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Hello lovely people. This chapter is quite heavy and deals with heavy topics - one of which is suggested suicide attempt. We have decided not to rate the chapter in spite of its content as we believe it’s not too detailed - still, we wanted to make sure readers were forewarned of a very angsty chapter. Take care of yourself.

It's all his fault. Baekhyun is sure now. It's his fault, and what's happening to him is only what he deserves.

This idea, no, this knowledge that it's all his fault didn't come to him straight away. At first he was too shocked and distressed to think much of anything, that awful night, that first, awful week when there was no more Nari and yet Baekhyun somehow had to go on living. After that week, when the initial shock subsided into the heavy darkness that has settled around him like a cloud and refused to lift away, he'd begun trying to work out what had happened. What he'd done to make Nari fall out of love with him. She'd told him it wasn't his fault, that he didn't do anything wrong, but Baekhyun found that hard to understand. If he hadn't done anything wrong, she wouldn't have left him. So there must have been something. Maybe Nari didn't even realise it herself, but something about Baekhyun is wrong enough to make her leave him.

The days, weeks, months had dragged by and every day Baekhyun tried to live without her. He really tried. He went to work. He spoke to people when they spoke to him. He smiled at his patients and wrote clear, concise notes in their journals. He showered and washed his hair and brushed his teeth. He tried to eat enough to keep his body functioning. It will get better, he would think. It has to. If I just keep on going, it will get better.

But it hasn't gotten better.

It's gotten worse.

After Chanyeol found him on the bridge, Baekhyun has been really trying to do better, because he can see Chanyeol worrying about him, and it makes him feel terribly guilty and ashamed. He wants to just disappear, so that he can stop causing trouble and pain to his friend, but he can't disappear, and he can't make Chanyeol forget he ever existed either, no matter how much he wishes that were possible. So he has to do better. If he can't feel better, then he has to at least act better, for Chanyeol's sake.

His new attempt at acting like he's okay works just enough to get him through another two weeks or so. He wears a jacket when he goes outside, avoids the footbridge, allows Chanyeol to collect him at lunchtime every day and force food into him. He makes himself a rule to shower at work every time he finishes a day in the OR, because it's easier to find the energy to shower at work than it is at home, where all he seems to be able to do is sleep.

He forces himself not to give in to the strange urges he's starting to feel. The urge to walk way too slowly. To stop walking completely and turn to face the wall and bang his head rhythmically against it. To crouch down and trace the painted lines on the linoleum corridor floor with his fingers. He can't do that when people are around. If he does they'll see his cracks. They'll know he's all gone wrong inside.

Sometimes he thinks they know anyway. He senses them watching him. He huddles on himself, lowers his head, thinks angrily, stop looking at me! Stop watching! Stop staring! He knows they're not really, but somehow, at the same time, he's sure they are. They're seeing through his mask and into his guilt and shame.

At other times he realises that he's being stupid, of course the other doctors, the nurses, the receptionist and the patients are not watching him. They're getting on with their own lives like people do. Why was he thinking that, earlier? He doesn't understand where his mind was.

A couple more days pass, and Chanyeol is relaxing, because Baekhyun is trying so hard. He's talking to his friend about his patients, even though his recitations of each case must be dreadfully boring compared to the way he used to tell them. He's eating, at least at lunchtime, and his friend doesn't know that half the time Baekhyun ends up throwing up an hour later, because sadness sits like a rock in his stomach and refuses to let him digest. He's going through the motions, and Chanyeol can't see that inside, Baekhyun is drowning.

On Wednesday, Baekhyun is walking across his office to get a file he needs from the shelf across the room when everything suddenly goes dark. He stops dead. He hears a gasp, and thinks it's him. There was a pen in his hand and it falls to his feet with a light plasticky clatter.

He can't see. He's going blind.

He stands like a statue in the middle of his office, terror stretching his eyes wide and making his body stiff, until he realises that he's wrong. He's not going blind, because he can, in fact, see. It isn't dark. There are his framed certificates on the wall, the shelves of books, the computer desk, the window through the door into the busy corridor outside. The bright light in his office is on. His eyes are seeing. He looks down to the pen lying at his feet. He sees it.

But it's dark. Somehow it's dark, he knows it's dark. Everything is dark. He can't see. He can't see.

