starting to take a turn for the better. It had started with the tentative curiosity in Ricky's eyes when Zhang Hao had returned to the cabin after replacing Jiwoong with the teaching (because apparently that's how they'd divided the task between themselves). Then it was seeing his friends' expressions, tense as a result of the disastrous Bible study they'd just returned from, slowly ease into those of comfort after Hao introduced himself. Hanbin could instantly tell they approved of him- especially Ricky, whose eyes lit up brighter than Hanbin had ever seen them the moment Hao asked him something in rapid-fire Mandarin. Hanbin couldn't keep the smile off his face as he'd watched them go back and forth, Ricky's expressions getting more and more animated by the second, relishing the sight despite understanding barely half of it. Jiwoong had sported a rare grin, Matthew had stared at the two in silent wonder, while Gyuvin's mouth was open so wide Hanbin wished for the nth time he owned a phone so he could take a photo for future blackmail material. Once again though, he couldn't blame him- none of them had ever heard Ricky say so much in one sitting to anyone.

The good mood had held up throughout the remainder of their hour of free time; to Hanbin's relief and insurmountable surprise, none of his friends had mentioned anything about his showdown with Mr. Zhang or even so much as gave a sign they'd been there at all- with the exception of Gyuvin, who'd kept sending questioning glances Hanbin's way, having seen this side of him for the first time since the three months in which they've known each other. Hanbin had pointedly ignored each one in favor of closing his eyes and drifting off for a solid half hour.

The peaceful atmosphere had carried on to the following hour at the pool- the girls had taken the river for the first day. Hanbin had been more than content to sit on a chair near the edge and watch his friends enjoy themselves in the water, brandishing his injuries as an excuse to clock out of joining the activity. Gyuvin had started to argue the second Hanbin's mouth had opened to say "no", but Hao was quick to shut him down, pointing to Hanbin's bandages- which it turned out, interestingly enough, none of his friends had even noticed prior. As soon as Hao had pointed it out though, they'd circled him like a wake of concerned vultures (do vultures even feel concern for their own? Hanbin doesn't know), but he'd waved them off, refusing to talk about it and shooing them off towards the pool instead.

The first half-hour had flown by, spent watching his friends perform all sorts of foolish stunts and shenanigans in the water, with Hao a tense ball of nerves in the chair by his side. He'd firmly refused to climb into the water along with the rest, clutching his first aid kit to his chest while insisting that injuries during the boys' swimming hour at the pool were just as inevitable an occurrence as injuries in the river, and someone might be in dire need of his help at some point. Secretly, Hanbin had felt elated to have him at his side, even if there was nothing between them but awkward silence and far too much distance, but he did think Hao's claims were just the tiniest bit too exaggerated to be anywhere near the true reason for his resistance.

He was forced to feel conflicted about that thought mere minutes later though, when a sharp gasp of pain had sounded from the opposite side of the pool. Hanbin had raised his head at the sound, trying to pinpoint its origin, only to find Hao already halfway out of his seat on the way to help the crouched boy by the pool's staircase, like a robot that had been programmed to act for this very situation.

It was Kim Taerae, Hanbin had realized upon doing a double take. He'd smiled. From what he could gauge by the picture in front of him, the boy had left the pool for whatever reason and then attempted to go back in using the stairs instead of diving in like everybody else. Somehow, he'd ended up slipping, gashing his left calf right across one of the knife-sharp edges of the metal steps, which resulted in a rather nasty, deep-looking cut that had started painting the water red within seconds.

Hao, having been prepared for a situation like this, was quick to carry out his ministrations, dragging a bloodied, angry-looking Taerae to their side of the pool and promptly sitting him down on the chair beside Hanbin's before getting to work. Hanbin had watched the entire process, hating with every cell in his body the way Taerae's reaction to the pain was almost identical to his own earlier that morning. All that had come out of his mouth in response to the injury had been that first surprised gasp of pain; all that had come after that was tensed muscles and blank eyes and tightly clenched teeth hidden by a working jaw. Hanbin had wondered, albeit involuntarily, if Taerae was just trying his best to "take it like a man" or if it was survival instinct, the same kind of default response to pain as Hanbin's been forced to deflect to his whole life.

Ten peroxide-soaked cotton pads, one whole roll of gauze, and two ice packs later, Hao had pronounced the job done, and then there were three of them sitting in the chairs by the pool instead of two. Hanbin wishes so badly he could have felt glee from seeing Taerae's dejected face as the boy had watched his friends have the time of their lives in the water without him, but suddenly he just didn't have the heart to. Throughout the following thirty minutes, Ricky had swum up to the edge at least three times to talk to Hao, and with every time Taerae's expression had grown increasingly more and more guilty as he avoided Ricky's eyes. By the third time, it had exploded into a full-on frown, but Hanbin couldn't have cared less. He had been more than content to sit back and observe his friend and gorgeous new acquaintance conversing with each other under the light of the summer sun, especially when it made the rare sparkle in Ricky's eyes that much more pronounced.

By the time the hour was up, however, they had faced a problem. Or, more specifically, only Taerae had faced a problem, because the moment they'd been told the van wouldn't be coming to drive them back to their cabins in favor of picking up the girls who were farther away from camp grounds and they'd have to make the walk on their own, Matthew and Jiwoong had wordlessly appeared at Hanbin's side, wrapping his arms around their shoulders in support. If there is one thing Hanbin's ever gotten lucky with, it had been his friends; Taerae, however, hadn't fared in that area of life quite so well, it seemed. His friends had patted him on the shoulder one by one before sparing him a couple pitying glances and running off towards the front of the line, leaving him limping and very obviously miserable as he'd tried his best to keep up with the rest of his peers and failed. Hao had left early after getting what had seemed like an urgent phone call from his father, leaving his only other viable option of help out of the question. Hanbin, being near the end of the line himself, had noticed Taerae struggle and he knew Ricky and Gyuvin had too, but he hadn't been about to go out of his way to help someone who'd offended his friend and refused to apologize. One look at Gyuvin's smug smirk and Hanbin knew he wouldn't be helping either. After all, who are they to contradict karma when it had executed its role impeccably?

It had been at that moment that Hanbin was hit with a painful reminder that he doesn't know Ricky quite as well as he wishes to. Ricky's heart has always been as unpredictable as rain in autumn, hidden away so deep that whoever dares go on a quest to obtain it might just get stuck and never make it back out, but it's a heart that has never once seen the rot of spite. Taerae didn't deserve its grace; he'd never deserved that first step Ricky took in his direction. He didn't deserve the last either, nor the hand that wrapped around his shoulders and under his arm for support, and he knew it. His eyes had widened in fear at the first step Ricky had taken towards him, and by the third he'd frozen in place, his head fallen to his chest in defeat.

Hanbin had been close enough to see Taerae flinch when Ricky had raised his arm, but just far enough that he'd been unable to make out the words that Ricky had whispered to him to finally get him moving. Whatever they had been, Hanbin could have sworn they'd made Taerae's eyes appear suspiciously red, even if only for a few seconds.

And now, beside him, Gyuvin seethes. It's a quiet anger, but far from a misplaced one. It grows infinitely hotter and becomes a tangible presence between them when Ricky goes one block further to help Taerae to his dorm "just in case." He looks just about ready to kill, and Hanbin understands. 

He predicts Gyuvin's breaking point to make an appearance in the next ten minutes at the very least, and is awarded with validation the second the door shuts exactly ten minutes after their arrival in the cabin, revealing a still shirtless, now shivering Ricky.

Gyuvin is instantly out of his seat, mouth running before his mind can keep up after it. "What on earth were you thinking helping that bastard? He could have easily made the walk on his own! He got what he deserved anyway so why the hell do you even care about him?"

Ricky only levels him with a steady, calm stare, his voice none the louder. "You're right, he got what he deserved. So? Does that mean that I should now stoop to his level and treat another human being like shit just because I can?"

Gyuvin flounders, having suddenly lost a noticeable amount of confidence at Ricky's unexpected response. "But- he insulted you! He had the whole class making fun of you for- for-"

"We've known each other for a day, Gyuvin. I'm afraid we are not close enough for you to be deciding how I should feel and react in certain situations. Keep your nose out of things that aren't your business from now on."

It had come out too sharp, far sharper than Ricky had intended it to- that much is obvious by the pained look of guilt on his face the second the words leave him. But that does little to stop its effect on Gyuvin, whose irate eyes momentarily go blank like a chalkboard cleaned in one swipe as he backs away. He slowly heads to his bunk without saying another word, and all Ricky can do is stand there and watch helplessly, mouth opening as if to say something, then shutting again. Well, fuck.

"Ouch," Matthew whispers beside his place at Hanbin's feet. "I've seen this one before. Gyuvin just shutting down like that means shit's really gotten to him."

Matthew turns out to be right. Gyuvin doesn't say a single word to any of them throughout the rest of the day.

And, like Hanbin had initially hoped for so badly, Hao doesn't appear in the cabin until nightfall. It's louder without him, a little less awkward.

But now, Hanbin finds he doesn't quite know how to feel about that.

-

The world is colored yellow and pink.

That never happens in their house. Not anymore; not since Doyoung left.

But he's there now, sitting on the couch right across from him and smiling like he's never abandoned them. Hanbin looks closer at the book in his hands- 'The Picture Of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde. He's never seen that book in their house before, and he's sure their mother hasn't either.

Wherever it may have come from, it brought magic to the home along with it. Doyoung radiates sunlight from where he sits, the pink mist rising from the pages enveloping him in a cloud of something soft and fragile, something that Hanbin could reach out and touch if he wanted to, but knows that he can't. He doesn't know how he knows, but he does. If he touches that cloud, Doyoung will leave again and never come back.

Hours pass and the world spins, and Doyoung never once moves from his seat as he reads. Sometimes, he'll smile at Hanbin and ruffle his hair like he used to do before he left. Hanbin smiles back.

But with each hour, the cloud dissipates around him further, until there's nothing left of it hours later but a thin, transparent film of color. Doyoung is no longer smiling.

Hanbin doesn't know where Kim Yerim comes from, or how she came about to be holding Doyoung's hand, but he assumes she was an illusion created by the book in Doyoung's lap. She's there, the angel sent by Satan to take Doyoung away from this cursed home, never to return. She's smiling, and now Doyoung is too, and Hanbin's heart falls to his stomach, because he knows all too well what's coming next.

Hanbin blinks his eyes, and Doyoung is gone.

He blinks again, and the world around him goes black. Somewhere in the distance, his mother screams bloody murder over his diary and his father keeps quoting Matthew 25:41 faster and faster until the words are nothing but a feverish jumble of incoherent wailing. Somewhere behind him, Hana weeps and Yujin is clutching onto the hem of his shirt and refusing to let go, begging him to do something as the world rotates on its axis at an impossible speed and takes them all with it. He feels hands in his hair, something wet and viscous streaming from his ears in rivers, feels the blood drown him until he can no longer breathe, but when he looks down, there is nothing. There was never any blood.

The world stops.

Hanbin is back on the living room couch, but this time, Doyoung isn't beside him. The room is no longer pink and yellow, but rather, there is no color at all. It's all black and white, and it's slowly closing in on him, but he can't run because there isn't anywhere to run to, now that his refuge has crumbled in favor of its own happiness. All that surrounds him now is silence- a silence so raucous and heavy he breathes it in and chokes on its bitter taste as it wreaks havoc on his lungs, and he knows deep inside that he is dying a slow death, but he can't stop breathing.

He can't stop breathing, he can't stop breathing, he can't stop fucking breathing-

"No...."

Click.

And then it all just...stops.

Somewhere in Hanbin's field of vision, the numbers 3:42 bounce around in a flash across the room as he desperately gasps for air, tries to push the last of that ugly, fatal silence as far down his brain as it could go. He's awake. It's not real; it never was, no matter how many times he could have sworn he'd felt the phantom tug of Yujin's little hands or the sensation of all his old scars reopening at once to kill him. This isn't the first time he's had this dream, and he knows full and well that it won't be the last, but in the end he will always awaken.

It's not real, so he needs to shut the fuck up before he wakes someone, and go back to sleep. Or try to pretend like he will, at the very least. He can't afford having someone see him like this and bombard him with unwanted questions he'll never give the answers to, anyway.

But alas, his urinary system appears to have different ideas in mind.

He tries his best to hold off on the urge for longer, but in the end, he loses the war to nature and is left with no choice but to force himself out of the warmth out of his blankets and trudge towards the bathroom.

He doesn't make it very far before he realizes that something in the room is horribly off. The bed nearest to the hallway is empty.

Hao's bed.

Click.

That noise. It had never been a part of his dream, in the end. Now that he thinks about it, the sound was far too reminiscent of the noise of that of the front door shutting behind someone. It has to be; the bathroom door is probably out of the question, as there is no light coming out from under it and no noise coming from behind it. That leaves only one viable option- for some unknown reason, Hao had sneaked out of the building in the dead of night, and the sound of the door shutting was what had woken Hanbin from his nightmare.

An unpleasant chill spreads up Hanbin's arms and down his spine at the realization. What the hell kind of urgent business could Hao possibly have at this time of night that would require him to leave the cabin? Hanbin refuses to believe he wakes up at this time; no normal human being does, and there's still a little over two hours before the Instructors' Prayer Hour. And besides, he has a strong premonition he just can't seem to shake about this having to do with that strange phone call at the pool, after which Hao had mysteriously vanished and not reappeared at the cabin again before lights out.

Maybe Hanbin should risk it and slip outside, just to check. Just in case. But first, the bathroom.

He goes in and finishes his business, about to head to the sink to wash his hands when, for the second time that night, he is forced to stop dead in his tracks.

Voices.

They're soft to the point of being nearly inaudible, but the lull is loud enough for him to be able to pick up a few stray phrases the contents of which only serve to peak his interest further.

"Have to talk about this...asleep...will listen to me or...no, sit....quiet, lights still on."

It grows progressively louder by the second before it comes to an abrupt stop. Hanbin's eyes dart to the open window right above the toilet, pinpointing it as the conduit for the noise. He stands there for a moment, hands folded as he weighs his options before deciding to screw it all and allow his curiosity to take over once again. It's not like he would have been able to go back to sleep, anyway.

So he proceeds to wash his hands, after which he tiptoes towards the light switch and flips it off, plunging the room into total darkness. Then he opens the door and closes it again- that way whoever's outside will think he's really left.

He'll chastise himself for his nosiness later, once his mind clears up from the whole fever dream this night has been so far; right now he has nothing better to do and nothing more to lose, so he crawls back to the toilet and hoists himself up onto the closed lid, which positions him right under the open window and should enable him to hear the conversation clearly.

He's ninety-nine percent sure that one of the voices he'd heard has been Hao's. Otherwise, he wouldn't have ever gone to such lengths to overhear someone else's conversation.

Silence reigns for a few more seconds before someone finally speaks again. This time, every word is perfectly crisp and clear.

"I think they're gone now."

Hao. So he was right after all.

"Great. Now, you two will sit down and listen to what I have to say very carefully, understand?" 

Hanbin doesn't know what unsettles him more- hearing Pastor Zhang's voice again or the mention of someone else being there with Hao. He fights the urge to get up on his tiptoes and peek out the window with every last ounce of willpower in him.

"We're listening." That voice Hanbin doesn't recognize at all, but it's probably for the best.

"Thank you, Kuanjui. I apologize for asking you to meet at this time of night, but it is the only time I am fully available for this kind of conversation."

"Oh, god. What did we wrong this time?"

"Don't 'oh god' me, Chen. I am your elder and you will treat me with respect, as you will God. And don't worry, you haven't done anything wrong yet. Hao here, on the other hand, has."

A moment of quiet ensues, in which the man obviously expects a verbal reaction from his son but instead is met with nothing but silence. It seems to aggravate him immensely, if his tone of voice when he speaks again is anything to go by.

"You don't want to talk to me, don't. No one's forcing you to. But you will at least have the manners to look at me when I'm speaking, understand?"

"I don't get it, Mr. Zhang. Whatever did Hao do now?"

"That is none of your business, Kuanjui. I am speaking to my son at the moment; you will sit back and remain quiet until I am addressing you."

"He's not answering you though."

"Chen Kuanjui."

"I apologize?"

"Thank you. Now, Hao. I want you to be the one to think about what you did wrong and tell me."

"I don't know. I truly don't know, Father." His voice is quiet, frayed at the edges with defeat.

Somewhere inside Hanbin's heart, a wire stutters and burns.

"Yes, you do. Don't play dumb on me now. You know you're not."

"But I didn't do anything wrong," Hao insists, voice steadily rising in volume out of agitation. "I've been everywhere I'm supposed to be. I haven't skipped a single service or prayer. I'm helping Kim Jiwoong with all his classes. I've been reading my Bible and I've been helping people and I've been good, Father. What problem could there possibly be now?"

"Problem? You're asking me what the problem is, now? The problem, Hao, is that you're living in the same cabin with people that I don't know. You were supposed to be rooming with the rest of your churchmates. Kuanjui, Taerae, Harua, Sohee, Hyun- why on earth are you not with them? Do you even know who you're living with, Hao? Do you have any idea?"

"I wasn't the one who decided to be put there!" Hao retorts, sounding suspiciously close to tears. Stupid, Hanbin thinks. Doesn't he know that trying to defend yourself against one of them never works? It's either keep your mouth shut or beat them at their own game. "The staff was in charge of that decision. It was the only arrangement available because we registered our names too late. There wasn't any space in Rui's cabin left for me."

"I asked you a question. I repeat, do you know who you're rooming with?"

"Yes! Kim Jiwoong, Sung Hanbin, Seok Matthew, Ricky Shen, Kim Gyuvin. They're all great kids, they're thoughtful and they're nice and well-mannered. And they need me there. One of them has injured himself badly just last morning and was in need of medical assistance. If I hadn't been there at that moment he wouldn't have been able to find me for a while."

"I couldn't have cared less, Hao. Those boys are not what you think they are. I've heard rumors from your fellow instructors. One's left the church we used to attend way too late, one's most definitely a junkie, the Shen kid dresses queer, Hanmin is messed up in the head-"

"Hanbin. His name is Hanbin, and there is nothing wrong with him. He was the one that I treated last morning, so I would know. I don't understand why you just believe all this- all this-"

"People don't talk without reason. Now, listen to me. I don't care if you want to or not; you're leaving tomorrow. I've made arrangements with Sohee's father to come pick you and the other kids up. I'll be needing the van for myself."

"Mr. Zhang-" Kuanjui starts, appalled, but doesn't get very far before he gets cut off by Hao.

"Fine, alright. I knew this was going to happen sooner or later anyway. Send me back, I don't care, but what did the others do to deserve this? They've been looking forward to this all year. This is their first time ever getting out of Paradise. Don't do this to them. What do you get out of it if they stay?"

"Oh, I get nothing out of it, trust me. You think it wouldn't be easier on me to keep them here? You think I want all this trouble? I'm doing this for them and them only. I contacted their parents and Taerae's grandmother and told them about how dangerous this environment is for young teenagers like you who are still growing in their faith. They all agreed immediately that their children should return home as soon as possible. These congregations aren't like the ones back home in Paradise, boys; they've fallen prey to false teachings and spiritual leniency and the fruit of it is evident. I cannot permit myself to risk your spiritual wellbeing like this and having to answer for it before the Lord when I die."

All that follows is a crushing silence that has Hanbin's stomach churning violently for a reason he can't quite explain. Gyuvin really hadn't been kidding when he'd said Zhang's fanaticism is a cut above the rest. There's a sour taste in his mouth when he imagines what all Hao must have had to go through as a child, and for once he thinks of the day his own father had left them with a lightness in his chest.

He doesn't expect Hao to speak up again, nor does he expect his own name to be the reason.

"What about Hanbin?"

"What about him?"

"He's hurt. Taerae still has me, but that kid might have no one to take care of his injuries once I'm gone. Who knows how long it'll take them to find a new nurse to replace me? They've only just found the replacement for the one that's left, and now I'm leaving too. I'm letting everyone down again. And Jiwoong...he can't carry such a big group all alone."

"I don't care, Hao, you hear that? I. Don't. Care. They'll live. What I care about is you and your relationship with God. Everyone else isn't important to me. Those kids are trouble, Sung Hanbin especially. I'm his teacher. I've seen more of him in one day than you have, so trust me when I tell you I know what I'm talking about. I do not want to see you so much as come within a hundred meters of him again, understand?"

"Yes, Father." It's labored, laden with years upon years of misery that Hanbin knows have borne witness to that phrase ruining Hao's life even on days that it would leave his lips of their own accord. He can hear the cry masked behind it, that wretched scream of Why do you always have to ruin everything good?  Why? He doesn't know what he would have said, had he been Hao and if he had a father for more than just a Christmas a year and the occasional family wedding.

He wonders, fleetingly, if Hao had ever thought of holding his father at knifepoint before falling asleep like he had. Probably not. People with eyes like his never do.

"Go back to your rooms now and get some sleep. Kuanrui, notify your roommates about the departure tomorrow morning and pass the word on to the girls. Sohee's father will be on his way as soon as he gets off work, so expect him to arrive sometime late in the evening. I'm off now. Good night, boys."

He doesn't get an answer.

There's the sound of heavy footsteps on the grass before a door opens and swings shut somewhere far too close. Hanbin is stricken with the sickening realization that Zhang's cabin has been right beside theirs this whole time. What were the chances he'd been in there when they were in theirs? How much of their conversations had he overheard, when Hao had been absent from the cabin and the windows had been so conveniently left open to let the air in?

"Hao," Kuanjui starts, but is cut off before he can say anything else.

"I'm sorry, Rui. I'm sorry this is happening again. I thought something would be different this time. I really, really did." 

"Hey, hey," Kuanjui's voice softens, and something rustles faintly before he continues, voice now muffled against skin and fabric. "Don't you dare fucking apologize again. It was never your fault your father's such a piece of shit."

"Don't curse."

"He's a fucking disgusting piece of shit, and you know it."

"Stop. It's a sin to talk like that about others. Especially parents."

"Your old man would say you being friends with someone like me is a sin, if he knew what I really am. Look at you though. You're still my friend, and at what cost?"

"I grew up with you, moron. You're the only friend I have. If not you, who?"

"Don't get all mushy on me now, hon. Chin up and do what you have to do, but do it with some sass and flair. I know you've got it in you there...somewhere."

Hao giggles. The sound comes out pitifully mournful, but Rui follows suit. It doesn't last long though, followed by a beat of heavy silence that betrays their true feelings on the situation. Rui takes advantage of it to bid Hao good night and send him off to bed, and Hanbin takes that as his cue to get the fuck out of the bathroom and beeline it to his bed before Hao returns.

He succeeds, already buried deep under his blankets a good minute before he finally hears the sound of the door being pushed open and thanks the universe for his friends being such heavy sleepers. Hanbin has the sneaking suspicion that Hao will want to keep this conversation between him and his father under wraps and questions about it if someone did hear wouldn't be appreciated, which Hanbin understands. He won't be the one asking, that's for sure.

That doesn't mean he doesn't spend the rest of the night thinking about it until he feels as if Hao's heart and mind become his own. As if that isn't enough, Hao's words continue to replay in his mind like a broken record player he can't get to turn off no matter how he hard he tries. Hanbin. His name is Hanbin, and there is nothing wrong with him.

By the time Hanbin's eyes finally shut, he's suffocating all over again.

-

Morning rolls around far too quickly for Hanbin's liking.

Thankfully, he'd managed to squeeze in an hour or two of sleep, which he supposes is better than nothing at all. It could have been worse. 

He could have been Zhang Hao.

"I think there's something wrong with him," Gyuvin whispers apprehensively, looking sideways at Hao's crumpled form in the blankets from out of the corner of the mirror as he styles his hair. "Not only did he not get up for that stupid Instructors' Prayer, but he hasn't woken up yet like, at all. There's just ten minutes before breakfast. Someone go wake him or something."

Ricky gets up, tiptoeing across the room to Hao's bed before stopping right in front of it. He leans forward slightly, as if trying to see something up close, then springs back up so quickly the alarm bells in Hanbin's brain set off one by one and start blaring red.

Ricky doesn't say a word in explanation, but instead motions frantically to Jiwoong, who'd been standing by and watching the scene in front of him unfold with a concerned expression on his face the whole time. Jiwoong joins Ricky's side and leans down to look at Hao, only to come back up with his face pale in unease.

"I think Gyuvin might be right," he says. "He looks almost gray. He's really sweaty and definitely not breathing right."

Hanbin's stomach drops. He couldn't have done anything to himself last night. Could he? Hanbin doesn't know, he's not familiar with Hao and the depth of his hurt like that, but it's his first thought nevertheless and it knocks the wind out of him even as his feet mindlessly carry him across the room to where his friends are now all standing.

It takes one look down at the boy's face for Hanbin to know that he's having a nightmare- a particularly sinister one. Hanbin has been a victim of their abuse long enough to know, and so has Yujin, with whom he's shared a room for long enough now to hold him through every single one. The morbid pallor of Hao's face, the cold sweat dotting his forehead and drenching his hair, the quivering lips and the tight hold on the sheets tell him everything he needs to know. Hao needs to be woken up now.

"Step aside," he commands his friends. "For your own good."

Hanbin doesn't know what they saw on his face that got them stepping back from him as quickly as they did, but he'll muse over it later, when he has time. Right now, his attention is fully turned on Hao and all that pumps through his blood is boiling fury that sees no way of release but through murder.

It is what drives him to swallow his fear and finally throw himself at the trembling body on the bed. He has but a few mere seconds to take hold of it by the shoulders in a death grip and heave it up into a sitting position before the worst part comes.

He succeeds and gets a fist to his face for it. The punch is followed by poorly aimed throws, jabs, and blows in no particular order, hysterical and frenzied as the boy in his hold fights to get out. Hanbin doesn't duck away from a single hit, fingers retaining their tight hold on the boy's shoulders even as the torn skin of his hands screams in protest, until the attack abruptly ceases and the room goes deathly quiet all at once.

He lifts his eyes to see Hao right in front of him, hand frozen midway in the air and glassy eyes blown wide in horror as the realization of his actions dawns on him at last. Hanbin watches, without a word, as his lips move but nothing comes out; moves his hands from Hao's shoulders to grab ahold of his wrists as they start to tremble anew.

"It's not real. Any of it. It's not."

Hao only stares back, unblinking, but his eyes don't go blank like Hanbin expects them to. He doesn't know why he did, honestly. Sometimes he forgets that some people process their emotions and allow themselves to actually feel each one. Hao's eyes don't go blank like his would; they well up with tears instead.

But he doesn't let them fall. He only blinks them back into nonexistence and slips his wrists out of Hanbin's hold as if they'd been burned. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. You didn't hurt me."

Hao studies him with an intent look that has Hanbin's eyes running away of their own accord, unable to withstand the raw pain of the soul shining through them. He can't stand it, despises the amount of unreadable emotion in them and the sheer weight of it.

When he looks up again, the lock in the bathroom door across the hall turns and Hao is gone.

-

The things that Hanbin dreads most always come around too quickly. In today's case, this thing is breakfast again.

With the events of the previous day and this morning filling up his head to the brim, the thought to come up with a new excuse had completely slipped his mind. Now he's reaping the consequences, the line to the cafeteria dwindling and leaving less and less people in front of him to save him time. Matthew won't buy the bathroom excuse after he'd used it last morning and evening. He's done for. 

Matthew must have noticed something, because he abandons his place in the line way in front and comes around the back to stand behind Hanbin. He throws a hand around his shoulder, and Hanbin knows he won't be going anywhere any time soon.

"Alright. I have had enough of this. Talk to me, Hanbin."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Yes, there is," Matthew insists, lowering his voice to a whisper so as not to be heard by curious onlookers in front and behind them. "I'm not blind, Hanbin. Something's up. You're not eating. All you've eaten yesterday was lunch, and barely. You skipped breakfast and disappeared halfway into dinner. I don't buy that dumb bathroom excuse anymore."

"I just don't like camp food. You know that."

"You used to bring lunch to school. You never do that anymore. You look like you're dying every time my mom forces something down your throat when you come over."

"It's nothing."

"Cut the bullshit. I'm your best friend, Bin. Talk to me for once, will you?"

"I said, it's nothing."

Matthew only shakes his head, and Hanbin wants to tear at the hair on his head at the sight of the sadness and utter frustration on his friend's usually smiling face. It's all because of me. "Fine. I don't believe you, but if there's nothing you want to say to me it's not like I can make you."

With that, he returns to his place in the line beside Ricky and Gyuvin, who are now chatting away like yesterday had never happened, leaving Hanbin alone to his all-consuming guilt and self-destructive mind. 

He can't talk to Matthew. He knows- God, he knows Matthew would leave everything and everyone to listen to him, if he were to come clean. He knows Matthew cares, more than anybody else on the planet ever will.

But in the deepest, darkest pits of his mind, he is terrified that Matthew will leave. His problems- there are too many of them, they're dark and they're sick and they're twisted, and if he starts talking, he'll never stop. If he musters up the courage to forgive himself for living and starts searching for that goddamn key to his locked heart, he fears what might destroy Matthew once he finds it. And people, they leave what destroys them, if they've got half a mind. Matthew does; he's got more than half of it. Hanbin would rather suffocate on all the unspoken words in him and let them ravage his body until it fails him at last, than live to see the day that Matthew leaves. He thinks it might be what finally breaks him.

The least he can do to prove himself is get at least something into his system. So he pushes down the nausea threatening to come up his throat and wills himself to stay in the line. He puts food onto his plate on autopilot, head at a distance from his body as he fills it up without so much as considering his choices. Dammit, he doesn't even like sausage. The sight of it alone is enough to turn his stomach inside out. 

But he sits and chokes half of one sausage down anyway, trying his best to avoid Matthew's piercing gaze through all of it. Fortunately, nobody else seems to detect the tension between them, still notably shaken by the incident with Hao earlier. Which, speaking of Hao, the boy is nowhere to be seen.

"He couldn't have eaten with the Instructors already when he's slept in," Gyuvin frets. "Is he not planning on eating breakfast at all?"

"Leave him be," Ricky waves him off. "He won't have time to. Jiwoong's preparing the lesson already."

"But still..."

"Jiwoong will take care of it," Matthew assures him. "He always carries snacks in his bag for the kids, and trust me when I say there's more than enough of it to go around."

"I sure hope so. God, but he looked so sick. Come to think of it, how did you know what to do, Hanbin? Why'd you let him hit you?"

Hanbin's nerves are at their limit, but he tries not to let it show. "I don't know, and I don't know."

"Mhm, sure. You did a great job, though, for not knowing what you were doing. You almost reminded me of a doctor, in some way."

Hanbin attempts a smile, but he can feel it coming out wrong even as he does and cringes. "You know what, I'm not that hungry. I'm going to go see if I can find Hao and get him to eat something before the service. Snacks aren't enough." Hypocrite.

"Hanbin," Matthew says.

"I don't like eggs and sausage, Matt."

"Those weren't the only things available."

"We got here late. Most of it was as good as gone anyway."

"I'm worried about you, Hanbin," Gyuvin pipes up. "It's like I never see you eat."

"Well, by the looks of me you don't have to worry about that being the truth."

"Don't say that," Gyuvin replies, visibly stricken. "What the heck do you even mean by that?"

"Exactly what you know it means. I'm off now."

He turns on his heel and walks out of the room without waiting for a response, knowing all too well what it would be. He doesn't need all that faux comfort, the counterfeit reassurance from the people he loves about how there was never anything wrong with him and it's all in his head. He knows the truth; he's not enough, and he knows they know it too. They will never dare to say it how it is though. They're too kind to, and it makes him sick.

It hadn't all been a lie, though. The idea to get something to eat for Hao had been brewing in his head while he was still standing in line. Now is the perfect chance for him to execute it, while there is still half an hour left till the morning service.

He discards of his plate and quickly fills up a second one for Hao, hoping there are no allergies he has to be aware of. Once he's finished, he sets off straight towards the cabins instead of the classrooms. He knows Jiwoong too well by now to think he'd allow Hao to help him after what had transpired earlier that morning. He'd definitely sent him back to the cabin to get some rest before the service, refusing to take no for an answer. Hence the reason Hanbin hadn't even bothered to ask Matthew for the key this time.

He is indeed correct in his assumption; the door gives way under his hand without resistance the second he turns the knob. He steps over the threshold, carefully balancing the plate in one hand as he does so, and shuts the door softly behind him.

He pads off to the room in sock-clad feet, about to call out for Hao before he briefly scans the room and realizes it is vacant.

Not this again.

The bathroom, then. He's got to be there; stepping out when you don't have the key to lock the cabin is forbidden, and Hao seems like the farthest thing from a rule breaker.

Hanbin sets the plate down on the dresser beside Hao's bed and heads back in the direction of the hallway. He doesn't get very far before the sound hits his ears and sends his heart sinking all the way down to the soles of his feet.

Someone is crying in the bathroom.

More specifically, Hao is crying in the bathroom, because who else could it possibly be? If only it were anybody else. 

Hanbin's heart beats a hundred miles a minute, but his feet stay rooted to the ground, stubbornly refusing to budge. Bloody hell, he doesn't know what he's supposed to do in a situation like this. Lord knows he's the last person to know how to offer comfort. All he's ever done for Hana and Yujin was hold them, but he isn't so sure Hao wants to be held. He doesn't think he himself has the emotional capacity to, honestly, or that he's allowed to hold him, either. "I do not want to see you so much as come within a hundred meters of him again, understand?"

It's been a while since he's succumbed to the feeble whisper of his heart over the endless roar of death in his head, but now's the time to let his heart lead. It may not truly know what it is doing, but Hanbin has no other choice than to follow its call at the moment, because his brain will be of little to no help in someone's sorrow.

It leads him to the bathroom door and forces him to raise his hand to knock. He finds that he is unable to, paralyzed at the sound of the heaving sobs on the other side of the door. They are ugly and shattered, strangled and wheezing and crying out for a salvation that will never come. Hanbin's heart wrenches; he's cried like this before, not a long time ago. But he'd held the pieces together all by himself in the end, locked away in the darkness of the bathroom in his own home as he begged the gash on his wrist to go deeper, bleed faster and longer so he could finally become what he's always been meant to be. A dead son.

He wills himself to stop spiraling, letting his fist meet the wood at last. This isn't about him, this is about a soul strayed on a godforsaken path he himself has traveled all alone and still sees no end of; he'll be damned if he lets it remain without a companion to pull it out towards the light, even if only for a while.

"Hao? Are you in there?"

The cries cease at once, leaving the building deathly silent.

"Hao?"

One, Mississippi. Two, Mississippi. Three...

Silence.

There you go again, you and your disgusting savior complex. You want to save everyone that doesn't want to be saved. Just like your father.

"I'm leaving, then."

"No, wait. Don't go."

Hanbin's heart seizes in his chest painfully.

It takes a solid minute for Hao to appear from behind the closed door. When he does, his eyes are rimmed red and his face is visibly plowed by all the signs of a difficult, sleepless night, but he's moving like none of it had ever happened. Like Hanbin hadn't held him in place when he fell apart only that morning, or heard him lose his mind on the other side of the door just now. 

"You didn't shower yet."

Hanbin's brows furrow at the extraneous nature of the comment, mystified by what could have possibly possessed Hao to make it. Hao's voice is hoarse when he says it, reminding him he hadn't just imagined what he heard, but the boy himself appears entirely removed from whatever had caused him to break the way he had just moments ago. All of it is too familiar for Hanbin to just dismiss. It's strange, almost uncanny, seeing yourself in the body of another human being so utterly different.

"You didn't, did you?"

"What? Oh. No, not since yesterday morning. I don't smell, do I? No? Okay, good. It's just that I, uh, don't quite know what to do with the bandages. I wanted to ask you, but you kind of fell off the face of the earth after the pool, so I figured I'd wait until I see you to ask."

"Falling off the face of the earth would be quite nice right now."

Hanbin opens his mouth to ask if he's okay, but what comes out of it instead is "Technically, you can't, because there's nowhere to fall off from due to the fact that the earth is round."

"Oh, really now? Says who?"

"...Science? You know, that thing that teaches us the irrefutable facts about our universe? Please don't tell me you're one of those moronic New Age flat-earthers that also believe dinosaurs still walk the earth and that hell is located in a gas crater in Russia. You're not, right...?"

"And if I were?"

"Get away from me. I'm stealing your first aid kit and running with it."

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Relax."

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

And then, he smiles.

All is right in Hanbin's world when he does. Everything wrong that's ever happened to him fades out into unreachable cities thousands of miles away, and Hanbin feels like he could touch the sun and bring it down to earth with him if he tried.

"I'll change your bandages now. Sorry, by the way. For disappearing on you all like I did."

"Hey, don't apologize," Hanbin frowns. "It's not your fault. None of it is, you hear me?"

He doesn't know if Hao picks up on the true depth behind his words, but he knows he's heard the secret that breathes the life into them- I know you. I know there's more to you than what you show the world around you. I know that you're hurting, that you're trying to kill yourself to be perfect, because it's something you can never be to them when you're alive.

He likes to think Hao heard him, because he goes silent as if he were listening, carefully working on Hanbin's wounds all the while. Hanbin keeps his eyes closed throughout the process, knowing that if he allows himself to look at the boy by his feet, he'll say something stupid like "you can talk to me, I'll listen" and chase him away. Hao would thank him, but never take him up on the offer and instead close in on himself even more, much like Hanbin does himself.

He'd gone so deep into his thoughts that he must have dozed off at one point, hypnotized into sleep by the soporific touch of Hao's hands. The next thing he knows he's opening his eyes and Hao is no longer in front of him. He looks around the room and calls out his name, but all is in vain. Hao had finished his job and already left for classes. Hanbin wishes he could've at least thanked him for his time and care, but he supposes he'll just have to catch him later on in the day.

He raises his arms and stretches, reveling in the satisfying crack of his spine and shoulders before his hands drop and one lands on what feels like a ragged slip of paper on the mattress.

He frowns in confusion, quickly retracting his hand then reaching for the same spot again to make sure he hadn't imagined it. And he hadn't- there is indeed a folded piece of blue sticky-note with his name written on top in barely legible cursive.

He instinctively knows who it's from before even opening it. 

To Hanbin:

It's Hao. You fell asleep while I was changing your bandages, haha. You must have had a tough night.

You are aware that I am leaving tonight. I also know that you're aware of the reason. You aren't exactly slick when it comes to your spying skills. I have the feeling it was you, anyway. Please keep it a secret from the others, if you can. 

I don't know when they'll find a replacement for me, so I left you a little something under my bed. I hope it helps.

It was nice knowing you.

- Hao. 

Hanbin blinks, unsure if he's read everything correctly. He reads it again, and again and again until the words begin to swim before his eyes and none of it looks real.

He gets up and walks over to Hao's bed, kneeling down in front of it and thrusting his hand carefully underneath the narrow opening, praying it doesn't get stuck. His fingertips trace something hard and square-shaped, and when he takes it out, something inside him withers.

It's Hao's first aid kit, the same one Hanbin remembers him holding onto in a similar way a mother holds onto her precious child. Beside it lies another folded paper, this one several times larger in size than the note. It's a handwritten guide to treating his own injuries, each step painstakingly described down to every last little detail.

Hanbin takes in a deep breath, then another one as a lump unexpectedly lodges itself into his throat. One more, two, then three, five, seven...

He lifts his eyes to the ceiling in a futile attempt to keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks, only to catch sight of the plate he'd put on the dresser earlier in his peripheral vision. It's empty. 

He looks back down at the two pieces of paper, still clutched tightly in his bandaged hands, and smiles.

-

The last thing Hanbin expected to happen at club readmissions was Taerae. 

More specifically...well, nothing. Just Taerae.

"Hey, uh." He's clearly uncomfortable, bouncing on his one good foot as he speaks, and Hanbin hates that he hates it.

"Yes?"

"You see, um."

Hanbin barely contains the urge to roll his eyes, currently not in the mood for socialization whatsoever. "Well?"

"There's a lack of helpers in the younger kids' camp area this year," Taerae blurts out, pushing his glasses farther up his nose in a gesture Hanbin instantly clocks as nervous. "They asked our Instructors if they could send someone over to help the kids with their crafts, just for club hour. Whoever doesn't care to join a club here, or...can't." He directs a pointed look at Hanbin's bandaged hands.

Hanbin's more than happy to take the opportunity to escape the overly stifling energy of the camp for a while and possibly even get to see his brother there, but he'd die before letting Taerae know. "Sure. I guess I could do that."

Taerae's face lights up with a grin so luminous it almost succeeds in flushing the last dregs of Hanbin's grudge against him down the drain. "Great! Jongho will pull the van up in around five minutes, so be ready to go as soon as you see it park outside."

" 'We'? Are you going too?"

Taerae's smile fades at the edges, albeit so faintly Hanbin wouldn't have noticed if he weren't staring. "Nobody except for us two volunteered. Is me being there going to be a problem?"

"No."

Taerae senses the lie in that single word faster than Hanbin expects him to, his shoulders hunching in that same defeated way they had at the pool yesterday before he speaks again. "Look, I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have said what I said to Ricky. I have my reasons to feel the way I do about his kind, but you wouldn't want to hear them. I don't have anything against him in particular; he's a cool dude. So yeah, I'm sorry. I sincerely regret what I said, so can you please just let it go now?"

"I'm not the one you should be apologizing to," Hanbin replies, feeling more than rankled at the egoistically self-defensive nature of Taerae's speech. "Apologize to Ricky. He may not care about what you said; he's probably forgotten about it completely by now, but I'm not that forgiving. I won't rest until he gets that apology straight from your mouth. Also, 'his kind'? What on earth was that supposed to mean?"

"You know," Taerae flounders, suddenly realizing he's digging his own grave deeper the longer he speaks. "His kind. Queer folk."

Had this encounter occurred but three days earlier, Hanbin would've been completely clueless about the context of Taerae's explanation and would have probably thought that he was referring to the synonym of the word "strange." However, the conversations he and his friends have been having during free hours in these past two days have opened up a totally new world of vocabulary and definitions of things he'd always been dying to know more about, thanks to Gyuvin, who'd taken Matthew's cumbersome role of Hanbin's "sin encyclopedia" upon himself to educate him on the vices of this world, once he'd discovered the full extent of Hanbin's naiveté.

So, now that Hanbin knows, Taerae's words only serve to fuel his anger further. "Oh really now? I suppose you went up to him and asked him about his preferences. Or is that just an assumption made because he has fashion taste, huh? What the heck is your problem, dude?"

"Don't mind him," a girl's voice pipes up from behind Taerae, snide and mocking. "His father- my uncle- left them for a man and it drove his mother to hang herself out of shock. That's why he's like that; please try to understand."

Hanbin would have taken it as a joke, given the comical delivery and deathly bored tone of the girl's voice, but then Taerae pales before flushing such a deep hue of red Hanbin is momentarily worried he might be sick.

"Haewon!" Taerae's voice comes out nothing more than a weak wheeze as he stares at his cousin in utter shock, but Haewon only looks on impassively.

"Don't talk to him," she says to Hanbin, sidling up a little too close for comfort before putting a stealthy hand on his shoulder and whispering "He's trouble."

Trouble, trouble, trouble. That's all that children like them will ever be in this world- nothing but bothersome problems to ignore and avoid lest they cause unwanted turbulence in someone's peaceful waters; or open people's eyes to painful, heart-wrenching stories they will refuse to read because they know all too well that they had a hand in writing their twisted plots.

Hanbin feigns to not have heard anything she said, which all three of them know would have been impossible what with the practically nonexistant distance between them and Haewon, but he'd rather play the fool than take the chance of seeing Taerae's eyes water a second time.

Haewon eventually gives up on trying to get a response from Hanbin and struts away, leaving the two of them facing each other once again in awkward silence. Hanbin begs the gods to just send the van here faster- haven't five minutes passed yet?- because for a reason he cannot explain something is holding him back from just up and walking away. He gives up on trying to argue with it, resorting to staring off into the window without moving an inch. Taerae doesn't budge either, but what's holding him there Hanbin has no idea.

"There you go, I guess. Now you know more about me than ninety-nine percent of this camp."

Hanbin doesn't miss the forced steeliness of Taerae's voice, or the way his eyes stay stuck up on the ceiling as he says it, and wishes he'd just walk away already. "Okay? I do not care?"

He looks at Taerae just in time to see his eyebrows jump up into his messy bangs. "What did you say?"

"I don't care," Hanbin repeats. "I don't give a crap about your personal life, just as you wouldn't about mine or Ricky's."

"But aren't you going to, like, I don't know," Taerae fumbles. "Question me? Say dumb sh- stuff about how you're sorry for my loss and stuff?"

"You can curse around me," Hanbin says, struggling to bite back a smile. "I'm not your pastor's son. But no, I won't ask you if your father's 'one of them homos' or look at you like you're a starving kitten or anything like that. Why would I? I don't think you'd like that."

Taerae only nods slowly and turns his head away from Hanbin, not saying another word. They stand there like that, in half-awkward half-comfortable silence until the van finally pulls up by the door and they get in, still not looking at each other. 

The ride is short, barely twenty minutes, but to Hanbin it felt like an hour, if not more. The tense silence between him and Taerae, along with Instructor Choi Jongho's somewhat formidable presence served to make the whole experience a more nerve-wracking one than a simple twenty-minute ride should have been.

It all dissipates into thin air the moment he slides the door open, however. Something- or someone- flies at him, a little human hurricane dressed in all black that almost barrels him straight to the ground.

"Hanbinnie!"

Hanbin lets out the breath he's been holding for far too long now, and with it he can feel every last little bit of heaviness in his body wash away and evaporate as it turns into a laugh. "Yujin!"

"Hanbin- oh. What happened to your hands?"

"My hands? Oh, that. I fell while playing soccer with my friends. Where did you come from that quickly?"

"They said two people from your camp were coming to help. I knew you would come, so I sat and waited for the van outside."

Hanbin grins, pressing Yujin to his chest with all his might until the little boy makes a choking sound and Hanbin panics, releasing him after he realizes he's channeled all his physical strength into the hug. "I'm sorry, baby. How's it been for you so far?"

Yujin's smile disappears in an instant. "Fine."

Hanbin's smile drops along with his at the sudden realization that somewhere along the way, his little brother had picked up on his habit the same exact way little Hanbin picked up on Doyoung's years ago. The feeling worsens when he realizes there is no way to reverse the damage already done. "You're not really fine, are you?"

"I'm fine," Yujin insists, straightening up and squaring his shoulders, because somehow that's supposed to make Hanbin believe him. "I'm not being bullied, or anything."

But Hanbin isn't blind to the dried tear trails on his cheeks, or the redness and the slight swelling of his eyes. It's happening again. They're picking on him and making him cry, yet he doesn't fight back because for the life of it he doesn't know how to. But he wouldn't even if he knew how, because their mother had made it her duty that he, like the rest of them, would memorize that stupid fucking verse about turning your left cheek to every strike since the day he first began to speak. Yujin isn't like Hanbin and he never will be; he is soft and he is obedient and he is gullible and overly trusting of everything that comes out of his mother's mouth because to him, their parents' god is real in the way that he never will be to Hanbin.

"I'll kill them. I swear I'll kill every last one of them. Tell me who they are, Yujinnie. I'll go talk to them and they won't ever say so much as a cross word to you again."

Yujin shakes his head so violently Hanbin fears he'll snap his neck. "Please don't. It will only make things worse. I'm fine."

Hanbin considers him for a moment longer- the way his young doe eyes, so innocent and painfully trusting, stare beseechingly into his own; the white knuckles of his hands as they dig into the fabric of Hanbin's shirt in plea, not letting go. Hanbin would kill for Yujin and never think twice about it. He would traverse the entire universe on his two bare feet until he collapsed of exhaustion to give him anything he asked for, but all he ever asks for is peace, the one thing Hanbin doesn't know where to look for.

"Alright, I won't talk to them if that's what you want. But I'll make sure they suffer. They won't find out that you told me, don't worry."

Yujin only shakes his head again, refraining from saying anything because he knows from experience that once Hanbin makes up his mind about something, there is no convincing him otherwise.

"Don't worry, kid," a new voice utters beside Hanbin, almost giving him a heart attack as he whips around only to discover Taerae's been standing behind them this whole entire time. He sends him a death glare, but Taerae pays no mind, kneeling down beside Yujin and taking his hand in his. "I'll help your brother over here, so I promise you they won't know what hit them."

At this point, Hanbin can't even find it in himself to get mad at Taerae for listening to the entire conversation so brazenly, because Yujin grins at him and asks "Promise?" and that's about all Hanbin needs to stop holding a grudge against the boy.

"Promise," Taerae nods, linking their pinkies and sealing it.

The three of them set off towards the crafting shop together, Taerae's and Yujin's pinkies still interlocked. Hanbin marvels at this, wondering what Yujin had seen in Taerae that he hadn't. Yujin is the shyest child he'd ever come across; winning his heart is no easy feat, especially not at a first encounter. Whatever it may be, Hanbin trusts his little brother's judgment, so he smiles at Taerae over Yujin's skipping form. Taerae doesn't hesitate to smile back, that same million-watt grin from half an hour ago illuminating his face in a bright ball of sun and campfire. Hanbin thinks he might have just gained a new friend, even if only for several hours. They might never see each other again after today, but a friend is a friend for whatever period of time fate decides to give. 

The hour flies by in the blink of an eye, and all too soon they have to leave. Yujin all but cries as he says goodbye, but Hanbin is at least comforted by the fact that he held true to the promise he'd made to Yujin, as did Taerae- none of the children save for Yujin ever realize that the paint spilled onto the drawings they had so proudly made for their friends had never actually been spilled by accident.

-

Hanbin doesn't know where Zhang Hao has spent the entire day prior. He hasn't even left the premises yet, but every trace of him is already gone from their room like he'd never so much as even stepped foot in there. Every last one of his personal belongings had vanished from the cabin and they'd all missed it happening, too busy with their activities to notice. Everyone except Hanbin, that is. He's been keeping his eyes peeled for at least a glimpse of the back of Hao's head since the moment he and Taerae had come back to the camp grounds for free hours, but it was all in vain.

Hao doesn't even appear at the river for swimming hour. Hanbin should have predicted it happening; Hao's already given him his first aid kit, after all, but it still jarrs him to see the middle-aged woman, her own tools in hand, sit down right in the place where Hao should have been sitting. They'd found a replacement for Hao much quicker than expected, it appeared, and for some reason that irked him.

Hanbin doesn't see Rui around either, nor any of the other boys he'd learned are part of Zhang's church with the exception of Taerae, who sticks around till the evening. He sits beside him at the riverbank too, and they even manage to uphold a decent, friendly conversation for an hour. Hanbin could feel that the boy had wanted to say so much more, but the presence of the new nurse sitting right behind them prevented him from doing so, and the tension never could quite bleed out of his posture.

Time is soon up and the boys are called to get out of the water and get ready to leave. Hanbin takes notice of Taerae's furtive glances at Ricky as the latter makes his way to the shore, laughing at something with Gyuvin all the while, and nudges him. "You want to talk to him, don't you?"

"I'm burning up with enthusiasm to."

"Ah yes, the enthusiasm. So bright at this point that it's hurting my eyes, in case you can't tell. Just go to him already. It's now or never again for you."

Taerae whips around to face him, eyes wider than saucers. "What do you know?"

Oops, a grave slip of the tongue. Great job on that one, Hanbin. "I know you're leaving and probably not coming back again. Nobody told me, in case you're wondering. I just have my ways. So go talk to him already. I can see you feel guilty. Trust me when I say he won't even care."

"You think so?"

"You think he would've helped you yesterday when nobody else did if he was mad?" Hanbin watches as guilt flits across Taerae's face briefly before continuing. "Just go. He's cool, I promise."

Taerae sends him one last doubtful look before hauling himself up and hobbling apprehensively in Ricky's direction. Hanbin observes, from a distance, the surprise dawning on Ricky's face and the instant irritation on Gyuvin's as Taerae stops in front of them and starts to talk, wringing his hands anxiously the whole time. Whatever he says gradually wipes Gyuvin's scowl into nonexistence and gets Ricky to adamantly shake his head before giving a fourth of a smile and awkwardly patting Taerae on the shoulder. Hanbin waits another minute until he can see all their faces clearly, then leans back in his chair in satisfaction at the smiles on all three.

They all bid goodbye to each other- Gyuvin and Matthew to a dozen more people, as expected, and they all drive back to their respective cabins in high spirits. Only Hanbin can't seem to shake the gloom off his heart when they walk into the bedroom and he sees, once again, the absence of a suitcase and other personal belongings beside the bed that Hao's slept in the past two nights, the uncannily sterile atmosphere surrounding the whole corner.

Ricky is the only other person to notice something is off, but when he raises up the question of Hao's whereabouts and the sudden emptiness in his corner of the room, Hanbin can only shrug. He feels horrible for it, especially considering that it's Ricky who's asking, but he won't let himself break his promise to Hao now.

Hao reappears only during evening service.

Hanbin almost lets out the biggest cry of relief when he sees him at last. It's not much, just the side of his face as he turns to whisper something to Rui two pews in front of where Hanbin and his friends are sitting, but it's enough to calm his nerves after they've been on the edge of fraying since he'd woken up after Hao left. He keeps his eyes on him for the entirety of the service, afraid to look away in case Hao might up and disappear on the world again. He doesn't though, staying in place the entire time and not once lowering his head nor turning it to the side or around, laser-focused on the preacher and whatever else went down on the stage that evening.

Hanbin's never seen someone with quite this level of determination to gain God's approval, but he's not so confident now on whether Hao's god is the one his father demands him to worship. The god whose love Hao is so pathetically desperate to win is his father's, try as he might to deny it with everything in him. It's the lie Hanbin had read in his eyes so plainly that fateful morning; Hao couldn't care less about God, much in the same way as Hanbin. Yet the life he'd built for himself- that pretty, deceiving web of perfection he's spun around his own head- did everything to prove otherwise. Hanbin wonders if that web will ever collapse around him so he can finally breathe on his own and see through his father's walls of sand; and what, or who, will be the one to break it.

He wants to come up to Hao, thank him for everything he's done and at least say goodbye, because he can see the blue van pulling up to the back of the building fifteen minutes before the service's end and the way the whole of the second pew looks at each other when they hear the sound. It's dread; pure, unfiltered dread. They don't want to go back to where they came from, and it gives Hanbin the faint impression that this week was going to mean more for them than just a summer retreat. It was supposed to be an escape.

The second the last "amen" is uttered after the last preacher's prayer, Hanbin springs up and darts in the direction of the second pew, but he doesn't make it far. His path is instantly blocked by swarms of adults conversing with each other about the sermon and teenagers eager to leave before they get detained by one of them to hear it. He tries to push through, feeling the panic rise steadily up his throat, but to no avail. When he finally succeeds in clearing the way enough to come up to their bench, it is already vacant.

He scans the auditorium in agitation until his eyes finally register the movement at the back door. It's them, he realizes- six boys and three girls, all quietly slipping out the door one after the other, yet so close together they might as well be one. Nobody seems to notice, and if they do, they don't pay any mind to the heavy atmosphere hanging above their heads almost like a tactile black cloud that reeks of hopelessness and broken wishes.

As badly as Hanbin wants to approach them, something tells him they want to make their exit go unacknowledged, so all he can do is stand in place and watch them file out the back door, every single one looking back with a longing that pains him to the very core. 

Taerae looks back the longest of the nine. His face is red and his eyes are welling over with tears he doesn't care to restrain as they fall freely down his cheeks, but he finds Hanbin's eyes over the crowd and breaks out in a smile, sending him a big wave. I don't want to go, he mouths brokenly, but all Hanbin can do is wave back even as his own throat constricts in an inexplicable sense of dread. There's too much he doesn't know, so many secrets about these children and their environment he knows could be uncovered if they weren't so afraid to do it, but he's helpless to change any of it.

