Stray Kids

“Y/N. I need you to tell me if he’s really gone.” Felix’s hoarse voice echoed in your ears. You didn’t know how to answer him, if you could. Your own voice refused to work, the hours of pain and heartbreak getting the best of you. Felix’s sniffles were almost as constant as yours, playing a tune of sadness that only the two of you could understand. “Please come over. I need you.”

Hyunjin normally wouldn’t be okay with you seeing a boy in the dead of night, even if it was Felix, but he knew it’s what was best at a time like this. He let you off with one last reassuring hug and a ruffle of your hair to which you whined about. Hyunjin only laughed and pushed you out the door and told you to come home soon.

The moonlight was comforting. The stars shone down on you like they were saying hello. There was a particular star you couldn’t keep your eyes off of. It was brighter than the rest, twinkling and giving off a soft blue haze.

Seungmin’s favorite color.

Maybe he was up there already, watching over you. He was probably calling himself your guardian angel or your knight in shining armor. You laughed at the thought. You couldn’t have imagined that you would laugh so soon, but it felt nice. It made it feel like none of this was happening. Like he was right next to you, telling you some stupid joke that he had been coming up with for weeks.

You sat down on the curb of Felix’s house and waited for him to join you. You turned your eyes to the sky once more, watching the star that refused to give up its light even as the clouds washed over it. There was a comfort you found it in as if it was truly Seungmin telling you that everything was going to be okay. That all the pain you felt that night was going to be over. Its blue haze twinkled once more before you were greeted by Felix, puffy eyes and red nose in all their glory. He sat down next to you with a sigh.

“Hi.” Your voice came out in a whisper.

“Hi,” Felix said back.

The air wasn’t awkward, but neither of you knew where to go from there. You didn’t want to talk about how your best friend was no longer present, but you knew you had to. It had to be addressed at one point or another. It was going to be painful but at least you had each other.

A shoulder to cry on and a soul to rely on.

The world was going to keep spinning, whether Seungmin was there or not, and you knew he’d want you both to be happy. The star in the sky, your renewed guardian angel, your best friend, would want the best for you.

“Did you watch the news?” you asked, breaking the silence. Felix could feel hot tears sneaking up on him but he held them back. Instead, he began to pluck out blades of grass from his yard. Something to occupy his hands since this thoughts couldn’t be controlled.

“Yeah.”

A few moments passed before he spoke again.

“I just talked to him a few days ago and now he’s-.” He paused. Saying it would make it real, and Felix didn’t want that. He couldn’t say it aloud, he refused. “How does something like this even happen?” Felix questioned desperately, turning his head so he could meet your eyes. If eyes are truly the window to the soul, Felix’s soul was deeply damaged. Maybe even torn apart. The bright and happy boy you knew no longer held a sparkle in his eye. It was gone, every last bit of it.

You felt your heartache looking at him, and you wondered if he felt the same as he looked at you. Felix glanced back down at the road beneath his feet, kicking a few pieces of loose gravel and sighing. You grabbed his hand and gave it a small squeeze. They weren’t much bigger than yours, fitting quite well in your grip. There was even a sliver of warmth in his touch.

“I’m scared, Felix. What if this guy does this to other people? To us?” The fear in your voice resonated in Felix’s ears. You were one of the strongest, most fearless people he knew. You were always the first one to stand up for him and Seungmin when something went wrong during one of Seungmin’s antics. You always refused to cry watching dramas, laughing as Seungmin teased Felix when he shed tears at the sad scenes that played out on the TV. You were always the first one to suggest adventures that were sure to never end well. You were the strong one yet here you were, afraid and utterly broken.

How did things get like this?

Of course, Felix knew the answer to that. He knew how life ended up this way, but that didn’t mean he had to accept it. The boy didn’t want to accept reality, questioning what he could’ve done better. There had to have been some way to prevent this from happening. It all made Felix want to blame himself.

“We just need to be careful,” Felix reassured, squeezing your hand back. You slipped away from him and stood up, balling your fists and pacing along the cracks in the gravel. You felt a red, hot anger begin to form and spread throughout your entire body. An anger that was directed towards the man that did this and towards the world for taking your best friend away so soon.

You wanted to scream from the rooftops. You wanted to break everything that got in your way. You’d be willing to tear down buildings if it made the pain disappear. The searing hot anger was refusing to die down, a sudden blinding rage that you didn’t know how to control. This cruel world took your best friend away and you weren’t okay with it. You were never going to be okay with it.

