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Their town was a small one.
Everyone knew who everyone was, they went to the same shops for everything, all the children went to the same school. There was one bus that traversed the town and it rarely had passengers, usually people visiting one another or children taking their friends to their houses after school. It was even impossible not to know where each passenger was going without having to ask them.
Their town was so small that gossip was non-existent. It just couldn’t happen because there was nothing someone might know that someone else didn’t. Gossip was about rumours and secrets, and there were no rumours among them, only facts.
And the accident at the Chois’ factory was one of those facts.
Soobin didn’t remember much from when it had happened, and he hadn’t been able to understand everything because he’d been just a kid at the time, but he was older now ten years later and he knew.
He knew the whole truth.
How a gas leak that had been predicted but unattended to had caused an explosion under one of the workstations strong enough to blow the whole wing of the factory up into pieces. The factory was the main source of work for people in their town, so when the explosion had been heard, even witnessed by some, the whole town had run out of their houses to get there as fast as possible despite the dangers because there was a high chance someone they knew had been there.
They hadn’t been wrong. Thirty-four people had died because of the accident, the biggest disaster their town had ever faced. And Soobin’s father had been one of them.
Maybe because he’d only been seven years old when it happened or maybe even because he’d repressed the memory, he didn’t remember much apart from the joint funeral of the victims and his mother crying and then her and many other people who had lost their family members watching the Chois’ trial on TV days later. At seven he hadn’t been able to comprehend the weight of the situation, but at seventeen he could write a thousand-word essay about it.
The owners of the company, Choi Chinhwa and his wife Choi Bongcha had been compensated for the damage caused to their business with 4.7 billion won. No one else had gotten anything, no word from the Chois who had obviously ignored the impending leak but had done nothing about it, no financial support for their families.
Ding dong!
Soobin looked up at the sound of the doorbell to look at the clock sitting on his desk on the other side of his room. Sure enough, it said that it was seven o’ clock which meant that it was exactly the right time for the doorbell to ring. It also meant that he’d gotten distracted and lost precious time. He stuffed the last things that were lying on his bed into his backpack without taking care to fold them neatly like he had the ones before them.
The doorbell rang again as he zipped his backpack shut and pushed it underneath his bed, out of sight. He took a look at his room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything and then ran out and down the stairs right as the bell rang a third time.
He already knew who it was at the door, but he still looked out of the peephole only to be met with the sight of his friends all squeezed together and trying to peek inside, probably wondering what was taking him so long. He wasted no time in opening the door.
The four boys that had been standing outside almost fell from the way they’d been leaning against the door and Soobin rolled his eyes at their carelessness.
“Hyung, we’re on time!” Kai cheered.
“And we brought cookies!” Beomgyu added, holding up the box he was carrying.
Soobin thanked him and offered to take the box so he could take it to the kitchen while they got comfortable and left their stuff somewhere so they could stop carrying it. They’d all brought a backpack with them, presumably with their clothes and essentials for staying the night. Yeonjun and Kai were also carrying one of Kai’s plushies each, which the youngest boy took extra care placing on the couch so they could sit comfortably.
As Taehyun passed from next to him Soobin sent him a look and then looked down to the box of cookies in his hands. When he looked up again, Taehyun nodded and then broke eye contact to join the rest of the group. Beomgyu had already taken up most of the space on the couch and the other three ganged up to try and push him off.
Soobin closed the door they’d left open and locked it behind him before retreating to the kitchen.
He set the box down on the table and stared at it. Taehyun had given him the okay that everything had gone well and Beomgyu hadn’t noticed anything, so now all that was left to do was wait and not get distracted and accidentally eat any. He’d also noticed that Taehyun’s bag had seemed fuller than the others’ ones, so he hoped that meant the younger boy had taken everything with him.
He let out a nervous sigh. It was going to be an eventful night, that was for sure.
His mother, stepfather (who his mum had married five years after the accident) and his two stepsiblings had gone on a trip for the weekend and left him behind. He hadn’t minded.
He was proud of how his mum had picked herself up after the accident and done the best she could for them. After the first months she’d continued grieving in silence and started working harder to be able to provide for her and Soobin. His dad had been the family’s main breadwinner before he’d passed away and without him they’d started struggling. But his mum had gotten a better job and then two years later she’d met Soobin’s stepfather and they ended up getting married three years after that and moving into the big nice house they lived in to that day. Their first child, Jihoon, had been born that same year and his stepsister Hajin a year later.
Soobin couldn’t be mad at his mum and stepdad for focusing on their own children more than him, they were still young, and he was sure he reminded his mother of his father who she hadn’t talked about in years. But he understood that it was still a traumatic experience for her, so he didn’t judge her for it. His stepfather was a good person. He treated him almost like his father used to, because he may not remember the accident, but he did remember his father enough to miss him. Jihoon and Hajin were nice and cute and he liked playing with them. He could see why his mum cherished them so much.
She’d tried to restart her life and he knew that it wasn’t a bad thing, but he was disappointed it had apparently meant restarting everything, even having a family.
He tried to look for silver linings and he supposed being better off financially than ever before was one of them. Jihoon and Hajin were growing up under better conditions than Soobin had, in a big house with a garden and expensive toys, but he wasn’t jealous of them. He didn’t miss his childhood, he just missed his dad. Missed how he would tell him stories every night and sneak him little bits of food from whatever his mum would be making for dinner and how he would carry him on his shoulders and jump up and down even if he’d hit his head once and cried for ten minutes until his dad had promised to buy him ice cream so he would forgive him. He’d bought him a toy car he could ride around in and told him he would teach him how to drive a real one when he got older.
And now he was older, with a licence which was the result of a complete stranger teaching him how to drive and wondering if his dad would be proud of the person he’d become.
Surely not after what he was going to do that night, but life is like that sometimes.
“Soobin-hyung!” he looked up at the sound of Beomgyu yelling in what sounded like distress.
He entered the living room to find his friend being manhandled and lifted off the couch by Yeonjun, Taehyun and Kai while he screamed and demanded to be put down.
Soobin was thankful that this house had good sound proofing because the neighbours would have definitely called the authorities if it didn’t. And that wouldn’t have left a good impression on his parents after they’d just trusted him enough to let him have friends over while they were gone for the first time.
Beomgyu was dropped on the ground before Soobin could save him, earning him a harsh glare from the shorter boy, and their three remaining friends made themselves comfortable in his place on the couch, spreading out so that Beomgyu would have no chances of fitting as well.
“You guys are so mean,” said boy muttered as he got up and dusted his clothes off.
“You were mean first,” Yeonjun retaliated.
‘No. You were,’ Soobin wanted to say but held back. They didn’t need any unnecessary drama that early into the night.
He knew that the plan for the night was likely to make him riled up or lose his temper, so he had to remain calm and collected. For his own sake too, but mostly for Taehyun’s. If tonight was important for him, then it was twice, maybe even more, as meaningful for Taehyun.
Tonight meant a fresh start for Soobin, one like his mother’s, and it meant the end of years and years of pain for Taehyun.
“Are we going to watch a movie or what?” Kai chirped from the couch.
“We have to cook first,” Soobin replied, “I know you won’t want to move after the movie and I’m not letting you skip any meals. We’ll eat first and then watch a movie.”
“While eating the cookies Taehyunie and I made!” Beomgyu added with a proud smile, “We slaved away for you all, so you should appreciate them.”
“I’m scared of your cooking,” Yeonjun replied, “For all I know there could be rat poison in them?”
Soobin almost jumped in shock. For a moment he thought they’d been caught and they were done for, but the reactions of the rest of the boys made it obvious that Yeonjun had only been joking. He let out a sigh of relief and locked eyes with Taehyun who was mirroring his expression. They quickly joined in on the fun and teasing hoping nobody had noticed them tense up.
The five boys ran into the kitchen and started looking for the ingredients to make a quick and easy dinner. Soobin informed them that there was spaghetti they could use as well as frozen pizzas he’d bought the day before after his parents had left. He could tell Yeonjun wasn’t so keen on the idea of frozen food but wasn’t going to suggest ordering in either.
‘He knows better than to flaunt his money here,’ Soobin thought.
Eventually they split the tasks into Yeonjun, Soobin and Beomgyu making spaghetti with sauce and Taehyun and Kai taking care of the pizzas. It soon proved that despite the kitchen being large in size, it wasn’t big enough for five 17-year-old boys bustling with energy and trying to cook together.
Beomgyu almost spilled boiling water on Soobin while taking the pot he’d been using to the sink to drain it and had crashed into Kai who was rushing to the oven to check on the pizzas, and the younger boy looked like he’d just been through a near death encounter when he realised what he’d just narrowly escaped. Yeonjun was at his side immediately to comfort him, while Kai scolded Beomgyu for not being careful enough and checking his surroundings before moving with such a dangerous object in his hands.
Spaghetti was easy to make, sauce not so much, Soobin realised that evening.
He’d seen his parents cook quite often, even helped them a few times, but it was in no way enough for him to have gotten the hang of it, especially when he wasn’t on his own, but had to coordinate his four extremely energetic and excited friends as well.
He should have predicted what would happen when he picked a tomato from the fridge. He had to stop a full-blown food fight from breaking out. He wouldn’t have any time to clean up after it, and it wasn’t something he would particularly enjoy anyway. The idea of being covered in food made him wrinkle his nose in disgust as he confiscated his ingredients from Yeonjun and Beomgyu’s hands. ‘There’s a reason some things are meant to go inside your body and not out,’ he thought.
They eventually managed to whip up some edible food, much to their surprise and joy. Before knowing that frozen food was an option, they had been certain that they were going to have to starve after somehow succeeding in burning the kitchen down while making cereal. They’d always have Taehyun and Beomgyu’s cookies, but Soobin and Taehyun weren’t going to eat any anyway, so if only for their sake they had to make something proper.
Soobin served everyone generous portions of the food that they could eat while they watched a movie like they’d originally planned. They’d made enough to feed an army, but they would eat it all no doubt.
Kai decided to pick a movie himself, so he rushed to the living room with Beomgyu to decide on one while the remaining ones helped out with carrying the plates and cutlery to the couch and coffee table.
When they arrived, they found their friends already loading a movie on the TV. Right as they were setting the plates down, Kai suddenly remembered something. “Hyungs, the pizza!” he exclaimed.
Yeonjun who had been carrying the least quickly put them down, thankfully without spilling anything, and ran back to the kitchen. He returned with a tray of pizza that was slightly black around the edges, but nothing too bad. Still edible.
“And now the real fight begins,” Beomgyu said, smirking, “Who gets to sit on the couch and who on the floor?”
As ideal as it would be, all five of them didn’t fit on the couch, so the split was inevitable. But who would want to sit on the floor when the couch was so comfortable and appealing?
“Soobin lives here all year, he knows what the couch is like, so he can sit on the floor,” Yeonjun said.
“No way,” Soobin replied, “The floor is too hard.”
“My butt will get cold,” Taehyun said and sat on the couch, crossing his legs.
“That’s so unfair!” Beomgyu countered, “So will ours!”
“You’re not the only one with a butt to protect,” Kai agreed.
“What if we just try to fit on the couch?” Yeonjun proposed, “We’ve fit in one bed before, it can’t be too hard.”
No one was willing to give up their seat, so they agreed to give it a try.
Taehyun scooted to one edge of the couch and let Beomgyu take a seat next to him. Kai was next, followed by Yeonjun and things were starting to look a bit harder as they squeezed closer and closer to one another. Soobin tried to fit between their oldest friend and the armrest and could already sense disaster.
They were all on the couch, but it was too tight and they could barely move.
“Hey we did it!” Beomgyu cheered and tried to lift his arms so he could clap. And that was when the disaster that Soobin had sensed came.
As Beomgyu moved, his elbow hit Taehyun right in the side.
The boy let out a yelp of pain and doubled over, hands nursing where he’d been hit and eyes squeezed shut.
Soobin practically jumped off the couch to get close to him. He leaned down in front of the boy and placed a comforting hand on his knee.
“Are you hurt, Hyunie?” he asked gently. He already knew the answer, but he always asked anyway.
Taehyun nodded as he recovered from the initial shock.
“Down there?” Soobin asked, nodding in the direction of his side.
Taehyun didn’t have to open his eyes to know where he was talking about. He nodded and slowly peeled his eyes open. The boys who were on the couch leaned forward so that they could see what was going on without crowding Taehyun while Soobin gently lifted his shirt to take a look at what had caused him the pain.
What he found was a sight that made his blood boil no matter how many times he saw it.
His friend’s skin was littered with bruises and scratches at different stages of healing. The one Beomgyu must have hit was a particularly dark shade of blue, which meant it must be fresher than the others, and stretched from his side and ribs to the middle of his back.
It wasn’t the only wound there though. Overlapping the bruise was a long scratch that made Soobin wince as if he was the one who had been cut. It looked deeper in some places than others and he didn’t even want to imagine the scene which had resulted in his friend having that wound.