Hao must have realized Taerae's falling behind, whipping around only for his eyes to meet Hanbin's one last time. And Hanbin, what else can he do at his mere fifteen years of age but stare back into them and hope that Hao can see everything he's ever wanted to say in his since the moment they'd first met? I hope you stay strong. I hope you break free from whatever it is that's got you and your friends between its teeth and awaiting death. I hope you remember me the next time you lock the bathroom door behind you to cry. I hope that maybe, just maybe, we'll see each other again someday, so you can tell me everything and I could get a second chance to hold you through it all.

Time slows down and sends the planets tipping over on its axis in those few seconds that they stand there, holding each other's gaze with an intensity Hanbin can't explain. It's not enough; the time they'd known each other had been so painfully short. But Hanbin knows, when Hao finally tears his eyes away and drags along a sobbing Taerae behind him, that he will remember him forever. Even as years will pass and more people will come into his life, both good and bad, Zhang Hao will be at the back burner of his mind, eating away at the scant remains of his soul and making Hanbin dream of him until he's desperate to push him out of his brain but won't be able to.

All he can do is watch as they pile into that cursed blue van one by one, disappearing from the rest of the universe behind the tainted windows. He watches as the vehicle starts, as it backs out of the gravel driveway, as the wheels carry it farther and farther away until it becomes nothing but a sad little blue dot in the violet of the sunset, never to be seen again.

It's all he's ever done, watch. He'd watched as his father left, as Doyoung struggled to hold on to life when he still lived at home but never said a word. He'd watched, watched, and watched as the years went by and his own soul slowly got sucked out of him, powerless to get it back. He watches the razor blade in his right hand every few days, detached from reality as something dark and wicked moves him to slice it through the skin and to the heart below it, watches himself bleed and then he watches Matthew stare at him sadly from across the breakfast table and he watches Ricky melt under every little touch anyone offers him and his own reflection in the mirror wither away day by day and Yujin trying so hard to be like him and he watches and he watches and he watches until he can't bear to anymore.

He finds Jiwoong in the corner, staring at the notebook balanced carefully in his lap, and says it as it is.

"I need you right now."

Jiwoong looks up at him, searching his face in worry. "Are you alright?"

"I don't know."

He gets up without another word, swinging his bag over his shoulder, and motions for Hanbin to follow him outside the door.

They make their way down to the river in complete silence. Hanbin thinks he might cry if there's any more of that today. He needs to scream, needs to hear someone curse the universe, anything. He isn't sure he can stand silence any longer.

They sit a little farther down the bank this time, and Jiwoong suggests they take off their shoes and socks to dip their feet into the water. "It'll help," he says. Hanbin doesn't quite believe him, but he follows his lead anyway, having nothing to lose.

The second the coldness of the water envelops his feet, he cries.

This time, when Jiwoong's lips meet his, he melts into the motion immediately. He moves with the desperation of the drowning, fighting violently against the contrasting gentleness of Jiwoong's touch and the unspoken question on his lips even as the kiss begins to taste salty. He begs for more with his hands, anything to keep him grounded and save him from falling if only by an inch, to hold on to the edge of the cliff for at least a second longer, but Jiwoong denies him and seconds later, he gives up, collapsing in the older's arms.

"Shh," Jiwoong rubs his back, pulling Hanbin's face into his chest as he heaves for air, clawing at his heart in hopes for that sharp, murderous ache to go away before it overtakes him and leaves nothing but his ugly black heart in its wake. "What's wrong, baby? What happened?"

"I'm tired," Hanbin weeps. "I'm sick and tired of wanting things to be different. I'm sick of everything. I'm sick of me, I'm sick."

Jiwoong doesn't say anything, but Hanbin can feel, even through the sobs that violently wrack his frame, the wetness on his own hair. Jiwoong cries with him as he lets himself fall apart at last, and that alone is enough.

Chapter Text

Two years later, summer 2018

The library downtown has been Hanbin's favorite place ever since he could remember.

He knew it would be since the day he first stepped foot into it thirteen years ago, holding onto his mother's hand because she still liked him then. The atmosphere of the place alone felt more like home to him than home itself, but it was the long rows of shelves upon shelves of books that had him sold- books would always understand him like nobody else ever could. Since the day he'd read his first book at four years old, he'd formed a certain view on their purpose in this world. A book will always be there, awaiting your presence for no other reason than to grant you a temporary escape from the burdens of the world, and Hanbin has no other such fixture in his life, at least not a permanent one. To him, books are his refuge, his teachers, his friends, advisors, and trusted confidants; even if the books he ends up holding in his hands may not always be the ones he truly wants most. Fuck his mother's unwavering determination to go through each one he ends up checking out- Father's orders.

But of course, just as every good thing in this world has its advantages, it will always have its own disadvantages as well. In Hanbin's humble opinion, the library has only ever had one of those- the salary. They don't pay him half as much as he would like.

But it's all fair, he supposes. It's not like he's ever actually had to do any hard work throughout the one year and ten months that he's been working here, with the exception of that one time a reader had realized they actually could take advantage of the one hundred book limit and checked out a hundred all at once. Hanbin hadn't known whether to be impressed or annoyed at the audacity, but it made for a good story.

He loves his job, though. He wouldn't trade it for another even if it paid twice the amount unless he seriously needed it, because he doesn't think any other work environment could offer him that quiet security and peace that the library does without fail. Not every teenager gets the chance to work in their most favorite place in the world, so who is he to pass up the golden opportunity? Besides, most of his work hours are spent doing absolutely nothing before people actually start showing up in considerable numbers, leaving him more than enough time to get lost in the worlds of books his mother would go into cardiac arrest hearing about. These twenty-two months working at the library had opened up whole galaxies of knowledge he's been completely blind to in his (at the time) fifteen years of life, secrets he knows he would have never had access to otherwise.

But still, at the end of the day, he wishes the salary could have been at least a quarter higher. It's not that Hanbin particularly needs the money, or anything. He's still living at home, his education and phone are paid for by his mother and the generosity of a few older siblings, and the car he now drives was passed down to him from Doyoung after he left. Hanbin will buy himself things from time to time- cigarettes being the only staple, other things being little essentials like hygiene products when he runs out, or the occasional pack of gum, sometimes even a shirt or pair of pants, if he's feeling particularly risky that day. But he could live without. It's not himself he needs the money for, after all.

Yujin needs to continue dancing.

It had started off as nothing but wishful thinking, a miniscule spark in Hanbin's heart that had burned out almost as quickly as it had been lit. He remembers that evening as vividly as if it had been a week ago. Yujin's hand, damp and clammy from the humidity of summer, squeezing his as he stared in open-mouthed fascination at the dancers practicing their routine behind the window of the studio they were passing by on the way home from the store. Hanbin had seen it all too clearly- the yearning, the greedy hunger in his eyes and the way his limbs had begun to unconsciously copy their movements to the rhythm. He'd wanted to dance too, as a child. But he knew he'd never have the chance while he lived under his parents' roof so he'd given up on dreaming almost as soon as he'd begun.

"Yujin," he'd asked his brother. "Can you imagine yourself dancing behind that window with them someday? "

"Yes," Yujin had whispered longingly. "I can imagine."

After a long pause he had said, without tearing his eyes away from the window as the beat escalated to a climax, "Mom would kill me if she knew."

A week later, Matthew's mother had quit her second job as a librarian and told him that now that she'd left, they would need her empty place filled as soon as possible. Hanbin had taken it without so much as a second thought.

After working there for two months, he had saved up enough to send Yujin to beginners' classes in a children's dance studio downtown, conveniently located just two blocks down from the library. The whole guardian thing had been a problem at first; Hanbin had been only fifteen at the time, and all this was meant to be kept a secret from the rest of the family, but he'd solved it quickly enough with the help of Gyuvin's adult cousin, who had been more than willing to play the boy's guardian and help him fulfill his dream. Yujin was lucky every one of Hanbin's friends and their relatives adore him to death.

Hanbin sinks deeper into thought without really noticing, unable to help it when the sun streams in through the glass entrance doors just so, casting a warm glow over the DVD cassettes stacked in front, and the enticing smell of freshly brewed coffee seeps in from the computer room on the second floor. It's all too warm and secure and tranquil for him not to think, but not even a minute later he gets interrupted by a familiar light tap on his shoulder.

"Oh hey, Sophia."

"Hey," the pretty girl in front of him nods, smiling. "Miss Jeon said you can get off work now, if you want. There's not a lot of people coming in today, so I can handle it myself."

'Why me?" Hanbin frowns. "If we need only one person on duty then I can do it, and you can go home. You've been here longer than I have today, anyway."

"There's no way in hell you're doing that," Sophia shakes her head, expression firm. "You always go straight to the dance studio to pick up your brother during our break hour while the rest of us go get dinner together. I barely ever see you eat, Hanbin. You've lost a ton of weight since you've first come in here and I'm worried, what with you always getting dizzy and getting those weak spells. Use this hour as an opportunity to go get yourself some coffee and a muffin or something before you have to go to the studio, please."

Hanbin smiles weakly, unable to tell her that his brain wouldn't allow him to indulge in a luxury like that for years now, but he knows she won't let him refuse her offer. "Thanks, Soph. You sure you'll be fine here alone?"

"No, we'll get robbed and murdered the moment you walk outside those doors," she deadpans. "This is a library, Hanbin. Be for real right now."

"Okay," he sighs, patting her on the arm affectionately before he begins packing his bag. "Have a good one, then. And tell Miss Jeon I said thank you."

"Mhm," she waves him off in dismissal, motioning towards the exit. "You owe me the answers for next year's math homework the entire first week, after this. Now go eat, fucker."

Hanbin makes sure she sees him flipping her off before he leaves the building. She reciprocates with an equal amount of enthusiasm.

He doesn't know what to do with his hour of free time, and he doesn't feel like driving around at the moment, so he puts on his headphones and puts on the album he's been obsessing over for the past two days now, aiming to get his steps in for the day by taking a stroll around downtown before Yujin's classes end. He wonders how his mother still hadn't once questioned why Yujin is supposedly spending time with Hanbin in the library three very specific days a week like clockwork. Yujin is nothing if not a stellar liar though; Hanbin has never seen someone be able to make up titles of books and whole plots on the spot like Yujin could, but the liar gene has always run strong in his family, so it's no surprise.

He gets past the first two songs and is just about to round the corner of the town's main square when the music stops and the wedding march abruptly starts playing, indicating an incoming phone call that could only be from one person. Though he already knows who it's from, Hanbin's good mood only escalates further when he registers the name that flashes on the screen.

"Hey, Dodo!"

"Hi Hanbin! Happy seventeenth birthday to you!"

"Thanks? I hate birthdays. Why did you have to remind me it's my birthday?"

"Oh, stop being such a broody piece of crap already and lighten up, will you? It's a once-in-a-year occasion, after all. Anyway, how've you been?"

"Pretty good, I guess. I got off work early, so I'm taking a walk around town before it's time to go pick Yujin up from dance classes."

"Wait, what? That's still happening!?" Doyoung's voice crackles over the line, incredulous.

"Yep. All this time and Mom still hasn't caught on, nor has anybody else. You should see him dance sometime, Do. He's an absolute pro. You know, if you called more often, you'd know these things."

Doyoung lets out a sigh laden with guilt. "I'm sorry. I've been working overtime a lot lately and it's more draining than I expected it to be. Yeri's having a pretty difficult pregnancy this time around, too. It wasn't like that with Haneul. I don't know what's wrong."

"It's okay," Hanbin says, except it's not. He misses his brother something terrible, and it's only gotten worse over the years. He still dreams the same dream about him at night, still sees Yeri take him away from them, but Doyoung will never know, because Hanbin's okay. He's trying so hard to be. "It would be nice if you called at least once a month, though."

"I really am sorry, Bin. I'll try to call more often when time allows it, okay? I do miss you a lot, just so you know. You and Hana and Yujin."

"What about the other eight?" Hanbin teases. "And Mom? You don't miss them even a little bit?"

"Not really," Doyoung admits sheepishly. "Don't tell them though, okay?"

"No, I'll go call each one of them right now and tell them you don't give two fucks about them so I can listen to them all complain on Sunday about how you became such an ungrateful piece of shit and how you don't care about anything but work anymore."

"Don't curse. Why are you always cursing?"

"Crazy how you had sex before marriage and still have the audacity to tell me not to cuss, honorable sir. One might even think you're a devoted Christian."

"Okay, knock it off, smartass. You have any plans for the evening? Birthday dinner or anything like that?"

"Why? You gonna come over or something?"

"Hanbin..."

"Gyuvin's parents have left for that family seminar down south- remember Gyuvin, the friend I told you about? Yeah, him. So Matthew had this grand idea that the three of us gather there to celebrate and sleep over, and then Matthew will drive us all to church tomorrow morning. I'll tell Mom I'm just going to the Seoks' like usual. She has no idea they'd changed their minds about not going to the seminar at the last minute."

"Mm, sounds fun. You're not going to be doing anything dumb though, right Bin? No drinking, smoking, girls, drugs and all that jazz?"

Hanbin almost laughs out loud at the uncharacteristic worry in his brother's voice. "No," he lies. "None of that, so don't worry. It'll be just us three sitting around some pizza and coke like we do every year. Maybe a game of monopoly or two before bed. Same old."

"Well, alright then," Doyoung says, the suspicion still not quite leaving his tone. "I gotta go back to work in a minute, so I'll hang up now, 'kay? Happy birthday again! And promise me you won't get into any trouble. Please."

"I won't, I won't," Hanbin sighs. "Hope your shift goes well, then. Give Haneul an extra big hug for me, will you?"

"I will," Doyoung promises. "Bye, then! Have a good time at Gyuvin's."

"Mhm, bye-bye."

Hanbin walks for another minute or two after hanging up, mulling over Doyoung's concerns from their conversation, before realizing just how far he'd walked.

Somehow, he's ended up at The Bridge, a place he hasn't been to in a while now. It's not a bridge, really- more of a long line of wooden railing installed along both sides of a road that leads away from downtown and towards the countryside. The road itself is one of three shortcuts of its kind, hidden from the inexperienced eye and known only by those who've lived in this miserable town for eternity and a day. It's far from being the shortcut favored though, due to its bumpiness, serpantine structure and extremely narrow passes, meaning cars aren't a common appearance in the area. 

It is the view that draws in those select few stragglers that happen to come upon this road, whether by accident or with purpose. Should one bend over the railing, their breath would be taken away from them the moment they let their eyes drink in the picture that unfolds in front of them- a river, loud and rushing, shielded from the heat of the sun by a canopy of forest overhead.

Some have indeed had their breath taken away from them at this very place, their bodies broken and decomposed at the bottom of the river. Some get retrieved after the suicides, some don't. The Bridge isn't only the town's infamously inconvenient shortcut; it is a gravesite. Perhaps that is why Hanbin finds a sort of melancholy solace in this place now, after having come so close to the Bridge ghosts' fate one too many times. The last time he'd come here, it had been with Doyoung, Seungho, and his sister-in-law Jiyul. He had been nine back then, still bright-eyed and daring to be hungry for life. Today, he is seventeen, alone, and more numb to the hunger than he's ever been before.

He checks his phone to find he still has half an hour to waste, leans over the railing, and lights a cigarette. 

He doesn't remember exactly when he picked up the vice. All he remembers is how it had made him feel in the beginning; the disgusting taste and the acrid burning in his lungs that had him promising it was the last time he'd ever do it, only for days to pass before he'd seek it out himself. Weeks later, he'd given up on trying to stop. Just like that, two years had passed and he still hadn't.

He takes in deep breaths of the poison and holds it in himself for as long as he can dare, his eyes staring out over the water and into the distance, unseeing. It's too quiet here, too solemn, and his mind gives ground to yesterday's memories far too quickly.

He'd been clean for two weeks. It wasn't much, compared to other periods in his life when the sun would begin to shine on him just a little bit brighter than it usually would, but it was something and it had all come crumbling down on him with just a few words. He hates how quickly words break him, make him reach for the blade to shut them out because he's never known how else to live without depending on the calculated balance between physical and mental pain to keep him just above the water. He tries so hard, drags himself out of bed every day through the fatigue that never seems to leave his bones no matter how much he sleeps, keeps his mouth shut at home to not get on anybody's nerves because as soon as he opens it, people are angry at him. He's become nothing but a shadow of himself in the past couple years, but still it's not enough to not feel the hurt after all this time.

The cuts on his thighs still ache and smolder after yesterday's breakdown. It wouldn't have been his luck if he hadn't overheard bits and pieces of the conversation between his mother and Minho in the kitchen- a conversation he wondered if they truly didn't know he overheard, or if they just didn't care anymore. 

"...lazy thing...useless." 

"...doesn't care for anybody but himself." 

"Hanbin? He's incapable of doing anything but lying around, eating, and sleeping. What can you possibly expect from him? Give me a break, Mom."

"...doesn't know anything. That blank stare- he'll just stand there and look at you like he's slow whenever you try to explain something to him. There's nothing left of his brain anymore. It's all in that phone."

"It's like he's not all there, when I look at him."

He'd been having a bad day already. The library had been closed, so he'd had nothing left to do but sit at home and feel like he's drowning in all the noise and endless mess that seemed to double as soon as he'd finish cleaning. But no one saw him trying to hold their home together. No one ever would. Their words had been the last straw for him to give in to his thirst for self-destruction all over again.

Oh, well. He might as well accept the fact that nobody wants to love him by now. It's not like trying will ever get them to give it to him. Yet he wants to be loved, needs it so badly he thinks he'll lie down and die if he has to make another day without it, but in the end he makes it a day, then a week, then a month and then another year. The days end and blend into nights that blend into days that bleed into more nights, and at the end of it all he's still standing. Still without love, still without witness to the tears that escape him in oceans behind closed doors, but standing.

He puts out his cigarette and walks to the bus stop, knowing he won't make it to the studio in time if he walks from here. He catches the bus just as it pulls up and spends the fifteen-minute-long ride fully immersed in the music blasting into his ears at full volume. He's almost positive the other passengers can hear everything through his headphones, but he couldn't care less at the moment. He needs the melodies to consume him whole while his brain isn't in overdrive from the evening awaiting him yet.

He always gets there ten minutes early so he can watch the dancers. Five minutes to watch Yujin's hip-hop class, and five minutes to watch the waacking class located one room down. He's seen his share of every class the studio has to offer by now- hip-hop, waacking, tutting, contemporary, modern, ballroom, and a handful more. But no other genre could capture his interest quite the way waacking always does. He loves everything about it- the attitude, the brazenness, the unapologetic flair. Once in a while, his imagination dares to stray as far as imagining himself in that classroom, but each time he pushes the image away before it can form into something bigger than just a fantasy. He can't afford to dream, not anymore. Not when everything he's ever longed for was dangled on a string right in front of his face only to be snatched away from him at the last moment.

The teacher sees him watching and invites him to join their class for the hundredth time this year. Hanbin politely declines her for the hundredth. "Too risky," he says. "Mom will definitely find out if two of us go. And besides, the timing just isn't convenient." And he might collapse, if the intensity is beyond what he's physically capable of. Eating disorders will do that to you.

He wants to dance; god, he wants to. But what he wants hasn't been in the universe's interest for a long time now, so he makes do with what he already has. And that is watching Yujin get to fulfill the dream Hanbin himself will never be able to, so his little brother will never have to stop believing in miracles. He will make sure that Yujin will never look at the other children his age and feel sick with envy; he has attended and will continue to attend every single one of Yujin's dance competitions in place of their parents, and though Yujin hasn't had a win to his name just yet, Hanbin will celebrate each one of them to come, because he knows for certain that they will. He'll cheer for him in the sidelines until his voice gives out, and he will tell Yujin he's proud of him after every trip and fall and loss, because god himself knows Hanbin's never heard it from his family. And better yet, Yujin has friends here- children that scream for him during his dance solos, have their own special handshakes with him, and hug him whenever he feels down. Hanbin will be damned if he lets anyone take that away from Yujin. 

"Can I tell you a secret?" Yujin asks with the most serious expression Hanbin's ever seen him wear as they settle into the car. "It's a bad one."

"Put on your seatbelt first and then I'll listen. What is it buddy? Did something bad happen that I need to know about?"

"No," Yujin shakes his head, fastening his seatbelt into the latch plate. "It's something really, really horrible though."

"Now you've peaked my interest. Spit it out, Yujinnie, or I just might combust from the curiosity. I can feel it coming...any minute now..."

"You're not funny," Yujin deadpans. "The thing is...I think the dance studio has become my favorite place in the whole entire world."

"Hm, that's good," Hanbin nods in appreciation as he gets them out of the parking lot and onto the main road. "I thought it was church though, no?"

"That's the thing," Yujin says, uncharacteristically forlorn. "It's supposed to be church."

"And who the hell told you that, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Well...nobody. But it's supposed to be my favorite place, isn't it? God will be angry at me if it isn't. What if He asks me about it when I die and then sends me to hell because of it?"

Hanbin takes a deep intake of breath and holds it, counting to ten in his head as he wills himself not to break out and curse in front of Yujin. This isn't the first time the boy had said something of the sort, but each time catches Hanbin off guard.

He'd be a liar if he said he hadn't had the same thoughts as a young child, but he'd never been the type to overthink it to the extent that Yujin does. He'd given up talking about it to his parents rather early, quickly having recognized their pattern of thinking and what their responses to his questions would be, and Doyoung never liked to speak on the topic of religion. All other siblings and extended family were out of the question. Adults in church or school weren't ever even close to being an option.

He knows what he wants to say to Yujin. Fuck whoever put those thoughts in your head. You never did anything even remotely deserving of some sort of punishment, much less an eternity in hell. Why would you even like church when the only memories you get from it are getting tormented and humiliated by the children in your age group?  But he knows that if word of his opinions would reach his mother's ears, he'd never live to hear the end of it, so he settles on "God's not that petty, darling. He has bigger things and worse people to worry about than you, trust me."

"But I'm a sinner. Everybody is, no matter the sin."

Just like that, Hanbin loses his temper. "Oh yes matter the sin, kid. What's the worst thing you've ever done, huh? Steal some chewing gum from Mom's purse? You ever heard of Hitler? The Imperial Japanese Armed Forces? Israel, perhaps?"

"I'm still a sinner, Hanbin," Yujin mutters. "Just a saved one."

Jesus Christ help me, Hanbin thinks- no pun intended. "Okay, then. Whatever helps you sleep at night."

He needs to get out of this godforsaken town before he loses it. How does one even begin to explain to an eleven-year-old that all they've ever been fed their whole life are lies built upon lies built upon more lies, and get them to believe you? It's fascinating, how masterful the church is at the psychological game of utilizing fear as a weapon against the broken and the children, whose brains are so clear yet so, so malleable and vulnerable to anything that comes out of the mouths of the people that try to sell them a false sense of belonging with terms and conditions. Hanbin is more than aware that it is these same children that then grow up to contribute to the cycle with renewed vigor, and his secret fear is that he won't be able to stop Yujin from meeting their fate.

He'll talk about it to him later sometime, when they have more time on their heads and the walls lose their ears. For now all he can do is put on Yujin's favorite song in apology for snapping at him and make sure he gets his homework done without Minho's intervention.

Yujin stops him before they can get to the front door, slipping some sort of package into his hands none too discreetly.

"What's this, Yujinnie?"

Yujin looks at him as if he's lost his marbles. "It's your birthday today. So, happy birthday. I guess."

Hanbin's mouth opens and closes several times before he gives up on saying anything and just goes straight for the wrapping paper. There's a small carton box under all the layers, and when he opens it he finds a pen laying inside.

It's beautiful- a glossy black all around with tiny faux gems lining the top and bottom, a transparent cap that closely resembles a feather in shape, and one word engraved in tiny golden print along its body.

Remember.

Hanbin's voice is hoarse when he speaks again. "What's this?"

"Ah, the word, you mean?" Yujin scratches the back of his hesitantly, shy all of a sudden. "You're seventeen now. That means one more year and you'll be going to university. Probably, I mean. I don't know if you're planning on going or if you're just going to work at the convenience store like Minho and Hana do. You did say you want to become a teacher, didn't you? Anyway, you'll be leaving home next year if that's the case. And well, um. I'll miss you, I guess. So I want you to remember me, us. Don't abandon us like Doyoung did and then never come visit. Don't come home twice a year like Daddy does, either."

"Yujin-"

"I love you, Hanbin. I really, really do. Thank you for all the things you do for me."

Thank you. Hanbin had never thought he'd hear these words from his little brother. Not that he would ever need to; he doesn't think he does enough for him to deserve a "thank you." His eyes water, but Yujin will not grow up remembering him crying. Hanbin doesn't want that for him. What he wants is for Yujin to remember the warmth of the embrace he gathers him in, and the sense of security he hopes it gives him. He wants Yujin to remember his "thank you"s. He needs Yujin to grow up knowing that he also means something to Hanbin, and their bond isn't one-sided. Maybe, one day, he can become an older brother Yujin will be proud of.

"I love you too, buddy, but what money did you even buy this with? It looks expensive."

Yujin smiles sheepishly at him once he pulls away from the embrace. "My birthday money from Grandma."

"Yujin, didn't I tell you-"

"You're always writing something," he shrugs. "And you're always looking for pens around the house. Thought I'd get you your own so you won't have to. Don't lose it or else I'm never getting you anything again."

"I won't," Hanbin promises him. "I'll carry it with me everywhere I go." He hugs him once more and then ushers him into the house before his mother can come out asking why they've been standing outside for too long. She doesn't trust him around Yujin, for some reason.

The second the door shuts behind him, he braces himself. That's the thing with his mother; he's always got to prepare himself whenever he's about to see her. Nobody ever knows what kind of mood the woman will be in at the moment. Even if he's lucky enough to catch her in high spirits, her mood had always been an extremely volatile matter, so he can never bank on high hopes for too long.

He starts observing from the threshold, analyzing her stance at the sink and the amount of strength exerted into her motions as she rinses the soap off the dishes. He analyzes all the signals in mere seconds, recognizing the angry edge in the way her arms jerk rhythmically through the movements, and instinctively hunches in on himself as he walks across the living room and towards the hallway. His gait becomes lighter automatically, allowing him to glide along the wooden floor much like ghosts float past windows in the movies- something he's mastered years ago once he'd realized that if he walked by quieter, there was less of a chance she'd hear him and turn her head in his direction. It comes to him like second nature now; heels just barely touching the floor and lifting off it the very second they hit the wood, all the exertion going onto the balls of the feet, which in turn raise in a gradual waving motion until he's halfway on his tiptoes for but a millisecond before his heels hits the floor again. It makes his feet burn if he's at it for longer than half a minute, but he much prefers that over the chances of confrontation with his mother.

It's just that sometimes, he forgets to raise his head in the process to take note of any obstacles that could be in his way so he could avoid bumping into them. Today is one of those days. He bumps into a chair- a fucking kitchen chair, for fuck's sake- and just like that mission A Few Seconds Of Peace And Quiet In The Sung Home is unsuccessful.

"Hanbin. You're back."

Hanbin can almost physically sense every ounce of life Yujin had poured into him just minutes prior drain out at the sound of her voice. "Yes, mother."

"How was the library?"

It doesn't sound like an accusation, going off of the words alone. But Hanbin knows his mother, and he can hear the irritation in her voice through the syllables raised in odd places near the end of the sentence. The poison within her is coiled up and waiting for the right moment to strike, and once again he is powerless to deflect the attack.

"It was good."

"I don't understand what you do in that place, seriously," she shakes her head. "You spend hours every day holed up there doing God knows what and then come home to lie around on your phone and rot away like nothing in the world matters to you. Just get a job, at this rate."

"I thought you said I'm too incapable and socially inept to get a job yet just last week."

"It would be better than you doing absolutely nothing all day long," she says. "At least you'd be useful for something. You never do anything around the house to help anyway."

"Okay. Since I'm so useless to you all, I'll be heading over to my room now to lie around and do nothing, if you don't mind. Am I excused?"

"You and your tongue, Hanbin. I never thought I'd given birth to such a snake," she smiles. It drips venom, like every single one of her smiles seems to do. "Just you wait. You'll regret every single word very, very soon. God will not let you go unpunished for the way you treat me. He'll stand up for me, if nobody else will."

"Sure," Hanbin says, suddenly exhausted as if he'd just run a marathon. "I'll go now."

"Go. Just leave and go to sleep, like you always do. It will be better for everyone else that way," she retorts. "And would it kill you to put on a normal face for once? At least on your birthday. You just have to walk around looking like someone died every day. One would think you have such a difficult life."

"Okay. I'm going over to Matt's at six," Hanbin tells her, expression screaming impassivity. "I'll be spending the night, so don't wait for me. Don't make me a birthday dinner or anything this year, okay?"

"Was I supposed to?" she bites. "I'm not doing anything of the sort this year. You've showed me you don't value anything we do for you anyway. But I still got you a gift. It's on its way."

"Okay," Hanbin says again, knowing his calm drives her insane. "Thank you. I'll go lie down for a while before I leave. Are you sure you don't need help with anything?"

"No, thank you," she jeers, her tone carrying that overly saccharine quality that makes Hanbin sick. "What can you possibly help me with? You can't even spend your birthday with your own family."

Hanbin turns around without another word and heads to his room. He opens the door and stills at the sound of her voice again, loud and bitter in the distance.

"Happy birthday, Hanbinnie."

He shuts the door, gets into bed, and falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.

-

By the time Hanbin pulls into Gyuvin's driveway at 6:15 p.m., he is second-guessing this whole plan being a good idea.

The Kims live only ten minutes away from the Sungs, so the countryside still doesn't go anywhere, but they have one thing in their area that the Sungs haven't had for years- neighbors. If Matthew- and Hanbin is one hundred percent certain it's Matthew- keeps blasting Seventeen on Gyuvin's father's loudspeakers in the office at the volume he currently is, Hanbin won't be surprised to see the cops pulling up with questions this evening. 

He needs to get Matthew drunk as soon as possible, and keep Gyuvin from drinking for as long as he can if he expects to have any peace of mind this evening. Matthew becomes uncharacteristically compliant under the influence, while Gyuvin gets off his proverbial leash and wreaks havoc onto whatever environment is unlucky enough to surround him in the moment, so the balance is crucial. Hanbin has never had to handle the both of them drunk before, and to tell the truth, he is terrified out of his fucking mind.

Fortunately, none of them seem to have touched the alcohol just yet. Gyuvin opens the door for him with a bright smile and a hug that almost chokes the goddamn life out of him until Hanbin has to punch his shoulder repeatedly to get access to oxygen. Matthew appears as equally excited, though his hug doesn't end up posing half as much of a hazard to Hanbin's life as the previous one, thankfully.

"Happy birthday, man! We have a surprise waiting in the basement for you," Matthew says in that sly tone of voice that Hanbin is acquainted with far too well after all the years he's spent knowing him. It's either an open casket or a closed one, when he says it like that. The smirk doesn't indicate a bright future ahead of him this evening, either.

"In the basement? Of course you had to put it in the basement. You know, when I recommended you start reading, I didn't mean start off with 'A Noise Downstairs'. I swear you'll start channeling your inner Charlotte any day now. You got me a haunted typewriter, didn't you?"

"Oh quit your theatrics," Gyuvin whines. "It's something good, really good. We promise you'll like it."

"I will not."

"You will, just wait and see. If I'm right, you have to go and buy us ice cream."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then you still have to go and buy us ice cream."

"For fuck's sake. Get a job, Gyuvin."

"No."

Matthew claps his hands loudly to direct their attention to him. "Enough yapping, ladies. Down to the basement we descend."

"It really can't wait?" Hanbin complains as they follow Gyuvin down the staircase leading into the darkened room. "Why can't you just give it to me after we party? Don't we always do it like that?"

"We would, but it's kind of...alive," Gyuvin confesses.

"What do you mean, 'alive'? What the hell did you guys get me?"

"Me."

"Me, too."

Hanbin stops in his tracks at the sound of those oh-so-familiar voices, suddenly rendered speechless.

It can't be. There's simply no way. 

Gyuvin's eyes twinkle as he turns to look at Hanbin, smile so wide it swallows up his whole face. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go to them."

They don't need to say more; Hanbin is already bounding down the stairs before Matthew's hands can stretch out to push him. He stops at the bottom of the steps, peering at the figures sitting side by side in the loveseat in the corner, just to make sure he didn't imagine it. Once he realizes that he didn't and it is indeed real, he's flying at the bodies in the chair faster than he's ever moved before.

"Jiwoong!!! Ricky!!"

Jiwoong only cackles into Hanbin's hair, clearly pleased with himself at managing to give Hanbin the shock of his life on a random Saturday afternoon. All Hanbin is capable of doing in the moment is flinging an arm around Jiwoong's neck and burying his face into Jiwoong's chest, holding onto him like if he were to let go, Jiwoong would disappear and never return. Ricky pats him on the back awkwardly and is about to move away, but Hanbin reaches around with his other arm and forcefully brings the boy into the hug, overcome by happiness.

"Now you have to drive to the convenience store and get us ice cream," Gyuvin crows.

"Shut up," Hanbin mutters, voice muffled through the fabric of Jiwoong's shirt. "Nobody talk to me."

"Not even me?" Jiwoong teases.

Hanbin leans back at last, staring into his friends' faces like he's seeing him for the first time. "How did you two even get here?"

"Transportation?"

"Asshole. You know what I mean."

"Ricky's parents got him a car for his birthday," Jiwoong elaborates. "A fucking Maserati. I can't even afford a car of my own, much less a Maserati." 

Ricky shrugs. "What good is a Maserati to me if I still don't have a license?"

"Hence why I was the one who drove us here. I remembered your birthday was coming up and thought I could arrange something with Matthew. He was the one who proposed we make it a surprise, so I thought 'why not'? We got sick of seeing you guys only once to twice a year, anyway."

"You did," Ricky corrects him. "I was absolutely fine with seeing them once to twice a year."

"Disgusting," Gyuvin huffs. "Shen Quanrui, you are so goddamn disgusting."

"Okay, now that we're all reunited, should we all go upstairs and get the fun going?" Matthew suggests, ever the party animal of the group. "Hanbin, I'll need your help with the drinks. Gyuvin and Ricky are in the process of setting up a little something in the backyard, and Jiwoong- the pizza should be ready any minute now. Will you be able to find the place?"

Jiwoong nods and Matthew claps his hands in satisfaction, gesturing for everybody to follow him upstairs. They trail him to the kitchen, where they all split to do their own things in preparation for the celebration, leaving Matthew and Hanbin alone to prepare the drinks by themselves. It makes Hanbin nervous, and he despises himself for it. Since when had he been nervous to be alone with his childhood friend? Since when had so many secrets and lies piled up between them for the sake of the other, even when they both know it's done them more harm than good?

Matthew wordlessly starts mixing the Sprite with the lemon brandy in one of the pitchers, leaving Hanbin no choice but to follow his lead with the other drinks. They both work in utter silence, making Hanbin ache with memories of years past. He hadn't realized how long it's been since it was just him and Matthew. Ever since Gyuvin had come into the picture two years ago, it's always been the three of them. Somewhere along the way, Hanbin had ended up losing his best friend. Yes, Matthew is still there, still a friend, still his closest friend- but nothing is the same anymore. Matthew no longer pleads Hanbin for the answers to his sadness, or initiates his famous comfort hugs, or asks Hanbin to talk. They have nothing to talk about anymore, when it's just the two of them, and that sudden realization hits Hanbin like a punch to the gut.

"Hey Matthew-"

"I think I forgot to take the strawberry vodka out of the fridge. Could you get that out for me, please?"

It's all his own fault. He's not stupid; he knows he could have salvaged their relationship if he had only showed Matthew he trusted him when it had started getting hard. Matthew has always seen the world differently from him; to him, keeping secrets means a lack of trust, a false love even. To Hanbin, keeping secrets is all he knows of love. He can't bear seeing Matthew crumble under the weight of problems that aren't his when he has a world of his own to carry on his back already.

So in the end, all they can do is go on like this and hope it doesn't get worse. They will continue whatever this is without a word of complaint, happy when Gyuvin is there to glue their shattered pieces together, lost and fighting a cold war with each other when he isn't. And, unless Hanbin surrenders, the only end the war will ever see will be the tops of their caskets when their hearts stop beating at last.

The two of them finish mixing and pouring the drinks relatively quickly, considering Jiwoong still isn't back with the pizza by the time they're done, so they call Gyuvin and Ricky to help them with carrying the pitchers and glasses out to the backyard while they wait. Hanbin steps out the door last and barely succeeds in not dropping and breaking the pitcher in his hands at the sight in front of him.

Gyuvin has gone all out to make sure Hanbin will have a memorable, atmospheric evening, if the way the backyard looks is anything to go by. The gazebo in the center of the yard is layered with a white canopy of frilly mosquito nets and colorful bead curtains hanging right over the entrance. Fairy lights line the beams and entwine the poles, bathing the whole structure in a warm, inviting yellow glow, and through the see-through nets Hanbin can make out mini-cushions, pillows, and a low table laden with heaps of all sorts of snacks and side dishes no doubt prepared by Jiwoong. In the corner stands a small mountain of bags that hold his gifts, though there's far too many of them for him to be entirely sure. Hanbin blinks rapidly as he takes it all in, mouth hung open in surprise.

"You see that?" Gyuvin beams. "That was all me. I made that all by myself."

Ricky nudges him with a frown, visibly displeased at being left without credit. "I helped you set the table just now."

"Yeah, well, I did everything else all alone, though. Happy birthday, Hanbin! You deserve all this and so much more."

He bounds up to him and wraps him in a hug that has Hanbin remembering everything that's gone wrong today, every one of his mother's sharp words that had twisted the knife permanently wedged in his heart even deeper. He takes in a deep breath of Gyuvin's scent- an ever-present mix of tangerine peel and sweet hay, and blinks the tears away when they come. "Thank you, Gyu. Seriously, thank you."

"He put a lot of damn effort into setting up that tent these past two days," Matthew shakes his head. "You better get him that ice cream later, Sung Hanbin."

Hanbin breaks apart from the hug, ruffling Gyuvin's hair as he does so. "I will, I will. He's earned it."

The back door flies open with a loud slam seconds later, revealing a ruffled Jiwoong balancing four boxes of pizza in one hand. "It's here. And before you ask what took me so long- I got lost."

"Why am I not surprised?" Matthew mumbles. "Let's hurry and get it into the tent before it goes cold."

"It's a gazebo, Matthew."

"Looks like a tent to me."

They take the boxes into the gazebo and lay them out on the table among the other food, Gyuvin and Ricky immediately peeking under the lids to see the flavors beforehand. Gyuvin goes as far as poking his finger into one of the pies- which earns him an indignant slap on the hand from Ricky- before he loudly announces that it has indeed gone cold.

"My bad," Jiwoong apologizes, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. "The GPS said one way, but the pizza guy recommended a shortcut and I just...yeah."

"It's okay," Matthew waves him off. "There's a microwave and an oven inside the house, anyway. I don't know if it'll fit into a microwave though. Any volunteers to go heat it up?"

Hanbin is the first to raise his hand, and is then immediately followed by Jiwoong. The two of them get sent off to the house to heat the food up while the others wait, which Hanbin expected- none of his friends aside from Jiwoong and himself have any experience with preparing food whatsoever, and have probably never even turned on an oven by themselves. One of them getting hurt because they were dumb enough to stick their hand into a burning hot oven isn't on Hanbin's bucket list at the current moment. Or ever, of course, but especially now.

The moment Jiwoong shuts the oven door on the first pie, he turns to Hanbin with a question on the tip of his tongue that Hanbin knows was inevitable. He's been on edge this whole past hour, not knowing what moment Jiwoong would end up deeming most comfortable to let it slip, but now that the time has come, he discovers he still isn't close to being ready.

"How have you been, Hanbin?"

"I've been well," Hanbin lies. "Got a job now, and everything. I have my own income now, too. How cool is that?"

"Hanbin. You know what I mean. Are you any better at all?"

It takes as much for Hanbin to wither right on the spot. He'd do anything if it would mean not having to answer; today is simply not the day for new lies. He has but a few remaining hours of June thirteenth to make a good memory out of. He'd rather be outside right now, watching his friends get drunk and wasted even as he sits there sober. He doesn't even care if they throw up all over him at this point- anything is better than having this conversation right here, right now, with Kim Jiwoong.

"I'm fine."

Jiwoong gives him his infamous dead look over the second box of pizza in his arms, visibly searching for words in his head as he works. "You...Hanbin, listen. I get you don't want to talk about these things, especially not today. But you're going to have to, someday, and you know it. You'll have nowhere to run. What's going to happen then, Bin?"

"What's going to happen then, I'll talk about then. Not now. I don't know why you think something's wrong, Jiwoong. Jesus, do I look that awful nowadays?"

"God, no," Jiwoong says, expression horrified. "That's not it. You did get even skinnier than the last time I saw you, but... I just wondered because, well. That one night at summer camp two years ago, Hanbin. I can't get it out of my head."

He whispers the last part, eyes averted as if it were nothing but a passing remark, but Hanbin knows better and it feels like a stone tied around his neck, dragging him to the deepest trenches of the ocean floor until the pressure in his head explodes. He's done it again. He's made somebody he loves worry about him when there's really nothing to worry about, all because he wasn't able to hold in his stupid fucking tears for the hundredth time. All because he's selfish.

"Oh, that. Don't worry about that. It was a long time ago."

"You never did tell me what happened."

"Because it wasn't fucking important. I was just having a bad day."

"It seemed important to you."

"It isn't anymore, alright?" Hanbin's voice rises without intention, making him panic instantly. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm getting so worked up today."

"No, you're fine. I should be sorry for prying. It was rude of me, considering we barely ever see each other anyway."

"You had good intentions."

"Not an excuse, unfortunately."

They finish heating up the rest of the pies with a desperate attempt from both sides to make small talk in order to distract themselves from the sharp emotions of the previous conversation, and it works, somewhat. Hanbin learns Jiwoong still hasn't graduated from high school, as he's been focusing on making money to keep their family above the water financially and is only now in his senior year as a result. He's working two jobs at the moment- one at a restaurant and another as a hotel staff member, leaving him barely any leisure time for himself or for life in general. He'd had to go to great lengths to receive permission for these two consecutive days off, which makes Hanbin's heart swell with guilt and gratitude simultaneously. 

He tries to keep Jiwoong talking for as long as he can, and fortunately by the time the latter runs out of things to say, the last pie in the oven is already half done. Hanbin uses up those last three minutes to disclose to Jiwoong the barest of the basics concerning the changes in his life throughout the seven months they hadn't seen each other. He speed-runs through the sudden drop in his grades, his job at the library, Yujin's dance classes, and even his father's last visit in December. Jiwoong produces the most satisfying combination of an eyeroll and a grimace at Hanbin's sardonic accounts of his father's "impressive achievements of converting Siberia's sinners", making Hanbin have to restrain himself from suffocating him in a bear hug all over again. Oh god, but he'd missed the sickeningly fine specimen that is Kim Jiwoong. How did he ever survive without him these past seven months?

They're done all too soon, now faced with the task of having to carry everything back out so they can finally get the celebration started. That means having to witness their friends get black-out drunk and most definitely pull stunts they'll end up regretting the morning after, if they even remember it. At least Hanbin won't be alone in his suffering today, as Jiwoong hasn't ever touched a drop of alcohol in his life and isn't planning to, in the near future. Hanbin knows one thing for sure, and that is the fact that solidarity in his sobriety today will not go unappreciated.

Gyuvin ends up being the first one to prove his point. It happens far quicker than Hanbin expected it to, and he'd already expected it to be quick. Gyuvin is always the first one of them to go, followed by Matthew, whose alcohol tolerance is somewhere in the middle; he couldn't be called a lightweight, but neither could he ingest more than four drinks without blacking out. They'd only drunk with Ricky once, back in youth winter camp last year, but he'd proved himself to be the most terrifying of them all when it comes to tolerance. Seven drinks in and he'd been barely affected; nine drinks in and he was only beginning to slur his words. Hanbin had made a mental note back then to hide the bottle from him after eight, slightly fearing for the boy's life.

Nothing's changed since last December. Gyuvin's still the first one to get himself drunk and his tongue loose, much to everybody's entertainment. Hanbin wishes the battery on his phone weren't on the verge of dying; this would have made the most perfect blackmail material to make use of in the future.

"No, listen, start taking me ser-seriously, will you? Jesus would definitely celebrate pride month. I kn-know he would."

"Listen, I like Jesus too. He's better than god. But give me a break. Next thing you'll be saying is Jesus would be at every local pride parade marching around with a pride flag and blasting 'Born This Way' from the speakers," Matthew snorts. "What do you think about in that pretty head of yours when you're sober?"

"Rainbows and unicorns," Gyuvin slurs, head already lolling onto Matthew's shoulder beside him. "Gay unicorns."

"Of course they have to be gay unicorns. God forbid you think about a heterosexual one."

"Fuck you, Matthew. There is no such th-thing as a...a straight...unicorn."

Ricky full-on groans, slamming his fourth emptied glass of strawberry vodka onto the ground in frustration. "Why the fuck am I here? Are we seriously discussing the sexuality of a mythical creature right now?" 

"Don't look at me," Matthew shrugs. "It's all Gyuvin. Although, if you were to really think about it... Don't you think the unicorn is an inherently queer mythical character in its concept created to appeal to the masses that favor such controversial aspects of life as whimsy, flamboyance, and inclusivity of oppressed parties?"

"Oh god, it's started, guys. He's talking like Hanbin."

"Is that supposed to be an insult-"

"It's a compliment in your direction, Bin," Jiwoong reassures him. "The offense is Matthew's."

"Hey! I read a book last month! Hanbin can attest to that, right, Hanbin?"

"Sure," Hanbin nods, already feeling like he hasn't slept in ages. "You didn't even finish it. You abandoned it as soon as you got the slightest hint of who the culprit in the book was. Shame, Seok Woohyun. Shame."

"The fuck was the point in reading it any further?"

Jiwoong raises his hand in an authoritative call for silence, clutching his head with the other in a dramatic display of displeasure. "Alright, alright, that's enough. Eat something, you morons. You've barely touched any of the food in favor of deep throating those glasses. Alcohol on an empty stomach will only get you drunk faster on smaller amounts. You don't want that now, do you?"

"I do," Matthew smiles blearily. "The faster I get drunk, the sooner I'm happy."

Hanbin feels a sharp pang in his chest, but he ignores it, forcefully pushing a slice of pizza into Matthew's sweaty hands. "Happy my ass. That's just the effect of the liquor on your brain. It's not true happiness, Matt."

"Oh, like you would know anything about happiness," Matthew retorts. Hanbin's face drops at that, but he plays off the sting with an eyeroll and pushes the slice into Matthew's mouth when he makes no move to eat it himself.

"There, now you're finally eating-"

His sentence is interrupted midway by a very stealthy Kim Jiwoong, who'd somehow managed to take the last slice out of the first pie and edged up to Hanbin until they were sitting less than an inch away from each other, all without Hanbin seeing. He'd turned his head from Matthew, only to find himself face to face with Jiwoong and temporarily rendered unable to speak, because somehow, the bastard had gathered up enough guts to push an entire half-slice of pizza straight into Hanbin's open mouth as he was talking.

"Take that and practice what you preach."

Hanbin can't even spit it out, the shock automatically propelling him to chew and swallow as his friends' amused gasps and laughs fill his ears.

"Holy fuck, Jiwoong. So that's how you do it."

"If I knew that this was the way to get him to finally eat..."

At this point in the evening, Hanbin can't even force himself to feel angry. Truthfully, he's starving right now. He always is, but he's gotten used to it over the past two years. He makes sure to eat just enough to not pass out from the hunger, but it's far from being as much as his body needs. It's not good for him, and he knows it. He's not blind, after all; he sees the way his hair has gotten visibly thinner, the aches, the dizziness that overtakes him far too often in his most active moments, feels the fatigue encroach every centimeter of his bones when he dreams about food and wakes up the next morning, pleading with his mind that he hadn't actually let himself go and eaten what he had in the dream. He also knows they all noticed it, and that it's been a while since they've known. They'd all tried to get him to talk about it, and each one of them had walked away without a smidgen of success. It's not like he can blame Jiwoong when he knows the other's been worried sick about him for years now. He could at least indulge them on his birthday.

So he swallows it down, and dives for the second half under Jiwoong's incredulous gaze. Nobody's stupid enough to cheer, thankfully, but they all smile at him like he'd just taken his first step. It makes him feel more than uncomfortable, to say the least, prompting him to frantically search the area with his eyes for anything to avert their attention to as long as it won't be on him anymore. He ends up finding his target in no time, however, and it's such an intriguing one he forgets about what's just been on his mind a second ago.

It's Gyuvin; well, Gyuvin and Ricky, to be more precise. It's a sight Hanbin's only gotten to witness once before- coincidentally the night they'd gotten drunk at winter camp all those months ago. Ricky, in his tipsy state, had leaned his head on Gyuvin's shoulder, which is something he would never have done sober. He'd always favored physical affection over any other love language, but it didn't show unless one knew him extremely well, and he's rarely ever the one to initiate it. But throughout that evening, he'd kept sidling up closer and closer to Gyuvin, not once moving his head off Gyuvin's shoulder, until his right knee had been practically swung over Gyuvin's legs and his arms were pressed right into Gyuvin's side. For what had seemed like an eternity, Gyuvin's face and ears had been painted the kind of flaming red that doesn't exactly happen from intoxication until Ricky had finally unglued himself from him. Hanbin still has the photo in his camera roll for mood medication purposes.

It's happening again, but this time, it's Gyuvin leaning into Ricky. Hanbin is startled out of his wits to see Ricky's ears tinged red at the edges, not used to any sign of fluster from the usually cool-headed, nonchalant boy since he's known him. He nudges Matthew, who is now definitely tipsy, and nods his head in their direction, getting a devious smile in return as soon as Matthew's finished analyzing the situation.

"Hey guys. I have an...idea. Since most of us are drunk, let's all reveal a secret we've been hiding. Shall we? Most of us won't- won't remember it by tomorrow any...way. Yeah"

"Oh no," Jiwoong groans, both hands on his head now. "No, no, no, no, no. Not this game, not drunk. Have you forgotten you still need to get to church tomorrow morning? Church, in case any of you misheard. Not the emergency room."

"Aw, come oooooonnnnn, Jiwoong. Nobody's gon' beat each other up. It'll be harmless, just wait an' see."

Jiwoong obviously does not believe a single word that came out of Matthew's mouth, but concedes nevertheless. "Alright, then. But I get to start the game, okay? Okay. Gyuvin, you go first."

"Bad idea, Jiwoong," Hanbin hisses. "Look at him. He's completely gone."

"Okay!" Gyuvin chirps, totally oblivious to Hanbin's panic. "This one's for Ricky only, 'kay? Nobody listen. Cover your ears, guys."

Hanbin looks around, just in case anybody actually covered their ears- pointless action, to say the least.

" 'Kay, now, Ricky. Did you know...?"

Ricky waits patiently for Gyuvin to finish his sentence, then realizes he won't be getting an answer unless he pries and asks "Know what?"

Gyuvin opens his mouth to say something and it moves, trembling and silent, before he shuts it again and drops his head sleepily into the crook between Ricky's shoulder and neck, nosing at his ear. Ricky goes completely still, to the point that Hanbin questions if he's even breathing, before Gyuvin gathers the courage to speak up again, his face turned away from the rest of them.

"'d you know I like you...Since that summer. When we firs' met."

Jiwoong covers his mouth with his hand and looks away, while Matthew grins wolfishly. Hanbin cannot tear away his eyes from Ricky's shocked face, utterly regretting ever agreeing to this get-together at all. Gyuvin may have just single-handedly ruined whatever friendship there has been between him and Ricky. If Ricky remembers this tomorrow- and he probably will- Hanbin won't be able to stand seeing them drift apart.

"No," Ricky says. Through the sharp chirp of the cicadas behind the netting and the Cigarettes After Sex track playing softly from the Bluetooth speakers in the background, his voice is all but inaudible, but the softness in it is louder than any other noise that permeates their space. "No, Gyuvin, I did not know that."

Hanbin holds his breath and waits- he isn't sure exactly what he waits for, but he knows he's expecting something big, a massive-scale earthquake that would open a gaping chasm between the two of them that's much too large to build a bridge over. Ricky Shen doesn't speak about love, he doesn't do feelings, but Kim Gyuvin is all about them. He lives as love itself, breathes it in as if it's the oxygen keeping him alive and breathes it out all over everybody else and sometimes, for people like Hanbin who've been hopelessly starving for love for ages, it's all simply too much. Ricky's like him, in that way.

And yet, nothing happens. Not for a second does Ricky move his eyes off the boy draped over his shoulder, and Hanbin hopes.

"You guys should kiss."

Everybody turns to stare at Matthew, mouths agape in shock, but he only proceeds to take another swig from his glass, unbothered by their reactions. "What? They should. I mean, what're they losing? Gyuvin likes Ricky. Is jus' a one time thing, an' they're both drunk. It'll be fun."

Jiwoong frowns, slowly reaching for the bottle still in Matthew's hands "Okay, Matthew, I get you ship them and all, I really do. But that's up to them to deci-"

"I'll do it," Gyuvin interrupts, sitting up so abruptly he ends up bumping his chin on Ricky's collarbone and making the other hiss in pain. "Ricky, you wanna?"

Ricky is at a total loss for words beside him, looking at Matthew as if he'd just materialized in front of him from the darkest pits of hell. Hanbin sympathizes with him immensely- poor thing had no idea what he was getting into tonight, beyond unprepared for anything like this on what was supposed to be a normal birthday dinner. Not that any of them were, to be fair. Hanbin wonders if Ricky even has any feelings for Gyuvin, though he's sure Gyuvin would be able to sense it through the kiss even while drunk, because Gyuvin reads bodies like subtitles on a foreign TV show. The idea that he might end up sensing nothing but a growing void between them terrifies Hanbin to no end.

"Fine, I'll do it."

Well, shit.

"Fuck," Jiwoong hisses. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. This is not good."

"Shut up an' enjoy this," Matthew says, retrieving his phone from his pocket and pressing record. "Come on, you two. Go for it."

Hanbin watches the scene unfolding before him with a mounting sense of dread that borders on a forbidden joy. When Gyuvin begins to lean in, inch by hesitant inch, Jiwoong's panic suddenly begins to make too much sense. Hanbin can see far too clearly the eagerness, the repressed yearning Gyuvin had been nurturing so guiltily for two years now seeping through every inch of his skin in the way his hands tremble violently as they cup Ricky's face, his toes curling and uncurling in his sneakers as if he's fighting the urge to run as far as his feet could take him.

It would never work out. Even as their lips finally meet and Ricky's fingers tighten in the fabric of Gyuvin's shirt until his knuckles turn white, the end is a picture bold and clear on fate's canvas. They live hundreds of miles away from each other, and on the rare instances they do meet, chances of the two of them being left alone for more than a couple minutes are practically nonexistent. A love like that has no choice but to end in disaster, for those scarce moments are everything and yet they will never be enough, stabbing through the heart like a dagger of doom every time they come to an end and you have to ask yourself when they draw away- "when is next time?" Because by the time "next time" rolls around, the love of your life might find somebody else that is everything you never will be and leave you broken and unable to love ever again. If there is one person such a love would ruin irreversibly, it is Kim Gyuvin.

The tremble moves from Gyuvin's hands to the rest of his body, and it doesn't heighten or decrease in intensity up until the moment Ricky's fingers tentatively bury in Gyuvin's hair and stroke it with a gentleness Hanbin didn't know he was capable of. A second of it, then another one as long as eternity, and Gyuvin snaps.

