#exo chaptered

Not once, in your recent memory had you felt that. Not really. Not like this. You would find Kyungsoo, because you had to. You owed him an apology and an explanation and you owed it to him to give him the evidence you had uncovered that exonerated him. You owed him so much. 

  Your noisy footsteps echoed around the deserted corridor that led to Kyungsoo’s kitchen and you’d laid a flat palm over the cold steel of that heavy door, poised to push it wide open — the quickest search here, and then you would move to the roof as Baekhyun had instructed you to. Only, which roof would you begin with? This palace was huge and had several levels where roof access could be reached by staircase or elevator. It didn't matter, you would begin with the access closest to you and move on to the next. You would not pause in your steps until you had caught sight of Prince Kyungsoo. Until he was safe and sound. 

  Your momentum paused for but a moment when the kitchen came up as empty as it had been when you vacated it hours earlier. That was before, when Ara had dropped her latest bombshell over your head and no amount of evasive maneuvering could keep you safe from it. 

  But everything felt different now. 

  You didn't have time to dwell on it. You had to find him now so he could know the truth about his mother. He had to know the truth about the queen he served so blindly. He had to know the truth about May and the baby that was alive and well inside her belly. The man had been lied to on so many different levels and by so many people — your skin prickled with the chill of the air around you as you burst through the fourth floor rooftop with the sparkling swimming pool. The water was motionless, the air here eerily quiet and windless and the reflection of the bright white round face of the moon from the surface of the water was the only face to greet you up here — you spun on your heels, ripping the door open and pushing your legs to run faster with the determination that you had inside of you for the truth you carried on your tongue. The truths you would reveal to him the moment you had a chance to look into his big brown eyes and begin your confessions. 

  Your legs were buzzing with the effort. Only this buzzing did not feel like your muscles complaining, this felt more external. It took you an honest-to-god second to realize the buzzing was actually outside of your body and coming from the cell phone that you had tucked into the front pants pocket of the bride-to-be pajamas you still wore. 

  The text notification lit up the screen, the two messages that sat heavy on the screen of your cell phone were from Baekhyun. 

  “Garage,” read the first message. A single word that immediately sent you away from the hallway you had just reached and spun you around toward the staircase you had just passed.

  The second text message lit a fire inside of you and you pushed your legs faster than you had ever run, skipping multiple stairs at a time, paying little attention to the burning inside your lungs and and pain you felt when you stepped wrong off the bottom step of the second floor. 

  “Hurry.”

  You did not bother opening the texts. You could see the urgency from the notifications. You could certainly feel the sinking feeling inside your guts when you read them.

  As you grew closer though, to the clean white hallway that led to that garage. That place where you and May had played grand theft auto in real life, driving his fancy black car over the shrubs that lined the curvy driveway, as the memories returned to your hazy mind, something else came back to you. It was an unwelcome invader, this fear that returned to you full force and brought back the familiar trembling in your limbs and hands and fingers. 

  You swallowed hard and tried to push the fear down, but a sinking feeling pulled inside of you when you tried to swallow the fear. It felt like a vacuum had been turned on inside of you and despite the urgency you knew of this situation, you knew there was simply no time for your nerves or your fear to have any place right now, you still had to grip the door handle twice to get your hands to stop shaking enough to open the door.

  Inside the garage was a cloud.

  The garage door was open but the cloud lingered, hazy and white all around and sounds came from deeper in the large open space, around the other side of the slick black car that felt so familiar to you.

  Human sounds. 

  The sounds of great effort touched against your ears and made the hairs on the back of your neck prickle. Dread traveled with quick spindly fingertips along the skin of your scalp. It made you shiver. 

  A man and his voice. A single man, cursing, grunting, huffs of breath but there was no other voice to respond to him.

  You had made it around the car by now and someone was there, just there, on the ground. 

  Two feet. 

  Two legs.

  A person you knew.

  It was a person that you knew.

  One sock, the other foot bare — but the person lying on the ground was so still, save for the occasional jostle from the man who curved his own body above him.

  He — Kyungsoo...

  Kyungsoo was on his back, his eyes closed, his shoes gone, where were they? You could see inside of his car, see the door still open and the engine turned off. Keys dropped where your feet stepped. You’d nearly trotted on them. You had to step over them as you moved. 

  You could see a pair of black Nikes carefully placed side by side onto the passenger seat only where was the driver? Why were his shoes set there so carefully? Where was his other sock? 

  “Is this how you fix it, you stupid fucking asshole? You spineless coward! You fucking pussy!” 

  Why wasn’t he answering Baekhyun? Why wasn’t he calling him nasty names back. The Prince Kyungsoo you knew would never take such insults hurled at him, and by his own brother. You’d seen plenty of their interactions in the past to know that Baekhyun would have had his neck grabbed and the back of his head slapped many times for this. 

  “You dumb, selfish, piece of shit. How dare you?”

  But Kyungsoo...

  Kyungsoo—

  “God-fucking-dammit, you stupid son of a bitch, open your eyes! This isn’t how you solve it! This isn’t the way!” 

  Between the grunts, between the pauses in his motions with his hands pressing down onto his brother‘s chest, Baekhyun was cursing. Baekhyun was screaming. Baekhyun was yelling at the top of his lungs. Begging for the man on the floor to wake up and smack him for his insolence. 

  Baekhyun was talking to you. 

  Baekhyun knew you were here and Baekhyun was saying something to you. You could not bring your legs to move. You could not bring your ears to sharpen to the words he said to you. All you could see were the five toes on the end of that bare foot that did not move at all.

  Kyungsoo was on his back on the cold concrete, his shoes sitting carefully side by side on the passenger seat of his car and now he was not opening his eyes. One sock off of his foot. It had to be so cold. He had to be very cold without his shoes on. He looked almost blue from how cold it was inside his garage with the door open. 

  Baekhyun bent his head down to Kyungsoo’s face and covered his lips with his own. 

  It looked like a kiss. 

  Kyungsoo’s eyes did not open. He did not lift a hand to slap his brother away from him. He did not push angrily at Baekhyun’s shoulders when their lips touched. The white cloud was clearing and you could see too clearly. 

  Kyungsoo’s eyes did not open. His color was wrong. 

  You didn't want to do this anymore.

  -

  You don’t want to talk about this anymore.

  -

  You don't want to talk about it anymore.

  -

  They had you all wrong. 

You were a coward.

  -

  Baekhyun shouted at you. Calling you by your first name, not your title. You did not move and you did not look away from his bare foot. 

  A shove came from behind. Someone moving swiftly past you bumped against your back and the motion threw you off your balance, sending you down to your knees where they hit the concrete hard. The jolt of pain surged through you and you felt as if you’d just woken from a dream. Only in front of you, the nightmare continued. 

  “I found the black bag,” Ara’s voice said to Baekhyun and he motioned with his chin for her to set it down beside him and open it up for him to see inside. She didn't seem to notice you had fallen. 

  “Speak to him,” Baekhyun said and Ara kneeled beside her prince with her hands fisted tightly in her lap. 

  “Y-Your Highness?” Her voice called out softly. You could hear the tremble. You could hear the terror and grief.

  “You hear that, you jerk? You made Ara cry. Open your stupid eyes already.” Baekhyun’s approach had changed now. He did not quit the efforts he made with his hands over his brother’s chest, yet his voice sounded less angry and less lively. He sounded tired. He sounded broken.

  Ara turned suddenly to look at you. Her face was streaked with tears and her eyes widened as if she only now realized who you were and that you were also here, living out this real life hell with her. She crawled away from her Lord, reaching for you with outstretched hands and she gripped tightly around your forearms and she pulled. You did not fight it. She had a sudden light of determination in her eyes as she did it and you could feel the rough floor scrape against your knees through the thin fabric of your pajamas. 

  “Your highness, the princess is here — say something to him, hurry,” Ara’s eyes pleaded and she placed your hands on his still body. 

  He was warm. 

He was so warm. You wanted to weep with the living temperature of his skin that you could feel below the fabric of the white dress shirt he wore. You followed the path of his arm down to reach for his hand and you held it within both of your own and you let your words free from your chest. 

  “Kyungsoo,” you called and you squeezed his hand inside of your own. 

  Baekhyun bent down to Kyungsoo’s face again, breathing into his parted lips and you could see the effect of it, as his chest lifted with the motion and you lifted Kyungsoo’s hand up to your mouth to feel the warmth in his skin with your lips.

  “Kyungsoo, please wake up. Please,” you begged and you squeezed. His skin was warm. He was here, all he had to do was open his eyes and you would give anything. You would give up your title. You would give up the life you had known. You would do anything not to lose him. 

  “Kyungsoo, please, I can't do this without you. Please wake up.” 

  With the breath Baekhyun had loaned him you saw his chest lift up, and then you watched his chest fall flat again and you leaned closer to his face so he might hear your voice more clearly as you spoke against his temple. 

  You gave him a truth. 

The first of many you vowed to give him. A truth so scary and so vulnerable, you hadn’t dared to speak of it even to yourself for fear of what it meant.

  “I love you, Kyungsoo. Please know that I love you.” You whispered this right into his ear and his chest that had fallen flat remained so for a spell as your confession, your first truth, drifted over his face and soaked into his skin.

  Your hands that squeezed did not waver in their grip and you gasped, you gasped out loud because you felt something in that moment. With your truth out, and it’s cleansing wave that coursed over your chest — in that exact moment you absolutely swore he squeezed your hand back. 

  You felt him. You felt him.

  Then you heard the gasp. It was rough and painful sounding and Kyungsoo gasped loudly as his entire body shook and trembled with the effort. 

  Immediately after the first gasp, came a loud cough and another violent gasp for breath and Kyungsoo inhaled too hard, too desperately for oxygen. He was shaking all over his body and Baekhyun dug through his bag for something; a tiny tank with a mask and rubber tubing. He was putting something over Kyungsoo’s face and Kyungsoo was swinging his free hand out, swatting, fighting, trying to get the better of the grim reaper who had surely had most of his talons in him. You held on to his hand with both of your hands, refusing to let go of him for even a second, should that demon return and try and finish what he had started. 

  “Shhh,” Baekhyun called out softly, “Kyungsoo, it’s me.” Kyungsoo’s eyes were still closed, despite the fight he was putting up. He struck out once, connecting with Baekhyun’s shoulder and you heard the grunt as Baekhyun absorbed the blow. 

  “It’s Baekhyun, you idiot!” 

  Another swing of his arm went from mindless to purposeful as Kyungsoo reached for the collar of the shirt Baekhyun wore and his fist wrapped tightly around the fabric and he pulled him down to where he laid flat on his back on the floor of this garage. 

  “Baek—”

  Kyungsoo’s hoarse voice broke through as his eyelids pulled halfway open. He rolled his eyes back into his head and closed them up again and he was reeling with the shock of it all. 

  Your grip around his hand was so tight, you felt like you might be squeezing him too hard so you loosened the tight grip but you felt the squeeze he gave your hand in return. With his eyes closed still you could hold him like this. 

  An overwhelming gratitude hit you; to hear him talking, to see the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out and you lifted that hand up to your mouth and you pressed your lips against the back of his hand again and again. 

  The jolt of watching him turn to face you, and the cool of being caught by him as his eyes opened and he looked at you; still blinking heavily, still fighting to keep his eyes open long enough for recognition to hit him and he gasped once, in surprise, when it did— it made you drop his hand. It made you let go of him. 

  His hand did not fall, for he had more strength inside of him than you had inside of you. His hand remained lifted near your face where you had let go of him and you were absolutely frozen when his hand opened up and you felt the warmth of his palm land over your cheek. You even felt a brush of his thumb over the wetness below your eye. 

  “Kyungsoo,” you called out to him and his eyes drifted away from you again. He’d let go of the vice grip he had on Baekhyun’s collar and slipped his hand slowly down his brother’s chest and he lifted a hand to run it down the front of Baekhyun’s chest once more. 

  Baekhyun was busy. Despite the small silent thanks you saw in Kyungsoo’s actions, Baekhyun was attaching things around Kyungsoo’s arm, listening with a stethoscope pressed to different parts of his arm, to his chest; shining bright lights on the end of a pen into pulled eyelids; assessing the damage, checking and measuring, formulating a plan. 

  “Ara,” Baekhyun called out without looking up from his cell phone where he was furiously swiping and typing, “close the garage door and remove every bit of evidence that anything happened here.” 

  She sprung up from where she had been curled into a nervous ball by Kyungsoo’s head and she leapt first to the button near the entry doorway to close the garage door. 

  Kyungsoo had given in to his closing eyelids and his hand had fallen from your face on its own as he drifted away from you again. 

  “Help me get him up, we have to bring him inside. He destroyed the cameras in here already but inside we will be seen. He’s just very drunk, okay? Too much partying before the wedding.” 

  You looked up instinctively toward the corners of the garage where you would place a camera if you wanted to get a good view of the room and sure enough, the camera there had been smashed by something heavy. Bits of broken black plastic were scattered around the floor below. 

  “Shouldn’t we take him to the hospital, Baek?” Your concern was cresting and he merely shook his head and you helped lift the weight of the unconscious man and draped one of his arms over your shoulder to mirror the way Baekhyun did on the other side. Kyungsoo’s legs were no help and the man was heavy, but Baekhyun was surprisingly strong and you found that he carried most of his brother’s weight for you. 

  “No Hospitals. I called someone,” Baekhyun said with a grimace on his face and you entered the hallway dragging Kyungsoo’s heavy weight as best as you could. “Someone. A doctor I know who can keep a uhh… a secret.” 

  “Baekhyun...you didn’t call him, did you? I thought he didn’t know who you really were.”

  “I don't really have any other choice right now. This is beyond my skill set and he’s my brother.” 

  Ara followed behind, with Kyungsoo’s shoes in one hand, a long black dress sock in the other and her head bowed with a grave look on her face. Her breathing was shallow and she did not look up at you as you looked upon her from behind. 

  Your home was the closest to the garage and you rushed to open your door so you could help Baekhyun bring Kyungsoo into your bed. 

  Baekhyun disappeared to your bathroom where you heard water running and then he was back, digging through his black bag again, this time pulling out several small white packages, all marked as sterile, some larger than others. He pulled blue gloves on his hands and there were tubes and a bag filled with clear liquid, a long scary looking needle and he asked you to hold Kyungsoo’s arm out and to hold it still.

  You just did as you were told; still too numbed by the trauma in the garage. Still too haunted by the cold stillness you’d seen in Kyungsoo as he laid motionless on that concrete floor. That particular shade of his skin invaded your mind’s eye again and again and you flinched when a tissue landed over the back of your hand that held on firmly to Kyungsoo’s arm so Baekhyun could put in an IV. 

  You had been crying. You hadn’t even realized it. Someone had just handed you a tissue to wipe your tears before they could run down your face and drip all over the bed below you. 

  You’d expected Ara or Baekhyun to be the deliverer. What you saw when you pulled your eyes up from the spot where the needle had been covered up with white medical tape: what stole your breath from within your lungs and replaced it with an absolute void of any sort of certainty, were two eyes watching you from the pillow of your bed. 

  There had been a tissue box beside the bed, easily reached by his other arm. Kyungsoo was watching you without a single word spoken on his lips and he blinked his eyes slowly as you quickly wiped away the wetness on your face. 

  The IV was in, more tubing was stretched across his face and inserted into his nostrils so he could breathe and his eyes closed again, only this time it looked to be more deliberate than earlier when you were carrying him out of the garage. You could make out slight movements of his eyeballs under his closed lids and he inhaled a deep breath and held it for a moment before the exhale sent him into a fit of ragged coughs that pulled Baekhyun’s face up from his ringing cell phone. 

  Baekhyun answered and you were handed a glass of water by Ara. You wondered at her weird standoffish behavior now. You accepted the water and moved closer to where Kyungsoo’s coughing seemed to be winding down now to help him drink. 

  Baekhyun was gone. You’d missed his exit with the coughing. Ara — you looked around to find her gone as well; bowed out for a moment of quiet clarity perhaps. She’d been through a lot as well, and her silent deference to you, you could not quite define, but something felt different in the way she looked into your face now. 

  You set the glass down and Kyungsoo’s eyes followed where you moved to the bedside table. Your focus was down on the floor beside the bed. Here you found his shoes and folded carefully and inside his shoe was that single black dress sock. 

  It felt like a compulsion; to put him back together the way he should have always been. He was a prince in line to the throne for fuck’s sake. He was your fiancé and future husband to be. He was the man you loved. You reached for the sock and his eyes followed you as you carefully stretched it over the skin of his bare foot, patting lightly over the top of his foot to be sure it was smoothed out and free of annoying wrinkles. 

  You were fussing now. Bringing his shoes off the floor and setting them on the chair beside your bed and when you were certain they were neat and tidy you moved to the blankets you kept on the bench at the foot of your large bed. 

  You covered him and when you brought the blanket up over his chest you saw him move before you felt the warmth of his hand grab ahold of yours and those silent eyes did not leave your face once since he’d woken back up. 

  Your steps froze with the contact. 

  Your heartbeat inside your chest was annoyingly noisy. Your own breathing, gave away how incredibly anxious you felt and you wanted to cover your mouth to keep yourself in control. You did not dare move though. Something about the intensity in his eyes kept you trapped in this.

  “Stay,” he spoke, at last and you closed your eyes with the tiniest request he whispered to you. Just one word, and you felt as if your legs might refuse to keep you upright any longer. 