“Careful?” you said rather harshly, “We don’t even know who’s doing this, how the fuck are we going to be careful?” Felix felt the change in atmosphere, leaving him struggling to find the right answer.

There was so much Seungmin wanted to do that he would never be able to.

“What do you want to do when high school’s over?”

It was a random question that suddenly popped up in your mind. You remembered when he was younger he wanted to be a prosecutor. He always said he wanted to put the bad guys away and give them what they deserve. You weren’t sure if it was the true reason or just because the two of you watched too many crime shows when you were kids.

“I think I want to be a photographer,” Seungmin mused while looking through his phone for the song that had been stuck in his head all day.

“Really? Why?” you asked curiously. He had never mentioned anything about that before. Sure, he took lots of pictures but they were mostly of himself and food.

“I want to capture things I don’t want to forget,” Seungmin said, looking up from his phone, “there is beauty in the smallest of things, and I want the world to see it.” You could’ve sworn you saw a sparkle in the boy’s eye. You questioned how you never noticed it before. He always seemed to be happier when he took pictures, be it of sunsets, his melting ice cream cones, or even you.

Seungmin’s favorite kinds of pictures were the ones when the person being captured isn’t paying attention. They’re natural, they’re real. He even has a few of you on his phone, but he’d never admit it. They were his precious pictures, pictures that would remind him that there is true beauty in a world where everything else seems bleak. Besides his short escapades, these were his release, his happiness. He wanted to take pictures of things he didn’t want to lose. While those things included you and the prettiest of sunsets, it included himself.

He didn’t want to forget who he was.

He wanted to capture the happiness that he had such a hard time grasping for.

There was so much about Seungmin that the world would never know.   

“Rise and shine!” Seungmin yelled into the room occupied by you and Felix, “I made breakfast!”

You and Felix groaned as the younger boy woke you both from your sleep. Even when you attempted to close your eyes and use the pillow to cover your ears, Seungmin still came over and used his foot to shake you. This wasn’t the first time Seungmin would wake you up early, sleepovers not being uncommon, so Felix knew there was no use in fighting it. He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and reached over to check the time on his phone.

“It’s only 7:20 in the morning,” Felix groaned, his deep morning voice overpowering your tired complaints. Seungmin was still attempting to get you up. He achieved pulling the blankets off your figure but was now working on getting you to sit up. You were doing everything in your power to stay asleep, although you were probably using more effort to counter his attempts than it would actually be to just give in.

“Well if you guys would’ve stopped gossiping like school girls last night and went to bed, you wouldn’t be so tired,” Seungmin complained between heavy breaths. You were really making him work up a sweat this early in the morning.

“Don’t act you weren’t gossiping with us,” you huffed as you threw his hands off of you and sat up on your own accord. Seungmin playfully rolled his eyes and made his way to the door, Felix sluggishly following behind him.

“I only joined in when you guys talked about Jeongin, Jisung, and Changbin. Those losers are too easy to make fun of,” Seungmin chuckled as he stood in the doorway, putting his arm around Felix’s shoulder.

“Whatever,” you groaned as you grabbed your blanket and pulled it up to your neck, “I’m going back to bed. Enjoy your eggs, Felix. It’s the only thing snail boy over there knows how to make.” Felix giggled as you poked fun at Seungmin. He loved when the two of you bickered because it felt oddly domestic, never anything harsh or cruel. Bickering was normal, and normal was safe.

“This is why you’re my favorite,” Seungmin whispered into Felix’s ear as he ruffled his hair and led him out of the room, arm still around his shoulder. Although his words were slightly muffled by the blanket that was now over your head, you heard every word Seungmin said loud and clear.

“I can hear you!” you yelled, getting up and chasing the boys into the kitchen. You heard the two boys giggling and their quickened footsteps on the tile floor as they picked up their pace to avoid you.

You almost smiled thinking about it all again.

Felix wasn’t the best at picking his words carefully. He tried to find the right things to say to help you calm down, but it seemed like every word that left his mouth made things worse.

“Well, maybe we should find out?” Felix asked rather softly.

“Find out? Seriously?” Without taking any notice, you were beginning to raise your voice. “How exactly do you plan to do that? We should just leave that kind of stuff to my brother. If we go off and try to be detectives, we’re going to end up being in some sort of danger that we might not even be in the first place.” You took a deep breath, trying to calm yourself down as you noticed the frown on Felix’s face was full of concern. You didn’t want to worry him since you were just as scared as he was.