Matthew is there to catch him when it happens, patting his back in concern as the boy lets out wet, heaving sobs that wrack his tall frame like a storm wreaks havoc on the shore. He repeats "What happened, Gyuvinnie? What's wrong?" like a broken record but all he gets in return are incoherent cries of something so incredibly painful it pierces straight through the soul and remains there like a parasite leeching onto its host. Gyuvin's not the only one to be affected, but Hanbin doesn't think Matthew notices the wetness beginning to well up in Ricky's confused eyes, or his fingers twisting in his lap, reaching for Gyuvin as if he had never pulled away before falling back to the ground in defeat.

Jiwoong moves towards the three of them just as Hanbin does, in time to see Gyuvin break away from Matthew's embrace and kneel sinking face-first into the grass, gasping for air as his cries grow so loud Hanbin fears it might tear his throat to shreds. His heart aches, knowing Gyuvin won't tell any of them the problem even if he were drunk to the point of a blackout. Gyuvin has always been the most transparent and honest of them all, but there is one thing he firmly refuses to open up to them about, and this kiss has finally triggered it to leak through the cracks.

Hanbin has to mend him; he has to at least try. If he can put so much as one stitch into the wound in his friend's heart before it festers beyond saving, he'll take any chance he gets.

Jiwoong catches onto his intentions before anybody else can and nods to him. "Guys, I need you all to help with something in the house real quick. Hanbin can stay with Gyuvin in the meantime, okay?"

"What would you even need two people for?" Matthew complains, sounding close to tears himself, but Jiwoong grabs him by the nape of his shirt and drags him along, followed by a perfectly compliant Ricky who honestly looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here at the moment. Hanbin's sharp eyes don't miss the way his head turns to Gyuvin one last time as they head out of the gazebo however, nor the half-second he spends hesitating at the exit before Jiwoong gently takes him by the elbow and hauls him along. Hanbin watches them leave one by one, until the last foot disappears behind the netting, before he finally moves.

A minute passes without him saying anything. Gyuvin doesn't need nor want him to, not at the climax of his breakdown where he wouldn't be able to answer even if he tried. So Hanbin just holds the drunk boy close, shielding him from the rest of the world as he lets him sob and wail into his chest until the top of his shirt is drenched through and through with Gyuvin's tears. Rubs his back firmly over and over again like Jiwoong had done for him once, when he'd been the one to break down this way. He shuts his eyes and pictures Gyuvin's heart bleeding out inside his chest, spasming and weeping hopelessly for its one desire to return and become his, all in vain.

In an alternative universe, Hanbin would reach inside and dig out Gyuvin's failing heart from its confines of despair with his bare hands, not caring about all the blood. He'd cradle it in his hands and mend all the broken parts until it would finally glow again, red and vibrant and happy. Then he'd put it back, and Gyuvin would magically forget all about Ricky and his star-crossed love. He'd fall for someone he could actually have, someone he could marry and raise a dog with and grow old aside like he'd once told Hanbin he dreamed about. It's such a simple dream, really, such an old and mundane one, yet so inherently Gyuvin that him living out life in any other way is hard for Hanbin to imagine. If only human beings could become god for a day to grant a single wish to whomever they wanted, just one silly little wish, Hanbin would fight every contender tooth and nail to become the thing he hates most in order to give his friends the life they want. The life that they deserve. Hanbin doubts the god his parents believe in loves them enough to overlook their teenaged faults anyway.

There's nobody to tell him he can't be god if it's what he wants to be. He's better at giving love to the people that deserve it than god will ever be, so he lavishes Gyuvin with the comfort he knows the boy has wept for on his knees in prayer at his bedside late into the night, away from eyes that have only ever known him as happiness personified. He runs his fingers over Gyuvin's shaking hands in calming waves, kisses his tangled hair and pats his back again and again, not once missing a beat until his cries begin to quiet and flow into words instead, choked and strangled.

"I l-love him, Hanbin. He doesn't fucking care, but I love him."

"Shh. I know, honey. I know."

He doesn't. He hadn't up until this very moment. He'd never thought it had gone this far, not once thought it was anything past "like". Not once had he thought it could happen; truthfully, how plausible could it be when all the time they ever get together is a week or two out of the year, with nothing but the occasional texting conversations to keep in touch in between it all? But then again, Hanbin knows nothing of love. Hell, he's never even liked anybody in that way. All he'd ever had was a single maybe-crush that lived for two fickle summer days before it was snatched cruelly from him by fate and a dark blue van. Love isn't something he can afford himself to even fantasize about having, so how can he possibly understand?

"Two years, two fucking years and he knows. He l-lied about not knowing. Why can't he love me back, Hanbin? What does that-that stupid Xiaoting have that I d-don't? If I were a girl..."

"Xiaoting? Who's Xiaoting, Gyuvinnie? You've never-"

Asking that question turns out to be a big mistake for reasons all too clear. Gyuvin's face scrunches up in pain again at the name and he lets out a final weak, strangled sob before going silent at last. Hanbin waits with bated breath for the tears to start up again, but after several seconds he comes to the conclusion that Gyuvin's probably exhausted all his tears at this point, with the way he's been going at it this whole time. He needs to drink something as soon as possible, as long as it's not more alcohol.

The water had run out ages ago, so he grabs a bottle of Gyuvin's favorite instead- mango juice. He pours him a full glass, holding onto the opposite side of the cup as Gyuvin drinks because his hands are still shaking, but some ends up getting spilled onto his neck anyway. Hanbin lets out an overly parental "tsk" and orders Gyuvin to stay still as he wipes away the liquid, and surprisingly, Gyuvin listens. He stays overly still, in fact- so still Hanbin's getting whiplash. When he looks up again, he finds Gyuvin staring at the ground with the blankest eyes Hanbin's ever seen on him, and decides he's had enough. 

"Alright, listen to me now. I don't know how much of what I'll tell you right now will stay in your memory, but I want you to pay attention, okay? This Xiaoting person, whoever she is, she's not worth your tears. Neither is Ricky- no, none of that 'but he's this' 'but he's that' bullshit, I can see you want to say it," Hanbin leans down to Gyuvin's level to meet his eyes- funny how small he suddenly seems, when he's curled up on the ground and sad- and takes his hands in his own.  "Listen, I know how badly you want him. Trust me, I know. But we can't always have the things we want in this life. You know why? Two reasons- either we don't deserve them right now or they have the potential to hurt us in the future. You deserve all the good things in this world, Gyu, the best things. But what you don't deserve is getting hurt."

"But then why does life still give us things that hurt even though we'd never wanted them? 'Jus makes no sense, Binnie."

Hanbin doesn't know what to say to that. He knows his attempt at offering comfort was lame. Fucking hell, he's just a child himself, having been confused and betrayed and fucked over by the cruel joke that is life one too many times throughout his seventeen years in it. He's never been an optimist; each time he'd tried to play the role, it would play him instead. So what is he supposed to say, really, when he doesn't even have the answers?

Gyuvin must sense that he doesn't, because he pushes Hanbin away after a full minute of silence and buries his head in his arms, hiding his face from view. "Leave me be. I wanna be sad. Just let me be sad."

Hanbin lets out a long sigh, looking up to the heavens for mental support that won't come. "For fuck's sake, Kim Gyuvin. You think I'm going to let you do that? Sit and mope around because of a boy when you could be- okay. You know what? Get up."

Gyuvin lifts his head and gives Hanbin a miffed look. "Get up?...Now?"

"The way you're looking at me, one would think I just asked you to go and run ten laps around the yard without stopping. Get up and follow me, dumbass. We're driving to the store to get supplies for a bonfire."

"...a what?"

"I'll get you the ice cream I promised too, to sober you up. But if you want it you have to stop crying and get up right this second, okay?"

Needless to say, Hanbin's proposal is accepted enthusiastically, and when the two of them step into the living room where the rest have been waiting, Gyuvin's in such high spirits he breaks the news to everybody before Hanbin can even begin to open his mouth.

"A bonfire?" Matthew repeats, looking and sounding much more sober than when Hanbin had last seen him. "Sounds great. But I think we should leave Gyuvin at home to rest while we're gone. He's scaring me."

"The hell'd I do?"

"Your mood swings are more jarring than those of a pregnant woman."

"Have you ever even been around a pregnant woman? You're the youngest," Jiwoong laughs.

"I read my mom's diary entries from around the time she was pregnant with me. Told me all I needed to know."

"First of all, that was a bitch move. But if I was pregnant with you I'd probably be having worse mental problems than just mood swings. Just saying."

"Oh my god Jiwoong mpreg!?"

"The fuck is that?"

Okay, perhaps Matthew hadn't sobered up quite enough. The last thing Hanbin needs right now is a full-blown discussion about fucking male impregnation, of all things, so he takes control of the situation and ushers them all out to his car before Matthew can say something he'll end up regretting tomorrow. His car is small, with barely three seats in the back, but they make it work.

Truthfully though, it was because he'd caught Ricky's gaze trained on Gyuvin the moment they'd walked into the living room, sharp and intense and yet so vulnerable behind it all, that Hanbin was afraid Gyuvin might notice any second and drown in it when Hanbin had only just managed to pull him out. He's aware Gyuvin's not the only one suffering in this situation, whatever it can even be defined as, but Gyuvin has always been so much easier to read. Ricky is a closed book much like Hanbin himself, and though it makes Hanbin understand him on a deeper level than the rest of his friends, he can't help but wish Ricky would just make his emotions on the matter clear once and for all.

Now's not the time for any more rumination on the matter, however. If there's one part of the day Hanbin wants to keep fond memories of, it will be now. He can almost taste it in the air; that gut-wrenching anticipation for something beautiful straight ahead, even if only for a single evening. He looks back in the mirror at Matthew, Ricky, and Jiwoong packed so tightly in the backseats there's not an inch of empty space between either pair, at Gyuvin dozing off beside him in the front seat, at the last rays of evening sunlight reflecting off the rearview mirror and bouncing off the dashboard in fractured lines of bronze. He thinks that right now, even if he's slowly murdering himself on the other days, at least he's happier than his father will ever be.

"We'll only be getting gasoline, because Gyuvin's dad already has firewood stacked up in the shed. And ice cream, because I promised."

"Geez, Hanbin, just drive already," Matthew whines, getting a smack to the back of the head from Jiwoong.

"He doesn't even have to be doing all this, so shush."

"What about the music?"

"I'm not entirely sure how to get to the convenience store from here, and I don't want to wake Gyuvin for directions, so I need to concentrate. I'll let you have the aux on the way back," Hanbin promises, and with that they roll out of the driveway and onto the road.

Surprisingly, he ends up finding his way to the store in no time. A small quarrel erupts in the car over whether Gyuvin should be woken or not, but Hanbin gets the final word- Gyuvin stays and sleeps the drunk off for as long as he can. Gyuvin is the only one of them quite visibly inebriated, after all, and they can't afford someone in the store noticing and spreading word to their parents. The town is too small to be taking any chances, and Hanbin knows Gyuvin's favorite ice cream flavors by heart, anyway. Ricky volunteers to stay with Gyuvin just in case- an idea Hanbin doesn't really approve of, but it's not like he can say no when Ricky's looking increasingly more pale with guilt and worry, so he leaves the two of them to each other and follows Matthew and Jiwoong into the store, praying Gyuvin doesn't wake up while they're gone.

Thankfully, none of the three are huge fans of shopping, so they manage to wrap it up in five minutes- record time. But it's still not fast enough. When the car comes into view, so do Gyuvin and Ricky inside it, and a second is enough time for Hanbin to see that Gyuvin is no longer in the front seat. They're sitting beside each other, so deep in conversation they don't appear to notice they're no longer alone.

As soon as the car doors open, they break eye contact and turn back around in their seats like nothing happened. Screw it, Hanbin decides. He'd done his part in trying to help. Whatever happens between them now is none of his business. He'll just be a silent viewer on the sidelines, ready to catch either one of them when they hit the dead end at full speed, blind. He won't be the one to put an end to something that so desperately wants to last. 

He turns around in his seat, facing Matthew while pointedly ignoring- or trying to ignore- Gyuvin's and Ricky's pinky fingers just barely touching between them. "You said you wanted music, didn't you Matt? Put it on and give me your phone."

Matthew types something into his phone with zero hesitation and hands it over for Hanbin to connect to the aux, leaning backwards in his seat with a satisfied smile as the opening notes begin to fill the car.

"I fucking hate this song," Ricky mutters under his nose. 

"Open the windows," Matthew yells. "The only right way to listen to this song is driving full speed with the windows open."

Hanbin can only indulge him, because unlike Ricky, he loves this song. It's everything he's ever wanted his life to sound like. It's his and Matthew's song; one of the three they'd play on repeat when Matthew first got a laptop four years ago. Memories come flooding back in waves- him and Matthew squatting side by side in the dark of Matthew's closet, bruised knees brushing together as Hanbin did his best to untangle Matthew's earphones in the darkness. They'd hide there while their parents visited with each other downstairs, listening to those three songs over and over, sharing those cheap convenience store-bought earphones as they hoped and prayed they wouldn't be found out, because getting caught listening to non-secular music would get them punished. He remembers ever so clearly Matthew's voice in that cramped, stuffy closet space, humming along to the melody; the smile in his voice that has always come so naturally to him. 

Hanbin aches to go back to those times, but time is irreversible, and all he can do now is make new memories with old material that still shines just as beautifully as it did back then. He lets down his window and gestures for Jiwoong in the front seat to follow. Like a domino effect, they all roll down their windows one by one, until the wind streams into the car full force right as the singer's voice begins to echo off the walls in harmony with Matthew's.

"The drink you spilled all over me, 'Lovers' Spit' left on repeat..."

"Faster!" Gyuvin yells out from the back, his face split in a wide grin. "Drive faster, Hanbin!"

"Fuck you!"

He steps on the pedal and imagines the force in his body being nothing but raw, unfiltered anger that flows out of him with every number that raises on the speed dial, until he feels like they're flying through the country roads and he's the pilot. Sung Hanbin- on top of the world, in control, flying past everyone and everything that's ever hurt him at a hundred miles an hour, with his friends on his wings to witness him soar and he doesn't even ache carrying them anymore, because he's happy enough to feel light, so light it's as if he's died and the weight of his soul had finally left him once and for all.

"We can talk it good, how you wish it would be all the time..."

But death has never felt like this. It makes him wonder, through the laughter wracking the bones in his body like an illness, if this is what living was supposed to feel like this whole time. If it is, if this is what people in the movies talk about when they say that life is worth it, perhaps he's never wanted to die, after all. If living feels like this, maybe to live is all he's ever wanted.

"It drives you crazy, getting old"

They're screaming now, every single one of them. Limbs intertwined and bodies pressed against each other in the backseat as they all become one, hanging out the windows and yelling, laughing, calling out anything and everything over the fields soaring past. Hands outstretched to the air in freedom, hair flying in all directions, eyes sparkling with fever- the kind that only visits one who still dares dream, who looks out into the nighttime sky and is brazen enough to fantasize becoming something bigger, something that pushes the boundaries of human. 

As he looks at them- Jiwoong with his head thrown back laughing like Hanbin had never seen him laugh before; Matthew and Gyuvin screaming the lyrics out the windows at the top of their lungs, not caring about staying on tune any longer; at Ricky singing along quietly, his dark eyes wide and glistening as he looks at Gyuvin as if he'd never seen something so breathtaking-in that fleeting second, Hanbin realizes that he'd never truly given up on happiness.

Somewhere in the most cavernous depth of his heart, he can sense something changing. He knows instinctively it's nothing colossal; knows he'll go home tomorrow and be sad all over again, knows he won't stop mutilating his own body, knows he'll still cry himself to sleep every holiday and that nothing will ever go back to how he's feeling at this exact moment. But now he knows something else, a thought he's never had before with such certainty, and it shakes him to the core.

"I want it back, I want it back, the minds we had, the minds we had..."

For the first time in his life, he is sick and tired of wanting to die.

-

Cigarettes taste best after midnight

He'd discovered it pretty early on after his first smoke, perhaps on his second or third. There's something about the nauseating bitterness of it that feels so sweet when the world is quiet and it's only him awake in the house, greedily sucking all the soul out of the silence while it's still available. It's romantic in a way, that dreary melancholia in the atmosphere.

It's better yet when he's not home, on edge about his mother or siblings possibly having to come into his room even in those odd hours, but surrounded by friends that know him. They don't approve of his habit, and they make sure to remind him of that on occasion, but they know by now that there's no stopping him, so they just leave him be. Hanbin is infinitely grateful to them for it, but he still prefers to get it done after they fall asleep.

They're spread out on one big mattress on the living room- Ricky's idea, surprisingly (he drank a bit more after they'd returned)- all seemingly fast asleep, except for Jiwoong, who'd spent the past hour arguing with someone over text messages before going to take a shower down the hall. The rest had been too exhausted to go and were forced by Hanbin, who'd showered first, to swear on their most beloved possessions that they'd go in the morning. After that they'd all gotten knocked out one by one, with a minute or two in between. Hanbin had tried his damn best to follow suit, but to no avail. No matter how tired he feels, sleep just hasn't come to him the way he's needed it to in these past two years.

That's how he ended up here, leaning out of the open window, elbows on the ledge as he goes through cigarette after cigarette furiously. One smoke, two- he must be on his third one now. Or fourth- the number is there somewhere, at the very back of his mind, but he can't bring himself to care. Other thoughts weigh on his heart tonight, heavy and anxious, though he swears he's feeling the best he'd felt in a while right now.

His brain takes him back to the bonfire they'd sat around a mere two hours ago, watching the sun set over the countryside and the stars rise to their temporary reign as they ate, drank, played music, and talked about everything and nothing in between. If he were to be asked about it, he'd find he recalled none of those conversations but one specifically, the one that keeps playing on his head in repeat at this very moment.

He'd scratched his wrist on a stray scrap of firewood by accident. Jiwoong had instantly pulled out a roll of bandages and a rubbing alcohol patch out of nowhere, after which he'd kneeled in front of Hanbin to help even after Hanbin had loudly insisted he could do it himself. The sun had fallen over his face in a particular way that had sent Hanbin spiraling years back to a room where he'd once sat just like this, looking into a pair of eyes the depth and beauty of which he still hadn't found a rival for to this day. It felt like getting punched in the chest, and the words that had come out of his mouth before he could stop them.

"Does anybody know what's been going on with the Zhangs?"

He would have never expected the answer he received.

"After that summer camp where we met, they hadn't once sent their children or teenagers to participate in any of the church union activities. It was the last time they were ever seen, according to what everyone's saying. It's probably because they're so busy over there."

"Busy?"

"Zhang's finished building a rehabilitation facility for troubled Christian youth last year, from what I've heard. Believe it or not, they've actually been getting some teens sent to them lately. Not a lot, but enough to keep the place running. Oh and, he's recruited his son and his son's friends as staff or directors of some sorts. There's people defending Zhang, saying it's rumors and all, but I honestly wouldn't put it past him. "

Hanbin hasn't been able to push it out of his head since he's heard it, but now that he's alone it's only worse. His mind can't help but wander to places he doesn't want it to, as he stares at the moon hanging overhead and smokes. He wonders if Hao approves of what his father's doing, if he really does help out with his father's disgusting work, and if he even likes it. Wouldn't he rather be doing something else with his precious time? He wonders if Hao has any time to study medicine anymore, or whatever other things he may be interested in. He wonders if Hao would even take the opportunity to do what he loves if it were presented to him on a golden platter, when his father would be standing behind him and digging his gnarly fingers into his son's skin to remind him that no matter the situation, his father's happiness should always come first.

His train of thought gets interrupted by the sound of soft footsteps approaching him from behind, the arrythmic gait of which can be matched to one person only. 

"Can't sleep, Binnie?"

"Mm."

Jiwoong doesn't stand beside him, but rather takes a seat on the floor right beside Hanbin's feet, looking up at him in his typical concerned way. "Got a lot on your mind tonight?"

Hanbin nods, discarding of his cigarette in favor of sinking onto the floor like Jiwoong but in the opposite direction so he could face him, needing the comfort of familiar eyes more than anything right now. The moment he meets them, the tension bleeds out of his shoulders in one massive sigh.

"I just...I think a lot. I'm always thinking, to be honest. It gets too much at times. It can suffocate me, if I'm not careful."

"I understand," Jiwoong nods. "I used to be like that myself, long ago. Nowadays I have no time to think anymore. Not about the things I used to, at least."

Hanbin had been slowly moving closer as Jiwoong was speaking, desperate for proximity of any kind, and by the last word his knees were pressing against Jiwoong's exposed ones. They're sitting closer now, so close the moonlight illuminates every mark and faint scar on Jiwoong's face and displays it in plain view. Hanbin finds he likes talking to him more that way, when his beauty finally looks human.

"What sorts of things did you think about?"

"All kinds of things, Hanbin-ah. More bad than good, that's for sure. It's all the things you don't need to know."

"But I want to," Hanbin whispers. He leans in until their noses brush and stays there, breathing in the heady scent of marijuana and garden herbs that is so inherently Jiwoong he's suddenly lightheaded. "You're too fucking secretive, Kim Jiwoong, you know that? You never tell me anything about yourself. There's too much I still don't know. It's a little upsetting."

"You know enough," Jiwoong whispers back, minty breath hitting Hanbin's lips all too soon. "So shut the fuck up."

The kiss ends up being rougher than Hanbin expected. It's violent, feral and devoid of anything but hot youthful lust; at one point Hanbin swears he can taste blood on his teeth when Jiwoong's tongue forces its way into his mouth, but he loves it like this. The pent up frustration, the anger, the eagerness to use and be used for nothing but a small taste of carnal pleasure because there could never be anything but friendship between them, peculiar of a bond as it may be- he needs it desperately, and he'll take it any chance he gets, rare as those chances come. Anything, to stay sane.

There are lips mouthing feverishly along his jaw, the shell of his ear and behind it; teeth and tongue dancing against the sensitive skin of his neck, sending sharp bolts of electricity through every forbidden part of him until he has to bite his swollen lips to hold back sounds he never knew he's capable of making. Jiwoong has him pinned up against the wall and rendered powerless to reciprocate, dizzy with a new kind of pleasure and starving for more. He fears Jiwoong might not give it to him when he wants it, needs it so badly he thinks he might cry.

His prediction ends up proving correct. Jiwoong comes to an abrupt standstill the moment the bare skin of his thighs comes into contact with the weight of Hanbin's desire underneath him, and Hanbin barely restrains himself from whining in disappointment at the sudden absence of that overwhelming pleasure when Jiwoong leans back.

"We can't," he shakes his head. "That's a line I refuse to cross."

"So you're just going to leave me hanging?" Hanbin hisses, beyond annoyed at the sudden turn of events. "After getting me fucking worked up and hard? Really? Jiwoong you can't just do that-"

"Yes I can, and I will. I have boundaries, Hanbin. Boundaries I don't want to cross with someone I consider one of my dearest friends. This is one of them."

Looking into Jiwoong's eyes becomes difficult when he talks like this. Their doe-like softness pleads Hanbin to understand something he cannot no matter how hard he tries, but it disarms him of his anger all the same and leaves nothing but a sigh of defeated acceptance in its wake. "Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pressure you like that. It was the hormones speaking, I guess."

"It's okay," Jiwoong smiles, giving Hanbin a brotherly pat on his back that almost gives him whiplash with the contrast from Jiwoong's actions mere minutes ago. "Trust me, I understand what you're feeling. But this- it can't be with me. We've already crossed the line the first time I gave in to you that summer two years ago, and this is now the very edge of that line. I want it to feel special for you when you fall in love, Hanbin-ah. Your first has to be special. Not just a casual exchange between friends."

"You care so much for me," Hanbin whispers around the lump involuntarily forming in his throat. "Why do you care? What's it to you if I don't find love?"

"Everything. You mean the world to me, Hanbin. You, Ricky, Matthew, Gyuvin. This- us- it...it saved me all those years ago." He looks up to the ceiling in what Hanbin knows is a valiant attempt to hold back tears, struggling to find his voice again for a moment. "I finally had people to look forward to seeing after that day we'd met. And you, Hanbin. I always knew you were something special. You reminded me of myself the moment I first saw you, and it made me want to protect you from all the things I'd always wished someone could protect me from. You're hurting, Hanbin. Even if nobody else can see that, I can. I'll be damned if I take away any chances you still have to fucking live the way life is supposed to be lived. When you love, Hanbin, that is when you truly live. I want you to live, because I never had the chance to."

Hanbin thinks about Jiwoong's words all night and cries into his pillow until he has no more tears left to cry. He doesn't know how many hours pass as he weeps, stares at the ceiling, then weeps again. It feels like there's something he's been missing, a hole in his soul that he doesn't know the cause for, and it's driving him insane. He knows it has something to do with living, something about the way he'd felt in the car when he'd laughed until he'd run out of air, about Jiwoong's confession under the moonlight streaming through the window and about turning seventeen. Whatever it is, it's tearing him apart in the most bittersweet of ways and he wonders, when the birds begin to chirp at last, if this is what growing up feels like.

He thinks about Zhang Hao and his father, Jiwoong and his suffocating life that leaves no room for youth, about the way Ricky looks at Gyuvin when he thinks nobody's watching, about Doyoung and the way he'd started smiling after he'd met Yerim. He thinks about dance, and for the first time in a while, he thinks about himself.

The sun is up by the time he finally picks up his phone and texts the dance teacher at Yujin's academy what he's been dying to tell her ever since she'd first noticed him watching her team practice last summer. He doesn't know when she'll read it; a small part of him hopes she never does, but he presses "send" anyway.

Sleep comes easily after that. He dreams about standing at the precipice of a cliff with an endless void stretching out in front of him, but this time the void is colorful instead of its usual pitch black. He dips his toes into it and free falls down into the trenches where he spends weeks, months, years before he finally returns to the edge of the cliff. When he makes it out, he emerges not as Sung Hanbin, but as color itself, vivid and radiant. He comes back out alive.

-

Hello, Miss Lee.

This is Sung Hanbin. I would like to take you up on the offer of joining your class and becoming a dancer.  I want to take a chance at doing what I love and see what happens. I'll be waiting for your reply with utmost anticipation.

Thank you.

Read 11:11 a.m

Chapter Text

Six months later

December 16, 2018

Darling, stop confusing me....

Right foot, forward. Left leg down, fall to your knees. Kneel and hang your head low, as if asking for mercy, make sure your eyes speak the rest of what your body can't.

Don't you understand? I have to go through this.

One arm to the face, the other outstretched towards an invisible torturer in a futile plea for salvation. Now all he can see in the mirror are his eyes, smoldering and vulnerable like they're supposed to be as his body moves without him thinking.

No light, no air to live in...A place called hate, the city of fear

Pick yourself back up. Do it gracefully, like you weren't just groveling before them, and now the music picks up and you're flying across the room, limbs moving like water. I play dead and the hurt stops. The music sets you free.

It's sometimes just like sleeping, curling up inside my private tortures, I nestle into pain...

Tremble before them. Be sharp with it, premeditated, but not too much. The pain has to flow smoothly, if you want it to look real.

I play dead....it stops the hurting

Twist your face into something awful and unrecognizible. Cry out, but cry silently.

It stops the hurting.

Reach. Reach for something, anything to keep you from losing control, and pull your fingers into a fist, one by one. Spin, before you give in to the urge and fall.

It stops the hurting...it stops the hurting...

One, breathe. Two, spin, leap up, let the wave pass through-

It stops the hurting

Fall.

Click.

"Jesus fucking Christ. Good morning to you too, Hanbin."

Just like that, the music stops and the air leaves him all at once. He turns in the direction of the voice, panting from the exertion. "Miss."

"You're an incredible one, Sung Hanbin," the woman in front of him shakes her head as she hangs her coat up on the wall. "Björk? That's an interesting choice of artist to dance to. And so well, too. You keep surprising me more and more each time I see it, kid."

"Thank you, ma'am," Hanbin beams, beyond elated at the praise. Lee Bada was never one to be scarce with compliments, especially when it comes to students like him, but the joy never fails fills his heart to the brim no matter how many times she tells him he's good over and over again. No one else has ever said it to him quite like she does, and not half as much.

"It's been two weeks since we've begun the one-on-one tutoring," she says, walking up to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. "I've been thinking. I know you said early morning before school and church is the only time that fits for you, but I'm getting worried. Five-thirty a.m., Hanbin, and on a Sunday. That's a bit too early for you, no? And as a high school junior, too...when do you ever rest?"

"Whenever I have a chance to-"

"-which is barely ever. I've heard things from Lalisa, Hanbin. Yujin tells her a lot, you know. He said you go to work at the library almost straight after school, and that you picked up delivery service on Fridays and Saturdays. I've also heard five of you are still living at home, and that you're always getting nieces and nephews over. Yujin said most of the babysitting gets dumped onto you in particular. I know none of this is my business, Hanbin; I'm just your dance teacher after all. But I'm worried for you. You're not getting enough rest. You don't seem to eat enough, either."

Hanbin swallows the lump that rises up to his throat with a great amount of difficulty, not accustomed to this kind of concern from an adult. The only concern he's ever gotten from them has been about his spiritual wellbeing, or his social life, or the books he reads, the music he listens to, and the things he watches on his phone behind their backs. Never this.

"I'm hanging in there, Miss Lee," he smiles wanly. "I don't really care about all that, as long as I can dance. And I've been trying my best to eat better lately."

It's not a lie, not entirely. He's begun eating when he's out with his friends, which isn't all that often nowadays, according to them- twice a week, maybe three. Sunday evenings, choir practices on Mondays, youth group on Thursdays; that's all that they see of each other as of late, and that's when they go out to eat and catch up for a while before parting ways. Hanbin has been trying, really trying. Even Matthew's noticed.

She doesn't need to know he still won't touch a single thing his mother makes at home, though.

The lesson passes smoothly as it usually does, and by the time the hour comes to an end and the sky begins to shed its black cloak for a navy blue, Hanbin's teacher is more than satisfied with his progress.

"I don't think you understand, kid. We've never had anyone quite like you and your brother in our studio just yet. Yujin picked up dance so fast Lalisa wanted to put him in the advanced team only eight months after he'd started. Eight months, Hanbin, and now I'm thinking the same for you when it's only been six. There's barely anything left for me to teach you that is required for the beginner level. I don't know what to do with you, for heavens' sakes."

Needless to say, Hanbin comes out of the studio glowing brighter than the snow that lies blanketing the world around him. This is exactly what he's been missing this whole time. An actual passion, goals, the realization of his childhood dreams. A reason to wake up every morning, something so wonderful it's enough to make him reluctant to die. He'll do anything to keep it. Those grueling hours of work and studying and the stress of keeping not only Yujin's but now his own escapades a secret- all of it is worth it for this, down to every last drop. 

It's making him happy now, but he knows that that happiness is nothing compared to what he'll feel once he levels up in his skill. He just has to keep at it for a little while longer. Today it's the one-on-one contemporary lessons he goes through half-awake; the waacking lessons and practice with the rest of the beginner team in that deceptively large-looking practice room that becomes so tiny and stifling when they're all side by side, limbs twisting and contorting in odd ways as they try to learn a new routine under Bada's relentless coaching; the dance battles with teammates he knows talk shit behind his back, because he wins every time. Tomorrow it's the advanced team and a bigger room and competitions with teams from other parts of the city; next year he'll make proficient and compete in national and maybe even international competitions, and none of the other things would matter because he'd be an adult who'd already begun building a life for himself in advance. He'd begun saving up for a room in that tall brick apartment at the very edge of town last year, and he already has more than enough in his account to go for renting it. Several more months of work and he can start looking around for furniture, decor, dishes-

"Hanbin! Over here!"

Of all the people Hanbin would be expecting to be parked outside of the dance studio at six-thirty in the morning waiting for him, Gyuvin would be the last on that list. But Gyuvin's always in every place Hanbin doesn't expect him to be yet should, so he doesn't know why he's surprised. It's the hour, he supposes as he treads slowly on the slippery concrete towards his friend's car. Gyuvin is never up this early until it's something involving some sort of special event that, in turn, entails seeing Ricky.

"Why the hell are you here?"

"Why?" Gyuvin shoots back, grinning as he shifts in the driver's seat without taking his hands off the wheel. "Can't I wait for my beloved friend to drive him to church once in a while? You spend an hour walking here because you're too scared they'll hear your car, you dumb fuck."

"Mom finding out about my job was bad enough, alright? And the service starts in four hours, you fucking moron. Tell me why you're here or I'm leaving."

"You're beginning to sound just like Matthew. Be honest, who are you and what did you do to my Hanbin?"

"Bye, Gyuvin."

"No wait- don't- you dumb little bitch. I just wanted to have a talk, okay? We never really get to talk lately. Not, like, talk talk, you know?"

So that's how Hanbin ends up in the passenger seat in Gyuvin's red Honda Civic at six in the morning, on the way to buy coffee at "the town's best coffee shop" (it's definitely not the best, simply Gyuvin's favorite), because it's not like Hanbin can ever say "no" to those absolutely, positively disgusting brown puppy eyes of his. It is Kim Gyuvin's greatest, most lethal asset, and unfortunately he is aware of it far too well.

It's nice though, Hanbin has to admit. The heat of the cup in his hands makes warmth course through his entire body in the way his coat just can't quite ever seem to accomplish, and the coffee has more milk than water as well as being overly sweet- just the way he likes it. He lights a cigarette and takes drags of it in between the sips, turning a blind eye to Gyuvin's disapproving stare in favor of savoring the familiar bitterness in a relaxed atmosphere at last. Cigarette smoke looks that much more beautiful in the winter, when it mixes with the white steam of warm human breath and blends into the delicious smell of Christmas, snow, and the frigid morning air just right. He voices that thought only for Gyuvin to look at him like he's finally lost it.

"Christmas does not have one specific smell. It could be the smell of gingerbread cookies for one person, peppermint for another, and blood for someone else. Everyone associates Christmas with something different. Everyone has that one Christmas that establishes something like that for them."

"Okay, but I meant the weather. Doesn't the air have a certain smell to it whenever Christmas is around the corner? Like a crisp, biting smell that turns your lungs inside out, but in the good way, you know?"

"That's just your cigarettes. You smoke way too much, I'm telling you."

"I smoke all year 'round. Why would it suddenly be different around Christmas time?"

"Okay, forget it. If Sung Hanbin says Christmas smells a certain way, then Christmas smells a certain way. But enough about that- you wanna hear some good news?"

Hanbin considers him for a moment, trying to decipher the sparkle in his eye in the dim glow of the streetlights above them, but ultimately fails. "Of course I do. What is it?"

"I got scouted into that elite sports academy I told you about," he grins. "Remember the one I said had produced some of the country's best players over the decades? I'll be starting with soccer there next semester. And I got in on a scholarship"

"...Kim Gyuvin. You're joking. You've got to be."

"I'm not!" he laughs, throwing his head back in glee. "I made it, Hanbin. God, all those years and years of never-ending practice. All that discouragement from my parents, all those arguments, and I still fucking made it. Aren't I amazing?"

Hanbin smiles, bringing his friend into a warm hug. He knows better than anyone how badly Gyuvin had wanted this, how much work he'd put in for it. "That you are, Gyuvinnie, that you are. I'm proud of you."

"Thank you," Gyuvin laughs. "I can't fucking wait. I'll miss you and Matthew though. How will you two ever survive without me?"

"Just as we've survived before you came along," Hanbin quips, poking his side. "I'm not planning on staying here past senior year though. Miss Lee hinted that she might move me up to the advanced group any day now."

"Already!? Well, that's great news to hear!"

"It is, isn't it? It's like doors opening right into my future. Makes me want to hope for one that isn't bleak."

Gyuvin shakes his head firmly at that. "It won't be. If there's anything you're not destined for, it's a boring life. I bet you you'll have everything you've ever wanted and it will be like spitting in the face of all the bullshit your parents have ever said to you. You'll be a rich, well-known dancer, have a nice house and a career you actually love, and get a boyfriend to travel the world and have mind-blowing sex with on days off. "

"What if I'm more of a one-night stand type of guy like you?"

"Cut the crap, dude. Don't forget I was with you when your dance group celebrated your teacher's birthday at that bar. I saw what Jihoo was trying to do. If you really were a 'one-night stand type of guy' you'd have taken him up on his offer right then, right there. Hell, if he'd have shown a smidgen of interest in me that night at all I'd have taken him without thinking."

"Okay, you're right, I may be a little bit of a romantic. It's just...hard for me to believe I'll ever find somebody, I guess."

"You will. I promise you. Just make sure it's not a Ricky. That shit hurts."

"Oh, speaking of Ricky. Those travel plans seeing any progress yet?"

"I wish," Gyuvin grimaces, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. "It turns out mustering up the courage to drive solo on the interstate for five whole hours after just getting a license is a bit harder than I thought."

"I still can't believe you finally got your driver's license for the sole reason of seeing Ricky after your parents have been nagging you about it for two years," Hanbin muses. "You're taking that friendship agreement much more seriously than I thought."

"How am I supposed not to? He wants to stay friends, but he wants us to become 'closer friends' if possible." Gyuvin smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "If being friends means seeing more of him at all, I'll take it."

"You're not getting over him anytime soon, are you?"

"It's been two and a half years, my friend. I'm still in fucking love. And what's even worse is there's definitely something between us. I can't call it friendship anymore, but it's the farthest thing from a romance- I don't know what it is. He confuses the living hell out of me, Hanbin. It's like I never know what he truly wants."

"Have you ever tried to ask him straight up? People can't read minds, Gyuvin. He could be wondering the same about you."

"It's pointless," Gyuvin shakes his head, dejected. "Every time I ask him about what we are, or tell him this isn't what a friendship should feel like, he avoids the question. God, he still makes me feel more in those few days a year that I get to see him than any other boy or girl in my bed had in hours at a time. No matter how many people I hook up with, no matter how good and wild the sex is, it all pales in comparison to what that one stupid drunk kiss we shared this summer made me feel. And you know what? That sucks, Hanbin. It sucks so much"

Hanbin doesn't reply immediately. He doesn't think any words he could come up with would be of any help at all in response to a confession of this magnitude.

A mere six months ago, he would have never thought that Gyuvin- sweet, innocent Gyuvin with dreams of his first being his forever only- would get broken to this point. He's never judged him for the one-night stands, or even the flings; he just wishes Gyuvin wouldn't be doing it for the sole purpose of trying to forget, because he knows it'll never work, but doesn't know how to break it to Gyuvin without seeing him break down again. So he just squeezes Gyuvin's leather-gloved hand over their half-empty cups of coffee instead and hopes the strength he puts into it is enough to convey his sympathy. 

"Yeah. It really fucking sucks."

-

It's been years since Hanbin had wanted to see his father.

He still visits, of course. Weddings, Christmas, the desultory birthday or extended family's death. But in these past couple years, Hanbin has been doing his utmost to avoid the man whenever he'd spawn home, using school, church activities and "late-night studying sessions at the library" as an excuse. The last time he'd visited was three months ago in September, and the dates of his stay had fallen exactly during the time Hanbin was supposed to be away on a youth seminar. Never before had Hanbin been so excited for another church convention. He'd ended up not catching so much as a glimpse of his father because of it, and was more than happy about it, to say the least.

He knows who the happiest to see him was, however, and who'd missed him the most.

Hanbin's mother has never been the same since her husband left. She'd never been a ray of sunshine, but after he'd gone, she became nothing but an angry, brittle shell of herself. Furious at the world for anything and everything, she'd take it all out on whoever looked like the easiest target, someone who she knew would forgive her over and over again no matter the fault. More often than not, that child was, and still is Hanbin.

But whenever their father comes around, it's like she transforms. Hanbin never sees her so happy on any other occasion, and he wishes he could understand why. He doesn't know what she sees in the bastard. Sure, he'd been a looker in his younger days, but that shouldn't have been enough. He supposes she never had much of a choice though. If a man in the church shows interest in you, you tell him "yes." "No" would make you a bitch in the minds of the entire congregation. That's the way it's always been in the church, and probably always will be.

She says she's one hundred percent happy with her fate, and though Hanbin never believed it for a second, he won't hold it against her for trying. He knows she's lonely, and that she misses their father something dreadful. 

Couples (and almost-couples) get horny when it's been too long without each other. Everybody knows that, and Hanbin's no exception- he spends far much more time around Kim Gyuvin than he should. It's just that sometimes, he forgets that when you're a dedicated member of the church, condoms are not an option.

"I'm telling you she's pregnant," Hana whispers to him conspirationally over the tray of piping hot vegetable casserole in her hands. "She's been throwing up all the time lately. She's always sleeping, too. That's how she was with Yujin the first three months, remember?"

Hanbin takes the dish from her hands and puts it onto the table among the others, wishing he could block out the sounds of violent retching from the bathroom down the hall before he begins to feel sick himself. "True, but don't you think she's a bit too old for this now? She's in her forties, Hana. There's simply no way."

"You don't know the first thing about how a woman's body works, do you? I'll bet you fifty right now that she's got a bun in the oven."

"It's been over eleven years now. Why not earlier?"

"They might not have had the chance to, you know, earlier. Or she just wasn't able to conceive."

"No," Hanbin decides. "You're wrong. Just wait and see. I mean, it's inconvenient for all of us right now. Seungho, Doyoung, Taeyeon and the rest have moved out ages ago and now have kids of their own. Dad isn't around to help with the finances. Lord knows what you and I make isn't enough to raise a baby, and Minho won't contribute a cent if you held him at gunpoint. No one's around for long enough throughout the day to take care of the house and I don't think we can afford help for very long. It would be a disaster, Han. She wouldn't do that to us." 

He'd have to give up dance to become a housekeeper, because nobody else would do it. By the time he could finally return, most of if not all of his team would have made advanced, and he'd be behind on everything. He'd be a high school senior, and catching up on the material he'd missed would become practically impossible with the absence of sufficient free time on hands. She knows about his job; he'd have to hand over half his income or more whenever she'd ask for it. Yujin might not be able to keep dancing. 

Life would become nothing but a cage all over again.

"You're so naive to even be thinking that, Hanbin," Hana grins, smile disconcertingly devoid of any emotion whatsoever. "You will never be held in a regard higher than religion by her. This is our duty. If you're a woman, you have no other choice but to take what a man gives you and bear it."

"But you do, though," Hanbin retorts hotly. "You let those stupid men in the church who have no idea what they're talking about direct your lives and manipulate you like puppeteers do their puppets all because 'the Bible says so.' The Bible doesn't give a single crap about you, Hana. You'll never be a Paul or a Peter or a David. You're allowed to do whatever the heck you want with your life."

"Stop talking like that. It's her choice to keep having children one after the other like a freaking factory machine," she shoots back. "What can you tell her when she's the one that wants it? This could very well be her last one, anyway."

"But what about u-"

"Everything okay over here?" a voice sounds from the doorway, hoarse and exhausted. "What are we fighting about?"

"Nothing, Mom. Hanbin and I were just setting the table for dinner and-"

"Hanbin's home? Well, would you look at that! The stars have aligned at last."

"Will you be eating or not?" Hanbin bristles, eyes automatically traveling to her stomach as a result of the conversation he and Hana had had prior. His own sinks when he takes notice of hers having taken on a little more of a rounder shape than usual. Please, god, not this. Not now. He's imagining it. He has to be.

"No, thank you. I'm feeling a little sick right now."

Hours later into the night, when the house is quiet and heavy with sleep, Hanbin passes by his parents' bedroom door on his way to the bathroom. The light is on, and the door open just wide enough to see inside. It's rather strange- staying up this late is completely incongruous with his mother's usual sleeping habits, at least from what Hanbin's observed in the past few years. It doesn't sit quite well with him, so he stops and looks inside, just for a moment.

That miniscule moment is all he needs to instantly figure out what she's doing.

She hadn't taken out the boxes in the basement that contain Yujin's baby clothes ever since he'd finally grown out of them a decade ago. Donating these sorts of things is out of question for her, nor has Hanbin ever seen her give them out to struggling families like some veteran mothers in their church are known for doing. 

It had been a Sunday too, on that fateful morning twelve years ago, when Hanbin, as a curious five-year-old, had watched his mother unpack his own baby clothes that she'd stored away years ago, overflowing with questions. Why did she still have them? Why did she need them again? Is he getting a little brother? Or, perhaps, a sister?

He'd gotten his answer six months later in the form of a tiny bundle of blankets and towels, a thick mop of ink black hair and wide, seemingly bottomless eyes of the same color. It hadn't screamed or cried like his mother said all the others had. It had simply stared at whoever held it as if in silent accusation at being brought into this world without its permission, but the moment their eyes had met, Hanbin knew that that little human being would be cherished by him with a love fierce and burning until his very last day. 

Not once had that not been the truth. Yujin is more than enough. Hanbin doesn't need any more; not now, when the puzzle pieces of his life's frame are slowly beginning to appear in his realm of vision at last, not when eighteen's gently knocking on next summer's door, not when he's so close to finally leaving this haunted hell called home behind. The guilt pulls him under and threatens to drown him, makes him feel like a killer. He should be happy. It's another new life being brought into this world to be called his family, after all.

He should be happy. But he isn't.

He should be happy. But instead, he tiptoes back to his room without saying a word. Stares at Yujin's peacefully sleeping form in the bed beside his, at the drawings he'd taped up so neatly and carefully on the wall above it, the tattered Bible on the nightstand with a piece of paper sticking out from in between the faded gilden pages.

He already knows what it says. He'd read it ages ago when it had slipped out of that Bible by accident, around the time when Yujin had first begun his dance lessons.

I'm sorry, God. I know that lying is a sin, and that I shouldn't be lying to my mom especially. But God, I like dancing so, so much. Do You think You could keep forgiving me just for this one sin, please? I'll do everything I can everywhere else to compensate. I'm sorry that this is the one thing that ruins me. I'm sorry that I can't be perfect for You.

He should be happy.

But he goes to sleep with his stomach churning in anger. And if his pillow is soaked through with tears again, nobody will ever know.

-

Like the majority of the ordinary populace living under the godforsaken dystopia that is modern capitalist society, Hanbin hates Mondays with a burning passion. 

His reason for it, however, differs from the typical. Mondays don't require him to be out of bed hours before sunrise as he doesn't have any individual dance lessons with Miss Lee on that day, or dance classes in general, either. His work hours at the library are shortest on Mondays as well. Monday is, in fact, the only day out of the week where other than school, a two hour shift at the library, and an hour of choir practice at church in the evening, he has nothing but free time on his hands. And now that it's winter break and school is out until the week after New Year's, he's stuck at home until afternoon with nothing to do. 

There's no reason to hate it but one, and that is Monday being Minho's only day off from work. This alone is enough to ruin Hanbin's mood before he even gets out of bed.

He isn't sure what it exactly is about Minho that he hates so much. He's never particularly liked any of his siblings- with the exception of Doyoung, Hana (sometimes, when she isn't stressed out from work), and Yujin- but something about the arrogant, patronizing way that Minho speaks and carries himself at his mere fifteen years of age ignites a rage in Hanbin that he doesn't know what to do with.

Perhaps it's the way he's always looked at Hanbin with that particular mixture of revulsion and exaggerated derision he knows carries an abject sting that pierces straight into Hanbin's soul and stays there like a disease. Minho's younger, yet he talks to him like Hanbin is nothing but a useless hunting dog at his master's mercy. He's never had a problem talking about him to others in the same way even while knowing when Hanbin's around to hear all of it. Hanbin wishes he knew why his brother despises him to this extent; he has his good moments at times, when he'll talk to Hanbin like an equal at the very least, maybe even act like a friend. Or he might call him disgusting and an ugly rat just because Hanbin had asked him to clean up after himself for once- he could never know. It was always best to be careful around him.

Today just so happens to be one of those careful days. Hanbin plods downstairs much later than he usually does, having taken advantage of a rare leisurely morning to sleep in, and is met with his mother's and Minho's voices drifting loudly from the kitchen before he even gets there.

"No, but seriously. Seungmin said his school's full of them. Like a rodent infestation, or something."

"My goodness, I just can't understand why his parents didn't send him to the Christian school like every other family in our church has. What's stopping them? Why are they trying so hard to be different?"

"I heard Mrs. Kim say the curriculum in ours is subpar to that of ordinary schools. She thinks the public school has a higher level of education."

"Yeah, and those dirty homosexuals. I'd rather my child not get an education at all than be surrounded by one of them. Why go to such lengths to risk your child getting contaminated with their illness?"

"Hey, it's not like Seungmin was the one who wanted it. He hates it there. I feel so bad for him."

"Poor thing. His parents don't understand they're killing him slowly, do they? Wait until he becomes one of them, then they'll start regretting it."

Hanbin holds on to whatever patience he has left as he walks into the kitchen, trying to block out the conversation while he makes his usual cup of morning coffee, but to no avail. Him being there means nothing to the two of them, and why would it? They don't know about his sexuality. In their eyes, he's silently agreeing with every word they say in the background. They've been thinking he's had his eye on the stunning, charismatic, talented Sophia Laforteza from the day they'd been first sat beside each other in one children's Bible study group at six years old; or the sweet, bubbly Ezaki Hikaru whose family had joined their church as members not long ago. They have everything he's supposed to like, all the charms he's supposed to fall for. They've seen him talk to the both of them more than once now- of course the rumors would spark up, because boys and girls just can't be friends and nothing more.

It's not like they can see him getting off to gay porn on the occasion, when all the lights are out and chances of someone catching him are nonexistent. They don't know about the excitement that fills him when the two main names in the book he opens during break time finally happen to be men's, or about him rewatching "Addicted: Heroin" for the tenth time and bawling his eyes out for the two lovers and their happiness. They would never understand the heaviness that weighs on his heart like a stone every time a sibling announces their engagement and gets congratulated with warm hugs, happy tears, and blinding smiles; nor the bitterness that chokes the last spark of excitement out of him at every wedding whenever the pastor would bless the newlyweds and wish them nothing but joy and growth in their love. He'll never be on the receiving end of any of it, but they don't know that.

It wouldn't be any different even if they did know, of course. It would be worse. But that doesn't change the fact that it just keeps going, and going, and going; and that it's becoming harder and harder to bear with each day.

"Seungmin told me yesterday that apparently the class president took a fancy to him and asked him out on a date, but when Seungmin told the teacher about it and asked if he could be transferred to a different class, the teacher told him to 'keep his homophobia to himself' and that 'somebody's sexuality shouldn't have an impact on your education'. That's how low society's stooped to nowadays, Mom."

"Lord God....This is serious. Tell him to be more careful around that thing if he doesn't want to get molested. They're all the same; those deviants have one thing on their mind and one thing only. Dirty, devilish whores."

"You're so intolerant, Mom" Minho jokes, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly. "That teacher would have hated your guts. If you're reacting like this to a story about a stranger, whatever would you have done with a gay son?"

"Do not ever, ever joke like that again!" she retorts sharply, dark eyes wide in indignation. "It's by our Lord and Savior's mercy that we have no such thing happening in our family. Had that been the case, I don't think my heart would have been able to take it. I'd rather have a murderer or a rapist as a son than a filthy faggot. That would be easier for me to live with, mentally."

"Agreed," Minho laughs. "Nobody wants a child like that. They should all die out and the world would become a cleaner place."

The scars on Hanbin's arms and thighs begin to itch with an intensity too difficult to bear- his subconscious signaling to him that he's had enough. 

"Are you two done over there yet?"

"Why?" Minho shoots at him, head cocked to the side in that signature pompous manner of his that makes Hanbin's blood boil. "Anything we say upset you?"

"I just want to have my coffee in silence for once."

"Should've gotten up earlier," his mother replies. "There's lots of us living here. We can't just all cater to your whims whenever you like, you know. Let me and your brother talk for a while, then we'll go about our business. I barely ever get the chance to talk to any of you like I should."

"Sure," Hanbin barks, the fury inside him threatening to spill over into a scream. With his desire to stay in the room any longer completely evaporated by now, he gulps his coffee down in mere seconds and stalks back towards the exit, but doesn't leave before taking the chance to shoot his own poison first. "But you shouldn't speak on such stressful topics anymore, Mother. You know- all that modern immorality concerning filthy faggots, mentally ill children, and the rest. I fear it may not be good for the baby."

Hanbin doesn't look back to see her expression, only hears her surprised gasp as his feet take him to the front door of their own accord. He almost bumps foreheads with a slackjawed, starry-eyed Yujin on the way, who'd been standing right outside the kitchen this entire time unbeknownst to everybody else, listening in on the conversation.

In the heat of his anger, Hanbin almost snaps at him. But then, with the most enraptured expression he's ever seen on him, the boy whispers "'Baby'? Am I getting a little sibling!?"

Hanbin looks at him and instantly feels his anger deflate into nothing but a vast abyss of black. He can't bring himself to answer, afraid his voice might break when Minho is not yet out of earshot. All he can do is press a soft kiss to Yujin's forehead before he puts on his shoes, turns around, and walks out the door without another word.

-

"Fancy seeing you here when your shift isn't in another four hours. I would have thought you'd be sick of the place by now, with the amount of time you spend in here already."

"Everything's going to shit again, Soph," Hanbin complains to the girl in front of him, dropping his head onto the librarians' desk in utter misery. "You know that I come here whenever that happens."

"So, what is it this time?" she asks lightly, stretching on her tiptoes in an attempt to return the book in her hands to its place on the highest shelf. Hanbin springs up from his seat as soon as the ladder begins to shake under her, holding it firmly in place with his two hands while she works. She sends him a thankful smile from above, and he forces one back.

"You see...everything's fine. At least, that's what I should be feeling like," he confesses, staring out the window ahead. The snow has begun to melt early last evening, leaving the city a gray mess of icy slush and fresh mud as far as the eyes could see. It looks not much different from how Hanbin feels inside, and the thought of it bothers him. "My mom's pregnant again, Sophia."

"Wha-"

"Really? Congratulations!" a familiar voice chirps from behind them, almost startling Hanbin into letting go of the ladder. It's Manon, a newer coworker of theirs, and one Hanbin's only recently begun to feel comfortable with. 

"Yeah, thanks," he replies lamely. "I guess."

"You don't look very happy though. Everything okay?"

"About the baby- it's their thirteenth," Sophia informs her nonchalantly. Hanbin observes as she gasps in shock, hand flying to her mouth as her eyes go so wide they almost pop out of her head. It never gets old, this reaction from people outside the conservative church branch, especially people not affiliated with the church in the slightest. Nothing entertains him as much as the comical shock on their faces when he breaks to them that cursed number, and nothing irks him more than the prodding that almost always comes right after.

"Oh," she says a moment later. "Well, damn. Now I get why you look like someone pissed in your breakfast."

"The fuck kind of comparison is that?"

"A very well-made one," Sophia tells him. "You look like utter shit, Hanbin."

"Why thank you, Sophia. You look lovely as always. In fact, I can't tell the difference between you and that flower on that wall in the slightest. That's how blinding your beauty is."

"That's an artificial sunflower, Hanbin."

"I stand my point."

"I hate your guts, oh I hate them. Get the fuck out of my library before I dropkick you."

"From the top of that ladder? You wouldn't. Remember when you tried that and ended up in a cast last year? Yeah. You wouldn't."

"I hope you burn in hell."

"As long as you'll be burning there alongside me."

"You two are very romantic and all," Manon interrupts. "But I want to know more about what the fuck is going on with your family, Hanbin. Do your parents know what condoms are, by any chance?"

"I don't think they do," Hanbin replies, tone caustic. "I mean, of course they do, but they're avid condom antis, you see. A condom? No-no. Get it away from me. Scary, very scary. A spine-chilling little thing, that tiny piece of rubber is."

"You're so funny, Hanbin. I wish I could adopt you."

"I wish you could too, Soph. I wish you could."

By the time Hanbin finishes his shift and exits the library hours later, the sky is dark and his watch glows 6:00 p.m.- thirty minutes before choir practice. He feels more at peace than when he'd left the house, thanks to his friends' light banter and the soothing effect the library seems to have on his tumultuous mind each time without fail. It probably won't last through the rest of the evening, but he'll make do. The most important thing right now is to get to choir practice on time and endure a full hour surrounded by his ultra-conservative, absurdly simple-minded and bigoted peers- with the exception of Matthew and Gyuvin, of course.

