Part 28 ⧫ Fearless

fear·less

/ˈfirləs/

adjective

“I think that being fearless has nothing to do with not being scared of anything. Fearless isn’t walking into the unknown and not being scared and being proud of that -- it’s having the courage to walk into the unknown, the courage to continue walking and conquer that fear. Fearless is having the ability to see when it’s right to let fear guide you, because sometimes fear is that instinct to keep us alive. It’s knowing when or when not to walk into the unknown. Being fearless is controlling your fears and not letting them control you-- that’s fearless.”

_______

The moment I heard Baekhyun screaming, I jerked awake.

I was a heavy sleeper -- it took a long time for my alarm to wake me up -- however, someone screaming was a completely different matter -- especially when it sounded like they were dying. And that person happened to be my not-really boyfriend. So in an instance, I was wide awake, every bit of sleepiness completely gone.

I kicked off my blankets, wondering if something happened -- like someone had broken in or something -- stumbling in the dark (hitting my head at least once on something hard), before I finally flicked on the light successfully -- then tripped blindly into the hallway towards the general direction of where the screaming was coming from. By the time I had reached Baekhyun’s room door and grabbed the doorknob, I too was on the verge of screaming too, though from pain. I couldn’t even count how many times I’d stubbed my toe in the past ten seconds.

I shoved open the door of his room, almost flinching at the sheer volume of Baekhyun’s yelling.

There was no intruder in the room, nor was there anything bad happening. Except the fact that Baekhyun’s was tossing and turning (tossing and turning seemed to be an understatement -- more like thrashing) -- or as much as I could make out in the dark, anyways -- on the bed, screaming.

The noise felt painful and harsh on my ears, but then the thought occurred to me that Baekhyun wasn’t even awake. In fact, it was most likely a night terror, things I used to have when I was a child. I stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do or say, or if I should even be here and should just return to my room now that nothing was wrong.

“Baekhyun,” I said instead, in a small voice.

“Hyung!” His voice was hoarse, rough, and it sounded, if it were possible, that something inside him was breaking. “Hyung, I’m sorry. I really am! Hyung, just wake up. Please. I’ll do anything! Hyung, please!” The last word wasn’t so much a request as it was a plea, and also when I realized he wasn’t just yelling -- he was crying. The tremble in his words, the way some sentences caught in his throat -- he might’ve been asleep still, but he was crying.

Not quite sure of what I was doing, I made my way across the room tentatively, unsure of what to do or say. He was asleep, it seemed -- Baekhyun wasn’t one to shout like this if he had control over it -- and night terrors weren’t something you could really wake someone up from by shaking them or shoving them off couches. In fact, they only wore off by themselves, and the best thing for them was to sooth the one having them, instead of trying to stop them from struggling. Night terrors also often occurred to people with stress and sleep deprivation, and Baekhyun was going through both. It wasn’t exactly too surprising that he was experiencing one when he finally decided to sleep,  but it still felt like a blow to see him like this, screaming and crying -- even if he had no idea what he was doing.

“Baekbeom, please. Wake up, dammit. Please!” His voice rose louder at each word.

I neared the bed, but didn’t dare sit on it -- he was moving around so much that I was pretty sure that I would get hit if I sat too close. “Baekhyun?” I asked again, this time louder, though he still had no acknowledgement to my presence, or the fact that he was screaming in general. His eyes were squeezed shut. “Baekhyun, wake up. It’s a nightmare. A night terror. So wake up.”

He gave a shout, but it was cracked and not as loud as it had been before, with not as much strength, like he was too tired to even shout anymore. I sat down on the side of the bed, trying to avoid being slapped unintentionally in the face. The only light was the faint moonlight streaming through the cracks of the curtains, and for a moment, they illuminated Baekhyun’s face, and I saw the tears glistening on his cheeks.

Then he turned, and his face was covered by shadows again.

“Baekhyun,” I tried again, louder. “Baekhyun, wake up.”

There was no response from him, but his struggles were gradually dying down, like he was too tired for it, and the only noise in the room was the faint creaking of the bed, and Baekhyun’s loud, ragged breathing -- almost like desperate gasps for breath.