  In fact, you sat down heavily into a chair you’d pulled beside the bed. 

  You looked into his face again and his eyes remained on you, steadfast and urgent. 

  You nodded your head once and you heard the exhale from his chest. An exhale of relief. 

  His eyes closed again and they stayed that way as you held on to his hand long enough for his tight grip to loosen. 

  He was asleep when Baekhyun returned wearing a sheer head wrap around the top of his head and looped back around to cover the bottom half of his face. No time for makeup tonight. You recognized the panicky way he looked into your eyes and the way his voice changed and lifted told you that Dr. Dante, his sometimes on-again, off-again something had arrived to check on the patient. 

  “Baekhee, I just don't understand how you found yourself in this situation — with a member of the royal family, no less. That non-disclosure agreement you made me sign sounded very scary too. What kind of emergency are we talking about? From exhaustion?” 

  You heard them coming before the first glimpse of them. Baekhyun had arrived through the doorway first and motioned to his visitor behind him. 

  “Oh you know...royals.” Baekhyun waved a dismissive hand in the air, faking confidence as best he could but you could hear the nerves manifest with the awkward way he forced a laugh. “Anyway, he’s in here.” Baekhyun’s voice trailed off and none of Dante’s original questions were ever answered. Baekhyung had aimed for flippant and unaffected but it fell flat. You heard only desperation and fear. 

  Dante arrived, looking as familiar as could be without wearing his white doctor’s coat and Baekhyun hovered and fretted around the man as he went to work as soon as he saw Kyungsoo on the bed. Behind his back, Baekhyun paced and wrung his hands together anxiously as if the doctor might discover something tragic that Baekhyun had missed in his examination of his brother. For all of his nervous energy, Dante didn’t seem to notice him. His focus was on Kyungsoo; checking vitals and doing much of the same intense listening through his stethoscope that Baekhyun had done in the garage.

  Dante was quiet as he finished his examination and he pulled out a small vial of medication from the black bag he’d set at his feet; injecting it directly into the IV for administration. 

  “Some steroids for his lungs — Baekhee, what happened to him? This seems like more than exhaustion. You know I need to know the truth if I’m going to help.” 

  Baekhyun stood his ground for a moment; his spine straight and his lips sealed, and you could see the debate happening inside his head as he warred with himself. 

  When he finally had come to some decision, he merely lifted a hand and pulled the scarf free from his head and you could see the tremble in his hands as he let go of the garment and allowed it to drift to the floor at his feet.

  “Male, age 27, found in an unresponsive state after acute, intentional C.O. intoxication and asphyxiation of an unknown duration. Cardiovascular event with cardiogenic shock. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was successful and the patient regained full consciousness, but presented with agonal respiration. Upon administration of normobaric oxygen, breathing returned to normal. No signs of cardiac dysfunction or anoxic brain injury as of yet… Dante, I‘m sorry, I have been terribly dishonest with you.” 

  Gone was the fake voice and gone was the pretense and lies. Baekhyun stood on his two legs and faced forward without hiding anymore and your eyes danced between their two faces as if you were watching a tense standoff where both parties had loaded guns pointed directly at each other. 

  The surprise was evident on Dante’s face and his eyes widened as he looked back down at Kyungsoo, asleep on the bed in front of him and again up into Baekhyun’s clear face. 

  “Baek...Hyun? As in Prince Baekhyun? Prince? He’s…” His index finger pointed down at Kyungsoo but his eyes remained fixed on the man standing in front of him. 

  “He’s Prince Kyungsoo and she’s—” He was pointing at you now as the revelations hit him harder and faster.

  The shock was short lived once he processed the medical information Baekhyun had given him. He had another set of supplies out of his bag and he began to draw blood from Kyungsoo’s arm. A brand new urgency was clearly evident in this situation with the string of medical terms Baekhyun had rattled off; none of which you understood. 

  “He needs a hospital. He needs to be in a chamber, Baekhee.” 

  “I don’t have one here. You heard his heart, it sounds fine. He knew who I was as soon as he regained consciousness. He isn’t just anybody. Please — he can’t go to a hospital and besides he doesn't have time for a chamber, he’s getting married tomorrow night.” 

  “Oh right, I heard that on the news— Are you telling me, you are actually the Prince Byun Baekhyun? I’ve seen a lot of you on the news too—But, enough C.O. To lose consciousness— Honey, his heart may not be fine. He will need close monitoring at the very least. If these labs don’t come back clear he’s going to need a chamber. I won’t be responsible for the death of a prince just to keep some royal secret.”

  Their bickering back and forth had lowered in volume as they naturally gravitated closer to each other with the heated discussion. One wanting to go by the book and leave no stone unturned and the other, confident in his gut decisions about his brother and refusing to risk the backlash from the press, or worse, from the queen, if word of this got out. 

  Much of their talk was quiet; hushed with heads bowed together, eyes closing and heads shaking back and forth as they disagreed and countered each other’s arguments with statistics or scary medical words. The words they used were beyond your understanding and didn't quite feel like the most important exchange happening between the two tonight. 

  You felt your focus begin to waiver, from the words they spoke, to something you understood easier; their body language. Baekhyun’s fingertips that tugged lightly at the sleeve of Dante’s shirt as he spoke. One or two breaths from gripping the man’s arm entirely. Dante’s hand that caressed a comforting circle lightly over the small of Baekhyun’s back and then a soft touch over his cheek, just below his eye line where a single tear must have escaped; an intimate soothing motion; a slip of affection and adoration; unconditional and undeniable.

  Your conscious did not let you keep watching. Their closeness and the intimacy you felt pouring off them in waves made you turn your head from it. This wasn’t a moment for you to witness. This wasn’t your fragile relationship that was growing stronger with brand new honesty that was so raw and terrifying, it took nearly losing a brother to finally risk taking a step into. It was their moment, not yours.

  You felt the slick green of envy just below the sick sadness that filled your own stomach with sticks and stones.

  Your mind drifted with your eyes over to Kyungsoo who slept quite soundly on your bed. Even in his current state, with ashen skin and a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, he was beautiful.

  Beautiful and miserable. 

Had you caused all of this?

  Your mood —a fragile rickety thing with holes in the floorboards and a single strand of thread holding your edges together — snapped.

  His breathing was shallow. His lips were dry and chapped. His eyes were closed but the sleep looked dreadful and fitful. 

  The wetness that ran down your face was an afterthought because—

  Kyungsoo had told you something earth shattering tonight; without even saying a single word to you, the message was loud and clear. It was something that you didn’t want to accept and yet now with the evidence of it sleeping in your bed right now, you didn’t have any excuses to deny it any more. It had slapped you in the face.

  He didn’t want to marry you. 

  He would rather be dead than marry you. 

  This felt somehow more than rejection. You felt like you’d been cursed by God himself for your many sins and the chasm inside of you grew. 

  You genuinely wondered if the pain might cave you in. You felt it deep inside your chest and every gasp for breath only made the pain grow more. It was nearly incapacitating. You labored to breathe through it. You fought to keep yourself upright through the immensity inside of your chest. 

  So you curled into yourself, to try and subdue it, to try and quench the fire that raged for what felt like centuries now and you pulled the back of Kyungsoo’s hand up to you as you pressed your forehead against it; and you wept. You had no other response to it, but to cry. 

  All other sounds vanished and the tight grip you kept on his hand felt desperate. 

  You did not know what would happen to you if you let go of his hand. You didn’t want to try it either. 

  What would become of him if you let him go? 

  What would become of you if you lost him?

  Would he do it again? 

  Would he try and do it again? 

  You did not know how long you cried for.

You had no frame of reference for this kind of pain.

  A warmth landed over the top of your head, and with long sweeping brushes, it traveled achingly slow from your crown down your temple; that warmth ran a pathway over your ear before it vanished for a moment, only to land over the top of your head and travel downward again and again and again.

  It moved slowly, like a fog and you felt your senses dull under its cover. Somehow, the pain that had been so bright and powerful grew further away with each sweeping pass.

  Comfort, an attempt to calm the chaos happening inside of you from someone; your exhausted mind assumed to be Baekhyun, only your senses protested that the angle would have been wrong. It could not be him.

  Your surprise made a sound — a half hiccup, gasping cry — when you lifted your head from the bed enough to open your eyes and held your breath to find that he was awake, Kyungsoo was awake, and he was touching you with his other hand, the one you hadn’t held hostage. He had to reach to do it. He had to pull himself up enough to get to you. It was a struggle but he did it.

  His eyes were open now, you had made such a racket with your weeping. The precious sleep his body needed to recover, you’d interrupted it with your pain, yet you felt unable to control yourself. He was awake, and he was looking at you as he struggled to reach across the distance to touch you in this way that you did not in any way deserve. After all that had happened...after all you had done.

  You felt lost inside of those brown eyes. He wasn't saying anything to you and his face was blank and tired. There was nothing that you could find in that expression to make sense of how he was feeling right now and yet his silence felt significant enough that you did not dare interrupt it. 

  A thought dawned and it was quick to rush into your mind; he was awake! This was significant and demanded action.

  You looked around the room with an urgency and his hand fell with your movement, slipping back down onto the bed and he groaned out a tired moan from within his chest. 

  Baekhyun was gone and so was Dr. Dante. Had they left the room to give you privacy during your breakdown? Didn’t they need to check on him again; now that he was awake? Didn’t something have to be tested, or listened to? What if his breathing got bad again or what if his heart stopped? 

  You began to raise to your feet and you felt the pull from his hand. He gripped harder and pulled back against you. 

  “Don’t,” he said through a labored breath and you allowed yourself to fall back into the chair you’d been sitting in. 

  Thoughts and worries flew by and you opened your lips to speak but found that no words felt right. You had so much to tell him. You had so much you wanted to apologize for and so much forgiveness to beg for but that fear that had kept you company all night long still had it’s long talons hooked deep within your guts. 

  He seemed to want you to stay, although you couldn’t quite grasp how that could be true. He’d gone through great lengths tonight to get away from you. He’d done some unspeakable, horrible things because he did not want to marry you; probably by all reason did not even want to see your face or hear your name ever again in his lifetime, and yet the grip he kept around your hand now felt just as strong and desperate as the way you clung to him as he slept moments before. 

  After a moment, when your retreat was no longer a threat, his tight grip relaxed and you noticed the wince in his face as he shifted in the bed to sit up more. 

  “Are you okay?” 

  Your voice was full of instability and you wiped at the fresh stray tears that had fallen. 

  The question pushed at him. 

It pushed hard and it pushed him away. His reaction gave you his answer. Of course not. Of course he wasn’t okay.

He looked away from you, his focus landing somewhere on the far wall of your bedroom, clearly not seeing whatever he was looking at. 

  His lips relaxed and his eyes glassed over as he stared ahead at nothing and you could feel the limp grip in his hand as the demons played games inside of his head again. You wanted to destroy them all. You wanted, above all else, for this man to have peace. 

  You wondered if it would be better if you kept quiet from now on. 

  A sound in the distance, a single church bell ringing into the nighttime fog touched your ears. It was one in the morning now. Past midnight on your wedding day. 

  “Kyungsoo.” His name was a whisper; as quiet as you could manage, as not to disturbed the delicate stillness that settled inside the room.

  “I was always going to marry you.” His soft voice popped like a bubble; a splash of cool that you felt all over your skin. You looked at him as he spoke but his eyes remained in that far away place.

  “Ever since I could remember, I was going to marry you. I—” 

  You did not move. 

You did not dare breathe, for fear of tarnishing that clear tone of his voice as he spoke, so softly, of the thoughts that were dancing inside his head.

  “I thought you could be the one to save me.” 

  His eyes were wet and he inhaled a raspy breath during the pause in his words. 

  “That was one of my mistakes,” he whispered, “putting you up on a pedestal.” 

  “Kyungsoo, I’m so sorry.”

  You could not stop the apology from leaving your lips and he was shaking his head back and forth the moment the words were released into the room. 

  “No— No, I understand now.” 

  You could feel the room around you, as if it had its own gravity and had begun to spin around you in a lazy circle with you and him trapped in the middle. He couldn’t understand, not without knowing the complete truth. 

  Still, he spoke to you, his head still shaking back and forth as you inhaled a breath to speak again, to stop this, to tell him once and for all the whole truth of the situation. 

  “I understand why you did that. I would have...I would have done something worse to you if you did what I did. If you took Ara from me, like I took May from you. I don't know what I expected. For you just to...let me?” 

  This had to stop. He was blaming himself for something that hadn’t even happened. Sure, you’d lost May, probably forever from your life, but she was okay, wherever she had ended up. She would live and she would have a chance to be a mother to her child. Maybe she would even get to live with the man she loved. Maybe she would even get to be happy.

  “Kyungsoo, you didn’t do anything. You haven’t hurt anyone, Kyungsoo. May is alive. She didn’t die. She is alive and the baby is okay. May is alive.” 

  The words were out and they sunk like heavy rocks at the bottom of a lake. The spinning in the room moved faster and you felt as if you might get sick from the dizziness and then there was a moment — there was a moment before he heard you, before he really heard you and you saw it happen. His mouth closed up and his eyes focused. His focus pulled and he looked into your eyes.

  “What do you mean?” With his eyebrows furrowed in genuine confusion, his eyes sharpened on your face and you gripped his hand tighter just in case he thought to get up and leave. Just in case your confessions were too much for him to take. You clung to him as you spoke, borrowing his warmth a little bit to calm the storm you felt sweeping around you.

  “I’m sorry. You couldn’t know, or she might not have made it. Sehun, he...he saved her, Kyungsoo. And his baby...saved them both, they are okay.” 

  “But the b-body they found...the records, d-dental records were a match.”

  You shook your head in denial. “It was a fake. It was all a fake, to save her life. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t know what to do. I’m so sorry, please forgive me.”

  “She’s...a-and the baby? I didn’t...k-kill?” 

  You could only nod your head in response to his quiet questions. He’d been holding it in. He’d been holding a breath for what felt like weeks perhaps. With your reassurance he finally moved and it began with his eyes closing up. Then he leaned forward, sitting up from the laid back position he had been in and you saw the small wince of pain as he moved and he came forward, closer to where you sat within your swirling spinning storm cloud.  

  Your salvation arrived with an exhale. 

  He opened up with two arms that reached out to you and the warmth of that exhale coated you from head to toe. His arms wrapped around your shoulders, pulled you into his chest; he breathed out in relief and your world finally stopped its chaotic spinning.

  After his exhale came an inhale and with that came a tremble. You wrapped your own arms around him to steady him and you squeezed. 

  “Thank you,” his voice was low against your ear, “for coming to find me.”

  “Baekhyun saved you, Kyungsoo.” It wasn't the time for you to be claiming credit for the sacrifice and struggle of others. You’d had enough of being dishonest with this man to last a lifetime. “And Ara too, she helped so much.” 

  “I felt you there. I heard you.” 

  You pulled back at this and you searched his face; looking into his eyes from much too close a distance to really be able to focus on anything, yet familiar old habits surged. 

  He couldn’t have actually heard. He had been gone. You’d been desperate to call him back to you. 

  “You...heard me?” 

  It was silly and childish of you to want to hide this; your love for him. Hadn’t you told yourself already you were done with it? With hiding things?

  “I meant it. I do love you, Kyungsoo.” 

  The spinning was back, only this time it felt more internal than before. Your own heart had decided to take you on a bender. 

  Kyungsoo had closed his eyes and he had leaned his head with another slow exhale of breath. This exhale was deeper, from way inside himself; he let the air out slowly through his parted lips and there was the sound of something echoing through your living room that pulled at your focus. 

  The deep exhale set off a spasm inside Kyungsoo’s lungs and he gasped and began to cough again, letting gravity take ahold of his tired and worn body he fell back into the pillows of your bed and rolled while coughing harder into the plush bedding. 

  The sound you heard from out in the living room echoed now and was rhythmic with an occasional mysterious squeak.

  Wheels. Something was being pushed, or dragged through your home and it was headed toward this bedroom. Kyungsoo’s coughing had subsided enough for a shaky breath when the door to the room swung open and you saw some sort of machinery with a screen and buttons, dials, and plenty of tubes atop of a wheeled contraption. 

  The man pushing the device entered just behind and in his other hand, he dragged something else, a big flat white board. 

  “Listen up, motherfucker, because I am only going to say this once,”

  Baekhyun positioned the white board squarely in front of the bed and he stuck the capped end of a marker between his teeth, pulled the top off and blew it across the room where it landed with a hollow clatter against your wooden floor. 

  He lifted the marker to the board and began drawing a series of emoji type faces in what appeared to be order of misery. On one end the tears were large and dramatic as was the frowny face, and on the other, an unbothered happy smile without a care in the world. There were then numbered one to five, five being the worst pain, and Baekhyun moved below the row of faces as he got to work sectioning the big board off into four areas. 

  “My name is Baek-hyun,” his marker worked furiously as he penned out the letters of his name in one section on the board, pausing to speak out each syllable as he wrote them down. “I am your nurse for the night.” In front of his name he wrote the word nurse and he underlined it twice. The marker squeaked noisily with each line he drew.

  “You are on su—i—cide watch,” each syllable was emphasized as he read aloud and enunciated by loud squeaks as the marker moved. He wrote this out very carefully and in large block letters.

  You noticed in the box below he had written a small dx which you gathered was his official diagnosis for Kyungsoo’s condition. Baekhyun moved his marker to this section of his board now and began speaking before he wrote anything down.