“Yo- you’re right, I’m sorry. Let’s just be careful,” Felix stuttered as you sat down beside him once more. You rested your head on his shoulder and grabbed his hand, looking for a source of comfort to calm you down.

“Don’t be sorry. I just don’t know what to do anymore,” you sighed, trying to maintain your cool as you watched your guardian angel twinkle in the sequined-silver sky.

You wanted someone to tell you what to do, how to go about a situation like this. All of this felt like a maze that was impossible to escape. You felt trapped in your own thoughts, swimming in false hope and unthinkable circumstances. There were a million doors, all with different answers, yet you couldn’t find the key.

“Let’s just stay like this for a bit,” you whispered, closing your eyes and letting your thoughts flood your mind.

You and Felix took a week off of school. It was an entire week of pain, unimaginable pain, just trying to get back to the way things used to be. At least, as much as that was possible.

The night before you went back to school, you had a nightmare. You couldn’t remember much, mostly just dark figures and the painful sound of Seungmin calling for help. You woke up in a cold sweat. The dark thoughts that were flooding your mind stayed in place as you heard a crash from the kitchen. You pulled the covers up to your face in an effort to hide.

If you can’t see them, they can’t see you, right?

With your hands trembling in fear, you picked up your baseball bat for protection and pushed yourself off the bed.

You had gotten the bat for your 9th birthday. It was a gift from Seungmin’s parents and something you treasured deeply. You and Seungmin decided to play baseball that year and both of your parents were ecstatic that the two of you were finally talking to other kids instead of just amongst yourselves. Seungmin’s signature was written along the side of the wood. He always told you it was a good luck charm. You weren’t sure if it was the thought that it brought luck or the fact that it truly did, but you can’t remember losing a single game after that. Hopefully, that luck was still present.

Carefully opening the door and mentally cursing the rusty hinges, you peeked your head out and noticed the kitchen light flooding into the hallway.

Your mind was in hyperdrive, coming up with possibility after possibility of who was in your house. The thought that it could’ve been the man that hurt Seungmin was the one that scared you the most.

He was after you too, wasn’t he?

You slowly walked down the hallway with light footsteps. When you got to the kitchen, you noticed there was nothing unusual except for an open cupboard and a plastic plate lying upside down on the floor. You loosened your grip on the baseball bat and let it fall to your side. You hadn’t noticed how tightly you were holding it before. As you sighed of relief, you felt a pair of hands grab onto your shoulders. A scream quickly erupted from your throat as you swung the baseball bat as hard as you could towards the intruder.

“Woah woah woah, don’t actually hit me with that thing,” Hyunjin chuckled, stopping the baseball bat a few inches from his face. Realizing it was your asshole of a brother, you rolled your eyes and push him to the side, holding up the bat once more and threatening to actually hit him with it. Hyunjin’s shoulder shook with laughter at your attempt to hurt him.

“You’re an asshole,” you huffed. You were more annoyed that he knew how scared you’d been this past week than the fact that he thought it was funny.

“I dropped a plate when I was making a snack. Go back to bed you dweeb,” Hyunjin said while trying to ruffle your hair to which you avoided his attempts. You pursed your lips together and walked back to your room, refusing to let Hyunjin laugh at your terrified state any longer.

You had a hard time falling back asleep that night yet, morning came like any other.

The alarm clock on your phone blared as the light from the window poked through the curtains and into your eyes. You could hear your mom cooking breakfast in the kitchen while Hyunjin and your dad laughed loudly about something they heard on the news.

The last place you wanted to go was school. It reminded you of him. Everything reminded you of him. But at school, you’d be expecting to see him in class or save your seat at lunch. His chair where he was supposed to be was going to be empty, or even worse, someone had already taken his place.

You quickly left your house that morning, avoiding any small talk with your brother or pitied looks from your parents. There had been enough of those the past week to last you a lifetime. They thought they were making it better but the only thing they were doing was the exact opposite.

When you arrived at your usual waiting spot, you pulled out your phone and sat down on the wooden bench.

You met Seungmin and Felix there every morning for school. Seungmin was always the first to show up, then you, and lastly Felix, who was usually late and caused the three of you to rush to school or else you’d end up showing up ten minutes after the first bell rang.

The sun on your skin was warm. Its rays of light were bright, ready for the day ahead, something you weren’t. It was the first time you’d left your house since that night with Felix. You wanted to stay home longer but your parents wouldn’t let you and neither would Felix. Staying in your room forever was going to do you any good.

A sudden buzz from your phone made you jump. You peered down at the small screen, looking at the text message Felix had sent to you probably telling you he was running late.

