The tap water ran through the crevices of his fingers like spider webs, tingling and stifling at the same time. He’d lost count of the time he spent washing his hands at the sink in the kitchen. How many minutes had passed by? Was it even minutes? Maybe hours, maybe days? He didn’t even care anymore. The ingredients for dinner lay forgotten on the dining table, the knife he held earlier thrown across the room during the frantic moment.

He just wanted to be cleaned off the sin he’d committed last winter.

He refused to let the memories crawl back to him.

“Himchan.”

The voice of his loved one called out in a soft murmur but he blocked himself from his surroundings. He was detaching himself from the world, mind and body.  

He scrubbed at the palm of his left hand with a yellow sponge lying on the marble counter. The soap blended with the tap water and bubbles formed in seconds. His vision blurred slightly and his nose started hurting. He didn’t notice the beads of tears escaping his brown orbs. They landed silently on the metal surface of the sink and got washed away in a blink of an eye as the tap water led them into the sink hole.   

The memory was vivid.

He could see himself walking the same dimly lit hallway, footsteps restrained from being audible. The white door with chipped paint stood before him as if it had been waiting for his arrival for a long time. He felt like he was imagining the glint coming from the golden doorknob. Despite the wild beats coming from his heart, he approached the door and pushed it open after swiftly twisting the doorknob.

“Himchan.”

Both of the voices from the present and memory called out in a haunting whisper. It confused him. Himchan blinked. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to continue. His soul wandered between dream and reality but the force from the former was stronger.

The skin of his hands burned but he didn’t stop himself from scrubbing at his fingers, the gesture filled with rage and resentment. The knuckle of his middle finger bled when he gave it a particular hard scrub. With his teeth and jaw clenched, he repeated the same motion for another series of silence but it was interrupted when that same voice spoke his name.

“Himchan, please listen to me.”

He shut his eyes and he felt this foreign liquid running down his face. They were hot against his skin. He used his shoulder to wipe them off his face but they wouldn’t stop. They kept on streaming down from his eyes to his cheeks, and finally chin.

“Stop it.”

The voice rose to a warning tone. Himchan paid no attention. He was still swimming across the rift that would lead him back to reality.  

A hand touched his elbow and he inhaled sharply at the contact.

The memory flashed and there he was, standing in the middle of the room with his hands lifted before his face. He shivered at the cold breeze that managed to slip past the slightly opened window. When he lowered his gaze to the floor, he could make out a shadow lying by his feet. He thought it was his shadow but then it moved. It trembled. It groaned.

It wasn’t his shadow.

Someone was lying on the floor.

Himchan blinked his eyes open. He saw red when he looked at the hands he’d been washing for the past few minutes. A horrified sob escaped his chapped lips and he would’ve stumbled backwards if there hadn’t been a pair of sturdy arms holding him up.

“Himchan!”

That same voice breathed the fragments of reality into his soul and he was alive once again, back from the dead.

He rinsed off the soap from his hands even when the voice told him to stop.

His stubbornness provoked the voice and soon enough the arms holding onto his shoulders slid down to his waist and pulled him away from the sink. He thrashed about desperately, willing to wash off his sin with the tap water but the voice wouldn’t let him. Hysteric screams came out from him and he wondered whether the monster was still inside him.

“Enough.” He remembered that voice.

He stopped fighting when the arms encased him in a tight hug. His knees surrendered in defeat and he crashed to the floor along with the voice coming from behind him. He could feel a puff of breath hitting the back of his neck and then there was a pair of lips touching the back of his ear. Everything connected to each other and slowly, the voice formed into a person and he remembered who it was.

“Yongguk,” he whimpered, holding onto the hands around his waist.

“It’s alright,” Yongguk assured. He pressed a kiss on the damp cheek.

“I’m scared,” Himchan shut his eyes and shuddered when the monster inside him growled, mad that Yongguk had once again managed to keep it trapped away from reality.

“I’m here, I’m here for you,” Yongguk said as he rested his chin on Himchan’s shoulder and took both of his wrists in his hands, rocking their bodies back and forth carefully.

Himchan leaned back against the warm chest, eyelids getting heavier as time ticked by.

He concentrated on Yongguk’s soothing voice and that was all it took to lullaby the monster to sleep.