Yoona’s head had yet to stop bleeding.

Head wounds were truly the crème de la crème of all wounds—always bleeding more than necessary and making a monumental mess out of an already horrible situation. Yoona’s blood had begun to dry in patches on her palms and cake underneath her nails, making her fingers twitch in a desperate urge to scratch relentlessly on her jeans. God lord, what she wouldn’t give to dip herself into a tub of scalding water and just not come out for months.

Yoona was brought back to the present when she felt the trickle of fresh maroon flow down the side of her face. She brought the back of her hand to try and wipe away the liquid, but ended up making more of a mess when it smeared across her cheeks and eye. She decided to just clamp her palm on the wound to stop it from bleeding out on Jungkook’s car seat.

Jungkook raced into his garage and killed the engine, slapping his hands flat on the steering wheel to collect his torrential thoughts. He hadn’t muttered a word since leaving the cemetery, but Yoona could almost see the uncertainty hanging over his head like a cloud. Everything he had thought was the norm was suddenly doused in petrol and lit on fire. His fear was so thick, so palpable, that Yoona almost wished she could reach over and snap its neck. His emotions were surrounding her own, diluting the pain within her to make her feel so much more worse than she already felt.

Jungkook had made it stone cold clear that he had wanted nothing to do with this, her problem, and wanted to get the problem fixed as soon as possible. His brows knit together in a frown and the corners of his lips pulled down, his confusion itself making it quite clear that he didn’t know what other steps to take.

This was too much.

She was too much.

Yoona had always been too much. She was supposed to be taken in teaspoons twice a day, not to be chugged down until the entire solution was empty. She was always troublesome, she was always making him pull his hair in worry.

And that infuriated him beyond compare.

“You can’t go home like that,” Jungkook finally managed to say after swallowing the frog in his throat.

Yoona her lips, tasting the sharp tang of copper the exact moment the gentle pressure of an impending headache began to ebb to life. At the state she was in, will she ever be able to go home?

Jungkook wrenched the door open. “My dad isn’t home tonight, so you can clean up inside.” At the lack of any sort of complaint on her part, he craned his neck to see if she had heard him—or worse, fainted.

Yoona was thankfully conscious, just staring at her upturned palm on her lap. “I don’t want to touch anything. I might get blood everywhere.”

Her voice was so devoid of life, of any sort of pain, that Jungkook wondered if she even remembered what had happened to her. Was she so used to the physical abuse that she had become so monotone? Was she fine with this ridiculous injustice? Why wasn’t she angry?

Jungkook quashed the kindling of anger flaming to life in his chest and twisted around over to unbuckle her seatbelt. Afterwards, he quickly hopped out to walk around and open the door for her. Unsure of any dizziness accompanying the head wound, he hooked a hand underneath her elbow and gently pulled her up to her feet.

Yoona resisted the urge to grind her teeth. This certainly wasn’t the first time a group of ghosts had ganged up on her, but the aftermath never felt easier. She truly wouldn’t mind just sitting in the car, anything to stop her from moving, because moving made her want to die. If someone would ask her to point out the location of one of her kidneys, she could very well give the exact location. They burned like a dragon’s flame—the ghost must have aimed a kick there in the midst of all the mayhem. Each step gave life to a new tsunami of muscle aches, travelling in waves from the tips of her toes up to the curve of her neck. Her skin felt tight and dirty.

“Come on,” Jungkook instructed hoarsely, making the decision not to touch her. His hand ghosted over the small of her back, guiding her through the hallway into the guest bathroom. The layout was should be familiar to her, because the entire block of houses on this scheme was built by the same architect. Her house had a bathroom just like this, nestled underneath the staircase. Inside, there was a ornamental mirror standing on a countertop, a sink and cabinet, and a toilet. There was small pot of fake daisies posted on either side of the sink. The walls were painted a soft beige, highlighted by fluffy white guest towels folded neatly and hung on the bar. Scenic pictures framed in wood hung in asymmetric patterns on the left side wall.

“I have to get something from upstairs,” Jungkook said as he gestured for her to step inside. “Sit down.”

Yoona turned her attention away from the mirror—she didn’t want to see the state she was in, in fear that she might cry in front of Jungkook. She didn’t think her tear ducts could cope with the demand for more tears, and didn’t think that her mind in general could handle the humiliation. She waited until he was gone to sit carefully onto the plush carpet in front of the toilet, leaning her spine against the curve of the lid. She was truly winded after having been thrown against the wall so roughly, the struggle to breathe without a sharp stab of pain coursing through her diaphragm