  “Because you are a dumb asshole,” the marker squeaked out loud as he underlined the two words written down; his official record of what Kyungsoo’s current affliction was. 

  Each glance you stole at the man laying in the bed was met with only a flat and blank expression. You wondered at Kyungsoo’s self control again and again as Baekhyun went on, clearly on some sort of mission to teach a lesson about what happened tonight. 

  After he was finished writing, he tossed the marker down and lifted a hand to motion at the top section of the board where the faces had been drawn.

  “How would you describe your current pain level?” 

  His voice had suddenly lifted with the question and you saw the passive smile he pulled to his face. This was Baekhyun in full on, petty, yet weirdly professional nurse mode. 

  Kyungsoo did not speak right away and you heard a rattle as Baekhyun reached into the front pocket of his bachelorette party pajama bottoms and pulled out a white bottle of pills. He shook it lightly and the sound echoed around the room. 

  “Umm...my ribs really hurt.” 

  “Nuh-uh-uh…” Baekhyun waved a scolding finger and lifted a finger to point at the faces on the board. 

  “Maybe...three or four?” Kyungsoo followed the rules and Baekhyun slipped the bottle of pills back inside his pocket as he crossed his arms over his chest and faced the man in the bed who was rubbing lightly over his ribcage. 

  “Right here, hurts bad — hurts like—”

  “Hurts like you died in my arms and I had to nearly crack your ribs to restart your heart? Hurts like I nearly lost my own fucking brother forever? Hurts like that?”

  Baekhyun’s words flew past you fast like piercing arrows and you inhaled sharply as they moved through you. You had to close your eyes tight to keep upright and mentally present in this. 

  Kyungsoo did not respond but his jaw snapped shut quickly and his eyes fell from his brother’s demanding eyes for a minute as his mind worked out a response.

  After a moment he lifted his eyes and he spoke with complete sincerity to his brother.

  “Thank you, Baekhyun. I mean it.” 

  “Are you going to do it again?” Gone was the friendly, professional nurse. This was Baekhyun’s honest and vulnerable fear speaking.

  “No.” 

  Baekhyun looked into Kyungsoo’s eyes and he did not move. Kyungsoo held his gaze securely and did not let go and they stood their ground until someone finally gave in with a sigh of concession. 

  Baekhyun exhaled and reached into his pocket again for what you thought was the pain medicine and instead of pulling out the white bottle you saw him hold up two small bright orange colored tablets gripped between his thumb and index finger.

  “I am prepared to offer you a single adult dose of regular strength over the counter pain relief medicine. You may have one dose now, and another in four hours. Take it or leave it.”

  “Baek— it really hurts.”

  “Take it or leave it,” Baekhyun lifted the pills higher into the air as he lifted his eyebrows, daring the man on the bed to challenge him on this.

  “What was in the other bottle?”

  “Don’t you worry about the other bottle. I guess that means you’ll leave it.” Baekhyun made a motion to stick the pills back inside his pocket and Kyungsoo lifted a hand with a hiss and a dramatic wince. “Okay. Okay. Give me the Advil.” 

  The medicine had been handed over and you helped Kyungsoo with the water glass so he could swallow it down as Baekhyun got to work with the other wheeled device he had arrived with. 

  He was turning it on and attaching stickers to Kyungsoo’s body in strategic spots. Something else with a light on it was taped to his index finger and the screen came to life with a traveling line, soft beeping and numbers on the side of the screen that told Baekhyun details that his stethoscope could not. 

  The spinning inside your head had shifted into a dull ache that pulled at your eyelids and you rubbed a palm over the side of your temple. You’d been too stressed today. You’d been too worried and too sickened by what you had been through and the toll was beginning to manifest into a what seemed to be turning into a killer headache. 

  After a few more attempts at blinking the pain away you gave in and asked.

  “Baek, do you have any more pain medicine? I have a headache from today.”

  Baekhyun’s focus pulled up from the monitors and he quickly nodded his head up and down as he reached into his pocket. 

  “I have acetaminophen only. It’s not too strong but it’ll help a bit.” 

  You accepted his offering with a smile and swallowed the pills down once they were placed into the palm of your hand and Baekhyun watched your face for a few seconds with a strange look developing in his eyes. 

  He furrowed his brows and reached into his front pocket on the other side and pulled out two white pills that he held in the palm of his hand and seemed to be looking down at very closely with his mouth moving, but no words coming out. 

  “Uhh…” he spoke up and you felt a sinking inside of you at this sudden and strange behavior from the man. 

  “What?” 

  “Uhh...this is,” he was pausing with his words and you heard a tone of alarm in his voice that was unmistakable, “this is in no way related to the pills you just swallowed, but how good are you with uhh...hypnotic sedatives—barbiturates, drugs like that?” 

  “Baekhyun what did you just give me?” 

  “Nothing...nothing...nothing, bad. Shit. Just...I think you might have taken my ludes.” 

  He was serious. He’d just accidentally given you some mystery drug from his pocket o’pills and it didn't sound like he really knew exactly which pills you had taken. He was holding a small handful of them now, all different colors and sizes, turning each one over and looking closely at the words or numbers or symbols written on the surface of each one. 

  “Yep. She definitely took the ludes. Okay, Princess, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. First you're going to start feeling very nice. And I mean nice-nice. Like you’re probably going to want to fuck someone or maybe hold something soft, do you have any stuffed animals? My point is, it's not the worst thing you could have accidentally swallowed from my stash.”

  “You had ludes and you gave me Advil?” Kyungsoo sounded genuinely offended with his brother and you let go of Kyungsoo’s hand and lifted your own hands to your chest, touching around your throat with your fingers, contemplating sticking your fingers down your throat to make yourself vomit. 

  “Baekhyun, am I going to die?”

  “Of course not. Of course you won't die. I’m a nurse and I’m going to take care of you and look, you have Kyungsoo here too in case you get excited or something. You—you should lay down.” 

It could wait. Whatever was consuming him so entirely could be put to bed for now and be dealt with later. After some rest. After some food. After some comfort from a friend. Not everything had to be dealt with alone. Not everything had to be hopeless and never ending.

He laid on his side on the large bed and was asleep as soon as his head reached the pillow. Still, you ran a rhythmic hand over his back as his breathing evened out and he let out a few low moans before he went completely still and quiet.

The silence seeped in like a fog and you sank to the floor, leaning beside his bed and laying your head down on your arm that still touched his back.

It was still.

It was quiet.

The silence coated over your head and made your ears ache with how loud it was.

It was probably the silence that brought on the numbness, but the longer you sat there with your head down and your eyes closed, the less you felt.

The less you felt of it.

It and the guilt from it all. The ever pervasive dread in the pit of your stomach that did not let up. The pain and anguish caused by the choices you had made. The consequences of what you had done to him; his desperate and desolate cries in that dressing room. The silence was changing it and you began to feel nothing.

It didn’t hurt.

You had trouble breathing through your nose and your face was wet.

The arm that you laid on was wet.

The bed below your arm was wet.

It didn’t hurt. You felt nothing and it was absolute.

You were numb. The tears were annoying but nothing else.

They would end.

As everything did.

The friendship you had with May.

The brief love you had known from Kyungsoo.

The silence throbbed and the numbness unfolded.

Like waking up from a dream.

No matter how vivid and real the dream had felt, you were waking up now. And just as easily as you let yourself feel that dream, your reality was taking precedent. You would let it go just as easily.

It had all been a dream and it was time to wake up now. The memory of his love faded into the numbness and you let it go with the dream.

It was time to live in the real world now.

You would not hold onto that dream any longer.

—

You opened your eyes to the sunlight leaking through the tiniest opening in the curtains on the far window of this unfamiliar room. The stiff hardness below your body brought on an ache in your muscles when you moved your shoulders and you realized you were on the floor with a pillow below your head and a blanket over your body.

The memory of the evening before returned as you blinked away the bright sunlight and sat up in the empty bedroom.

Baekhyun was nowhere to be found, but you did notice a yellow post-it note stuck to a cell phone that sat on the bedside table.

‘I got this for you. -B,’ was scribbled on the note by what you assumed was Baekhyun’s hand and you picked up the cell phone to unlock it.

The lock screen wallpaper on the phone was a picture of you, passed out on the floor of his bedroom with your mouth open and an arm laid over your eyes.

You had a waiting text message from a number saved under the name ‘Pretty Baekhee.’

‘Servants came looking for you early saw you on camera. Wedding stuff. Isn’t your family coming today? Sorry if i was weird last night.’

You felt lighter today. Despite the sore back from the hard floor and the headache from not getting nearly enough sleep, it would have to do.

The dreams were fading.

You wanted to ask him about last night. You wanted to ask him about what he said about his mom. You’d typed out the question three times, each time deleting it before giving up.  

‘Are you okay, Baekhyun?’

Your message sat there for a moment before you saw a few dots at the bottom of the screen as your message was received and you could tell that he was typing out a response.

Only the action stopped for a while, picked up again, and stopped again. You stared down at the phone for a long while as nothing happened.

Finally you felt a vibration in your palm that told you he had responded to you.

‘Yep, never better’

His reply was too short, too forced, and too flippant to be genuine. Especially with as long as you saw him typing for. He must have have had own little battle before deleting whatever he was too afraid to say. But what could you do? You couldn’t even be honest with him. Why did you deserve anything in return? You definitely couldn’t force him to talk with you. The idea of having someone to talk to felt so foreign to you, yet you yearned for it.

‘You can talk to me sometimes, if you want to. We could talk to each other. Friends talk sometimes.’

This message was not met with typing. This message was received, read, and then it sat there on your screen for ages as you looked down for any signs of life from him.

You’d given up on seeing him respond to it as you busied yourself with finding your way back to your own home so you could shower, change and get ready for the day.

He’d said that your family was due to arrive today and you recalled seeing a schedule of events before the wedding that had a royal dinner with both families and all wedding parties present.

This would be a grand event. You would have to remember to eat something before you got into your dress since you would likely be much too anxious to eat anything at the dinner.

You’d have to see him. Did you have the courage to look into his brown eyes and see all of that pain? Even worse was the thought of seeing those eyes vacant and hollow.

No matter.

It would be an ordinary day for both of you. Business as usual. Fancy restrictive clothing; hold your head up high. Accept curtsies and bows. Show deference to the influential. Eat three bites, place fork down, sip wine.

Look into his eyes. Ignore the pangs of guilt. Smile, but not too wide and don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

Just an ordinary day.

Halfway through your food, the phone you’d hidden inside the waistband of your jeans vibrated and you excused yourself for the bathroom to read the text message from Baekhyun. The servants bowed at the waist as you walked by them. When you were passed, they simply resumed their work of readying your evening gown for tonight. As soon as you were out of the room you heard them resuming their low talking as they worked together and gossiped and giggled about something amusing. You swallowed away the envy.

‘Thank you for this. Talk tonight?’

It felt nice. The smile that reached your eyes was genuine.

Right there in that moment, hidden away in your bathroom with a house full of servants waiting to preen and pluck, truss and string you up, you made a decision for yourself.

You would talk to Baekhyun. You would trust him. You would have a friend and there was nothing in the world that could stop you from having a friend. A real one.

You had never owned your own phone before but you had watched May do it plenty of times to know that somewhere inside this keyboard was a selection of little faces.

You found them easily enough and scrolled through to find the happiest one. One with a large toothy grin and little moon eyes and you sent out your very first emoji to your friend. The happiness you felt inside of your chest made you want to type that little face many times in a row, but you stopped yourself and just sent one. You didn’t need to go crazy.

You hid the phone in the same shelf inside your walk in closet, just far enough back to be invisible to anyone who did not know where to look and you left the peace and quiet of the bathroom to get ready for the evening.

As these things go, there was an abundance of waiting before anyone required you to move.

The dress’s fabric was thick and shockingly scratchy whenever the ruffled hem tickled against your calves. Whoever picked it out obviously didn’t give a damn about the person wearing it. You recognized the thick glasses of the stylist from the dress fitting and her eyes roamed over your body in approval. She stopped at your neck. Her concerns ended there. They did not include the look in your eyes as you tried to ignore the itch in your skin when that stupid rufffle snagged on your pantyhose with every single step you took.

“This dress itches.” You said to the nearest ear to you and the servant girl looked at you for a moment; bowing her head in apology.  

“I’m so sorry, your highness. It’s sponsored for the event by the designer himself.”

“What’s the problem?” The stylist had a whiff of your annoyance as you reached down to scratch lightly over your hose, careful not to snag anything with your nails.

“I beg your pardon, Ma’am, she says it’s itchy.”

You felt like a naughty child that was acting out, but you honestly did not believe you could stand wearing this for the entire evening. The stylist looked up from the dress at last and looked into your eyes for a good five seconds before she spoke again.

“He is Her Royal Majesty's favorite designer and she has selected this piece personally for you to wear tonight. It is an unimaginable honor.”

You could feel yourself losing the battle and the steel trap in her eyes held your own for longer than most of the hired help would even dare. “Perhaps a drink would help, your highness.” At last, she dropped her eyes and you gritted your teeth and nodded your head once.

A shot of alcohol arrived on a tray and you tossed back the bitter clear liquid.

It was an ordinary day.

The dinner was beginning. Faces were blurring together with the occasional important face popping into your vision.

You were presented into a dining room, a different one than you had visited before, this one larger and more grand.

All of the faces you had grown accustomed to during your time in this place were present. Only Baekhyun smiled at you when you made eye contact and you smiled back at him. The others nodded with tired looks in their eyes and you did the same to them. You looked around carefully and slowly, knowing who’s dark brown eyes would be the final ones for you to touch when you reached your seat.

As the groom, and the most important participant of this ceremony aside from you, Prince Kyungsoo would be seated at the top of the table, near the head. Near where his father, the king, was scheduled to appear and where his current wife, Queen Hong would be seated beside.

Next to them, you would see the face of your father, who had just arrived, you heard from the maids this morning. He was bringing along his newest wife. She was younger than you and her pregnant belly would have swollen enough to make her hold in a grunt when she stood up and again when she sat down.

You wondered if at last, your father would have the son he’d always desired and you wondered if that baby boy would ever know what it felt like to have a real friend.

You’d arrived at your spot and your view of the floor showed you black shoes connected to ankles and black pants standing exactly where you expected to see him.

Just an ordinary day.

There was a touch required here. His hand — the same that you’d felt before with his rounded fingertips and electric warmth as they etched a deep cut pathway across your bare skin. The passionate touches and heavy breaths of that far away dream world that still teased you.

You had to let it go. It was gone.

He held his hand out, palm down and you did not even hesitate. You had to still be breathing, right? You’d yet to collapse onto the floor at his feet so you must be awake.  

Years of practice — you worked on muscle memory in front of this broken man with your broken heart still somehow pumping blood to every cell in your body on this very ordinary, very unremarkable day just like any other day.

The palm of his hand was moist below your fingertips and you bent at the waist and the smooth skin of the back of his hand was heated when you pressed your lips to it.

You’d meant to drop his hand quickly. It was done and you meant to let go. But he...his thumb moved with the lightest brush. Either a flinch or a mistake, he had given the smallest squeeze over your fingers. A ghost of a memory that had escaped. Remnants of the dream. It slowed you down and you looked into his eyes for a moment.

You remembered to breathe. You remembered the small smile you pushed onto your face, for the sake of the show.

He looked at your face now. The beautiful eyes of Prince Kyungsoo were holding on to yours with an unreadable and heavily guarded wall built around them.

He breathed in and out and in again and he blinked once before his head dipped and he bowed just once. It was his part.

No more would come from him until the dinner was over and he had to look at you again for the farewell.

There was a predictable flow to these things. You remained standing until your cue to sit and it came after your father entered, the King of your small nation who’s drought and famine ravaged population depended on this fortuitous union for, not their prosperity, but for their survival.

He was in a good mood. You could tell by the puff of his chest as he walked and the tight grip of a hand over his wife’s arm to steady her waddle. You looked at his hand noticing how tightly he held on, an outright protective stance it appeared and you wondered if they had been see the doctor about the sex of the baby yet. A boy would be an heir. A boy would be cherished and well loved at home. A boy wouldn’t have been sent off to an unfamiliar place and married off to whichever foreign prince would open up valuable trade routes and lower export tariffs on vanilla and coffee beans, your nation's biggest exports.

His beamed a wide smile to see you and you offered a deep bow as a greeting, mirroring many of the others who stood in this enormous dining hall.

There was a pause of breath before a loud voice announced the King and Queen’s entrance. The room responded and heads were down until the pair were well into the room and seated at the head of the table.

It was your first time seeing King Lee, Kyungsoo’s father and you had never expected the man to be so very old. You would not be surprised to learn that he had reached the triple digits, now that you were actually looking at him and you regretted not having been able to ask May anything about him before you found yourself in front of him. He was old enough to require a wheelchair which was pushed by a servant to the head of the table and he lifted a shaky hand midway to signal that the guests should be seated.

He stared ahead at the table with eyes that clouded over so much that you wondered if he was able to see through them and it became abundantly clear why you had seen none of this man since your arrival when his first words whispered over his shoulder to his Queen was a question as to why there were so many people here today.

His presence today was formality only, because Queen Hong’s voice spoke up over the sound of the senile old man’s heavy breathing and occasional coughing and soon he gave up and grew more interested in the glass of wine that was kept topped off at his place setting.