"I can't see," he hears someone saying, the words flowing into each other like a chant, "I can't see, I can't see, I can'tseeIcan'tseeIcan'tsee -" It's him, his voice, the words coming from his mouth, tangling over themselves, but somehow saying them helps, or no, it's more like he needs to say them, and it doesn't matter anyway because they're coming out on their own and there's a strange comfort in them. His eyes prickle and now there are tears sliding down his face, the words are pulling the tears out like fingers in his eyes, "I can't see I can't see I can't I can't I can't -"

He can't even stand. The floor greets him. Hands and knees. Fingers spread onto thin office carpet. The pen he dropped bumps his fingertips. He can't see. No, he can see. Some part of Baekhyun knows he can. He just thinks he can't, and now he's scared, now he's really scared, because he knows it isn't really dark, and yet somehow at the same time it is dark. He's seeing, but he can't see.

Why can't he see?

"Can't can't can't" the words are blurring. He's losing them. They stop coming, and without them he is lost. He shuts his eyes and fear courses through him, paralysing him.

Could Nari see this darkness around him? Could she sense it, hovering around him, waiting and ready for Baekhyun to break so it could sink into his cracks and consume him? She must have been able to. She must have known. Baekhyun is sure now. She was right to get out of it, get away from him. He is relieved that she got away.

There are things in the darkness, swimming around him. Ugly things, hateful things, things that wish him harm. They're there, even though they're not. They're there for him, because it was his fault. His fault, everything is his fault. Guilt grows teeth and starts tearing him apart inside. He doesn't know what he did but whatever it was, it was bad. He covers his ears and closes his eyes, hunched over and kneeling on the office floor while they swim around him, and he hears a voice again, his voice, the words are back, different this time. "No," he's saying, over and over, "no no no no no no-"

There's a pen in his hand and he takes it and stabs it hard into his leg. Then again, again, again. There's pain, and he focuses on it, the sharp pain where the tip stabs into his thigh and the duller bruising pain because it's only a ballpoint and he has to hit pretty hard to get much pain out of it. But yes, the pain finds him in his lost darkness, and he opens his eyes and he's in an office, his office, and it is not dark, and he can see.

He's chilled and shaking and drained. He kneels on the floor while reality gathers back around him. His leg is throbbing. The plastic sheath of the ballpoint pen has splintered.

Can a person be horrified and numb at the same time? Apparently so, because Baekhyun is. Rationality is back with him. Of course he can see. Of course there aren't monsters swimming in the darkness around him.

He feels like he's just woken up from a nightmare, except the difference is that he knows he was awake. He didn't wake up. It was more like skipping from one reality to another.

There's a brisk knock on his door and it opens before he can say anything. He starts to get to his feet and staggers, head spinning. Whoever it is that opened the door catches his arms and steadies him, and he's looking into Chanyeol's face, eyes wide with alarm, worry etching creases into his forehead.

"Are you alright? Why were you on the floor? You didn't pass out, did you?"

Baekhyun shakes his head quickly. "No, nothing like that," he says. "I - I dropped my pen, I was just picking it up," he holds up the pen as evidence and is grateful that he's wearing dark pants, because he's probably made ink marks all over the fabric that covers the throbbing area of his thigh.

Chanyeol exhales. "Oh, okay," he says, and smiles. Baekhyun can see how relieved he is and the guilt is back, not that it ever really left, but it is back worse and worse. He hates that Chanyeol worries. It's so wrong. He shouldn't worry about Baekhyun. His friend doesn't deserve this kind of stress, and it's all Baekhyun's fault for being so useless and being unable to get his act together.

The things in the darkness swim around him. He feels them brush against his back, his arms. He shudders. No, he thinks, no no no no. I do not feel them. They are not real.

"Ready for lunch?" Chanyeol smiles at him and takes his arm, obviously not going to take no for an answer, just like he hasn't all week, and Baekhyun resigns himself to yet another session of chew, swallow, try not to throw up for an hour, throw up anyway. It's a truly pointless exercise, but refusing Chanyeol would take too much effort, and he's too ashamed to explain.

He acts his way through lunch, smiles at his friend though it feels like lifting lead weights, makes appropriate noises at the stories Chanyeol tells him from the paediatric ward and reciprocates with descriptions of the patients he's seen that morning. He even manages to swallow most of his lunch with Chanyeol only having to remind him to eat twice.