It sadly wasn’t a new sight to Soobin, to any of the boys for that matter. They’d nursed Taehyun back to health after many similar instances in the past and knew everything about the origins of his wounds. Perhaps the only thing that hurt them more than seeing those wounds on him was seeing them turn into scars that the boy would probably bear forever when they finally healed.
Soobin’s fists clenched around the fabric of Taehyun’s shirt.
“What happened?” he asked.
“The same as always,” Taehyun replied, “She was drunk and I was the closest thing to her.”
“The scratch?” Soobin asked.
“A broken bottle,” his friend said.
Soobin let the shirt go and watched it fall to cover the ugly truth all five of them knew hid beneath it.
Not only all five of them, everyone in town knew about it.
Soobin had met Taehyun at the joint funeral for the accident’s victims ten years ago, the boy another child left fatherless by it. They’d hit it off immediately and been friends ever since. They’d been sitting in his room together while their mothers and other family members of the victims watched the Chois’ trial, and that day had been the beginning of ten long years for the younger boy.
While Soobin’s mother had rebuilt her life and moved on, Taehyun’s had remained stuck in the past. She’d taken up drinking the very afternoon of the trial and her neighbours had had to carry her home. The drinking only increased as the years went on, and eventually she started taking her sadness and anger out on her son. Soobin remembered the first time he’d found his friend sitting on the front doorstep of his house crying and black and blue all over after his mother had hit him.
And just like everything that happened in their town, the whole community knew about it.
One of the reasons Soobin hated it there was because no one ever did anything. They all turned a blind eye as Taehyun’s mother started drinking more and more and then did the same when they would hear the abuse going on in the house. “It’s just grief,” they would say, and it made Soobin see red. Everyone had the right to grieve, but when it led to this shouldn’t someone step in? He’d asked his mother to go to the police several times because he worried they wouldn’t take him seriously if he did, but she’d said the same as everyone else, except with the addition of, “Won’t you feel bad if Taehyun lost his mother too because of this?”
He’d wanted to say no, that he wouldn’t, because if this was what the woman was capable of then she didn’t deserve a child, but he hadn’t been able to utter a single word.
And so the years had gone by and he and Taehyun had grown up together, but the abuse had never stopped. And as the years went on, it wasn’t only other parents who noticed it, but their teachers and classmates too. And just like before, none of them ever did anything.
“Did you clean it?” Soobin asked Taehyun.
The boy nodded. “Don’t worry about it, hyung,” he said and offered him a smile of reassurance.
“I’m sorry, Tae, I didn’t know,” Beomgyu said almost immediately, obviously still upset about causing the other boy pain.
“It’s okay,” Taehyun replied.
Soobin could tell that Beomgyu was disappointed in himself for not knowing about Taehyun’s injuries because he was always the first who could tell when something had happened to him. It was usually him who would clean his wounds and wrap them in gauze if he needed to and hold the boy close until he felt okay again. They lived the closest to each other, so after every incident Taehyun would go straight to his house to seek out the comfort and tenderness he’d been robbed of ten years ago.
“Maybe we should spread out,” Kai spoke up, “Let’s not do that again.”
The others all nodded in understanding. Taehyun said he was comfortable on the floor and that he could sit there just fine. Beomgyu insisted on giving up his spot to him, but his attempts were met with failure as the younger boy made it clear that he had no intention of moving. Soobin offered to also take the floor, so the two set on opposite sides of the couch while the others made themselves comfortable, squeezing Kai in the middle so they could hug him from both sides.
He was the youngest in their group, and they definitely treated him as such. Not that Kai minded.
The five boys took their plates of food and started eating as Yeonjun started the movie.
Soobin twirled his spaghetti around his chopsticks and watched the scenes play out in front of him without saying much. The others would occasionally make comments on what was happening or even compliment the food with surprise. They ended up eating all the pasta and most of the pizza. Teenage boys and their appetites truly shouldn’t be underestimated. Taehyun even said he could have something else too.
“Trying to grow?” Beomgyu had poked fun at him as the boy got up to go to the kitchen.
“You’re not that tall either!” Taehyun shot back.
“Still taller though,” the other stuck his tongue out at him.
“You’re both so cute,” Yeonjun mused, “Please don’t grow any taller. I like being able to look down at you.”
“Just for that comment I’m going to find one of those medieval torture devices and stretch myself,” Beomgyu replied.
Kai yelled at him not to get that imagery into his head when they were already watching a horror movie, albeit a very shitty one. The screen was currently paused at the main character hiding in a cupboard and Soobin couldn’t help but think about how bad a hiding place it was. If the monster that was chasing her opened the cupboard there would be nowhere she could go and would inevitably get killed.
Taehyun soon returned with a plate of strawberries and a fork and sat back down in his spot on the floor. Beomgyu tried to sneak one of the strawberries but got his hand slapped by his younger friend.
“If you want some too go get your own,” he said, “There are more on the table in the kitchen.”
“Don’t forget we have cookies for dessert,” Yeonjun reminded the two.
“Or forget it so I can eat them all,” Kai piped up.
‘I wouldn’t recommend that,’ Soobin thought.
“I’m too full for them anyway,” he said instead, “I’m going to get some gum while I digest this.”
“You’re so weird,” Yeonjun commented.
“Maybe, but at least my breath never stinks,” Soobin replied, reaching over to where Kai had put his bag, knowing that the younger boy always carried chewing gum around with him.
They started the movie again when he got back. By that point Kai and Yeonjun were each holding one of Kai’s plushies while the younger boy also leaned onto Yeonjun’s shoulder.
The oldest and the youngest. Soobin had to admit that they looked cute, but he wasn’t sure if it was a genuine feeling that resulted from seeing them together or the idea of the youngest and oldest being close that made him think that. He knew for a fact that he didn’t find Yeonjun cute, not in the slightest. Kai on the other hand, yes. He was very cute and innocent, even if he was almost as tall as Soobin.
And right as he was thinking about how he didn’t like Yeonjun the boy decided it was the right moment to lean forward and pop the bubble Soobin had been blowing while watching the movie.
He probably wouldn’t have minded that much if the gum hadn’t gotten stuck on his face afterwards, which he absolutely hated, and if it hadn’t been Yeonjun who had done it.
He wiped his face trying to scrape the gum off as he turned around angrily.
“Why would you do that?” he said, obviously annoyed.
“Just for fun,” Yeonjun replied, not understanding if the other boy was actually mad or just pretending.
“That was annoying, not fun,” Soobin snapped.
“Sorry,” the older boy said, flinching at the harsh tone and clutching the plushie he was holding closer.
“Well there are some things saying sorry can’t fix,” Soobin spat.
“Hyung!” Kai intervened, “It was just a joke. Let’s not fight, please.”
Soobin’s blood was still boiling, but he managed to gather himself and turn away from Yeonjun. He should probably apologise to him for being so harsh but apologise to Choi Yeonjun was the last thing he would ever do. Not when Yeonjun was the one who should be begging him for forgiveness.
He knew he’d just told the other boy that apologies couldn’t fix some things, he wasn’t asking for one as if he was going to accept it. But bringing the other to the point of begging for his forgiveness was something that seemed too appealing to him to not long for, if only so he could continue to reject it over and over.
Because it was true that no matter how much Yeonjun apologised to Soobin and Taehyun he couldn’t change anything that had happened ten years ago.
They could pretend nothing was wrong, but at the end of the day their fathers were dead and Yeonjun’s family was to blame.
They tried to avoid the topic as a group, and it was rarely brought up. The only time Soobin could remember it becoming more than a few awkward glances was when Yeonjun had tried to offer Taehyun money at school. The boy had almost collapsed during P.E. because his mother had spent all their money on alcohol and he hadn’t eaten in days, and Yeonjun had tried to pass him some money from his wallet so he could go buy something to eat. Taehyun had taken one look at the 50,000 won note and pushed his hand away spitting out, “It feels like my dad’s blood is on that money.” It had made Yeonjun flinch and pull the money behind his back and out of his sight and was the angriest Soobin had ever seen his friend.
They hadn’t expected to meet Choi Yeonjun, the powerful Choi family’s precious son, on their first day of school. News of him going back to school after being home-schooled for years had of course reached them that summer (news, not rumours) and sent them into an uproar. Soobin had been bordering on furious when he’d heard because he didn’t even want to breathe in the same perimeter as the person whose family had taken one of the biggest joys out of his life and were the cause of Taehyun’s one going to hell.
Their first day of school Beomgyu and Kai had introduced themselves to them, saying that they’d wanted to talk to them for years as they always seemed lonely just the two of them but had only worked up the courage to do so then. The four of them had gotten along easily from the beginning and would have had a pretty good day if a certain classmate hadn’t decided to insert himself into one of their conversations.
Soobin had never even seen Yeonjun before, but merely by his awkward stance, standing as if he knew he wasn’t wanted, and his expensive looking bag and shoes he could tell exactly who it was.
“I’m Yeonjun,” he’d said, “This is my first year here.”
Beomgyu and Kai had let him join in while the other two watched as the family they hated the most entered their lives once again, and once again with no warning of what they were capable of doing.
Soobin was initially hesitant to allow it to happen, as had Taehyun, and they’d done their best to avoid him as much as they could.
It wasn’t until a particularly bad incident between Taehyun and his mother that they’d agreed to play along with befriending him.
Soobin had been holding Taehyun in his arms as the younger boy cried at the pain in his wrist, which had later turned out to have been broken, and whispering words of reassurance to him when Taehyun had said, “I can’t stand him, hyung.”
Soobin hadn’t had to ask to know who he’d been referring to.
“I know,” he’d said, “I can’t stand him either.”
“How can he walk around school like that so casually knowing everything that happened?” Taehyun had said, eyes squeezing shut and fresh tears escaping them, ones of anger, “His family is the reason my mum is like that and he has the nerve to talk to me as if we’re friends? Sometimes… Sometimes I want-”
He’d stopped himself. Soobin could have left it at that, but he’d wanted to know the younger boy’s thoughts. Wanted to know how his friend had been feeling.
“Sometimes what, Tae?” he’d asked.
Taehyun tensed up in his arms, and when he spoke his voice sounded ice cold. “Sometimes I want him to hurt like I do,” Taehyun had said, “I want him to understand what his family has put me through.”
For a moment Soobin hadn’t said anything, probably causing Taehyun to think he’d shared too much. His next words had surprised the younger boy.
“I do too,” he’d said, “And I’ve even wanted worse than that.”
He hadn’t had to elaborate for the boy to understand what he’d meant by that.
“Me too,” Taehyun had admitted.
“What if…” Soobin had started that sentence many times before he’d finally mustered up the courage to say what he’d been thinking, “We do that?”
Taehyun had sat back, causing Soobin’s arms around him to loosen, so he could look into his friend’s face and see how serious he was about what he had just proposed. He’d found no trace of lying or hesitation in his eyes.
“If we do it we’ll be figured out,” he’d said.
“We can wait until I’ve got my driver’s licence,” Soobin had said, “We can do it and then leave. There’s nothing here for us anyway. My parents won’t mind for too long and your mum won’t even notice.”
“I want to get away from here,” Taehyun had muttered, almost like a confession.
And so they’d made their plan.
They would continue to hang out with Beomgyu, Kai and Yeonjun and make them all believe that they got along well with Yeonjun. A small lie to get the boy to trust them.
When Soobin turned seventeen he would get his licence so they could take one of their parents’ cars or hotwire one if they had to so they could drive away as fast as possible. When they were set and ready, they would invite all of their friends to Soobin’s house for a seemingly peaceful sleepover. They’d contemplated about whether or not they should invite Beomgyu and Kai as well, but had eventually decided that it would seem weird to them if they weren’t, which had in turn produced another problem: how were they going to make sure that the two boys didn’t interrupt them or stumble upon them at the wrong moment.
That had been when Taehyun had thought about the cookies. He and Beomgyu could make them, since Beomgyu had been into baking recently, and while he wasn’t looking Taehyun could mix the powder from sleeping pills into the batter, enough to knock anyone who ate them out for a few hours at least. All he and Soobin had to do was make sure not to eat any.
While the others slept they would carry Yeonjun away and take care of him, maybe even bury the body if they had enough time. They hoped that by the time anyone found out what had happened they would be long gone and far away from their town. With some luck they will have even abandoned the car they’d taken and picked up another one so the police would lose their trail.
And then they will finally be free.
Soobin’s mother would finally have the picture perfect family she’d wanted, Taehyun would be away from his mother and they would be able to start over together somewhere else, with the past dealt with and behind them and gratified after getting the revenge they’d longed for for so long.
And tonight, tonight was going to be that night.
“How about we do finish this movie,” Kai suggested, “I want to know what will happen next!”
It was obvious that he was just trying to bring down the tension from the short fight Soobin and Yeonjun had had. Soobin decided that if it was for Kai he was going to let go of it that one time and move on. He was weak for the boy, he had to admit it. He had made two friends out of that ordeal and he knew that they were the only thing he was going to miss after running away.
Knew that he would also have to live with the knowledge that those two friends would probably never see him the same way again after what he and Taehyun were about to do.