Hanbin steers his car out of the parking lot and onto the street leading towards the church, wondering all the while why he's even doing heading there at this point. His mother was never insistent on him attending all the Bible studies, youth group meetings, and choir practices; services were always what's truly important. She would be disappointed if he'd miss out, of course, but she wouldn't make a huge deal about it like Matthew's mother would. Matthew missing a single church activity for any reason other than sickness or being out of town was always an unacceptable scenario to her. 

But Hanbin doesn't have to be doing this. Neither does Gyuvin; well, only when his parents are home- which is a few hours out of the day on weekdays, and either early in the morning or after midnight. And yet he and Gyuvin still go. Hanbin would like to say it's because they're all fairly good singers and their absence in the choir would be very much noticed by the audience, which isn't really a lie, but he knows there's much more to it than any of them are willing to admit.

As he approaches his destination, Hanbin finds himself vaguely remembering something Matthew's said years ago. "Be honest, though, guys. Do you think we'd ever find each other in this lifetime if it weren't for church and all that?"

"Probably not", Gyuvin had replied. Hanbin feels the weight of those words more now than ever. There is this strange, tangible tension among them lately, and it's pulling at the strings connecting the three of them, wearing them thinner and thinner each day still. What they're hanging onto now is much too frail to allow to unravel further, if they wish for any of it to be left at all by the end. The thing that is currently holding them together is also the one thing neither of them want to have anything to do with, but none of that matters when they know the time they have left together is limited.

He walks into the building with a smile on his face, not caring to check how natural it appears in the cloakroom mirror like he usually would. He greets nobody but Sophia, who'd trailed after him in her own car when their shift ended, and his two best friends, as usual. He knows the people around them perceive him as cold and stuck-up; he's heard the shit they talk about behind their back from people far too eager to pass it along to his face. He couldn't care less, though. Only six months left, and he's leaving. Cutting everybody off, erasing all existant connections to the church whatsoever, starting over from a clean slate and a new place. He wants to forget what it feels like to sit in a church pew wishing he were anywhere else as the preacher's voice rises to a manic scream, what it's like to hold a Bible in hands that would rather touch a man's skin in the most sinful of ways, to hear about the dismal fate awaiting people like him in the afterlife. 

Six months, and it'll all be nothing but a distant, hazy past. None of them are planning to stay on to become members of the church, reluctant as they are to face their parents' wrath and disappointment as a result. Gyuvin will continue to strive towards his goal of becoming a successful soccer player and making it big in the sports world, Matthew will most likely go on to that prestigious university continents away that he'd had his eye set on since freshman year of high school, and Hanbin will be chasing his dream of becoming a recognizable name in the dance sphere. They'll see each other on the holidays, maybe even birthdays, if they're lucky. Just like things have been with Hanbin's father for the past seven years. 

But at least there will be no more church, and all the negative baggage that comes with it for people like them. That thought is one Hanbin quite likes to entertain, hence the reason it keeps him going strong and helps him breeze through choir practice on autopilot, mind half-empty. Before he feels like they've even started, time is already up.

"No but seriously, Hanbin, you've got a splendid voice," Heo Solji, their choir director, tells him as they file out from the stage one by one. "It's a pity you don't want to sing in the services. All that talent going to waste when you could be praising God with it...it's a sin not to utilize the gifts given to you for God's glory, you know. He could take them away from you any time He wanted."

"I am aware," Hanbin nods, forcing a tight-lipped smile he hopes doesn't show just how badly he wants her to get out of his way. Please, just let me leave.

"But I'm very glad we have you in our choir," she prattles on, patting his shoulder. "We'd be nothing without you. You'd be a great addition in the main choir as well. Too bad you can only become a member after baptism. Which, speaking of..."

Somewhere inside Hanbin's head, Gyuvin says "shit, here we go again" in broken English, and Hanbin doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"...when are you planning on getting baptized and becoming a member of the church?"

I'm not. Ever. I'd rather fucking hang from one of those shitty chandeliers on the ceiling. "When I'm ready."

"Don't you think you've been putting it off for too long now?" she prods gently. "I understand you might need time, but life doesn't wait, Hanbin. You could die tomorrow. What answer will you give to the Lord when He asks you why you've been putting off on becoming His fully committed servant for so long? Maybe there is a certain sin taking root in your heart that you're trying to hide from Him? It's best to get rid of it and repent in contrition while you still have time. You want to go to Heaven, don't you?"

"I will do it when I'm rea-"

"Do you want me to arrange a conversation with the Pastor for you, by any chance? He could help. If there's any secret sin plaguing you that you're scared to disclose to people around you, he's the one person you can tell. He'll give you some sage advice and pray with you. I've done it once as a teenager myself; I can promise you he won't judge-"

"Hey, Miss Heo," Gyuvin chirps, materializing by Hanbin's side out of nowhere. It startles the woman into silence so quickly Hanbin almost laughs. "I'm sorry to interrupt, as I see you were having a serious conversation, but I am in need of Hanbin's assistance with something at the moment and will be borrowing him from you- if you don't mind, of course."

"Oh," the woman breathes, pursing her lips into a counterfeit smile the edges of which remind Hanbin too much of his mother. "Of course, Gyuvinnie. Have a good evening, boys, and thank you for being here today. Hanbin, you and I will converse on this matter later if you'd like, alright?"

"Sure," Hanbin smiles at her, saccharine. "Of course we will."

He lets Gyuvin propel him towards the exit by the shoulders without putting up a fight this once. He'd let himself get kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a car bound and blindfolded, at this point- anything to escape this place and the people in it. The sharp, scrutinizing judgment in Miss Heo's eyes still lingers on his skin like the chill of a knife held against the throat for a minute too long, and that drives him crazy.

"Hey, Gyu."

"Hm?"

"You reckon we can go somewhere right now? You, me, and Matt?"

"Don't we usually...?" Gyuvin asks, confused. "I thought it was tradition by now, no?"

"Yeah, but I meant actually go somewhere this time around. Not to the usual pizza place around the corner, but like...I don't know. Somewhere fun."

It takes only a moment before Gyuvin's eyes light up with an idea. "You know, I actually was planning to go to the mall after we eat to shop for Christmas presents. I need to get stuff for my parents, maybe something small for you and Matt this time too. You bought anything for your folks yet?"

"No," Hanbin replies sheepishly. "I haven't. It's not really a thing in our family."

"It should be. It's Christmas, for fuck's sake."

"That doesn't mean shit to them. And I don't know what to get for anybody but Yujin, honestly."

"Hm, I'd imagine it's a headache trying to buy for that many people. Don't bother, Bin. Get something for the ones that deserve it and the rest can go to hell."

"That's a great idea. But are you saying you're taking me Christmas gift shopping right now? Seriously?"

"Well, yeah," Gyuvin says, like it should have obvious. "You and Matt both. He never gets shit for his family anyway."

"Pfft. They don't deserve to even have him as their son, much less get gifts from him."

"So I should just leave him out?"

"Of course not! Let's go, then. Matthew- wait, where's Matthew?"

"Already at the restaurant, waiting. I'll call him to let him know there was a change of plans."

Needless to say, the evening spent at the mall serves to finally disarm Hanbin of the last remnants of his previous shit mood. Somewhere between searching all the stores like maniacs on a mission and ending up in at least three more than once, laughing at oddly shaped candles and getting nasty looks from the other customers, taking blurry photographs of each other in flowery hats and silky bathrobes, and Gyuvin spilling iced coffee all over Matthew's new jeans, Hanbin had realized that so far, everything is okay.

Sure, his family might be struggling financially like never before. He could get a new deodorant from the dollar store for Christmas like he had last year and fight the jealousy that filled him upom seeing Gyuvin's expensive headphones and brand-name clothes, which would inevitably be followed by guilt for being ungrateful- a lot of other children get nothing from their parents, anyway. His mother could be pregnant at the least convenient time, his father could be doing nothing to help, Minho could loathe his existence and want him dead, for all he cares. He could deal with all that. As long as he still has his friends by his side, if only for a while, he can take on the world even though it's never truly been his.

His head is in a pleasant daze when the three of them finally walk out of the mall, winded but in higher spirits than ever. God, but he wishes he didn't have to go home so soon, even though his anger has diminished significantly by now. One more hour. Please, just give me one more hour of this before I have to go home.

"Hey, Gyu, you have a free arm there. Could you check the time please?"

"It's already nine," Gyuvin replies after checking his phone. "We spent less time in there than I expected us to, honestly."

"I don't want to go home though," Matthew whines. "Say, do you guys wanna come over for a while? We could wrap the gifts and get something hot to drink before you head home."

"This late? You sure your mom won't mind?"

"Nah," Matthew waves his hand dismissively. "You and Bin are top two on her list of approval."

Hanbin doesn't know how to feel about that. He'd resented Matthew's mother ever since she and her husband had kicked out their oldest daughter the day she'd turned eighteen. She'd been "too much to deal with", according to the woman's words, "impossible to get through to." Hanbin doesn't know the whole story, only about the self-harm and a boyfriend outside the church that had gotten her pregnant, but everyone knows about that, anyway. She'd never been anything more than just an acquaintance to him, a familiar face on Sunday mornings that his mind had always registered as "Matthew's sister" rather than by her own name. But he'd seen the way the whole situation had affected Matthew as a young child, and that in itself makes him want their parents dead.

Fuck the fact that they treat Matthew like the light of their life. If they ever find out about the boy who hides underneath it all, he'll get the same treatment as his sister and they all know it.

But he greets her warmly anyway, through clenched teeth and a tensed jaw behind a smile that could fool a master. Gives her a hug, asks her how she's been been doing, praying on the inside that her last day comes soon. But Matthew wouldn't want him to let her see right through. He can give his friend that much, if anything.

He can't help the sigh of relief that escapes him when she finally heads upstairs to attend to her own matters, leaving the three of them to their mugs of hot chocolate and the cozy warmth of the spacious living room. It's as if the tension visibly bleeds out of everyone's shoulders the moment she's out of sight, giving them the green light to proceed with being themselves, albeit quietly. Matthew bounds off to find the scissors and tape for the wrapping paper before rejoining them a minute later with a bright smile on his face, giddy as if this were the first time he'd ever had company over.

That's just what he's always like with people. Bubbly, vivacious. Always smiling. Buoyant, like no darkness could ever drown him. 

Trained.

"Here's the stuff. The boxes and ribbons are in that big red packet over there, in case you forgot. We don't have much time left before my mom will come down to start hinting that you need to leave, so let's hurry and wrap this up as quickly as we can, no pun intended."

"You're so not funny, you know that?"

"I don't remember asking for your opinion, Hanbin, so shut the fu-"

"Shh."

"-heck up and get to it. You have the most boxes to wrap out of all of us."

They work in silence. It's a comfortable one, yet not quite- the kind that can only reign between friends that have known each other for years, people that are familiar with the most intimate parts of each other's minds, yet know nothing about each other's hearts anymore, because nothing is like it used to be. They've changed, every single one of them, like growing teenagers are supposed to do, but the versions of themselves they've grown into are versions none of them are brave enough to ask and learn about, lest they uncover parts of themselves so ugly and wicked and rotten that it shatters the three of them apart forever.

"Pass me the ribbons Matt, will you?"

"Sure thing."

Deal with your own shit if you want the people you love to stay. It's what Doyoung had always told him, when he'd been around. Hanbin wonders who'd been the one to teach that lesson to Seok Matthew, to Kim Gyuvin. Who were the people who'd broken the part of them that might have saved their connection when it had still been fully possible? Who was the secret Doyoung of their lives; who was, and still is what Hanbin's mother is to him? His father? 

They're all broken. It's nothing new. But the extents of the damage vary; each damaged fragment has a different word written on the label. And yet they'll never truly know the depth of each others' worst inner pain, because to each one of them, opening the gates to their souls for the people they cherish most means a death worse than the physical kind. It means loss, a sooner expiry of a friendship already so very fragile. It means the approaching end of an act that was meant to make life seem normal.

There's a snowstorm outside, loud and relentless. The wind howls and screams something bloodcurling yet unintelligible; bangs against the windows with the desperation of a dying child trapped in a glass cage, unprepared to meet their demise as the clock counts down the seconds to the end with no mercy. Above their heads, bent over the coffee table in utmost concentration, the living room lights flicker as if in foreboding of something evil in store. Once, then twice.

And then, the lights go out, plunging the three of them into utter darkness.

"Well, shoot," Matthew says.

"The lights have gone out," Hanbin adds. Like it isn't obvious.

"Yeah, no shit," Gyuvin whispers. "It's snowing pretty damn hard. I don't know if I can drive home in this weather, Matthew."

"You're not," Matthew reassures him quickly. "Call your parents and tell them you're sleeping over. There's no way I'm letting you drive right now, not with your crappy skills and a week-old driver's license. Hanbin, you as well. Sleep over tonight, just in case."

"I would, but I don't know if-"

Rrrriiiiinggg

Rrrrrringgggggg

Rrriiiiiiinggggg.....

The intensity of the ringtone in the quiet darkness of the room has them all jumping out of their seats, scared out of their wits and clutching at their shirt collars. It's Hanbin's, of course- everybody else always has theirs on silent.

"Jesus, Hanbin. You really should lower the volume for that thing at least, if you don't want to turn it off."

"Can't risk missing phone calls from my mom, you see," Hanbin winces, finger hovering over the green "accept call" button in hesitation. "That's the only person who'd call me at this time. She'd probably panic up a storm if I don't answer."

"What are you waiting for, then? Take it, idiot."

He does.

But it's not his mother's voice at the other end of the line. It's Yujin's. Quivering, hushed, tearful.

Terrified.

"Hanbin-hyung..."

"Yujinnie? What's wrong- baby, are you crying....?"

"H-hanbin..."

Something in the tone of his voice has Hanbin's stomach dropping all the way to the soles of the shoes already halfway tugged onto his feet. Has his hands trembling for a reason he can't explain, wordlessly begging Yujin to go on before his mind travels to every worst scenario possible and makes it hard to breathe.

"Yujin, listen to me. I need you to tell me what's going on right now, okay? Calm down for me, please. You're okay, baby. Everything's okay; nobody's going to hurt you while I still have a say in it."

He feels Matthew's gaze, heavy on his skin with questions unasked. He senses Gyuvin's worry from meters away, sees his wide eyes blink rapidly the way they tend to do when he's concerned, without even having to turn around. It's okay. You're overthinking it. It's okay.

But it's not.

You didn't put your diary away before you left. You didn't put your diary away before you left.

You. didn't. put. your. fucking. diary. away. before. you. left.

And then Yujin breaks out into a litany of choked sobs that have Hanbin's heart contracting painfully in his chest. They're supressed, as if they're not supposed to be heard. As if this is a phone call he wasn't allowed to make, as if he'd get hit as soon as he's found.

"She's...she's tearing our r-room apart. She's really, really angry- I- I think she's going to kill you- and dad's coming- oh, Hanbin...."

Hanbin's heart freezes in his chest. Stops. 

She found it.

There's screaming in the background, so loud that it nearly drowns out the sobs. Furious, bloody. He hears plain as day the sound of crashing, slamming, something heavy falling and shattering to pieces. More screaming, his name in the background like he's never quite heard it yelled out before.

She found it. It's over.

"Yujin-"

"I think- I think you're in really big trouble, hyung. I don't know what's g-going on but please, come quick. Please..."

"Okay, okay, I'm coming. I'll be there soon. Get off Mom's phone this second and go hide somewhere quiet in the meantime, okay?"

"I need you to promise me that you're coming."

"I promise, Yujinnie. I promise you, just- please don't cry, okay?"

"Okay, but-oh no-...I'm scared, Hanbin, please!"

Wailing. It's his mother's.

"I'm on my way now. Hang in there, sweetie, alright?"

He presses "end call", runs outside without his coat and lets the curses pour out of his mouth while they still can. Someone yells his name from behind, something about his coat and the police and deep breaths, but he doesn't hear it- the keys are already in the ignition. The wheels are already sliding along the ice.

"I'm scared, Hanbin, please..."

Outside, the wind howls on.

Chapter Text

Dust.

Dust on the kitchen counters, dust coating the hidden spaces underneath pages of the books that line the shelves, dust on the keys of grand piano in the living room. Dust everywhere.

She hates it. Loathes the filthy sight of its thick gray film over all her favorite things, because that's where it always assumes ownership for no reason other than to spite her. Never on the things she wouldn't look at twice. 

So she makes it her duty to get rid of it. None of her children ever would, at least not like she does. They're not meticulous enough with it, never truly care to get the last speck out, so long as it appears clean at first glance. She despises that about them. Having such an approach to cleanliness is unfathomable to her, like standing down before confirming that the enemy is fully slain. But they won't listen no matter how hard she nags at them about it, so in the end she does it herself.

She has to, for him. 

She doesn't know why she tries so hard, honestly. It's not like he'll ever notice her efforts the way she's always dying for him to. Ultimately, all she'll ever be to him is a collateral of his filial duties. Something required to have ownership over it, because a woman cannot be her own master like a man can. It's what has been planted into her brain since she was old enough to have it beaten into her by her father's belt, and it is what will never be uprooted from it. She needs him, not because she wants to need him, though such is already the case, but because she has to need him. He doesn't need to need her back; husbands aren't obliged to. 

And yes, he doesn't need her. Never has. What he needs are her hands, to keep the household he's never around to nourish running, and the sacred portal to life in between her legs to honor God's plan for marriage and reproduction. The rest is noise to him, all noise. Trivial, muffled, indiscernible.

She forgets about it all as soon as he calls to tell her he's at the airport. She hadn't known he was planning on coming today; none of them had. He'd done this before, once or twice- toying with the element of surprise to keep them all on their toes. He knows the children love it, just as he knows that she hates it. Limited time to clean, even less time to prepare a decent celebratory meal, and everyone but Minho and Yujin busy working or taking care of their own offspring. But she'll make do, like she always does.

The contrast between the state of each of her children's rooms is jarring, to say the least. When Doyoung was still around, his and Minho's room had been almost unnervingly clean, one of the reasons she'd always loved him so much. Now Doyoung's gone, providing for his own two children hundreds of miles away, and the room is, simply put, nothing short of a pigsty. She won't ask Minho to clean it, though, because he'll say he doesn't see the need for it. For her children, their father's arrival is about other things. The gifts, the stories, the coddling-for a select few. They don't care if he sees their rooms dirty. She's the only one that does, for some reason.

The hands on the clock seem to move with dizzying speed as she works, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the hem of her apron every once in a while, going to the bathroom to vomit when the growing life inside her becomes too much. The first trimester of pregnancy is always the hardest. But it's coming to an end, thankfully, and she hopes the sickness follows, along with the chances of miscarriage that are always highest at this time. Miscarrying is a fear she never could quite rid herself of, even after twelve successful pregnancies in a row. She should go to bed, seriously, instead of doing all this when she knows it will go unappreciated in the end anyway. But she can't, not when he'll be here in only two hours.

It surprises her, Hanbin's and Yujin's room being the cleanest. Somehow there's never an in-between with it; it's either filthy enough to rival Minho's or neat enough to look straight out of a magazine, but almost always the first. Hanbin cleans it on occasion, when he's home long enough to care. He must have cleaned it yesterday, when they'd come home after church. He'd done a good- almost good- job with it, of course. Get the boy to put his mind to something, and he'll do it so well you won't know what hit him. But never quite perfectly.

It's the dust on the desk that bothers her. 

She attacks it with freshly renewed vigor and a damp rag in her hands. It's the last room remaining on her cleaning list before she needs to go check on dinner, and also the room with the least work, so she might as well go all out. The more energy she puts into it, the less likely she is to think about this room's inhabitants and worry herself sick all over again.

She casts one look at the stack of notebooks in the corner of the desk, all arranged by color in the order of the rainbow, and fails.

It's Hanbin, the one that's on her mind the most these days. He's never been like the rest of them, never normal. Since the moment he learned how to speak he'd ask questions. Not silly questions like "Is the moon actually following us when we drive?" or "How do the stoplights know when it's safe to cross the street?" He'd never cared for things like that much. No, Hanbin asked questions like "Why would God want to save people from Hell when He was the one who created it? Does that mean He regrets it?" Or "why do you want us to read the Bible when it contains all the same things the books you won't let us read do?"

It concerns her to no end. Children aren't meant to ask questions like that. They're not meant to doubt God when everything they've ever been taught from birth leads back to God and God alone. It sends a chill down her spine to this day, the way he'd cried over the story of Lucifer in church as a small child years ago. His sobs had gotten so loud the other mothers had started giving her The Look, and she'd had to take him outside. She'd cried over it too, as a little girl herself, but she'd cried in sympathy for God. Her child had cried for the Devil.

She knows she's losing him. He hasn't shown interest in the Scriptures for years. There's no light in his eyes when he sings with the choir, a bite to his voice when she speaks her mind on anything from The Other Side, a shift in his shoulders whenever she tries to sneak a look at his phone screen. She has no doubt he's reading all kinds of forbidden books in the library, too, because he doesn't have to bring them home anymore. And the headphones. He's always wearing those damned headphones, and she'd be stupid to think he's listening to hymns or classical music in them. They aren't exactly soundproof with higher volumes, but he's never seemed to care.

He's just a little lost, is all it is. Strayed away from the right path, cooled off towards the faith like so many believers are prone to do at one point in the journey. He simply needs something or someone to reignite his light and direct him back to the one and only truth, where he should be. She'd help him, but he doesn't want to hear it. Every time she tries, he walks away.

But he's not evil. He isn't a deviant of any sorts. He's on the right side of politics, he at least believes in God and His plan for salvation, he shows interest in the church- moreover, he's active in it, which isn't something every mother in the congregation can boast about her teenager. He doesn't partake in vices like premarital romance and sex, or drugs, or smoking, or drinking; she knows her son, after all. Worse sins, such as indulging in pornography and self-gratification, thirst for violence, any sorts of antipathy for Christianity and all things traditional, homosexual tendencies- it's never even been a possibility.

She knows her son.

He left a single notebook on the desk before going out- a rare occurrence, as she knows he always locks his things away before he leaves, but then again he'd walked out spontaneously because he'd gotten angry, so he wouldn't have planned beforehand. The notebook is closed, of course; he never leaves them open. This one looks different from the rest, though- blue, with a leather case, thicker than the ones he usually buys. It's tattered, too, like it's something important to him. There's a bookmark in it, the first one she ever remembers seeing him use. What could he have possibly written so important that it required to be marked?

She moves to put it away. Hesitates.

She shouldn't be doing this. He wouldn't want her to do this.

"...all that modern immorality concerning filthy faggots, mentally ill children, and the rest."  There had been that strange bite to it again, just this morning. The sour expression on his face when Minho had dragged out the word "intolerant." Things that shouldn't have been there, yet were.

One peek, just one.

The first entry is from 2016. The year she'd started noticing the changes.

She'll just flip through it quickly. Nothing more.

Words jump out at her at the speed of light. 

Death. God. Life. Heaven. Hell.

Boys, sex, summer, dance. Love, forbidden, body, hate, loneliness. 

Instinctively, she knows that all the answers to her questions lie here, in this tattered little blue book filled with her son's scrawly, faded handwriting.

She shouldn't; she really shouldn't. But she needs to know, or else she just might give up on him.

She forgets, as she unlocks the Pandora's box in her hands, that knowledge can come with a cost. And sometimes, that cost is love.

-

"Hanbin-hyung..."

You didn't put your diary away before you left.

"She's...she's tearing our r-room apart... dad's coming...come quick....please, Hanbin, please.

I'm scared, Hanbin

He presses "end call", runs outside without his coat and lets the curses pour out of his mouth while they still can. Someone yells his name from behind, something about his coat and the police and deep breaths, but he doesn't hear it- the keys are already in the ignition. The wheels are already sliding along the ice.

The world renders him blind when he least needs it to. Not a single thing is visible through the wind as the snow continues to pelt against his windshield with reckless abandon. It's almost as if as it is trying to break through the glass so it could unleash hell on him, turn him into the lone scapegoat of its wrath like he hasn't tasted enough of it already. Like he's not about to walk into a hell he'd created with his own right hand and a pen, become nothing but a worthless sack of flesh and bones begging not to be torn apart.

He could die tonight if he keeps going at this rate, and he knows it. Driving in this sort of weather at the speed he's attempting to go is practically a death wish of its own; he might as well stamp "suicidal" on his forehead in bold black letters for everybody to see. But he'd failed to end his life the first time he'd tried at fourteen, so naturally he'll get out of this alive too, if his car does end up crashing. He'll untangle himself from the wreckage and crawl home with a proverbial foot already down in his grave, if that's what it comes down to. He has no other choice now, not when Yujin's waiting.

His little brother is his one goal tonight, the light at the end of the tunnel he must reach before he can rest. He'll worry about himself and his own fate later, after the storm passes. Yujin's waiting for him, for once dependent on him for salvation rather than god, and Hanbin can't afford to disappoint him.

So he drives. Just fucking drives on and on and on, farther into the pitch-black unknown while every instinct in his body screams for him to go back the way he's come from and save himself while he still can.

He isn't clueless to what exactly is awaiting him at home. He's also morbidly aware that there's no lying his way out of this one, no sheltering himself from the downpour about to come. He hears his heart shriek to him like a wounded animal, against the suffocating cage of his ribs, that this is the end. The day where the foundation he's spent the past year building and fortifying for himself so painstakingly, brick by brick, will finally collapse atop him and bury him alive. This time around, he heavily doubts he'll have enough strength remaining to pull himself out from under the rubble again. But he can't be entertaining these thoughts now- not until they actually become reality, or he just might succumb to the pull of the winds and let them take his breath away too early.

Soon isn't happening nearly as fast he needs it to be. The winds only continue to blow harder, and the snow falls at such a frenetic pace he can't make out a single sign or lamppost anymore. The electricity appears to still be out in the area- disadvantages of living in the countryside where the power lines are isolated and never properly maintained. There's not a single light ahead as far as the eye can see, and he's become painfully conscious of the perilous slide of the ice underneath his wheels as the vehicle swivels and sways in all the wrong ways, whispering to him of all the potential risks he's flirting with. But it's all good, so far. He can make it as long as he's careful. He knows these roads like the back of his own hand, after all; he can navigate through a harmless little blizzard, if anything.

Deep breaths. His teeth grind in his mouth against their own will and his abdominal muscles clench in a ferocious anxiety that has his throat closing up and tongue suddenly feeling too heavy for his mouth. Jesus Christ, he must be finally losing it, but his feet, cold and half-numb in his scuffed hand-me-down boots, step firmly on the gas like he knows what he's doing. He's reckless and running on pure adrenaline, as if he has nothing to lose when mere hours ago, he had everything.

And suddenly he's flying, just like he had done this summer on these very roads. But this time there's no Lorde playing in the background, no friends, no laughing or drunken singing that makes his ears bleed. When did the world around him manage to become this dark again, so devoid of anything remotely euphoric when only fifteen minutes ago he'd been at peace in Matthew's living room, surrounded by old candles and chipped family heirloom mugs filled to the brim with hot chocolate, Gyuvin humming Christmas carols into his ear? 

He can't help but question, knowing what will happen once he gets home and faces them all, if he'll ever get to experience anything like that secure warmth again. All that exists in him now, as he slowly feels himself lose control over his vehicle and his mental state, is a terror so crippling and visceral he's a little child all over again, getting grabbed by his hair and stricken repeatedly for a wrong he couldn't even fathom. You thought that child was dead, didn't you? You were so certain you'd finally succeeded in killing him off. But I'm right here, Hanbin. I never left.

Midnight. Footsteps, stealthy yet so frighteningly jarring in the quiet of the hour, approaching his room at the speed of light. He shuts the laptop. An assignment, mandatory to turn in tomorrow, he says. The footsteps retreat to where they came from.

"What do you think about her?" Nice. She's nice. "Just...'nice?' again? That's it?"  He replies that he's just not interested in pursuing a relationship right now. He can't be bothered, with so much already on his plate.

"Do you support them or something? They hang those awful flags downtown every June and you're the only one who stays quiet about them every time we drive past." There's simply nothing for him to say. Does Dongmin think Hanbin enjoys looking at those things any more than he does?  

"You keep looking at him as if he were a girl you fancy. I almost thought you were about to undress him with your eyes or something."  Stop it. "He's pretty, though. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to fantasize of him as a girl. Or do you not even do that?"  Piss off, you moron. "You a faggot or something?"

Faggot, faggot, faggot...

He's going much faster than he should be now, but he can't seem to make himself slow down if he tries. Nothing's working anymore; no matter how hard he tries to keep his hands steady on the wheel the fog in his mind refuses to clear, the words won't stop screaming and laughing and mocking him from every direction of his car until he thinks he might have gotten possessed. He needs to breathe, just breathe; he fucking can't. He's too weak, too frail-minded for something like this. He's Sung Hanbin at the end of the day, and Sung Hanbin is someone who would get scared out of his wits and mumble the name of a god he doesn't believe in under his nose every time nothing else helps, like the pathetic, cowardly little thing he is. His thoughts clamor louder than he'd dared let them in years, and he swears his heart's about to beat out of his chest and tumble to the brakes below, leaving him to depart from this world as nothing but a gaping hole of deformed guts, muscle, and bone. The universe- the universe starts to feel like one endless dark tunnel closing in on him from all sides, the opposite of what the universe was created to do.

But in the end, none of that matters. Not until he makes good on his promise. So he swallows his panic attack and chokes on every bite as it goes down, willing himself to stay in the present moment for as long as his body can keep it up. Steps on the pedal underneath his feet with twice as much power as before, ignoring the smell of burnt rubber that instantly attacking his nostrils. He can do this, all he needs to do is keep it up, and he can.

If only his eyesight hadn't decided to go blurry right at that moment, maybe he would've seen the deer jump in front of his car in time. But he never sees the things he needs to, at the moment he needs to. Life has never been that kind.

He meets the animal's eyes, in that split second separating the last step off the precipice of the cliff from the fall. Sees them flash red, as the blood in his veins slows to a chilling standstill.

The sound of the glass shattering feels strangely muted, as if he's hearing it in a nightmare that isn't even his own. He smells the blood moments before he sees it, feels the nauseating stickiness of it trickle down his temple and pour in rivers from his shoulder before the pain actually erupts and knocks the breath out of him with the force of it. Helpless to put a stop to any of it, he chokes into the airbag that's keeping him pinned to his seat and away from the destroyed windshield, tries to get out so much as a cry, yet to no avail.

The five-hundred-and-ten million kilometers making up earth are reduced to nothing but a crushing space between a giant mound of snow and an oak tree, activating his claustrophobia to its full extent. He has no mouth. Tears his lungs to shreds trying to find it, but only comes to the surface with more blood. More agony.

Doyoung will kill him when he finds out Hanbin had totaled the car he'd left for him, made him promise to keep good care of. Hanbin laughs imagining it. He laughs, as he switches the engine off with shaky hands and tumbles out of what's left of the door, stray shards of glass slicing against bare spots of already mottled, lacerated skin. Laughs hysterically as it takes him forever and a day to find and turn on the flashlight function in his phone, choking on the revolting taste of iron coming up his throat all the while. Laughs, as he puts one foot in front of the other and the pain flares up like a fire, as he pushes through it all like a naive fucking fool, painting the snow around him crimson with an artistry that would put the best of abstract artists to shame. Cries, the tenth time he stumbles and falls.

He isn't sure how long he lies there, the burning ache in his body threatening to rob him of his consciousness and lull him into a cold, fatal sleep that would have solved everything. His clothes are drenched to the thread in blood, sweat, and snow; the wet fabric digging into to the torn meat of his shoulder with the murderous greed of a leech. His temple throbs where the tree branch had sliced it, trickling blood steadily down the freezing skin of his jaw, his neck, down his chest to merge with the blood from his shoulder. He wonders, as he lies and contemplates waiting for his demise, where else he'd been injured that he doesn't yet know of.

He can't do this. He can't reach home like this. He can't just lie here and bleed out to death. He can't face his parents. He can't let Yujin down. He can't take the hurting any longer.

Yet he can take one step. One step isn't nearly as much as he needs to do, but one step is a defiant "no" in the face of surrender.

He can no longer truly feel his feet, but he knows one moves forward when he looks down. He drags the other one behind it, puts it in front. Success.

Just one more step. It's what he keeps whimpering to himself feverishly over and over like a deranged lunatic, as the planet spins in a blinding blizzard around him, sending him plummeting into the snow again and again until he no longer feels human. As he limps forward, hanging onto to his last residual bits of willpower, he is one with the snow and wind himself. He is no more than a creature fashioned from ice and scarlet snowflakes by the gnarled hands of Mother Nature Herself, meant to have stayed buried underneath the snow as winter's dark little secret before it melted and took him with it, erasing all proof of his existence.

Fifteen minutes feel like a lifetime.

When the white batten walls of the Sung farmhouse finally come into view, Hanbin is no longer standing. His legs had given out at the mere sight of it, refusing to function whatsoever. It leaves him with no choice but to crawl, all the way to the front door from the edge of the driveway.

The tears streak down his cheeks involuntarily this time. The agonizing pain, the cold, the panic, the dread- it's all driven him to the breaking point after half an hour of fighting not to feel it to the most abject of extents. He isn't sure he can make it to the door without losing consciousness, if the overpowering dizziness and wild rhythm of his heart are anything to go by. 

Not until he gets there, though. He won't rest until he walks- crawls- over that goddamn threshold and sees Yujin's face, shows him that he's come home like he'd promised. Whatever happens after that is free to brandish the killing blow on him, because once the night is over, nothing will matter anymore. He'd gone over this scenario in his head one too many sleepless nights, when panic and anxiety would consume him whole and infect his brain with paranoia of this exact day, the one that he'd hoped so badly he would escape in time.

The darkness at the edges of his vision closes in on him like a black veil in slow motion the closer he inches towards that door, but it still doesn't prevent him from spotting the vaguely familiar white monstrosity parked beside his family's cars. He can't remember the name of the owner, not when everything's swimming in front of his eyes, but the sight of it strikes a fear into him the kind that only one specific person had ever managed to do.

He's numb inside out as he stares. Blinks, hoping his father's car will vanish into thin air if he just does it hard and fast enough. But it's still there each time he opens his eyes- cold, formidable, unmoving. Nothing Hanbin can do will ever make it leave.

He turns his back to it and averts his focus to climbing the three steps to the front door instead, sensing in his body that he doesn't have enough time left before he collapses. Seventeen minutes since he'd first said "one more step", a few seconds left to make the lie come true. 

Tomorrow he'll find he doesn't remember much of what happened in those few seconds. He'll only remember, albeit vaguely, the dull thump of his chest against the wood as his knees gave out at the very last moment, the door giving way. Hands, floating in his field of vision yet refusing to hold him, letting him collapse onto the floor as the pain finally becomes too much.

But the heartbreak he sees in Yujin's eyes, for the half-second they meet his before he succumbs to unconsciousness, remains crystal clear in his mind for years to come.

-

The voices are warped, stifled. Miles away- probably somewhere on land, because he's submerged underwater.

Get up.

It's freezing against the heat radiating from his face, wet. Dripping down his hair, his face, drenching his shirt all over again and making it stick to his wounds. The shock seeps through the fabric and into the bone, making his head pound obnoxiously. Lights, flashing in his vision where he remembers with certainty it had previously been dark.

Get up.

Clammy monster hands on his shoulders, like the ones from his childhood nightmares, pulling him up by the hood of his coat to consume him whole. His body goes limp in its hold on instinct, knees buckling. The monster shows no mercy, only digging its slimy appendages deeper into his flesh where it hurts. It retrieves another one and snakes around him to grab him by the roots of his hair, yanking him up where he'd begun to sink to the floor again. Vertigo makes its unwelcome reappearance at the sharp movement.

"I said get up and stop playing with me this second, or you'll regret it. Look at you...getting into acting these days, are you?"

Somewhere, a small, tearful voice that may or may not be Hana's. "He's bleeding, Dad."

"It's nothing serious. He'll live. He's making a big deal of a few minor injuries so he could be left alone because he knows what's coming. You're dumber than I ever remember you being, Hanbin."

"It's nice to see you too, Dad."

It's not much more than a wheeze, so weak he barely hears himself say it through the blood rushing in his ears. His father has no problem catching it, though.

" 'Nice', eh? You can stop trying so hard to act like a man now. Get up and get walking. This is the last time I'll say it."

It's as if he's still fighting for his sanity back in the car, struggling to make out a single object through the blinding storm and failing miserably. But instead of drowning in darkness, the lights make his eyes hurt, the voices merge with the piercing howl of the wind until the noise becomes one unbearable, gut-wrenching cacophony straight from his worst night terror. He can barely move on his own, can't even breathe properly, and everything around him feels like a simulation he was never meant to step foot in.

"I can't."

"You can't what, walk? Alright, then. I'll help you walk."

He heaves his son up by the shoulders as if the boy were already a corpse gone flaccid, not caring to discern between the injured parts, and this time Hanbin can't help the guttural cry that tears from his own throat. Fire licks up the territory of his entire arm, and now not only is his wound spurting blood anew, but something in his body is wrong. Some bone or muscle shifted out of place, not entirely where it needs to be, and the sensation of it is sickening.

"It- it hurts-"

"Should have listened to me when I first told you to move. Stop being dramatic, you're fooling nobody."

Driven by sheer fear, Hanbin manages to make it onto the closest couch in the perimeter on his own two feet. It's the only couch of the three that's vacant- something that never happens with a family their size, especially not when ten out of the fourteen of them happen to all be home. He doesn't have to raise his eyes from where they're glued to the floor to see the nine pairs of feet dangling from the other couches, with barely an inch of space in between. He realizes, belatedly, that though most of them despise touching each other with a vengeance, they prefer to do just that at the moment rather than share a couch with him after what they'd heard.

"It has come to my attention that a lot has changed about you since the last time we've seen each other, Hanbin."

He doesn't remember his father's voice ever being this grating on the ears. He wishes fleetingly that his arms had enough strength in them so he could lift them up and cover his ears, even if only for a foolish show of defiance. But the least he can do for that now is find his own voice and use it though it pains him to speak, because his voice is all he has at the moment. "I'm surprised you even remember enough about me to propose such a notion."

"Don't get smart with me now, young one. Keep in mind, Hanbin, that I am still your father and always have been. Without me, without all of us here, you are nobody. You are worthless."

"Well, for all issues with the p-product, complain to the manufacturers, won't you?"

Fast footsteps, a firm hit to the back of the head. Something viscous and overly reminiscent of iron comes up his throat along with it, propelling him into a coughing fit that wracks his lungs until they sizzle. "I see you have learned audacity. You'll talk like that to your friends, not your father, understood?"

Panic constricts his lungs and blocks his airway, but he's a dead man if he lets it show. He summons what little courage remains within him and lifts his eyes for the first time since he'd awoken, only to instantly be met with the cold, black abyss that is the eyes of his father. He's more than unprepared, but he wills himself to stare inside them with his head as high as he can lift it, mentally draining his gaze of all emotion as he does so till he knows with a sure certainty that it's empty. Blank, like nothing the man in front of him may say could ever affect him in the slightest, when in fact every word makes him yearn for the blade he hadn't touched in months like an addict yearns for a final shot of heroin years after finally getting clean.

"I want you to explain this whole thing to me. As a matter of fact, do us all a favor and explain it to everybody in this room that had ever thought anything good of you. Your mother, whom I found weeping disconsolately on the floor in your room the minute I stepped foot in the house. Your older brothers and sisters who tried so hard to set a good example for you while you were still small, letting you tag along everywhere you weren't wanted. To Minho and Yujin, who are supposed to look up to you as a role model and respect you. Explain to them where they all went wrong."

"Went wrong...with what?" As if he doesn't know. As if it's not eating away at him with every waking moment he spends around them against his own will, dreaming of the day he makes his getaway.

"So you want me to be the one to explain it to you?" Mr. Sung's voice replies to him with a disconcerting calm. "I can do that. Hana, give that thing to me."

He knows what it is without even having to look at it. But he looks anyway- a mistake on his part, because the first thing his eyes land on instead of the root cause of it all lying in Hana's palms is her face, pale and sickly. Hanbin knows she felt his gaze, yet she avoids it like the plague, as if looking at him might make her sick. She passes that oh-so-familiar blue notebook in her shaking hands to their father without a single word and proceeds to bury her head in her hands, face hidden from Hanbin's view by the thick waves of hair immediately falling over it.

"I'll help refresh your memory, since you seem to be struggling to do so yourself," the man says, opening to a random page.

Hanbin's heart stills in his chest as he catches on to what exactly his father is about to do. He lunges, seeing nothing ahead but that cursed notebook cradled in his father's hands. Dry-heaves under a strong wave of nausea as his head spins and his hand grabs empty air and he misses- fucking misses.

"Don't worry, I'll give it back to you. But before I do that, it would be nice if those who haven't yet quite grasped the gravity of this situation could become properly enlightened on the matter, don't you think? After all, this was lying on your desk like you'd wanted someone to find it, so I don't think you're ashamed enough to view the things you wrote here as personal." 

"Don't."

Hanbin's skin smolders, whether from the terror that settles in his stomach like lead or from the illness steadily encroaching on him he doesn't know. His father ignores his plea, and now he can no longer push himself to move the way he had done out there in the storm. There's nothing he can do anymore but just sit there, drowning in his pain and staining the couch scarlet as he resigns himself to the fact that his deepest, most shameful secrets are about to be exposed right in front of him, word by dirty little word.

" 'Dear diary'," the man begins. Patronizing, dripping with a poetic ridicule as if he were reciting some silly parody in a comedy show with his son as the laughingstock of the nation. Hanbin screws his eyes shut and trembles.

" 'Remember Mark, the new pianist we'd gotten last year? He came up and talked to me yesterday. Ugh, but he's so admirable. Smart, handsome, chivalrous- anything one would ever want in a man. He has such beautiful lips, too. I wonder what they taste like; not like I actually want to know. Or do I? It's not a crush, or almost-crush like I had on you-know-his-name. He's just extremely fascinating to me, is all.'  "

Hanbin bites his tongue with his canines so hard he tastes blood again. Fights the urge to defend himself and tear at his hair and scream his lungs out, even if none of what he'd say would make any fucking sense. In the corner of his vision, his mother throws her head back with a groan and Taeyeon grips her daughter tightly by her chubby little arms until the child cries out from the force.

He didn't write it, it was a book he'd borrowed, he was keeping it for a friend, it was a project for literature class. Anything but his.

"Here's another one, from two years ago. Much more intriguing, if I dare say so. Listen to this- 'I'm gay. There, I said it. More like wrote it, but it's pretty much the same thing. I'm not ashamed of it, either. Would I have been if it didn't feel so natural? I don't know, but it's what I am. Natural, authentic, and real. Words that could never apply to me if I went against my instincts and tried to like a girl.' "

Hana springs from her seat and dashes for the bathroom, gagging. His mother sobs, heavy and low. 

"Interesting, isn't it, hearing your own sinful thoughts and words from a different perspective? Doesn't it make you feel so, so stupid? Here's another one your mother had found, and I must say it is quite...perverse. Not something I ever expected from a boy like you, to be honest."

"Stop," Hanbin rasps, gasping from the ache that shoots through his chest at the effort it takes him to raise his voice. "Please, stop. That's enough."

"It's not enough until I say so."

Please, don't let it be that one. As long as it's not the worst one, that one specific entry he'd written a few nights after the last time he'd seen Jiwoong, horny and lonely as all bloody hell, he can still take it. Maybe then he could retain at least a feeble semblance of dignity, if anything. He deserves that much.

"Forgive me if I hesitate; this is extremely lewd, but... 'Is it so wrong that sometimes I just want it? That one thing everyone my age wants yet isn't allowed to think about? What if I just want to make out with a pretty boy until he's out of breath and begging me for more with his eyes- cough- pin him down to a bed and do unspeakable things to him until he won't be able to think about anything but me whenever he thinks of pleasure- cough- Tou- doing it myself is just not enough any longer. But whatever. I should just go have a smoke. It helps, every once in a while.' Well. That was a difficult read I wish I never had to make. "

Down the hall, Hana retches into the toilet bowl with a violence that paralyzes.

Detached from his own body, Hanbin watches from outside of it as Taeyeon weeps silently, tears soaking into her tiny daughter's curls where she sits on her lap, perfectly still while her mother trembles. Seungho hisses slurs underneath his breath the coarseness of which Hanbin had never known he was knowledgeable on, even with his vicious temper. Minho's and half a dozen other siblings' gazes bore through Hanbin with a revulsion that strangles the body sitting motionless on the couch. Mrs. Sung wails on. 

Across from him, Jiyul's mouth is pressed into a thin, sharp line. Her hands repeatedly worry the fabric of her skirt in the same frayed spot, and she peers at Hanbin with an emotion he is too mentally inept to try to translate anymore. But then Yujin buries his face into her chest, like he used to do with Hanbin when something made him feel small or preyed upon, and Hanbin returns to his body to the raucous sound of his heart shattering in the background.

His father's voice drones on for eternity. He'd found it all- everything in Hanbin's entries that was never meant to be read by anyone but Hanbin himself, and brings his son's "sins" to light until there's nothing to be left in the dark. Smoking, dancing, cutting, boys and pornography and gentle kisses and primal human lust. His thirst for love. His undying desire for freedom, his spite towards the church and its ill abuse over feeble minds.

His youth.

His mother's voice breaks as she begs. "Tell me you're not...that. I can't even say it- God, Hanbin, please. I won't believe it until I hear it from your own mouth."

For fuck's sake, what's the use anymore in pretending to be something he isn't? Sung Hanbin was born sick, sent to his family as a curse from hell branded and prayed over by the devil himself, and it's high time he play the part that had been his from the very beginning of time.  

"And if I am?" he whispers. "Then what? Say it. Go on now, spit it all out. Everything you think about me after hearing that."

A strangled cry leaves the woman's chest, the sheer force of it snapping her neck over the back of the couch. "Oh, God. Oh, my God."

"You're lying!" Taeyeon cries. "I don't understand why you're doing this. Hanbinnie, you- you used to be so good, when you were little. Sure, you weren't the most obedient or- or the easiest child in the world to get through to but you were so smart, so kind. You're not gay, Hanbin-ah. You're just...you're lost and confused, that's what it is. The things you see in your phone-"

Seungho's voice is steel, so sharp it could cut. "You think so? The way I see it, he's always had it in him. I knew something was wrong with that child since the day he learned how to speak. There was always something so unsettling about the way he'd look at you- well, now I know what it was all along. He's sick up in there. A dirty fricking cocksucker."

Hanbin smiles in spite of himself, feeling his body once again slowly approach the void of unconsciousness. Cocksucker. He wonders, amusedly, if that will be the last word he ever hears. He should have asked Matthew to engrave it on his tombstone, the moment he'd first heard that phone ring.

"Why?" somebody sobs. It echoes through the tunnel, distorted and siren-like. "Why, Hanbin? Why are you doing this to us? What did we ever do to deserve this?"

Nobody wants a mentally ill child, Minho's voice screeches in his brain. Pounds against the membrane, wearing down the tissue and twisting it into a readied noose for his neck. Sick. They finally know that you're sick. Yujin will never look at you the same again.

Breathing feels like a bigger feat with each passing second. Holding on to oxygen becomes a battle he no longer wishes to fight, much less win.

"I'm sorry."

"You can say 'sorry' as many times as you like, Hanbin." His father. "It doesn't change the fact that you have just made a statement that practically demands God to remove his shield of love and protection from over you. It won't change the fact that you are a slave to Satan and take pleasure in being it. You have just destroyed your mother and ruined our family beyond saving, Hanbin. I hope you're happy."

"You ruined our lives," Hana hisses in the distance. "How are we supposed to go on like everything is normal after this!? People at church will know..."

"I wouldn't have given birth to him, had I only known. Lord Jesus Christ, what for!?"

"Don't cry, Mom. Please, don't cry."

"My son is going to hell, Minho. Oh, my poor, poor son..."

"Don't call it that. Why would you ever call it that?"

The living room tilts on its side, taking everything with it as Hanbin begins to lose the fight for consciousness entirely. 

But one thing remains still even as the rest of the room launches into vertiginous orbit, striking horror into the little boy buried deep into the folds of Hanbin's flesh. The crucifix above the piano has eyes, colorless and vacant, and they bore holes through his ravaged skin and into his soul that burn. Whispers, in a voice that sounds uncannily like Yujin's, words he'd thought, hoped he'd forgotten.

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul...Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell...

He wonders why he'd cried for the devil at all as a child, when the devil had crept its way out of Gehenna forty-five years ago and become someone he's known all along. When this whole time, Hanbin was its own spawn, only to now be ripped apart in its clutches and offered up as a sacrificial lamb in its futile attempt to redeem itself and step foot in Heaven once again.

Do not be afraid...

Only when the world goes dark and Hanbin slumps forward on the couch, unresponsive, does the man on the crucifix finally go silent.

Chapter Text

A bolt of electricity coursing through his shoulder was what woke Hanbin from his blackout that fateful night.

Or maybe it was Yujin's soft, heartbroken whimpers somewhere beside his bed. He wouldn't know. Not much makes sense anymore, through the mind-numbing haze of the fever mercilessly ravaging his body.

"Don't move," a woman's voice whispers when he opens his eyes. "I'll help you."

Help me with what? Hanbin wants to scream. Erase my memory? Reset my brain? End my life? 

All that comes up instead is his dinner.

The woman in front of him doesn't flinch, doesn't even push him away when the vomit gets on her clothes, the bedsheets, the carpet she's kneeling on. She rubs his back with steady hands through it all, whispering something unintelligible to the ceiling in prayer until he's exhausted the last of the contents in the stomach, spent.

"Yujin, bring me some towels and clean bedsheets from your mother's room. Do it quick, while she's still downstairs."

Fast, gentle footsteps across the room, fading out into the hallway. A cold hand on his forehead, its touch tender yet the will in it so, so strong. A flowered skirt, mussed and wrinkled in all the oddest places, floats into his field of vision more vividly than anything else.

"Jiyul?"

"Quiet, my love. Not another word."

The pain wins and Hanbin shuts his eyes, slipping away into the shadows once again.

-

He gets a dream, when the fever reaches its peak. He dreams that someone cared about him.

In that rare, bittersweet dream, Yujin whimpers something barely discernable, like he always tends to do when he's terrified.

"Dad, please. He needs to go to a hospital. What if- what if he dies...?" 

"He won't. And you won't tell me what I need to do. You're too young to know what..."

A second voice this time, that of a woman. Jiyul's. "Father, Yujin's right. I tried to treat his wounds as best I could...his hypothermia was quite bad...high fever... because of the immense stress..."

"You'll teach your husband how to live, Jiyul, not me ...wants to make it on his own without God...important lesson..."

In his dream, he sees Yujin's tiny figure in the background of all the noise, picking things up off the floor in their destroyed room as tears stream down his cheeks unabated. It's all your fault he's unhappy. Sees him float up to the bedside and move as if to take his hand, only to step away and start crying harder.

"Mommy said I'm not allowed to come near you anymore. I'm sorry."

He sounds too real to be a dream; all of it does. Hanbin can't be sure of it, not yet.

Later, when the risk of death is over, he asks Jiyul about it. She tells him, through a watery smile, that none of it was ever real. He doesn't believe her.

-

It's Friday morning when he discovers that opening his eyes no longer feels like a hammer to the skull. December twenty-first, the day of the year where light takes its leave much too early and the night is longest. The winter solstice, better known to Hanbin as Four Days Since The World Turned Upside Down.

As soon as his eyes adjust to the light streaming in from the window, he props himself up on his good elbow, moving slowly so as not to be shot back down by some sudden jolt of pain. He begins to assess his condition, slightly dreading what he might find.

Bruises line the sides of his ribs, ranging in color from a harmless green to a midnight lilac uglier than righteousness. It looks worse than it feels though, he supposes. But then he tries to move his left arm and ends up having to drop it almost instantly, hissing at the scathing pain seizing his forearm where his father had grabbed him days prior. He's almost positive the man had twisted it badly; for fuck's sake, the wound spanning his shoulder hurts much less than that.

Speaking of his shoulder wound, there's a thick layer of freshly changed gauze wrapped along the circumference of it, protected by another layer of plastic wrap. The sight is baffling for the longest minute before it strikes him through his confusion that he's entirely shirtless.

He assumes it had been necessary, to treat his injuries. Yet that doesn't take away from the fact that another layer of his secrets had been unceremoniously peeled off and uncovered for everyone to observe while he had been lying unconscious and oblivious to it all. Whatever, he thinks. They'd all heard the old man read about it anyway. 

Right...

Memories of that doomed evening flood his brain like they'd been waiting for this, lying low in the bushes fully prepared to attack at the exact moment he'd regain some semblance of mental clarity. Every picture that comes to mind stands clearer than the last, every sentence cuts sharper, and his body throbs. Bombarded by vision after vision Hanbin wishes so badly he could erase from memory, one stands out in a way different from the rest- that of a small boy who means the world to him and a woman, tiny and plain, keeping vigil at his bedside when everyone else refused.

Yujin's behavior hadn't come as a surprise in the slightest. Hanbin had always known that the boy would stick by him through joys and tribulations alike, even if it meant risking his own position of favor with his parents. "Mommy said I'm not allowed to come near you anymore. I'm sorry."  Yujin would obey, there is no doubt about it. But he'd also find a method to get around it, follow his heart in a way that wouldn't entirely break the rules. That's just the way Yujin is, devoted like a dog to both sides, unable to choose which one is more deserving of his full-time loyalty. A child, at the end of the day.

It's Jiyul that confuses him.

Hanbin finds himself thinking about her and the strange way she'd behaved towards him ever since that evening, as he climbs out of his bed and half-crawls half-limps his way into the shower, fighting the all-consuming soreness that limits his every movement. He takes off his pants and boxers- both the ones he wears exclusively at home, Yujin must have helped her changed them- and steps under the water, letting himself bask in the warmth of it while he still can. Stares at the wall, refusing to look down at the destruction site his body had become.

He'd been protective of her since the day he'd learned she was to be Seungho's bride. Even as a seven-year-old at the time, he knew the woman wasn't going to have it easy, well-acquainted with the extents of that particular brother's temper. And she seemed to sense his silent worry, always treating him kinder than any of his other in-laws; scratch that, kinder than most of his blood siblings ever would. Her care would manifest with utmost subtlety- she'd never speak a word to him about his reluctance to repent and get baptized, praised him for his work around the house, wouldn't make him feel like utter trash for the most trivial of accidents (or any accidents at all, for that matter). The smallest things, really, and yet those were the things she somehow knew that Hanbin needed most.

But not this. Staying by his side after who he's been revealed to be, helping him as a dignified member of the Sung family- impossible. A feat that should not have been feasible even for Jiyul. 

It takes him forever and a day to get dressed. Standing and walking, it turns out, hurt much more than lying down or sitting do; tugging on new articles of clothing over wounds from a car accident is a whole different story in itself. He pushes through, like he's never not done, and feels like he'd run a marathon by the end of it. He needs a break, he decides, before the next step that is the most torturous of them all- being forced to face whatever shit the day will have in store for him after what had happened.

He doesn't know how he ended up bent over the sink, staring down his own reflection in the mirror. Every fiber of his being protests the game the longer that he stands there, but he can't look away, transfixed by what he reads in the eyes of the monster peering right back at him through the glass.

The past few days have made a ghostly nonentity of him. White, like the snow that had witnessed his hysteria at the brink of surrender. Red, under the vacant, sunken in black pools that his eyes have become, is the only splash of color visible. Red on white, like his blood soaking through the snow under his feet. Like the flash of warning in the whites of the deer's eyes as it flew past him, the discordant screech of his wheels. Red, on white, on black- this whole week before Christmas. Blood, snow, words on paper. Blood, snow, his words on paper. Blood, snow...