"I'm on a night shift tonight, and then I have three days off," Chanyeol tells him when they're reaching the end of their break time. "I won't be in until Sunday. Promise you'll keep having lunch?"

"Okay," Baekhyun says. The promise is a lie, but he doesn't care. Whatever makes Chanyeol happy. "I have the weekend off, so I guess I'll see you Monday?" This is a calculated sentence, because he knows it sounds like he's showing interest in life, and as he hoped, Chanyeol beams at him and happily suggests that they go out to a nearby cafe on Monday. Baekhyun smiles, agrees, and stops in the bathroom on the way back to plastics to throw up everything he just ate.

Baekhyun doesn't plan what happens next. He doesn't mean to take advantage. It's just that when he gets home that evening, he realises that Chanyeol isn't going to know if he doesn't go to work tomorrow, and he's just so, so tired, and he's scared too, because of what happened in his office. So he texts Chief Seo that he's picked up a stomach bug and can't come in tomorrow. He should feel relieved that he doesn't have to work tomorrow, but he's too tired for that. He needs to sleep. His phone vibrates as he drags himself towards the couch, but he can't be bothered to check it. It'll only be the chief acknowledging him. It's not like she's going to make him come in if he's supposedly puking his guts out.

Baekhyun lies down on the couch and closes his eyes. It's dark because he never the light when he came in, and the blinds are drawn, because he never opened them this morning, or yesterday morning, or last week. He curls up and drags the blanket from the back of the couch over him. Fear and despair claws at his throat.

He wants out. Everything is too hard, too dark, too scary. He's losing his mind and he wants it to stop. He wants to get away, but there's nowhere to go, yet he knows he can't keep on like this. He's not being dramatic. He really, truly cannot go on. He has to get out. He has to. It has to stop. He's crying again, because it hurts. It hurts and there are things coming for him, they're hating him, he hates himself. "No," he hears, "no no no no..." he pours himself into the words and murmurs them over and over into the blanket. He builds them into a wall between him and the terrible outside. "No no no no no..."

Time passes. He's sleeping. No, he's awake. Or is he? The darkness whispers strange things to him, and he clutches the blanket tighter so that he won't feel them brushing against his skin.

He wishes it would stop. He just wants it all to be over. If only he had thrown himself off that bridge. Now it is too late. His body has shut down. He's stuck. He can't move. He can't even get off the couch to get water, despite the dryness of his mouth. Getting somewhere high enough to hurl himself off is so utterly impossible he might as well be wishing to fly to the moon.

He sleeps. Time passes. At one point he hears his phone ringing. He thinks about moving his hand to pick up his phone, which is within arm's reach on the floor beside the couch, but he doesn't manage to actually make his arm move. The phone rings out. It rings again, but this time he doesn't even think about going for it. His ringtone cheerily sings the first verse of Red Flavor and goes mute halfway through the chorus. After that it doesn't ring again. Perhaps it ran out of power. It doesn't matter.

More time passes. Hours, days, he's long since lost track. Sometimes he isn't actually asleep, but he might as well be, because his eyes are closed and his body is still and leaden, and his mind wanders through rifts and valleys of guilt, shame, despair. There's nothing he can do now. His mind has given up on him, and so has his body. They've given up on him, and he's given up on them. He feels how dry his mouth is, and he is aware that his heart feels strange and fluttery and it's getting harder to breathe, but he can't make it matter. All he can do is lie here and drift, slowly but surely, towards his end.

---

Jongdae is just finishing up with his last outpatient of the morning when his phone vibrates in his pocket. When he’s said goodbye to the expecting mother and checks his phone, he finds a new message in the group chat with Chanyeol and Baekhyun. Baekhyun and I are going out for lunch, Chanyeol asks. Can you come?

Jongdae smiles a little as he messages back, happy that he can accept the invitation. The ob-gyn department is understaffed at the moment and Jongdae's been doing too many extra hours, trying to protect the already exhausted residents from burnout. The last two weeks have vanished into a blurred whirl of business and exhaustion, and catching up with his favourite two doctors sounds like the perfect way to recharge his batteries. Even just getting out of the hospital for an hour sounds amazing; he’s been in here for days and it’s starting to feel like nothing outside the hospital actually exists. Love to, he writes.