You found yourself reaching for your own wine glass with a similar fixation to keep the itch from the gown drowned under a haze of red tinted alcohol.

Halfway through dinner, the conversation shifted from mild pleasantries into rocky waters that made you put your fork down and look across the table at the profile of your father’s face as he reacted to the news that you were sure he had heard already.

A spy, from his own house, caught red handed by a member of this royal house.

“Such a shameful thing,” your father exclaimed with a slow shake of his head. “We can assure you, we were just as shocked to hear about the maid’s illegal activities as I’m sure you were. Just terribly shocked and disgusted. It’s a good thing she was caught so quickly. I don't tolerate traitors in my kingdom.”

His focus shifted to you and you felt the dryness in your mouth turn your tongue scratchy and sticky.

Beside you, Kyungsoo had been steadily sipping on his wine glass when he tipped it back further, emptying its contents into his mouth and he placed the glass back down on the table with a hard thud.

Below the table, his leg bounced up and down in a regular rhythm.

“She was certainly acting alone. I trust that mess has been cleaned up well?”

“Oh, we won't discuss such grisly details over dinner, but yes, the problem has been dealt with.”

The wine glass was being refilled and he angled himself toward the servant pouring the bottle.

“Bring me something stronger,” he said.

A servant returned with a glass and the bottle on a tray and Kyungsoo grabbed both the glass the the bottle to place in front of his full plate.

The rest of the dinner went by in a similar manner. By the end of it, you were quite literally itching to get back to your home so you could get out of this stupid dress and get away from the pervasive dark silence that sat beside you steadily drinking enough whiskey to put an entire soccer team to bed.

If you had any guts at all you might have reminded him that his wedding day was tomorrow and he had to be able to stand at that alter long enough to agree to this entire disaster with the words ‘I do.’

He couldn’t really do that if he was unconscious.

You’d been watching his face with a sort of disconnected feeling surging through you when a comment floated above your head and pulled you out of the trance.

“—too much to ask for, but it may be possible that their affections for each other run much deeper than mere familial obligations. What do you say, Prince Kyungsoo? Are the rumors true? Would you say you have fallen in love with her?”

Queen Hong was talking in that sickly sweet voice of hers and a curious crowd murmur could be heard around the large table. Kyungsoo had gone still beside you, but his fingertips still touching that damn whiskey glass.

He lifted his glass to his lips and slowly took a drink as he stared ahead at the centerpiece on the table. A large bouquet of hydrangeas in pink and off-white colors and some spots of chartreuse around the blooms. He wasn’t making any move to respond, and you wondered if he had even heard the question. Was he too drunk to reply. Did he intend on ignoring a direct question from the queen herself?

“Answer your mother, boy.” A low gasping voice called out and Kyungsoo’s eyes snapped up to where his father commanded a response from him.  He let go of the glass and rubbed quickly over his face, ridding himself of the startled expression at being called out by the old man who hadn’t spoken a single word since the start of the meal. As he brought his hand back down you caught a tremble in his fingers as he sat up straighter and fisted his hands together down in his lap. You saw pinkness form on the back of his neck and on his ears at the embarrassment.

The old man’s outburst brought a wide smile to the Queen's face and her eyebrows wagged in delight at seeing Kyungsoo squirm so much. This was clearly her idea of a fun time. She was very amused now and you were very much not.

“Yes, Your Majesty, I’m… I’ve f-fallen…” he cleared his throat and you felt a sickness surge up hot inside your stomach as a startling force of anger took over.

How dare they demand this of him. How dare they talk to him in this way, like some amusing sideshow act that they could poke and prod at with a stick whenever they pleased.

Your hands were shaking and you used it to your advantage as you reached too quickly for your wine glass and tipped just so to send the whole thing flying over your plate and spilling the red liquid down the front of this ridiculous dress you were wearing and all down your itchy, itchy legs.

“Oh, my goodness,” you called out and you were descended upon by servants who dabbed with napkins and grabbed at your wine glass and dinner plate where an uneaten filet swam in a blood red lake. “I fear I may have celebrated too much tonight.”

“Yes, perhaps you have,” Queen Hong said with a touch of disappointment in her voice and a shrug of her eyebrows. You were surprised to see them move. You’d thought for sure they had been rendered immobile by all the Botox.  “You may be excused. Kyungsoo you may escort your fiancé back to her room for the evening. I trust there will be no incidents of any kind at tomorrow’s ceremony.”

You bowed a farewell and you both exited the room together. You were hyper aware of the fire hot heat of his hand that rested over the small of your back just until you were both clear of the dining hall and then it vanished from you entirely.

You stood in a hallway and the walls spun a little bit.

You were decidedly more drunk than you had admitted to yourself and you fought it with a few hard blinks to get the walls to stand still.

There was a presence here. Kyungsoo stood with his back against the wall opposite of the one you occupied and his eyes were closed up tight as he leaned his head back against the wall. His hands were fisted into tight balls at his side and his cheeks were bright pink from the large amount of whiskey he had consumed. You were sure that he had had half a bottle at least, just at dinner alone.

After almost an entire minute, he leveled his head, and without looking at you, turned and walked away with an outstretched hand touching the wall with his fingertips as he walked.

His steps were not very steady but neither were yours. You knew this because you followed him. You were kind of unsure of where exactly you were in the palace and you figured he would probably head back to his place and you knew the way from there.

He turned a corner and there was another hallway.

Five steps into this one he stopped and spun around in a half circle with big black eyes wide on you and a hand still touching the wall to steady himself.

Would he speak?

Would he yell?

Would he cry?

His mouth opened up and no words came out, but you could see the pressure inside him making his chest, shoulders, up to his chin even vibrate with pent up tension.

But he did not speak a word. Instead he walked faster now in the opposite direction from where he going down that hallway, he walked passed you without relying on the wall this time he breezed passed you and you watched him go, giving the man some space before you resumed your following footsteps from further away.

Now you really didn’t know where you were. There was a huge wall of glass windows that overlooked one of the gardens and the night time exterior lights shone down on expertly manicured hedges and remarkable blooming flower beds.

You hoped you were at least sober enough to find this again. You quite wanted to see what it looked like during the daylight.

He walked for ages. He must have known you followed him, but made no attempts to speak with you or even look at you and eventually you recognized the large framed work of art from outside of his home.  You heard the loud slam of his front door and the pervasive silence that followed that sound.

And it did not hurt.

You felt nothing. Not even the itch from the skirt ruffle. Not even the stickiness from the red wine that had soaked into your panty hose. Somewhere far away, you thought you heard a haunting sound somewhere inside that hallway, but you spun and forced your legs to move quickly. Back towards the familiar. Back to where you called home. Back to the place where the low echo of that single scream could not touch you.

You’d had enough time to get out of the dress. You’d grabbed a change of clothes and headed toward the shower with the wet tights halfway peeled off of your legs when you heard the pounding on your front door.

It was three swift knocks.

Followed immediately by three more.

An urgency was betrayed and you pulled the comfy sweats over your still sticky legs and pulled a t shirt over your head just as you pulled the front door open.

Kyungsoo stood there and he had not changed his clothes at all. The tight necktie still in place at his neck and the crisp suit jacket buttoned up from the dinner.

To the outside observer, the man was put together.

To you… you could see all of the pieces as clear as day. He was breathing hard as if he had run over after screaming his head off inside of his locked up living room and his eyes held tight onto yours with their vice grip when you opened the door.

“Did you watch it?”

His question was cold and it hit you hard against the chest. You took a step back. Away from this.

There was nowhere to go. He took a step inside your home and you retreated again, unable to look into the blackness of his eyes for too long and keep your wits about you.

“Kyungsoo,” you said his name and it felt dirty in your mouth. You had lost your right to say that name with your traitorous tongue, but you had nothing else to call him.

His body had a tremor to it.

“Did you see? Did you watch the tape? Did you see what I did to my own mother?”

Your head was shaking back and forth, not because you were going to lie to him and pretend like you never watched it, but because he had it so wrong. What he thought, what you had thought before you watched it, none of that was shown on the tape.

You reached your hands out cautiously outstretched in his direction and his hands surged and he swatted your hands away quickly, his body still shaking and trembling with every step he took as he paced back and forth.

The door behind him clicked shut and he sneered at you now, his teeth bared as he pulled his lips into a humorless grin.

“Did you see what I am capable of? What I did to her? What I can do to you too?”

He took a step into you now, and his hands reached for you, having swatted down the comfort you attempted to issued out in vain, this time when he reached for you it wasn’t with any sort of comfort or affection in mind.

You felt his strong grip reach for your shoulders and he squeezed down hard enough to cause a surge of pain through your arms and he shook roughly, demanding with his words and his actions that you speak, that you do something, or say something, anything to explain yourself. To explain this.

“No, Kyungsoo. Stop. Please.”  

His grip tightened and you felt the tears prickling in your eyes.

“Tell me!” He screamed up close and shockingly loud and you flinched away from it when he shook you again. “Tell me you — saw it!”

You heard his voice breaking now and his words lost their stability. His anger was changing and his hands loosened their tight hold.

“Why won't you just tell me? Why won’t you just do it. Just fucking do it, tell everyone what really happened to her? Tell them I’m a monster — destroy me. They’ll execute me. They’ll kill me for this.”

The tears were falling down his face as he spoke and the whites of his eyes were bright red.

“What are you waiting for?” His eyes screwed shut hard and he released the hold on you, slipping down onto his knees, his hands followed your arms as he sank down to the floor and he let go of you completely when he covered his face with both of his hands.

“I watched it, Kyungsoo. I watched the tape.”

You’d found your voice when the painful grip of his hands let you go and he sobbed into his hands on your floor.

“Kyungsoo, there’s nothing there. It didn’t show you doing anything at all. It was nothing.” You felt a desperation in this. Like you couldn’t get the words out fast enough to convince him of the truths you had found.

“No,” he said from below his hands. “No,” he repeated. His head was shaking back and forth steadily as he denied what you said to him.

“Kyungsoo, I swear it. You can have it back. I promise you, there was nothing there.” You felt desperate to stop this — to stop this pain you felt choking you from the inside. You had trouble breathing and the tears made it hard to see, but you left him there in a heap on your living room floor and you ran to the bathroom — to the walk in closet with the hidden shelf and the spot where you kept the tape. It was still there. You gripped it in your hands and you ran back to where he sat on your floor with his hands fallen down to his sides and desolation on his wet face.

“Here,” you bent down to him, shoving the tape roughly into his hand and he looked at you in confusion before looking down at the tape and he was reeling with it.

“No, it’s not possible. I remember —I remember it happening.”

He was lifting himself, the tape in his hand as his tether to the past which he had been so certain of. The past that you were now denying had any evidence to back it up with.

“I remember the sound of it.” His focus was far away and he lifted a hand to run a circle over his ear as he spoke of the wretched memory. “I remember the sound of — the sound of her bones cracking — of her crying out in pain from it.”

The tears fell freely, dripping steadily off his chin and disappearing into the black of his suit jacket.

“—the sound of the air squeezed out of her, it happened right here, I’ve been living with it for fifteen fucking years—the sound of my mother, of my m-mother dying because I didn’t get my way and I threw a fit...” his hand beside his head pulsed his fingers open and closed as he put words to the horrors that happened in his memories.

His eyes suddenly focused again on you.

“Why did you do this to me?” His words competed with his heavy breathing and you wrapped your arms around your stomach with the painful question. Everything hurt. Everything ached. You could hardly breathe through the immense pain inside of you.

You felt all of this.

You felt like you were the one being crushed by this pain.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered and he lifted up the tape and squeezed down hard inside the palm of his hand. You heard plastic cracking.

“Why did you do this to me, if this thing was nothing. Why did you do that? I—” He gasped an inhale, “I loved you. You destroyed me, for this. For what? Nothing? For fucking nothing?”

“Kyungsoo, I’m sorry. I was trying to save May.” You were begging now. You felt the warmth of his hand as you frantically reached for it and the mention of her name stopped his breathing for a second as his face changed and screwed together in a fresh wave of pain.

“M-May,” he said below his breath and he stumbled away from where you reached for him; breaking himself free of your touch. “May.” He repeated again softly and he looked down in his hand at the pieces of the tape that sat inside of his fingers.

He retreated again and again until his back hit your closed door and his head was shaking back and forth.

“No,” he whispered and his eyes closed as he inhaled a deep chest filling breath of air and he lifted his eyes, planting them squarely on yours.

“This — This is wrong. I have to stop this. This wedding can't happen. I won’t let it happen. I don't care what happens to me, but we won’t be getting married tomorrow.”

There was a terrifying conviction inside his eyes as he spoke to you and it made you gasp out loud to see it.

It was impossible. Everything had already been arranged, and agreed upon by the governments of both countries.

They had both of your signatures and royal seals.

If either of you failed to show up, the missing party would be promptly located, dragged into the wedding hall and forced at gunpoint to state the words of agreement to the union.

This wedding was inevitable. It always had been. The only thing that could stop this wedding was something you did not dare to speak out loud, for it was something more horrifying than anything you could even imagine.

In the midst of your genuine shock at his declaration you didn’t notice the sound of your front door opening and you came into action only when you heard the loud slam of the door closing after he’d left your home.

When you opened the door back up to chase after him, he was already gone and the hallway you ran down in your desperate search showed no signs of him.

He had simply vanished, along with all of the fire and rage, ire and violence that threatened to destroy every cell inside his body and destroy you along with it.

There were a few seconds when you touched him. It wasn’t that he allowed it but Kyungsoo no longer remained present inside of his own mind and simply did not fight the burden of your hands on him.

In those few seconds, when your hands ran along his trembling shoulders and his body shook with the ragged sobbing that took what was left of your heart and splintered it to match his own — in those few seconds when the sticky warmth of his skin connected with your cold fingertips your words jumped up your throat and bounced along the back of your tongue — in those seconds, you wavered.

“K-Kyungsoo...no,” you aren’t a monster — they wanted to spill out. — May is alive. The truthful words, the reality behind the lies and the tricks and the whole honest-to-god of it all. You tasted it. It tasted nice, like fresh clean water in the hot desert sun. You wanted to swallow it down and quench the thirst that raged through your body, drying up your cells and making your brain go mad with the need for it. You felt like you were dying without it.

You could stop his pain. The tears that spilled from his closed eyes and ran down his face that he made no move to dry. You could tell him the truth; May was alive and the ruse had been a ploy by Sehun to save her life; to save his baby. Kyungsoo didn’t kill her. He didn’t kill that innocent life that grew in her belly. They had only needed to trick him and the queen up to this point and now that she was alive and you would swear upon your whole life to him that her safety was the only goal. You never wanted to deceive him.

Would he buy it for a second?

Would he really believe that this convenient moment of spare honesty was somehow superior to the countless piles of lies you were now buried under?

And what of the tape.

What of the evidence you had gathered against him; evidence that could destroy him, strip him of his title, probably even be used to execute him if the tape was spun against him in the right way. A prince in line for the throne, found to have dealt the killing blow to a powerful monarch — his own mother, what kind of monster indeed — then gone through great lengths to cover it up.

The public would demand his head.

You had known of the tape’s existence because of May. You’d known of Kyungsoo’s involvement in his mother’s death for the same reason. May knew of the tape because of Sehun and Sehun had the most to gain from exposing Kyungsoo as a murderer and a traitor to the crown. With Kyungsoo out, Sehun would be that much closer. Sehun’s own flesh and blood brother Jongin would be next in line and he would gain that much more influence and power. Power was something Kyungsoo believed every single one of his brothers craved like oxygen. His mistrust in them went deep and no amount of your insisting that they weren’t out to destroy him would make him believe you hadn’t committed the ultimate betrayal.

He would not let you live. If Kyungsoo knew the truth — that he was not the monster he called himself, that he was not responsible for another death, but a victim of your lies — surely he would not let you live.

Maybe your life was easy to give him. You had never had much of one to be honest.

But all the others?

He would exact his revenge with a strong swift hand that would reach out to your family, your country at home whose government; whose people stood to lose so much if this marriage did not take place. How many would starve when the economy failed? Families would suffer and children would die. Your father, who had promised so much to his people would shoulder the blame and shame would follow your family’s name for generations.

Your honesty would spare Kyungsoo of this pain but so many others would suffer. So many innocents would die.

You had always known that this marriage was not about you. It was not about Kyungsoo. It was bigger than even the both of you combined and it had the power to crush and the power to destroy. It had the power to save lives and feed children and the lives of so many people depending on you and him just owning up to the task and doing what was expected of you — doing what you had promised.

You wavered in those few seconds. You teetered along the edge your choice. One choice to spare him and him alone of this monumental pain; a salve of honesty that would destroy everything you had been trained your whole life to protect.

His skin felt alive and raw under your comforting hands for those few seconds and your words pushed up to the tip of your tongue before you swallowed them back down and exhaled a soft cry from deep inside your body. You could feel the warm wetness of the tears that ran down your face and you let them fall as you swallowed down the honesty.

You deserved this pain for the crimes you were committing against the man you loved.

The polished marble floor felt like ice against your knees and you sank hard, ignoring the pain that shot through your limbs with the impact.

How had it come to this?

How did you come so far from the way of the righteous? How had you forsaken your own morals and abetted in the destruction of this beautiful human being?

The suffocating sobs were quieting down and Kyungsoo gasped in deeply for breath; his nose too stopped up to be of any use he gasped through parted lips and his eyes that had been sealed tight to the world opened slowly with the plea for air his lungs made.