He wanted his last night with them at least to be a good experience.
They sat watching the movie and nibbling on the last pieces of pizza because it would be a shame to throw it out when they’d just learned how to use a kitchen to make it. Soobin even leaned back so he was resting on Yeonjun’s legs as a sign of reconciliation to the oldest. Yeonjun took it as an invitation to start playing with his hair and Soobin wanted nothing more than to grab his hand and break his fingers.
Thank God their little lie was going to come to an end that night because he didn’t think he would have been able to take it anymore.
The movie ended in the very predictable way of the main character’s love interest throughout the whole movie killing the monster just as it was about to kill her and taking her away to safety. Taehyun stretched his limbs like he was finally relaxing after being tense for a long time. Soobin had to admit that the floor wasn’t the most comfortable and he felt like doing the same thing himself.
“If I can’t sleep after this can I come to your room, Soobin-hyung?” Kai asked, too excited for someone claiming they’d been scared by a horror movie.
“You just want someone to cuddle with,” Soobin read right through him.
“But can I?” the boy insisted with a radiant smile.
“Sure,” Soobin said and reached over to pat his knee.
Kai cheered. “This is why Soobin-hyung is my favourite,” he announced.
And just like every time Kai said something along those lines, the ones he hadn’t mentioned began a competition of reasons on why their youngest should have chosen them, with arguments such as buying him snacks or covering for him whenever he skipped class.
“Remember the aglio e olio I made you last month?” Yeonjun whined while hugging Kai’s arm.
“You dropped it on the floor before I could eat it, hyung,” the boy shook his head.
“It’s the thought that counts,” Yeonjun insisted.
Beomgyu snorted. “Well if that’s the case,” he said, getting up decisively, “I’m going to use the strawberries Taehyun didn’t eat to make you all smoothies that Kai will drink and realise that I’m the best hyung.”
With that, he marched into the kitchen. The rest followed soon after because it wasn’t like they were going to turn down the offer for smoothies. Three of them even thought that they would be great to accompany the cookies they were going to have, while the other two just cared about being well-fed. It was also warmer in the kitchen which was always a nice change, especially for those who had spent most of the evening sitting on the floor.
Beomgyu quickly detected the packet of strawberries in the fridge and set it on the kitchen bench as he rummaged through the cupboards to find a food processor he could use. He tried asking Soobin for help, but his friend let him look on his own merely because it was quite amusing to watch.
After lots of cursing, Beomgyu eventually found what he’d been looking for and started cleaning and cutting the strawberries. He threw them all in the food processor as the others watched, either from the doorway or in Taehyun’s case sitting on the kitchen counter next to him.
“You’re acting like such a chef,” Soobin joked and mimicked the serious expression Beomgyu had taken when cutting the fruit.
“Stop teasing me or none for you,” Beomgyu replied, pointing at him with the knife.
Everyone backed away at the gesture, even if they weren’t too close to him.
“Don’t play with knives,” Yeonjun said.
“Come on, you know I’m careful,” Beomgyu rolled his eyes but put it down anyway and started putting the strawberries into the machine.
“You have your clumsy moments,” Taehyun retorted, “You can’t blame us.”
Beomgyu snickered. “Like when?” he asked as he pressed the button on the machine.
He barely heard the scared shout of “Hyung!” coming from Kai before he was sprayed with crushed up bits of strawberries. He pulled his hand away from the button, effectively stopping the machine but doing nothing for his appearance. His shirt was covered in liquid and bits of fruit, as were his hands and even his face had gotten some of the hit, particularly the side that had been turned towards the machine.
He looked up at the others in horror, then down at the lid he’d forgotten to put on the food processor. He sighed and closed his eyes as he raised his head in annoyance.
“Like this,” Taehyun said, trying to stifle a laugh.
The sound didn’t go unnoticed by Beomgyu whose eyes snapped open and turned to look at the younger boy.
“You think this is funny?” he asked.
Taehyun put on a straight face and shook his head. Meanwhile, Yeonjun and Kai were having a hard time holding their own laughs in and a giggle that escaped Yeonjun made Beomgyu turn to them instead.
“Stop laughing!” he said, irritated.
“I’m sorry, but the timing was perfect,” Yeonjun replied.
“You know what else is perfect?” Beomgyu no longer looked upset but sneaky, a look of mischief easily detected on his face.
No one dared answer his question.
He noticed the silence and took a few steps towards their oldest friend instead. “This mess on you,” he said.
He held his hands out like claws and lunged for Yeonjun, who in turn yelped in surprise and dashed out of the way. Beomgyu didn’t chase him but instead turned his attention towards Taehyun. The boy noticed his change of heart and moved away quickly. He dashed behind the counter and crawled from one end to the other before escaping through the entrance to the kitchen.
Beomgyu didn’t lose time before going back to his original target and chasing Yeonjun down. The other glided to the other side of the kitchen, tossing Kai to Beomgyu on the way. Kai screeched and dropped to the floor where he could slide between Beomgyu’s legs and then run off into the living room, following Taehyun’s lead and brushing against Soobin on the way out.
Soobin just stood in the doorway and watched the chaos unfold. He felt oddly calm and thought that maybe it was because what he was seeing finally reflected what he was feeling inside, and it gave him a weird sense of reassurance.
Beomgyu had gone after Yeonjun for the third time, but this time the older boy was done with hiding in the kitchen and had stepped onto the counter so he could run across it in the urge to outrun his friend while they both laughed. Soobin wanted to yell at him to get off because he had his shoes on, but he just stared at them dumbly. He didn’t move until Yeonjun crashed into him and grabbed him by his shoulders.
“Soobin, run!” he said, not at all scared, simply amused, “He’s going to get us!”
Soobin finally snapped out of his stupor, plastered on his best fake friendly smile and turned around with Yeonjun so they could run into the living room and away from their strawberry-covered friend.
The living room wasn’t a better place to be. Taehyun and Kai were hiding behind the couch, giggling to themselves, when the two eldest walked in. They motioned to them to be quiet and not reveal their hiding place, but Soobin doubted it would help them if Beomgyu entered the room and just took a few steps inside. Nevertheless, he and Yeonjun listened to them and instead grabbed two cushions from the couch (not Kai’s plushies, Soobin didn’t want Kai to start hating him any earlier than he had to) and braced themselves for Beomgyu’s entrance.
The boy didn’t take long to follow them into the room, hands still held up like claws and running with the most gleeful laugh as he chased them, and they started throwing couch cushions at him. It wasn’t long until they had to move behind the couch as well, thus exposing the two younger boys to him as well. They screamed bloody murder and got up hurriedly to get out of Beomgyu’s path.
Their friend didn’t seem tired of chasing them at all, as he was on their tail so quickly that they all went their separate ways and started running around the living room causing havoc. They yelled and laughed and although one could have easily mistaken the scene for one of fear, they would simple have to see their bright smiles and sparks in their eyes to be able to tell that it was the exact opposite.
Soobin found himself not caring about how loudly he screamed. Even if his house hadn’t had good soundproofing, he wouldn’t have minded if anyone heard him, because this was the freer he’d felt to express himself in years. His friends probably thought that he was screaming with joy and excitement like them, but he was letting out anger, pain and anxiety about his future. He was about to run away from the only place he’d ever known with his best friend after committing murder, and he could finally let everything he was feeling about the ordeal out as he ran around the coffee table in circles to get away from his other friend who was chasing him with pieces of strawberry on his hands.
They were thrown into a panic when Beomgyu suddenly decided to change the direction he’d been running in. They had milliseconds to process it and do the same, almost running over each other, but successfully avoiding him.
All that is, except Taehyun.
Soobin heard him yelp in surprise and turned to see him with Beomgyu’s arms wrapped around him and being wrestled to the ground.
“Stop! Stop!” he cried, but Beomgyu didn’t listen and started wiping his hands on him instead.
Taehyun continued to scream the house down until he was finally let go. By that point, his previously light-coloured shirt had long stains of dark red running across it. He looked like the monster from the movie they’d watched had tried to maul him to death.
Beomgyu chuckled as he got off him, rubbing his now mostly clean hands. “You’re such a good human towel, Taehyunie,” he said.
Taehyun got up looking defeated and staring at the stains on his clothes.
“Now you two are matching,” Yeonjun joked, gesturing to both boys who had dirty clothes.
It seemed to have triggered something in Taehyun, because the next thing Soobin knew, his eyes were glistening with mischief and he was facing Yeonjun.
“Want to join us, hyung?” he asked innocently.
Yeonjun seemed to understand what he was implying, because his laughter died down and he took a step back, as if he was seriously being threatened.
“No, I’m good,” he tried, but Taehyun wasn’t swayed, and even worse, Beomgyu looked eager to join in too.
“Come on, hyungie, don’t you love us so much?” he said, pouting at the eldest.
“Give me a hug, Yeonjun-hyung,” Taehyun spread his arms and walked towards him to capture him in his arms.
Yeonjun’s eyes widened and then he took off as fast as he could, the two others hot on his trail.
He jumped over the couch, Soobin once again holding back from scolding him about his shoes, and made a run for the stairs. Kai looked excited and wrapped up in the scene, so he pulled Soobin by his arm so they could watch everything from up close.
When they got to the staircase, the others had already reached the top and Yeonjun was trying to go into one of the bedrooms to hide. Just like in the movie, Soobin thought that it was a dumb decision considering he would end up being trapped between three walls and one small exit.
Kai pulled him up the stairs and he stumbled after him, almost falling at some point, but thankfully he was able to find his footing again. Knowing the house for a big portion of his life helped a lot.
This time, instead of the dirty ones trying to chase the others, they’d all teamed up against Yeonjun. Even the two who weren’t covered in food were trying to corner him. Soobin and Kai had moved to block his entrance to the room he’d been trying to enter and watched in amusement as Taehyun and Beomgyu approached them with their arms outstretched. It looked like a scene from a zombie movie.
In a moment where they stopped noticing him, Yeonjun escaped from between them and proceeded to run back towards the staircase in order to go back downstairs in hopes of salvation.
Taehyun reacted quickly, though, and right as the two stood at the top of the staircase, he wrapped his arms around the older boy in the hug he’d been threatening him with from the beginning of their game.
Yeonjun cried out as he felt him. “Let me go,” he whined and tried to wriggle out of his grasp.
“Over my dead body,” Taehyun replied and just held him tighter.
Soobin could tell that while he was still playing along, his friend was also enjoying holding the boy in such a vulnerable position, his captive in a way. He could detect the trace of seriousness in his voice and the odd calmness that had overtaken him.
The same could not be said for Yeonjun, however.
“Come on, Tae, let go,” he complained, but successfully managed to rip his arms off of him, which wasn’t hard considering Taehyun was nothing but skin and bones.
“Nope,” the smaller boy countered, trying to regain control of him.
“I said let go!” this time, Yeonjun sounded a bit more irritated and he pushed Taehyun away from him at a final attempt to free himself.
Soobin had heard that you either experience a traumatic event in slow motion or in fast forward. Something about the density of frightening memories, he wasn’t sure. He’d even heard of people completely forgetting the traumatic event as if it had never happened.
For him, it was a combination of all of those.
He saw Taehyun fall back from the push and his foot miss the edge of the top step of the staircase in slow motion. He watched him flail and his eyes widen as he realised he’d lost his footing in slow motion too, as well as Yeonjun reaching out to him a tad too late and the beginning of Taehyun’s fall.
Then his memory went blank, and the next thing he knew he was still standing at the top of the staircase as if only a second had passed while Taehyun lay at the bottom, limbs splayed out all in different directions. One of his legs was still resting on one of the steps and his head was lying on one side, making it hard for them to see his face.
For a moment they all expected him to get up and brush it off, maybe even run back up to scare Yeonjun, but it didn’t take them much longer to figure out that something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
“Hyung?” Kai called out to him.
Nothing.
“Hyunie?” Beomgyu tried that time.
Nothing.
“Taehyun?” the urgency was evident in Soobin’s voice.
Still nothing.
Taehyun just lay there.
Still.
“Tae!” the severity of the situation seemed to have finally hit Beomgyu and he ran down the stairs faster than Soobin had ever seen him run.
As realisation dawned on all of them they did the same. They’d never run like that before, hadn’t known that such urgency even existed, but here they were.
“Taehyun!” they all kept calling out to him as if waiting for some miracle to happen and for him to respond.
Beomgyu reached him first but didn’t seem to be able to approach him. Even after seeing him black and blue and bloody so many times, this was a sight he wasn’t prepared for.
Soobin fell to his knees next to Taehyun’s body and reached out with shaking hands to touch his shoulder. The boy’s face was still turned away from him, so he tried for something he knew wouldn’t shock him as much as the inevitable would.
He grabbed his shoulder and shook it hard.
Nothing happened.
He shook it harder, as if it would change anything, but Taehyun remained still, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“Taehyun-hyung?” Kai’s small voice was heard from next to him, but Soobin paid him no mind.