His mind goes into overdrive and corrodes. His hand follows suit and reaches for the handle of the second to last drawer, his fingers jam between the last two towels, searching. Even then, not once do his eyes stray away from the apparition watching his every move in the mirror.

That's it, the blade murmurs to him as it sinks greedily into the flesh. Oh how I've missed you, you precious, naive little thing. I am your destination, the solution you'll always return to and the comfort you'll never stop seeking out.

The sting is too much to bear after everything, not nearly enough to bleed the memories dry. I am the alpha and omega, Hanbin, your beginning and your end. I am no monster, little one. I am you, and you are me, and we will never be untangled from each other for as long as you keep your heart hidden from my reach. You know how badly I hunger for it.

Go away. Leave. I'll make you leave; I can do it if I try.

Never, Hanbin, never. You've tried time and time again. Look at where you are now. You've come back to me at last.

Walking downstairs feels oddly like a lucid dream. He registers somehow, through the fog engulfing his mind again, that something's missing. An important little thing, one he always has on his person. And he needs to be somewhere right now- where does he need to be? Two places, people are waiting for him in both, dependent on him to show up. There are books in one, and friends, and there are mirrors in the other, and laughter and smiles and music, somewhere far away from home. He can't remember- god, why can't he remember? 

He reaches the last step and stops dead in his tracks.

Again. Their eyes are all directed at him again, and the mouths gone quiet- he could have sworn they were talking while he was coming down; it's his fault they can't talk anymore. He looks from one face to the next, counts only five of them this time around, but it's as if they've all morphed into one and he's having trouble telling which part of it is whose, because his vision is swimming and his heart is roaring in his ears, but nobody seems to notice.

"Look at him. He's already up and well," his father says.

Nobody else utters a single word. The closer Hanbin steps to the table, the faster their silverware hits their plates. By the time he's hobbled over to his usual seat, they'd all gotten up and left.

He sits down anyway. Waits, for what he has no idea, but he waits, staring at the lone pitcher of unfinished ice-cold milk at the center of the table as he does so. He realizes soon enough that there's no point in it, that today will be the day that he'll finally get to drink his coffee in peace and quiet like he'd always wanted to.

Just not like this. He'd never wanted the quiet to feel like this.

More milk than water, overly sweet. Just the way he's always liked it. And yet, for the first time since his addiction to caffeine had become a problem, it tastes like nothing.

All the same, it reminds him of the cafe downtown, his Sunday morning expedition with Gyuvin. Gyuvin...he'd left him and Matthew behind with no explanation whatsoever. They must think he's dead. They wouldn't be too far off with that assumption. He should text them, anyway. One word, at least, to let them know he'd gotten home safe- had he though? Alive is safe enough, he guesses.

He needs his phone to- his phone. So that's what's gone. How the hell did he manage to miss it?

Suddenly feeling more clear-headed than he'd been in a while, he shoots up from his seat with a determination he already knows is dangerous. It will lead him nowhere, trample his small hopes under his father's boots only further, but the least he can do right now is try. There's still a life outside those doomed wooden doors in places he remembers now, and if he lets that last sliver of life slip through his fingers, the monster in the mirror and the blade in the bathroom drawer is all he'll be left to in his misery. He'll lose his goddamn mind, then; he can't have that.

Hanbin finds his father stretched out on the couch, buried nose-deep in his Bible with Yujin beside him, curled in a ball underneath his shoulder. Hanbin doesn't look at him, avoids his eyes at all cost. He'll slip and lose his mental footing again, if he looks at Yujin- worse yet at Yujin being held by their father. He can't afford to let the little boy see his older brother break down like that ever again.

"Give it back."

"Your little journal?" the man drones, not looking up from his book. "In the trash. Workers came by this morning and drove it all off to the dumps."

He swallows, hard. So, you're still afraid of him, huh? "My phone. I need it back."

"What for?"

"I need to text my friends. I need to go to work. My boss and coworkers have not been able to reach me for days now; I need to explain myself to them-"

"You will be going nowhere. And as for your contacts, I have alerted them of the situation. You have nothing to worry about that."

Hanbin's heart plunges to the soles of his feet. "What do you mean, 'nowhere'? And how did you get into my phone?"

He knows the answer to the second question before he even gets out the last word. He'd looked up in time to see Yujin cower under his father's arm, face crimson with shame and another expression that fills Hanbin with a guilty rage- fear. He's scared out of his wits that Hanbin would hurt him for his betrayal somehow, as if he's not well aware that Hanbin doesn't have it in him to because he knows who'd planted the fear into his little brother's heart in the first place.

"You're a conniving little swine, aren't you?" Mr. Sung laughs, no humor behind the sound. "Preying on the smallest and weakest of the bunch to keep all your dirty little secrets. And the fact that you have no shame about it, too..."

"What did you tell them?"

"Tell who, Hanbinnie?"

"My friends. My boss. My teachers. What did you tell them while I was sick?"

"Who's Lalisa, Hanbin?" the man retorts angrily, ignoring the questions. "And what did she mean by 'why hasn't Yujin come in yesterday?' I asked her, but she didn't answer. "

The unexpected mention of Yujin's dance instructor throws Hanbin into a cold sweat. Here he was, thinking that every last one of his secrets has been exposed and stripped down to the core, but apparently he hadn't listened close enough. As he stands there, at a loss for words, he suddenly recalls that while he'd never held back in his descriptions of glamorous detail about the emotions that had taken root when he'd started dancing, he hadn't once written a single thing about Yujin's dance classes. Not even so much as a mention.

"Yujin's math tutor," he says carefully. "I'm paying her to help him catch up to the others in math because his teacher says he has trouble following along in class."

"Yujin? Is that true?"

The little boy nods slowly, eyes wider than saucers.

"Then I'll tell her you can go on paying her until you run out. You'll drive him there too, for as long as he has sessions."

"I always do."

Silence. Minho looks at him from the end of the second couch, gaze inscrutable. The scar on Hanbin's shoulder pulses, rapid and wild.

"What did you tell my friends?"

"Kim Gyuvin and Seok Matthew?"

Hanbin lets out a sigh of relief in his head; his paranoid habit of deleting their conversations for no apparent reason has served to his good. His friends are safe.

"I told them the truth, everything as it is. That you've decided you don't care about anybody around you anymore and wish to live life without their love and support. That you couldn't care less what they think about you and that you don't cherish their friendship because you picked your sin over the people that love you."

"Okay. I'm sorry."

There's nothing else he can say, when it's clear that defending himself is pointless. When his mother had gone to bed as soon as he'd gotten up from the kitchen table, when Minho stares holes through his face, and Hana and Yujin won't look up at him at all. He wonders what Gyuvin and Matthew think of him now, after reading his father's words. If they believed any of it at all.

"Where do you think you're going, Hanbin?"

His shoes are already half on. He's not taking them off now; tugging them on that quickly had sent fire licking up his aching feet and he won't let it be for nothing. "I'm going to work. I've skipped too many days without warning. I've got to at least find out if they've fired me or not."

"I've taken care of that already" he replies. Robotic, steely. Like this is the one thing he'd come back home to do after months away. "I've texted your supervisors that you're resigning for personal reasons."

"...No, you have not."

The low rage he hears simmering in his son's voice has Mr. Sung looking up from his Bible at last. The beast inside has awoken. "Oh yes, I have. Listen, don't you think you hold yourself in too high of a regard for what you are?"

The man gets up and Hanbin's breath hitches.

His father is going to hit him. He's going to seize him by the collar of his shirt and plunge his fingers into his insides and scream at him, because he knows how it paralyzes him with terror. He won't rest until he witnesses his son's last spark of courage go out in person and that knowledge has Hanbin frozen in place, eyes glazing over as the lump in his throat expands to beyond what he can suppress.

Mr. Sung pushes his face into Hanbin's, so close Hanbin could have smelled the stale coffee on his breath if he'd allow himself to inhale. "Listen to me very, very carefully right now, alright? If you think that everything will go back to what you consider your normal after this, you are gravely mistaken. I understand this means nothing serious to you, believe me I do. For you, this was nothing but an ordinary statement about your so-called identity that you believe you have the right to. Your world is all sunshine and rainbows right now. 

But not for us. We can't take this lightly, Hanbin. We are in mourning. As your father, I will never forgive myself if I allow you to go on as you are right now without any consequences. It is my God-given duty to do everything in my power to keep you from stooping any lower than you already have because I love you-"

"Let me go," Hanbin wheezes, beginning to tremble even as he fights to regain his composure. He can't stand hearing those three words, would rather shoot himself dead on the spot than having to hear them from his father's mouth ever again. 

"I said you're not going anywhe-"

"Let. Me. Go." He can hear his own tone rising into desperation, the sort of sound that would only serve to rile the man's anger but he can't help it, whatever rationality he'd had in the beginning now overtaken by a carnal panic he cannot control. "I need to go to work. I have classes-"

"One more word," the devil hisses, "and I won't hold back any longer. You are done with working. Seungho and Dongmin went out to search for the car last night, the one you'd crashed like an idiot. Want to know what they found in the trunk? Loads of useless, sentimental crap from Lord knows where. If you can't spend your money wisely, then you're too young to work. I'll leave you enough for Yujin's classes, and the rest will go to pay the bills. You have to contribute to this family somehow, after destroying it like you did."

"Gifts," Hanbin whispers. "Those were Christmas gifts for you."

"You think your family will take anything from you now?" Mr. Sung jeers, incredulous. "Your brothers have already thrown it all away. We don't want your gifts, Hanbin. We just want our son and brother to be normal."

Hanbin steps back and takes off his shoes. Falls over as he does it, picks himself back up again. As he limps back towards the stairs, morbidly defeated, everybody looks at him. Nobody sees him.

"Oh, and you can forget about dancing completely now," the man says to his waiting back. "That's never happening again. Not while you're under my roof."

Feeling increasingly more suffocated by the second, Hanbin turns around and searches his father's face after those words. He looks for love on it, at least a single inkling of proof that those three deceptively mellifluous words had been genuine. He searches, and finds nothing.

"Is that all?"

"Yes," the man says. "That is all."

Hanbin returns to his room without another word. Shuts the door behind himself, and suddenly gets the sinking feeling that he'd never actually left his room at all, as if this whole time he'd actually been in confinement and the permanently constricted space of the four walls enclosing him in their cerulean-colored clutches was what had finally driven him mad, got him seeing things and hallucinating people that were never supposed to be there. To some extent, it might be good to wish that that would have been the truth. Insanity should no longer scare him by now.

He scratches at his skin and tears at his hair until it no longer hurts. He claws at his chest to try to rip through the flesh to the beating heart obscured below until exhaustion sets in and the panic gives way to a fatal, unfamiliar numbness. He breathes, too much, too little. Too deep into his lungs, too shallow to suffice. All the while, the walls eat him alive.

-

Yujin finds his beloved older brother curled up in a fetal position on his bed hours later, asleep and burning up again. The tears don't stop, when you're eleven and find out that seventeen-year-olds- your favorite seventeen-year-old, at that- can break. 

His mother's instructions can go to hell, just this once. He wets a towel with cold water and presses it to his brother's forehead, because he doesn't know how else to help but needs to do something to prove himself after he'd caved and betrayed Hanbin by telling their father the password. He won't leave, he promises himself, not until his brother's eyelashes start to flutter, and he sticks to his guns till the end like he knows Hanbin would have done. He's not supposed to revere his brother as an example any longer, his father had said, but right now Yujin finds he doesn't care.

He never knew that people could cry and beg for forgiveness in their sleep. Hanbin looks beautiful doing it. For the first time in his very short life, Yujin isn't sure that beautiful is such a good thing anymore.

-

This time, Hanbin wakes up to darkness.

Or rather, to the odd blue hour that descends upon the countryside in that almost imperceptible interval between evening and nightfall, a phenomenon quite rare in the wintertime. Dammit, it appears summer is intent on plaguing him even now. 

And of course, so is his mother's smoldering animosity.

"Get up and get ready," her curt order slices through the air. "All your siblings- with the exception of Doyoung, of course- are coming over for the family reunion dinner, since your dad's here and you're finally well."

"One would think you didn't want me there."

"Shut your mug and get your lazy ass up. All you do is sleep, for goodness's sake. Good for nothing."

He doesn't want to do this. The last thing he needs right now is a house bursting at the seams with people, all of their contemptuous stares and venomous words directed at him when he's already barely holding on. For the first time in the history of the Sung family, the main attraction of the reunion dinner won't be their father. The spotlight will be on him, on Sung Hanbin, and the sheer brightness of it will set him on fire, leaving him hanging up to his neck in flames for the sole purpose of their entertainment. He knows his family well enough to predict that everyone will take their turns with it, too.

By the time he's descending to the main floor, the sharp sound of children's laughter already pierces his ears stronger than any other noise. His nieces and nephews must have all come along- at the end of the day, annual Christmas family reunion is something nobody but him ever wants to miss. The only thing that's ever saved him from losing his shit every year had been the children, each one dumped into his and Hana's hands one by one as their older siblings would express their desire to "take a rest for once" and trot off to the tables and the celebration. He reminisces fondly of the days that Hana would try to her best to throw her weight around with the babysitting, only to give up in a few minutes and leave all the young ones to him, stating that she'd had enough and couldn't take a single moment more else she explode. Not that he'd minded, really. He loves children and they tend to love him back just as much; besides, he's good with them, always has been.

He was stupid to think it would stay that way.

Stupider yet to not have expected the noise to die down to a murmur the moment he stepped into the picture. Even the loudest of the children follow suit, wide-eyed and puzzled as they look back and forth between Hanbin and their parents in wordless inquiry. Do they know? Hanbin wonders. Do they hate me now too? His siblings would never have explained the concept of homosexuality to their children, out of all his other transgressions. Nobody ever explains it, in the church- you find out yourself.

Four-year-old Minjeong breaks the silence first. "Why are you bad now, Uncle Hanbin?"

"Mommy said you did something really evil," eight-year-old Woobin chimes. "We're not allowed to play with you anymore. She said you might do something wrong to us."

"...Oh," is all Hanbin can say in reply. He's done with words, thinks he might be done with them for a while after today, because there's really nothing left for him to properly articulate. He scans his sibling's faces briefly, every one of their expressions expecting him to provide their children with answers that they themselves cannot, yet should have been able to. Well, if they're thinking he can tell their children something that their parents want to hear, then they're thinking wrong.

"Is that so?" he pushes out of himself. "I'll...well. I'll be going now."

"Wait, Hanbin, won't you eat something at least-"

"Be quiet, Jiyul. Leave him be. It's in everybody's best interest."

He retreats to his room, shuts the door, and falls into a deep sleep once more without having to try. He doesn't even mind the possibility of nightmares any longer- embraces it, even. But this time, instead of the usual horrors, he dreams about sounds of muffled children's laughter and the smell of chocolate cake too far out of his reach.

-

The following two days pass in a psychotic blur. His room becomes both his haven and his prison, sheltering him and his growling stomach from each mealtime he'd refuse to come downstairs for, releasing demons from every overtly dark corner in the nighttime to torment him and leaving him huddled up against the wall awaiting the break of dawn that would surely force them to retreat. Demons hate the light. That's what his father always used to say.

Perhaps it's better that way. Should he sleep through the night, there would be no guarantee he could easily fall asleep in the daytime, when he needs it most. Today's daylight brings with itself anguish twice as potent as yesterday's, and the day after tomorrow will most definitely quadruple the amount. Coming downstairs to quell his thirst and- if it's it out of his power to bear it any longer, his hunger- means eyes on him. Eyes on him mean words. Words mean more hurt. More hurt, in his fragile mental state, entails a sure-fire panic attack. 

Panic attacks will always mean the blade.

Two days aren't much. Forty-eight hours, sixteen hours designed to stay asleep, thirty-two to stay awake. Two days are supposed to fly by, if anything. But in Hanbin's depersonalized state, they crawl. Like snails, miserably trying to slide their languid, slimy little bodies along as fast as their anatomy can allow them in order to lose the predator on their tail, and failing before the game truly even starts. 

He'd lived these past two days out so identically to each other that they might as well have been one. Staying awake through the nights, thinking about everything that's ever happened to him yet nothing in particular because he couldn't truly feel his body and he couldn't figure out why; hearing Yujin begin to stir just as the first tendrils sleepiness knocked on his door, and only falling asleep to the sounds of the house coming to life. Getting shaken awake once or twice by his father to have another "serious conversation" about his attitude and remembering nothing of it, going back to sleep. Waking up to Yujin getting ready for bed, pretending to be asleep until the boy's breathing would even out, indicating his arrival to dreamland. Then, he'd retrieve the blade. Last night in particular, he'd been at it for hours. Or at least that's what it felt like.

Should it worry him that since that evening nothing feels, looks, or sounds remotely real? That whenever he looks down at his hands, or thinks hard about himself as a human being, he wonders if his soul had been snatched out of his throat and implanted in someone else, a random stranger who needed it more than he did? He doesn't know where to look for himself. Maybe he shouldn't, maybe there's nothing left to find. Jiwoong would say this is just his mind's way of protecting him from more adversity than he can bear. Hanbin thinks he'd had more of it than he could bear years ago. Or maybe Jiwoong's right. Hanbin doesn't care. He just wants his heart to stop beating before the next time his father comes into his room.

It doesn't, of course. Rather, it only speeds up its pace, the third morning into the excruciating cycle. On Sunday, December twenty-third, two days before Christmas Eve and the day their church usually hosts the grand evening Christmas sermon, Mr. Sung enters his son's room for the last time in Hanbin's memories.

"You're coming with us this evening."

"I don't feel well."

"And I don't give a continental farthing. You want to miss the morning service, fine. But you will be there with the rest of us this evening, and I don't want to hear a single word you have to say about it. Poor Hanbinnie, doing nothing but sleep and stare at the wall like a dumb boar all day long. Life must be so hard for you."

With that, he turns around and slams the door, leaving Hanbin to his own ruminations and abrupt withdrawal of drowsiness.

Church is Matthew, is Gyuvin, is his good friend and favorite coworker Sophia. He won't be able to take seeing them all turn on him, silently curse him and his revolting hidden nature when they'd been the ones to provide him with the false assurance that he deserved to be treated as human in the first place. No, he too has his limits.

But his father won't just let it go. Hanbin may think now that he's got nothing left to protect or fear losing, but the man has always had a knack for disproving every one of his flimsy hopes and trampling them into the dirt along with his son's barely existent self-esteem in the worst of ways.

So Hanbin goes. 

Doesn't matter that pulling his left arm into the sleeve of his much-too-small white "special occasions" shirt makes his eyes sting, or that his face looks no better than that of a corpse, or that his mother tells him she'd rather not even look at him when he asks her if she's feeling okay- "sorry, I just need some time to accept it. I'm not there yet." At the end of it all, it is six p.m., thirty minutes before the service, and he's in their black van with Hana, Minho, Yujin, and his parents, old hymns blasting from the speakers as if this is how it's always been. A perfectly functional, happy Baptist family, straight from the church library's children's storybooks. A gruesome little fairytale begging to be perceived as idyllic, written by heavy black books and bruises from leather belts and eyeless crucifixes. A story with no end in sight.

By the time they enter the auditorium, the congregation is already on the last stanza of "Silent Night". Everybody turns around. Of course they would.

They always do, he'd been used to it forever, and naturally word of his father's arrival must have spread like wildfire so it's only to be expected that they'd been waiting for him, like loyal pets wait disconsolately for their master's return after years spent apart. But it feels as though they're all looking at him instead, that everybody knows now who- what- he really is. Not that he should care- when has it ever bothered him what people think? Why is the perspiration washing over him in frigid waves now, of all times? Why does nothing feel real?

He's about to sit down beside Yujin in their family's part of the pew, dazed and on the verge of panic, when he meets Matthew's and Gyuvin's eyes for the first time since That Day.

They're sitting together, second to last pew in the right half of the room- their bench. His, Matthew's, Gyuvin's- ever since their parents had finally permitted them to sit together years ago after weeks of imploring and promising they'd only listen to the sermons, nothing else. Hanbin should be there with them right now; he hasn't sat with his family in years, not even on the occasions his father had attended on his visits home. Surely they'd realize something is seriously amiss. 

When seconds pass and they still don't tear their gazes away, Hanbin knows that they know. Perhaps they're not in on the cruel details of the situation, probably not even the main picture, but Matthew and he have stuck with each other for a decade- Gyuvin for almost three just as meaningful years. Not seeing the black cloud looming above any of their friends' heads with as much as they're privy to about each other, though it isn't much at all, is incomprehensible.

Hence the reason Gyuvin's eyes are huge in his face, even more so than usual. Yet they still seem to be unable to contain the true extent of his concern; it overflows and radiates from every pore of his being, so much so that it seeps through the sleeves of Hanbin's suit and makes the incisions on his skin smart with an uncomfortable grief. Matthew's expression is at a much different range in the spectrum, stern eyes squinting and the muscles of his face immovable. But Matthew's visage and its language is at times more familiar to Hanbin than his own- he's been losing sleep over this.

Hanbin can't possibly tell them anything with his own eyes, nor does he know what he could possibly do to let them know he's alright. His immaculately practiced smile and the age-old forced lightness in his expression is nowhere to be found now- it must have evaporated alongside his words, leaving him at a total loss for lies. He wishes he knew what they saw when they looked at him, so he could never have to witness those kinds of lines engraved into their faces ever again.

The sermon starts, giving Hanbin an excuse to look away. He catches his father stare at him from the opposite end of the bench, his look inscrutable, and tries his best to ignore it.

The sermon flows into ten minutes and Hanbin's mind departs farther away from his body. There it is again, that petrifying sensation of reality slipping from his grasp. He's not truly here; he must have teleported to this place somehow, did too much with his imagination, and now he can't get away. 

The sermon reaches twenty minutes. He's positive he's never seen these people before. They're a fragment of his darkest fantasies, ones he doesn't remember having. How the hell does he know their names? 

Forty-five minutes, now they're praying. He doesn't kneel with the rest of them. Sways on his feet- not intentionally, he's not bad on purpose, he swears. His body simply keeps doing things he doesn't mean for it to; it's not his fault, this once.

Prayer is over- time for the main choir to go up. The first chords of the piano swell through the auditorium- it's "Carol Of The Bells", they sing it every year, yet all too soon Hanbin struggles to breathe. He stares at the words displayed on the projector; there's nowhere else to look. He can't escape from the voices and the melody permeating the dimly lit room and infiltrating his ears, his mind, his very being until he can't form a single coherent thought, can mouth nothing but "please" to a nonexistent savior like there's no tomorrow. Please, make it stop, he can't be losing his mind here, not here for fuck's sake. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop makeitstop.

It doesn't stop. Why isn't it stopping?

Hark how the bells, sweet silver bells...

Ding dong....ding dong....ding dong...

The breath escapes him in ragged bursts of a rabid creature trapped in a cage, loud and unrestrained. Yujin's looking at him now, reaching for his hand, whispering something. Hanbin doesn't hear him. 

Ding 

Dong.

Ding..

Dong...

His brain stutters. Stills, not for long. Raises the gun.

Vertigo. Bodies, and voices, and lights, none of them from this earth as he knows it.

Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong.

His knees buckle before he can pull himself up. Minho rolls his eyes. Giggles.

Some supernatural force takes ahold of him by the strings and supplies him with enough power to stumble out of the room before he can cross a line he won't be able to come back from. He wishes it could also be so kind as to make his ears stop ringing and threatening to explode. His tongue pulls back into his throat and his head spins, his psyche comes apart at the seams, but at least he's out the door now, as the worst of it begins. Passes through the hallway somehow- floats, his body isn't his anymore- reaches the door to the stairwell and there's footsteps behind him, falling fast and heavy, but he runs as quickly as his cotton-stuffed feet can take him, stumbles over air as he lunges upstairs, where he can be alone and if he can just be alone where it's quiet it will pass, he will come back to himself and he'll be alright, he just has to make it and-

"Hanbin, stop."

Just a few more steps. They'll leave him alone soon; they'll hate what they see, once he turns around.

"Bin, please, slow down before you hurt yourself!"

The footsteps behind him continue on their chase, but he's reached the top floor now, and if they want to see him at his fucking worst so badly, they'll get to see it now. He's done trying to hold it in. Detached, he feels his body collapse and slide down the wall beside the window, meeting the hard floor. This is it, he can give in now.

The second he does so, his form begins to convulse in a wicked sort of tremors that he knows with a certainty have never possessed him before. His brain can't fathom the damage it's wreaking on his own body, but even through the confusion Hanbin recognizes that this is no ordinary panic attack. This is something different and far, far worse. 

The footsteps speed up in pace, then stop altogether. Hands leave their scathing marks all over his body, frenetic, pressed for time they don't have. Somebody breathes close to his head, onto his face, deep breaths like the kind he's forgotten how to take. He wants them to leave.

"Matthew...oh, Matthew, what do we do with him!? Matthew, I think he's dying."

"He's not dying," Matthew barks. "Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures. Mandy used to have them."

"What?"

"It's a stress seizure. Move him away from the window. Be gentle."

The hands move over to grip his shoulders. They shake in expectation of violent protest, a foolish thought considering it's obvious that Hanbin's got no strength left in him to make that fear reality. He lets Gyuvin- it may or may not be Gyuvin- maneuver him away from the window and onto the carpet, powerless to save himself any longer as the seizure ravages his mind and body with no regard for his pride.

While they hover over him, talking in hushed tones, his hands find their way under his sleeves by themselves. Before the two blurry figures can figure out what he's doing, his nails have already taken to the scars on his arms, old and fresh alike, desperate to get himself to bleed and ache anew so he could return to his body, take control of his mind again and just make it fucking end. But they don't let him.

"Hanbin, no-"

"Get him to stop that, now. I'll take his left, you go for the right arm."

"You said not to touch him!"

"You'd rather this go on?"

There they go, taking away his last chance at being the one to help himself out of this. And perhaps it was useless to ever try in the first place; the moment they pry his fingers off himself, the blood spurts and soaks through the white fabric, unapologetic. They see it, and they still refuse to let him go.

They hold him through every torturous second that he slips away, hopelessly searching for his mind, as the shivering reaches a dreadful climax and his heartbeat goes into overdrive. One of them cries, louder than Hanbin's ever heard either of them cry, or maybe it's the both of them, or all three. Someone says his name, over and over and over again as they drape themselves over his frame and shudder with heaving sobs, but it's loving and it's tender, nothing like his father says it. He could learn to like his name, if it was always said like that. 

"Come back to us, Hanbin-ah. Please, come back."

-

An hour and a half later, he's on his knees in the living room.

He doesn't know how he got there. It's a dreamlike sequence of events with the roughest of transitions, and his rattled brain struggles to handle it. How is it supposed to, when an hour and a half ago he was fighting for his lucidity, convinced he wouldn't survive the method his body chose as a response to the stress demolishing it? Matthew and Gyuvin had led him to the car, both of them pale-faced and thoroughly shaken after seeing the strongest of their group come undone for the first time. They hadn't said a word to his parents- it would be of no use; then they'd left him to fend for himself, after uttering their choked goodbyes.

In the darkness pervading the car, Yujin had silently taken his hand and held it throughout the whole drive, uncaring if someone saw. And then, somehow, Hanbin had ended up....cracking. Falling to his knees before his family and breaking down in tears, any previous inhibitions demolished, because he'd finally come to his wits' end and it hasn't even been a week. He's fragile, just a child yet, and he isn't sure he can take much more of this. This isn't how he wanted life to end.

He doesn't think about what to say. It pours out of his mouth on its own in gushing, salty streams. The tongues of a soul who'd never asked for anything much, other than love. 

"Please...please just stop."

" 'Stop'?" Mrs. Sung parrots, bitter. "You want us to stop what, exactly? Nobody's doing anything to you. You've done this to yourself."

"Get up off the floor," Minho adds. "You're so embarrassing."

Hanbin pays no mind to the tears freely rolling down his face, the fact that he is full-on crying in front of his family not phasing him anymore. He's got none of his dumb old ego left in him; it's all fossilized and turned into pain. Just gnawing, soul-eating pain. "Please- I just- can you please stop treating me this way?"

It's pathetic. Stupid, mortifying. Galling like nothing else, but he's tired. People do strange things when they're tired. Even stranger things, when it's the bigger kind of tired.

"I know I'm disgusting, I know it's hard to look at me, I know I've tainted your perfect family image, I know that, okay? But is it so hard to just forgive me!? I'm sorry I'm gay. I said I'm sorry already. I'll say it a million more times if you need me to- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

Losing his breath has become second nature to him by now. So have his mother's cries and the back of his father's hand.

"Shut your mouth."

"Will you forgive me if I do?"

"Stop playing the victim already, it's sickening. Why, you ought to be beat with stones like they used to do to the likes of you before. But death would be the sweetest way out for a son like you, don't you think so?"

Hanbin sinks to the floor, defeated and bruised. Sinking.

"I'm sorry."

Hours pass before he gets back up. His family had already made their way upstairs a long time ago, locked away in the comfort of their bedrooms and sound asleep without a care in the world. All except his mother, whom he can still hear sobbing in the distance as her husband snores on. Hanbin wonders how his father can even sleep through the sounds. He sure as hell wouldn't be able to. 

His numb legs scream at him as he crawls upstairs and to his room, head pounding after his breakdown. It hadn't worked, in the end. Begging has always been his very last resort, one he's never before had to turn to. It not having achieved anything just goes to show, he thinks, that trying any longer is meaningless.

Meaningless...

He turns around and walks back down the stairs. Reaches for the doorknob. He forgoes the shoes; they won't be necessary where he's going. Neither will the coat.

He lingers at the Bridge till sunrise. Climbs on top of the ledge three times, staring down at the vast expanse of water below and mentally preparing himself for the end. Each time, he tells himself this will be his last.

And each time, he climbs back down.

-

"Good evening. Is this Pastor Zhang's number, by chance?"

"His son Zhang Hao speaking on his behalf. What can I help you with today?"

"Your facility's official website said you will be open to take in new students again after New Year's, correct?"

"Yes, that's right, sir. The spaces are filling up rather fast, however. We haven't got that many left."

"Right, right. You see, young man, I'd called to ask if it would be possible to make a reservation for my son, Sung Hanbin..."

-

Morning unleashes the last of hell's wrath onto the Sung household.

Hanbin stands paralyzed in the doorway, watching with horror as the paramedics lift the stretcher holding his mother's unmoving body into the ambulance parked in their driveway. He moves to follow; he needs ask them what's wrong, if this happened because of him, but his foot slips on something wet and viscid and he falls a second too late.

The ambulance had already driven off into the sunrise, leaving him kneeling in a puddle of blood that isn't his own, yet all his fault.

They'd yelled out some words and terms, when they were picking her up off the ground and trying to get her to breathe as she'd writhed in pain. "Myocardial infarction". "Stress-induced." "Miscarriage." "Abnormally large blood clots, tissue." Medical jargon Hanbin should have understood yet didn't, because of course he'd never been into medicine. All he knew was that those terms meant something really, really fucking bad.

He does know the definition of "stress-induced," however, quite damn well. That evening, he decides to do something about it.

If Yujin hadn't sensed something off about the way Hanbin had hugged him before he'd gone and locked himself in the bathroom, he wouldn't have ever said anything. But Hanbin has never said "love" in the past tense before.

"Goodbye, Yujin-ah. I've always loved you so much, you know that, right?"

It fills Yujin with an inexplicably cold fear that has the hairs on his neck raising. The long kiss pressed onto his forehead didn't help matters much. Hanbin hates forehead kisses, has always said it reminds him of kissing somebody goodbye. "Like a 'see you in the afterlife'", he'd laugh.

But it's just the two of them at home tonight; his father's at the hospital with his mother, and so is everybody else. The little boy trembles from head to toe with dread, not doubting his brother's intentions for a second, but what can he do? He's only eleven, and he's too small to break the door down, too goddamn weak to do anything whatsoever.

There's something else he's much weaker to do, however, and that is to live the rest of his life at home without Hanbin by his side. The sheer thought of it has him gasping for air.

Ambulances are too expensive, and they'd just called one that morning, so he dials Doyoung's old locksmith friend and promises him through piteous sobs and wails that he'll get his dad to pay him as much as the man wants. In the thousands- hundred thousands if that's what it takes, anything as long as he saves his brother.

He bangs on the door, screaming his feeble little lungs out for Hanbin to stop whatever he's doing, to please just come back to him because he needs him and he can't live without him. Everything will be okay, he tells him, I'll get them to stop and everything will be okay. Yet Hanbin doesn't relent for a second, his back firm against the door as he lets the empty bottle of pills drop from his right hand. It's too late now. He clams his mouth shut with his fingers to muffle his broken cries at the heart-rending sounds of his brother begging him to live, clinging at the frayed edges of his resolve to not open the door and hold him in his arms for one last time as the life bleeds out of him once and for all. He can't do that. He doesn't want Yujin to live with that memory haunting him.

By the time the locksmith manages to break in, Hanbin is no longer conscious. The old man finds him curled up on the floor, lips blue and clothes covered in his own vomit, completely unresponsive- but alive.

He mutters hopeful prayers under his breath all the way to the hospital, attempting to comfort a despondent Yujin in the backseat in between intervals, only to fail miserably each time. Yujin firmly refuses to be consoled, as he cradles his brother's head in his lap and burns with something he's never felt before. A hatred towards God, frighteningly strong and unforgiving.

"Christmas does not have one specific smell. It could be the smell of gingerbread cookies for one person, peppermint for another, and blood for someone else..."

In the end, Gyuvin had won at their little game. Sung Hanbin's eighteenth Christmas smelled perilously like his last.

Chapter Text

Christmas Day, 2018

Heaven has an aftertaste. Lysol and bleach, served with an acidic tinge of illness and final goodbyes. It takes on the form of dismal gray walls, long white curtains and snow-dusted landscape imprisoned behind glass too small to contain the vastness of the view. A room where time, having gone on a murderous spree everywhere else, seemingly comes to a halt for reasons unknown. This is what Heaven is today, to Hanbin. The unfavorable details of it can be overlooked.

He knows where he really is; he's not an idiot. There's a tube positioned uncomfortably in his nose, reminding him he'd failed to end his life and finally do something good for his family and friends yet once more. But a boy can dream.

And Yujin must be happy about it- the only one to be. His screams still ring in Hanbin's ears like aftershock, tremulous little "please"s and panicked, raw "don't"s. Sounds he can't push out of his head and fears he will never be able to. 

The door opens, shuts. Someone walks up to his bedside, the sound of their footsteps unrecognizable, and a chair creaks unpleasantly. Not his father, or any of his family, at the very least.

What now? What happens after you survive your last attempt at the sole apology that would have finally been accepted? Failure hadn't been in the cards; he'd taken the unopened bottle for a reason. If, after all he's done to escape, he'll have to return home and live the past half-week all over again, he won't hesitate to try again. He's not the sort to give up on apologies after one try; he will implement two, maybe even three surefire methods all at once to ensure his heart finally stops beating so he can make the world a better place. Unless something changes. Or unless he gives in like they're all waiting for him to, pretending to shed his iniquitous skin and don that of a meek, brainless lamb to appease their anger. But playing the role of the holy man has, unfortunately, always been out his realm of ability.

"So you're awake, after all."

Hanbin doesn't turn around to greet the bearer of the bittersweet news. The solitude in the hospital feels different from the kind that torments him at home; it's tranquil and light after what he's experienced, and he wants to bask in the light of it for just a little while longer before he has to up and face the hell that is his life again. 

"Alright, if that's how you want to play."

Hanbin counts the seconds as the silence stretches on, waiting for the intruder to get fed up with his stubborn reticence and leave, but all in vain. The bastard refuses to budge.

"You know, they'd thought pumping your stomach was all they needed to do. And then- boom, two broken ribs. An arm twisted out of its socket. A mysterious shoulder wound. Fresh self-harm scars, malnutrition, dehydration, hypotension- whatever the fuck that means, a heartbeat in the high hundreds like every time your father came up to your bed. How did you get this fucked up in such a short period of time, dude? I know you never say shit about anything that happens to you, but don't you think this gone a little too far now, Hanbin?"

The fucker won't rest until he gets acknowledged. Hanbin sighs, long and bitter. "Why are you here, Matthew?"

"Because I almost lost you?" Matthew retorts angrily. "Because I care, maybe?"

"Oh really now? I would never have thought."

He doesn't mean to be such a dick to his best friend. He has no idea why his mouth has lost its restraints, but apparently he's powerless to stop whatever comes out of it now.

"Hanbin- see, um, okay. I've not been there for you like I should've, I admit it. But you- you never fucking tell me anything! You struggle and you keep it from me, you'd tell me you're fine every time I asked, you brushed me off and lied to my face whenever I got worried. Look..." Matthew's voice breaks, making the steadily growing lump in Hanbin's throat smart painfully. "I know you, man. I know what kind of person you are. You're always in your fucking head. You think your friends are better off not knowing about your shit because they've all got their own, and you're scared they'll think you're using them as your therapist or something. You're scared they- you're scared I'll get sick of you and leave, aren't you?"

Hanbin stays silent, eyes glued to the fingers fidgeting in his lap as if he's never seen them before. Matthew's voice is quivering now- he's crying, and the realization strikes Hanbin like a hard punch to the stomach, rendering him unable to lift his head out of inundating guilt. "And because you're so scared, you push me away because you'd rather we drift apart as a result of those actions rather than because of your pain and secrets. But why, Hanbin? I don't get it. Was it really that hard for you just trust me for once and let me in? Why do you think so poorly of me? I'm your best friend, for fuck's sake. If you'd told me- shit, if only you'd told me then maybe the two of us wouldn't be sitting here right now! "

It's been ten years, five months, and one week since the last time Hanbin has seen Matthew cry. That time, he had cried because of his father. This time, he's crying because of Hanbin, the one thing the latter had vowed with iron will he'd never allow to happen. For that very reason, he'd kept quiet about his burdens. Yet in the end, all that strategy had ended up accomplishing was exactly what it had been created to prevent. 

So after years upon years of nursing his pain alone, all because Hanbin's dying to look at Matthew but can't bear the thought of seeing him cry, he caves.

He doesn't start from the scarring incident of evening December seventeenth, or even from the earliest days of his depression in the ill-fated year of 2016. He decides he'd held back enough. Therefore, he pours out everything he's ever kept locked away and hidden from the very beginning, sparing no details and sugarcoating none of the wretched ugliness that they are constituted of. He talks about the differences in his relationships with his siblings, about his quietly undertaken role of Jiyul's protector, of his feelings over his father's mission work, even of the first time he'd tried to kill himself without realizing, and the second time where he'd known what he was doing but it hadn't worked. He tells Matthew about why and when he'd begun self-harming, where and how his issues with his body image started, his messed up relationship with Jiwoong and the haunting evening years ago when Paradise Church's children left camp grounds. He tells Matthew what dancing means to him, breath hitching with repressed emotion, and how having it torn away from him so cruelly after having established his whole life plan around it felt like having a pair of newly-grown angel wings ripped off.

He stutters and trembles when he gets to December seventeenth, but pushes through and brings every single traumatizing particle of the story to light, hating the way his friend's face bleaches progressively whiter with each minute. But now he's started, and just like he'd predicted would happen if he ever were to tell his friend the truth, it spills out without stopping.

Matthew had come in at the first hint of sunrise. By the time Hanbin's done talking, the clock had stricken eight a.m. 

Hanbin had never given thought to Matthew's potential reaction to his story, any of the things he might say. It was never meant to be something for him to be privy to. But now he knows, and he says nothing. Simply continues to sit in the chair by Hanbin's bedside, face pallid and gravely serious while he tightly grips his best friend's hand as if it could somehow protect him from his past. It's futile, but it could have worked if Hanbin let himself imagine it hard enough.

He'd left one part of the story untold- that same dark, chilling paragraph that had driven him to try to complete the book of his life prematurely. He can't pluck up the courage to confess it right away. His friend may not think much differently of him after he's heard everything preceding it, but he definitely will after this. Nobody in their right mind could defend what he's done, not even someone as understanding and empathetic as Matthew.

"My mother almost died, Matt."

"I know. I saw your dad and Hana with her when I was passing by one of the floors."

"It was a heart attack. And it had provoked a really bad miscarriage."

"I know that too, idiot. You think your old man hadn't spread the word to the entire church by now? Everyone's praying their asses off for her. Why are you telling me all this?"

Hanbin swallows, searching for the right words. His body flames hot, then goes frigid, then flames hot again. "I did that."

"Did what, dumbass? Cast a spell on her with black magic? Poisoned her food? What's this gotta do with you?"

"You don't get it," Hanbin croaks. "They said it was stress-induced. She cried all through the night. She's been walking around with red eyes for days- my mom...she's got a weak heart, Matt. She worries over nothing and everything in between. And now, because of me-"

"Hanbin," Matthew snarls. "Sung motherfucking Hanbin, listen to me right now before I lose it and slap you across your beautiful face. Cut. The. Bullshit. Do you even hear yourself right now? You're saying your mother got a stress-induced heart attack because of you. That she miscarried because of you. Have you ever considered that that's not a normal physical reaction to something so minor as your child's sexual preferences? I want you to look at your arms for a second. Look at what you've done to yourself- what you've been doing for the past four years- and tell me they're the victims."

"But Matthew-"

"The woman got a heart attack because her son doesn't like pussy. What the fuck kind of mother does that!? She's been crying for days, so what? And you haven't? You're the one supposed to be getting a heart attack right now, not her. You survived a car crash and crawled for like half an hour home all by yourself through a goddamn blizzard only to get outed while you sat there bleeding out, you got treated like scum of the earth and humiliated every single day for no reason other than you don't want a wife- tragic, by the way- you're getting accused of pedophilia by people you've grown up with, and she's the one to collapse from the stress!? Why are none of them by your bed right now, huh Hanbin? You almost died, and they couldn't care less-"

"Stop. Just stop," Hanbin pleads. He can't do this anymore, can't take hearing words that will plant hope in him about his innocence, because such a prospect is no longer something a murderer like him is deserving of. "It's all my fault. This would have never have happened if only I hadn't been such an impulsive, spoiled child and hadn't stomped out of the house without thinking, all because I got angry. I never think before I do something. Jesus, if only I'd stopped and thought-"

"What do you think you're doing? Hanbin, no-"

"I have to find her," Hanbin snaps. The blankets are already pulled away, the IV drip ripped out and off- there's no stopping him now. Matthew can try all he wants; this is something he has to do, what he should have done the moment his eyes had flown open. Useless is all the outcome of it will ever be, but he'll be damned if he doesn't try.

"Find her and then do what, Hanbin? Say you're sorry? Fall to your knees and beg for forgiveness again? What do you think she'll say, 'oh yes, honey, come here and let Mommy hug you' or some shit? Don't be stupid."

"What floor did you say her room was again?" He's passed the other beds now, uncaring of the eyes trained on him and his scarred arms now out on full display. He's doing this.

"I'm not telling you. If you don't stop it and come back right now, I'll make you. You know I can."

"Okay, fine. I'll find it myself."

The halls stretch out endlessly before him, a blinding white maze of cold floor and drawn curtains, and he's a rat trapped in the midst it. Weakened yet uncontrollably rabid, desperately trying to sniff its way out to any prey it can sink his teeth into in order to finally relieve the crippling pressure on its brain. He's being chased again- this time it's just Matthew, and Matthew's a liar; he has the physical attributes but not the guts to take Hanbin by force and drag him back, so Hanbin doesn't worry. He has one destination, one sole endpoint in view, and nobody will be getting in his way.

One room, empty. Second room- a hyperventilating child and an old man with an amputated leg. Third room- a whole family, all in bed and charred from fire, not his family. The entire floor- wrong floor. He gets looks from nurses- screw the nurses- he presses the elevator button anyway. Almost gets Matthew's hand jammed in the door, but the boy gets in right on time. 

"You don't want to do this."

"I do. I need to do this."

"No, you don't. You know exactly how this will end."

"I don't give a flying fuck. Tell me which floor or leave."

"Hanbin-"

"Or stay, for all I care. I'll search every floor of the building top to bottom if that's what it comes down to."

"Third floor," Matthew relents, albeit through his teeth. "Room two hundred-twenty-something. Fuck you, Hanbin, seriously."

"Thanks."

And Matthew follows him without another word, all the way out, up to the very door of room two hundred-twenty-nine, and inside. Of course he would, Seok Matthew, bless his conflicted little soul. Ever the quiet worrier for his friend's wellbeing, yet faithful as a hunting hound to the bloody fucking end. Either Hanbin goes in with him, or he doesn't go in at all.

"I'm not leaving you."

"I know."

"You do know you'll regret this deeply, right?"

"I know."

"So go in and get it over with. I'm right here beside."

He does. The image he's met with the moment he pulls back the curtain brands itself into his soul with a piping hot iron and tears away the meat of it with a crushing ruthlessness. 

A woman lies in the bed, hooked up to a plethora of tubes and wires, her complexion gray. It's not his mother, it can't be, nobody can change that much in the span of a day. But his father and older sister wouldn't just stand around the bed of a stranger. Nobody but his family would ever look at him with such a burning hatred and bloodlust in their gaze, at the end of the day.

"Mom..."

He prays she didn't hear him. Matthew was right, he doesn't want to do this; he's already regretting this too strongly to withstand. They're all staring at his arms- his scars, and he realizes with a start that Jiyul must have never said anything about it. If his mother sees it...

"Who called me?"

Matthew's arm wraps around his shoulders, firm and ever so steady. On his guard to shield him from any storm that follows, ready to catch him the second he falls.

"Don't look," Mr. Sung tells her. It's all she needs to hear to gauge his identity.

"Get out of my sight," she hisses. "You killed my child. What more do you need from me?"

Hanbin opens his mouth, closes it again. He's got everything to say, and yet there's nothing he already hadn't. He'd come here with a purpose, a good purpose. The only problem is, he no longer remembers what that purpose was.

"I'm sorry."

"This again," Mr. Sung snorts. "You think 'sorry' will fix anything? Will it bring your mother's baby back? Will it heal her?"

"Just go back to your room and try killing yourself again," Hana spits bitterly. "Try a knife this time, if the pills didn't work. Please, just freaking die already. Everyone here would feel so much better if you did."

"Well, Hana dear, you shouldn't say it like that-"

"What the hell is wrong with all of you?" Matthew cuts in, practically vibrating with anger from head to toe. Hanbin stills in his hold- Matthew doesn't get angry at people he barely knows, never like this. "You demonic fucking bitch. Your brother tried to kill himself. He tried to take his own life away, do you even understand what he's had to go through to get to this point? Why does nobody care? What did he do so wrong?"

"You're not going to teach us how to live, boy," Mr. Sung says sharply. "What did he do so wrong, you ask? Well, your innocent little friend whom you have your arms around here is a homo. Does that help you understand better? Feel any different about touching him now?"

Hanbin's nails press into Matthew's back so hard it probably leaves marks, but it's too late to stop Matthew now. The boy is incensed, smiling with his teeth bared, head cocked to the side in utter disbelief. "Why would I? Birds of the same feather flock together, no?"

"Matthew," Hanbin gasps, blood running cold. 

"Ah, I see," Mr. Sung sneers. "So who influenced whom here? I should have known he was hanging with the wrong kind of company. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he was the one to convert you to his ways."

"Nah, it was me, sir," Matthew taunts, voice so saccharine it could kill. "I kissed him on the lips first, with tongue. Lots of tongue. Then it was his neck, and all the rest. Shall I tell you about how I got him into my bed, too? It took me forever. He made every second so worth the wait-"

Mrs. Sung screams in her bed, beside herself with rage. "Get out! Get the hell out and never let me see you again! Damned bloody whores- nurse! Nurse I'm being harassed..."

But it is of no use. Matthew, having had expected a crazed reaction of some sort to his provocation, is already dragging Hanbin off into the hallway and into the direction of the elevator. Hanbin can only grip at Matthew's wrist like it's his lifeline, shaken to the core at his friend's gall more than anything.

"Matthew, what the fuck?"

"Nothing the fuck," Matthew retorts. "Keep walking. I'm going to get us food, and then we're getting the hell off of this floor."

And the hell off of that floor they get indeed. After a quick stop by the cafeteria, where Matthew orders Hanbin to wait at one of the tables while he buys the food himself, he ushers them back into the elevator and presses the button for the top floor. The numbers flash red on the elevator's position indicator in slow motion, swimming in front of Hanbin's tear-filled eyes as he tries his best to blink them back into nonexistence because Matthew's watching- old habits die hard. Matthew notices but says nothing, opting instead to march him through the top floor and the door to the last place they're supposed to be at right now- the rooftop. 

"You've got to be crazy. It's locked- we don't even have permission-"

Matthew retrieves a ring of keys from earth's asscrack- or, to be more specific, his back pocket- and jingles them in front of Hanbin's face, eyes sparkling with mischief. "You keep forgetting my dad's a full-time doc here. He's had these in his bag forever. Said he never goes up there anyway, so I grabbed 'em from him ages ago. Just don't go around with a megaphone about this and no one will know."

"Right."

"I'll take all the responsibility if it becomes a problem, promise. Here, I brought your coat, put it on if you don't wanna get sick."

Matthew unlocks the doors and shifts the packages under his shoulder so they could walk through the doors hand in hand, just like they used to do back in the days when they were younger. A cold gust of wind instantly hits the both of them in the face, snatching Hanbin's breath away and forcing his eyes shut against the shock of its for a couple seconds. He almost suggests going back, he's not in the mood for this right now anyway, but Matthew gestures towards the ledge and as he follows, Hanbin instantly understands why his friend had chosen to bring them here of all places.

The view from the top is nothing short of breathtaking. As they stand there and peer down at the snow-blanketed fields and forest spread out below, one boy who could have been dead yesterday and another who would have followed if it worked, their hearts race with adrenaline as if they were on top of the world. Like nothing else matters at the moment but the snow; those god-awful, hateful words thrown at the two of them only minutes ago rolling off their backs like water because right now they have each other by their side, and always had, even if for the longest time it hadn't felt like it.

"The mountains loom so close from up here I feel like I could touch them if I tried," Hanbin breathes, a smile ghosting the chiseled planes of his face for the first time in a long while. "Oh, imagine if we could, Matthew."

"What? Touch the mountains?"

"Don't you think we'd be invincible then, you and I?"

"Yeah," Matthew laughs. "We'd be invincible."

They stand there for a little while longer, elbows hanging languidly off the ledge, shoulders pressed up against each others' with no space in between. Hanbin breathes in the icy winter air and lets it encase his lungs in frost, spellbound by the mystifying beauty of the moment.

Life is so strange- a wicked little thing, with all its infinitely different sides and colors. It shows you one shade and leads you to believe that's all there is, and you hate it, you hate it so much that sometimes you wish to just lie down and die. But then for a minute, one miserly little minute that could visit you anytime without forewarning, someone comes along and takes your hand and just like that, the color changes. In the span of that single minute, you forget what that other color, that maddeningly stagnant color of life that drove you borderline insane, even looked like in the first place.

"I've missed you, Matt. So, so much."

Matthew smiles. Hanbin doesn't need to look at him to be able to tell; when Matthew smiles, the whole planet feels it and soaks it in like tender spring soil soaks in the return of the earliest rays sunshine, starved for any sort of warm touch after the lonely, heartless winter. 

"Let's sit," Matthew proposes, mentioning to the single bench stationed in between the door and the ledge. "I got us something to eat, though it's probably gone cold by now."

It hadn't. Matthew had kept the sandwiches pressed up against his coat, preserving the temperature with his body heat, and Hanbin revels at the pleasant warmth that settles in his stomach as he takes a bite- but not before wincing at the unfamiliar heaviness of it as it goes down his throat.

"What did you expect?" Matthew chides. "You haven't eaten for, like, the past week. Eat it little by little, and make sure to chew well. "

"But I did eat," Hanbin mutters in a weak attempt at self-defense. "Just...not that much. I didn't really care to come downstairs when they'd all avoid me like the plague and make sure I saw it, you know?"

"Fuck them all," Matthew snarls, all traces of happiness wiped off his face in an instant. "I hope they all burn in hell. Bitch ass motherfucking cunts."

"Jesus. The mouth on you."

"One of us has to have one."

"About what happened in my Mom's room...why'd you do that?" Hanbin asks, suddenly hesitant to raise the subject but unable to place it anywhere far from his head. "Why'd you say what you did to them, I mean?  I understand the motive was to defend me, but 'birds of the same feather'? Why lie about that, of all things? Unlesss..."

"Yeah? You can say it, come on."

"...Seok Matthew, I'll be damned. You never told me you were gay!"

"You never asked," Matthew shrugs, taking another bite of his sandwich as if Hanbin isn't sitting there ridden with a very valid fear for his best friend's future. "And I'm not gay; I'm bi. I like the girls more, anyways. But hell yeah, I'd be down to fuck a guy. Or catch feelings for one, if I had the chance. Never really had any romantic feelings for one, not yet."

"But why did you say that?" Hanbin repeats, thoroughly agitated. "My father won't keep quiet about it; you know it perfectly well. He's the type of man that makes every child on earth his responsibility 'in case god asks in Heaven.' That's the way he is, he's got to let their parents know so they can immediately take all the 'proper' measures and 'save' their child. I'd seen him do it before, with my older siblings' friends. You've just very possibly lost everything because of those few careless seconds, Matt. Why would you ever do that?"

Matthew doesn't answer right away. He takes the last bite of his sandwich instead and stuffs the plastic wrap in his coat pocket, then tucks his knees under his chin and stares off into space, face set in stone. Hanbin waits patiently, observing as the wind tussles the stray curled ends of the brown hair sticking out from the bottom of Matthew's beanie while the imaginary wheels in his friend's head spin and turn. He senses Matthew's answer wouldn't be a simple, direct one this time- rare, for a persona like Seok Matthew. He talks a lot and yet never says much in the end, because talking and saying are two very different things, but when he does choose to say something it's always sharp and straightforward, to the point and not straying a single inch outside of it. This time will be different, and Hanbin finds he isn't prepared, hasn't been for the last two years.

"You know something?" Matthew starts. Slow, careful. "It's so weird, how small the world is. How fated some connections are. Of all the people it could have been, the locksmith Yujin had called just had to be Gyuvin's grandfather. And somehow I was over at his house when it happened, at Gyuvin's. Sleeping over again, because I felt too alone and Gyuvin did too. His hookup just didn't do much for him anymore after the evening you up and left, you know?

And then his mom had gotten the call. The guy's her dad, right, and his wife's been dead for years so he's gotta tell someone. She'd had him on speaker. I still- I'll never forget what he said, Hanbin, word for word."

Matthew's voice breaks off. A single tear slides down his cheek, trails down his neck and disappears into his coat. Hanbin digs his nails into the wood underneath, suffocating on his guilt but then Matthew continues, and there's nowhere to run, nothing left to do but listen.

" 'The Sungs' youngest called me to break down a door. Their boy's badly hurt, I think he tried to kill himself, poor thing. One of their younger ones, the real skinny one with those odd sharp eyes that just seem to look right through you. They're trying to save him, over at the hospital.' Gyuvin and I, we didn't have to hear any more to know that it was you. He passed out, Hanbin. Gyuvin literally just stood up and...passed out. Our six-foot-two I-don't-do-feelings-anymore fuckboy, ultra-athletic soccer champion buddy Gyuvin just...yeah. I wanted to go without him, but I knew he'd never forgive me if I did, so I waited for him and we went together. His parents didn't want him to, but he didn't give a shit- you should have seen the way he went off at them, Bin. Never in my life had I seen Kim Gyuvin like... that. He'd left with them this morning to visit his dad's family over in the south, 'cause you know how it's their Christmas tradition and all that bullshit and he had no choice. But he asks about you every hour. I don't think he's had a wink of sleep yet, since he'd sat with me here through all of last night."