You still touched him, shamelessly and with these disgusting traitorous hands. You ran your palms over his shoulders, down his forearms, soaking in the warmth of his skin that seeped through the shirt he wore and when his eyes opened you felt the first bit of it, the first bit of him coming alive and coming out of the grief that had nearly drowned him.

The first gasp of precious air was for his lungs but the second was for strength against your hands. He inhaled into the recoil and his arms rose swiftly, pushing hard against your hands that you dared to touch him with. Just enough to break the contact. Just enough to give him that precious space he needed away from you and the multitude of your sins against him. Some he knew of; others he did not.

And as quickly as it began; the sadness, the grief, the all consuming anguish, and the pain, that rose from deep within his chest to swell over his entire being, it stopped. You watched his face as he blinked once and then twice, the second much slower than the first, and the muscles in his face relaxed down to near nothingness as he exhaled every last bit of air from inside of his lungs.

Kyungsoo inhaled a deep breath and he stared ahead of himself into the emptiness of the room, not seeing, nor feeling, nor living - and he turned off.

His hands hung lifelessly in his lap; knuckles red with clotting blood and the rapid and complete shift in his demeanor was alarming enough for you to gasp in a startled breath.

You had no words to give him that could fix it and the touch of your hands had been the last thing he wanted; yet you felt desperate for something, for anything —

“Kyungsoo.” You whispered his name into the silence that had enveloped his existence and he did not move or blink when you called his name.

“Kyungsoo,” you said again and this time you heard the raspy inhale of air he took to inflate his lungs and you saw the gentle part of his lips with the air he pulled.

Would he speak to you? Would he have anything to say about his part in, what he believed was the death of your best friend? Would he have any more to speak about your monumental betrayal of his trust?

“I suppose this makes us even now,” he whispered with a tired hoarseness in his throat and his eyes refused to meet yours despite the desperation with which your eyes crawled over the features of his profile.

Kyungsoo stood on trembling legs and his eyes did not glance in your direction once as he left you. You could not bring your eyes to follow his retreat. His gaze would have no reason to touch upon a woman he abhorred. You had no courage to watch the back of his head, the back of his shoulders, or the stumble of unease in his legs as he left you.

Instead, you watched the broken empty space he once occupied; the dents in the wall where his fist had collided, and the red stains of his blood that painted the scene and the sound of his exit afforded you but a moment of silence before the murmur of voices absconded and strangers began to fret and fuss around you, but not necessarily about you. No. Not one of them was there for you. You had no one here.

Hushed complaints about the damage to the room and to the groom’s suit. Judgements about the precious time wasted on aired dirty laundry that could have been spent on receiving deliveries or fixing decorations or preparing for this abomination of a wedding that would take place in two days time.

Whispers and rumors.

Gossip and scandal.

Strangers’ fingers touched you no more than was necessary to dress you in your own clothing and relinquished you to other strangers who steered you with light fingertips — what you wouldn’t give for just one warm palm against your back. In the backseat of a black sedan you sat alone and gripped your own hands tightly together in your lap and you daydreamed of the warmth and pressure of May’s hand.

The rest of the contact with every other human was superficial and shallow and your chest ached for what you had lost in such a short amount of time.

When you found yourself again; when the dust around the day had settled and the sunlight began to lessen and the nagging unease inside of you that begged for something to happen grew too noisy to ignore; the pull for action led to the item you had been avoiding since it came into your possession.

Your room was as you had left it. The boutique shopping bag delivered by Jun sat beside your bedside table and you could tell by the careful placement of the tags on the garments inside that it had remained undisturbed since he had given you the device that would play the tape.

The tape. Kyungsoo’s video tape.

You’d hidden it well; inside a gap in the third from the bottom shelf on the left hand side of your walk in closet. The gap at the back, between the shelf and the wall, was small enough that one would be unable to spot anything off about it and as you reached a hand into the shelf and felt around the tiny space you felt the flat plastic edges of the small rectangle that had been the source of so much pain in your life.

You might have thought that the unknown was the hardest part about this tape. And while, yes, not knowing what could be on it was a major cause of grief and anxiety for you up until this moment, now the significant agony was the memory of the look in his eyes when he had learned exactly what you had done to him to get your hands on this little thing. The worst had already been done. It was now time to find out why. The reason why you had to do this had to be on this tape.

Your limbs worked on autopilot and you pulled out the laptop May had left behind. Below the garments in the bag sat a rectangle shaped device and what looked to be a larger version of the tiny tape you had in your hand. A center section popped out and you ignored the tremble in your fingers as you clicked the lid closed and carefully connected wires into their respective inputs until you had a rudimentary set up with a player for playing the video, software on the laptop to view and record video and wires running between the two. When plugged into the wall outlet, everything hummed to life with friendly little lights as if the secrets contained within this tape did not have the power to destroy entire worlds.

The first time you pressed play, the video player merely clicked and turned itself back off. A light knock on the side of your temple for your slight in memory was all it took to straighten yourself back out and you remembered that these old tapes required rewinding in order to play from the beginning. It was a little button and the device whirled to life, spinning fast and noisily until it reached the end of tape and another click signaled that the action had been completed.

The button was silent and waiting.

You had come this far.

You pressed play and the screen came to life before you. The software playing the video allowed you to record it as well and you hit the little red circle button as soon as the video began to play, understanding the importance of what you might witness. You knew the video would be backed up on the cloud, as May had always reminded you the importance of keeping back-ups of the really important things.

The beginning of the video was grainy. A view obstructed by a haze of blue. You could only hear bits and pieces of a voice speaking softly to someone else.

It was a woman’s voice and her words were sweet in tone.

‘I got you this to protect you,’ she said, and there was no response at first. And you heard his name, spoken louder, over the sounds of perhaps a television, although the video was still covered by a blue haze that prevented you from seeing anything.

‘Kyungsoo,’ she called again and you heard the first bits of a child’s voice. There was a sound of loud crackling that made the small speakers of your laptop pop with the volume and the video was flooded with light and with the image of him.

His smiling face; he had to be no older than 10 but he was small, and his face full of innocence and joy as his eyes widened on your screen, his gaze fell directly into yours as he looked right into the face of the teddy bear his mother had just given him.

‘You have to remember to bring it back to me once a week, Okay?’ Her voice was calling out to him and grew quieter before disappearing completely as the video turned abruptly sideways and bounced and shook wildly, occasionally catching the view of his tiny feet hitting the cobblestone and then his shoes bouncing atop bright green grass. Then you landed with a thump on your side in what could only be described as a makeshift tent hidden somewhere on the palace grounds; far away from the sounds of anyone or anything that might disturb this adorable child’s very important work.

He was a tiny chef. You saw actual pots and pans and a little boy crouched in front of them, grabbing handles and flipping up rocks and sticks; spilling the contents out onto the ground below without a care. He shouted orders out to his imaginary kitchen staff and rang an imaginary bell when his dish was perfected. He paused once to set you upright from where you had fallen over and you had a better view of the piles of mud and leaves he had carefully arranged on a stolen dinner plate. You lamented that you could not answer the many questions he asked you; his visiting teddy bear friend who had joined him for dinner this evening.

He was playing. He was happy and he was full of so much life and so much energy.

As the video played you fell into it. Giggling with the games he played and growing attached to this happy little boy who didn’t say much to others but seemed to find great comfort in talking to himself and sometimes to you, the teddy bear, who carefully watched him play. While the recording quality was low and grainy, sometimes hard to make out with great clarity what exactly was going on, you soon realized that you had been let into a substantial chunk of the very young life of Do Kyungsoo. Yet you knew, if you wanted to make any significant progress in viewing this thing before your wedding, that you would need to speed up the playback to get through it all.

You’d grown tired of sitting and waiting after the first hour watching without sound as the recording played at 5 times the normal speed and occasional images of a messy bedroom, or that empty tent flew by the screen.

Surely something would happen on the screen. Something significant enough to catch your attention. Something profound enough to signal you to slow down the playback and pay attention.

You half watched now, noting how the lighting shifted as the day turned to night and then to day again. You clicked again to speed up the playback after the two hours of watching the same bare tent wall with nothing happening.

Occasionally, and it was shocking each time it happened, his sweet face would appear — lips moving quickly with smiles that reached his eyes and some toy in his hand that flew around, attacking some other toy in his hand — and you’d slow the playback down to real time to hear the booming battle sounds he made with his mouth.

As the video played, again at super speed since the camera had obviously been left in an empty room alone for a very long time, you let the video run away with it until you saw movement again, walking away a few times to eat or use the bathroom. After long you found mind drifting and you struggled to pay close attention again, occasionally slowing the video to listen to the sounds of some video game, a child’s screaming and laughter, the sounds of play, the view of a tree blowing in the wind on the other side of an enormous window.

The change happened overnight.

The video ran for long, too long and nothing seemed to happen. Yet you sat up straighter in your seat when the sudden realization hit you. The video had been playing fast, super speed, yet the image of the little boy sitting in a ball on the floor was not moving.

With the speed it was playing at he should have been buzzing about the room with toys or running back and forth but in the video, Kyungsoo had been curled around himself on the floor by the window for hours now.

You reached for the video controls and switched to normal speed. But of course, if he did not move at five times the speed he would be absolutely motionless at normal speed.

You sped the video up again, moving even faster this time; looking to move past this stillness. You saw someone enter the room, leave some food for him which he did not touch, and the image of his tiny body curled into himself merely shifted as he fell over into the hardwood floors and fell asleep.

You moved again, maxing out the speed with which the video could play and you watched his tiny body sometimes rise to move lifelessly through his room. Occasionally eating to survive. Getting up only once onto his bed to sleep. Most times, falling asleep on the floor in front of that window. Never once touching any of the toys and games that filled his room. Never once gracing your eyes with his sweet laughter or glorious play again.

He was just gone and it had happened overnight.

Only, what the video showed you wasn’t anything substantial that could be of any use to nearly anyone. Except perhaps a therapist.

The video only showed a beautiful, once happy child changed into the broken shell of a person that you sometimes saw behind those big eyes of his.

The trance-like way he stared ahead of himself, neither crying nor raging, felt achingly familiar and you recalled the last few moments you had with him in the dressing room. After the grief had subsided and his heart and mind turned off any and all traces of humanity — to protect himself.

You saw three days fly by. Three days of this broken child sitting alone and the video ended with the bear sitting in the exact same corner of his bedroom and Kyungsoo sitting motionless by the window.

But, what had happened before this? You had seen nothing that was significant at all. A bit of a child playing, you recalled from the earlier playback, and then the bear was left somewhere without him for a while.

You replayed the day again after the video finished copying into the hard drive of the laptop, moving at twice the speed to save on time. There was some movement as the camera traveled and it changed hands. You saw different shoes and the camera moved between a few different people until it landed into the hands of someone who wore a suit — security of the house, or a butler perhaps and then the view was simply Him, in his room, shell shocked and destroyed.

This tape didn’t have any incriminating evidence against the young child and definitely didn’t show a murder. If anything it showed a complete failure on the part of any of the adults in his life to give enough of a shit about him to protect him, to protect his heart, to help him overcome the soul crushing grief of losing a parent.

What you saw was neglect.

What you saw was apathy and it was criminal.

It made you feel sick to your stomach and the image of that small child sitting alone sat in the back of your eyeballs for a long while after the tape quit playing and the screen of your laptop timed out and shut off.

The regret came to your first. It surged up fast and hot inside of your chest and you felt the tremble in your lips and the burning in your eyes a split second before you felt the wave of guilty water coat over the top of your head.

This?

Had this been it?

Had you been sent on a wild goose chase by May and Sehun to occupy you, to destroy the faith you had in Kyungsoo and to weaken the union the two of you would make?

Had you really destroyed the man you loved, for this? A video of his pain and his grief after losing his mother?

You had been so sure. It was May. Your May. You loved her, she was your very best friend and she had never once lied to you before. Sinful secrets with Sehun aside, this was May!

The image of that little boy flashed into your mind once more and you closed your eyes tight, feeling the unshed tears slip down your face.

When you opened them again, the silence of your own room bore down on you, heavy and destitute. You looked around your large and empty space and the clocks on the wall talked to each other with out of sync ticks, leaving you out of their inside jokes.

You were alone.

You’d lost May.

You’d lost Kyungsoo.

The silence was stifling.

How could you even begin to repair this?

If you spent the rest of your life apologizing for what you’d done, would he ever forgive you?

Maybe if you returned the tape. Maybe if you told him the truth about May. Maybe if you fell down to your knees and begged his forgiveness. Maybe if you vowed to sacrifice your entire life for him.

The sour mood dragged you down fast and you reached for the damned tape, angrily popping it out of the player and gripping it hard inside of your hand. This thing that had been dangled in front of your gullible face and you had fallen for every word so easily.

Your thoughts were a jumble of anger, guilt, loneliness, sadness. You wanted to scream. You wanted to cry. You wanted to talk to somebody, but you had no one. Not a single person inside the walls of this enormous palace who was on your side. No one who was a friend.

Their faces flashed through your mind and with each pass through every single member of the royal family and even through the help, even May, even Ara when you began to feel a little too desperate, one face in particular kept returning to you.

One person who felt, somehow, different than the others

One person who was closer. Who you had already cried in front of once, maybe even twice. One person who was just as lost and confused with even being alive. Perhaps you could run some of your thoughts by him. Perhaps you didn’t have to go into exact details, if you just left out some incriminating details.

You raised your hand to knock on the door.

You didn’t even have a hard time finding his place this time. Although you couldn’t be sure of his motivations with Sehun and with May, you at least trusted him enough to be your alibi. You at least had some faith in him as a friend. Maybe he would be too drunk to be any use. Maybe you could spill all of your secrets to him and he wouldn’t remember them in the morning.

When Baekhyun pulled the door open you took note of a few things immediately. He was wide awake, at three in the morning. And even though he was wide awake so late, Baekhyun was completely sober.

“Oh. Hello,” he said softly, without much of the usual fire and mischief that usually sat inside of his eyes, Baekhyun looked into your face with a little cock of his head and a tiny smile on his lips.

He looked at you for a moment and the tilt of his head straightened out as he pulled the front door of his room open further and he took a step back, clearing the way for you to come inside of his home.

“I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you,” you said softly and he shook his head just a tiny bit. His stance was inviting and you found your legs carrying you through the threshold, stepping lightly into his foyer where you slipped out of your shoes.

You didn’t understand why you felt so at ease with Baekhyun.

Perhaps it was the ultra casual way he looked at you and spoke with you. Although not an equal by any means, he was a self proclaimed bastard with no prospects. You were, down to your DNA, a rightful heir to a kingdom and he was...well, he was…

“Let me guess…” Baekhyun began speaking slowly the moment his eyes left your face and watched down at your feet as you slipped into the slippers you found there.

You looked up into his face when he didn’t immediately guess and you found his eyes tossed up into the air with a finger poised against his face, deep in thought and you scoffed out a tiny chuckle. Your first of the day.

“Umm...cold feet?” His teeth bared with the last syllable and his lips pursed into a small pout when you sighed and shook your head, inhaling a breath ready to speak, to answer him, to come up with some excuse as to why you would show up at his door in the middle of the night, two — actually, now, one full day before your wedding day.

“No, no..let me guess,” he spoke before you could get any words out and he was taking smaller steps into his home as you followed behind him.

It was clean this time. Gone was the booze filled kiddie pool that had occupied the living room the last time you came. You didn’t see a single empty liquor bottle or empty can of beer and all the rooms around you had open doors and they all looked to be unoccupied with sleeping hookers. There wasn’t a single speck of white powder on any of the shiny surfaces of the home and the place smelled as clean as it looked.

He sat down on the sofa and tucked his feet under himself, patting the seat directly beside him for you to sit down as well and you did as you were told. There was a weariness that washed over you as you sat down and you leaned against the plush sofa feeling like you might never be able to get up again if you stayed here for too long.

Baekhyun inhaled sharply and snapped his fingers in front of him, a charming smile widened across his face.

“I’ve got it!” You were pretty sure he didn’t have it, but his enthusiasm was adorable and you felt another tiny chuckle leave your chest. “You have come to the extremely correct conclusion that you have picked the wrong prince to marry and have come to take me up on my many offers.”

You had leaned your head back against the sofa and closed your eyes just for a little while and his guess made you smile right before you opened your eyes back up again to look at his face and let him down gently.

A small head shake was all it took to drop the raised eyebrow from his face and pull his wide triumphant smile into more of a thoughtful pout.

“Okay, I give up. Tell me.”

“Are all you done guessing now?” The smile remained on your lips simply because it was him. He had a power inside of him to lift your darkest moods.

“What’s the point,” he shrugged, “if you aren’t here to run away with me.” He was kidding, of course. You could hear it in the easy delivery and flippantly dismissive words. This was Baekhyun’s charm. Nothing bothered him. Nothing ever destroyed him completely. He was Prince Baekhyun. The nation’s trouble maker. The illegitimate bastard of the king and, who was it again? The rumors had been harsh. Did those words roll off his back as easily as everything else did? 

The son of a whore.

“I just needed a friend, Baekhyun.” Your voice betrayed a bit of your weariness with the sigh that preceded your declaration and Baekhyun had gone quite still and quiet beside you when you said it.

Baekhyun, who was, at his very core, a fidgety person, had gone still and when you opened your eyes again he was watching you without a smile on his face and with what had to be a look of confusion in his eyes.

