***NOTE: This one-shot is absolutely confusing but that was my intention. When I listened to the song/saw the lyrics, this was how my thoughts shot out at me. I'll post a second chapter kind of explaining the structure of the story in hopes that it makes it more understandable, although I think that once you get to the end, everything becomes quite clear. Please enjoy! (x

Hyukjae started at one.

Feeling his way along the walls through the darkened house, he traveled slowly through the hallways and into the living room. He counted the days it must have been by now but failed to come up with even a single digit, just knowing that it had already been too long.

His life had become a shame.

He felt his way to the single recliner that stood in the far corner of the large room. His stiff toes dug into the soft carpet and he had the feeling that he was sinking fast—his entire home suddenly a vengeful sea of quick sand. Though his instinct was to fight it, he accepted it. There was no point in hiding anymore.

If only. . .

His kneecaps simultaneously disjointed themselves and he crashed down into the carpet's ever welcoming embrace, his body coated with thousands of tiny arms stretching up at him. Teasing him.

He touched his left ear to the floor and listened to their whispered words. “There,” they seemed to say, “there is where you deserve to lie.” Though his mind so readily agreed, his instinct was to fight it and he shook his head, ignoring, or rather, not feeling the burn dealt to his sunken cheeks.

Only now did he realize exactly how numb he was. All emotions had seized to exist in him since a time ago he hadn't yet grasped. At first, he'd determined that they'd fled, said “Yippee!” and waltzed right out of him.

But he'd abandoned them, threw them out into the cold snow the morning he woke up colder than the snow itself, and walked on. It was him. Only him, void of all natural emotions.

All except the guilt that dug deep into his gut and made him wretch every night into an empty bucket at his bedside. Guilt was now his only companion. He wanted to fight it, so badly, but Guilt was stronger than anything he had ever felt before, and so he counted from the spot where he lay.

The carpet scratched at his skin, tormenting him now, as he ticked down the seconds that would mark the end of him. How long could he remain alone in this dark? “How long, Hyukjae? How long?” They asked and scratched again, laughing. They already knew.

Hyukjae started at one. . . and ended at three.

It was his voice that broke into the silence, a loud, painful scream beckoning the dark shadows of his solitary home. He thrashed this way and that and barely winced when his foot collided with the short leg of the end table beside him.

No physical pain could dull the guilt he felt inside, for Guilt wouldn't allow it—Hyukjae's heart was now Guilt's home.

What else would fit in a lost soul?

With hot tears flowing feverishly from his burning eyes, Hyukjae rose abruptly to a kneeling position and curled his skinny fingers around the underside of the glass end table and hoisted it upward as he stood. The small table spiraled once on its way to the fireplace on the opposite wall and shattered into large workable pieces, joining everything that had previously sat atop it on the carpeted floor.

He ground his teeth as pain left his mouth in one lung-cracking cry, his fingers finding their way through his unkempt hair and pulling, snatching, ripping.

Hate. An emotion he thought had too left him long ago came soaring back at him so fiercely it literally knocked him off balance. He stumbled into the big screen television at his right, causing it to crack horribly down the middle while it tipped over off the entertainment system.

Hyukjae watched it fall as he caught his balance on the large platform. He watched the crack crawl upwards in several directions like a sprawled spider web and felt his breath catch. Too familiar.

Hate.

Hyukjae wrenched his gut with yet another piercing cry and shoved the entertainment system's base backwards, the tall structure crashing into the wall and snapping in half with the force. Wasting no time, he found his way over to the fireplace with ease, his eyes having adjusted to he impeding blackness surrounding him. With a long swipe of his arm, Hyukjae swept off the candles, the decorations, the pictures . . . the pictures. Memories. He cried, and screamed in comprehending agony.

He hated himself.

Guilt spoke to him as his gaze wandered down to the last frame that had tumbled to the floor. A face he'd known nearly since birth smiled up at him through shattered glass and it made his knees go weak yet again and he buckled. Shards of glass sliced their way through his skin at his landing and he bled—but his stomach hurt, his chest hurt, his mind hurt. He forgot to feel physical pain.

He himself was pain.

His tear drops rained down upon the abused photo as he shakily lifted it from its place on the carpet. He remembered suddenly how many days it had been since the last time he'd seen that face, having avoided pictures of every kind like the plague.

The plague. What a choice of words. . . That was funny even to himself as he thought it. His hardened jaw relaxed and he swallowed the sorrow before it exploded from his slightly agape mouth. He cried softly and let the tears pool before they poured. He couldn't believe himself, how truly insensitive he had become. Or in all reality, how unbearable he'd always been. He finally understood what it was already too late to understand.

Sadness, Helplessness, Regret, Anger, Love. Guilt. Hate. Pain. Suffering.

Love.

He wasn't emotionless. Only because he didn't deserve to be. He couldn't hide them, his emotions, abandon them, or toss them out, for he was at fault. He was the villain to the victim. He was a danger.

He was the plague.

The dulled sound of firewood splitting created the illusion that it was quiet and peaceful that winter's night. It smelled nice inside—hot chocolate brewing on the stove with the natural smell of firewood crackling under fine golden red embers. It looked nice inside—brown and black armchairs lined a smaller perimeter of the gray, carpeted room, pictures in frames hung on the walls and marked the surfaces of counter tops and decorated the fireplace.

It was the quiet illusion of an ideal home that left Donghae feeling incredibly empty inside.

How fake.

The holidays were so near and yet not a single decoration was up anywhere. Donghae knew the Christmas festivities would just pass them by and fade into the next year.

He stood at the very end of the long hallway and leaned his left shoulder on the pearl white wall. He visualized a house with a child or two running amok between places logically deemed too small to fit through. He almost smiled at the thought of an old grandpa German Shepard peeking at them through annoyed, sleepy eyes, yawning once before falling back to sleep again with ears half perked up in case the patter of little feet came rushing back to him.

And he visualized Hyukjae. He visualized himself holding Hyukjae in his arms while being held back, keeping a protective eye on their adopted little ones together. A beautiful couple. He visualized happiness, peace, love—a mutual kind of love that he could both give and receive anywhere. Everywhere. . .

Hyukjae.

A heavy sigh escaped his lips and the beautiful vision instantly faded into that of nothing. Loneliness crept up inside of him once again just as it had several times within the last month and he shuddered at the deep feeling.

It tortured him into thinking all day, “Where did it all begin?”

He asked the empty house's four walls, the gray carpet his clothed toes sank into, the hot chocolate he now had no appetite for, the cold winter's night which housed the snow, the frosty wind, the crescent moon. “When Hyukjae lost faith,” they said in answer, and he felt his chest constrict.

'From the very beginning,' is what they really meant . . . But where did that leave him?

Before Donghae could ponder over that new question, the house phone began blaring off its handle. Donghae