"You got here, in the end?" Hanbin asks, even though it's obvious, just to say something. He can't look Matthew in the face anymore, the guilt is too much, consuming his very being until he feels like he could implode and melt into the ground underneath his feet.

"Gyu's parents refused to, so his grandpa drove us there. When we got there...oh, Bin. I think you fucked Yujin up beyond repairing."

Hanbin cries, quiet and noiseless. Lets Matthew take his arms in his lap and gently trail each one of his scars with his fingers, even as the both of their tears fall onto the ragged tissue and meld together until it's impossible to tell from whose eyes they had fallen. 

"Don't do that to him again, Hanbin," Matthew whispers between his sobs. "You're his everything. Hell, you're part of my everything and I never say it. You're part of Gyuvin's. Even Sofia, she cried in his arms until she threw up when she heard. Hanbin, please stay with us. We need you, the ones who say they don't are not important, okay? Yujin needs you, Gyuvin needs, I need you, Bin. Fuck, I can't fucking do it without you."

Hanbin drops his head into Matthew's lap, his fingers burying in the fabric boy's coat in apology. They both shiver uncontrollably, whether from the freezing cold or from the cries wracking their bodies, neither of them know, and Hanbin no longer cares. All that matters to him is Matthew, the secretly fragile, little five-foot-seven Matthew with his permanently unruly locks of shaggy brown hair, who always plays the omnipotent, untouchable superhero much like Hanbin does himself. Matthew, who is so similar to him in so many different ways and who's seen him grow, who'd been there to hear his voice crack for the first time and doubled over laughing when Hanbin had freaked out like the world was ending at the first signs of stubble on his chin, who knows his top ten favorite songs when nobody else would ever care to remember, who'd just given up his own secure family life for the sake of defending Hanbin against words he's heard a hundred times and over again. That Seok Matthew, his best friend Seok Matthew, whom he will never, ever let go of again, even in death.

"I'm sorry," Hanbin repeats into his shoulder until the words sear into the air between them, smoldering and golden. "I promise you, Matthew- next Christmas we'll be happy."

-

Hanbin wishes Matthew didn't have to leave.

He can't explain it, the sudden feeling of unease blooming in his stomach like venomous flora when Matthew announces that he has to go. He tells him he'll visit tomorrow, and the day after that, if Hanbin's still not discarged by then. He says he might bring Yujin with him, and Sophia had expressed her desire to come along. "I'll be here again before you know it," he'd assured, not missing the shadow that had crossed over his friend's face. "I'll be here so long you'll get sick of my face."

Hanbin doesn't think that's possible, but he refrains from saying anything, plastering a wan smile onto his face as he waves goodbye. He keeps his eyes glued to Matthew's every move, up until the boy vanishes into the hallway and out of his range of sight altogether. Something thrashes and wails under Hanbin's skin, begging him to get up and follow, take Matthew by the sleeve of his coat and drag him back to Hanbin's side so he wouldn't have to stay here on his own a second longer. It's probably just the paranoia, he tells himself. What else could it be, when this past week has fucked up him to the maximum?

Seconds turn into minutes turn into hours. The clock ticks away, the skies darken. Everything and everybody is on the move, all except for Hanbin. Hanbin can do nothing but lie in his cramped little hospital bed and stare up at the ceiling and into the window in intervals, letting his mind wander and digest everything it shouldn't. The nurse appears twice, the first time to replace his IV- "why would you ever rip it off like it that!?"- the second to give him medication for the pain he'd completely forgotten about until she mentions it. At dinnertime, a short, middle-aged lady with a sweet face riddled by smile lines brings him a tray of food and tells him he should eat something, that the nurse said he's malnourished and treading the dangerous line of being classified as underweight, and that she's worried for him too despite not knowing him. He thanks her and promises to eat, but his smile drops the moment she turns her back- whatever good this watery green slop she'd called soup may do for him, he won't be touching it. The rest looks decent overall, but his appetite is nonexistent. He'll let the little girl behind the curtain next to him have his share when she wakes up.

Goddamit, Christmas has never felt more lonely.

Thinking gets bland after three hours. With his phone is gone, no paper in sight, and his room not being one of those bigger ones that have TV's inside, there's not much he could entertain himself with. But he does have a pen with him- the one Yujin had gifted him on his birthday. Hanbin had promised to carry it with him everywhere he went, and as is typical of him, he'd taken his promise rather seriously. He'd made sure to have the thing in his pocket before he'd entered that bathroom with the intention of never coming back out, so he could die with at least one trace of love on him. Wondering whether it could still be there by some huge stroke of luck, Hanbin reaches for the small pile of folded clothes on the chair beside him- Matthew's doing- and sighs with relief when his fingers come in contact with the pen's hard outline through one of the pockets.

He loses track of the time he spends twirling it around in his hands, dissecting and reassembling it, studying it as if it were some vital subject worth memorizing. He thinks of Yujin all the while, and what he'd say to him when he stops by. If there's even anything he could say to convey just how sorry he is that he'd made his little brother suffer so, that he'd been the one to make him cry himself to sleep. Matthew had told him about how the tiny thing had sat stoically in the hallway as he waited for Hanbin to emerge from behind the closed doors, refusing to budge until he'd see him alive and well. How he'd been sobbing into his hands until Matthew and Gyuvin appeared and sat down beside him, after which he'd hastily wiped his tears and sat staring ahead like he hadn't just been caught crying like any normal child in his situation would do. How he'd waited and waited and waited, until he'd fallen asleep in Gyuvin's arms from exhaustion and had to be carried to the car by his father so he could finally be taken home, because he'd put up a screaming fit about it when he'd been awake. His quiet, obedient, taciturn Yujin, who'd never dared so much as speak loudly to their parents, much less raise his voice at them out of fear for going to hell. Hanbin needs to see him, needs to hold him before he goes crazy and tell him how proud he is.

And lo and behold, just as he thinks it, the sound of the door squeaking on its hinges reaches his ears. It's not a nurse, nor a doctor; they'd been here much too recently to come again, and no one in the room had raised any alarms from what he'd heard. He perks up and raises himself onto his elbows, hoping that by some chance this visitor could be for him, maybe they brought Yujin with them, maybe he's getting discharged and delivered of this maddening boredom at last-

"So, any better?"

One hundred eighty-eight centimeters in height, wide frame, receding hairline. Sunken brown eyes beneath thick, bushy black eyebrows, thick lips pressed into a firm, angry line whenever Hanbin's around. This person had not arrived to deliver from distress. He had arrived to strike one final blow to son's psyche, the most monumental and life-changing of them all, and Hanbin won't realize it until it's already too late.

"It matters to you?"

"I'm your father. Of course it matters to me."

"Mhm. Sure."

Hanbin turns away towards the window, the last of his mood now totally soured by his father's presence. Whatever the man wants from him, it won't be good. When has it ever been?

"Can we at least talk like two civil human beings for once? If you don't want to talk as father and son, that's okay. It hurts, of course, but I'm trying my best not to show it. We could talk business, if you'd like. Pretending we're business partners could help."

"Just say whatever it is you need to say already."

"I said 'talk.' Talking implies two or more individuals putting in the effort. What I need to do at the moment is to talk to you about something."

Hanbin bristles, his patience with the man long expired and now replaced by a simmering irritation. "Haven't you done enough talking by this point? I may not remember much of what you'd grilled me about this past week but if it's about how I just need to take it all back and start 'taking the steps in the right direction with your help' to make me 'right', no thank you. You won't be able to help me with that. You can't change a person's sexual orientation like that."

" 'Sexual orientation' is a made-up concept, it doesn't exist. But then again, you're right. I can't change what you like."

Hanbin gapes at him like he'd fallen from the sky, questioning if he'd heard that right. Then the man opens his mouth again and Hanbin mentally kicks himself for not assuming that there would most definitely be a catch.

"But I know something else that can. Something I think you might actually enjoy-"

"No. Just get out."

"You don't get to speak to me that way, first of all. You learn to speak like that from that faggot friend of yours? My, but I hope you don't think you'll be seeing him after what the two of you had pulled today. Get up."

He's heard this somewhere before already. There was a "get up", and then there were hands, and blood, and pain. Hours, days of it. Hanbin freezes in place, alarm bells going off one by one in his head, loud and blaring.

"Come on, get up. Don't worry, I won't grab you. I know I'm a horrible, toxic father but do you really have to take the act that far? I just want to talk to you somewhere people won't be able to hear us."

"And where would that be?" Hanbin throws back, his tone cutting. "What's so secret you're afraid of a toddler girl, some sick old people, and a potential couple of nurses and doctors hearing?"

"I have a proposition for you," Mr. Sung says, unrelenting. "You can either lie here in utter boredom for the next few days and have to experience your mother and siblings hating your guts for as long as you live, or you can come with me and hear what I've got to say about turning your life around for the better. I won't force you to give up anything or change yourself, go to church or read your Bible, or whatever it is you probably think I'm going to say to you. Actually, I think you'll quite like my offer this time around."

Hanbin won't, of course. He's never liked anything the man has had to say particularly much, but anything is better than having to spend another hour staring up at the ceiling, trying to recall all the capitals of the world and getting stuck on either Burundi or Myanmar for the nth time. "Where is it you would like you talk?"

"How about you and I take a little drive?" Mr. Sung proposes conspirationally, as if this were some harmless, playful secret between a father and a son who've always had it good and didn't hate each other with a bloody passion.

Every nerve in Hanbin's body warns him that going along with whatever the man might have in store is as bad of an idea as it can get. But he drowns the voices out with the infamous misconception by the elaborate title of "It Can't Get Any Worse Than This Now, Can It?" and gets up to follow, cringing from the pain shooting through his ribs and shoulders as he does so. Whatever the nurse had given him didn't seem to last very long, then.

Mr. Sung throws the package he'd been holding into Hanbin's arms, motioning for him to open it. "I suggest you go change into your regular clothes first. Take a shower, maybe. I'll use the bathroom, meanwhile."

Bad, bad, bad. "You said we're just going for a drive. Why would I need to do all that? And is this even allowed?"

"I wouldn't have done this without permission from the doctor. And wouldn't it be strange if I were seen driving around with a kid in a hospital gown? With those pathetic little...scratches on your arms too. And besides, taking a shower would help you feel better."

Hanbin has to admit the prospect of a shower and clean, regular clothes right now sound pretty damn nice, so he heads towards the hallway where Matthew had pointed out the showers before, throwing his father a sideways glance as he passes him by. Something about the man's behavior is so downright suspicious this evening, and Hanbin's every instinct is on guard.

He deliberately takes a longer time in the shower than needed, partly to spite his father but also because unexpectedly, after he was sure he'd had more than enough thinking to last him a lifetime, he finds that he now needs to think some more. It's all too bizarre; his father is actually talking to him nicely, or as least as nice as the man knows how to get. It's the last thing that should be happening after the fiasco with Matthew that morning. It should have only gotten worse, yet suddenly there's a considerably smaller amount of cruel humiliation and razor-sharp insults getting hurled at him from every possible direction, and Hanbin almost wishes he'd spent more time with his father as a child if that meant having more time to observe him and commit each and every intricacy of his manipulation tactics to memory. He's clueless on what to expect from this, senses it will be different this time, but different in just what way he doesn't know and it scares him.

If he'd only come out of the showers five minutes earlier, he would have caught his father in the act of searching his corner of the room and spaces in the bathroom for his most essential personal belongings. A minute earlier, and he would have seen the man tuck a full bag of them into his coat and under his shoulder, the bagginess of the clothes making the item almost entirely inconspicuous unless one cared to look close enough. Hanbin would have then most likely put two and two together before the man could have said another word. He would have stalked out into the hallways and called for help, and he would have gotten it. But because time has never been on his side, such will never be the case.

Hanbin exits the showers significantly refreshed and more clear-headed, feeling prepared to face whatever the near future holds. He's still not feeling peculiarly good about this whole situation and what emotions it may entail however, but backing down now would be unthinkable, so he marches back to his room with his head high and his resolve to remain impassive to whatever the man might say unusually strong. He has Yujin's pen in his right pants pocket as a lucky charm- if everything goes wrong, at least he'll have this left.

"I'm ready."

"Good, good. Let's go now, shall we? Car's parked right beside the entrance."

Survival instincts of a starving rat in downtown Paris, Ricky quips somewhere from the swamps of Hanbin's mind. Hanbin chooses to ignore him. (In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have. Ignoring Ricky's life predictions has never gone well for anyone.)

"Would you by any chance let Yujin come here tomorrow?" Hanbin inquires hopefully as they enter the elevator. Mr. Sung refrains from answering immediately, waiting for the doors to slide shut before he turns his back to Hanbin and scrutinizes him through the mirror in front of him instead, his sharp eyes unreadable.

"Why would you need him to come?"

"To talk him into rebelling against you and hiding illegal substances for me, of course. Why else? Maybe I just want to see my little brother after he'd saved my life. Or does that not sound plausible enough for you?"

"Start controlling your tongue when you speak to me and then we'll see."

The elevator reaches its destination too soon. Hanbin drags his feet behind him as they exit, just barely fast enough to keep up with his father as his stomach clenches violently. With each step he takes, the thought that he's about to be more royally fucked than ever pumps his lungs full of panic. There's no evidence to prove that claim; this is probably nothing but another "serious conversation" twisted to appear as a genuine compromise less cutthroat than the past ones, but god, he just can't seem to shake that infernal feeling.

It only takes root deeper in his core once he makes out the car they're approaching, one completely unfamiliar.

"Mom says you can't stand small cars. Don't you usually drive the white van when you come visit? Whatever happened to that?"

Mr. Sung brushes him off. "That's not important right now. Get in."

With the door already half open and one foot in, Hanbin hesitates. Something whispers to him that once he sits down and shuts that door behind him, his life will undergo a change so radical that it will be impossible to describe in words alone. Stretching out his arm to reach for the handle and slam the door closed becomes an almost unattainable feat, his limbs feeling as if they're being steadily infused with lead, but in the end he manages to do it. The air comes back to him all at once.

Mr. Sung locks the keys into the ignition and Hanbin screws his eyes shut, rubbing his hands against the cold leather of the seatbelt before realizing they've gone clammy- since when did that start to happen? His intuition had never served of much use to him in the worst of his unfortunes, so why right now?

Hanbin waits with baited breath for the first word to start off tonight's round of torture, but the man waits all the way until he'd steered out of the hospital parking lot to speak, cranking up Hanbin's anxiety level further still. "I'd like to address one of the things you said just now, Hanbin. 'When you come to visit', remember saying that?"

"What about it?"

"Well, this was the last time I've come to visit..."

Oh, thank the gods.

"...because I've come here to stay."

What gods? What gods, you fucking idiot?

Hanbin's stomach sinks all the way to the floor beneath his feet, heavy and twisted into countless tight knots. This wasn't what he'd meant when he'd complained about their family needing support, for hell's sake. "Why'd you have to take me out of the hospital and put me in a car if this is all you had to tell me? I would have understood perfectly fine from my bed."

The car rolls up to the first traffic light of the journey, coming to a standstill. It sends Hanbin into a mental frenzy; he's been lying still and taking in the same stationary scenery for hours. He can't take much more of stillness and waiting before he combusts- the prospect of spontaneous human combustion is known to not be entirely impossible, and he doesn't doubt the possibility of it occurring if he has to sit in the same enclosed space with his father any longer.

And then, the man speaks.

"You see Hanbin, I've realized something about you that I should have realized so much earlier. You don't see what you have become as a problem in the slightest. Nothing I or any member of our family can say will open your eyes and make you see straight. To make it worse, you were raised in the light, unlike the people you claim to be like. You've been hearing about God and the narrow path from day one, you know what's right and wrong better than ninety percent of the population, and yet the treacherous nature of the path you've chosen to go on doesn't strike as you as demonic in the slightest. You've put your mother's life in danger, yet not even that could stop you in your evil ways. You fail to see how far you've gone with this. How dangerous this is for not only everyone around you, but also you yourself."

"Where exactly are you going with this?" Hanbin grits out through his teeth, forehead pressed against the window as he watches the formidable black silhouettes of bare-branched trees whiz by. He hates this. He wants Matthew, wants Gyuvin, misses them like they've gone off to battle without him. He wants to cry. He can't cry. Won't cry, just yet.

"I want you to hear me out and not interrupt me until I'm done."

This is it. They've driven out of town now. This is it, this is where the bomb drops.

"I can't handle what you've become anymore. Nothing I have tried helped. You've left your whole family broken and can't even be bothered about it. Seeing your mother crying was enough reason for me to consider this at the very least, but after she almost lost her life over you...I've decided I'm giving this a try."

"Giving what a try?" Hanbin wheezes, his chest constricting with a frightening tightness. He prays his father isn't about to say what he thinks he's about to say, already knows he will, but maybe, just maybe, he won't. Hanbin's simply manic after everything that's happened, he's let his imagination venture too far, perhaps his father is alluding to something else entirely. He's not about to do what Hanbin's afraid he will. 

"I may not be able to handle you anymore, Hanbin," Mr. Sung repeats. "But there are people out there that can. People that are favored by God more than I am, people with spiritual gifts to heal illnesses like yours."

"No. I'm not doing this. Turn the car around. Now."

"They're very good pe-"

"Turn it around-"

"Shut your fucking mouth!"

The sound of screaming instantly has Hanbin going rigid. There is nothing in this world that terrifies him more than getting screamed at; he can take the slaps, the shoving and brutish manhandling and the verbal abuse, but screaming- screaming directed at him- is where his mind fully gives out. He doesn't even pay mind to the fact that his father had just gone against one of his own most sacred rules and swore, doesn't notice the car veering into the parking lot of a gas station- the tears spring to his eyes before he can stop them, his hands shake where they're clasped over his ears, and all he wants is for this wretched car to crash and burn while they are still in it.

"Listen to me. I need you to calm down. Calm down, for goodness' sake, nobody will lift a finger at you! You were the one who made me sin and curse at you just now, may the Lord forgive me. Stop shaking this instant, I said."

"It doesn't work like that," Hanbin snaps through chattering teeth. "Where is this place? Why did you bring me here?" His eyes scan the surroundings wildly, unseeing until they fall onto the fuel gauge on display right in front of him. His breath catches at the sight. "What's this? The gas tank's full. Why-"

"Stay here for a second," the man interrupts roughly. "I need to have a word with someone real quick."

And Hanbin stays, for there's really nowhere he can go when the shock and fear have rendered him immobile save for the tremors, though all he wants to do is run, run, run as far as his feet could take him and never look back. He's helpless and betrayed, with no one to save him from this inevitable fate, no one to care if he screams. All that's left for him to do is sit and wait for whatever this nightmare is about to be, because though he's aware of the gist of it, he isn't sure just how it will unfold. Not knowing makes it that much harder to breathe.

He can't see the man his father's talking to even though they're standing right in front of the windshield, on account of the car's miniature size. It would be so easy to just reach over and pull at the handle- the doors are unlocked, the car's still running, fucking hell he could take it if he wanted to. Sidle over to the front seat and drive off into the dark, leaving them behind. They wouldn't be able to catch him, but then again, the police would. And what the police would do is return him right back to where he tried to escape from- his father's clutches.

Forcing himself to calm down and start thinking clearly as he waits, Hanbin weighs his only two currently available options- escaping and getting into further trouble, or giving up and making the best of it. Tonight, it doesn't take long for him to rule out what's least rational in his situation. He shuts his eyes, leans back into his seat, and resigns himself to his fate. 

And when his father opens the driver's door and sits down beside him for the final time, Hanbin is as composed and ready as he'll ever be.

"I don't think I need to explain what I'm doing to you by this point."

"You don't," Hanbin agrees, eyes closed, head tipped back. Calm, every inch undeterred on the outside. "I understand, Dad."

He'd give the world to.

"Good. See, that's how it should have been from the start. A meek 'I understand, Dad' and a nod of the head, nothing more. Was it so hard?"

"Get on with it."

"Ah, well. If that's how you're going to be, I don't have much more to say to you," the devil grunts. "Here. Your things."

Hanbin reaches for the bag in his hands and looks into it, perplexed at what he finds inside. His toothbrush, toothpaste, face wash, soap, shampoo, razor, deodorant- "Seriously? Is that all you're sending me off to god-knows-where with?"

"The gentleman outside has all the answers, he will explain it to you. Nobody had the time nor the desire to pack your clothes and other things, but I'll make sure to send them to you later. Make do with this for now. Figure out the rest when you get there. I've got to go now, your mother needs me. Be good."

Not even a hug. Hanbin doesn't know why he'd expected one. He hasn't hugged his father in a decade, nor does he want to now. But it would have been nice, for once. Just this once.

"Wait- before you go..."

Mr. Sung turns around in his seat back without taking his hand off the handle. "Anything you want to say to me?"

Hanbin swallows, clenching his hands into fists by his sides to stop them from shaking. The man outside hasn't moved from the position he was in when he'd talked to Hanbin's father, and it's rather cold. He shouldn't keep him waiting, shouldn't keep his father away from his mother much longer, but the words take an incomprehensible amount of strength to tear out of his throat, and he alone is far too weak to make them flow quickly. "How long?"

"Depends on how long you're willing to take coming back to God and the truth. You could be back home in a week if you tried. Or you can stay there for years. It's up to you, Hanbin. Your future is in your hands. I am only helping."

"Helping."

Though his father would definitely not be giving him an actual explanation, Hanbin doesn't need it; there's no doubt about where he's being sent off to now. He should have predicted this from the second he'd rolled out of Gyuvin's driveway that ill-fated night, really. But he'd failed, not only at this but at everything he should have succeeded in, and now he's paying the price. One week had been more than enough to change his life for a drastic worse right when things had finally begun to look up for him. But he can't drown himself in these thoughts and let them consume him anymore; he's had enough. Death had laid its intentions out for him pretty clearly by now; he isn't going to achieve it plainly by desire no matter how hard he tried. No, he now has to wait with outstretched arms for it to come to him, and he will do so with poise.

"Dad..."

"Yes? Hurry up if you will, I need to get going."

"Yujinnie..." Hanbin whispers hesitantly, his eyes once again beginning to burn against their will. "Please don't let Yujin think I abandoned him. Tell him I love him. And I know you don't like my friends, but make up a good lie for Matthew and Gyuvin, please? I don't want them to worry."

"I don't lie, Hanbin."

"Well, then, just tell them I love them. If it's not too much."

They stare at each other for what feels like an eternity. Hanbin searching out any concealed trace of softness like he tends to do, his father searching for any sign of hidden remorse. One minute later, the door shuts, separating the two of them forever. In their last moments with each other, neither had found what they were searching for. One had given up trying as he watched the other leave, and the other will lie in agony on his deathbed many years down the line, still blindly searching in his immutable pride, yet finding nothing.

But for now, it is merely "farewell".

Hanbin doesn't turn his head when the door opens a few minutes later. Not even when the engine starts and the driver slowly maneuvers their car out of the gas station and onto the highway. He wants to hold off for as long as he can, on looking into the face of whoever had conspired with their father to take him away from everything he loves. He fears that any more hate in his heart at the moment will destroy him to the point of irreparability. All he wants, at least for right now, is to be left alone before he starts grieving the people he's left behind, on full volume.

The person beside him, however, seems to have different ideas in store. As always- Hanbin's infinitely rotten luck.

"This is so awkward. Won't you at least look at me?"

Hanbin starts at the sound of the voice, soft, deepened yet still oddly boyish. He won't turn around, there is nothing that could drive him to do something so stupid, but he would be a liar if he said his curiosity wasn't peaked all the same. "The view's nice. So, no. Sorry."

"It's pitch black outside, Hanbin."

Hanbin's heart skips a beat, then starts off on an erratic gallop. Of course the man- boy- would know his name, his father would have told him. But there's something about the way the tainted angel says his name that is so familiar it hurts. It's been said like this before, by someone he used to know for two days filled with magic, forbidden discoveries of youth, and sunlight. Even now the sound of it is still too fresh in his brain, rings so loudly he swears he could have heard it yesterday.

"Say that again."

"Say what?"

My name. "...Never mind. Just shut up. Forget I said anything."

A chuckle, gentle and sweet. Then, "How'd those cuts heal, all that time ago?"

This time, Hanbin turns.

Wishes he hadn't, just like he had wished on that dreamlike, evanescent summer day when the boy had been right in front of him, even closer than he is now.

Wispy brown hair, now cut shorter, more "appropriate". The same long, slender neck; aquiline nose, gracefully sharp jawline. But even in the darkness, his eyes look different than they had two years ago. Guarded, sparkling with something savage and cruelly wounded. They turn to meet his, and when they do, they smile. 

Hanbin smiles back.

"Long time no see, Zhang Hao. You've...changed."

"Long time no see, Sung Hanbin. I could say the same exact thing about you."

Chapter Text

Hanbin will never be one of the many in love with Silence. For years, she has chased after him relentlessly, crawling out of her skin with desperation to woo him over, but he remained unmoved. He still is, forever reaching for any extant noise available to block out the sound of her angry pleas at his heart's door.

There are, however, those rare moments where he gives in and indulges her in her appeals. After all, nobody can avoid Silence forever when she is notoriously lithe and impossibly fast on her feet. Right now is one of those moments where she has caught up to him and he finds he doesn't even mind; rather, he prays she keeps clinging to him for as long as she is willing. Zhang Hao is not somebody he wishes to talk to in the slightest in his current situation.

The only time he'd talked to him in this past hour, outside of greeting him, had been to inquire about the time. It had stricken him, as he'd peered out at the lightening sky, that the last time he'd looked at the clock had been in the hospital, hours before his father had come in and practically driven him off to be kidnapped.

Hao had glanced over at him, and, with a matter-of-fact tone replied "Three-thirty a.m., last time I checked." Did he even sleep? Hanbin had wondered involuntarily. Not like he cared, of course.

"In case you're wondering how I'm still awake, I had three cups of coffee this evening," Hao had informed him. "I have another here," he'd then said, motioning towards the full cup sitting in the holder, still warm.

Again, not like Hanbin cared.

It was almost like they'd switched places from their first meeting in that little sun-filled cabin in the mountains two years ago, when it had been Hanbin longing to initiate a conversation with the other, who'd in turn show him in every way he knew that a conversation was the last thing present on his mind. What had changed, after all this time?

After two hours spent in silence, Hanbin is fighting the urge to nod off, wishing he had music to listen to as he stares out into the window and drinks in the gorgeous crepuscular azure of the early morning sky. All that is visible under it is mountains guarding snow-blanketed fields and trees as if such were their moral duty, reminding Hanbin of the people he's leaving behind. People that, with each forward-bound centimeter of the wheels gliding along the interstate, fade further and further away into the distance and out of his reach. Each tree that flashes by is more miles between him and the little boy who doesn't know how to survive at home without him, between him and his childhood friend he'd only just managed to rekindle their broken bond with. The friend that saw black when he'd thought he'd lost the only person in his life he trusted with his dirtiest secrets, the girls that had brightened his mood on the gloomiest of his workdays without fail, the woman who'd refused to allow him to give up on his passion before even he could see it within him and given him the wings he'd needed to make his dream a reality. Now, these people are history. And though history always repeats itself, the time between the two points is always indefinite, and that's what terrifies him to no end.

The first hints of pink are just beginning to peek through the clouds when Hao veers off the interstate and into an exit directing to some town the name of which Hanbin doesn't recognize. "Gas needs a refill," he mutters under his nose, whether to Hanbin or more to himself Hanbin can't tell. He's been refusing to acknowledge the boy's existence for two hours now, and will continue to do so (though he does admittedly itch to point out that the tank is still more than half-full, but what good will that do him?)

Hao finds a gas station in record time; more impressively, a full-service station on first try. Hanbin suspects the real reason Hao had needed to stop has to do with those three (now three and three-fourths) cups of coffee; even the most seasoned of coffee addicts wouldn't be able to hold out on a bathroom break for that long after such copious amounts of the thing.

Hao is already out of his seatbelt, hand reaching for the handle when he asks the question Hanbin's been dying to hear- "You coming with?"

"No, I'm really enjoying being cooped up in a deathly silent car that I can barely stretch my legs in, thank you very much. What do you think?"

"The silence problem was your choice," Hao points out. "There's no need to be so rude, you know."

"I'm not being rude, I'm just-" Tired. Done. Tried to kill myself a little over twenty-four hours ago. I was still hospitalized just last night. My family hates my guts. My mom called me a whore. I was sold off to a conversion therapy facility without my consent after having had my whole future planned out in my head- how about that?  "-in a bad mood right now. Sorry."

Hao doesn't answer, casting a worried look over Hanbin's slumped frame- a look Hanbin fails to notice. He doesn't even realize Hao's out of his seat until he hears the keys twist out of the ignition and the door shut. He starts in his seat; come to think of it, he really should get out. Stretch his legs and walk around some, maybe even take a look inside the convenience store for a change of scenery. It might delay him losing his shit, at least for a little while.

He makes up his mind and steps out of the car, gasping at the icy air that hits his nostrils without warning. They must be going up north, with this weather. He shivers and quickens his step.

Upon entering, he is immediately enveloped in a pleasant warmth blasting through the heaters on full power. It soothes his nerves somewhat, after feeling like he's been freezing for hours on end, although the heater in Hao's car had been functioning perfectly well this whole time.

It wasn't about the weather, really. His father's eyes had been freezing, his mother's wrath had been freezing, the blade against his skin and the floor of the bathroom had been more freezing still. Even Zhang Hao's futile attempts at lightening the mood had felt frigid, but now that he's temporarily out of sight, now that Hanbin's father is hundreds of miles away, Hanbin can allow himself to bask in the warmth, even if only for a minute.

He walks aimlessly through the snack aisles and tries to pay no mind to the wary glances the young girl at the cash register sends his way as he waits for Hao to reappear from the bathrooms. Each colorful packet that jumps out at him reminds him how he's now entirely broke, that even though he has a solid several thousand currently stored away in his bank account, his card is most likely now in his father's hand to do with it whatever he pleases. He's not hungry, he swears he's not, but a drink at least would be so nice and comforting right now…oh, now he just wants out.

Out...

A certain thought rattles Hanbin's brain like a lightning bolt, white-hot and scathing. 

He could make it out of here. He has enough time to; Hao's been gone for but a minute, and if Hanbin were to make a dash for it right now, the odds might actually work in his favor this once. There's a long chain of stores stretching out just ahead; he could run until he reaches any one of them, preferably one farther down, and then walk in as calmly and nonchalantly as he knows how. No one would take notice of him then, and he doubts anyone would remember him if Hao were to describe him- he's not that memorable of a face. He'd wait it out, and then he could ask for help. He could be heard. He could be saved.

But Hanbin's scheme falls through before he can even begin to execute it, for he had contemplated on it too long, so focused on trying to be rational about the steps and having a detailed strategy that wouldn't fail him that he forgot how precious and vital every second is to such a plan. He thought he had a few seconds to spare, and that is his first grave mistake.

He gathers the courage, takes the first step, and the doors to the bathroom swing open.

Fucking hell.

It's alright, luck is on his side- for now. He must not be appearing particularly suspicious to Hao at the moment, because the boy only goes on about grabbing more snacks for the rest of the way and even proposes that Hanbin pick out something he likes- "I'll pay for it all", while Hanbin nods along mindlessly. The words go in one ear and out the other as his eyes wander along the shop's premises, attempting to map out a surefire escape route. He's buzzing with excitement on the inside and it's not the good kind; his body feels heavy and the momentum in his legs seems to drain bit by bit, like it does in every nightmare where he tries to run and finds that he cannot. But if he fights it right now, it will definitely show, so all that's left to do is wait. The right moment has to come, sooner or later.

In the meantime Hao, having realized he won't be getting an answer out of Hanbin, disappears into the aisle right beside him after he's done speaking. The proximity of their locations heightens Hanbin's level of unease all the more. It doesn't help that he keeps catching glimpses of Hao's hair and blue puffer jacket through the vacant spaces on the shelves- the boy would surely notice if Hanbin were to walk past him.

But it's too late to change his mind now. He'd given himself one last attempt at hope after resigning to his misery- he can't kill it off now before it gets the chance to suspire. Even if the odds are at an all-time low, the least he can do is try. He needs to be able say that he's tried, in the future. If there is one for him.

One step forward, then one more. Before he knows it, he's passing by Hao's aisle.

He then commits his second mistake- looking in Hao's direction.

All he'd wanted to achieve by doing so was to calculate the approximate amount of time he has left on his hands by trying to gauge whether Hao is as focused on the packages in front of him as Hanbin needs him to be. Perhaps he'd be so locked in on the task he would forget all about Hanbin and let him have this one chance. And he is focused, in fact so much so that he's bent over at a ninety-degree angle and squinting at the labels on the chocolate bars like they're the most important thing in the world, whispering something under his breath in strained Mandarin as if trying to solve some groundbreaking mystery of the universe. Cute, Hanbin thinks, it would almost be cute if he weren't the predator in this situation and I the prey.

Forget about that right now- Hao's focused, he's safe. He takes another step forward, then another and then...

"Were you watching me?"

Hanbin's stomach gives way and plunges to the soles of his feet.

"No," he lies, throat drier than a desert. "Just, you know, trying to see what's on the shelves."

Would've been credible if you'd just walked into the aisle instead of lingering outside of it, dumbass.

Hao says nothing, but something in that piercing gaze of his changes even as he narrows his eyes at Hanbin. Something that should have been cold, and yet strangely, runs tepid.

Hanbin can do nothing but nod at him again, not wanting to take the conversation further and honestly a little disconcerted by that odd look. He takes a deep breath and wills himself concentrates on walking again, one step at a time. Now, rather than go straight for the doors, he dips into the neighboring aisle and spends a couple seconds there before moving on to the next, pretending to evaluate random produce as he goes. The whole time, he feels the weight of eyes on him- not just any eyes, but those shrewd, vulpine brown eyes that boast the power to swallow one whole without chewing prior. He turns around several times; each time Hao's back is turned, his lips still whispering. No eyes.

A few seconds longer, the casual rustle of a chip bag and a well-acted assessment of a damaged flashlight, and suddenly he's half an aisle away from the door, Zhang Hao two.

Hanbin's third mistake, the one that will close every last open window and send the downpour crashing down on him in full force- hesitation. Hanbin gives the store a last once-over, lifts one foot onto the rug lying in front of the exit, and hesitates. 

But why? you may ask. The only answer that can be given is "I don't know, and I will never know". It is simply one of those predestined moments in life, for every moment in our life is nothing but a predecessor for one or another significant cataclysm already decided upon by our universe. It is an unknown story you will be inches away from stepping into, a sequence of chapters that pledge you deliverance and relief from your turmoil once you turn the page, when without warning some supernatural force will manifest itself in the deepest crevices of your bones and render you dumb, a waxen statue unable to move even as every nerve in your body rips itself in two with the overpowering urge to do so and yet, for reasons unknown to us at the moment- nothing.

Nothing at all. 

It's useless now, trying to get his right foot to join his left on the rug, to unfreeze his hands from this horrible spell and grab the handle. He could push himself even harder; it would probably work, if he were just a little more of a masochist. But he can't do it, not when Hao is standing ten feet in front of him, horribly still and staring straight through his soul as if he can see it.

It could have been anything else. He could have simply needed to get some air, he could have gotten bored of waiting for Hao, he was done looking around and simply had nothing better left to do. Yet somehow, Hao had read it in the rigid lines of his motionless body- the fear and despair emanating from the depths of his very being, and he'd known better than Hanbin himself that Hanbin wanted to run away.

He takes a step towards him. Unsure, painstakingly slow.

Yet still, Hanbin cannot move a muscle. That, and the wet sheen of his wide-blown dark eyes leaves his predator no space for doubt.

Hao carefully places the items in his arms onto the counter and tells the frightened-looking cashier that he may or may not come back to complete his purchase, bids her goodbye in case of the second. Then he turns around, his eyes trained back on Hanbin, and starts walking.

His pace is fast, his gait determined. But it is the ear-splitting clack of his soles hitting the floor that bring Hanbin back to reality and get him moving at last.

And god, does he ever move. He runs as if there's no tomorrow, dashes out the door like a bloody fucking madman. Hears it slam shut behind him seconds later- he must have gotten a good head start on Hao, then. He has this, at least, a small margin of a chance instead of nothing at all. He charges forward without really looking, only knowing he's heading in the direction of the stores, or at least where he remembers them being. It's hard to make out because all of a sudden, it's snowing. 

He doesn't know when it had begun. All he knows is the mighty roar of blood in his ears, the adrenaline spiking through his veins and threatening to spill from his eyes. His boots crush the snow underneath and turn it into white powder that kicks out from under his heels like sand. Images flash through his memory- God, not this again, it's driving him insane. Electricity blackout, snow outside. Startled faces, a crying child on the phone, snow outside. A deer, a tree, glass stained scarlet- snow outside. Always, always snow. He'd rather it were fire and brimstone instead. It's what's supposed to rain down in hell.

He understands that he won't make it. Though he doesn't wish to admit it he understood it from the start and yet for some foolish reason he keeps going, though the fading bruises on his ribs begin to pulsate wildly and his shoulder screams, a million hot blades slicing and tearing through the muscle, leaving nothing but charred sinew and tissue in its wake. Somewhere far away, from behind, footsteps follow. Someone's always following him once he truly needs to be alone. Why are they always following him?

Why him?

"Hanbin, stop! Please, just stop, you're not in the condition to be doing this right now!"

Hanbin runs harder. He doesn't even want to be running anymore, has no idea why he'd wanted it in the first place when it was never going to work, but he puts more pressure on the balls of his feet all the same, just to see how far he could make it before it's over. The mind always gives up before the body does, Matthew used to say. Afternoons in the old abandoned gym at the edge of town, egging Matthew on to go for a bigger deadlift, both of them laughing in glee when he makes it... the last rays of evening sunlight illuminating Gyuvin in the corner hugging a sleeping Yujin to his chest with one hand, filming their antics for Ricky with another, quietly laughing along...

"Hey, in front of you-"

Hanbin doesn't listen, of course. Consequentially, he meets the cold metal of the lamppost shoulder-first and falls to the ground, marking the end of all his fragile hopes right then, right there.

Fuck his life, seriously. Not only is his whole left arm throbbing anew, but his right shoulder is now also being ravished by fresh waves of agony from scraping against the cement, not to mention the rest of him. He really should have just held on to that feeling of making peace with his fate that he'd had in the car before his father abandoned him for good. Why on earth had he let go of it in the first place?

Hao must not have been that far behind in his chase, as he catches up much sooner than Hanbin expected him to. He leans forward with his palms on his thighs, panting hard from the exertion and scrutinizing Hanbin's stretched out form in front of him as if it were the root of all his life troubles. 

"I can't believe- I can't believe you thought you were going to get anywhere far in your state. But you're fast, I gotta give that to you."

"Oh, what do you know about my state!?" Hanbin retorts, profoundly annoyed and done with life. "I didn't tell you shit about it."

Hao winces at the casual use of profanity, and Hanbin feels the slightest twinge of satisfaction at the sight. "If you're implying that your father did, well- he didn't tell me much. Only that you were 'a bit banged up' and had recently been discharged from the hospital after some accident. That it wasn't that bad."

Hanbin briefly considers telling him the truth, just for the sake of telling, but thinks better of it once he realizes the effects it may have on his privileges in the facility. "So if that's all there is to it, why can't you just leave me alone? I promise I'm okay."

"Because your father is a horrible liar," Hao replies sharply. "And you seem to have inherited his genes. You think you're so great at playing the big man, don't you? Like I don't see you grabbing at your ribs any time you happen to breathe too deeply. There's this look on your face whenever you have to make a big movement that involves that left shoulder of yours. You're pale as a sheet and your clothes hang off of you like they do off a hanger. I'll bet you my life savings your father brought you to me straight from your hospital bed. So really, Sung Hanbin, how okay are you?"

Nobody has ever has asked him that question before. Not a single soul had ever noticed so much of him without knowing him, and needless to say it catches Hanbin more than just off guard. He peers up at Hao from where he's lying on the ground, into that beautifully angry face staring right back at his, and thinks the view from upside down has never looked more captivating. "You know, I had no idea you were capable of saying this much all at once. I honestly thought you barely knew how to talk."

"I talk when I see the need for it," Hao snaps, visibly ruffled at the quip.

"Hm. Can't relate."

For a moment, as ironic as it is, neither of them speak. Hao's eyes are fire as they look down into Hanbin's, and Hanbin's eyes are ice that melts slowly but surely in the heat of their chains. Hao stretches out his hand to him, jutting his chin out in annoyance. "Come on. People are staring. You'll get sick at this rate."

Hao's warrior stance signals he won't be backing down until his command is obeyed, so Hanbin sighs in defeat and slipping his own bare, bluish tinged hand into the warm, gloved one in front of him. "So, which part are you worried about exactly: my health or the people staring?"

Unfortunately, it appears Hao's communication timer had run out conveniently at that exact moment. He doesn't spare Hanbin another word even as he hauls him up and marches him back to the car like a father would march his disobedient child to the corner.

He does, however, scan Hanbin's face once he pays the gas station attendant for his ministrations and gets back in his seat. An emotion akin to concern swims in his eyes, unmitigated, but Hanbin pretends he doesn't notice it. It's almost identical to the look he remembers from their first meeting years ago, yet he tells himself it's all an act on Hao's part because what else could it be when Hao is so willingly throwing himself into his father's foul business, when he'd seen how badly Hanbin needed that last chance at hope and proceeded to tear it away from him so heartlessly? He resists the urge to roll his eyes and turns his back to Hao like before, thus once again shutting out all chances for conversation.

They're back on the interstate in no time. Outside, the snowfall subsides from heavy to a gently-falling light, dreamy mist. Hanbin, having returned to his original position of facing the window, drowns in his thoughts as he takes in the view, but this time the demonic shadows that usually haunt them are nowhere to be found. He traverses the surface of his soul for the slightest inkling of his previous fear in front of the unknown, the anticipated bitterness that was supposed to remain and fester after the plan fell through, even the embarrassment following the consequences for confidence without a solid basis- all as good as gone. Every poisonous emotion that had run its destructive course through his system in the past week has dissipated into near nonexistence, dried up and preserved somewhere so deep inside him that he's apprehensive to imagine the wreck they will make of him once the walls crumble and the floodgates open in the future, somewhere along the line of things. How could it be possible, when just days ago, yesterday, even a mere couple hours ago he'd been feeling everything at once? Maybe he'd hit his head when he'd fallen and didn't notice.

Unable to wallow in his ruminations any longer, he turns to Hao and inquires, "How much longer do we have left to drive?"

"An hour and five minutes or so," Hao answers after taking a quick look at his phone. "Why?"

"How can you stand it? Just...driving on and on like this?"

"I guess you could say I'm used to it."

Briefly, Hanbin remembers that Hao had been the one to drive his whole Bible study group to camp years ago, at the age of sixteen. "You probably are. But couldn't you at least put on some music? It's way too quiet in here."

"Funny," Hao says softly. "You struck me as a person that likes the quiet."

That's what everybody thinks. "It gets too much at one point."

Again, Hao says nothing in return. It drives Hanbin crazy, this mystifying tug-of-war they've been playing ever since they've first met each other. "Alright, then. Don't mind if I do."

Before Hao can even ask him what he means by that, he's already diving for the storage compartment between them that contains Hao's phone. A split second later, the device is in his hands, and if looks could kill Hanbin would have already been decaying in the cold, dark earth.

"Give that back this instant."

"Look, I'm doing this to help you. You and your folk are so damn eager to help me with my big bad problems, don't I have the right to at least help rid you of your very obvious boredom?" God, what is happening to him? When had he become this caustic with his words, this bold around people he doesn't even know?

"I...I don't really listen to music like that," Hao mutters helplessly. "I'm not allowed to."

Hanbin gapes at him, in total disbelief. "Okay? So?"

"So I can't listen to music...? Disobedience is a sin."

"You- what- okay, let me get this straight. How old are you exactly?"

"Eighteen," Hao gets out through his teeth- Hanbin can tell he knows what's coming.

"You're eighteen, a legal adult, and you still don't listen to music because your daddy says you can't...? You're joking, right?"

"I do listen to classical though!" Hao exclaims defensively- the loudest Hanbin's heard him get so far. "And hymns, of course. There's not that many of them I like, but I don't really have a choice. Nothing else is approved"

"But you do have a choice! There's simply no way that you've got a phone on you- no parental supervision app on it by this point, I would hope- and stay so devoted to your father's rules that you don't watch any movies or entertaining videos, don't listen to music, and don't consume any form of social media whatsoever. There's no way! Next thing you're going to tell me is you've never once watched porn or jerked off like everybody else does."

The crimson painting Hao's face and ears has crept down to his neck now, his expression comically appalled at the use of such crude (unfamiliar too, Hanbin supposes) language and the suggestion that he could do something so profoundly wicked. "Of course I don't!" he retaliates, indignant. "Sexual sin is one of the worst iniquities you can commit in the eyes of God."

Hanbin bites back a laugh, wondering if Hao knows what sin in particular had landed Hanbin in this car, but refrains from asking- he's experienced enough homophobia recently to last him a lifetime and over. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry my words offended you. But may I ask you just one question? And I want you to answer me sincerely. Do you truly, seriously not want to listen to any other kind of music at all? Tell me you've never once heard a song playing in the store or from somebody's phone at school and liked the way it sounded."

Hao flounders momentarily, fingers stimming with the wheel. "I'm homeschooled."

"No surprise there," Hanbin lets out before he can stop himself and grimaces. "But that's not an answer to my question. Come on, you can be honest with me. I'm a highest offense-level sinner, remember?"

"You won't be getting an answer."

"So you do want to listen to music!" Hanbin exclaims, satisfied at the confirmation in the guilt written all over Hao's face. But something in him softens as he registers the tight angle of the boy's jaw, the minute sadness slipping through the lines around his eyes. He tries to put himself in Hao's shoes and picture what his life would be like if his father had been the overseer of every private little detail of his days from birth and onward, how dull and burdensome each day would be when even though he had access to an escape in the form of music he truly likes, books with characters he could actually relate to; movies portraying love and heated passion and the transient yet meaningful pleasures of life, created to inspire- he wouldn't be able to enjoy any of it because the fear of the afterlife would outweigh his desireto live the present one. He can't fathom it, he's never feared in that way, but he imagines it must be absolutely miserable.

"You know what? I think God wouldn't hold it against you if you didn't listen on purpose."

"Huh?"

"If I unlock your phone and keep it out of your reach while I play something, you'll have no choice left but to listen. There's nowhere to pull over right now and your hands need to stay on the wheel, so you can't cover your ears either. That way, it wouldn't be your fault."

"But-"

"No 'but's. Come on, tell me what you'd like to listen to. If you can't think of a specific song, then maybe a genre you tend to enjoy when you hear it? Rock, metal, hip-hop, r&b, indie? I'll put on anything but classical and hymns."

Of course, Hao immediately clamps his mouth shut and refuses to give an answer. Maybe Hanbin's gone a bit overboard with the coercion; he does sound a little as if he's persuading Hao to abet him in some sort of clandestine crime, but really now? When he's going to all these lengths for him?

"Alright, then. I'll just put on something I like and you'll have to sit with it even if you absolutely hate it. I'll take it you won't tell me your passw-...well, never mind. It appears you don't...have one...?"

"Stop. My dad will-"

"Don't worry about that. I'll delete it from your history."

"Just make sure I can still hear the GPS," Hao mumbles defeatedly. The sound of it alone makes Hanbin feel good enough to almost crack a smile- he's won this battle today, at least.

Soon after, the heavy, distorted rhythm of drums echoes through the tiny car. "My favorite song," he informs Hao, though he's sure Hao doesn't really care, and leans back in his seat. He closes his eyes and prompts his consciousness to sink into the music, drinking in the familiar melody that's served as a home for him in some of his darkest moments. 

Mitski's voice bounces off the floors and onto the walls, strong and mournful. 

"I will retire to the Salton Sea

At the age of twenty-three

For I'm starting to learn I may never be free..."

Now, Hanbin can smile, even though it comes out looking somewhat sorrowful- unbeknownst to him. He mouths the words as they come, unapologetic because he means every last letter of it with his whole heart and soul. "But though I may never be free, fuck you and your money. I'm tired of your money."

He knows without opening his eyes that Hao shudders at "fuck you." He doesn't know, because his eyes are closed, that Hao's head hangs at "I may never be free."

He hadn't picked this song on purpose. It just so happens that it's his favorite, and his favorite just so happens to resonate with his situation now more than ever. He opens his heart to it and becomes the song itself, as the guitars kick in and the singer's voice grows increasingly more and more hysterical. It saws through him and drags into memory every single instance that he'd thought he wouldn't make it this past week, the lowest of each lows. He tries not to think about where it had led him, whom it had brought back into his life, and the inhibitions that used to define him that it had now robbed him of for good.

And when the first scream sounds, Hao's knuckles go white on the wheel, Hanbin's in his own lap. One of them hates it, wants the song and those awful, awful screams to end as quickly as possible and never hear it again; the other imagines the screams as his own and lets them possess him. One scream for the small, tattered blue notebook lying lone and desolate somewhere in a landfill. Two screams, for the sister he'd grown up with and had ended up losing to blind hate and bigotry. Three screams, for Yujin's torn little heart and the traumatic memories he, Hanbin, had left him to have nightmares of till his last day. Four screams, for the dance studio that had allowed him to dream when he thought it impossible. All the rest, for the wrath he wishes he could feel at being caught and forced into yet another trap, the wrath that isn't there but should be.

He'll never know it, but with every one of those screams, from the first one to the last fizzling out with that unsettling crackle of distorted guitar, he is planting a seed of life-saving doubt in a heart that isn't his own. In the driver's seat, tensed and ridden with shivers at the unfamiliar emotion evoked in him from the music, Zhang Hao looks at the broken creature beside him as if he were something beautiful. And he is, but Hao senses that he doesn't believe it; knows that he, Zhang Hao, had himself played a part in making Hanbin think that way. He's playing it right now, because his father needs him to. Because it's his obligation, and he is nothing if not his Lord and Savior's faithful servant till the end. 

Yet even though he's obeying his father's command, doing everything the way he's always been told, for the first time in many years the young man sitting beside Hanbin feels like God is no longer smiling down at him for a reason he cannot explain.

-

Hanbin is begging the universe for this to all be a cruel joke.

The roads to the facility have seemed strangely familiar this whole time, but there are only so many destinations he's been to that didn't require at least a couple hours driving through familiar interstates and highways. Trees, fields, and mountains don't carry much variation to their appearance in this part of the country anyway, so he'd thought nothing of it at first. This changed when they'd reached the four-hour mark and a certain building in the distance caught his eye, a building younger Hanbin would see once every year for nine years straight, a building that used to only mean one thing.

Summer, worship music on top volume, the AC on full blast. He's jammed in between Matthew and a friend of an older sibling in the church's van, faces pressed smack against the hot, sticky windows. It's coming along any minute now, they're close, closer, closer, and then- "I see it! The yellow house! We're almost there!" The next exit off the interstate is theirs. Three more turns, six straight minutes along a gravel road, and there it is. Camp Zerobase, summer's annual getaway and Hanbin's second-favorite place on earth.

A sour taste rises to Hanbin's mouth at the sickening realization. "Your father just had to build his prison around this specific area, didn't he?"

"Oh..." Hao frowns. "You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

Hao chews on his lip, hesitating to speak. Stubbornly refusing to look at Hanbin. "My dad...he, um, bought the campgrounds last year. The place isn't 'around this area.' It is that area."

Hanbin stares at him, utterly stupefied and trying to convince himself he'd heard wrong. "What do you mean, 'bought' the campgrounds?" his voice shakes against his will. "You're playing with me right now. Right?"

"You'll see when we get there, then."

Hanbin sees. He sees the exit they drive off into, the usual three turns, and those old gravel roads. Images so painfully close and dear, and yet so starkly different from what he knows- he'd never seen the campgrounds in the winter. His whole life, he'd associated this place with everything summer, all things sunshine and vivid color, his only chance at seven full days away from home as a young child. Never buried under snow, never in whites and somber grays.

But the sign at the entrance to the camp had stayed the same, tall and so hilariously run-of-the-mill with its message- "Welcome To Camp Zerobase- where adventures await!" No childish voices cheering at the top of their lungs in the car at the sight, though. The cabins stand far off in the distance exactly the way they used to, except now, they are places nobody is eager to walk into, walls meant for confinement rather than rest and blooming adolescent friendships.

The objects in the picture haven't changed. The colors, however, have faded drastically, their once vibrant shades now forever irretrievable.

Hanbin holds his breath as they drive through the gates, those gates enclosing so many memories that have played a role in making him the person he is today. He's dizzy with shock; it's all too much, this is a place he'd never again expected to see after he'd "graduated" to youth camps unless by some miracle. Now he's here to stay- moreover, brought here by the one person who made his last year here more memorable than the others, even if they'd known each other for less than two days.

Today, they've met again. And they'll be living here alongside each other, in the sacred premises that have brought them together in the first place.

And to think everyone had always said the Zhangs wouldn't come back.

But when they reach the cabins, to Hanbin's confusion, Hao drives straight past them.

"Wait. Where are you going?"

"Home."

"So you don't live around here?"

"I do. Your father's sure a cryptic one all right," Hao sighs, turning into a lane Hao doesn't remember existing. "You see, we have a system set up here. Certain dates we're open to accept new students while a select amount of already stationed ones go home either for good or for a test period to see if they've fully changed, then periods of time that we're closed once we reach a certain amount of people. We really don't have enough staff on our hands yet to deal with everybody properly. Trust me when I say we have some real tough cases here."

"Oh, yeah?" Hanbin laughs, no humor behind the sound. "What, like gay kids? That must be so hard for you."

"We're closed right now so technically you were not supposed to be here until next week, but your father's appeal, well. I don't know what he'd said to my father but you're here now and-"

"So where will I be staying exactly?" Hanbin interrupts, his usually iron patience frayed at the edges. "Why'd you drive past the cabins?"

"-since they don't reopen for new students until the first of January, you'll be staying with my father and me here."

"And where is 'here'- oh."

In his bewilderment, Hanbin had to failed to the notice that not only had the car come to a full stop by now, but that Hao had also already parked it in front of a single building. Not just any random building, either- a house. A giant wooden house half the size of a mansion that bears a striking resemblance to the cabins located farther down the grounds, but four times larger than one in both height and area. It stands tall and imposing, the lone object in the middle of a field for hundreds of meters around, with the only exception being the outlines of the cabins just barely visible off to the south. The sight alone makes Hanbin's throat close up on itself.

While Hao has already unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out of the car, Hanbin can't get his sore limbs to obey him just yet. He's glued to his seat, unable to tear his eyes away from the wooden monstrosity awaiting them behind the glass. It instills a sort of melancholy gloom in him, presses on his chest like a lung-crushing stone and makes him want to heave with sobs until the pressure dissolves, but he can't. Once again, he is too numb to react.

The sound of the passenger door opening jolts him out of his broody trance. He turns his head and meets Hao's eyes, now fully rid of that fresh coldness Hanbin had detected in them at first and replaced with that stupid emotion Hanbin still firmly believes is anything but concern.

"My father's expecting us right now."

"Mhm."

"You have to get out."

A long sigh, an unclenching of fists. He's ready. He has no choice but to be.

"Let's go, then."

Ready. Absolutely, positively fucking ready.

He follows Hao down the trodden pathway leading up to the front door in a full-on daze, clutching onto the bag his father had left him with as if to some sort of lifeline. How had he ended up here? Was he not just at home two days ago, in the hospital at the wee hours of this same morning? Where had the time for this to become his new reality even spawned from?

They reach the door. Hao holds it for him as if he were an honored guest instead of an inmate about to be shown to his new cell. "Come on in."