“A friend?” He said it so low, had he not been completely still you might have missed it.

You nodded once, not quite understanding the odd look you saw on his face.

“...and that friend is...” he was squinting at you now, with his head turned and not quite looking at you head on anymore but his hand was up again and one shaking finger was pointed toward his own chest. With his mouth he shaped out the word me but he didn’t actually say it out loud.

“You,” you said with a bit more conviction than you thought was necessary and the squinting evened out into the regular confused look he had on his face at the beginning of this friend talk.

“Do you… do you need money? Or do you maybe… need a fix of something…” he was running through the possibilities out loud now. “Or maybe…”

Was this really such a stretch to him? 

“No, Baekhyun. I don’t need anything from you. Just — I just wanted to see a friend. I promise, that’s all.” He was watching your face carefully. Probably still judging your words for their honesty and after a bit of silence you felt the characteristic tremble of his legs shaking as he resumed all of his usual fidgety behavior. 

While you hadn’t exactly been Miss Popular in your life, you had at least had May, but something about Baekhyun’s reaction made you a tad uneasy. Why was you offering your friendship such a far-fetched idea?  Maybe he didn’t like your company. Maybe it was unwanted. 

“If...that’s okay with you.” You supplied sheepishly, suddenly losing what little confidence you had in this plan. “I just thought that we seemed to get along.” 

Baekhyun inhaled and exhaled a long slow breath before angling his torso toward where you offered your flawed but no-strings-attached friendship to him.

 “Okay,” he said once and his head bobbed forward as if he danced to the beat of a song that wasn’t playing.

“Okay. A friend. I have a friend.” 

You offered a grin in response and breathed in a steadying breath. But it wasn’t enough. You felt the strange awkwardness that coated the back of your tongue and Baekhyun cleared his throat nervously and looked away from your face now. 

Perhaps this was just a little new to you. What exactly did friends do with each other anyway? 

Talk? Watch movies together and play games together? Joke around and laugh together? Sit awkwardly on a sofa and avoid eye contact until one of you slips and catches the other one looking and has to cover his mouth to keep from spitting out in anxious laughter. 

Baekhyun was giggling now and you bit down on your bottom lip to keep from laughing along too loudly. It took a moment for some of the awkwardness to fade and even then you felt the need to spark up some sort of conversation to ease into this new friendship.

“Baekhyun, can I ask you something?” You slipped into it a moment after his giggles died down and he looked up from the nail polish he had been scraping off of his nails. 

“Oh God, you do want money,” he said immediately without missing a beat and you laughed and rolled your eyes at the question. 

“Why did you help Sehun out?” 

It wasn’t a selfish question to ask. Not entirely. You were genuinely curious about why someone who had nothing to gain from it, would put his life on the line by going against the queen. By lying to the throne and for the part he played in faking May’s death like that. 

Baekhyun was quiet for a moment and stuck a finger inside his mouth, now using his teeth to scrape off the remains of the pink polish. 

“Well, there’s a baby, you know.” He finally said with a shrug. “Somebody should take care of the baby. It’s not like they have any say in this.” 

He had moved on to the next finger and bits of dried polish sat scattered all over his lap. 

“Babies are innocent. And he shouldn’t lose his mother just because of who his father is.” 

You nodded your head, not bringing to his attention his slip of calling the baby a he. Even though this early in the pregnancy, the gender of the baby still couldn’t be determined even with advanced ultrasounds. 

You felt too exhausted to correct him and who knows, maybe Baekhyun knew something about it that you didn’t. 

You looked around with your sleepy eyes, noting how every single light in this place was on and you could see a stack of boxes off toward the side of his kitchen. Close to the room you had been in the last time you visited. The only clean room in the house at the time. From what you could see from your view on the sofa, it seemed like the walls might be a different color in there. 

“Why are you awake so late? What were you doing?”

Baekhyun followed your eyes and looked behind him toward the strangely pristine room that he kept in his home. 

“I’m redecorating.” 

He declared it with a wide smile; abandoning his quest to rid himself of the pink nail polish with his teeth. He stood up from the sofa becoming re-interested in what you had interrupted with your arrival. 

“You wanna come and help me pick? I can’t decide on which curtains I want to use.” 

You welcomed the distraction and rose to follow him into the bedroom which you swore had been completely brand new and unused the last time you’d seen it. You knew what packaging creases looked like on pillow cases. You even smelled the new walls back then; just a touch of fresh paint, covered with some pretty scent in a warmer on the dresser. 

When you stepped inside the room, the color on the walls was indeed different and even the flooring which once had a soft plush carpeting had been replaced with polished wood. 

The furniture was brand new and sitting just enough away from the walls to tell you that the soft blue he had selected wasn’t quite dry enough for anything to be resting up against it.

He grabbed two packages from atop the brand new, plastic covered mattress and held them up for you to see. One was a shade darker than the other, with a gentle striped pattern and the other was sheer bright white. Honestly, either would look perfectly fine with the color of the walls and you shrugged and pointed to the sheer curtains. 

“Can’t go wrong with natural light,” you said and he flung the rejected curtains out of the door and began to rip with his teeth at the packaging around the new curtains you chose. 

You noticed he still had a speck of bright pink nail polish stuck to his bottom lip and you leaned in close with your fingers outstretched to carefully pluck the pink off. He stopped moving his mouth just long enough for your fingertips to come into contact with his skin and the moment you felt the warmth of him you heard the gasp of breath from his surprise. You saw the widening of his eyes too and they crossed as he tried to look down at your hand descending on his face. 

Had you made a mistake? You didn’t think that touching would be off limits but Baekhyun sure seemed surprised enough by the motion.

Nevertheless you got the bit of pesky pink off his lip and it was stuck to your finger now. You held it up for him to see what you had been after but he was staring at your face with a far away look inside his eyes

“You had some nail pol—”

Your words were cut off when he leaned into you quickly and covered your mouth with his own. 

Baekhyun was kissing you on the lips. He was kissing you, why? What? It came as such a shock that you had a one second where every bit of rational thinking just stopped. It was a genuine surprise; you were frozen with it and when the warmth of his exhale, through his nose passed over your face, it signaling for you to wake up and do something about this. 

You pulled yourself away from him, and you lifted both of your hands to lay over his chest. The push was slight, and the second your lips left his he took a step back and away from you. 

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately and there was a look of genuine surprise in his eyes as he lifted his hand up to his own face. He covered his parted lips and you saw a trembling in his hands. 

“Baekhyun, what—”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I don’t know...I’m not good at this. Shit,” the trembling in his hands was worse the more he apologized and you saw wetness inside his eyes. “You’re not going to leave, are you? I’m sorry, I fucked up. I won't do it again. Please, I’m sorry. Don't leave.”

He sounded like he was close to panicking with the shaking you saw and the first drop of wetness you saw on his cheek. 

“Baekhyun, it’s okay,” you said over the rambling he was doing and he closed his eyes tightly and laid a hand over his chest in some attempt to control his reaction.

“Baekhyun, it was a mistake, it’s okay. I’m not mad at you.” You reached out your hands for him, coming just short of touching him and his breathing was fast as his face screwed together with a look of intense discomfort. 

“What—” He panted through gritted teeth and his eyes were closed tightly. “—do you want from me?”

“Baekhyun, I don’t want anything. I just wanted to see you, that’s all. I promise!” There was only so many times you could say it before the frustration of his misunderstanding your intentions with him became too much. 

“People want drugs, or favors, or money, or sex from me,” he raised his voice suddenly and spun on his heels to face you and his eyes were wide and red from the heightened emotions running through him. 

You shook your head, insisting that you had no such intentions in approaching him tonight. But the seriousness that you saw in his eyes took away the frustration you’d been feeling. In its place, a new emotion was surging through you. 

It was worry. You looked at him in a new light now. Seeing the anxious energy that was radiating off of him. The fidgeting and the rapid speech. The trembling in his hands and the tears that slipped out of his eyes even as he blinked fast, trying to dry them, trying to fight this, you softened your voice to him and reached for him, at last.

You felt the warmth of his arm and gripped a hand lightly around his bicep. He was tense and his muscles were clenched down hard, yet when you touched him, he did not flinch away from you. 

“Baek, are you okay? When is the last time you slept? Did you eat today?” 

With your touch, his breathing began to slow and he blinked much slower. There was a pause in his movement and you felt the weight of him lean against your arm. The signal of his acceptance of your comfort made you open your arm and pull him in, wrapping an arm around his back to rub and shush calming circles over his shirt. 

“I—I have to finish this.” He signaled around the room with a free hand and on his voice was the kind of hopelessness that only came to someone who had been futilely working on something until four in the morning. 

“Why do you have to finish it tonight? Can’t it wait until tomorrow, Baek?”

He looked at your face now, his nose pink and his eyes red and bloodshot. He was blinking his eyelids hard as he looked at your face for a long while before he inhaled a breath and lifted his face, suddenly focusing on your face and his expression changed into one of mild surprise. 

Then he looked around the room again. It felt like you’d lost him for a moment and he suddenly realized who you were when he looked at you that way. 

“I—I….don’t know, I’ve always tried to get it done as soon as possible. It has to always be ready. Every moment when it’s not ready is a waste.” 

His words held so much conviction, you did not doubt that he believed this to be completely true. But, why?

“Ready for what? It was brand new before, why did you have to re-do it? What are you getting it ready for?”

His head was shaking halfway through your line of questioning and he was taking a step away from the comfort of your arms that still tried to rub gently over his back.

“No. No. Not for what. For who.” 

As bizarre at this evening had become at this point you didn’t believe he could have said anything that would make today any stranger. 

At least you weren’t alone. If Baekhyun wanted to repaint and decorate and entire house tonight you would be his own personal decision maker if it meant you didn’t have to go back to your place and be all alone 

“She didn’t come before, and it wasn’t good enough. When she comes it must be perfect. I think the blue should be perfect this time.”

You weren’t following. Did he have an ex girlfriend that had demanded that he change something for her? 

The silence on your face and the way you looked at him with a head shake to indicate that you did not understand got him moving again and he looked right into your face now. 

“I’m not crazy,” he said firmly and he bit down on the inside of his bottom lip and did not let the eye contact that he held with you fall. 

“Baekhyun, who is this for?” You’d had enough of the cryptics and the exhaustion of the day was smacking you against the head right now. You didn’t have time for anymore games. He had to quit this and go to sleep. He was making you sleepy with his non stop messing and fussing over the room when it was becoming increasingly evident that he just needed a good night’s sleep. 

“Hey,” you tried again, reaching for his arm now. He gave it to you easily and closed his eyes when you pulled him. “It’ll be okay if you finish this tomorrow. It already looks great. I’m sure she will love it when she comes. She might even like helping you put up the finishing touches.” You felt like you were talking to a young child at this point. He moved his legs where you led him and you saw his face calm over as he sighed a long breath of defeat. 

“But, what if Mom comes tonight? When I’m asleep?” He said softly and you had managed to pull him into the living room, toward what you assumed was his own bedroom. 

When he said that word the exhaustion that had been coating every inch of your skin faded your focus on his face sharpened. His eyes were closed and he was swaying on his feet. He looked ready to drop and you… You were having a hard time with that word he had said because of what you knew to be an absolute fact about Byun Baekhyun. 

“I’m not crazy,” he said again softly when he caught you looking at him again. 

And though you hated to think of him in such a way, you were having more and more trouble with this project of his now. 

Because you’d read all of the articles in the newspaper after it happened. And you heard the rumors and gossip spreading through the palace. Everyone knew it. It was a fact. There was never any doubt about what happened to her.

Worse than the hideous words they called him were the words they attached to the woman. 

That’s what they all said. There was a funeral. 

She threw herself into the sea. Prince Byun Baekhyun, the son of a dead whore. 

You hadn’t quite figured out a plan of action in the off-chance that a casual run-in turned into a drunken hookup and subsequent morning-after love confession with whimpering apologies from both sides, but what you knew for certain was that you weren’t about to fall again.

You wouldn’t let yourself be put into the position to be hurt again. If you had to keep him at arm’s length to make that happen then that’s simply what you would do. The softness you saw in his eyes when he looked at you; the hurt you could read like a graphic novel on his oversized features could poke and prod at you all it wanted; you would not waver. You had survived the last six months, what was a few more minutes with him close enough to hold; close enough to touch; close enough for the warmth of his lips to leave a lingering tingle?

You took your time answering his question. It was a heavy one — Were you scared of him? — your tongue felt too dry when you finally coaxed some motion from it.

His eyes glanced down at your lips when you spoke.

“I would say,” you inhaled with the words as you searched through your vocabulary for the right one and midway through the exhale you continued, “I’m smarter now.”

Your answer sent him moving. His eyes fell from your face and his hand lifted to tap fingertips in an absent-minded drift over his furrowed eyebrows and he blinked fast with the harsh lighting from your bathroom vanity reflecting a flickering wetness in his eyes.

“I think I’m just going to focus on being more careful with myself from now on.” And with my heart — but, you held the word back.

“Because you’re scared of me,” he spoke again, repeating the same words as before only this time his hand fell over his eyes as he closed out the world for a moment. It wasn't a question this time. Your response had solidified in his mind the real reason for your reluctance for closeness. The real reason why you were so desperate now to get him out of your home. Kyungsoo could feel it and he was reeling as he took a step back.

His shoulder hit a door frame and he was out of places to go. This bathroom was tiny, just as the rest of your apartment was tiny and you listened to the sounds of the water from the shower behind you, running down the drain. There was a very slight mist in the air from the steam the hot water produced. It was hardly enough to fog the mirror even. Kyungsoo’s reflection looked clear enough for you to easily make out the pained lines on his face that his hands rubbed over. You could see the tremble in those hands and when he dropped them, his head sagged forward.

“I’ll,” he swallowed roughly and the words were interrupted by the breath he pulled, “fix it. I can fix this, please...if you—”

There was a war inside your chest. You hated the admission. You hated this truth.

Yes. You were scared.

“—if you just let me try—”

You were terrified. You were so frightened that he would reach out and rip the last bits of your heart out that you wanted nothing more to do with it. You wanted him to leave. You wanted the temptation of the warmth and kindness in his eyes to vanish so you wouldn't have to resist him any longer. How much longer could you possibly say no to him before the single syllable changed to ‘well… maybe.’

Kyungsoo’s focus was on you again and you caught a flash of movement in his posture. A shift of his balance that made him surge forward. It was minimal in depth yet when he moved you moved; only your legs carried you in the opposite direction. Away from his advancement. You stepped back as he stepped forward and he noticed it.

And he stopped.

Your ears were humming. The thick steam that poured from the shower clouded your peripheral vision and Kyungsoo lifted both of his hands to cover of his nose and his mouth as he gasped once softly and shook his head in a shallow rocking motion.

“You,” the hands muffled his words, “don't want me here. You don't want me close to you at all.” He sounded close to tears to finally know this ugly truth about you.

No. No, this was vulgar. This beautiful human before you should not feel such pain; you could feel the shards of your heart scraping and clawing inside of your rib cage and it begged and it pleaded for some way to comfort him but your mind would win with its common sense and timer that ticked down the minutes until this whole ordeal was over, the knowledge that he would leave and take with him every last chance you had at a love so painful and all-consuming — your rationality held on fast and you stood stubbornly on your own two feet, curled into yourself with arms wrapped tightly around your stomach to keep your insides from spilling out all over the floor. You had to try your hardest to keep yourself together right now. You were the only one you could count on for this.

“Kyungsoo,” you spoke over the sound of the running water and your heart and your mind were at war, “I just... I can’t.”

“You can’t what? You can’t be with me? You can’t forgive me? You can’t be in the same room as me?”

You felt like your voice had been snatched away and you hated this look on his face. It crushed you. It destroyed you. How had you gone from so determined... to this?

He still had your heart and all of the power of such an absolute ownership. But you had what was left of your pride and it would have to do.

The steam was beginning to thin now. The hot water was gone and nothing at all had been accomplished with it. What a waste.

So much time had passed that you were certain a few more minutes here and he would miss his second flight. The consequences of this were beginning to stack; mounted up high as each moment brought with it more and more real-life dangers. Greater than just the damage to your silly little heart.

“Kyungsoo, your flight.” You whispered it like the filthy word it was and you felt like a coward or calling upon such an excuse.

“I’ll go,” he said with his eyes wide and trained down at the floor below his legs. It was trance-like, the way he responded. “I’ll go because you want me to go, but I’m still going to fix this.”

When he looked up into your face you could see the clarity of the room written all over his face. And he was looking into your eyes with a different look; different than before. It was brazen and it was oddly strong. A new aura you hadn’t seen all morning was bursting through his big brown eyes and he aimed them in your direction.

“Look, I made a mistake. That was me...my faults, my insecurities— I’m the one that fucked this up. You said that you’re smarter now but there wasn’t anything dumb about falling in love and honestly when I thought that I’d never see you again...it fucking killed me.” He held you in his gaze as he spoke to you, legs no longer standing within the doorway of your bathroom. He had already taken several steps away from you the moment he noticed you flinch away from him.

“And I know you haven’t said it yet—” he was leaving as promised but your heart held onto him and pulled hard. It had no effect. His feet kept on retreating and he was leaving now. Just as you had wanted. Right?

“—but I know you still love me. You’re hiding it — trying to be strong or ..or stubborn—” His vision sharpened and he lost some of his gumption on the word stubborn when the mention of such a bratty word made your lips pull into a frown and you did not fight the urge to roll your eyes. As if this was mere stubbornness. As if a broken heart could be labeled with such a word. Stubborn was something a petulant child was. You had been nearly destroyed. You were trying to live now.