Meet us in plastics in five? Chanyeol’s message pops up immediately, and Jongdae sends back a thumbs-up before changing his white coat for his outside jacket and grabbing his wallet. He arrives on the plastic surgery floor at the same time as Chanyeol and the genuine happiness he feels on seeing his friend spills into his smile.

“Hi, stranger,” Chanyeol says, and Jongdae laughs.

“I don’t even want to think about how many hours I’ve pulled this week,” he says as they fall in step and head past the reception area towards Baekhyun’s office.

“You mean last week,” Chanyeol grins at him. “It’s Monday.”

“Already?” Jongdae is only half-joking. He knows it’s Monday because it’s his outpatient clinic day, but working all weekend makes the fact that it’s the beginning of a new week seem rather irrelevant. Chanyeol knocks on the closed door of Baekhyun’s office and opens it without waiting for an answer, but the office is dark and empty.

“That’s odd,” Chanyeol says. “It’s not one of his surgery days. He should be here.”

“You know his schedule?” Jongdae is a little surprised. It’s hard enough to keep track of his own schedule, let alone another doctor’s in a different department. Chanyeol nods, looking distracted. He closes the office door and Jongdae trails behind him as he strides back towards reception. “But in the chat you said you guys were meeting?”

“Yeah, but we made the plan last week,” Chanyeol explains. “I did remind him, but he didn’t check the message. I assumed he was busy with patients, but...” he trails off as they reach reception and turns to the receptionist with a pleasant smile, but Jongdae doesn’t miss the worry in his friend’s eyes. As Chanyeol asks the receptionist if she’s seen Dr. Byun, Jongdae finds himself suddenly uneasy. He doesn’t know why or where the feeling has come from, but he has the sense that something isn’t right.

“Dr. Byun isn’t in today,” the receptionist tells them. “Dr. Park and Dr. Chung are splitting his outpatients.”

“He’s not in?” Chanyeol repeats. “Why not?”

“He’s sick,” the receptionist says as she pulls up a roster on her computer screen. “Stomach flu, is what I heard. It must be pretty bad. Looks like he hasn’t been in since Wednesday.”

Chanyeol goes white. He makes a clumsy grab for Jongdae’s arm as his knees buckle slightly, and Jongdae grabs his upper arms and steadies him. Alarm shoots through him, and his heart starts to pound. What is this reaction?

“What?” he asks urgently, searching his friend’s face. “Chanyeol, what is it?”

Chanyeol’s eyes meet his, and they are like ragged holes of fear. That look chills Jongdae to the bone. He’s never seen his friend look like this, never. Without answering his question, Chanyeol pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps clumsily at the screen. “Pick up, pick up,” he mumbles as he puts the phone to his ear, but Jongdae hears the recorded message as the phone goes straight to voicemail without ringing.

“,” Chanyeol curses. He’s still white as a sheet, and Jongdae grips his arm harder.

“Chanyeol, tell me what you’re thinking,” he orders. Chanyeol’s hand falls to his side, the phone hanging loosely in his fingers.

“I found him at the rail of the footbridge two weeks ago,” he says. He sounds dazed. “It looked...he looked bad. He said he wasn’t suicidal, he promised me he wasn’t, but he’s been so depressed and I was so afraid…” his eyes go distant and he grips his phone convulsively before continuing. “But he’s been so much better the last couple of weeks, I really thought he was doing better,” his eyes meet Jongdae’s, full of anguish. “Jongdae, was I wrong?”

Chanyeol’s eyes are pleading with him, begging Jongdae to tell Chanyeol that he wasn’t wrong, but Jongdae can’t, because he doesn’t know. He goes cold as Chanyeol’s words sink in. Depressed? Suicidal? He thinks of all the times Baekhyun has acted differently, been distant and standoffish, refused to talk, refused to hang out, told them he’s “fine, just tired”, snapped at them to back off and to leave him alone already. Horror punches a hole in his chest. He knew something was up. Why didn’t he think further? Why didn’t he try harder? Why did he do as Baekhyun asked and back off, hoping he’d be in a better mood next time? Why didn’t he see that behind his mask, his friend was drowning? Chanyeol has seen. He found Baekhyun on...on a bridge...

His thoughts stutter over the horrifying image. “You think he’s in danger?” he asks, but he already knows the answer. All his everyday cares and worries have gone suddenly remote. The world around him grinds to a halt, and he’s flooded with a sense of d