Then, "I'll show you to the second floor."

As soon as Hanbin's two feet step over the threshold and onto the fur rug at the entrance, he is in an entirely new, unknown world. The interior of the house may as well have jumped straight out of a resort advertisement magazine. Wooden walls plastered in crosses, dainty Bible verse templates, family and church portraits; wooden floors covered with Turkish rugs faded out just enough to look cherished; high wooden ceilings and exquisite glass chandeliers- a prism or two missing if one looked close enough, maybe more. Wood, so much wood, all in a pleasant dark shade that in an alternate universe could have inspired Hanbin in the process of building his own home. The smell, too- pine and sandalwood, a faint trace of freshly baked raisin bread lingering in the air- cozy, like all the rest. Terrifyingly so. 

As he trudges up the stairs behind Hao, Hanbin feels no less than an intruder. Like he'd barged into not just a house, but a home- and home, to him, has always been a place where first secrets were created and the earliest of weaknesses hidden. Home was the planet located farthest from the sun, undiscovered by the rest of the world. Home always spun in the opposite direction from the earth. He's been to houses before, more times than he could count. Rarely homes.

Hao's footsteps come to a halt outside the first door that comes into view at the top of the staircase, leading Hanbin to all but fall onto him. He catches himself just in time to see Hao whip around and scan him from head to toe as if he's assessing something Hanbin himself has no idea about. It's nothing significant- just a quick, critical traverse of the eyes, and yet somehow it lingers on his skin even under all the fabric, sets Hanbin's ears on fire.

"Wait here."

Hanbin opens his mouth in protest- didn't Hao say his father was waiting for them, and won't he be mad at Hao for not bringing Hanbin to him right away?- but Hao has already opened the door and is slipping inside. In that fleeting millisecond, before the door shuts in front of his face, Hanbin briefly catches sight of a figure in the far right corner of the room. His heart seems to skips a couple beats for an agonizing moment. Pastor Zhang.

Hao had lied to him. The man wasn't actually expecting them right away, otherwise wouldn't Hanbin be currently standing behind the door with his son instead of in the hallway, at a loss for what to do with himself? 

Or maybe, just maybe, he's doing this to buy you time.

Hanbin promptly pushes that thought out of his mind and presses his ear to the door, trying to make out at least a sentence or two to get a grasp of the situation, but there's no use. The sounds are too muffled. He gives up and slides to the floor, his eyes closing by themselves as sleepiness finally overtakes him. 

Just as Hanbin is on the verge of nodding off, Hao emerges from the room, looking unexpectedly drained of all life. He lays eyes on Hanbin and knits his brows together in a troubled frown. "You can't sleep here. Come."

Hanbin shakes himself awake as best he can and drags himself back to his feet before reaching for the doorknob, only to retract his hand when Hao panickedly exclaims, "No, not there! I was talking about your room."

A room? He would kill for a room of his own right now, especially one with a bed.

Uplifted by that thought, he trails after Hao down the long, darkened hallway until they stop in front of a door at the very end. "This one will be yours until Tuesday. Six days from now."

Hanbin nods impatiently, powerless to bring himself to care about anything other than sleep at the moment. "Can I go in now?"

"Go ahead. Everything you need is already there. Bathroom's next door."

"Thanks." Thank you for getting your father off my back for me, even if only for now. Thank you for not making me feel like the devil incarnate after what you've seen of me today. Thank you that it was you who'd picked me up at the gas station, and not anybody else. "For the room."

"Sure? It's not my room, I mean. Oh, and..."

"Yes?"

Hao throws a nervous glance down the hallway, fiddling with his fingers before he speaks. "You're not alone here. Just saying."

"I know. You and your father live here, obviously."

"That's not- oh, never mind," Hao exhales heavily, rubbing at his forehead. "I'll leave you be until lunch. Get some rest in before then, please."

That's funny, Hanbin thinks as he watches Hao's tall, lanky form retreat briskly down the hallway. Nobody's ever asked me to rest before.

He waits until he can clearly hear Hao's feet hit the last stair before he allows himself to open the door to the room at last. To his surprise, it's not a small one, though not really large either. Bigger than his room at home though, the one he'd shared with Yujin and many years ago, Doyoung. Shared. Past tense. He wonders if Yujin will sleep all alone tonight. Fight his nightmares alone, with nobody left to hold him. Nobody around that cares if he needs to be held. 

The room's a decent one, nonetheless. Relatively plain, compared to what Hanbin had expected the bedrooms in a house like this to look like, but he supposes a guest room wouldn't look particularly fancy. Besides, he just doesn't fucking care. There's a bed, a nightstand with a lamp on it, a closet, and a window- what more could he possibly need?

Sleep. He needs to sleep. He tries to recall the last time he'd slept and realizes it had been the night after he'd had his stomach pumped at the hospital, and only for a few hours because Matthew had come in early. The drowsiness he'd managed to hold back in the face of the chaos comes crashing down on him full force now, and his body feels like it floats rather than walks itself to the bed. The white pillows and flower-print blankets look more inviting than any bedding has ever had before; he just needs to lie down, let his aching bones melt into the mattress and his head sink into that heavenly softness, and then he could-

"Who the fuck are you?"

Hanbin's soul all but leaves his body along with his exhaustion.

Words echo through his mind like a broken record as he wills himself to turn around. "You're not alone here. Just saying..."

"Who are you?" the ghost repeats as Hanbin searches the room in confusion, trying to attach the voice to a person- an object, even, he's sleep-deprived enough for it to be possible- until his eyes finally land on a figure crouched in the left corner of the room. The one place that the light streaming through the blinds had neglected to reach.

Seeing that it had been found out, the figure rises to its feet and Hanbin almost laughs. How had somebody this tall and broad managed to look so small squatted in a corner?

"Right back at you," he throws at the giant without batting an eye. "Who the fuck are you?"

The giant steps out into the light, finally allowing Hanbin to make out each one of his features clearly before the answer comes.

"I'm Park Gunwook. Your turn."

Hanbin withholds giving his name away immediately, opting to observe this eccentric stranger first to get a rough picture of what he's dealing with, just in case. And to his total dubiety, he honestly can't tell if there's too much or nothing at all. The boy stands at a height of about six feet, his frame the kind of impressively built and broad that can only come from genetics, his stature and aura exuding dominance and suggestions of brutish strength. Every single line and curve of his jaw is pure edge, everything under his tan skin taut, firm muscle- and yet the soft slope of his nose is crinkled in mirth, the feverishly alert eyes under his thick black eyebrows are creased into happy crescents, and his thick lips are curved into a warm, mischievous grin.

Hard to tell, with this one.

"I'm Sung Hanbin, I guess."

Gunwook tilts his head to the side, toothy smile growing wider. "You 'guess'?"

Matthew would have gotten along with this brat just fine, Hanbin thinks, now unconsciously mirroring Gunwook's smile. "Mind telling me why you're here, Gunwook?"

"I live here, for now," Gunwook declares, plopping down onto the bed unceremoniously and crossing his legs. "Got nowhere else to go."

"Why this room? This isn't your room, is it?"

"Nah. Mine just doesn't have a window, so I come here."

Hanbin joins him on the bed, so energized by the prospect of having someone to talk to- a fellow "sinner", too- that he decides the sleep could wait. "I thought they only start taking people in on the first of January. I'm the only exception, or so I was told. How'd you get here then? And when? Is this your first time too? What'd you do, if you don't mind me asking?"

"That's helluva lot of questions," Gunwook grins again- a well-worn smile, like he was born with it. "But nah, I'm not really supposed to be here either. I'm an exception too, you could say. Zhang picked me up off the streets."

"So where'd you come from?"

"I just told you, man," Gunwook deadpans. "The streets."

"Okay, but-"

"Why does everyone I tell that always think I'm playing!?"

Hanbin's eyes widen. "Wait, so, really? The streets?"

"I'm homeless, you see," Gunwook discloses. "My mom-"

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Hanbin interrupts, worried he might have pushed the boy too far in their first conversation. "If you don't feel comfortable-"

"Bro, I've told this story a hundred times over," Gunwook rolls his eyes. "Mum was a druggie, got knocked up by some dude in her ring, and I happened. Always men around, drugs, drink, people fucking in and around the house wherever, whenever- you get it. I'll spare you the rest of the details, story's pretty damn long. I was nine or ten when we got kicked out the apartment 'cause all the money was going on her drugs. She got sick of me, 'cause kids are expensive, y'know, and threw me out. So, there you have it. The rest was the streets."

"Oh," Hanbin breathes, not sure how to respond to being trusted with such a heavy piece of personal information right off the bat. "Um, how long did you live there? On the streets, I mean?"

"Six years, maybe seven? If you count the time I spent in and out of shelters and homes, probably less. The last home couldn't handle me so they sent me off to this one because they had connections to their main guy and he said he'd take me in for free, something about 'having mercy on the lost lambs that need it' so yeah, now I'm here. I swear on my old man this one won't last long either, but the Zhang dude says it's different. This place is Christian. Looks like everyone here is, except me. Speaking of, what'd you do to get here? Drugs? Booze? Gang shit? I was in a gang for some time, y'know. Wild stuff."

"Um, no," Hanbin sucks in his lips, suddenly embarrassed. "I'm gay. And some other things here and there. But primarily, because I'm gay."

"That a crime with the Christians or something?"

"A big one, apparently."

"That's fucked," Gunwook murmurs sympathetically. "Didn't know people still care about shit like that, Imma be honest."

"They do, believe it or not. Say, would you happen to carry any cigarettes by chance..? I haven't had a smoke for too long."

"No buddy, sorry," Gunwook pats his shoulder. "Ran out of them myself. Tell you what, though. There's a tiny food store, down by the cabins. You probably don't have much dough on you but you could just swipe a pack real qui-"

The sound of a throat clearing sounds in the doorway and Hanbin startles in spite of himself, instincts still on high alert. 

"Gunwook, didn't I tell you you're to stay in your room today?" Zhang Hao sighs, leaning onto the doorframe tiredly. "The guest needs to rest."

"How'd you even get here?" Hanbin questions, puzzled. How much had Hao overheard?

"You really have to make sure you fully close the doors around here. They're rather heavy."

"How much did you hear?" Gunwook shoots at him, verbalizing Hanbin's thought from earlier with no qualms whatsoever.

"I just came down the hall seconds ago," Hao replies calmly. "All I heard was 'food store' and 'money', don't worry. Now get back to your room."

"Or what? You'll kick me back outside if I won't?"

"I won't do anything. But my father might."

"Yeah well, he won't do shit," Gunwook spits. "I can be wherever I want, whenever I want. Democracy is a thing in this country, by the way."

"Democracy doesn't make the streets warm in the winter."

"Oh, fuck you!"

And just like that, Park Gunwook is gone. Stalking out into the hallway and disappearing behind a loudly slamming door, the time of his next resurfacing with the purpose of shining a light onto Hanbin's very colorless, very dreary life of isolation now a mystery.

"Come on now, seriously? He just wanted to talk!"

"I understand, I do. But you really have to rest, okay? I may have known Gunwook for only a week but he'll talk your head off if you let him. He's a lot. Now's not the time to get to know him."

"Whatever," Hanbin concedes, begrudgingly admitting to himself that Hao just might be on to something this time. "You should, uh, go take a nap too. You look quite drained yourself."

Hao smiles- has Hanbin seen him do that yet today?- only a miniscule lift of the corners of his lips, but a smile nonetheless. "Don't worry about me. I'll be just fine. You take care of yourself right now."

Hanbin nods, finding he's run out of words to reply with. Wanting so badly for Hao to say something else, anything, not even knowing why he wants it.

Hao doesn't. Not right away, anyway. The door closes halfway behind him in slow motion, as if in on the secret of Hanbin's reluctance to be left alone, before a bony, graceful hand materializes from the darkness and stops it in the middle. There's no face to follow, nothing but that lone saving hand and a boy's voice, quiet and so dangerously sweet.

"You really should stop smoking, Hanbin. It might kill you someday."

A lump comes up Hanbin's throat, massive. Bitter. He doesn't swallow it. "I know."

"Then act like you do."

Someday, he will. Someday. Just not today.

-

Hanbin doesn't come down for lunch on the first day. Nor the second.

He sleeps through it. He sleeps through the evening, the night, and the following morning too. The exhaustion had run bone-deep, crawling its way into his intestines and releasing its poison into his bloodstream by way of all the trauma he'd had to experience ever since that blasted evening of the seventeenth. Now, his body could finally catch up to at least a quarter of the rest he'd missed out on. He would be a fool to not take advantage of it.

The entire time he spends asleep, three people wait.

Park Gunwook waits, entering the room several times throughout the day and standing by Hanbin's bed like a loyal old guard, inwardly losing his mind now that he'd finally found someone to communicate with and couldn't. Not having the heart to wake him, nevertheless.

Pastor Zhang waits, impatient to witness just how much Sung Hanbin's spiritual condition had deteriorated and reveal his sins in front of his son, so that Hao would know to stay away. Starving to humiliate him and put him in his place, to utilize him as yet another object to experiment with his "God-given spiritual gifts" on, to suck out his soul and hang it out to dry until it hardens the right way.

Zhang Hao waits, visiting Hanbin's room every two hours like clockwork. Leaving food on the nightstand, just in case he wakes up, because somehow he senses Hanbin would refuse to join them in the dining room in favor of eating alone, if at all. Twice, he takes off the boy's shirt with bated breath and feels like a vile sinner for it, though he does it only because he couldn't stop thinking about the boy's pained expression whenever he moved too abruptly. It bothered him. He dresses the boy's wounds and rubs ointment into his bruises with a tenderness he himself cannot explain the reasons for, chokes on air at the sight of the scars lining the insides of his arms, wondering how exactly they'd come about to be and why. Thirsting to know more about the heart lying hidden beneath them, dying for more reasons to be near.

A day passes. Hanbin sleeps on, getting up only twice to use the bathroom and drink water from the glass Hao keeps refilled by his bed, going back to sleep right after. For the first time in too long, he is completely free of nightmares.

Park Gunwook waits for a friend. Old Zhang waits for fresh prey to sink his teeth into.

And Zhang Hao waits on for his very own Lucifer, even if he may not be aware of it just yet. The boy in the bed looks too much like an angel to him, whenever the moonlight falls just right.

Lucifer was an angel, too. But Zhang Hao had forgotten, because that's what humans do. And in a life where Sung Hanbin had, according to his enemies, made one too many mistakes, this one will be Zhang Hao's first and most deadly.

His favorite.

Chapter Text

The ceiling is beautiful.

Stunning. Positively magnificent, even.

Or, more specifically, the pattern on it. Cracked, with little vine-like squiggles in between. Hanbin only knows because he's been staring up at it for the past fifteen minutes, allowing the dread of the place to swallow him whole.

If only he'd stopped to think before getting up to go shower. If only the strong aversion to the feeling of not being clean wasn't ingrained in his personality as strongly as it is. Had these been true, he could have succeeded in delaying this inevitable meeting for at least a little while longer and given himself time to prepare.

But there's no use in bemoaning his idiocy now; he's positive Hao had heard him leave his room and rattle about in the bathroom. A door in the hallway had been left wide open and there had definitely been someone else there, loud enough to be heard but too quiet to be Gunwook. Now all that Hanbin's got left to do is sit on his bed and wait for the call to battle while he aimlessly tries to predict just how furious the meeting with Pastor Zhang will leave him.

A familiar figure, overall-clad, takes shape in his doorway moments later, its face turned to the side. "You're up."

Hanbin wishes he knew why Hao won't look at him. What have I done now? "How many hours have I been out?"

"How many days, you mean?" Hao corrects him. "Two."

No wonder his head had felt like it was splitting open upon waking. "Oh. I'm sorry about that."

"No, you looked like you needed it. How are you feeling?"

"I'm..." Hanbin pauses. He's dumbstruck, suddenly registering a huge part of a certain familiar presence in his body has gone missing. A sensation he's grown so used to in the past week and a half that it had felt like a childhood friend stuck by his side, silent yet comfortingly omnipresent. "What did you do to me while I was out, exactly?"

Hao's eyes widen, and if Hanbin didn't know any better he would've thought the boy looks almost guilty, to some extent. "Nothing! What do you mean by that?"

"I'm...barely hurting anywhere anymore," Hanbin clarifies in wonder. "My arm and shoulders are still a little sore, but-"

"You just needed to sleep, was all," Hao interrupts, his tone strangely clipped. "Now, um. About my dad."

"Oh, that. You don't even have to say it, I guess. I know what you're here for."

"I'm sorry, I really am," Hao mutters, still not meeting Hanbin's eyes. "He really won't wait any longer."

"It's okay. It's not your fault."

Something in Hao's face shifts at those words; that keen, guarded glint of his eyes Hanbin remembers seeing so starkly in the first minutes of their reunion is back. He senses that he'd just told the admirably mature, stone-fashioned version of Zhang Hao a truth that the vulnerable, love-starved Zhang Hao hidden away from the rest of the world has never been brave enough to the believe.

"Follow me to the office," Hao says. He's already moving out the door. "Honestly, the sooner you get this over with, the better for you."

He's right. Hanbin nods, deciding he's been running away from this moment long enough as it is. It's not like him to run from his problems- wasn't, before December seventeenth. "Alright, then. Lead the way."

Hao does. Hanbin trails after him down the hallway, their footsteps falling into a spontaneous rhythm near the middle. It calms him down somewhat- not that he'd been panicking his head off beforehand, or anything like that. Reluctance to have to face and talk to someone so similar to his father so soon was all it had been, really. But there should have been more. The old Hanbin would have been shaking.

It seems that the degree he'd felt all his emotions to up until bashing himself into that goddamned streetlight in front of JCPenney's will not be returning to him for a while after all. It could be that they'd slowly started draining from his body even earlier than that, as early as the first pill that had made its way down his throat on Christmas Eve. Maybe it's a good thing, or maybe it will be the end of him.

Hao stops right before they reach the office door, and Hanbin's thoughts stop with him.

"You think..." it's a quarter of a sentence, a muffled and timid one Hao never finishes. His back is turned to Hanbin, one arm halfway outstretched towards the doorknob, slowly retracting.

"This is your dad's office, right?"

Hao nods, but makes no move to enter. His hand is now hanging limply back by his side.

"Well, shouldn't we be walking in then?"

"We should, but..." He turns back around to face Hanbin and shakes his head, stepping back from the door as if it were a burning furnace. "Come downstairs with me for a minute."

"Why?" Hanbin questions. He's confused at this turn of events, at Hao's indecipherable loyalties, at everything. The latter, especially, is close to driving him mad.

"I want you to get something to eat."

"Oh. I'm fine, though. I'm not hungry."

"I didn't ask," Hao throws back, feet already hitting the stairs. "You need to eat. That's final."

Hanbin doesn't know what to make of this, but yes, he'd rather be following Hao into the kitchen right now than into the lion's den- aka Pastor Zhang's office. Which is how, without much further ado, he finds himself seated at the large oak table in the downstairs kitchen, cluelessly watching Hao concoct some sort of drink out of milk and half a dozen packets of frozen fruit.

"A smoothie," he elaborates upon catching Hanbin's inquisitive gaze. "Healthy and easier to digest than solids."

"You have stomach issues?"

"It's for you," Hao deadpans. "You haven't eaten any of the things I- you haven't eaten these past couple days. Honestly, forgive me, but I suspect you haven't eaten much prior to that either. I'm going to change that whether you want me to or not."

What does Hanbin even say to that? With everything life has been throwing at him, he hadn't had the mental capacity to worry about the way his body looks in days, had even forgotten to care whether IV liquid has calories or not- one thing he'd often worried about prematurely in the past in case a hospital stay would ever be in the cards for him. Still, he isn't sure he's ready to just eat like Hao's intending for him to, no prior planning, no calculation of calories involved. "Listen, um-"

"You do know you have to be on a liquid-based diet after a prolonged period of not eating or eating very little before easing into solids, right? It might kill you if you don't, in extreme cases."

Well. Tell that to Matthew, who'd bought him an entire fucking sandwich hours after literally getting his stomach pumped. Miraculously though, nothing had happened to him aside from a slight tummy ache. Maybe it's because he'd only finished half of it. "Do you worry about everyone like that?"

As expected, Hao ignores him. Hanbin takes the break in their conversation as an excuse to observe him from afar. He hadn't had the chance to truly look at Zhang Hao so far, analyze the changes beyond what he'd gotten to see in the dark.

His attention is first stolen by the way Hao's soft, dark locks fall into his eyes as he concentrates, shielding his face at a picturesque angle any photographer would kill to capture. Then, by the deft movements of his long, slender fingers as he works the blender, and that's where it gets hard to look away. Hanbin feels his face heat up the longer his eyes linger on the lithe motions, despises himself for it. 

He tears his eyes away and wills them to look anywhere else, until Hao walks up to the table and it becomes straight up impossible. He's set a glass filled to the brim with the aromatic pink liquid in front of Hanbin, hovering until he is able to ascertain that Hanbin's full attention is on him.

"Eat. Or drink, I guess. Both. You need to get your energy up."

"I have literally just slept for two days straight."

"Sleeping and eating are two different things. You can't think clearly on an empty stomach."

Hanbin doesn't think being able to think clearly will get him anywhere he wants to be anytime soon, but whatever. He appreciates the gesture either way. "Thanks."

He reaches for the glass, only to put it back down when he realizes that Hao is situating himself on a chair right across the table. "Are you going to watch me drink?"

"Not watch you, per se, just sitting down. I still need to take you back up after you're done."

"I can do that myself, you know. I remember where the office is."

"I need to be there with you for the conversation. It's required. I'll just stay here until you're ready to go, if that's alright by you."

"Yeah, okay," Hanbin breathes. "Fine."

He can do this. Hao won't comment anything off-handed or stare at him while he eats, like his mother does. Hao won't call him a pig and laugh, like Minho does. Or a cow, like his father used to say.

He won't. He wouldn't. Right?

"Sorry if I'm coming off as harsh, but we don't have all day," Hao reminds him. "You don't have to down it all if you don't want to. But I do ask that you at least try a little."

"Sorry," Hanbin exhales. Hao wouldn't.

He takes the glass into his sweating palms and lifts it up to his lips.

He drinks it all.

-

Hanbin wonders what Zhang Hao's bedroom looks like. If it is in any way similar to his father's office, containing a desk overflowing with used notebooks and shelves upon shelves stacked to the brim with books. And if it is, are they also all books on theology and psychology "from the Christian's perspective"? The same age-old, recycled stories of poor lost sinners finding Christ at their rock bottom, separated from each other only by their authors' (sometimes) and character's names, the covers, and the titles?

Does the Bible that's no doubt sitting on his nightstand catch the light and reflect it with a rich, healthy luster like his father's does; or does it lie suffocating under thick layers of dust in the darkest corner of his room like Hanbin's used to before he'd flew into a rage at the sight of it after a particularly bad fight with his mother and threw it away? Probably the first. Definitely, the first.

Hanbin's eyes wander back to the man sitting grave and purse-lipped in front of him. In his opinion, old Zhang and his son couldn't possibly look more different. Where Hao's pretty, graceful face curves and slopes in uniquely feminine edges, with a tasteful touch of the masculine in his sharp Adam's apple, a vaguely aquiline nose, and thick yet immaculately shaped eyebrows sitting low over his eyes- a delightful balance of yin and yang- his father's face is nothing more, nothing less than that of a man. Don't get Hanbin wrong, he doesn't mean it in an offensive way, but it is the face of a man the likeness of which one would pass by on the street on an average of a dozen times in the span of five minutes and still forget the exact countenance of if inquired about. The eyes behind those thick frames, black orbs cold and hard as flint, devoid of a human soul for kilometers deep, have not been passed down to his son either. Hanbin casts a glance at the boy sitting rigid in the armchair right beside Pastor Zhang and decides he must have taken heavily after his mother. But it's not like Hanbin had ever seen her. Or so much as heard a single thing about her from Hao's or Mr. Zhang's mouths.

That should be the last thing to bother him right now. The ominous rhythm of Pastor Zhang's fingertips drumming against the surface of his desk foreshadows worse things for him to be concerned with.

"Tell me why you're here, Hanbin."

Hanbin shifts his gaze back to Pastor Zhang's face and stares, hard and unblinking. Contrary to the man's belief, two can play this game perfectly well. "Pardon me, but why should I do that when you are already aware of the reason?"

Old Zhang arches an eyebrow and laughs. It's short, grating- more of a bark than anything. "You know, young man, the human race is quite an interesting species to have come from God's creation. Some of its members we may be close to for years, even as long as our entire life, and still we witness them grow and change with every day. They never remain the same, either evolving or devolving with their soul's calling in some way. And some we may have known for no more than a week, for an hour a day, yet when we cross paths with them years later they haven't changed in the slightest. Have you ever gotten the chance to meet such a person before, Hanbin?"

Hanbin bites back a laugh- the nature of this quip, at least, is right up his alley. "I have indeed. There is only one such persona I have had the great pleasure to make the acquaintance of though, believe it or not."

Needless to say, Mr. Zhang doesn't seem to appreciate the jest as much as Hanbin would have liked him to. "I see. Now, I would like to hear an answer to my question, if you may. Why are you here, at Blue Paradise Rehabilitation Facility?"

Hanbin doesn't answer, opting to stare straight into the man's eyes instead with the most psychotic level of indifference he knows how to muster. He is uncertain as to where this courage had stemmed from, if being driven to the edge with one foot dangling over the chasm only to be dragged back along the proverbial bridge that had brought him there in the first was what had finally made him stop caring, but he welcomes it. Weaponizes it, for as long as he is able.

"No one can force you to answer, if you don't wish to do so. You are right, I do know the reason. But the reason I wanted to hear it from your mouth is because I am curious about what you think you did to deserve to wind up here. But judging by your attitude, I'm beginning to doubt you think you deserve to be here at all. Hao," he motions to his son, who'd been sitting motionlessly in his seat staring off into space up until he heard his name being called. "Would you be so kind as to retrieve for me page two from the blue folder over there? Thank you. Now read it aloud for us, please."

Deja vu hits Hanbin like a truck flying at him full speed. His insides coil, a deadly viper preparing to strike, and yet he cannot move a muscle as Hao raises the paper to his face, similarly to the way Hanbin's father had on That Night. Hanbin's stomach churns as Hao opens his mouth to begin reading, but then Hao shuts it back closed before a single sound can come out of it, rapidly flushing scarlet.

"Well? Read it, son."

"I, um-"

"Read."

Hao gathers his bearings, still looking oddly stricken as he begins to read. "Name of student: Sung Hanbin. Age: Seventeen years, six months. Height, uh..."

"Not that. You know what I'm asking you to read!"

Hanbin catches it instantly- the slight tremble of Hao's fingers under the paper as he lowers it before taking a deep breath picking it back up again. He doesn't want to be here any more than I do right now. "Student was admitted upon parents' reports and complaints of: signs of demonically influenced mental illness, uncooperative behavior, corruption of family members, delinquent behavior, smoking, se-sexual depravity and...and..."

"Leave him be," Hanbin cuts in, unable to stand the sight of Hao's flaming face and neck any longer. "Sir, you're not illiterate. You can read in three languages; I see the books. Either you read or let me do it, if it's a step that absolutely cannot be skipped over."

"Please sit back down and stay quiet until I permit you to speak," Zhang drawls. "Hao, continue reading. There's not much left. Smoking, depravity, what else?"

"Ho-, um, well."

For a moment Hao's eyes dart to Hanbin, catching the latter off guard. He didn't think the boy would even want to look his way after the grand disclosure of Sung Hanbin's Long List Of Big Bad Iniquities, but what he finds in the look directed his way confuses him even more. 

An apology.

"Homosexuality," Hao utters quietly. A whisper, almost, leaden with shame and so painfully telling. In that instant, it is sufficient. Hanbin now knows another thing about Zhang Hao that nobody else in his joyless, suffocating little world does, but he makes no sign to show it.

"Yes, homosexuality," Zhang repeats loudly. "You see, Hanbin, your father had called me- well, my son here had been the one to pick up, several days ago with a very- how should I say this- shocking request to make. He'd returned home from his tedious mission work only to find his family in shambles because his son's secret second life had just been revealed to them by the Lord. Your father thought he could help you. He put in every effort to, he told me. He wasn't going to give up until his beloved son showed signs of waking up from his deadly blindness. But then he witnessed in full the effect that your behavior was having on the rest of the family. He saw that his home was no longer what it once was, that the beautiful dynamics God had intended for it were destroyed and the devil had sowed its evil seed of animosity and hatred through you, and knew the only way to salvage his family was to send you away until you came back to your senses. Not only for their sake, but for your own. You were supposed to come join us here on the day of the New Year- what a great way to start the new year, turning a fresh page to find your way back to yourself, don't you think?- but after you put your mother's life at risk he realized he'd committed a grave mistake by waiting and ignoring God's gentle call.

You know, we don't allow just anybody to come here when the reception period is closed. A young homeless man named Park Gunwook had been the only exception so far. He was struggling to hold on to life and drowning helplessly in sin when we saved him from the street just last week. I had heard God's voice calling me to stretch out my hand to that poor sinner and give him a second chance, for He told me that this action wouldn't be left without reward, if not on this earth then in Heaven. You see, I couldn't ignore God's command, as his loyal servant. You, however, have my connection with your father to thank for this chance at redemption."

Hanbin wills himself to stay calm, fighting the overwhelming urge to curse out the man in the most colorful shades of profanity known to humankind. "Connection? What are you talking about?"

"You must not realize the extents of your father's influence on our mission field!" Pastor Zhang exclaims, feigning surprise. "He is quite the name among such circles. As I myself am greatly involved in the mission field through connections and the occasional journey to pagan lands, I happen to know your father very well. He is a persevering soldier for Christ and His Word, I would say more passionate than any man of the Lord I have ever had the privilege of meeting. I feel incredibly sorry that he and his family have to be undergoing such trials at the moment. But the Lord works in mysterious ways; that He does, that He does. This situation could open valuable pathway to blessings in the future- yes, young man, even through you."

Soldier for Christ, my ass. Hanbin fumes in his seat, heat pulsing through his veins and begging for an outlet he cannot permit himself to use. He allows himself to imagine, albeit briefly, a blade held against the old man's neck, slicing through the surface, maybe deeper. Maybe drawing enough blood to spill rather than just bead on the skin and dry out minutes later, maybe enough to make him shakily declare he's not afraid to die. Then deeper, just enough to make him admit to his deceit and tearfully pray for his life.

It's got to be the nicotine withdrawal.

"May I leave now?"

"I apologize, but I am not done-"

"What more could you have to say?" Hanbin's voice is shaking now- he's the child kneeling on his parents' living room trying to beg for mercy all over again, but he's stronger now so he can't bring himself to care. "It's nothing I haven't heard before. Poor, poor Mr. Sung and his family- what did they do to deserve such a punishment? Twelve children and one's flawed enough to get the whole family grieving. Is confirmation what you need from me? Yeah, I'm dirty and promiscuous and evil and a demented queer. Is that good enough for you?"

It's not my fault. It's not my fault, it's not, it's fucking not.

He doesn't feel himself getting out of his seat, nor does he feel his legs moving. He can see, from a detached point of view, half of a body that doesn't feel like it's quite his because it's been replaced by anger down to the very last cell, the most delicate of the membrane- the last emotion seemingly left in him at all, too much of it compared to everything else.

Hao peers up at him, wide-eyed, beseeching. "Hanbin, wait, please-"

Hanbin explodes.

"Oh, what now!? Wait for what, exactly? What did you even bring me here for? To listen to my sins being read out to me one by one like I'm in fucking court? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, Zhang Hao. For fuck's sake, can you all just leave me the fuck alone!?"

The hallway is long, miles lengthier than he remembers it being. Pitch black, enclosing in on him like a deadly tunnel, rocking back and forth in a blur. In the distance, he hears a chair creak, then a "don't, son, let him go for now," but none of it louder than his breathing. None of it more bitter than the hot, angry tears inexplicably streaming down his cheeks. Where did they come from? That was child's play compared to what he'd had to hear from his parents and siblings. It should have made him laugh, at the most. And he's not sad, either; there's none of that left. He's full of rage, overflowing with it like a fountain with no pools for leverage, and other than that rage, there is nothing. 

Yet still, for some reason, the tears flow.

-

The window in Zhang Hao's room overlooks the backyard.

So do the windows in four other rooms on the second floor. But his is the biggest, offering the widest view. He'd picked out this room for that very reason, on the day they moved in almost two years ago.

He's since made it a habit to open it and lean out to look at the scenery when he needs to think. He thinks often. Too much, people have told him time and time again. It changes nothing.

He needs to think now more than ever. He's dying to digest what he'd just read, what that means for his future communication with Sung Hanbin and the measures his father would potentially want him to take. But he can't think about it too deeply all the same, not past the tremor in Hanbin's voice or the hurt in his eyes that had looked like it had never previously been allowed to be there without going unpunished. If he thinks about that, he'll have to think about the word. If he thinks about the word, he'll think about what it means, how it applies to him. 

It means nothing. Nothing at all. He isn't like that, like Hanbin. He's normal, always has been, always will be. 

Still, he hates the way his fingers automatically tighten over the ledge when a head of tussled black hair floats into his field of vision below. He watches with bated breath, as the figure stumbles forward in the snow with no apparent destination, as its hand comes up to its face to jerkily wipe away what Hao had thought the boy incapable of. Sung Hanbin is crying. And it's all because of him and his father. 

He wishes he knew, as he tears his coat off the hook on his door and lets the door slam, why it feels different than when the rest had done it. The guilt was always there of course, but it's nothing new to him. It was always a switch that could easily be toggled in whichever direction he needed it to be in order to stay indifferent in his father's presence; turning it off, especially, was more than just second nature to him by now. But then Sung Hanbin had come along. And for reasons unknown, he'd been the one to toy with it, finally causing it to malfunction when Zhang Hao had been most in need of it not to.

He's fast on his way out of his room and towards the stairs. Park Gunwook was even faster.

Hao already knows, when the back door shuts just as he's begun to descend the staircase, that Gunwook will get there first. And maybe that's a good thing. There's not a single word of comfort Hao could offer Hanbin in the moment. After all, Zhang Hao had been raised to dole out unsolicited advice and criticism that would drive the most docile of men lunatic. He was brought into this world to judge, never silently; to deliver from harm, but never leave the victim without blame first. It's all he ever remembers seeing his father do.

It's everything he's ever seen his mother fight against, before she had the opportunity to teach her son how to be like her instead of her husband. Before she took her own life.

By the time Hao closes the back door after himself, Gunwook has already caught up to Hanbin, a bare, muscled arm wrapped supportively around Hanbin's shoulders. Even then, Hao takes a few more steps before stopping in his tracks. He really should tell Gunwook to go put on a coat. But that would mean intruding on their brief moment of happiness, and that is just not what he does. "Children are always best seen and not heard," his father says. Besides, Gunwook would just snap at him to mind his own business and command him to leave, which Hao supposes he deserves anyway. He'd say the same to himself, if he were in Gunwook's shoes. Hanbin probably wouldn't appreciate his presence much either.

He turns back around into the direction of the house, defeated. Looks back over his shoulder once, only to see Gunwook's shoulders shake with laughter before he gives Hanbin a friendly slap on the back. More than Zhang Hao could ever give him, less than what he secretly wishes he could.

-

"What is it about him?"

"About who?"

"Hao," Hanbin says, absentmindedly twirling his fork in the air. "What makes him the way that he is? It's as if he's a robot. A marionette almost, you know? But then sometimes you look at him and it's just...I don't know. There's something heavy there. Tell me you see it too."

Gunwook sighs, throwing his head back against the mattress from where he'd sat down beside Hanbin on the floor twenty minutes ago, after having firmly refused to go down to the dining room for lunch with Hao and Mr. Zhang like he usually does. Something Hanbin is immensely thankful to him for, as well as the stupid fucking jokes he'd come outside to tell him when Hanbin couldn't find a way to put an end to those meaningless tears. "Don't know, don't care. Wanna know what I think? The kid's a fucking loser who sucks up to his old man for everything because he can't even think for himself. Speaking of, you're one of them deep thinkers, aren't you?" he turns to Hanbin, tilting his head. "Don't be. Nothing good comes out of thinking."

"I'd disagree. All the good things we've ever had in life had come from a great deal of thinking. Books, movies, music, social media- the good parts of it, and so much more. Just close your eyes for a second and imagine how dull this world would be if we couldn't think."

"Yeah well, you know what else had come around from 'a great deal of thinking'?" Gunwook shoots, bitter. "Drugs. Suicide. Fear. Thinking too much will kill you, dude. I've seen it happen. Just go with the flow and say 'fuck it' to whatever tries to stop you. It'll be fine then."

They finish their meal in silence. It's not a heavy one, but it's not exactly comfortable either. Still, Hanbin prefers this to the silence he's growing used to sharing with Zhang Hao. At least this doesn't tempt him to look and begin falling back into something he shouldn't.

-

Three days pass by faster than Hanbin had expected them to. He'd convinced himself that they'd surely drag on, for the four bleak white walls imprisoning him seemed to slow down time each time he entered into their vicinity without Gunwook by his side to make the hours fly again.

Hanbin doesn't know what he would have done these three days here without Gunwook, truthfully. Zhang Hao is far from being a suitable partner for conversation, as least as far as conversation that has nothing to do with religion and rules is concerned. And Hanbin is nothing if not an extrovert, even while never having been known as a particularly outgoing child, much less a loud one. He's always been one to draw energy from the people around him rather than from solitude, and Gunwook seems to understand.

Thankfully, Hanbin isn't spending the last few hours of New Year's Eve in that dreadful, suffocating room all on his own- courtesy of Gunwook's greed for companionship, of course. It had been Gunwook's idea for them to sneak out into the backyard half an hour before the big twelve strikes, so they would "at least see the stars when it happens". Hanbin had agreed with him. The stars look warped through the window netting whenever he tries to look at them. Tiny white dots sliced into quarters by black stripes of mesh, all their lustrous allure lost. Sure, the cold wind may make his eyes sting and the lightly falling snow brings back unwanted memories, but here, with a new friend by his side and no walls to hold him, the stars are clear. It's all he needs tonight, before he bids this rollercoaster of a year adieu forever.

He turns to Gunwook beside him and asks what he'd asked each of his friends every New Year's Eve ever since he'd read it in a book. "What would you want the new year to bring you?"

"A home," Gunwook answers without hesitation. "I don't reckon it'll be here. Maybe I'll move around a few more times until I find it. A family, too. That's something everyone expects a guy like me to say, but it's the truth, on god. There's really nothing else I'd like more."

"Hm. You did also say you like Maseratis."

"Dude, I'm as far from getting one as you are from getting a girl," Gunwook snorts. "But hell yeah, a Maserati would be dope. Like ten years down the line, maybe. What about you?"

"What kind of car I'd like, I mean?"

"No, you fucking moron. Same sentimental shit question you asked me. What would you like the New Year to bring you?"

A snowflake falls onto Hanbin's nose and lingers for a fraction of a second before melting. He wonders if it's snowing back home. If that deer is still alive, if it had children. "My little brother. My friends. My dance teacher and the studio. I want to dance again. Have a smoke, too. That's it, I guess."

"You dance? Damn, bro. You know, you never really spilled about how you got here. What happened and all-"

"I'd rather not," Hanbin interrupts softly. "I don't like thinking about it."

"And yet you still do" Gunwook says. "You think about it all the damn time. I see it on your face."

"What time was it on the kitchen clock when we went out?" Hanbin switches the topic, more than ready to turn it in a different direction. "We've been out here for approximately ten minutes."

Gunwook scratches the back of his head, his smile sheepish. "I, um, don't really remember how to read time. Sorry."

"Oh. Well, do you remember what numbers the arrows were on?"

"Eleven and nine?"

"We have about five minutes before January first then," Hanbin deducts, gesturing for Gunwook to follow him back to the door so they could sit up against it on the slab of concrete in front. "Let's wait for it. That clock chimes out the hours so loudly we'd be able to hear it from outside."

And so they sit- two shattered, abandoned young men side by side, awaiting another year of the unknown ahead as if it would change something. They each ask themselves if it could get any worse than the one about to pass. Perhaps this would be the very year that would change their lives for the "better" they both desire so badly but won't speak about. There's also a chance this would be the year one or both of them would finally meet their demise. Maybe this year, something or someone would come along to make them no longer wish for that possibility. 

One memory burns brightest in Hanbin's brain as he treads down this year's memory lane, hopefully for the last time. It is that of his birthday party; of Gyuvin's grin when he'd bragged about decorating the gazebo, of Ricky's eyes shining even as he insisted he hadn't wanted to come see them, of Matthew singing along to their song after so many years- singing loudly because maybe he actually hadn't hated Hanbin then, of Jiwoong's vulnerability when the two of them had relinquished the reigns to their loneliness, letting its demons drive them farther than they ever had ever dared to do before. And it's childish, it's dumb, but at that moment he looks up at the stars and makes a wish. 

That ache to live, the one I had on that day the last time all five of us were together. I don't care how you do it, but please, give it back to me. I want to feel it again.

Seconds before the clock chimes twelve, the snow ceases to fall.

-

Ding....dong. Ding...dong. Ding...dong.

Nine more times, and now it's midnight, January first. Exactly twelve years since the night the fireworks had been unusually loud. Twelve years since his mother had picked up the gun and erased six years' worth of Zhang Hao's memories with her.

"Hao. Are you even listening to me?"

"Oh. Yes, father."

"When you'll be assigning Hanbin and Gunwook to their cabins tomorrow, I want them to be separated. Place either of them into one of the empty cabins, if you must. I do not want Sung Hanbin to be living in one space with anybody he knows or anybody that may already know him. We need to hold off on the corruption spreading twice as fast as it already is, while it's still in our power."

"Yes, father."

"Here's to the Lord for blessing me with such an obedient child that walks in His light," Pastor Zhang smiles, baring his teeth. "May your fruit unto the Lord increase tenfold this year, my son. Happy New Year's Hao, happy New Year's."

The snow had stopped falling, unlike it had on that morbid New Year's night twelve years ago when death had entered their home. Zhang Hao stares out into the window and, as usual, says nothing.

-

Zhang Hao shows Hanbin and Gunwook to their assigned cabin that same morning.

Of course, Hanbin remembers Hao saying their official reopening date is on the first of January. He just didn't think old Zhang was that eager to get them out of the house to have his son escort them out, bags and all- filled with clothes and other small essentials they lacked derived from some mysterious source, because the two of them hadn't had any to bring along- at seven in the morning sharp. Oh, well. Some things just are the way they are, and you have nothing left to do but deal with it. 

Hanbin steals a look at over at Hao, just once; he can't help it when the energy emanating from the boy beside them is so palpably heavy it hurts. Hao's face is drained of all color, eyes once again taking on that strange reserved chill that Hanbin is steadily becoming familiar with. It occurs to him that while he'd been out with his new friend last night, gazing up at the stars and getting to know each other better as best as they could without crossing personal boundaries, Hao had probably been either holed up in his room, all alone, or sitting with his asshole of a father in lieu of a comfortable companion to celebrate with. He feels a pang of sympathy at the thought and instantly shakes it off.

After another minute or two of walking alongside a listless Hao and a grumpy, half-asleep Gunwook, the three of them finally come to a stop in front of a door Hanbin's seen one too many times. His heart leaps up into his throat at the numbers engraved on it in brass, chipped at the ages and glazed over with frost. He prays to the universe that he's reading it wrong, that Hao is playing a cruel joke on him, but it's all in vain.

009.

Does Hao honestly not remember, or is he just pretending not to?

"You and Gunwook will be staying here, in 009," Hao tells him quietly, because he does remember, knocking on the door as he speaks. When he doesn't get a response, he tries again, to no avail. After the third time he pulls a key out of his pocket, sighing heavily.

"Gunwook and I will be staying together?" Hanbin asks in disbelief, just as Gunwook lets out an excited whoop beside him. I won't have to do this alone.

"Yes," Hao confirms, twisting the lock and letting the door slowly creak open in front of them. "These are the only two spaces available right now. You wanted to stay together, didn't you?"

"I mean, I didn't think it would be possible, but yes, of course I would want that-"

He trails off abruptly, realizing that they've entered the room and that every single face in it- four of them in total- were turned in his and Gunwook's direction.

"Oh, damn," Kim Taerae grins. Still blindingly bright, still sunnier than any smile Hanbin's ever seen. Like he's here because he wants to be. "Fancy seeing you here, Sung Hanbin. Zhang got his revenge at last."

"How the hell do you know him?" another voice asks, tired and vaguely familiar. Eerily so. "Hao, how the fuck are we fitting another two people in here?"

"Sorry, Rui. You'll have to try."

Rui?

Chen Kuanjui...?

Hanbin gulps down the anxiety threatening to crawl up his throat and scans the other inhabitants of the room by one. There is nobody else he recognizes by name or by face, yet he knows them, every single last one of them, by the pain in their eyes. It's different, shining through in various levels- some glow white-hot with wrath, some run colder than the winter winds howling outside; still others are vacant, until you dig deep enough to reach their core and find it swollen and raw with desire for love and affection from any hand willing to offer it. That, in all of its ugly beauty, holds familiar to Sung Hanbin.

He hopes they could all get along, at the very least. At the most, become what Gunwook's soul hungers to be a part of- a family. Hanbin will do what he can with the leftover pieces of his heart to create it for him, if he has to.

From the far corner of the room, Kuanjui smiles sadly in Hao's direction. Hao sees it. Turns to leave. 

Hanbin stops him. "Wait. Hao, I..."

"Yes?"

This time, Hanbin locks his eyes with Zhang Hao's and holds them captive. "You wanted to say something to me."

"I didn't," Hao whispers in denial. "What made you even think that?"

"Maybe I'm not the one you wanted to say it to. Say it anyway. I'm here to listen."

Hao raises his eyes. Wavers, gives in. "Could you...?"

"Yeah?" 

"Could you...look out for him? For me?" Hanbin doesn't have to follow his gaze to know it's shifted to the farthest corner of the room, where Chen Kuanjui sits blinking back tears. "He shouldn't be here."

Neither should you, Hanbin wants to tell him. Or anyone, for that matter. But here we all are. "Okay. Okay, I will."

Hao gives him a quarter of a smile- if you could even call it that. It reminds Hanbin painfully of the way Yujin would smile at him, whenever he would stubbornly insist he wasn't hurting. "Hanbin?"

"Yes, Zhang Hao?"

Hao hesitates. It's something he does a lot, Hanbin's noticed. Every movement, every gesture, every word is carefully analyzed and thought over, premeditated in case of it going against whatever spiritual force is holding Zhang Hao back from finding himself amongst it all. 

"Take care of yourself as well, please."

Wonder. That is what fills Hanbin's chest whenever he learns something new about Zhang Hao, always something he'd least expected to know. It's a curious wonder, dark in places only one kind of wonder ever is.

"I will. You take care of yourself too, Zhang Hao." Hanbin smiles back.

And so, Zhang Hao's fall from Heaven begins.

Chapter Text

Silence.

Heavy, suffocating silence. That's what blankets the room the moment the door behind Zhang Hao goes closed, leaving the six of them alone with each other at last. Shattered, each to their own extent; some still visibly reeling from the shock, looking as if they'd been brought here straight from their beds at home in the middle of the night. Hanbin supposes it wouldn't be entirely a misconception, if the way he himself had been taken is anything to go by at all.

They're all looking at each other, scanning faces one by one in wordless inquiry. Hanbin wonders how many of them even know each other at all. Other than Gunwook, Kuanjui, and Taerae, he isn't familiar with any of the rest. There are two of them, to be exact, and going off of appearance alone they may as well be like night and day compared to each other- one is tall and broad, his long brown hair unkempt and falling into his face and over his ears, his clothes baggy and rather plain- the sort most teenagers wear when they really can't be bothered. His eyes are impossibly round in his cherubic face and carry such a soft, gentle light in them that they remind Hanbin painfully of Yujin's, making his heart squeeze involuntarily in his chest. Beside him sits another boy slightly shorter, scrawnier, yet his face is all sharp angles and wicked lines, his intense, dark eyes like that of a hunter laser-focused on its prey. Unlike the first boy, his clothes are stylish and tight-fitting; his raven-black hair meticulously slicked back with each strand artistically held in place with copious amounts of hair gel- just like Ricky always used to do, Hanbin thinks heavily. There isn't so much as a centimeter of space between them, he notices; they must have come here together.

Gunwook is the first of them to break the silence.

"So...names? Gotta know what to call y'all and stuff, you now. Me, I'm Park Gunwook, " he offers good-naturedly. "Have no fucking idea why I'm here, Zhang picked me up from a home. And this here..."

"I'm Hanbin. Sung Hanbin, seventeen and a half. I'm here for...quite a lot of things, I guess. Mainly for..."

Suddenly, he hesitates. Yes, they might all have been put in a correctional facility for one reason or another, mainly meaning none of them want to have anything to do with the religion of their families, but that doesn't mean some of them can't be homophobic. That doesn't mean he might not face daily harassment and chorusings of "faggot, faggot!" at best, get beaten up to a pulp and suffer a fatal brain injury like Jiwoong's ex-boyfriend at worst. Hands, fingers digging into his torn shoulder, pain...his mother's face peeking out of the hospital blankets, gaunt, gray... "I'm here for..."

"You don't have to do this if it makes you uncomfortable, honey," Rui cuts in gently. Hanbin watches, helpless, as the boy gracefully climbs off of his bunk and walks up to him, taking Hanbin's hands in his and giving him a comforting smile. "I'll go next. I'm Chen Kuanjui, eighteen. I'm from Taiwan, but I've kind of kept going back and forth every couple months for years now because, you know, problems with citizenship and all that. And I'm here," he says loudly, squaring his shoulders as he turns his face to the rest of them, "because I'm gay."

Before Hanbin can even react, throat closing in on itself from the sight of the radiant smile lighting up Rui's delicate features, the small, fierce-looking boy in the bunk across from them laughs sharply. "That's all? That's the one and only reason you're here?"

"Apparently," Rui deadpans, rolling his eyes flippantly. "I'm an angel where all the rest is concerned." He gives Hanbin's hands one light squeeze before letting go and plopping down onto the floor into a cross-legged position, gesturing to the boy who'd spoken to him. "And you are? I don't remember seeing the two of you anywhere before. But then again, the fucker's only ever let us get out with other churches once."

"I'm Wang Yixiang. They all call me Nicholas though," the boy tells them. "Moved up also from Taiwan, a couple years ago. I'm here for everything but murder and sexual harassment, at this point. Smoking, booze, drugs, sex- don't know what's wrong with that though- burglary, violence, weapons, you name it. I've been in juvy twice before this- once in Taiwan, once here, then jail once when I just about turned eighteen. I stopped with the crime after jail, gave up drugs and all that after a while and went to live with my relatives. They were some religious nuts, convinced I needed help beyond all that, so here I am. "

Beside him, Gunwook goes frighteningly quiet. Hanbin can't help but notice the odd emotion swirling in his usually smiling eyes whenever he's laid eyes on Nicholas throughout these past few minutes. They seem to go dark, almost as if in recognition of a fatal enemy, and Hanbin can't help but wonder if there's history. Nicholas doesn't seem to recognize Gunwook whatsoever. The realization manifests in the pit of Hanbin's stomach like an approaching cyclone- what Gunwook had disclosed to him in the bedroom all those days ago wasn't actually even close to being half the truth about his traumatic past.

"I'm Byun Euijoo," the tall boy beside Nicholas utters shyly. "I'm-"

"The hell are you doing here?" Gunwook interrupts, head inclining to the side in curiosity. "You look like you've never killed a fucking ant in your life."

Euijoo blushes from his ears down to his very neck. Hanbin instantly decides he likes him. "Same reason as Kuanjui. Um, yeah."

"Don't mind me asking," Hanbin interjects, giving up on trying to curb his curiosity. The two of them are just so different from each other. "But are you and Nicholas...?"

"We are," Nicholas barks. Wraps a protective arm around Euijoo's shoulders, as if Hanbin would have a problem with them somehow. "You a homophobe or something, dude? I'm warning you, I don't play about that shit."

Hanbin smiles to himself involuntarily. How comical. The one phrase he'd always get asked in this same exact derisive tone in the past had always been "You a faggot or something?"  How the tables had turned. Maybe, if he were to go insane enough, he could even get used to this. "Unfortunately, I actually also happen to be the object of said phobia, so no."

Just when Hanbin had thought Kuanjui's grin couldn't grow even impossibly wider, it does. "That makes four of us."

"Hey, I like 'em both," Gunwook informs them. "The chicks and the dudes. Don't go telling Zhang now though, it'll be too much for the poor fucker after everything else."

"Well, I'm Kim Taerae," Taerae drawls from his bunk, and Hanbin remembers with a start just what the boy's stance against the likes of them had been two and a half years ago. Perhaps it had changed, given the fact that he hadn't given any verbal reaction to them all coming out to each other one by one yet; or maybe he'd just finally learned to control his tongue. "I'm here because, well, I guess you could say I got caught up with the wrong kind of company. Shit got bad and, well, I found these guys. They had drugs- coke and all that, mostly. Drugs helped. That's all I can say."

Hanbin sneaks a careful glance at Gunwook. The latter's jaw works violently, but he doesn't say a word. 

Kuanjui decides to be the one to ventures the question that hangs heavy above them, am unrealized warning of much worse days to come. "I know that already because as some of you may or may not know, we're both from Zhang's church. But did you bring any with you? And how long has it been since you last took any?"

"My grandma strip-searched me, turned my room upside down," Taerae shrugs indifferently. Smiles. Hanbin instantly registers it as a front- a very well-rehearsed one. "She'd never done that before, mind you. It was a week after I'd just come from the hospital after a...uh...an overdose, so I suppose she was desperate. A little angry. Took what I had left from me, sent me here right after."

"How long, Taerae?" Rui's voice is quiet know. Shaky. 

A chill runs down Hanbin's spine in sudden understanding. We're all screwed.

Taerae's smile vanishes. "Seven hours."

"Shit," Rui hisses, covering his face with his palms momentarily before plowing them through his long hair, panicked. "We're gonna need to tell Hao."

"No, we won't. Why the fuck does he need to know?" Taerae argues, voice rising to nearly a scream. Out of the corner of his eye Hanbin sees Gunwook move to get up, considers stopping him but thinks better of it.

"Taerae, if you're going to go through fucking drug withdrawal in this place, of all places, it's either we let Hao know or we go through his father. You can't just-"

"Like he's not gonna go and run to his daddy about it instantly anyway? He thinks I haven't taken any since my hospital stay. Fuck you, Kuanjui, some shitty friend you are!"

"No, your 'shitty friend' is right," Gunwook cuts in calmly. Taerae's neck whips in his direction instantly, the anger blazing behind his thick frames enough to make Hanbin hesitantly inch towards his new friend in some futile attempt at protection in case things go terribly wrong. Mum was a druggie...kicked out the apartment 'cause all the money was going on her drugs. She got sick of me... "Listen here, kid. Your friend ain't doing this to fuck you up, okay? Withdrawal is a bloody bitch I doubt you've ever been through, and I know because I fucking saw it. I may not know Zhang's boy that well; hell, I don't even like the motherfucker, but I've seen enough of him to know he cares. He's responsible. Someone's gotta be on alert about the shit that goes on in here other than us four."

"Right," Rui nods, his voice now audibly more stable. "We wouldn't know what to do with you in case something goes wrong. Hao has his own car, in case we need it. And besides, he knows medicine. Like, really really well. He's pored over medicine books of every field ever since he's first learned how to read, okay? You know that. If there's anybody that can help- and no, I won't count Nicholas- then it's Zhang Hao."

