── .✦ strangled
Masterlist
—> Part one —> Part two — Hyung line — Maknae Line —
—> Part three
Pairing : Bahng Christopher x reader
Word : 665
Genre : angst
Warning : none
[___]
Entering the flat, Chan takes off his shoes slowly, looking around the entrance. No light. No sound. He calls out, a little hesitantly.
Chan
- Yn...?
No answer.
He walks to the living room. Everything in its place. Too much in its place. The plaid she always dragged over the sofa is folded. The mug with her initials is not on the coffee table where she always left it. He frowns.
He checks the room. His suitcase is there, locked. Her clothes are in the cupboard. But on the chest of drawers... several things are missing. Her old Moleskine notebook, worn to the binding - the one where she wrote down everything she couldn't say out loud - is gone. Her lion cuddly toy, which she had kept since childhood, is no longer on the bed. Her wooden-handled hairbrush, damaged on the side, is gone too. Her perfume, the one she'd worn every day since they met, is no longer on the shelf.
He opened the nightstand drawer: empty. She kept her anti-anxiety medication there. And a photo of them, taken on a rainy day in Busan. A square mark remains in the dust.
Chan takes a step back.
He sits down slowly on the edge of the bed. His hands shake a little.
- Shit...
He takes out his phone. He hesitates. Types a message. Deletes it. Starts another.
He presses "send".
The message stays there. One second. Two seconds. Then:
"Message not delivered."
He frowns. Checks the signal. All's well. He tries again.
"Message not delivered.
He opens their conversation. No profile picture. No status.
He goes to his networks. There's nothing.
Instagram: "User not found."
KakaoTalk: "You cannot send a message to this contact."
He freezes.
His heart drops in his chest like a block of concrete.
- No... no no no...
He gets up abruptly, spins around in the living room. Grabbing his phone, he dials her number.
Beep.
Beep.
"This number is not available at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep."
He hangs up. Drops the phone on the sofa. Runs his hands through his hair.
Suddenly, the flat seems immense. And empty. Terribly empty.
His eyes fell on the photo on their fridge: a Polaroid of the two of them, stuck together with a heart-shaped magnet. She was smiling broadly, her arms wrapped around him, and he was looking at her as if that were all that mattered.
He picked up the photo. He looked at it. And for the first time in a long time, Chan felt truly, deeply alone.
Chan puts the Polaroid back down, slowly. He rubs his face, tries to breathe, but it's no use - his throat is tight, his thoughts are crashing against his skull like waves in a storm.
He stumbles backwards, almost tripping over one of the stools on the kitchen counter. And that's when he sees it.
A small silver shard, left in a corner. Almost invisible against the pale marble.
He approaches it.
A bracelet.
The bracelet.
The one they'd bought together, two years ago, on a whim, in a tiny shop in Tokyo. A braided black thread, a small plaque engraved in Korean:
"같이 숨 쉬다"
(Breathing together.)
She never took it off. Not even to sleep. Not even in the shower.
And now it's here. Put down. Deposited. Deliberately.
Chan stands still. As if this little piece of string and metal weighed a ton.
He reaches out, trembling, and takes it between his fingers. It's warm. Recently removed.
A word, speechless, escapes his throat.
- What the fuck?
He collapses to the floor, leaning against the cupboards. His head falls back against the wall, his eyes fixed on that bracelet, as if it were the last link he had left.
But she was gone.
And this time, she had taken silence with her.