His eyes were instead focused on what the others could surely see as well: the small growing puddle of blood that was pooling underneath Taehyun’s head and staining the floor where he lay.
He felt numb as he reached out further and cupped Taehyun’s check before turning it so he could finally look at him, and then fear and denial washed over him at once as he looked into the eyes that had once belonged to his best friend.
All he saw was a body with Taehyun’s face on it, just a piece of bones and flesh.
The eyes that had once looked like they held the whole galaxy in them now stared ahead of them vacant of any emotion.
Taehyun, his Taehyun, was gone.
There are five stages of grief, most frequently experienced in a certain order, but Soobin felt them all at once. Every emotion took over him and he let out a cry that didn’t even sound human to his ears before backing away from the body on the floor, his mind telling him that it wasn’t true, it wasn’t true. He’d seen it himself, that wasn’t Taehyun. Taehyun was alright. Taehyun wasn’t that body, he was a boy who had learned card tricks while not paying attention in geometry class, who wanted to own a pet snake when he got older, who had cried when their teacher had told them about global warming because he didn’t want the penguins to lose their home, who would sit on the porch of Soobin’s house with him late at night and try to look for constellations in the sky. And he was probably in another room or coming down the stairs to meet them because that body on the floor was not him!
Soobin hadn’t realised he’d been holding his eyes shut. He slowly peeled them open, half-expecting what he’d just seen to just be a what if scenario he’d imagined after seeing Taehyun slip on a step and that he would see Yeonjun holding onto him when he finally opened his eyes, relieved that he’d caught the boy in time.
But everything was the same as his what if. Taehyun’s body was at the end of the staircase and Beomgyu was holding him in his arms and shaking him, screaming his name over and over again while Yeonjun tried to keep Kai away, tried to shield his eyes from the sight because no one should have to see their friend dead.
Dead. Because that was Taehyun was. Dead, gone, never coming back.
The first tear dropped from Soobin’s eyes and after that they wouldn’t stop. He cried and cried and felt his eyes sting from the amount of salty liquid building up inside them and he tore his throat with loud sobs and screams, but even through his blurry sight he couldn’t look away no matter how much he wanted to. He yelled at his body to turn away, to make him see something anything else, but he was paralysed and could do nothing as Beomgyu finally dropped Taehyun to the ground and bent over, his own body shaking with what he could imagine from the muffling in his ears were sobs like his.
Yeonjun and Kai dropped to the ground, the older boy never letting go of the youngest and turning his face into the crook of his neck so he could cry without having to look. Soobin willed his pathetic arms and legs to work and managed to crawl up to Beomgyu and Taehyun.
He wiped his eyes, not that it did much, and stared at what used to be his friend. Beomgyu was still shaking next to him, curled into himself as he cried. Soobin stretched his arm and touched the top of Taehyun’s eyelids. He’d seen people do that in movies but had never thought he would have to do it himself, especially not for the person he considered his best friend. He took a shaky breath as he pulled the eyelids shut with his fingers, hiding Taehyun’s eyes from the world. He looked much less scary after that, almost like he was sleeping, if not for the ever-growing pool of blood around his head. Soobin reached a little further and carded his fingers through his hair. They came up wet with blood as he neared the back and he flinched.
He sat still cupping Taehyun’s face, trying to connect with him somehow, wherever he was, and letting his tears fall onto his friend’s skin and roll off. They could have passed as Taehyun’s, mourning the youth he’d never lived and would never have the chance to experience.
He tensed up when he felt Beomgyu get up from where he was sitting next to him, the sudden movement taking him by surprise. He turned around to see his friend walking towards Yeonjun and Kai as if in a trance. He’d stopped shaking, but it looked like all the tension had gone to his hands which were clenched in tight fists at his sides.
He stopped in front of them, and for a while it seemed like that was all he was going to do. But then he suddenly twitched and grabbed the front of Yeonjun’s shirt.
Kai was forced to let go of his hyung and was sent to the floor by the sheer force Beomgyu had used when grabbing Yeonjun and pulling him towards him. The older boy’s eyes filled with fear as he looked up at his friend. Except it didn’t feel like his friend. Beomgyu was usually so welcoming and kind, but now he looked cold and unapproachable, and more than that he looked angry, furious even.
“You killed him!” he screamed as he shook Yeonjun with so much force Soobin would have worried if it was anyone else.
But it was Yeonjun, and Beomgyu was right.
“You fucking killed him, you bastard!” Beomgyu continued, spitting in Yeonjun’s face as he yelled at him.
“Hyung,” Kai tried to approach him and separate the two.
“No, Kai,” Beomgyu stopped him, “No ‘hyung’ this time. Taehyun is dead and he did it!”
The shaking stopped and Yeonjun tried to speak through his disoriented state. “I didn’t m-” he managed before Beomgyu slapped him across the face and caused him to stop.
“Don’t you dare!” the other yelled, “Don’t even fucking think about trying to apologise or whatever bullshit you were about to do! I don’t care what happened, all I know is that Taehyun is dead because of you! And you can’t say anything to change that so shut the fuck up!” He ended his sentence by throwing Yeonjun onto the floor, leaning on top of him so he could punch him.
“You murderer!” Beomgyu seethed, throwing a punch that Yeonjun tried to block with his arms with little success. The younger boy’s anger had reached the point of no return.
“Stop, please!” Kai cried with urgency, wanting to stop what was happening but obviously too scared to go anywhere near Beomgyu. He turned to Soobin with desperation, tears still glistening in his eyes. “Soobin-hyung, help me do something,” he begged, but Soobin didn’t respond.
Soobin didn’t do anything. He watched as Beomgyu continued to beat Yeonjun up and didn’t bat an eye. He didn’t know exactly what he was feeling, but he couldn’t deny that the sight was giving him some sort of satisfaction. Yeonjun was finally going to feel what they’d all felt because of his family, he was going to hurt.
For his dad, for Taehyun’s dad and now for Taehyun himself.
So Soobin kept watching and listening to the curses Beomgyu threw at him while tuning out Kai’s pleas and cries for help.
“We should have known!” Beomgyu was yelling, his hits never stopping and Yeonjun still struggling beneath him, “Your family are murderers, you must be one too. We let you in when you know what they did to Soobin and Taehyun, we thought you were different!”
He dropped Yeonjun on the floor and stood up. Soobin saw the boy try to move to get away, but Beomgyu pressed him back down with his foot.
“I’m not finished,” he growled drawing his leg back so he could kick him in the side.
Yeonjun doubled over in pain, but Beomgyu just kept going. Now that he was lying on his side his face was visible to Soobin, and he could see the damage Beomgyu had already done. His nose was bleeding and his eyes were shut, partly because of the pain, but Soobin could also tell that they were also hurting him, if the way he was trying to shield them from further hurt said anything. They were probably going to bruise soon.
“Hyung, stop!” Kai screamed, sounding like he was about to lose it, “You’re going to kill him!”
“Maybe it’s what he deserves,” Beomgyu seethed, looking down at Yeonjun like he was the most disgusting creature he’d ever laid eyes on.
“This isn’t you, hyung,” Kai kept trying, “Something terrible happened. Let’s not lose ourselves. Maybe… Maybe… We could try CPR? Or-or putting pressure on the wound. My mum said-”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Soobin murmured, “Taehyun is gone, Kai.”
“And if you think the one who killed him, can be forgiven just like that, then something is wrong with you,” Beomgyu kicked Yeonjun one more time as he spoke, and this time the other turned completely onto his front, knees tucked under his chest and hands trying to cover his head.
“It was an accident,” Kai tried to reason, “This is Yeonjun-hyung. He’s so good to us, he would never do this on purpose.”
Soobin envied his innocence.
“You know his family history,” Beomgyu insisted, “Who knows if he was just waiting to do it? And it doesn’t matter if it was an accident or not. If I tell him it’s alright just because it was an accident, will that bring Taehyun back? No!”
“Taehyun-hyung wouldn’t want this,” Kai said.
‘If only you knew, Kai,’ Soobin thought. Part of him just wanted to spill everything, but something was holding him back, probably his still strong feelings of grief and loss. He didn’t want to do anything, just sit beside Taehyun and pretend the smaller boy was just napping.
“Taehyun also didn’t want his mum to hurt him like she did,” Beomgyu snapped, “And look where that got him. Do you know how many times he came to me bleeding and looking like he was seconds away from passing out? How many times that woman broke his bones because she couldn’t recognise who he was? Once she hurt him so bad he was clinging onto consciousness and I had to try and convince him to go to the hospital and he just kept telling me that he loved me because he was scared he was going to die! Did you know that?”
Shockingly, Soobin didn’t.
Taehyun didn’t talk about his mum a lot, so he only knew what he willingly shared. He knew that Beomgyu was probably more informed on the subject, being the one Taehyun trusted the most with his injuries, but this was completely new information to him. He remembered that Taehyun had missed a week of school once, and that he hadn’t been able to get a hold of him when he’d tried to go to his house. Had it been then?
It hadn’t been that far from the day they’d began devising their plan. He wondered if the catalyst to Taehyun confessing his thoughts hadn’t only been the injuries he’d sustained that day, but also a close call with something much worse that he’d experienced?
“Thought so,” Beomgyu said after processing the silence from both Soobin and Kai, “Well, he did. And she wouldn’t have gone bad if it wasn’t for the accident. The accident his family caused because they didn’t care about a gas leak they knew was going to cause a disaster in the future and they would get money from. And then they acted like it had never happened, said nothing, not even a goddamn sorry to the ones who lost their family members! You’re not a kid anymore, Kai, you know how many people at school lost their parents that day, and two of them are your friends. And now that history is repeating itself, you’d rather stand by the killer?”
“I’m not standing by anyone,” the younger boy retorted, “I’m trying to get you to see that what you’re doing is wrong. You’re stooping to the level of those you just talked about.”
Beomgyu stared at him for a moment before turning his attention away from him and to the quivering form of Yeonjun beneath him. He knelt over him again and pushed him so he was lying on his back again. Yeonjun’s immediate response was to try and pull himself into a fetal position, but Beomgyu easily pried his shaking hands away from his face. Yeonjun sputtered as the two made eye contact, trying to say something but the shock causing him to lose the ability to form any sort of coherent phrase.
“Maybe,” Beomgyu said, eyes locked intensely on his, “But Taehyun was like my little brother, and he killed my little brother.”
He started raining punches down on him again, Yeonjun still trying to talk between them, but being interrupted by cries and whimpers of pain.
Soobin tried to drown out Kai’s continued protests and simply hoped that Beomgyu wouldn’t finish Yeonjun himself so he could get what he’d planned so hard for.
Eventually it seemed like Kai had had enough, as he stood up decisively and dove in Beomgyu’s direction, not far from where he was in the first place. He came between him and Yeonjun and wrapped his arms tightly around Beomgyu so he was forced to stop what he was doing. The older boy tried to shake him off, but Kai was bigger and determined to put an end to the situation.
“Stop,” he cried, tears soaking into the front of Beomgyu’s shirt, “We can’t lose two friends tonight.”
Yeonjun saw his chance and he took it. With strength Soobin hadn’t thought he could have after being beaten so hard repeatedly, he got to his feet as soon as Beomgyu was removed from him and made a run for the other side of the room. He held his side as he ran due to the pain and he was pressing the back of his palm to his left eye, but he seemed mostly okay.
A part of Soobin was regretful Beomgyu hadn’t done more damage. The other was more concerned about the fact that the boy was now free in his house and could probably leave if he wanted to and go to his parents or the police. They would all believe him; he was a Choi after all. And if he reported anything that had happened they were done for.
He expected him to either run to the door or back to the staircase which had started everything, the latter being fairly close to him. Instead, the boy decided to try and defend himself one last time.
“I know what happened at my family’s factory,” he said, wiping some of the blood under his nose, “It was horrible and I’m so sorry you had to experience that and lose people you loved. But I’m not my family, I’m Yeonjun, your friend, and I love you all so much. Taehyun too. I would never wish anything bad upon him and I didn’t mean for any of this happen,” a tear trailed down his left cheek, but it didn’t touch Soobin, “I wish I could turn back time and change it. I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry! Do you think this isn’t hurting me too? Taehyun was as much my little brother as he was yours!”
Soobin actually scoffed out loud that time, because Yeonjun really thought that the boy who owed all his misery to him would ever see him as a brother.
What a naïve and close-minded world he lived in…
“If there’s anything I can do,” Yeonjun continued, “To make anything better I’ll do it. I’ll get out of town, I’ll give you money, I-”
Beomgyu laughed in Kai’s arms.
“Money, money, money,” he muttered and then raised his voice once more, “Why is it all about money with you people? All you understand and breathe is money. Well, there are some things money can’t get you. It can’t undo years of rotten family history, it can’t bring people back from the dead no matter how much you want it to, and it sure as hell won’t save you even though I’m sure that’s what you want the most, scumbag.”
The others barely had time to process what had been said and what followed.