“—or whatever it is but it’s still there, I know it. You still love me too...you just have to remember it.”

As if you could ever forget. You were biting down on your bottom lip with such a force that it was beginning to feel sore between your teeth. Your arms were crossed over your chest so tightly your muscles felt the strain and he wasn’t waiting for any more of a response from you. He was leaving. You held him in your sights until he simply was not there anymore.

“I’ll see you in Japan.” He called out from the living room and you felt the forceful exhale of the breath you had been holding send your body downward as your legs sank and your used up body leaned against the bathroom wall.

The soft click of your front door closing was the final sound to come from outside of your bathroom and you took a full five minutes of existing in your own skin before you pulled your bones back up with your own muscles and pulled the T-shirt roughly from your body.

You leaped into the ice-cold stream of running water and your lungs gasped as the freezing cold inundated your every cell. You sputtered and you shook and withstood the shock of it until your persistence began to pay off and you could feel your body becoming numb to it. Growing used to the pain until you hardly even noticed it anymore. It was an excellent metaphor for your existence up until this point in Korea and if you could take this, then you might just be able to withstand whatever other bullshit was coming next.

Your rescheduled flight to Osaka was easy enough to arrange and by the time the wheels touched down on the runway you were beginning to feel the strong clutches of that morning’s hangover headache finally beginning to fade.

The headache medicine you picked up with the emergency contraceptive pills at the pharmacy on the way to the airport helped ease you into your recovery and with a little food in your belly, you actually began to feel like you might just live to see another day.

You didn’t usually travel alone on work assignments. Perhaps this slip of your memory had one benefit; your flight was peaceful. Not that you wanted extra time to sit and stew inside your own head particularly, but at least you didn’t have to converse with anyone in a language that took just enough effort to become exhausting after a while.

It was probably because you lived here now, in Korea, but lately, you’d been feeling more and more fatigued with the language. Not the translating itself, that was fine and only sporadically demanding, but spending day after day talking to so many people had begun to make you feel rather worn down. It hadn’t been like this before moving here and you attributed it to the change in your job. More responsibilities, more stress — that sorta thing.

Your mind wandered in the taxi to the hotel and you recalled the phone calls in the beginning. The long video calls with Kyungsoo in which you’d go on for what felt like hours about your day. The days when you came to visit him and you’d spend entire nights up late with him just talking and talking about anything and everything you could both think to talk about. The last thing you had longed for was peace and quiet. You craved his words and he pulled yours from your own lips with open-ended questions an insatiable need to know everything you possibly had to share with him. You’d never grown tired of it. Not like now.

It had to be the move. It had to be the full and total immersion in a new country and the demands of your new job.

When you arrived at the hotel you keyed a quick text to the manager in charge of on-location staff assignments and you were instructed on your reporting location to begin your preparations for the fan meeting. There were scripts to go over for final approval, teams of staff members who approached you for small tasks and larger tasks, and all at once you were back into it. There was a rush. This felt hectic just like it had felt with EXO in Europe last year and you felt at times that a single translator on staff might not be enough for all of the work. If only you could split your body into two and handle two of the tasks at once then perhaps you could sign off on these interview questions while simultaneously monitoring the group chats of which you had multiple notifications flashing; all of them needed your attention.

Time was moving too fast and you limped along trying to catch up with the rush of work your late arrival had piled upon you. You’d had to pee for the better part of an hour and you couldn't even think about sitting down to eat something. There was simply so much work and not enough time. There was equipment to wear; an earpiece and mic that would feed your voice into the ears of select staff and group members for you to provide real-time translations as the show progressed.

The hosts spoke and you spoke, usually reading along from the already pre-approved script of questions and commentary, but careful to pay close attention for ad-libs and changes and when it came time for you to translate for the members as they addressed the audience, the sensation of hearing your own voice echoing throughout the entire arena to raucous applause and screams was about as surreal as it could get.  

Your performance was far from perfect. You stumbled on a few words and especially upon hearing the sound of your own voice over that crowd, you could feel the pressure mounting inside of your chest. Your mind blanked on a few words and you had to scramble while still trying to sound as professional as possible to find another way to say things. The whole experience left you feeling hot in the face and flustered as hell and you have never been so happy to witness the final reluctant goodbyes at the end of an event in your whole life.

The members waved their hands and blew their kisses and the fans in the crowd screamed and cried and you felt like you might just collapse from the genuine relief that it was actually finally over.

You had done it. It was done. Bumbles and mistakes had been made. There was nothing you could do about that now. It was over. You pulled the wiring from around your neck, removing the earpiece carefully as you unplugged yourself and handed off the equipment to the member of staff who was collecting mics to carefully catalog and place into rightful locations and you honestly could feel a cold sweat all over your skin. Your hands were shaking and you felt just a little nauseated. You needed some downtime. You still had to pee but also you needed to sit in complete silence in a bathroom stall and not have to say another word to another human being for at least a few minutes. An hour was out of the question; your phone was already vibrating with message notifications.  

You left your phone inside your back pocket and made your way toward the bathrooms. It could wait. Whatever it was could wait for five minutes.

You found the bathrooms and your bladder was screaming as you pushed through the stall door, quickly pulled down your jeans and heard the sound before you felt the rectangle piece of technology that you had very thoughtlessly left in your back pocket vanish with a clunk and splash combination.

Shit.

Fuck.

Shit and Fuck!

You stood in a flash and turned to look inside the toilet bowl; every single wasted wish and hope you had used up from the falling stars and blown out birthday candles mocking you as you spun to look. Please, please, please no, not your phone. Not in the toilet, not the 3-year-old treasure you held closest to your heart that was so full of your entire life you never even considered going through the trouble of replacing it. It was an older model. Definitely not waterproof and there it sat at the bottom of the toilet bowl. Tiny bubbles were rising from the corner and you leaped into action.

Fuck hygiene, this was an emergency. You reached into the water and pulled it out and it dripped and dripped as the water drained from the inside pouring back into the toilet bowl. You scrambled for some paper. For anything to dry it, anything to save this and it was so blank and so black and so dead looking and it was still dripping.  

You pressed the buttons on the side. You pressed the home button, you held buttons down, you shook out the rest of the water from somewhere inside the bottom speaker and the toilet paper stuck to your fingers when you tried to blot and dry as much as possible.

Your messages. Your photos. Your whole life.

The phone had soaked up that water like a sponge and you could feel the stress from the day mounting over your head because you still had to pee, goddammit!

You stared down at the phone, sitting motionless on a pile of wet paper and even the relief of emptying your bladder could not have any sort of significant impact on you now.

You had the pictures with him in there.

There was an entire folder dedicated to him. Dated pictures that documented every single visit, every single dish you both made together, every single gift exchanged. Super secret folders with passwords to protect them with pictures you both took together. A kiss on the cheek, a sweet smile on his face. A giggle when his eyes disappeared completely. The video you snuck while he slept one night and you were elated to capture the sound of your name mumbled in his sleep.

All gone.

You sat on the toilet in silence. This wasn’t the kind of silence you craved a few minutes ago. And yet you were bathed in it now. With filthy feeling hands and a useless and broken phone and a useless and broken heart inside your chest and your emotions mounting the longer you sat here remembering everything that had been on that phone.

It was gone and he was gone too.

The burning began in your eyes and it only lasted a second before you felt the tears cresting and spilling down your cheeks. Your nose stuffed up almost instantly and you felt consumed by loss.

At least you were alone. Your lungs trembled and stuttered and you breathed through your mouth as the tears fell endlessly down your face and you cried. You cried for the memories, you cried for the love and for the disappointment of it all. You cried for yourself and you cried for Kyungsoo and you cried and you cried alone in this bathroom in an event venue in Osaka, Japan when you really should have been finding some sort of solution to this.

Maybe you could save it. Maybe you could open it up and dry it with a hotel blow dryer, or maybe you could find a kitchen and find some rice to soak it in overnight, you had heard once that that was the way to fix wet phones.

You couldn't just cry about this. You had to get up and out of here and do something to fix this. Weren’t there people who could fix these things? Cell phone repair shops who dealt with water damage and data recovery who would go into your phone and find your super secret photos of your super celebrity idol boyfriend and you locked in a fucking selfie kiss and possibly take that photo and spread it all over the internet and cause a career-ending scandal?

Fuck.

Still, you were up and out of the stall. Still, you were washing your hands and shaking every last drop of water from out of your phone as you attempted to somehow cleanse the outside of it with paper towels because of disgusting toilet water and all the potential bio-contaminants that involved.

You were thinking of e-coli and botulism and Ebola and any number of other things that could possibly attach to your face if ever you held this thing up to your ear once more.

You wrapped it in the paper towels and held it just a little more carefully away from you as you moved and a quick glance in the mirror told you that while it did look like you had been crying, your makeup had been waterproof and your face had an after-crying glow that honestly didn’t look too bad. At worst you looked a bit drunk maybe.

You vacated the bathroom in search of some solution.

What you found was a dressing room with the letters EXO on them and you knew you would encounter plenty of staff members inside to at least help you brainstorm your next move. Perhaps they had a stash of staff phones they could let you use for the rest of this assignment so you could log in to the messenger program and continue your work duties.

On the other side of the door was a flurry of movement and activity. Staff worked to de-wardrobe, label, and organize items and bodies were moving in all directions as people did their jobs quickly so they could be done with it and finally get to close out this day’s schedule properly.

A pair of eyes caught your own and having finished changing his clothes he looked up from his seated position on a sofa in the center of the room with a genuine double take at your state.

Had you really looked that upset? You were probably a damn mess. You could feel the remnants of your emotions sitting at the back of your throat and Sehun stood up and took strides in your direction with a question on his eyebrows.

“Hey...you okay?” his head dropped close to your level and you shook your head back and forth as you held your hands out to show him your dead phone carefully wrapped in several brown paper towels from the bathroom.

It hadn’t occurred to you that he wouldn't know what you were showing him. Something hidden inside paper towels. He reached forward, ready to receive your terrible offering and you pulled it back quickly, not wanting him to catch a public toilet disease by touching this thing with his bare hands.

“I dropped my phone in the toilet.” You spoke through gritted teeth but you could hear the whining complaint on your own voice.

Saying it though, out loud, with your own mouth was so much worse than the incredulous repetition you had been replaying in disbelief inside your head.

Sehun snorted instantly and his hand flew up to cover his mouth and he didn't try that hard to hide the laughter that was very obviously shaking his shoulders.

“Oh...my god,” he whispered with a dramatic pause between the words for emphasis and you groaned and stomped your foot that he would dare laugh at you in your time of complete and utter disaster.

“Sehun,” you whispered harshly but it was no use reprimanding him because he had already covered his face with his open palms and he openly laughed so much harder when you scolded him.

“I’m sorry,” he said between big gasps for air, “It’s just...the way you’re holding it seemed like you found a dead bird or something.”

“Oh shit, are you really crying?” His laughter quieted down when your lips frowned down into the saddest pout at your terrible, terrible luck and you were about to leave this useless man in search of someone else — anyone else who could actually help you when a second face appeared beside the, now concerned, Oh Sehun.  

His face was equally concerned to see you sniffling and wiping stray tears from below your eyes and you were trying your best to control this. The more attention your quiet sniffles garnered, the more you wanted to turn and run out of the room.

The wide eyes of the man standing beside Sehun turned on him and you flinched when a hand reached up and roughly smacked the taller man on the shoulder.

“What the hell did you do?” Junmyeon, the leader of the group was hissing angrily at Sehun and you lifted your phone up quickly to protest. But more faces were appearing beside Sehun and Junmyeon now and there was a bit of a circle gathering. Oh god, you were a spectacle.

“I’m sorry for whatever happened, but sometimes our Sehun, he seems very mad or angry but really,” Junmyeon addressed you with a nervous smile on his lips and reached his own hand up to wave over the length of his own face, “he has a sleepy bitch face. That is just his face.”

Sehun’s expression had shifted at being blamed for this and he lifted his head to toss it back in annoyance. A loud sigh vacated his lungs and he rolled his eyes hard.

“Resting, Junmyeon. It’s a resting bitch face. God, how many times...”

“Sehun didn’t do anything. I’ve...dropped—” you lifted the phone toward the center of the circle of faces that had gathered. The commotion was already set into motion and Minseok had joined in the investigation of what exactly Sehun had or hadn’t done to make you cry.

Only Minseok had noticed that you held something in your hands and your words were out of your lips just after he had grabbed the brown paper towel wrapped phone from your hands.

“—my phone in the toilet.” The paper towels had fallen open enough for Minseok’s hand to grip around your phone briefly and it took him a good three seconds to register what you had actually said. The motion must have shaken some more drops of water from the inside.

“Oh my god, it’s wet. Why is this wet? Why is my hand wet right now?” His voice had risen by octaves and he quickly opened his hand to send the phone falling back down where it missed your hands holding the paper towels and clattered down onto the floor between everyone’s legs.

Heads looked down.

“I dropped it in the toilet,” you whispered with your voice thick with shame and your face felt like you’d been lounging in the fire pits of hell.

Minseok was green. He was waving his hands up and down rapidly and making gagging sounds and you frowned down at the now cracked phone screen of your dead phone.

“Why is Minseok freaking out?” Jongdae had arrived at the circle and stood beside Manager Lee and Manager Park who both looked down at the device with matching disinterested expressions on their faces.

“Put it in some rice,” Jongin chimed in from the sofa he seemed to be glued to, “I’ve dropped lots of phones in water. You put them in rice and they wake back up.”

“Where is she going to get rice right now?” Sehun asked Jongin who rolled his eyes as he looked up from his phone screen for a moment.

“Uhh...this is Japan, Sehun. She can just, like, go outside and get some rice on the street,” and as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, he held his hands out like a game show hostess showing off the fancy prizes up for grabs. “We are in Japan.”

“Did you pee on it?” Chanyeol’s baritone chimed in and you shook your head vehemently with your eyes as wide as could be. He gasped softly and he leaned in closer to you. “Was it the other one?” Chanyeol held up his fingers in a V shape, quietly asking about the other bodily function that might have happened with the phone inside the toilet and you wanted to just die.

You wished for a hole to climb into. Everyone was talking at once. This was a terrible situation that was becoming worse with each new witness who arrived to gawk.

“Toilet water on his hands,” Junmyeon responded to Jongdae’s question and the later wrinkled his nose in disgust, “She dropped her phone in the toilet and Minseok picked it up...got it on his hands. He’s going to be washing for hours tonight.”

Jongdae clicked his tongue and shook his head back and forth.

You crouched down on your ankles to grasp the phone within the paper towels again and cradled it between your parted knees with great care; as if all of the damage that could come to the device hadn’t already occurred.

“It looks kinda old, maybe it was time to replace it.” Sehun offered as he joined you down on the floor where you sunk down to sulk.

“It had everything on it, Sehun. My whole life. Pictures, videos...work. I have so much work I still need to do and I need my phone to do it. How will I get through the fanmeeting tomorrow without a phone? Do you know how much work gets done while I’m on the move?”

“Maybe you can use a replacement for now and we can take that one to get fixed when we get back to Seoul...Hmm?” Junmyeon was speaking down to you like you were an upset child he tried to pacify. He bent in half at the waist to join the pow-wow on the floor and you looked around to see that most of the half-interested parties to witness the spectacle had lost interest by now and wandered away. Minseok had disappeared quickly and you were certain that the running water you could hear coming from the dressing room bathroom was him scrubbing his hands.  

“Does anyone have a spare phone on them? Baekhyun you have two phones right?” Junmyeon was asking the room and several faces looked away as soon as the question was raised.

Baekhyun, who had been sitting on a nearby sofa with his head tossed back in half nap, half exhausted coma lifted his head for a moment.

“Why is this an our problem and not a her problem?” Junmyeon stood and leaned in Baekhyun’s direction with his jaw clenched and his face pink.

“Because she’s the one that Sehun li— knows. Sehun knows, h-his friend. She is his friend so she’s our friend. Why are you like this?”

“I need my phones,” Baekhyun said dismissively, closing his eyes up tight as his head fell back into place to rest against the back of the sofa.

A hand appeared. A hand holding a phone, and you stared down at that hand that held the phone out for you to take. The owner of the hand spoke and you jumped at the low voice that coated your eardrums and your heart and your entire existence in warmth.

“Here,” he said and the phone in his hand illuminated with the movement.

“I have two. Use this one for now.” Kyungsoo spoke beside you and you looked at the phone he presented you with. The phone he offered was the kind of familiar that singed your skin and prickled your memory and you could feel the protest on your tongue long before you followed his arm up to his shoulder to look into that calculated and blank look on his face that he kept controlled as he interacted with you in front of the others.

“Oh good. This will work for now. So you can get your work done, right?” Junmyeon was smiling wide at the obvious display of teamwork before him — a valuable member of the group taking care of another member so they could get their job done, for the good of everybody involved, for the good of EXO (We Are One)  — you could see the relief and pride written all over Junmyeon’s face as he looked at Kyungsoo.

“K-Kyungsoo, I don’t think—”

“It already has the apps we use. You can just log in and see all of your messages and emails and everything. You won’t be able to get a replacement phone by tonight and tomorrow will be too busy. Just use it.”

He was waiting for you to take it.