Felix, 7:26 A.M

I’ll be there in ten minutes. Forgot to set my alarm. Don’t leave without me.

Typical.

For the next five minutes, you scrolled through your phone, liking stupid memes on Instagram and spamming your brother with snapchats just to annoy him. Suddenly, you heard quickened footsteps behind you. Assuming it was Felix, you stood up and brushed off your uniform.

“Took you long enough,” you huffed, beginning to turn around to face him.

The person that was behind you was definitely not Felix. Not unless Felix suddenly liked to wear ski masks to school.

Before you could even process the situation playing out right in front of you, the stranger put his arms around your neck and a piece of cloth over your mouth. It became hard to breathe, your vision slowly betraying you.

You wanted to scream but your body didn’t allow it, failing to do what you asked. You could have sworn you were thrashing your limbs, kicking and screaming like a toddler who was just told no for the first time. Yet, if you were, it wasn’t doing you any good. The man who was holding you was far stronger than you were. All you could make out was the strong smell of the cloth held up against your face. You watched as the road in front of you became blurry and abruptly disappeared, your body giving out and all of your thoughts being put on hold.

Felix’s eyebrows furrowed as he ran to your usual spot, trying to catch his breath. He noticed your bookbag lying on the bench as if it had been lazily thrown without a care. At first, Felix thought you were trying to prank him. Maybe jump out and give him a good scare because he was late once again. When you didn’t show up for twenty minutes and hadn’t responded to a single one of his texts, he knew something was wrong. There was a bad feeling forming in the pit of his stomach that refused to dissipate.

“Hyunjin,” Felix panted, having sprinted all the way up the road. “I think something,” he couldn’t seem to catch his breath, “I think, something, something happened to Y/N.” Hyunjin stood in the doorway, blinking at Felix’s statement, not sure how to react although he felt the big, red emergency lights flashing in his brain. He placed his hands on Felix’s shoulders and lowered his eyes to meet the boy’s before him.

“What happened?” Hyunjin asked, his voice as low and calm as he could make it. If he were to act rashly, he would worry the kid even more than he already seemed to be.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Felix tried to think of a reasonable explanation. He racked his brain for an answer as he stared into Hyunjin’s eyes. There wasn’t a good answer for this, a good reason as to why your bag was thrown to the side and why you didn't answer his texts.

“Her bag was on the bench and she’s not answering any of my texts,” Felix said, lips visibly trembling as every word left his mouth. “I just know something is wrong. Hyunjin, you had to believe me.” Desperation coated each word that Felix was trying to say, something Hyunjin had never seen from the kid before.

It was not Hyunjin’s turn to take a second to breathe.

Hyunjin took a deep breath and removed his hands from Felix’s shoulders. He reached for the keys that hung on the hook next to the door, running his free hand through his hair. He had to remain calm. Just because you were his sister didn’t mean he could break protocol. He had to carry this out like any other case and report to the police station before taking any further actions. But, Hyunjin was fighting the urge to do the exact opposite. You were his little sister, the most precious thing he had besides your family dog. He watched you grow up alongside Seungmin and eventually Felix. You had to be safe, he didn’t know what he would do if you weren’t.

Hyunjin bit back his lip, holding back any words or actions that he would regret.

“Feli-”

“I’m going to go search for her. I’ll text you if I find anything.” Felix ran off before Hyunjin could begin to talk out what they should do. Hyunjin extended his arm out to reach for the younger although he was already far gone.

Hyunjin didn’t have a good feeling about any of this but he was going to do what he could. If he had to break rules so be it. Your safety was all that mattered.

He was going to bring you home.

A groan escaped your lips as you finally came to, holding your head and squinting your eyes at the sudden light, although it wasn’t bright. It took you a few moments before you realized where you were.

Well, what you could make of it at least. The walls were made of rusted metal, waves imprinted into the material. The floor was solid wood, easily giving you splinters that were never going to come out of your skin. Small holes were scattered along the walls, pockets of sunlight shining through them. You could swear you heard the sound of waves and the scent of salt fill your nose.

You felt your heart begin to race and frantically stood up and started to bang on the walls of whatever it was you were trapped in. Your hands were turning red, pain quickly spreading along your palms, yet you didn't stop.

There had to be someone out there, someone who could hear you and get you out of there.

Minute after minute passed before you gave up, slumping against the side of the wall and sliding down until you roughly hit the floor. You weren’t even allowed a second of thought or a moment of a calm heartbeat. Your eyes flew to the noise that came from in front of you.