Beomgyu managed to break free from Kai’s grasp, sending the boy to the floor with a harsh shove that he would never have given him if he’d been in his right state of mind, the younger boy yelped in surprise and pain and Yeonjun tensed up and started running to the staircase when he saw Beomgyu charge towards him.
There was no doubt in anyone’s minds what the boy wanted anymore.
He wanted blood.
And he was determined to get it.
For the first time since Taehyun had fallen down the stairs Soobin found that his legs could carry his whole weight, and he stood up and ran after the other two, leaving Kai behind. He was going to come back for him, but this was more important at the moment.
Yeonjun stumbled multiple times while running up the stairs, but still managed to make it to the second floor and run to one of the rooms. He had lost his head start, though, so Beomgyu and Soobin caught up to him easily. By the time he was entering Soobin’s bedroom and trying to shut the door behind him, Beomgyu had also reached the room and had stuck his foot between the opening of the door to prevent him from being able to hide away.
And just like before, Soobin’s thought when also arriving at his destination was that the boy had made a bad decision.
Yeonjun seemed to be figuring that out himself, looking around the room for a possible exit while Beomgyu just got closer and closer to him after being able to enter the bedroom after him. He looked back at the door, but Soobin was also standing there and he probably understood that running past someone else wasn’t the best idea. Soobin wouldn’t have let him go anyway. He then threw a fleeting glance to the window opposite Soobin’s bed.
Beomgyu laughed at him.
“Going to jump to get away?” he asked, “The fall will probably kill you anyway. I’m not letting you get away like that. If you’re going to die, I’ll be the one who kills you, you piece of shit.”
Soobin felt his mood drop when the realisation of what his friend had said hit him.
For months he and Taehyun had planned this specific night for two reasons: kill Yeonjun and escape the town they’d come to hate.
That entire time, something in the back of Soobin’s mind had kept telling him that he wouldn’t be able to do it, that in the last minute he would take pity on the boy or be too scared to actually do it. Even at the beginning of the night while he’d been packing that thought had continued to plague him. But now that he was faced with the situation, he wasn’t even thinking about it. All that was on his mind was that he finally had Yeonjun where he’d wanted him for years, before even meeting him.
Beneath him.
Choi Yeonjun was afraid of him.
It felt vindictive in a way. This fear Yeonjun was experiencing could have been the same one his dad or Taehyun’s one had felt moments before dying, maybe even Taehyun himself. And Soobin was going to avenge them all.
Except something was quite literally standing between him and his end goal.
The night had taken an unexpected turn, and Soobin didn’t even know what could happen anymore. He’d never imagined Taehyun would… that he would be separated from him like that, and furthermore, he’d never expected Beomgyu to blow up this way.
For as long as he’d known him, Beomgyu had been one of the gentlest people he’d met. He couldn’t recognise the blood-thirsty boy that was standing only a few metres away from him.
But that wasn’t the only thing that was worrying him at that moment.
Beomgyu would probably calm down once he’d gotten what he wanted, that much was clear to him, but the problem was that both of them were after the same thing. Yeonjun’s life.
There was no way Beomgyu was going to let Soobin finish him off, no matter how much the other let him beat him around. Soobin could tell since he’d snapped in the living room that he wasn’t going to rest unless Yeonjun’s blood was on his hands. And Soobin would be damned if he let someone take what was rightfully his simply because they had entered a destructive mindset, even if that person was Beomgyu.
“You’ve had your fun with him,” Soobin tried to reason, “I’m the one with a bone to pick.”
The gravity of the situation seemed to finally be hitting Yeonjun. Perhaps even after not having anyone but Kai defend him when Beomgyu had been beating him before the boy had clung onto a sliver of hope that Soobin would remain by his side. But now two people he’d considered his best friends only a few minutes ago were fighting over who would get to take his life.
The lie that had fooled him was unravelling right in front of his eyes.
Soobin saw the moment Yeonjun’s world collapsed, saw him quiver and his remaining strength fade from his body. He didn’t cry, just stared at the two in disbelief as if he was seeing them for the first time. And in a way he was.
“Did you forget what happened to Taehyun already?” Beomgyu turned to Soobin.
“Imagine holding the grudge you are for ten years,” Soobin countered, “This is the only thing I need right now.”
“Is that all Taehyun was to you?” Beomgyu seethed, “Fuel to your fire?”
“Don’t be stupid, Beomgyu,” Soobin snapped, “I want to do this for him.”
“So do I,” the other replied, “I have the same right to kill him as you do. Except I didn’t wait a decade to do something.”
“You’d better shut your fucking mouth,” Soobin growled, because he didn’t like what Beomgyu was implying one bit. He hadn’t waited ten years because he’d wanted to, he’d waited ten years because he hadn’t known he had the choice and the power he needed to take action. Taehyun had been his driving force, and now he’d lost him to the same people he’d lost his dad to. If anything, he had more of a right to Yeonjun’s life than anyone else in their town.
Beomgyu was about to fire back when they heard a thud. Both immediately checked on their target, worried that he had taken advantage of their short verbal fight and taken off without them noticing.
What they saw instead was Yeonjun fallen to his knees as he finally succumbed to the reality he was experiencing. He was shaking badly but producing no sound and his fingers dug into the carpet on the bedroom’s floor.
“Please,” he murmured brokenly, voice sounding dead to the two’s ears, “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything.”
“You’ve already done too much,” Soobin said to him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt Taehyun,” Yeonjun tried to reason with them, “I don’t know what happened. We were just playing around, you saw it.”
“For fuck’s sake, Yeonjun, I don’t care!” Soobin finally lost his cool and yelled, “The outcome is the same and your family has cost me to lose the most precious people in my life. Get your head out of your privileged ass for once and see something from another perspective. The only thing I care about is that you scum finally understand what we’ve been feeling all these years. Maybe when your parents lose their precious son they’ll think twice before not caring about their workers and the ones who are actually in need after an accident.”
He lunged forward towards the boy who was already in a vulnerable position and couldn’t get away.
He had almost reached him, fists clenched and ready to pick up where Beomgyu had left off, when he was grabbed by the shoulder and pushed back. He whipped his head up to see what had happened and got a brief glimpse of Beomgyu’s face before he was shoved to the ground.
He leaped back up onto his feet as if he had springs attached and closed the distance between him and his friend before taking a hold of his arm and pulling him back.
“I just told you-” he shot at Beomgyu, but the other cut him before he could even finish his sentence.
“And I don’t care,” he said, “You have your reasons and I have mine, and right now I will not hesitate to get you out of the way to get what I want.”
Soobin saw red. He couldn’t think of anything logically anymore, he was just angry.
“Oh well if you don’t care then I don’t either,” he said through grit teeth, pleasantries gone.
He pushed Beomgyu aside when he tried to wrap his hand around Yeonjun’s throat. The boy yelped in surprise and faltered but managed to ground himself and not fall. When he looked up at Soobin again it was to fix him with a glare of pure malice that Soobin had never expected to get from him.
“Watch it, hyung,” Beomgyu said like a warning.
“Or what?” Soobin challenged him. He didn’t care about how he made him feel anymore.
They were two hungry pumas hunting the same gazelle, and neither was going to back down just so the other wouldn’t starve, it was each man for himself.
Beomgyu bared his teeth and reached for him. Soobin ducked out of the way and retreated to the farthest side of the room he could reach. Beomgyu picked up on his movement quickly and wasted no time in running towards him. In a way it reminded Soobin of how they’d played and chased each other in the living room and kitchen earlier in the night.
This time, when Beomgyu got close, he grabbed him and slammed him onto the floor, causing him to let out a cry of pain. Soobin quickly took a hold of his flailing arms and turned him around so he was lying on his stomach, one arm underneath him while he twisted the other one behind his back. Beomgyu cried out again, but just like before, Soobin didn’t let it phase him. He wasn’t sure if his ultimate goal was to break his arm, but he would do what it took to make sure he wouldn’t stand between him and his prize anymore.
He was so close to getting it, Beomgyu hissing in pain as he continued to twist his arm, when for a moment he faltered, and that was when he lost the upper hand he’d had in their fight.
He put more of his weight down on the same side of Beomgyu’s back as the arm he was holding to put more pressure on him, his knee digging into the boy’s shoulder bone, but at that moment he didn’t realise that he was giving him more freedom on the other side. Beomgyu noticed this and immediately pulled his arm out from underneath him. Before Soobin could react, he’d been backhanded, and the unexpected force had caused him to waver enough for the younger boy to push him off him.
Beomgyu slid from underneath him and before Soobin had had enough time to defend himself he had grabbed him by his shirt despite his arm that must have still been hurting, and thrown him with all his force into the bookshelf on the opposite wall of the room.
Soobin collided with the furniture, resulting in some of the books falling and the wooden piece wobbling unsteadily.
His head hit the edge of one of the shelves and the pain hit him all at once, his vision seemingly turning white.
Only a few seconds later, the blinding white turned to black and the last thing he registered was a book falling onto his already hurting head before the world faded and he lost consciousness before he could finish throwing Beomgyu a curse.
---
When Soobin came to again, he was still propped up against his bookshelf.
The first thing he registered was the pain in the back of his head, still there albeit a bit numbed compared to how much it had hurt when he’d first hit it. He brought a hand to the back of his head and touched the area where it hurt, trying to feel for any open wounds. He didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary, maybe a small bump, but it didn’t seem like it was bleeding. He didn’t know how long he’d been out for though, so it could have dried up while he sat there. He continued feeling around, searching for any crusted blood, but his scalp and hair felt as normal as they always did, so he concluded that everything must be alright.
The next thing he noticed was how quiet the room was. As he got gradually more conscious the memories of what had occurred started returning. His eyes shot open instantly as images of the fight entered his mind and he became aware of what the silence surrounding him might indicate.
His vision was hazy at first, but he could make out the objects in the familiar room due to the low light his lamp that had been turned on since the beginning of the night provided. It also made the atmosphere quite ominous though. The orange tinted light reminded him too much of scary movies and horror stories. He’d always thought it was overdone and exaggerated, but now he was sitting in the red light himself and he felt scared, threatened.
At first glimpse the room seemed empty. Some books were on the ground around him and the sheets on his bed were ruffled. He could picture Yeonjun and Beomgyu fighting on it clearly. For a split second he let the silence try to trick him into believing that everything had been a weird dream or hallucination, but he shoved it aside. There was no way he could have created those graphic images himself.
He slowly and cautiously stood up. From a higher angle, not much changed, except for the fact that there was an obvious lump under the bedcovers. He could also detect a weird smell, but he couldn’t identify it or pinpoint where exactly it was coming from. He ignored it in favour of the lump that was too big to be a rumple in the blankets and way too still to be anything reassuring.
He practically tiptoed over to his bed, worried something would jump out and startle him, but also because a part of his mind was telling him that he didn’t want to look underneath, didn’t want to see what the blankets were concealing.
It persisted even when he’d reached the bedside and had stretched his arm out to grip the edge of the white and blue blanket. He hesitated, thought that maybe it was right, maybe he should just let it go and move on, but he needed to know what it was.
He sucked in a deep breath and pulled back the blanket.
He dropped it almost immediately. His hand hovered in mid-air where he’d just been holding it as he looked into the empty dead eyes of Choi Yeonjun.
He was lying in an almost perfectly horizontal position. His head was propped onto one of the pillows in the bed, his right arm still at his side while the left one was lying on his stomach and his legs grazed the edge of the footboard. His lips were slightly parted, in a cry for help or an attempt to breathe, Soobin couldn’t tell. If he had to guess, it didn’t seem like he’d put up much of a fight before he’d died, but that wasn’t what was currently occupying his mind.
For most of his life he’d thought that seeing the ones he hated more than anything in a state like this would bring him inner peace, maybe even happiness. He’d thought that his life’s goal was to be the one who would bring them to this position. Before he’d been knocked out he’d thought that seeing them dead by another’s hand would fill him with nothing but regret and anger towards the person who had taken the opportunity from him.
But now, staring at Yeonjun’s still body, he felt numb.
The body looked just like Taehyun’s, their features being the only thing that separated them from each other. There was no hint of the person it had once belonged to, nothing that made it any different from any other human that could walk by Soobin’s side on the street.
At the end of the day, what made the two boys different from one another? In death they were both nothing but shells of their past selves, and quite literally so.
Soobin had to stop his thoughts from wandering, because the things they were conjuring up were making him feel uneasy. He let his arm drop back down to his side and turned on his heel to leave the room.
Just as he was about to open the door that was almost completely closed, a sense of remorse washed over him and caused him to stop. Despite not wanting to see it again, he turned to face Yeonjun’s body on the bed. It felt wrong to just leave it like that when he’d attended to Taehyun’s one to a certain extent. He wanted to ask himself why he was having these thoughts when he had never cared about Yeonjun in the first place, but he knew that even if he did, he wasn’t going to get an answer. It wasn’t as if anything that had happened that night made sense.
He walked back to the side of his bed and stood over the boy he’d considered his enemy for so long. It felt so different now that he was gone, or well, didn’t feel at all; he was still numb.
