Kibum barely managed not to fall asleep on the couch when the other two tiptoed out. He was tired – that seemed to be his permanent state these days – but he needed to think. Minho had disappeared into the bedroom they shared and closed the door behind him. Kibum couldn’t hear any sound from there. Perhaps Minho had gone to sleep. In the kitchen, by the sounds of it, Jinki was starting to make dinner.

Kibum pushed Taemin's blanket off and sat up. He was worried by the conversation he’d – well, he supposed the best way to put it was spied on – between Dr. Ji and Minho. He didn’t like the way Dr. Ji had been talking to Minho. If it had just been the words, it might be explainable. Kibum had never been to a therapist, and he had no idea what methods they used. It could be argued that Dr. Ji was simply helping Minho clarify his feelings and beliefs, and maybe that was a valid technique, he didn’t know. But he did know the dominating way those pulses of ozone had been emitting from Dr. Ji, and the way Minho had seemed locked into the conversation, his answers forced out of him whether he'd wanted to give them or not.

That in itself was concerning enough. But the things Minho had been expressing also rang in Kibum’s memory. It was my fault. I didn’t do anything. It makes me hate myself. It’s so dark...and the way he had so desperately agreed when Dr. Ji had suggested that if he couldn’t protect his friends, his family, there wasn’t much point in him living.

Did Minho want to die? It was such a terrifying idea that his mind shied away from it. Surely not. Not Minho.

But then he remembered the whispers that had come to him when Dr. Ji was treating him. How they had intensified when the doctor touched his skin. How he'd heard words in the whispers. Failure, they’d hissed. Worthless. Everyone would be better off if you were dead.

Minho couldn’t hear the whispers. But perhaps they were still affecting him on a subtle level. Perhaps he was more vulnerable to them, with his essence scent so weak. What if, weakened by whatever he'd done - or not done - that had shaken his core belief in himself so much, that suggestive power and subtle pressure pushed him towards an edge he wouldn’t have approached on his own?

Kibum shivered. He looked helplessly towards the closed door of their bedroom. He didn’t think Minho would kill himself. He wasn’t at that point. Not yet. But if Kibum wasn’t careful, didn’t do something, couldn’t find some way to change those wrong ideas Minho had got stuck in his head...

It was my fault, Minho had said. What did he mean? Jinki had said Minho had changed while he was in his coma, but he hadn’t mentioned any other incidents. Maybe something had happened to Minho that the others didn’t know about. He wondered if Minho would tell him if he asked at the right moment. Maybe when the violet scent was strong, and the liquorice smell was not present.

Change yourself, Dr. Ji’s voice echoed.

Kibum frowned. Was that where the liquorice smell was coming in? Perhaps Minho really was trying to change his personality, change his nature into the person he believed he should be, since he hated the old one and thought he was a failure. The new essence smell that didn’t seem to belong to him could be reflecting this change.

Kibum didn’t want Minho to change. He wanted his old friend back.

He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes tiredly and gazed around the living room. The low table beside the couch showed definite signs of Taemin having been here earlier. Several textbooks were spread open, and pens and pencils were scattered all across the table, as if he’d upended his pencil case looking for a favourite pen. A plate had a half-eaten sandwich on it. Taemin had obviously run out of time to finish his snack and his homework before he’d had to go to the studio for his evening dance practice. He was studying for his CSAT as well as being a full-time idol. Kibum wondered how the kid was doing, juggling all those demands on his time. What with Kibum’s excessive amount of sleeping and his too-frequent trips to hospital, he’d barely seen Taemin for weeks. He slid off the couch to sit cross-legged by the table and glanced at the open maths textbook in front of him.

It was calculus. Kibum recognized the symbols of the equations strung along the page from his high school days, now thankfully behind him. Taemin had started working on the first problem, but he hadn’t gotten far. Kibum glanced down Taemin’s lines of calculation. He had made a mistake on his third line that was affecting the results of his later working, and Kibum picked up a pen without really realizing what he was doing to correct the mistake. Then he finished the equation. The figures were clear inside his head. It was obvious what the answer was. He wrote it beneath the question with a slight thrill of accomplishment. He’d never been much good at schoolwork, least of all maths, but these problems were no trouble at all.

He went on to the second question, then the third. The numbers made sense to him in a way they never had before. They seemed perfect and complete. He saw how mathematics could be like building a house out of light, or music. He’d always struggled before because numbers and calculations seemed to have nothing to do with anything he cared about, but now, he saw that numbers were literally the fabric of life. They filled his head, building and connecting with each other like a web constructing itself in his brain. He turned the page of the workbook and kept working, his pen flying across the page. He’d never concentrated like this before. He lost sense of everything else around him and absorbed himself in the structured beauty of mathematics.

Some time later, he went to turn the page and found there weren’t any more pages to turn. The workbook was completed. He gave a sigh of disappointment and stood up to see what Jinki was cooking. He wandered into the kitchen and leaned against the doorframe. Jinki turned to look at him, and then something interesting happened.

Kibum found that the numbers he had been working with were still hanging in his mind like a web, absorbing the overwhelming rush of information from his extended senses. Where the calculations were more complex, the web was thicker, denser. It screened him from the attention that Jinki poured towards him, like the way sunglasses blocked the brightness of the sun. Through the web, Jinki’s attention didn’t hurt Kibum, or give him any pressure at all.

Excitement gripped him. Was this the solution to his problems? He tried to hang on to the number-web in his mind, but it was already starting to fall apart like a spider web in rain, breaking and fraying as he lost concentration.

“Are you hungry?” Jinki asked him, and Kibum noticed how even though the web was falling apart, it was still absorbing most of the pressure of his regard. He nodded.

“Good, because I made heaps.” Jinki pointed Kibum to sit at the table. He’d made omurice with mushrooms, red peppers, and cheese. Kibum could identify each ingredient clearly by smell. It smelled amazing – but through the fraying web of numbers, not overw