Sehun, Junmyeon, Jongdae, Chanyeol, and Jongin all waited for you to take it. Even Baekhyun from the sofa peeled an eyelid open to watch you take it.

Manager Lee clapped his hands once and the members' heads turned to listen as he announced 15 minutes before the vans left for the hotel and people were on the move again rushing to pack up belongings and finish last minute activities and you reluctantly reached for the phone that Kyungsoo still held in his hands.

He watched your face carefully as you gripped it and there was a slow motion blink of his eyes that made a wave of heat travel through your chest.

He stood on his legs and reached down to grab your hand and pull you into a standing position and then he leaned close to whisper into your ear, careful to drop your hand from his as soon as you were in an upright position.

“Password’s your birthday.”

He pivoted on his feet, leaving you here in the center of the dressing room with his own personal phone, the one he’d used to call you with late at night when you dated him. The one he’d texted you with and video called you with and the one who’s screen he’d kissed many times when he couldn’t kiss you in person because of the distance.

The one he’d used to break up with you.

“Kyungsoo,” you called toward his retreating back and he spun to look at you with raised eyebrows behind his round glasses. “I’ll give it back as soon as we get to Seoul.”

He shrugged his shoulders, “Keep it as long as you need it,” he said with a concealed smile inside his eyes.

“I won’t look at anything in it either,” you said much quieter this time and with just a bit of sarcastic notes in your voice.

“You can look at all of it,” he said and the smile in his eyes was gone, “You already have the password for everything.”

Your looming work deadlines overshadowed your sense of danger. It didn’t mean you couldn’t feel it, but you honestly didn’t have much of a choice. Kyungsoo was the only person in the entire room to offer you a solution that wasn’t soak the phone in rice and pray and he had already left for whatever task he had been in the middle of when you had barged your crisis-having, weeping self into his dressing room.

So you turned to the phone — Kyungsoo’s phone — tried your best not to be too annoyed by the all of the unread messages and waiting texts and missed call notifications you saw all over the damn thing (what was wrong with him?) and you logged him out to log yourself in where you needed to be.

The messages had piled up. Had you really been offline for a whole hour directly after a high profile event in your target language where you were required to vet a huge amount of official statements and articles that represented the company, the group, and the brand of EXO? You were glued to the phone for the entire ride back to the hotel and paused only for a moment to search for your room key so you could get to your laptop and finally close out the last of your tasks from today’s fan meeting. You had planned on showering and having a quick in-room dinner before final script approvals for tomorrow’s event.

Your self-control was impressive if you didn’t say so yourself. Although being so busy that you didn’t even have time to go to the bathroom without taking your laptop with you probably helped fuel the self-control.

Kyungsoo’s phone — it had its own tempting little voice that called to you from the coffee table — had been left completely and surprisingly unexplored by the time you signed off on the final script translations and you’d watched it sitting there out of the corner of your eye as you grabbed the remote control and flipped on the tv. The phone lit up a few times as non-urgent group chat messages arrived for you and then a longer buzz sounded out. And it didn’t quit.

Oh shit, it was ringing. Kyungsoo’s phone was ringing. You looked at the screen and read the word Mom on the illuminated screen and that single word sent a wave of tension through your body that started at your head and landed somewhere deep inside your belly.

You shouldn’t answer it, right? Your hands were on the phone and your grip was faltering on the second ring.

What would you even say to her?

You did suppose that you could simply explain how you, a vetted S.M. employee, had his phone for the time being and her son was unavailable but you’d be sure to let him know she called.

That was the professional thing to do. It was the kind thing to do also. It was your fault that he didn’t get to speak with his mother right now after the schedule had been completed for the night and he would have had enough time for a talk with his mom. You knew how busy he was and how rarely he got to actually connect with her. Your guilt multiplied the longer the phone rang.

The call had rung it’s third and fourth ring and you watched as the phone went silent in your hands. The screen went black and after a few seconds of staring at the blackness, the phone buzzed again briefly indicating that she had left a voicemail.

What if it was something important?

What if something was wrong?

You no longer hesitated. A trek through his contacts brought up a sparse list. Mom, Dad, a couple of managers and some of his actor friends. Slithering by down the list was his dog sitter Sunny— as pretty a thing as she was annoying (ugh), and your frustrations magnified upon the realization that he did not have his work phone number saved in this phone. But then again, why would he? What reason in the world would he have to call himself?

What he did have saved was your name with a little red emoji heart trailing behind it.

You glared at the heart and the heart glared back at you.

And then your fingers were moving.

It was that damn heart. How could he still have that damn heart?

You jumped to his text messages and scrolled through the chains searching for the color red. It was far down on the list but it was there. The final messages exchanged with each other weren’t angry. They weren’t bitter or harsh. You scrolled and you scrolled and you saw kindness. You saw sweetness and splashes of love. Like a relic frozen in time — the unearthed bones of a pair of lovers — buried alive and in their final moment, their last breath was a kiss.

You hadn’t been able to delete them either.

You closed out of the text messages. You were already in this deep. Hadn’t he given you permission to look anyway? There wasn’t even a ceremonial pause in your movements where you second guessed yourself. How far had you fallen now?

His photo gallery was organized in folders and honestly, it was mostly pictures of food. Very few personal pictures despite the careful labeling system he used for his photos. You honestly felt disappointed. Your gallery had been full of pictures. Personal pictures and pictures of places you’d traveled for work. The really personal ones though...the pictures that stabbed and burned when you looked with your weakest moments to blame; those were in hidden folders with passwords for extra security.

He…would not have done the same, would he? His phone was a bit different than yours, but your snooping had unearthed what you were certain was a hidden folder within his photo gallery. A little trip through the phone settings and you were prompted for a passcode. It was four digits this time; different than the six-digit passcode to unlock the phone and you typed in the month and date of your birthday.

It did not work.

You tried once more with the same numbers; perhaps you had entered it wrong.

It still would not open and you sighed out in frustration that he would trick you like this. He said you had his permission to look and he said you had all of the passwords to get in, and yet you sat here now, trying every single four-digit number combination that you could think of feeling like a damn fool and a little bit like a bumbling novice phone hacker without a single bit of savvy to get the hacking job done.

Your frustrations mounted when the phone alerted you that after whatever number of failed log-in attempts you would now be required to wait 30 seconds before trying again and you tossed it angrily down on the table in front of you.

You had tried your birthday, his birthday, your birth year, his birth year, some bastardization of both of your birthdays combined, the last four digits of your phone number, even the last four digits of your passport number, which he had absolutely no way of knowing in the first place; you still tried it and came up completely empty as you stared at the stupid numbers on that phone counting down for your chance to stoop to even lower levels than you had already stooped.

This number couldn’t have to do with you. There was no way you were meant to view the pictures in this secret photo album of his. You really should just give up. What if there wasn’t even anything inside the folder? What if this was some elaborate Kyungsoo-esque prank designed to tempt and then torment you when you couldn't crack it?

You regretted taking the stupid phone from him in the first place.

Your timer was done and you felt like a trapped animal, unable to free yourself from the snare you were caught in simply because you were unwilling to let go of the tasty treat you held on to. If only you put it down, you would be able to remove your hand from the trap and get up and just walk away.

Now you were convinced that the passcode had nothing to do with you, you still aimlessly cycled through dates you remembered. Landing somewhere around the date the European tour began last year, the first time you saw him in person, the day you were running late to the introductory meeting and he claimed you as his own personal translator, refusing to allow you to leave with any member of EXO unless it was him, that date...the day you first sat down to eat with him in Paris.

Paris was first. Paris was the start; the romantic city you both explored together before even having shared a first kiss. The date of the start of the tour did not work to unlock the folder but your heart seemed to tingle as you sat up straighter and thought to try something new. What if it wasn’t a date?

It was a long shot; 7274 using the numbers on a telephone keypad would spell out the word for Paris in Korean. Pari when romanized.

You tried it and jumped to attention when the password was correct. 7274...Paris. His secret password was Paris.

The message on the phone informed you that all hidden folders would now be unlocked and viewable and your hands were trembling as you returned to the spot you had been so disappointed to find filled with only pictures of food before.

And...oh.

Oh — Do Kyungsoo, you frustrating, beautiful, stubborn man.

The change in content was staggering. You could hardly move your hands to scroll with how they trembled and shook from what you saw in the thumbnails.

He had plenty to hide. He had more than you had in your phone. It was like a shrine.

Pictures of you; your own smiling face, your silly faces, your sleepy eyes, your pouted and puckered lips, images captured in person, images saved from your facebook, screenshots from your Instagram (which you did not even realize he followed), pictures of you alone, pictures of you with your friends, pictures of you with his dogs during your visits. Pictures you hadn’t realized he was taking, but he must have taken them because there you were, asleep on his couch with a furry black poodle curled up high around your neck and a second grey poodle curled behind your knees. It was all here. He hadn’t deleted a single thing since meeting you and he seemed to compulsively save them just as you did.

More shocking than the old pictures were the newer ones. The picture of you with a forced smile as you posed with friends a week before moving to Korea. It was here too.

Apparently, you weren’t the only one who kept up to date even after the break-up. You weren’t the only one who did not understand the meaning of letting go.

Do Kyungsoo was in love with you. You knew this already, but the evidence of his feelings was so obvious — it was obscene.

If he was going to be this way; if he was going to refuse to let you go, then why had he done that? Why had he done this to the both of you if he was just going to have his stupid heart broken like this?

You had to close it down when you got to the screenshots he had saved from your chats. He had circled things you said, put in little finger drawn hearts around the words, or hand-drawn short commentary like so cute or pretty and saved them that way. Why?

Why.

Damn it.

Your heart was beating too hard. You stared ahead at the tv playing in your room, completely unaware of what kind of program might be playing. You were technically looking at it, but nothing registered.

It came back to you like a flood; the reason why you had ventured into his phone to begin with.

Why you hadn’t just gone to the messaging app to begin with instead of searching through his contacts was glaring evidence of your idiocy.

You found his name from the EXO members & staff group chat and opened the direct message chat window beside his name.

‘Your mom called.’

A minute passed before you saw the number beside the message change and you knew he’d read it.

Another minute passed before you saw the three dots appear beside his name that told you he was responding and your heart was in your throat by the time his one-word answer arrived for you.

‘Oh?’

… Really, Do Kyungsoo? It definitely had not lived up to the anticipation. You wanted to scream and flail about the familiarity of this feeling.

‘I didn’t answer but she left you a message. I did not listen to it.’

You could feel your own awkwardness as you offered up too much information when he hadn’t even asked for any of this. Yet his frustratingly short reply grated on you and you wondered how he ever got to any of his schedules on time or at all if this was how he communicated with people.

‘You didn’t answer?? :/ What am I even paying you for?’

He was joking. You were burning alive and he was playing with the flames.

You did not respond. You couldn’t open up that type of communication with him. Playing and joking with each other was definitely in the Don’t column of your Do and Don’ts of Do Kyungsoo.

Your adherence so far had been spectacularly bad; what with the sleeping with him last night and snooping through his private picture gallery that had felt like reading a diary. You didn’t need to add the fuzzy feelings that inflated your chest with warm air when he said something that made you laugh.

‘You can listen yourself. Room 228’

You’d expected him to knock on your hotel door after a few minutes of travel time. What you did not expect was an emoji response [o.O!] and literally seconds later the sound of a knock coming from somewhere else within your room; from a direction opposite of the door of your hotel room.

You’d never had reason to, or paid much attention to the inner door of your hotel suite. It was the kind of door that had double doors, with locks on both sides that you knew could be used to access an adjoining hotel room.

You stood up from your sofa and the disbelief had reached new levels because, literally, what the fuck.

‘That better not be you.’

‘!!!,’ Was all he said in response and he knocked again; three quick knocks to mirror the three exclamation points he sent you.

You unlocked the door and pulled it open slowly and Kyungsoo stood on the other side wearing his usual black on black on black with sock-covered feet and his black hair laid flat over his forehead and black round rimmed glasses on his face.

His expression was one of genuine surprise and the combination of his wide eyes and parted lips behind those glasses was almost enough to make you close the door just as soon as you had opened it up.

You pushed it a bit, in fact, and you felt the tiniest bit of resistance on the other side. He had already moved into the gap and you must be squishing him.

“Wait, why are you closing it?” He complained from the other side but there was a bit of brevity on his voice as he did it.

“I changed my mind,” you said, “you can’t come in with those glasses on.”

“Ahh...this again,” he murmured and you pulled the door open to peek around the edge.

“You’re wearing them to disarm me.” You were pouting. You were being irrational. You were very, very tired from the very long day and he was watching you with his big round eyes and with that adorable expression on his face and you would rather slam this door shut with every ounce of strength in your body than let him inside here with those glasses on his face. Were they new? God, they were nice.

“I’m wearing them to see you,” he countered and you scoffed, knowing better.

“I just want to call my mom.” His tone drifted into lower, more sincere waters. “She’s been sick lately and...and she stayed up late to call me tonight after the schedule. She’ll be worried.”

You gave up instantly; dropped your hands from the door and letting it swing open wide with a step back. You were being unfair to him and to his mom and he had done you a huge favor after all. He’d saved your ass really, the amount of work you were able to get done tonight because of his help would make tomorrow downright bearable.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m just...really tired,” you were retreating back into your room, toward the sofa where you had left his phone and he followed quietly behind, reaching down for the familiar, now shared device. “I hope nothing bad happened,” you whispered as he held the phone up to his ear to listen to her message.

His face was blank as he did it and he focused ahead on the opposite wall where the clock told him it was well after one in the morning and everybody in this room probably should be asleep instead of doing whatever it was they were doing right now.

He was moving; swiping on the screen and holding the phone up to his ear and you heard the voice on the other end of the phone answer before he began speaking to his mom.

You did not want to pry. You did not think you had the right to, but he was sitting here in your hotel room talking to his mom about something that was going on with one of the dogs. You heard the word for veterinarian and a dreadful feeling was growing in your belly. Was one of the babies sick? Had the youthfully beautiful Sunny finally neglected them to the point of illness and would soon be replaced with some sweet but friendly old man who was passionate about poodles and did not use every opportunity to touch the poodle’s owner liberally and flirtatiously to a soundtrack of forced laughter as over-the-top as a faked orgasm? [You hated her laugh about as much as you hated her face.]

You had been lost in your own thoughts by the time you came-to and realized that Kyungsoo had already disconnected the call and was just watching you standing here with your arms tightly crossed over your chest and your jaw clenched down so hard it ached around your earlobes.

“You okay?” He said once your realization shifted to him and away from the darkness of your own thoughts.

Okay? You hardly knew the meaning of the word anymore.

“Are the puppies okay?”

He was looking down at his phone as if something caught his attention on it, but he glanced up once at your question.

“Yeah, they’re just getting shots tomorrow. I said that on the phone. Your Korean’s getting rusty, baby. Should we work on it?”

Baby? How dare he. He had a look on his face. There was almost a fiery glare in the depths of his eyes and it was very late. You were very tired. He was very tiring. You should not have let him in wearing those glasses.

“I was trying not to listen.”  

“You can listen,” he said before holding up the phone in his hand which was open to the unlocked gallery of images which had once been so shocking to discover and already looked so damn familiar to see in his hands. “You can know it all,” he added quietly with his eyes back down on the phone again and his ears bright pink with the truth on the table for everyone to see.

“Kyungsoo,” you began. You felt worn down. He should sleep and so should you. In your respective hotel rooms of course.

“Why did you cry? What did you lose on your phone that made you cry so hard?”

You did not continue with where you were headed; to tell him it was time to sleep and so you could both rest enough for tomorrow's work. Instead, you found your words lost somewhere along the pathway to your lips.

“You can talk to me, you know. I’m still Kyungsoo. I’m still the same person.”

You bit down hard on your lip. It was a dangerous topic to approach this late at night. Especially with this person.

“Was it us? Was it our pictures that you lost? You didn’t save them anywhere at all? Was that why you cried?”

His prodding was soft and gentle, begging you to unfold and show what you hid inside of yourself. You had to look away from the softness you saw in his eyes and the urge to answer the many questions he had asked you burned in the back of your throat.

You had to speak. You needed it said like you needed oxygen.

“It’s like...like it never even happened now. At least before, I had something concrete that I could go back and see with my own two eyes. At least with that, it seemed like maybe it was real. We were really happy once.”

With each new word you spoke the room grew darker and colder and the thickness in your throat was coating your vocal cords. You spoke through it, but it was evident and obvious. You weren’t looking at him. You could not. You felt the burning return to your closed eyes and wetness built up and threatened the riverbanks and the well-being of the towns folks nearby.

And where it grew cold and where it grew dark came a warmth that encased around your bones.

You could smell him before you could feel him; strong and enveloping you entirely within his arms.

Kyungsoo had stood, closed the distance between your bodies and he was hugging you. His arms wrapped completely; his hands flat against your back did not rub in comforting circles, he was still and he was strong and he held on firmly and when you pulled much needed oxygen into your lungs you smelled the fragrance of the skin on his neck where your head had naturally tucked in. It felt like a dream.

His voice, this make-believe voice that narrated into your ear; using the voice of the man you loved.

“We can take more pictures. We can start again. Please, don't cry. We’ll make more memories together. We can do it again...right this time. I really loved you and you really loved me — that was real.”

He spoke with so much conviction, you longed to believe the fairy tales he told — all sorts of stories and your heart begged for you to believe them all. “It was real then and it will be real again. I promise you...I promise.”