He wanted to say something as he closed the boy’s eyes, but he couldn’t think of anything that would be appropriate to say and no words reached his mouth, so he just remained silent. His fingers fluttered over the shut eyelids, almost as if they were unsure about whether or not they should retreat or do something else. He brushed a lock of hair away from his face without knowing the reason behind the action. Maybe it was all he could offer instead of words.
He left after that, without looking back, not bearing to look at Yeonjun anymore, maybe because he still wasn’t used to seeing dead bodies or because of the fact that this was the second one he’d ever seen, and both had been in the span of a few hours.
His returning memory had brought another thought to his mind, though, and it concerned the link between him being forced into unconsciousness and the state Yeonjun was now in. There had only been one more person in the room with them up until Soobin’s last memory, and that person hadn’t been there when he’d woken up. He needed to know what had happened, as if it wasn’t already obvious enough, and Beomgyu was the one who could give him the explanation he was after. All he had to do was find the boy.
As he left his bedroom, he thought about all the possible places he might be. The house was definitely big enough for him to hide and not be discovered for a long period of time, Soobin had lived in it long enough to know that, but what if Beomgyu was no longer within the four walls of the building? He had no idea how long he’d been out for, Beomgyu could have easily found his keys and left to who knows where in that time. If he had any sort of common sense, which Soobin knew he did, he would have made a run for it. Just like he and Taehyun had thought, the incriminating evidence would be stacked against him and he would inevitably be sent to prison.
If Beomgyu had left the house there was a high chance Soobin would never see him again.
The smell that had penetrated his nostrils in the bedroom grew even more intense when he stepped out of it, so much that he had to cover his nose for a moment to get used to it. When it had become bearable to breathe freely again, he stood in front of his door and tried to think of some sort of plan. His previous one had been wrecked to pieces, but there could still be a chance to salvage part of it if he could get his mind under control and think logically.
First things first, he had to find a clock and check the time. He had a vague idea of what time the fight in the living room had broken out, and knowing how long he’d been knocked out for could possibly tell him how far Beomgyu had gone if the younger boy had indeed run away. He took a few more steps to the top of the staircase, where an old antique clock his stepfather had brought home was hung on the wall. He avoided looking down at the bottom of the stairs, afraid of seeing another haunting image, and quickly checked the time on the clock. 2:07, it read.
The movie they’d watched had ended at 22:30 which meant that he had been unconscious for roughly a little over three hours. It wasn’t a reassuring thought, quite the opposite. He was still worried about the nature of his injury, but he felt almost completely normal apart from a dull ache, so he wasn’t too worried about it. Once everything was over, he would get it checked just in case, but he had other priorities.
Eyes still on the floor he made his way to the stairs. His hands gripped the banister tightly and he walked with his back in the direction of where he remembered Taehyun’s body lying. He didn’t want to have to see it again. He just wanted the night to be over and hope that things would look better in the morning. He knew he was giving himself unrealistic expectations, as if so many events would just be erased when the sun rose, but it was all he could do to stop himself from losing his mind.
“Just breathe, just breathe,” he murmured to himself as he took step after step.
He finally made it to the bottom and let go of the handrail. He was still breathing heavily, but he made up his mind to look up. Looking down would only bring him face to face with what he didn’t want to see. Heat washed over his whole body and he started to sweat.
He was about to raise his head when he heard shuffling and what sounded like a muffled voice coming from somewhere near him. He’d almost brushed it off as a strange aftereffect from the hit to the head he’d taken when he heard it again, though only the voice this time. It didn’t sound like talking, there were no words, only a choked sound almost like a muffled hiccup. Or more specifically, the sound of a sob, of someone crying.
Soobin examined the area in front of him, trying to think of places the sound could have come from. He only had to look a little to his right to see that the small cupboard under the stairs that his family used to store shoes was slightly open. As long as no one had taken any shoes, there was no reason for it to be open. Even if Beomgyu had left, he would have just worn the shoes he’d arrived in. It didn’t make sense.
And then he heard the sob again, much more clearly now that he knew what it was, and positively coming from the cupboard.
When Hajin and Jihoon had gotten into Harry Potter they’d seen the cupboard in a much different way than simply a storage area. Soobin’s family would search the whole house for them only to find them squeezed inside the cupboard taking turns roleplaying as Harry and his relatives. Eventually his parents had installed a light inside it so that the kids could at least see around them while they played, as they showed no signs of stopping. So Soobin knew that despite it being a tight fit, a person could definitely fit inside the cupboard. From the looks of it, whoever it was hadn’t noticed the light, so it was pitch darkness inside.
Soobin tiptoed over to the cupboard and slowly slipped his hand through the crack between the door and the wall. The person didn’t show any reaction to him, so he continued his administrations. He found the switch in no time and pushed the rest of the door open at the same time as he pulled the string and turned the light on.
A squeak that may as well have belonged to a mouse escaped the figure inside the cupboard.
“S-Soobin-hyung?” Kai whispered after he’d gotten over the initial shock of being discovered.
Soobin felt his heart break at how sad and pitiful the boy in front of him looked. His eyes were red-rimmed and shining with tears, tracks of the liquid running down his cheeks like a never-ending river. He was curled up in a fetal position, knees drawn up to his chest and his whole body was shaking. His hands were the only part of him that wasn’t, but that was because they were tightly clutching a wolf plushie, one of the two he’d brought with him that night, close to him, hugging it as if it was the only thing keeping him grounded.
And Soobin wouldn’t find it impossible to believe if it were.
The last time he’d seen Kai the boy had been pushed by Beomgyu and ignored by everyone in favour of continuing their fight. Even when he’d woken up from unconsciousness, he hadn’t even thought of him, had forgotten he was even in the house. When they’d watched that movie together, he’d made fun of the character for hiding in a cupboard but facing someone who was now doing the same thing made him realise that it was about more than hiding. Kai was trying to block reality out by sitting alone in the small space, understandably so after going through something so traumatic and then being left behind by the ones he trusted.
While Soobin blamed himself for it, he couldn’t help but feel that out of everything that had happened, Kai in such a horrible situation was the one thing he could never have predicted. He was a bright kid, someone so positive and overflowing with energy that he never would have imagined him in a place like the one his house had turned into. He wished he could have shielded him from the horrors he’d witnessed, because seeing him looking so small and scared made him so angry at what had caused him to feel like that, and he knew that he was part of it.
“Hi, Ning Ning,” he said softly. He stepped into the cupboard and sat down in front of Kai, mimicking his sitting position as it was the only one that allowed both of them to sit inside comfortably at the same time and closing the door behind him. He couldn’t close it completely so it was still a bit open, but it was good enough.
“What are you doing here?” Soobin asked, trying to lighten the mood if that was even possible anymore.
“Hiding,” Kai confessed, stroking the plushie’s head as if it was a puppy.
Soobin didn’t ask from who.
“I’m sorry, Kai,” he said, “It must have been scary.”
“I thought it was a dream at first,” Kai said, “When Taehyun-hyung… But then hyungs started fighting and Beomgyu-hyung was so violent and wouldn’t stop and you looked so defeated and Yeonjun-hyung was so scared. I wanted you all to stop but I couldn’t. And then I was all alone with…”
He wiped some more tears that escaped his eyes. Soobin’s heart clenched when he understood what he’d meant. He’d thought leaving Kai alone after he might have been hurt was bad enough, but he hadn’t realised that he had also left him alone with Taehyun’s body. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like to be in a room with only your friend’s dead body. Hell, he didn’t have the strength to look at it himself and he hadn’t been in its presence for as long as Kai had.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“I tried to talk to him or heal him, but you were right, hyung,” Kai continued, “He’s gone. I carried him to the couch. The floor is uncomfy and he would hate it.”
“I’m sure he would appreciate it,” Soobin told him.
“I was going to come see what you were doing, but it sounded like you were fighting again,” the boy said, “And then there was a bang and I got so scared I came here and hid. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. It just went quiet and I thought you were working things out but then I heard Yeonjun-hyung screaming. I wanted to go and help him, but I was so scared. And then he stopped and I heard Beomgyu-hyung coming down the stairs and he was so angry when he couldn’t find Taehyun-hyung at first that I didn’t want to face him. I don’t know where he is now, I’ve just been here and waiting for this to be over.”
His voice cracked as he reached the end and more tears fell, but he didn’t make an effort to wipe those ones. Soobin watched as the first ones dripped off his chin before deciding that he couldn’t take the sight and reaching out to wipe them instead. He couldn’t stand seeing Kai like that anymore.
“It’s okay,” he murmured to the boy, “It will be over soon.”
“What happened upstairs?” Kai asked, “Is Yeonjun-hyung okay?”
Soobin wondered if it was right to tell him the truth or just keep it to himself. “He’s not hurting anymore,” he said eventually. He guessed that meant he was okay. How Kai interpreted it was up to him. As much as he hoped that he could trick his friend like that, he knew that Kai was a lot less naïve than most people assumed him to be.
He probably understood what Soobin was avoiding telling him and was trying to pretend he hadn’t.
“That’s good, isn’t it, hyung?” he asked shakily, “At least he’s not hurting.”
“Yeah,” Soobin replied numbly. He didn’t feel much about Yeonjun, but he did for Kai, and he wasn’t going to become an ass towards him when he needed someone strong to lean on.
“He really isn’t like his parents,” Kai muttered, “He’s a good person. He treats us well and takes care of us. He taught me how to ride an S-Board and when we eat together and my food is too hot he always blows on it for me so I won’t get burned. He made me a candle that smells like cookies in class and you know how he plays with our hair sometimes when he’s zoned out? It feels nice.”
Soobin could only nod in response.
“He’s not like them,” Kai insisted and shook his head, “He would never do what they did.” He sighed and closed even more into himself.
Soobin watched him without speaking. He needed that time, he decided, so he was going to give him it. He would do whatever he could so this night would be less painful for him.
“I’m sleepy, hyung,” was what Kai said next.
Soobin would have raised an eyebrow at the statement if he could. Why was Kai telling him this? Was he trying to change the topic?
“I don’t want to sleep,” the boy continued and this time Soobin detected some drowsiness in his voice, “I’m going to have bad dreams, I know it.”
‘I’m sure I will too,’ Soobin thought. He didn’t think he would be able to erase some of the images from that night anytime soon.
“But my eyes are closing,” Kai said, “I don’t want them to, but I feel so sleepy and they won’t listen to me. Can you help me stay awake, hyung?”
Soobin would have happily agreed, would have moved so that the two of them were sitting next to each other and tell him stories until the sun rose with lots of plot twists and action to make him so invested in them that he wouldn’t be able to even think of blinking, but something about his statement seemed off to him.
Kai was speaking as if he was being forced to fall asleep, and he was starting to sound like it too. Like he was drifting off to sleep against his will. Soobin couldn’t think of anything he’d ever learned about trauma that had mentioned something like that, or something that could-
‘Oh. Oh no.’
“Kai,” he said out loud, “Have you eaten anything? After we all ate together.”
He watched the boy’s face morph into the expression he always had when he was deep in thought or trying to remember something. His brow quickly furrowed, probably due to what he’d remembered. Soobin only hoped and prayed that it wasn’t what he was afraid it would be.
“Please don’t be mad, hyung,” Kai said, rubbing his eyes, “Remember the cookies Beomgyu and Taehyun-hyung brought?”
‘Please no.’
“Yeah,” Soobin replied, heart clenching.
“When we were playing in the kitchen, I took some and put them in my pocket,” Kai told him and took one hand away from his plushie to put it against the front pocket of his hoodie, the one he loved because it had a zip and he could use it to sneak snacks into the cinema, “It was supposed to be a prank so you would wonder where they’d gone when we ate them. But then everything went wrong and I forgot about them. When I was hiding in here and waiting for you to come back downstairs, I was trying to calm down and I thought that maybe eating one would make me feel better.”
Soobin remembered that Kai and his sisters would always eat cookies together when they were having a hard time. It made sense that when he was feeling distressed he would seek out the thing he was used to helping him.
“How many cookies did you eat, Kai?” he asked, and everything depended on his answer. At least it felt like Soobin’s entire world did.
“I didn’t have them all,” the boy responded as if that was what was important, “Only four.”
Four.
Soobin knew how much sleeping powder had gone into each cookie, had helped Taehyun come up with the recipe. So he knew that one sole cookie was capable of knocking one of their friends out cold for a good six hours at least.
And Kai had eaten four of them.
As if he was coordinated with Soobin’s sudden and terrifying realisation, Kai fell forward. Soobin’s reflexes acted up immediately and he managed to catch him before he faceplanted into the ground. It was uncomfortable to move in the small cupboard, but he didn’t care. He had to make sure that his friend was okay and that nothing was going to happen to him. He couldn’t let Kai be anymore hurt than he already was.
“Sorry,” the boy apologised, as Soobin wrapped his arms around him so he could help him sit up and propped his head against his shoulder.
“Don’t be,” he replied, “It’s all going to be alright.”
“How did everything go so wrong?” Kai muttered, gripping one of the wolf’s ears.