He still wasn’t awake, I thought, then shuffled a bit closer on the bed. The threat of getting whacked seemed to be gone. “It-it’s okay,” I heard myself saying, but my voice was trembling. What could I say, when it wasn’t okay? I understood? Not this. He wasn’t alone? In a sense, he truly was. “It will be. Baekbeom will wake up. Then everything will be alright. You just have to wait.”

He gave a faint gasp, almost one of confusion, and then opened his eyes and blinked.

Baekhyun looked utterly confused for the first couple seconds, and for a moment, he looked at me with unrecognition. Then, he blinked again, lifting his palms to his cheeks, which were still wet. "Water," was the first word he said, and his voice was barely a whisper, a faint croak that I barely heard. "There's water on the bedstand. Can you… can you pass me the water and turn on the light?"

I squinted in the darkness, trying to locate his lamp first. In the end, after knocking a couple of books onto the ground, I managed to flick on the lamp. The sudden brightness made me squint, before remembering the water. I handed the cup to Baekhyun, and wordlessly, he took it, before chugging all of it down, all the while blinking furiously.

"You okay?" I managed after he passed the cup back, and sunk back into his blankets, head hitting the pillow with a soft thunk "I didn't mean to intrude, but you sounded like you were screaming for your life and it woke me up and I thought something was wrong. It was a night terror, anyways -- I had those when I was a kid…" I trailed off when I realized I was rambling again, and looked at him. "Are you okay?" I asked again.

He didn't say anything, but reached over and flicked off the lamp again. Darkness descended over the room, and Baekhyun's breathing and my heartbeat was the only thing I could hear. I was still sitting cross-legged on the bed --if he didn't answer, did that mean that I should go? Or was I supposed to stay? Would he be mad at me? Irritated? "I guess I'll go back," I began. “Well, night terrors mostly occur once per night, so you’re not going to get another one anyways, so… yeah, I’ll go and--”

"No," he said, so softly that I wondered if I had mistaken his words for a breath. "Please don't yet." His voice cracked. "It's too quiet."

"You okay?" I asked for the third time, wondering if he were purposely avoiding the question.

"No." There was a visible tremble in his words. "No. Truth is, I'm scared. Really, really,  really scared. And it feels stupid. And you know, I feel so useless. I mean, I had fun tonight with the movie at all, but when I’m lying alone in the bed, everything just catches up with me and it’s so hard pretending. I can’t escape reality whatever I do. And it’s unfair, really unfair. Why did it have to happen again? Was once not enough? How could some people live so happily, so contently with both parents and a brother while I have to lose both? What did I do wrong to… for this to happen?”

It felt odd being on the same bed as somebody -- especially a boy, and the fact that he was my half-not-really-boyfriend actually made it more awkward -- at night with the lights turned off, but this wasn’t exactly the time to think of it. I thought about Baekhyun’s question, and figured that I truly had no answer for it. Why was the world so unfair, that some people had everything yet some had none? So instead, I said, “Baekbeom’s not gone.”

“Is it my fault?” He asked instead, ignoring my comment, making me wonder if I said the wrong thing. “I tell myself it’s not, but the guilt is so heavy that it takes less strength to believe that it is my fault than to try to convince myself that it’s not. It takes less strength to sob into the pillow and scream than to force myself from crying. And it’s stupid, because thinking of it now, I don’t seem to have strength for anything anymore. I can’t even sleep properly, and I was already having problems with sleeping before… all of this happened. I don’t want to be scared, Iseul. I don’t want to worry all day whether or not hyung will wake up or not, but that’s what I spend all day doing. I can’t even escape it when I’m asleep anymore. It’s just going to be nightmares. I’m so scared that every phone call will be from the hospital, telling me… telling me…” his voice broke there. “And I think of everything I never got to say to him. Now that it’s too late, I think I finally… found the courage to say it. But it’s useless, and the regret -- I used to think that I didn’t need to live with regrets if I didn’t care -- but I do care, I care so much -- the regret, it’s killing me inside. I’m just… so, so scared, and I can’t do anything to not feel that way.”

There was dead silence, and I was at a complete loss for words. Because truthfully, I had no idea what to say to him that would comfort him, like all those times before. “It’s not your fault. You don’t have to convince yourself, because it’s not. Baekbeom would have said the same thing if he were here, because it’s not your fault.”