Taerae stands unmoving for several seconds, studying Rui's face with a blankness that scares Hanbin more than it confuses him. A memory of the boy from two years ago unwillingly floats into memory- just as stubborn, just as rash and unpredictable, yet with a smile that used to reach his almond eyes and turn them into glittering crescent moons; a blankness that used to be easily readable. None of this remains, with the Taerae of today. 

"You know what? Fuck every single one of you, then."

The steps are loud. The turning of the knob is even louder. The slamming of the door makes Rui and Hanbin flinch where they stand.

"Well."

"That was a bitch move," Nicholas sneers. "Trying to rat him out to that dumb little Zhang shit? Seriously. Could've been a bit kinder to the guy, don't you think? He was struggling."

For some reason, Nicholas opening his mouth finally serves to become Gunwook's last straw. The giant gets up from his spot on the floor, stretching to his full six feet like a beast preparing to pounce. "Oh, I know you aren't talking right now, you bloody fent junkie."

"...what?"

"I'm just saying it's funny," Gunwook says slowly. "That you, of all people, have shit to say about being kind."

"Oh, yeah? The hell do you know?"

Hanbin looks between the two with mounting confusion, his instincts screaming at him to move, to help- but how can he, if he doesn't know what in bloody hell is happening? When once again, he has met another mirror of himself, a deep well of lethal secrecy that had the potential of poisoning everybody around it before it was ever undug?

"Nicho," Euijoo says nervously, now having gotten up as well. "Is this about Seobin?"

"Seobin...?" Rui echoes. He looks increasingly more nervous as the wordlessly appointed mediator of the group, but neither of the boys now close to butting foreheads seem to care, or even notice.

"Your boy know about this too?" Gunwook growls, turning his gaze on Euijoo, who cowers away from it before he can help it. "Wonder if he'd leave your despicable ass, if he knew his little boyfriend's a mu-"

"I had nothing to do with that and you know it."

"Oh yeah? Like you weren't standing right there watching it happen?" Gunwook presses, pointedly ignoring Nicholas's fist clutching his clothes violently in warning. Meeting his dark, smoldering stare head-on. "And now you're just like him. They would've done the same shit to you, and you know it-"

Nicholas full-on growls, not much unlike a wounded animal. "Shut the fuck up. Shut your bitch ass trap before I-"

"Alright, alright," Rui claps loudly, having regained his courage and now firmly resolved to break up the fight before it would bleed into something physical. "I have no idea what the two of you have going on, and honestly? I'm not interested. Figure it out later. We have other people in this dorm who've been dragged out of their beds before sunrise, and since classes don't start until tomorrow, we really all should get some sleep, don't you think?"

Euijoo comes up behind a heavily breathing Nicholas and lays a tentative hand on his shoulder, slowly steering him away from Gunwook. "Yeah, Nicho. We just came here. Let's not fight before we even properly get to know everybody, alright?" Hanbin marvels at how quickly Nicholas's eyes soften, how easily he deflates in the boy's hold. Wishes, briefly, to know what it feels like.

Nobody apologizes. It should have been expected. Still, Hanbin feels an uneasy pang in his chest when Euijoo takes his boyfriend by the shoulders and gently leads him out the door past a defeated Gunwook, who suddenly looks nothing like his previous borderline murderous self. He doesn't raise his eyes to meet Nicholas's when the latter marches by; his head hangs low, his eyes screwed shut in exhaustion deeper than purely physical.

"Gunwook," Hanbin tries carefully. "Do you...know this guy? Did he hurt you?"

"I know him." Curt. Bitten.

"Did he-"

The volcano erupts. Park Gunwook's fuse arrives at its short-lived end. "Oh, just leave me alone, man, will you!? I can deal with my own shit!"

Hanbin's left with nothing to do but helplessly look on as the boy, shoulders hunched and frame strangely smaller than Hanbin remembers it, stalk out of the door just like the previous three inhabitants all had. Gunwook's sharp response stings, in the depths of his heart, but somehow he knows that Gunwook wasn't truly angry- not at him, anyway. Hanbin rather prefers this to Gyuvin's heavy silences when he's sad sober, or Ricky's lame jokes in attempt to blow the insults off as if they never happened. For some reason, Gunwook trusts the world with his emotions, despite all that it had put him through in order to take them away from him once and for all.

"Gunwook will come around," he tells Rui. "They all will, we just need to give them some time. They might have shared the surface level of things with us, but there's so much you just can't and don't want to say in a single minute, you know? We're all so new to…this. Whatever you call it."

"You're right," Rui sighs. He walks towards his bed and sits down heavily, motioning for Hanbin to follow before the words pour out. "I just- it's about Hao. I feel so awful for Hao. None of the others but Taerae know this, but I've been here like, forever, Hanbin. Ever since they opened up the place a year ago, so pretty much since the beginning. They...they started off easy. Just, you know, regular 'problem' kids from church that don't have the most perfect reputation. Kids who could never really be saved from the rumors, at most didn't show interest in all the God stuff. Then Zhang moved on to kids with problems people actually knew about, stuff like drinking, smoking, girlfriends or boyfriends- all the shit the church disapproves of. Kids from churches outside of ours, mostly. We never had that many troublemakers, aside from Taerae, 'cause we were all scared, so fucking scared. And then..."

"And then?" Hanbin prods gently. Rui's nerves are visibly frayed after the morning showdown, his previously barely discernible accent becoming thicker the faster and more agitatedly he speaks. It pains Hanbin to notice that its appearance seems to upset the boy greatly. "It's okay, Rui. Take your time. Or you don't have to talk about this, you know. It's a lot and I get that."

"No, no, I'm fine. I've been dying to talk to someone about this for a while now, and you seem like the one right person here. It's just- I'm so worried about him," he sighs again. Stares at the boards above them and blinks, furiously, until Hanbin is sure his vision must look like the flashes of ambulance lights. "After some time, Zhang got cocky and started taking on the even more 'serious' cases. Honestly, 'serious' could mean ex-gang members or criminals with either a previously religious background or religious relatives who worried, or 'serious' could just mean poor queer or trans kids who just wanted to be left alone. I know one who's been here for a year now and I'm really close with her, and they forced her to live in the boys' quarters- and oh, it's fucking awful, Hanbin!

But that's besides the point. This period...all these kids who could actually cause serious problems like Nicholas, and Gunwook, and the new kid Maki they put next door…there's a lot of their kind still left over from last period, too. I'm not judging their backgrounds, don't get me wrong. By 'their kind' I mean the- the psycho kids. The ones who aren't afraid to get violent. Some of them respect Hao a bit, but some of them...some of them hate his guts. And by hate I mean the sort of hate that's nearly gotten him into the hospital before. He...he refuses to tell his father, Hanbin, because he's so worried, and I think Nicholas already hates him, and gosh I don't know what to do with him and- fuck, I don't even know why I'm telling you all this because you just got here and I don't even really know you but I saw Hao with you and oh, I'm just an over-sharer, I guess. I'm so sorry."

Gunwook seemed like one too, Hanbin thinks wryly. And yet everything he 'overshared' was barely the tip of the bloody iceberg, apparently. "Rui, listen. Yes, we might not know each other that well yet, but trust me when I say I understand. If it were my best friend in this situation, I'd be just as worried. To tell the truth, I don't really know why you're here. I don't fathom why your best friend just looks on and doesn't do shit to help you out of here-"

"No, oh god, that's not- look. I understand where everybody's coming from with this but he's really not what you all make him out to-"

"But what I do know is that I don’t know anything yet. Okay? I don't know enough about you, or him- or how any of this mess came to be, truly. And frankly, it's none of my business. But don't worry, I'll do what you want to me to do all the same. You can trust me on that."

Rui turns his head towards him slowly, wide eyes swimming with untold pain. "How…?"

"You want me to keep an eye out on him for you, don't you? Make sure he doesn't get into any trouble with the bad kids?"

"If you could do that," Rui breathes. "If it's no problem."

Would it be a problem? Hanbin isn't quite sure. He harbors the most confusing mixture of emotions towards Zhang Hao after all the incidents of the past week and a half. Now, it's become somewhat of a languid, sloppily hand-crafted monster molded half out of gray chunks of resentment, anger, and irritation at his close-minded worldviews; half out of iridescent grains of sympathy, fascination, and perhaps even the slightest flicker of interest- a desire to dig deeper, know and understand more of him for no specific reason at all. He wishes he could find out just how far Hao is willing to go for his father, what sorts of lengths he would run to if it meant staying faultless in God's- an in turn, his father's- eyes; and, if loyalties were to be tested, would Zhang Hao's perhaps someday, by some remote miracle, lie with him. Why that particular thought crosses his mind and blares at the forefront of it, he is at a loss to explain.

"It's no problem," he promises Rui, if only to see the clouds in his beautiful eyes temporarily dissipate. Lord knows the clouds in his won't be getting to that point for a long while yet.

-

When night falls upon the grounds of Camp Zerobase, Hanbin finds himself terrified.

There it was, that initially evasive catch to his mind's apparent numbness after the tragedy. The breath that caught midway in his throat as Kuanjui flipped the lightswitch off and plunged the six of them into complete darkness. The panicked gasp frozen on the tip of his tongue as Nicholas drew the blinds because he insisted any light at all prevented him from falling asleep, and nobody argued. The belated realization that the last time he'd slept submerged in pitch black had been during The Week Before Christmas.

The same week that had almost ended everything.

He'd been knocked out cold his first night at the hospital, merciful courtesy of the anesthetic he'd been administered to numb the pain so people he didn't even know could help bring him back to life with cold, lifeless machines. He'd fallen asleep during daybreak, his first time in Hao's room, warm and fed. He'd fallen asleep with the light on, all the rest of the nights. The worst of them.

He feels the first waves of the tell-tale dizziness set in the minute his head hits the pillow. Tries not to pay them any mind even as he understands clearer than day what's impending. He's not afraid, he tells himself. He knows better than to think it real. He knows he'll come to, after it ends. So he'll just let it happen. He won't panic.

It's just sleep paralysis. It's happened before.

Seconds…minutes…seconds…seconds…

And there it is- the room begins to narrow in on him. Slowly, but surely, his body becomes too heavy to move, his head too full of cotton to turn away. It's happened before. Many, many times.

Just not quite like this.

Never before had the shadows whispered as loudly as they do now, never accusations this vile. Not once prior to this have they taken on the faces of the people he loves, distorted them so cruelly.

Yujin screams bloody death, his face twisted into an abhorrent burning mass of melting wax. You left me. You were selfish enough to seek the easy way out for yourself and nobody else. You left me weeping, left me traumatized without ever getting to see you safe and healthy and happy after, left me all alone.

You left him, left us all, screeching, a black shadow with eyes so startlingly scarlet they pierce through the veil of darkness in the room in all the wrong ways, just like his father's. You're rotten through and through. You care for nobody but yourself. See? Nobody, nobody, nobody…

A voice without a body. Quieter than the rest, still rising above the screaming. Won't you eat, Hanbin? Won't you give your fate up to me and see the magic I can make of it? Won't you eat?

Matthew, I think he's dying…dying…think he's dying…

Red, all over again. God, he despises the sight of it.

Mommy said I'm not allowed to come near you anymore…

Alright then, I'll help you walk.

Up, up, up towards the ceiling. A millimeter a second, a snail's pace. Rendered immobile, helpless to fight back as he's raised up by the hands of a power so sinister that he can no longer breathe as it controls him, maneuvers every fibre of his body as if it was never his own to begin with.

He can no longer tell what the voices are saying. All he knows is that it's an amalgamation of all the things he's ever heard, truly heard. Things he's never been able to forget.

His body drops back down onto the bed at the speed of light without so much as a warning.

Darkness again. He finds he prefers it much more without that horrible red.

His heart seems to be beating at a thousand miles a minute, sparing his lungs no mercy. Every breath is a privilege that has to be fought for as he struggles to readjust to reality, convince himself that yes, he's back and that no, it wasn't actually demons at work like his father would have said, and that yes, yes, yes, he's fine. Fine, like he's always been at the end of things. And the end, it will always come to you if you just stick around long enough to see it.

Arms, warm and wrapping themselves around his uncontrollably shaking body, secure in their hold. There's a face pressed flush against his neck, then a nose nuzzling itself into his ear in much the same way that Doyoung's dog had used to do before his father had shot it dead for its bad leg in the backyard, when Hanbin had been five.

He's able to register the identity of the warmth even before he hears the familiar voice that murmurs sleepily into his skin.

"Couldn't fall asleep. I'll just stay here, if that's cool with you."

Hanbin wonders if he should let Gunwook know that he's a horrible liar, if only for no other reason than to help him step up his game in the future, for when he'll actually need it.

He falls asleep before he can decide.

-

Kuanjui is the one to find them first when morning comes.

"Are you and Gunwook…?" he asks Hanbin without finishing the sentence, observing quietly as Hanbin struggles to untangle a stubborn knot of hair in front of the mirror before letting out a soft laugh and coming over to help him himself.

"Dating? Oh hell no," Hanbin lets out a noise reminiscent of a laugh, closing his eyes in pleasure at the sensation of gentle hands working through his hair. God, it's been a while since someone's touched it like this. It used to be his mother, ten years ago. "I've only known him for a week. And it's just not something that would happen, believe me."

"He's sweet, though. You know," he hesitates, fingers momentarily stilling in their motion before he speaks again. "I heard you crying, last night. No no, you didn't wake me up, I promise. I've had problems with sleeping for years now. I was actually going to come over to your bed to see what's wrong but your friend beat me. Why were you crying though, if it's okay to ask? I worry, you know."

"I cried?" Hanbin asks, thoroughly embarrassed. For god's sake, this isn't the impression he'd wanted to leave upon his roommates so early on in their time knowing each other. "Well. It was just a regular sleep paralysis episode. Nothing serious."

"You get them often?"

"I used to get them practically every single night, back when I was younger and not really getting as much sleep as I was supposed to. It was a long time ago. They'd reappear for short periods of time throughout the year, after that. I don't know what the problem is this time if I'd gotten more than enough sleep this past week, though."

"Stress, probably," Rui supplies, cheering as he finally undoes the wretched knot. "New environment, all that. It contributes to all the sleep bullshit."

"I, uhm," Hanbin makes a sheepish face. "It…was the dark, actually."

Rui's eyes blow wide, right hand frozen halfway in the air with the hairbrush still in its clasp. "Why didn't you say!? I always have a nightlight at hand just in case, because one of my old cabinmates hated sleeping in the dark, but nobody opposed Nicholas so I thought…"

"It's okay," Hanbin shakes his head. He'd honestly expected Rui to poke fun at him like he knew most others would, somewhat flustered now that his expectations had been met with an entirely opposite turn of events. "I'll have to learn to live with it anyway. I'm seventeen, for heavens' sakes."

"I'm eighteen and terrified of insects. So? Is it Nicholas you're scared-"

"Someone say something about me?"

Euijoo, who'd been sitting at the edge of his bunk without a sound thus far and listening in on the conversation with one ear, instantly jumps up at the sound of his boyfriend's voice. "Nicho, what took you so long? It's almost breakfast time, according to the schedule. Gunwook still needs to shower."

Nicholas frowns. "I don't give a fuck about Gunwook." He throws a scathing glance over Hanbin and Kuanjui as if to wordlessly establish his position as the apex predator of the food chain, but even through all of that manufactured rough exterior Hanbin doesn't miss the way that gaze appears to skirt around Gunwook altogether. He fears him, for whatever reason there might be. Park Gunwook might just be the one person in this universe that Wang Yixiang fears like this.

"Why the hell are we all just standing there?" Taerae barks from where he's been pacing by the doorway for the past half hour, beside himself with anxiety unlike Hanbin's ever seen. "Can you just let me fucking go by myself at this point?"

"Breakfast didn't even start yet. You'll wait for the rest of us, Taerae," Rui answers evenly. "That's the way it's done around here. And with the way that you're behaving you'll have Hao's attention on you immediately if you go alone. That's not how I want to do this."

"Oh, fuck you and fuck Hao. Jesus. He can go fucking rot for all I care," Taerae spits. Aggression seeps through his every pore, pools into a stifling quiet that permeates the room as the gravity of the situation sinks into all of their minds, one by one. He's been off the drugs for thirty hours, Hanbin calculates. Twenty-two- less than a day if you only count the hours he's been awake. Barely the beginning of things, then.

He takes in the light tremble of Taerae's hands, the redness of his eyes. Asks himself how on earth they are all going to pull through the worst of it and come out alive. "Have you slept at all, Taerae?"

"No," Taerae laughs. It's short, grating- a chilling sound, to say the least.

Hanbin makes pointed eye contact with Gunwook behind him, hates the nervous way the boy's pupils dance as he observes Taerae, no doubt thinking of his mother. "Go shower," he tells him in hushed tones. "The faster you'll be done, the faster we can get him to where he can be helped."

Needless to say, Hanbin doesn't think he's ever witnessed anyone walk into the bathroom for a shower and step out of the in the span of exactly two mere minutes, down to the very last second. He was, though he wouldn't admit it to Gunwook, rather impressed.

"Classes start today," Rui tells them once they're all out the door and heading towards the cafeteria. "There's not that many new kids coming this period, only about fifteen, all of whom we're going to meet today. All the rest- still here from previous periods, bless their souls. There's some decent kids, some that are…well, not so great, then some who are literal angels. There are also a few who are dangerous. If you just avoid anyone that gives you bad vibes and focus on trying to not get into deep shit with the teachers at least on your first day here, you should be fine."

"That's easy to say," Nicholas grimaces. "You could get into deep shit with them just because you didn't smile at something you were supposed to and didn't know it."

"Not everybody has a resting bitch face quite like yours," Euijoo says, patting his shoulder in affection.

"Guys, just- whatever you do," Rui says, suddenly serious. "Be careful. Don't get called into Zhang's office on your very first day here, please. That's going to destroy pretty much any good chances you have at getting decent treatment, right off the bat."

"Zhang has an actual office that kids get sent to?" Hanbin wonders aloud, unable to hide the incredulity in his voice. "Like students get sent to see the principals for causing trouble in school? Seriously?"

"Oh honey," Rui sighs. "You don't even know the half of it."

-

Contrary to Hanbin's expectations, breakfast in the facility's painfully familiar cafeteria boasts no exciting moments. He'd expected so much more, honestly- like, for example, a cliché gang fight breaking out, or a bizarre fit of insanity from some poor student at their wits' end. He'd forgotten, ultimately, that this was never a crackhouse to begin with, nor is it the juvenile detention center that Zhang had so desperately been pushing for it to become with the local authorities when it had all just begun. All that this is a prison for young people whose only sin had been trying their best to navigate the chaotic labyrinth that is their life; a 'hell' created by a human hand that dared to go against its own teachings and deem itself God, but a hell that, unlike the one preached of, at least professes to offer its inmates a ticket for the staircase to Heaven.

This particular hell seems to thrive on segregation and sowing hostility among its civilians from the very start. Hanbin had been discouraged to learn from Rui that not only are the meal tables divided for each cabin- and placed so far apart from each other than Hanbin can't make out half the people's faces- but that talking to anybody outside of your own cabinmates, let alone the girls from the womens' section of the camp is strictly forbidden outside classes and the occasional assembly. He wants to ask Rui how on earth the boy seems to know so many people, seeing how fondly he speaks of them when telling stories, but Hanbin supposes one would grow tired of the regulations sooner or later and find a way to get around them if they really wanted to.

More than once during the beginning of the allotted forty-five minutes for their meal, he catches himself spacing out over his half-filled bowl of cereal (that he swears he's trying his best to finish), thinking about what his family would be doing at the moment. Sleeping, probably, what with the time difference and all. Which one of them, if any at all, are tossing and turning in their beds like he had last night? And his friends…Gyuvin must be back from his relatives' place by now, spending hours in the soccer courts to make up for lost time. Matthew- fuck, his father would no doubt have told the Seok parents about what their son had said. Hanbin prays that his friend hadn't been stupid enough to own up to it and willingly bear the brunt of their anger but rather made an excuse and stubbornly stick to it instead.

Once, he swears he hears a laugh from a faraway table that sounds so painfully similar to Matthew's it has his throat tightening up in misery. God, he's got to get ahold of himself already. He won't be seeing his friends in a while and there's nothing he can do about it but make peace with the fact unless he wants to drive himself mad all over again.  

Twenty minutes before classes commence, Rui motions for everybody to follow him out of the cafeteria. "It's best to find a seat and claim it as yours for the rest of the period before all the other newcomers pour in. And besides, I want to give you a little preview of classes and rules and all that so you can at least have a basic picture of it, okay?"

Hanbin begins to dissociate earlier on than he predicted he would. It starts as they traipse the three minutes from the cafeteria to the chapel. Worsens, as they pass the auditorium where Hanbin's last class as an attendee of children's summer camp was held; that same goddamned auditorium where he'd first met Taerae, talked back to Pastor Zhang, missed Yujin knowing back when he had the privilege of knowing he was going to see him again in a couple days. By the time they reach their designated classroom and Rui starts his mini-lecture, Hanbin's head is no longer on his shoulders. It's floating, far away above the clouds somewhere, full to bursting and yet thinking about nothing at all.

He hopes the day will be over soon.

And then Zhang Hao walks in, and Hanbin's feet are touching the ground again.

Rui only momentarily lifts his gaze from where's leaning on the desk explaining the schedule to Euijoo. Hao meets it. Hanbin doesn't know which of their expressions goes blanker the moment the miniscule spark of acknowledgement in both their eyes goes out.

Rui turns away and continues to speak, albeit quieter as Hao diligently goes about setting up the classroom for his lesson. Almost against his own will, Hanbin's eyes are drawn to him. It's not as if he hadn't tried to divert them elsewhere at first; he'd had no problem with burning holes through the wooden drawer in the corner before Hao had walked in. Now, for some reason, it is no longer so easy.  

Zhang Hao moves like water, or rather, the god of it. In the slightest of his motions, the most mechanical and automatic of his actions, there are waves undulating with a might he carefully conceals; a nebulous power he forces down into the pits of its source because for the people around him, it isn't one that is desired, or needed. It is a threat. Nobody wants to see God in places they are afraid to.

Hanbin senses that Hao can feel the weight of eyes on his back, even if he doesn't turn around to prove it. He must be used to being stared at, and with malicious intent most of the time too, but Hanbin doesn't have an ounce of it in him towards the boy and he hates that. Nothing makes him more anxious than being unable to figure a person out. His whole life, he'd survived by putting people into glass boxes that classified them as one or the other- Predator, Predator With Slightly Bigger Predators, Prey That Preys On Smaller Prey (or, as Jiwoong preferred it- Prey that has decent chances to level up to Predator in the future), and Fellow Permanent Prey- so he could know whom he could trust, whom to be aloof around, and whom to avoid completely. Rarely did one's characteristics ever fail to fit them fully into any of the four, or make them fall out every single one altogether the way Zhang Hao does. It frightens him but simultaneously instills an itching zeal to push farther, learn more about the enigma's ultimate innermost self because unlike most other people Hanbin knows, that's where he appears to hide every single little truth about himself. And until Hanbin finds his way to that corner of Hao's soul, however deep and seemingly unreachable it may be, Hanbin knows that looking anywhere else might be one of the hardest things he's tried to do in a while.

-

Zhang Hao speaks of rules as if they were confessions of love.

So gently, so powerfully. Too loud to leave room for meaningless questions, still a decibel too quiet to instill true fear. Not confident enough in delivery, an inkling of what could almost be deciphered as fear in his visage; but nowhere close to shy.

He's so much. Still not quite as much as his father wants him to be.

"I've already explained our newcomers how devotions will proceed. I'll have you know that I am your teacher for that subject and that one only, in situations when my father is too busy to lead it. All the other times I will study alongside all of you as a fellow student."

Right. He's a high-school senior. He still studies, does homework, passes exams. Of course he does. Hanbin forgets Hao's human too, once in a while.

"I don't think we need to go over rules of dress code; I am certain everybody is well-acquainted with the church's standards. Oh, and no long hair, of course. Nothing going past the ears," he shoots a hesitant look at Rui as he says that, but the latter only ignores him completely. "Now, as for rules of conduct..."

It's humorous, Hanbin thinks, that this should happen to be the part of the day that his eyelids get so unbearably heavy. There is never a better sleeping pill than the sound of self-proclaimed saints droning on and on about how to properly lock yourself into an airtight cage and how best to sequester yourself away from the world so it will hate you even more than it already does. More than once throughout it Hanbin feels Hao's eyes linger on his bent form, as if at war with himself whether or not to "do the right thing" and call him out for not paying attention. Hanbin slouches farther and farther down in his chair if only to test Hao's patience, get him to lose it, but gives up and goes still once he realizes it won't work.

The sleepier he gets, the thicker Hao's and his classmates' words slur as they bounce off of the bleak, decor-less walls. Each one flies into one of Hanbin's ear and out the other in no time, nothing but background noise, muddled and meaningless. God, but the chances of him losing his mind from boredom simply by following this mundane fucking routine every day for hell knows how long might just be way higher than his chances of losing it because of the actual kidnapping and forced conversion therapy. Once or twice, that goddamned laugh that sounds like Matthew's floats over faintly from the neighboring classroom, makes him want to find the boy doing it and throttle him in anger for the way his stomach coils painfully each time. Other than that, nothing. Just words, words, and more words.

Things don't stay dead for much longer, however.

"Trannies like him won't get into wherever it is you believe you're going where you die anyway. So what's the problem?"

This is it; his time to shine has come. This is the part of being a menace to his environment that he specializes in most, a situation where he can potentially make himself useful. Suddenly, sleep feels light years away.

"If you're going to call me that, then at least say 'her'," a voice sounds from the back of the room, loud and clear. Unashamed. Hanbin looks back to see that it belongs to a the lone girl in the class- because she is one, it would feel so wrong to call her anything but even if he were a hateful fucking bigot. Dyed reddish-brown curls, bleached eyebrows, huge dark eyes with a depth that could rival even Euijoo's. Something soft but at the same time, dangerously siren-like. "Say it right this time. 'Trannies like her'."

"Nobody's going to say that word a second time, or a third, or a fourth," Hao says sharply, glaring at the boy in the front of the room who'd apparently started it. "That term is noted as a slur in the dictionary. I thought I had just listed one of the rules being that use of neither curse words nor slurs will ever be tolerated on theses grounds. Sit down, Wumuti. If anyone else bothers you in such a way again, feel free to come to me about it."

He's different, Hanbin marvels, unwillingly reminiscing of the details of his first encounter with Taerae and how Pastor Zhang had handled it. He's so different from his father that it's almost laughable.

The boy Hao had just put down, however, seems to be far from satisfied with his hateful show of prejudice being shut down quite so quickly, and by the person he'd probably expected to side with him most. "You didn't answer my question though, honorable Zhang Hao sir. People like him aren't going to Heaven in your book, are they?"

"If she repents," Hao replies evenly. "Anyone who repents of their sins and makes an effort to turn their life around while putting their faith in God and the Holy Scriptures while trying their best to fulfill its commands, that person will gain a place in Heaven."

"She." He had actually called her "she." In that very moment, a fist-sized chunk of that nefarious gray monster falls off and melts into nonexistence.

"It's a he," the boy retorts angrily. "Why do you keep calling it something it isn't?"

The proverbial timer runs out. Hanbin decides that if nobody else has had enough yet, he definitely has. "She's not an it."

The boy whips around in his seat, hazel eyes squinting in disdain as his gaze lands on Hanbin, identifying him as the source of opposition. "Well, well. I figured there were bound to be a number of faggots and the likes in here, but this many at once?" A smirk grows on his face, leering and full of intent that has Hanbin's limbs tingling unpleasantly with wariness. "So how'd your parents react? You know, for them to have brought you here and stuff you'd think they did the right thing and denounced you."

Hanbin stares back, steely, willing his body to show no reaction. He knows what the boy wants from him, from Wumuti, and he's not going to be the one to give it. "She's not an it. She's a fucking human being."

"Sung Hanbin!" Hao barks from the front of the room, but Hanbin ignores him.

"Okay, okay," the boy laughs, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Jesus. The hell'd they feed you butterfly boys that you get this feisty? Doesn't suit the look at all, if you ask me."

"Butterfly boy"... Memories flood back, memories that are confusing and unwanted. "We should cut his eyelashes, Taeyeon. They make him look too girly." "If I see you wandering off to the makeup aisle one more time, Hanbinnie, one more time!- we'll be calling up that psychiatrist for real this time." "The Sung kid? Join the team? Sure, I guess… but can he even kick a ball? Just look at him, I mean." 

He wouldn't call himself particularly feminine-presenting, as wouldn't most people outside the church that know him. But an early interest in makeup, naturally pretty features in childhood, and his comfort in purely platonic friendships with numerous girls had garnered him more than enough questionable comments from people for him to not be familiar with the sting. "Why? I suppose you only like to see pretty boys opening their mouths when it's to suck your cock?"

A spluttering cough here, a wild hoot and whistle there. Someone even claps.

Before the room goes quiet.

The boy turns scarlet, his mouth dropping open as his face goes blank. Rui stares at Hanbin over the hand covering his mouth, eyes dancing in mirth as he struggles not to dissolve into a hysterical fit of laughter while Nicholas sucks in his lips in a poor attempt to do the same, only to fail and let out a very conspicuous strained chuckle that has Euijoo beside him peering up at the ceiling as if he doesn't know him. Wumuti smiles brightly enough to put the sun to shame.

Zhang Hao's face stays stone.

"I'm going to need you to come along to the office with me, Hanbin."

"Sure," Hanbin replies, wondering why he can't find it in himself to feel surprised. His first day at it, and he's already fucked up in such a flamboyant way. Not that he regrets it, of course.

He's about to open his mouth to ask Hao if he will be accompanied because he has no idea where that cursed room is located, but is interrupted by a loud ringing noise coming from Hao's phone instead. Hao dives for it so quickly he almost drops it before answering the call.

"Yes, Sohee...Already, huh? Send them over to the office, yes...It's your lucky day then, because I was actually heading there right now with my one of my own...Mhm, bye-bye." He disconnects from the call with a heavy sigh and looks over at Hanbin, weary. "Come along, then. It seems you're not the only one to have gotten in trouble on your first day here, so at least you won't be alone."

Hanbin follows him out of the classroom with his head held high. He sees Rui shoot him a proud smile out of the corner of his vision- comical considering how adamant he'd been that they'd all go through their first day without getting on The List, but it lifts his spirits nevertheless. It's not all bad, not like it's his first time getting told off for standing up against hatred. Besides, Hao had mentioned he won't be alone. Hanbin wonders what the other culprits could have done so early on in the day to get sent to the office, and already feels a kindred connection with them for that alone.

"I wish you'd realize that I don't really want to do this, Hanbin," Hao tells him tiredly as they make their way down the darkened hall. Hanbin casts a surprised look at his face, not having expected him to speak out on the matter after exiting the classroom. Or at all, if he were to be honest.

"I wish I could realize that too," he replies slowly. "You haven't really done much to prove you don't want to though, have you?"

Something white-hot sparks in Hao's eyes, burns out almost as quickly as it had appeared. Hurt, Hanbin realizes with a start. He had just broken past that deceivingly impenetrable brick wall and made Zhang Hao hurt, even if only for a second. Strangely, he doesn't like the way the thought makes him feel.

"The office is here," Hao informs him brusquely once they make it to the end of the hallway, motioning to the last door. "It won't take long, just a quick talk. I know it might seem like overdoing it, but it's the rules."

Hanbin doesn't answer him.

Hao sighs heavily. "Alright. Get in there and I'll follow you shortly, okay? I need a couple minutes to wrap up the lesson as I'm not allowed to leave them alone for longer than five minutes, please understand."

Hanbin watches him leave and doesn't even know why he does it. He stays rooted in place until Hao rounds the last corner and disappears out of view on light feet, like fog scattering on a gray winter morning. Maybe, just maybe, Hao commands not only the waters, but also parts of his heart much too soon.

The moment Hanbin enters the office, his heart drops to the soles of his boots and doesn't come back up for minutes after.

Where he couldn't previously find any traces of the woman who'd given Zhang Hao life and the very blueprint of her own soul, he is surrounded by them now. She's here, Zhang Hao's mother- every missing bit and piece of her essence that had been so loudly absent from her son's home appear to all reside here, screaming so loudly they punch the air out of him and renders him frozen. A particular type of cold he hadn't felt in a while.

He takes a step forward, apprehensive to even look around, much less touch any of the memorabilia out of solemn respect for the departed soul. Little antique trinkets and dozens of mini-statues line the desk- things he knows for sure haven't originally belonged to Hao. A single faded necklace crafted out of seashells is encased in a glass case on the highest shelf, too high to reach without the help of a ladder. Portraits line the walls- framed photographs of young Zhang Hao with his mother, in each of which he strangely never ends up looking older than five or six years. In one, she kneels at his feet in a long white dress, seemingly uncaring of the moist green grass potentially ruining the fabric as she ties his shoelaces with a gentle smile, Hao looking on at her delicate hands with intent focus. In another, she stands in the middle of an empty amphitheater, one arm holding her hat in place from the wind and the other holding a laughing Hao, his tiny arms spread out into the sky like a bird that had once flown wild and free. 

In yet another still, she stands beside a woman Hanbin doesn't recognize. There's not an inch of space between them, and they gaze into each other's faces with the most tender of smiles. At their sides, clutching onto the hems of their dresses, are two little boys around the age of six- one of them Hao, and the other whom Hanbin instantly recognizes as Taerae. If he didn't know any better, he would've thought the picture was of a happy, thriving young family with two mothers as the parents and no man to ruin the picture. 

Not a single one of those numerous portraits holds Zhang Hao's father inside of them, just like none of the portraits in the Zhangs' home hold any of his wife. It occurs to Hanbin then that this office, for whatever reason there may be, is more of a home to Zhang Hao than the mansion on the hill will ever be. This is where Hao goes when he'd rather die than speak.

He's about to turn on his heel in favor of waiting outside when voices suddenly begin approaching from the hallway. 

More specifically, one voice starkly rising above them all. A voice that momentarily makes static crackle in Hanbin's vision before his brain goes vacant in utter disbelief.

"Hanbin? Sung Hanbin? Ahh...should've figured the fucker wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut here for long."

Another voice, familiar- the static crackles again, twice as hard. "That's exactly why we love him, you know."

The ceasing of footsteps, the turn of a knob. Two pairs of eyes that Hanbin knows better than his own, had spent years of his life peering into to worship the way they lit up and creased when they laughed, when they blinked faster than the speed of light and glittered like priceless diamonds in the rare moments they cried.

"Hey, Bin!" Matthew waves with a grin so luminous that Hanbin's knees buckle at the sight of it. "It's been a while, ain't it?"

"A while," Gyuvin echoes quietly behind Hao, dark eyes swimming with unshed tears even as he smiles at Hanbin with all his teeth, affectionate and so disgustingly relieved to see him for no other reason than that he loves.

Gyuvin and Matthew have always loved, love, and will love- far too much.

"You're crazy," Hanbin whispers, stumbling, choking on the words as they leave their mouth. "You're so fucking crazy."

Every part of his mind goes into overdrive as his friends' arms wrap around his frame, squeezing the life out of him as if there's no tomorrow. He's blanking, powerless to hold them back with equally reciprocating enthusiasm, but he supposes the limp movement of his arms as they rise to rest on each of their backs will have to be enough.

"I've always been crazy where you were involved," Matthew mutters into his shoulder. "It's always been you and I, Bin, always the two of us doing crazy shit ever since we were kids. You weren't planning on leaving me out this time around, were you?"

I hate you, Hanbin wants to tell him. I hate that you knew I would want you to stay out of trouble and keep your trap shut, because you're well aware that your happiness and safety mean more than anything else you could do for me, and you still chose to come here over the peace you could have rebuilt for yourself and thrived in. I hate you and I hate Gyuvin too for going and choosing me.

"Don't hate us, Hanbin," Gyuvin sobs like he heard every thought. Curls his fingers in his hair, desperate, and Hanbin suddenly remembers where and how Gyuvin had seen him the last time. Hugs him harder. "You couldn't have stopped us anyway."

Hao clears his throat from the doorway- Hanbin had completely forgotten he was standing there in the first place, looking on at the entire scene. "So, um, you'd better move this somewhere else because-"

"How'd you get here?" Hanbin asks Matthew breathlessly as the three of them break apart from the hug. He heard Hao, knows full and well he's ignoring him and bringing him more trouble, but he couldn't care less in the moment. Nothing is more important right now than his two best friends, sitting in front of him like it's nothing and Hanbin hadn't been going through hell trying to reconcile with the fact that he might not see either of them again for years. "What did you do? Why are you here, of all places?"

"We'll talk about that later," Matthew tells him. "First you tell us how you got here, what's been going on, how this even happened. How are you even, Hanbin? Last I've seen of you…last Gyuvin's seen of you, you were dying. He thought you weren't going to make it."

Hanbin always looks away from Zhang Hao in the moments that would have told him so much more.

Nobody sees Zhang Hao's eyes widen at the last of Matthew's words. He'd gotten told that Hanbin's hospital stay was for nothing but a bad fall and the result of poor self-management.

Nobody had seen the spark of longing in his eyes, as he'd stood there watching the three share something he'd never before had the chance to experience, a bond he'd longed for with a hunger that would chew him fleshless on the darkest and coldest of nights. Nor had they seen him shoot alert glances down the hallway every few seconds, watching out for consequences of the problem he himself created.

Nobody sees him slip out the door, either, and he'd rather they not. Hanbin is smiling, albeit tearily, but smiling. Hao tells himself that he wants to spend as little time seeing it as he is able before he vanishes from the hallways.

He picks up his phone and dials Sohee, his friend and the devotions leader from the classroom next door, and makes sure to scan his surroundings carefully before he speaks.

"Yes, Sohee. All done. Who'd you say were the two that got into trouble? Yes, I'm free to take care of them now. Okay, but- the auditorium today, don't send them to the office. It's temporarily shut down for maintenance reasons."

-

"We don't have a lot of time, and I'm not too excited about getting into trouble for absence just yet," Matthew says, jumping up onto the edge of Hao's office desk and making himself comfortable. "But you wanted to know how we got here."

Hanbin nods, feeling last night's lack of sleep crash down on him in increments along with the shock still riddling his body. He wants to know, of course, he won't be able to go back to class and sit there without going insane if he won't know, but Hao's absence in the room is an acute crawling sensation in the lining of his stomach for reasons he can't understand. He hadn't noticed him leave. He remembers, vaguely, that Hao was supposed to have a conversation with them about their behavior. Whatever happened to that?

"Of course I want to know," he replies. "But maybe we should have this conversation after we get fucked up for our behavior first."

" 'We?'" Gyuvin frowns. "Who's 'we'? Are there more than just you?"

Hao had never gone back to the classroom, either. He'd gone to Matthew's and Gyuvin's to get them. When they'd never actually had an official reason to come here.

"There were," he says slowly, making a mental note to fully process that information later in the day. "Never mind. Start talking, Matt. Before I throttle you."

"And if I'm into that?"

Hanbin laughs. It feels good, to laugh.

The next ten minutes send him on a rollercoaster of emotions he feels as if he's experiencing outside of his own body. Matthew tells him, stumbling over his words, how Yujin had run to him in panicked tears when he and Gyuvin had appeared at the hospital the next morning, unknowing that Hanbin was no longer there. How he'd pleaded with them to tell him the address where Hanbin had been sent off to, or if his father had lied and Hanbin had died and was sent to the morgue before he could find out about it, the confusion that morphed into a chilling fear as they realized that Yujin hadn't simply gotten mistaken and Hanbin had indeed disappeared from his hospital bed without a trace. How Hanbin's father refused to say a single sentence to them other than "he's gone to get help", which led them to connecting the dots together. Getting into his father's phone with the help of Yujin's photographic memory of numbers and passwords, successfully tracking the number to the exact facility on their first try.

Matthew hadn't even had to try. Mr. Sung had inevitably spread the word of his son's deadly secret to his parents, like Hanbin had known he would. He asks Matthew carefully about what happened, how bad exactly had it gone- but Matthew defers from talking about it, only casually brushing back his thick hair to reveal a bruise black as night decorating the sharp line of his jaw and telling Hanbin everything he needed to know. He fights the bile rising in his throat as Matthew tries to speak again but loses his voice, wants to cry when Gyuvin intuitively takes over after one quick look at Matthew's wandering eyes.

"It was only a matter of trust," he tells Hanbin sadly. "I didn't want to do it, believe me. But Matt- he said he had nobody but you and me, now. That he wanted to stick by the people he had left. They were getting ready to…to throw him out anyway. He asked me to talk to his parents about this, 'recommend a place'."

"And you?" Hanbin's voice shakes as tears stream down freely. "Matthew's a dumb fuck if he believed he had nothing left to lose. What about you, Gyuvin? What about soccer? The academy? I know you still love your parents for some stupid reason so what the fuck was going through your head?"

"You," Gyuvin smiles gently. "Matthew. And me. Because if you're going, Hanbin, then so is Matthew. If Matthew's going, I'm alone. I'm alone- I worry myself sick over both of you and I won't be able to breathe. I care about soccer, of course I do. But I believe we can get out of here in no time, if it's us three. It won't even be a few weeks, trust me. I can never play soccer again if I lose my fucking mind, Hanbin. I lose my mind if I face the chance of losing the only people that know me. Please- please understand."

Hanbin gathers them both into a hug again, feels Gyuvin's fingers trace the risen outline of his scars through his sleeves. Realizes the boy had memorized the lines of them, hates hates hates and hates and hates.

"I understand, Gyuvin. Believe me, I understand."

-

He can't focus.

Everything has been too much, and they're barely into the afternoon. How the hell is he supposed to focus on quantum equations when his friends had trapped themselves in this prison of their own will and are now sitting just one wall away? When his father hadn't even told Yujin where his brother had gone? When Taerae has asked for one too many bathroom breaks and had come back from each one looking increasingly more unwell, when Wumuti had come back from breaktime and immediately laid her head on the desk so her hair would cover her tear-streaked face from the rest of them? Why is it that with the world's angels crumbling to dust around him, the most important thing in the moment is supposed to be the numbers on the paper?

Time crawls, but crawling is moving nevertheless. After an eternity, the only two classes left for the day are what Hanbin has been dreading the most- the conversion sessions.

Immediately, his classmates are divided into several groups, some much larger than the others and vice versa. "Alcoholics, drug addicts, sex 'addicts', queer kids, the violent ones," Rui explains before waving goodbye. "You might meet kids who are here for neither of these five reasons but are still forced into one of the groups anyway. Sorry to leave you babe, but the daily sessions are only for the newcomers. I have them twice a week so I'll be rotting away in my bed whilst y'all have fun over here."

Which is how Hanbin finds himself sitting right in the middle of the circle of chairs in the auditorium of the neighboring building, flanked on the left by a placid Euijoo and on the right by none other than a deathly bored, half-asleep Seok Matthew.

"How can you even want to sleep at the moment? We're about to be in conversion therapy, Matt. Fucking conversion therapy. The very thought." He's attempting to make it sound humorous. Like he's not trying his uttermost best and failing to stop thinking, stop remembering, prevent a panic attack he knows is lurking somewhere in the sidelines, laughing its heart out at him.

"Shh, I'm trying to dissociate," Matthew mumbles without bothering to open his eyes. "Respectfully, shut the fuck up."

"Oh, Matt. It's so nice to have you back again."

Realizing he won't be able to get comfort from his best friend at the moment, he sighs and turns to his last resort, who has been sitting there silently observing their groupmates this entire time. "Hey, Euijoo. So where would they even put someone like Nicholas? He's done everything, according to him at least."

"Oh, they didn't put him anywhere," Euijoo answers with a fond twinkle in his eye. "He's run off and hid."

"He what!? We're allowed to do that...?"

"I don't think so, but it's Nicholas we're talking about here. They won't find him," Euijoo shrugs. "At least not while the lesson's still going."

Hanbin knows what he needs to do before Euijoo even finishes his sentence, quickly beginning to unbutton his dress shirt below his coat. "Hold that thought real quick."

"What are you doing? Hanbin, no, the teacher's already on the way-"

"Relax, I've got this."

He almost hadn't. The teacher bumps into him halfway down the hall. 

"And where do you think you're doing?" the man asks, raising both bushy eyebrows in suspicion. It makes him look uncannily similar to the Slipknot-looking demon from "Sinister" and paradoxically, Hanbin instantly feels much less scared about his plan. 

"Cabin," he blurts out, putting on his best angry expression. "The teacher told me to change my shirt immediately before the next lesson because the neckline is too low and that violates the dresscode. I'm trying to go as quickly as I can." Surely he can't see it's a button-up. He can't, right?...

The man pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, staring down Hanbin all the while. His beady black eyes linger on the exposed quarter of Hanbin's chest a moment far too long, and Hanbin feels his insides freeze over. "I reckon that teacher was right, now. Too low, much too low. Run along now, but make sure you come back. Run along!"

Hanbin didn't need to be told twice. 

He buttons his shirt hastily as he walks away, fingers fumbling from the shock and disgust that pulses through him in frigid waves from that sleazy look. Does Zhang have any idea what kind of people he hires to brainwash his students at all? He probably does. Hires them anyway, raises their salaries when they ask. Hanbin wraps his coat tighter around himself as he steps outside, cold from something other than the winter wind.

He's about to swing the door to the cabin wide open and barge inside when he's stopped by the sound of voices from within, so loud they're bordering on yelling.

Cursed fucking cabin. He keeps overhearing conversations he shouldn't in here even two years later. Maybe it's the number nine- it's cabin nine after all, and the first time he'd been here had been two-thousand-sixteen- turn that six around and it also becomes a nine. Jesus, even a skeptic like him wouldn't dismiss such a possibility at this point.

Fuck whoever's in there- not Rui though, he likes Rui- Hanbin will walk in there like he owns the damn place and fall face-first into his bed like he's been dying to ever since the first minute of the first class commenced. Whoever is talking in there can keep talking, for all he cares. As long as they're not trying to get each other pregnant while he's there to witness it firsthand, he's fine.

Or maybe he'd spoken too early. He almost trips over his own shoelaces with the speed that he dives back around the corner when he recognizes the other voice. 

"I don't make the rules, Kuanjui. You know that!"

"Yet you follow every single one of them like you fucking did! Every goddamn little rule, Hao," Rui yells in anger. "Why the hell are you speaking to me in Korean right now, for example? What's the reason for that?"

"I-"

"Because it's another stupid rule your father made! And you follow even this one like a blind fucking dog when you know there's no reason to," Rui's voice trembles before abruptly switching to Mandarin. Hanbin thanks the universe for having given him the burning passion to pour so many of his free hours into studying it over the last several years, even if the unfamiliar dialect Rui uses throws him off a little.

"How much of yourself are you willing to lose for him, Hao?"

Hanbin hears Hao's breath catch even from the distance that he's standing. "I'm not having this conversation with you again."

"When have we ever even had it!?" Rui cries in frustration. "You clammed up halfway like I didn't fucking grow up with you. Like I'm not your sworn best friend. Remember that dumb blood pact we did when we were nine, Hao? Remember your dad walking in on it and beating the shit out of you because he thought you were practicing witchcraft?"

"Rui…"

"Forget it. You know what? I'll do it. I'll cut my fucking hair. At least you can tell your dad you did your job and save yourself from trouble."

"I don’t understand why it's such a big deal for you," Hao shouts. Hanbin had no idea he had a voice like that on him. "It's just hair. It'd be so much easier on you if you just followed the rules. Why is keeping your hair like that even so important to you!?"

There's a pause, a momentary stillness that accentuates the tension between the two so starkly that Hanbin feels like a sinner for intruding, wants to leave and never come back. "Because you used to have it like this."

"What?" Hao whispers. It's so loud in the pervading stillness that Hanbin flinches from the heaviness of it.

"You used to have it this long, two years ago," Rui repeats, and Hanbin can hear the sad smile in his voice. "It was the one thing that you refused to obey your father in, in case you forgot. You'd do everything he told you except for cut your goddamn hair, because your mother had always said over and over again that you'd look good like that. Remember how you father went crazy every time she'd tried to get it to grow out and not give you a haircut? And then…and then he built this bloody school and you cut it and you changed, Hao. I look at you and I don't see my best friend of sixteen years anymore. I see your fucking father."

Hanbin knows they hear the door slam behind him. He doesn't care.

He makes it off the pathway just in time to vomit into the bushes. The words play in his head over and over again like a broken record as he heaves. I see your fucking father. I see your fucking father.

I See. Your. Fucking. Father.

He doesn't know Zhang Hao as well as Rui does. But he still knows exactly where those words will make Zhang Hao go when he hears the door behind him slam, the footsteps crunching along the snow slowly, then faster and faster until they're running, dashing as far away from the building as they're allowed to go. He also fears that Hao saw him keeled over in the snow, trying to catch his breath, and probably put two and two together rather quickly.

Somewhere in his attempts at learning Zhang Hao, Hanbin had once more committed a grave mistake.

Before he can try to make amends for it, however, he cautiously tiptoes back into the cabin to brush his teeth, after which he heads to the room, only to find Rui standing with his back to him and staring woodenly at the wall without moving a muscle.

"Rui, um. Are you okay?" It comes out small, pathetic. Not the way that he's used to speaking to anybody but his family.

"I would like to be left alone, if you don't mind."

"Okay." Hanbin understands. Appreciates Kuanjui for telling him instead of turning around and putting on a mask for him. He thinks he might have a lot to learn from the inhabitants of this cabin in the time to come, more than his parents hope he'll learn from the useless conversion classes that they paid for.

His conversion class. That's where he's supposed to be right now, where he's supposed to return to.

His feet take him elsewhere.

To the neighboring building. The one with the shrine built for a dead mother, disguised as an office. The one hiding a boy who Hanbin had so foolishly thought wanted nothing more than to be like his father.

The room is soundproof. He wouldn't have known if the silence permeating the empty hallways hadn’t been broken so abruptly, so breathtakingly as soon as he entered the office.

Hao takes out all his anger on the bow and violin in his hands so violently that for a moment, Hanbin is rooted in place with the force of it. He vaguely recognizes the piece as Paganini's "24 Caprices"- the epitome of hell for any sane musician, not to mention a violinist. Hanbin's pupils dance with the wildly fluctuating direction of the bow as if hypnotized, before greedily taking in the sight of the wrists, graceful and bending back and forth like palm trees shaking in a storm; the fingers flying, deft and powerful, pressing in intervals with all their might onto the strings and undulating back and forth to make them vibrate. Hanbin wonders if Hao knows that he dances as he plays. His feet pace back and forth like a madman's as his body seems to twist and turn with each change of octave, as if possessed with something that desperately wants out of the prison that is his flesh. His eyes are shut tight, eyebrows furrowing as if the music is an ache he wishes to get rid of, allow it to float out of his bones and into the endless planes of snow so it could sink into the mud below it, not to resurface until spring returns to turn it into wildflowers.

All of it takes Hanbin's breath away, has him stepping closer to the vortex without realizing it. He's in a daze and he wants to touch; sweep away the dampened hair falling into Hao's eyes, sinfully attractive as the sight makes him. He wants to rip the instrument from his hands and push him into a corner just to see his rage explode in fireworks, wants to suffer from the residue and burn. He wants, and he wants, wants, but oh God- isn't it too soon to want? Is he even allowed to?

A step too loud, a meter too close. The music comes to a stop.

Ice.

"What are you doing here?"

Contrast, everything about him is pure contrast. Ice on his lips, fire in his eyes. Hanbin doesn't know where to find the middle ground.

"I asked you- what are you doing here?" Hao asks as he carefully puts his violin back into its case. His tone so eerily calm it sends chills up Hanbin's spine. "This is a private space. You are not supposed to be here unless I or my father personally invite you."

And Hao's right, Hanbin realizes belatedly- he isn't supposed to be here, he doesn't even know why he's here in the first place, or what he thought he was doing when he allowed the beating of his heart to lead him here. What did even he think he was about to do? Apologize? Comfort him about something he'd never dare let see the light of day? He's stupid, so impossibly stupid. Always stupid.

He wants to tell him that, but doesn't get far with it before there's fingers wrapping around his arm, making imprints in his skin. He startles, wants to scream, but there's a voice that doesn't sound at all like his father's whispering into his ear.

"Quick, we have to hide!"

A flash of colors, a mysteriously opened portal of darkness, a careful hand pushing him inside- and they're gone. Vanished. Dissipated from thin air like they never existed in the first place, their souls teleported into the void by some sheer force that Hanbin recognizes only seconds later had been Hao's fear.

"My father," Hao whispers, panicked. "It's him and his coworker. Good thing you left the door open so I could hear them coming."

"What are they doing here in the hallways when the building's empty?" Hanbin asks him. Not like he cares about that at all. He can't, not when Hao's so close to him that he can't find where his body ends and Hao's begins.

"They come by sometimes. They come into this room too, even though I've politely asked them a million times not to. I made a lock and he still got the key somehow."

"That's fucked," Hanbin whispers back. "But why-"

Hanbin can't decide which he heard first- the footsteps rounding the corner of the hallway or Hao gasping into his ear as he hurriedly shuts the door to the closet as quietly as he can, unintentionally pushing himself against it in the process.

He could have moved. Hanbin could have moved too. But it's too late. They can no longer afford it; Pastor Zhang and his friend have already walked into the room.

He doesn't pay much attention to what they say- it's all meaningless drivel about work and money anyway. It's the last thing he wants to be paying attention to, but in all honesty, maybe he should be. His hands are pressed against Zhang Hao's heart.

It wasn't intentional. When Hao had turned and accidentally cornered himself against the door, Hanbin had automatically lost his balance and started to fall, only managing to keep them both upright and not tumbling out of the closet by clumsily grabbing at Hao's shirt. It had been his first instinct. Somehow, the exact place his hands have found themselves on had been Hao's heart.

And now, he can't really move them elsewhere. There's absolutely no space in the closet width-wise; he can't move his hands to Hao's shoulders because it would make his wrists hurt like hell, he can't move them lower or anywhere else for obvious reasons. If he were to drop them by his sides, he'd end up touching Hao's thighs, and if he drops them in front of himself…well.

In shorter, less technical terms- he's fucked.

Fucked, because Hao doesn't smell of cologne like the rest of his peers do, but of lilac. Fields upon fields of it. Fucked, because a narrow sliver of white-gold sunlight creeps in through the opening and falls straight across Hao's eyes, turning them the color of honey before he realizes Hanbin's staring and shuts them. So utterly, hopelessly fucked when Hao's heart starts thudding faster underneath his hands even though his father is now audibly heading towards the exit. It runs at whole eternities a minute, transfers its burning energy through the skin of Hanbin's fingers and into Hanbin's own heart, making the two of them run alongside each other in tandem.

He wonders if Hao feels fucked too.

"You should watch the things you say here," Hao whispers right then, because of course he of all people would have the audacity to drown out his heart with his mind in the worst of moments.

"Why?" Hanbin asks. Presses one finger harder into his chest, then two. Just enough to test the waters in the desert, more than enough to make Hao momentarily forget how to breathe. "Are you worried about me? Or is it something else?"

"What's there to worry about?" It runs, runs, runs…

"What you're hiding," Hanbin whispers without thinking. "That you're no different from me."

Zhang had been out the door for a minute now. Hao could have pushed him out much earlier if he wanted to. But he chooses now.

Hanbin watches him leave without a word. As always- what's new? He stands there trying to calm his rabid heart, gives up after he gets to a hundred and starts walking.

He has no aim, no destination. This day has already been too long. He just walks, much like he had two and a half years ago when he'd skipped breakfast instead of spending those precious moments with friends that would never again be the same.

He walks for barely fifteen minutes, but it feels as if hours have passed when he finally stumbles on an unnervingly familiar pathway he swears he'd only seen once. Back when the sun he'd cursed was beating down on him and he'd foolishly thought it was the worst thing that possibly could.

He looks down under his feet at the pathway, just freshly cleared of snow. This time, instead of gravel, he sees asphalt.