“I don’t know,” Soobin said, “I wish I did.”
“Can we turn back the time?” Kai’s words were starting to sound slurred and Soobin held him tighter, “To when we were all happy?”
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Soobin said.
Kai nodded.
“We were happy a few hours ago,” he said, but the older boy couldn’t agree with that. He hadn’t felt much happiness during the night, mostly just stress, fear, grief and anger. He let his cheek rest on the younger boy’s forehead and said nothing.
“I’m sleepy, hyung,” Kai muttered, “I don’t wanna go to sleep.” His voice was tinted with panic as he realised that something very wrong was going on.
And once again, Soobin was powerless and could only watch, powerless, as another person he loved began to fade right in front of his eyes. He cursed himself internally for being so inadequate.
“It’s okay,” he said, trying to sound as soothing as possible and not show any of the panic and sadness he was feeling, “It’s gonna be okay.”
“No!”
With a small burst of energy Kai pushed himself off his shoulder and sat on his knees in front of him, looking him in the eyes. They were wide and full of more unshed tears, and so much sadness that Soobin wished he could give himself so Kai wouldn’t have to suffer.
Almost as soon as he’d sat up, his body grew weak again and his knees gave way, causing him to be sitting on the ground with his legs making an M shape. It couldn’t have been comfortable, so Soobin stretched his legs out and pulled him over to him so he could sit in his lap. The least he could do was make him comfortable.
“Hyung,” Kai sounded so broken, “I don’t want to sleep.”
A pearly tear slipped down his cheek.
“Shh it’s okay, baby,” Soobin shushed him, the pet name slipping out without him even noticing, “It won’t be scary anymore. You can just rest and never have to think about tonight again.”
There was no use prolonging the inevitable.
The boy in his lap was getting drowsier and drowsier by the second, and by now he definitely knew what was going to happen to him. He sniffled.
“Will you stay with me, hyung?” he asked the older.
“Of course,” Soobin promised.
“I love you,” Kai muttered, “You’re like a real big brother.”
“I love you too, Ning Ning,” Soobin said, blinking hard so the boy wouldn’t have to see his tears.
“Will you tell my mum I love her?” the younger asked, “My dad too. And my sisters.”
“I promise,” Soobin reassured him, and he meant it. He would find a way to reach his friend’s family somehow before he left. He would deliver his last message to them.
“Thank you,” Kai said.
He paused for a bit and then spoke again, “’m scared, hyung.”
“I know,” Soobin ran his fingers through the boy’s hair comfortingly, “It will be just like sleeping. Maybe you’ll even dream. It won’t hurt like it does here.”
“But you’re here,” Kai looked up at him, “’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, Kai,” the older boy felt like he was choking, but he managed to get the words out. He couldn’t let those precious moments go to waste.
“D’you think ’ll see Taehyun an’ Yeonjun-hyung?” Kai’s eyes were slowly shutting as he spoke.
“Maybe,” Soobin replied.
“Don’ wanna,” Kai persisted, trying to keep his eyelids open but to no avail, “Wanna stay here.”
Soobin wanted to scream, to yell at the universe or at a God if one existed that this was unfair. There was no way someone like Kai deserved what was happening to him, and he didn’t understand how it was. Nothing made sense anymore, only that he needed Kai to stay with him and not leave.
And that was the one thing he couldn’t change.
“Relax, sweetie,” he said to him, “Don’t try to fight it anymore. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. It will be okay, I promise.”
Was it true? Was it going to be better for the boy on the other side? How could he promise him that without knowing it? Maybe he just had to take his chances to comfort both of them.
Kai nestled into the crook of his neck and finally let his eyes fall completely shut. He held his wolf plushie close to his chest with one arm, while the other had moved to hug Soobin’s waist at some point without either of them noticing. The latter arm squeezed his hyung’s waist and the other boy did the same, pulling him impossibly closer to him and rocking his body back and forth as he succumbed to sleep.
“Good boy,” he murmured into his ear as he did so, “That’s my good boy.”
Kai wasn’t moving anymore, but Soobin kept going. He continued rocking him as if he was a baby and whispering reassurances to him as tears escaped his eyes and dropped onto the boy’s hair.
Soobin didn’t even stop when Kai’s breathing against his neck grew fainter and fainter until it ceased completely and the arm that had been hugging him dropped.
He only stopped when he’d cried so much that he couldn’t sit up anymore. He doubled over, Kai still in his arms, and cried and sobbed inconsolably.
His mind kept bringing up memories of Taehyun and Kai’s smiles, the two of them being the loveliest kids Soobin had ever met and them playing together, laughing together, even doing nothing but sitting together. He hadn’t realised how peaceful he’d felt during those moments, not until they’d been taken away from him forever.
With every memory he broke even more on the inside, each one something he would never experience again, something beautiful that had been erased from the world.
Eventually, he composed himself and brought a hand to his face to wipe the tears and snot that were making it wet. He wiped his hand on his shirt and then turned his head to look at Kai’s face again. Unlike the others when he’d seen them, his eyes were closed as if in sleep, and Soobin tried for a second to convince himself that this was all it was, a short nap, a bit of sleep.
He brushed the boy’s bangs out of his face and hugged him closer, placing a kiss on his forehead before readjusting their positions so he could lay him down properly. He put him on his side, in the position he knew Kai slept it, and put both his arms around the plushie he loved so much.
He gave him one last look in farewell and then pushed the cupboard’s door open again. He was done with everything. He had to get out of that house and then out of that town. There was nothing for him anymore.
He stepped out of the cupboard, expecting the same quietness that had greeted him when he’d come downstairs again, but what he found was completely different.
The living room was engulfed in flames.
Orange and red covered the walls, the table, the pictures, the TV and were licking at the feet of the couch. He looked around in horror, only to discover that it wasn’t only the living room, but most of the house. The kitchen seemed the brightest, and therefore the one in the worst condition, but the flames had extended from the two entrances and into the living room and the rest of the house respectively. They were rapidly approaching the cupboard and staircase, and Soobin stepped out of the way in panic to get as far away from them as possible.
And at last Soobin was able to identify the smell that had been bothering him since regaining consciousness: smoke.
What had happened? How had it happened? How had he not seen it?
He suddenly remembered the heat he’d felt not too long ago, the one he’d brushed off as fear. At the time the fire must have still been relatively small, contained within the kitchen and starting to spread to the other rooms, so he must have not seen it at all, especially when he’d been looking at the ground most of the time.
Soobin’s mind was racing, trying to think of what could have caused the fire. They hadn’t lit any candles and there hadn’t been any bad weather. Was a neighbour’s house also on fire? But no, it was obviously coming from the kitchen, and there were no other houses in that direction. It must have started from the inside, from them.
They’d cooked earlier. They’d turned off the stove, hadn’t they? Yes, he remembered scolding Yeonjun and Beomgyu for almost accidentally pushing him too close to it as he’d leaned over it to turn it off. He’d turned the knob and then given each a light smack on the back of the neck; the image was as clear as day to him.
But they’d made pizza too. They’d used the oven. And this time, Soobin had no memory of them turning it off. Instead, he remembered Yeonjun hurrying into the living room while carrying the pizza after they’d almost burnt it. Nowhere in that memory did he find someone turning the oven off in the process.
He couldn’t do anything as he stood and watched his house burn. He should probably be feeling bad, but that place had never been his home, had never been somewhere where he’d felt safe and wanted. He felt no connection to it. So he just watched and felt his eyes burn due to the tears that hadn’t dried out yet and to the heat and bright light.
Until he remembered something Kai had told him. He’d said that he’d put Taehyun on the couch after everyone else had gone upstairs and left him alone, the same couch that was beginning to be engulfed by fire.
Soobin snapped out of his trance and let out a pained cry as he ran to the living room. He wouldn’t allow Taehyun’s body to be left behind and burned in an accidental house fire. He had to get him out of there and give him a proper burial, pay him some respect. And Kai was also still in the cupboard. He had to move, and fast.
His body burned as he ran through the flames, cracking sounds he had never known he hated so much piercing his ears.
He could see why Kai had put Taehyun on the couch when he saw him. He looked a lot more comfortable lying down on it, and a lot less dead. Kai had even given him his other plushie, a white rabbit, to hold, just like Soobin had done for him.
He wasted no time rounding the piece of furniture and placing his arms underneath him so that he could pick him up bridal style, trying not to drop the plushie as well. It was the least he could do for both Taehyun and Kai to not let the things they’d loved in life be destroyed by the fire.
He was almost at the front door when a sudden exclamation stopped him in his path, “Don’t you touch him!”
Soobin turned around and sure enough there Beomgyu was, standing in front of the staircase. Soobin had a few things he wanted to say to him, but he was in a hurry and they could wait.
“The house is burning,” he replied, “I have to get him out of here and then come back for Kai as well.”
“Kai?” Beomgyu raised an eyebrow at his statement, “Where is he?”
“In the cupboard under the stairs,” Soobin explained.
He debated about whether he should tell him about what had happened or not, the images of Beomgyu going feral and eventually killing Yeonjun still clear in his mind. He worried that the revelation would cause something similar, and he didn’t want something preventing him from removing his two best friends from the burning building. Yeonjun momentarily came to his mind, Kai’s kind words about him making him wonder if it was right to do the exact opposite to him, but he shook the thought out of his head almost instantly.
“I’ll get him then,” Beomgyu offered.
Soobin swallowed, knowing that he might be about to trigger a hurricane, but it was either he told Beomgyu or he found out himself when opening the door, and perhaps being prepared was best.
“He’s dead, Beomgyu,” he said.
The other stopped in his tracks and turned around to face him in disbelief. “What?” he asked, voice coming out no louder than a hoarse whisper that was barely heard over the cracking of the fire.
“I couldn’t save him,” Soobin continued, “I just want to get both of them out quickly and then leave.”
“What happened to him?” Beomgyu asked as if he hadn’t heard anything he’d just said.
“Overdose,” Soobin replied vaguely.
“Overdose?” Beomgyu wasn’t satisfied with it, just like he’d feared, “On what?”
“Sleeping pills.”
“How the fuck did he get sleeping pills? What aren’t you telling me, Soobin-hyung?”
“This is not the time for this. I’ll explain late-”
“No!” Beomgyu seethed, causing Soobin to jump, memories of being sent flying into his bookshelf flashing before his eyes, “You’re going to tell me now what the hell happened to him.”
“Taehyun put sleeping powder into the cookies you made,” Soobin confessed, “Our plan was to have you three eat them so you wouldn’t notice while we killed Yeonjun tonight. There! Happy now? We’d been planning this for so long to get justice and it went so wrong and now all I can do for Taehyun and Kai is keep their bodies safe from the fire. So help me.”
He didn’t know why he’d expected Beomgyu to comply.
“Your plan?” the boy growled, “You were involved in this?”
“Beomgyu, let’s-”
“You planned all of this,” Beomgyu said, “If it wasn’t for you none of this would have happened. If it wasn’t for your stupid plan, Taehyun would still be alive.”
Soobin couldn’t say anything because he knew it was true. He’d known the whole time, but hearing someone else say it felt like finally accepting his responsibility and letting all the self-loathing he’d been trying to repress for hours take over him.
“I know,” he said, “But now we have to go! Once we’re out of here, beat me up, yell at me, kill me, I don’t care. Just don’t let Taehyun and Kai burn in here. Please.”
Beomgyu stared at him blankly, but he turned his back to him and continued walking, hoping that the other would grab Kai and do the same.
“You’re just like the Chois.”
The words felt like an arrow had been thrown at his back.
“You knew the risks and you took them,” Beomgyu continued, voice flat, unemotional, “And look where we are now: Taehyun and Kai are dead. Two innocent people are gone because you were too selfish.”
“So now I’m selfish?” Soobin couldn’t hold back anymore, not when he was being compared to his most hated people, “Just a few hours ago you called me a coward for not doing anything sooner, and now that I told you I wanted to you think you can call me selfish? If you think I wanted any of this to happen then you’re sick in the head.”
“Don’t put words I never said in my mouth,” Beomgyu retaliated, “I didn’t say you wanted it to happen. But you have to pay for the consequences of your actions.”
Soobin saw his fists flex and curl up and he knew what he meant by that. “I know it was my fault,” he said, “I won’t deny it. I know and it fucking hurts to accept it, but it’s the truth. But I’m going to do the only thing I can to somehow try to fix it.”
“There is no fixing,” Beomgyu seethed, “Nothing you can do. Do you see what I mean? You’re acting just like the Chois by thinking that human lives can be replaced by some words or actions. Your father would be disappointed in you.”
Even in his anger, Soobin had the decency to put Taehyun down by the door before lunging at Beomgyu. Bringing up his father was low. Having the nerve to compare him to that vile family was one thing, but mentioning his dad like that just to make him feel bad and satisfy himself crossed a line that should never be crossed.
“Keep my dad out of your filthy mouth, you bastard,” he growled as he grabbed Beomgyu by the front of his shirt.
“Hit a nerve?” the other asked, “Maybe now you’ll understand what you did. You’re just as much a killer as the Chois are.”
