A searing pain hit your hands as you tried to pull away, the heated glass pressed firmly against your skin with the hand of your father wrapped around the opposite side of the glass, with a protective glove on his hand. Struggling to pull your burning hand away, his grip increased around your wrist while he pressed the glass into your skin, causing the heat to burn deeper and deeper into your skin.

“Stop please” You begged quietly, your body becoming overwhelmed by the pain that he was inflicting on you.

“Not until you know what you did wrong” Your father snarled as his fingers dug into underside of your wrist, causing you more pain.

“What did I do?” You whispered falling weaker and weaker by every passing moment.

“You tell me” Your father released the cooling glass from your hand as your eyes closed in relief, your hand pulsating but with a little relief for the moment.

Opening your eyes, you watched him hold the glass over the burner again as he grabbed your other hand. Struggling again, you tried to pull him but he just held you tighter until the heated glass met with your skin once again. A whine of pain cursed your lips while your father pressed the glass into your hand further from the sounds that you made. Biting your lip harshly, you closed your hand feeling the pain increase as he wrapped your fingers around the glass. The taste of blood filled your mouth as you tried to distract yourself by biting your lip harder.

“Do you know what you did yet?” He questioned releasing the glass from your hand as your knees wobbled, becoming weak by the moment. Setting the glass on the counter, he pulled the oven mitt off of his hand before he balled his fist.

Trying to balance yourself on your wobbly knees, your hands hung to your sides as you glanced down at the burns that were becoming apparent across your palms, and fingers. Lifting your eyes to your father, you saw his balled fist pulling back for the punch as you moved out of his way. Closing your eyes, you stood there vulnerable before him, waiting anything more he wanted to do to you.

“What did you do wrong?” Your father growled wanting an answer, “Tell me!”

Dragging your tongue over your dried lips, you thought a moment too long as your father’s strong fist pushed into your stomach. With the force of his punch, you stumbled backwards, falling down on the tile with your burned hands trying to save your falling form.

“Tell me what you did!” Your father demanded as pain writhed your body.

“I was in your way, I apologize” You told him, finding the only reason that you could use to explain his punishment towards you.

“Don’t be in my way again” He growled in a low register, stepping over you, you moved your hand from behind caught under his foot before you pushed yourself up.

Watching him walk over to the couch, he the tv to a show before you slowly pushed yourself up off of the tile floor. Turning up the volume to a disturbing level, you took this chance that he was distracted to push yourself up off of the floor and shuffle down the hall to your room. Closing the door behind you and locking it with the handle lock and a chain lock, you leaned against your door, allowing your head to knock back and rest against the white door as the throbbing in your hands increased while the blow to you felt your breaths become shallow and uneven due to the blow to your stomach.

A chime came from your phone, pushing yourself up from the door, you wandered over to your desk. Sliding your finger across the lit-up screen, you tapped on the new message as the conversation pulled up. Dropping your eyes to the end of the conversation to see the new message.

Hey beautiful, I was just thinking about you and wanted to ask if you wanted to hang out tonight? - WH

Letting his message sit, your eyes moved over to your hands seeing the blood trickle down from the deep burns and the blisters fill with bodily fluids underneath your skin. Picking up your phone with the tips of your fingers, you pushed your phone into your back pocket before shuffling into your bathroom, joined with your bedroom, you pulled the handles of your faucet to cold water as you slipped your hands underneath the cold flowing water.

A soft moan of relief spilled from your lips as your eyes closed and you leaned forward, resting your weight on your forearms, soaking in the relief that the cool water flowed over your wounds.

Feeling the relief ebb away, you pulled your hands from the stream of water, turned off the water dabbled your hands against a soft towel before pulling out some burn ointment. Carefully applying the ointment to your skin, you hissed and hummed with pain as the ointment stung when it came into contact with an open wound.

Applying the ointment over your hands, you slowly wrapped your hands with white gauze before your phone chimed again. Taping the edges down around your palms, you pulled out your phone and slid your finger across the screen once again.

It’s perfectly okay if you don’t want to hang out tonight, I just want to know if you are coming over or not… - WH

Positioning your less burned fingers against your phone, you painfully typed back a message.

I can’t come over tonight

Hitting the send button, you lifted your eyes to your reflection in the mirror, the light-yellow hue of a fading bruise around your eyes along with a bandage already pressed against the hairline on your temple, not to even mention your busted lip from trying to silence yourself earlier.

You know… we haven’t seen each other in a little over a month… is there some reason why you don’t want to come over? - WH

Positioning your fingers against the screen once more, you began to slowly type the word father, however, you slowly deleted the message and began typing another one.

No…

Do you need some space? - WH

No…

Can I do anything for you? - WH

No…

Do you want to still be my girlfriend? - WH

Little did Woohyun knew all that was happening and the reasons why you didn’t want to see him. With bruises from past beatings still coloring your skin as these new punishments lowered your self-esteem, wondering what man would every want to love someone so broken.