“Say one more word and I’ll break your skull,” Soobin couldn’t even think straight because of his rage. His insides were burning, and this time it certainly wasn’t because of the fire. His threat was serious.
“I’d like to see you try,” Beomgyu spat back.
He leaned down and bit Soobin’s right hand. Soobin cried out as the teeth almost broke skin and his grip loosened enough for the other to free himself and run away.
Realistically, Soobin knew that he should leave him behind, take Taehyun and get out, but what had just happened had filled him with the second thirst for blood he’d ever experienced.
And this time it was for Beomgyu’s blood.
‘I can act quickly,’ he thought, ‘Creep up behind him and choke him. Hold him down long enough. Or better even, get a knife from the kitchen and stab him in the back, just like he did to me.’
He’d started running towards the flaming kitchen before he’d even completed that last thought.
No one got to bring up his past like that and get away with it. He didn’t care that Beomgyu didn’t seem to be in his right mind, hadn’t been for a few hours, he had done something absolutely disgusting and insinuated something just as bad, and he was going to pay the price.
The kitchen was hot, everything up in flames. The fire was so strong that Soobin could barely see or make out any of the original room’s colours, everything just various shades of yellow and red. The smoke made him cough, so he covered his nose with his shirt and walked to where his muscle memory directed him to find the knives.
His mother and stepfather were too worried about Jihoon and Hajin taking one or getting hurt to keep them on the kitchen counter, so they’d put them in a draw separate from the rest of the kitchen utensils. It wasn’t locked, just high enough for the two of them to not be able to reach them when they were younger.
In hindsight, maybe they should have invested in a lock, because Soobin’s intuition kept telling him that he was about to make a terrible mistake as he opened the draw and pulled the sharpest knife out, but he shut it down and exited the room, dodging the flames, in search of his target.
He found him further down the corridor outside the kitchen. Just like in his fantasy, Beomgyu had his back turned to him and was leaning on his knees as if he was trying to catch his breath. Soobin didn’t care if he was, he secured his grip around the knife’s handle and charged towards him.
Beomgyu reacted quickly and turned around before he could reach him, his right forearm coming up to push against Soobin’s chest and back him into the wall behind them and the other slapping his hand that was holding the knife and causing it to fall, clattering on the floor.
Soobin could see where it had slid over Beomgyu’s shoulder, but the boy grabbed his chin with his free hand and turned his head so that he was looking him right in the eyes. He saw the fire in Beomgyu’s ones that could only be rivalled by the ones around them, and mustered up his best own ones to try and at least make him feel uneasy.
“Were you going to try to kill me?” Beomgyu asked in an almost mocking tone, “Was the truth too hard to handle?”
“You asshole,” Soobin spat.
His anger had given him newfound strength it seemed. He found no difficulty when he brought his arms up and shoved Beomgyu away roughly, and especially not when he gave him a kick in the stomach for good measure. The boy went down, and Soobin made a run for the knife.
Beomgyu still had some fight in him though. He reached out for him and grabbed him by the ankle. Soobin faceplanted into the floor.
His whole face hurt, but he couldn’t let his opponent take the upper hand. He sat up as fast as he could and threw his weight against Beomgyu. He internally praised himself for his timing because Beomgyu had just started sitting up, probably to get the knife instead of him. He’d just saved his own life.
Laying against Beomgyu wasn’t going to keep him safe for long though, so he attempted to turn around and hold him down more effectively so he could maybe hit him enough to immobilise him or at least weaken him so he would be able to arm himself again. He straddled his waist and placed his hands on his shoulders, pinning him to the floor.
He threw the first punch, effectively landing it on Beomgyu’s jaw. He was about to hit him again when Beomgyu pushed his legs up against his back and overthrew his balance. Soobin’s choice to only hold down his waist and leave out his legs had betrayed him, as it had left Beomgyu with enough lower body strength to perform a stunt like that.
As soon as he was the one in control, Beomgyu switched them around so Soobin was lying underneath him. His head collided with the floor, but he could only focus on it for a fraction of a second before he noticed something else.
While moving them Beomgyu had also shifted them just a bit. But that small amount had brought Soobin closer to the knife he’d dropped earlier. If only he could reach out a bit farther…
Two hands wrapped around his neck and caused him to lose his focus. He looked up and locked eyes with Beomgyu who didn’t seem to have seen the convenient place he’d put Soobin in, and the boy wasn’t planning on letting him know anytime soon. Not until he’d gotten a hold of the knife again, at least.
Beomgyu’s hands around his neck tightened and Soobin was suddenly aware of what exactly was happening. He felt like he’d just choked on a big mouthful of something and then suddenly his airway was cut off. He tried to take in a big lungful of oxygen as he stretched his arm towards the knife.
“I killed Yeonjun,” Beomgyu said above him, “Don’t think I won’t do the same to you.”
His grip on his neck tightened and Soobin almost gave up, letting out a choked whine. He felt so weak, with no power, but he refused to die like that, so he picked his arm back up and continued trying.
“I killed him like this too,” Beomgyu continued taunting him, “Well, not exactly like this. I suffocated him with your sheets. He put up a fight after I’d knocked you out. He must have thought you would have spared him eventually. How idiotic.”
Soobin’s fingers brushed against the hilt of the knife but only briefly before he was forced to pull them back against his will, the stretch too much for him.
“He tried to make run for it,” Beomgyu said as if he was telling the other a story, “Tried to run over your bed, but he was too slow, I got him. I wrapped the blanket around him and held him down like that. At first he was just trapped, but then I lay over him and put more pressure on the parts around his head. I could tell when he started losing air. He started panicking, just like you are now.”
He wasn’t wrong. Soobin’s body was shaking at the fear of death, his oxygen intake completely non-existent at that point. He kept touching the edge of the knife but being drawn away from it, and part of it was because of his body’s reaction to impending death.
But Beomgyu merely chuckled at the feeling of him struggling beneath him and continued talking, “He tried calling for help, but no one was coming. Eventually he started spasming. I could feel every single time he did and I just held him down tighter. He took my brother from me, I was going to give him what he deserved. I felt it when he lost consciousness.” He paused and his expression morphed into one of pleasure and Soobin felt sick knowing that someone’s death could bring him such an emotion. “He dropped like a fly. He went all still. But I still held him down. He wasn’t dead yet, I knew it. I waited a little longer until I was sure he hadn’t survived it. Checked his pulse and everything before I left.”
This time, Soobin was able to briefly take the knife into his hand before dropping it.
Beomgyu’s hold on him tightened even more. “And now the same is going to happen to you,” the younger boy said menacingly, “It’s only fitting, don’t you think? You acted like the Chois, and now you’re going to die just like one.”
The next sound to come out of him was a gasp of surprise and pain as Soobin’s knife pierced his skin.
Soobin was still lying underneath him, but he was now holding the knife he’d finally managed to grab and its blade was buried deep inside Beomgyu’s chest.
Soobin’s eyes widened as the vice around his neck loosened at last, coughing as he took in breaths again, but it was the feeling and sound of the knife cutting through the layers of fabric and skin and the sound Beomgyu had produced which had gotten that reaction from him.
He slowly looked up at Beomgyu again, and for a moment he saw the boy he’d known for so long in his eyes, the one who hadn’t been overtaken by grief and led to do unspeakable things, the one who was kind and loving and would never be able to process everything he’d done when he came to his senses again, the one who looked at him with a betrayed expression; the one he’d called his brother.
The next moment, blood spilled out of Beomgyu’s mouth and his eyes rolled back into his head. Something warm and wet dripped onto the front of Soobin’s shirt that he could tell without looking was more blood and he realised what he had done.
Horrified, he pulled the knife out and stood up. Beomgyu’s body bounced off of him and he landed on the floor, on his side. Beomgyu coughed at the impact and more blood came out, and Soobin had to look away.
There was so much.
So much of everything.
And he didn’t know what to do.
He backed away from Beomgyu, watched as he heaved and choked on his blood. He dropped the bloodied knife on the ground and tried to close his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear it. His hands shook badly, as did the rest of his body and although his neck was free, it was getting harder to breathe by the second.
A burning sting on the back of his foot reminded him of another problem. He yelped and leaped away from the flame that had touched his ankle, leaning down to hit his pant leg and extinguish the small spark on it.
He looked around him again and saw the house in a state he’d never even in his wildest nightmares imagined it. Everything was red, burning. If he’d thought it had been before he’d been badly mistaken, because this, this looked like the Hell described in the Bible he’d read as a kid, like a scene from a science fiction novel, except this was real. And he was inside it.
Had had to do something, had to call the fire brigade or just get out.
He tried to find a route around the fire that he could take, but he didn’t forget about his friends. Not once.
He realised suddenly that out of the five boys that had gathered at his house that day, he was the only one who was still alive.
He cried but the tears didn’t stay on his cheeks for long before the intense heat caused them to evaporate. He looked around him lost, but he found nothing, only loneliness.
And then he made up his mind to be brave and get them out of there, all five of them.
Beomgyu was right in front of him, lying still now in a puddle of his own blood, Kai was the next that was nearest to him, followed by Taehyun and finally Yeonjun.
Yeonjun would be hard to get to, as he was upstairs, but maybe Soobin could go back inside after carrying the other three to safety. No, he was going to go back inside for him.
He grit his teeth and took a decisive step in Beomgyu’s direction.
He waded through the rapidly spreading flames and reached the boy, picking him up and laying him over his shoulder. He was smaller than him, and not too heavy, so he hoped that he could manage carrying both him and Kai on either shoulder to buy time. He felt blood soak his shirt and skin from the stab wound, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was getting everyone out of that house.
He coughed as smoke penetrated his lungs and made it harder to breathe. He tried to cover his nose, but there was so much of it that it was pointless. He just had to hurry up. He could make it.
It was when he’d reached the cupboard that breathing became close to impossible. Carrying someone was only making it harder for him at that point, and so did his added panic. He set Beomgyu down so he could open the door to the cupboard and tried to take in some air to fill his desperate lungs.
He coughed harder as more smoke entered instead, and his hands shook.
“I can do it, I can do it,” he kept muttering to himself, his lips shaking and words coming out jumbled. Sweat dripped into his eyes and mixed with his tears and the stung and blurred and even opening the small door became hard.
He let out a frustrated yell and ran a hand through his hair when the door finally opened. He had just leaned down so he could step inside when a dizzy spell hit him.
He lost his footing and fell onto his hands and knees. He tried standing up again but he was suddenly too weak, too lightheaded.
He coughed harder and couldn’t stop.
He lifted his arm despite his coughs and steadied himself against the wall in front of him. He was going to do this! He was going to get all of his friends out of the house and then leave with them. He would give them a proper burial outside of town and mourn them on his own and then go away for good, hopefully to somewhere better, somewhere where innocent boys didn’t lose their youth because of petty adults and selfish actions.
Another dizzy spell hit him, and Soobin had a flashback to a time not that long ago when they had snuck out of school and gone to a convenience store to buy candy and eat it along the Han River and they had all wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders.
And Soobin realised that during his life all four of these boys had been his family more than anyone, living or dead, had ever been, before everything went black.
---
By the time the neighbours noticed the fire and could notify the authorities it was too late.
By next morning there was basically nothing left of the house, just ashes and some construction poles. The family that lived there was notified and had rushed back to town immediately after hearing the news.
They found the rest of their small town gathered around what used to be their home, now just debris surrounded by police ribbons. Eunjung, Soobin’s mother had been unable to speak to anyone, could only comfort her children and try to hide as much of what had happened from them as possible. How was she supposed to tell them that their big brother was probably gone forever?
For a few hours the town had hope that maybe the boys had made it out before the fire had gotten too bad, but the police had soon uncovered five bodies, charred beyond recognition. The only way to tell who they were was by seeing who wasn’t present at the scene, although there was no need for that, they all knew who lived in the house, who they were friends with and also who hadn’t been home the night of the fire.
“They must have left the oven on by accident while cooking,” a police officer said, heartbroken.
The town mourned them and comforted their families, especially the ones who were being plagued by tragedy for the second time in such a small timeframe.
The five boys were laid to rest next to each other, a grand service for them was held that was paid for and provided by the Choi family whose son had also lost his life in the accident. No one commented that their appearance at the joint funeral was the most distressed anyone had ever seen them. It was a time of mourning for the whole town.
“Poor children,” everyone said. A small accident had cost them their lives before they had even had the chance to experience them to their fullest.
Some whispered amongst themselves how it was that their town had faced so many terrible incidents. Some others talked about the Chois’ involvement, while others shut them up, told them that they shouldn’t take away from the tragedy and let the town mourn.
Because they all did, every citizen mourned the five boys as if they had been their own children, their own siblings, their own friends.
That’s how small their town was.
Small enough for everyone to know everyone, for one’s pain or joy to become that of all the others, for secrets to be impossible to be kept, to be non-existent.
Except for this one.
What had happened that night in that house would forever remain a secret between the five boys and the house’s ashes.