Taemin waited until he was out of Kibum’s sight before dropping to his knees on the grass and tried in vain to stop the flow of tears that streamed down his cheeks. Why am I crying? What reason do I have to cry right now? Taemin felt pathetic and he probably looked it too. At the time, finding Kibum had seemed like a rational idea, but now it just seemed stupid. He wanted to get to know the guy, not convince him that he was some annoying, freaky stalker.

Not caring that his face was blotchy, his eyes were red from having rubbed them so much, and tears were still making their way down his cheeks, he stood up again and started walking home. There was no point going back to school now, he decided, having just checked his watch. The bell was going to go in just a few minutes, anyway. He walked almost mechanically, his head swimming with thoughts. He was awoken from his daze, however, when a car horn honked loudly, making him jump. The car was quite literally just centimeters from his right leg. Avoiding eye contact with the driver (who was now shouting profanities at him out of the car window), he quickly hurried across the road and tried to stay more alert as he walked the rest of the way home. Luckily, he arrived home safely to find an empty house – his parents were still at work.

With nothing better to do, he decided to simply lie down on the couch. The room was silent aside from the incessant ticking of the clock, which was becoming increasingly louder in Taemin’s mind. The ticks seemed to be becoming more frequent to him, too, and the sound was soon replaced by a relentless chorus of “pabo, pabo, pabo”. It was almost as though the clock was taunting him; telling him how stupid he was. He should have left Kibum alone, he knew he should have. It wasn’t his place to be meddling, anyway. Just because he had problems in his past doesn’t mean he had the right to meddle in someone else’s future.

He had been lying on the couch staring at the ceiling in almost-silence for a few hours now (in fact, he had been staring at the ceiling for so long that he was beginning to see patterns and shapes in the plain white paintwork,) when he heard a knock at the door. He assumed it was just his parents, so he took his time getting to the door. He was surprised when he opened it to find Jonghyun and Minho on his doorstep, the latter glaring at Taemin.

Happy with something to do other than think about what a screw up he was, Taemin smiled and let them in. He didn’t even care that Minho was glaring at him – he knew the older boy would forgive him soon enough, anyway. He always did, no matter what Taemin had done.

‘So, what brings you to my humble abode?’ he asked loudly, walking into the lounge room. He motioned for Minho and Jonghyun to join him before flopping back down onto the couch. He saw Minho crack a smile for a split second, but as soon as he locked eyes with Taemin, it was gone again. He never was that great at acting angry.

Surprisingly, the two hadn’t come over to question Taemin about him embarrassing Minho. They were simply bored and decided to come bug him – something he had become accustomed to. Sure, he had only met the pair about four months ago, but they had already visited his house more than any of his other friends. He occasionally thought of finding a hobby for the pair, but he, too, had a lot of spare time, so he didn’t mind the visits. Either way, they’d been visiting a bit less since Jonghyun had found himself a girlfriend (Son Jiwon – a rather plain, but well-liked girl in Jonghyun’s year level).

Before long, Minho had totally forgotten about being angry at Taemin, and Taemin had forgotten about what a screw up he was. Everything seemed perfectly normal as Taemin waved goodbye to his friends just a few hours later. Little did he know, it was really only the calm before the storm.


Kibum had stayed at the park for a few hours after Taemin left, just watching the sky. The clouds drifted lazily across the horizon and occasionally slid into the sun’s path, making everything seem dreary and grey for a few seconds, before continuing their journey and leaving the sun to shine freely. His anger had subsided, so he lay there calmly, picking out shapes in the masses of clouds – something he had Jinki had done frequently since they were children.

He probably would have forgotten completely about going home had his mother not called in a panic and asked why he wasn’t home yet. He told her he had lost track of time (which was the truth), before hanging up and setting off quickly on his way home. He had completely forgotten about what had happened that day until he arrived home and his mother stared at him with wide eyes, agape.

‘Uh, is there something wrong?’ he asked rudely. She was staring much the same way she had when she first discovered the cuts on his wrists, and it was making him uncomfortable. She took a few steps forward, closing the gap between the pair, and reached out to touch his cheek. Kibum flinched away.

‘,’ he hissed under his breath, realising that he probably looked as though he'd been hit by a truck. ‘It’s nothing, umma,’ he reassured her in a louder voice, trying to smile, but only succeeding in forming a half-grimace. ‘I’m just uncoordinated. You know that.’

She looked unconvinced, but didn’t resist nonetheless as he hurried upstairs to assess the damage. Shutting the door loudly behind him, he peeled off his shirt and threw it on his bed before turning to look in the mirror. His eyes were immediately drawn to his split lip and the small gash on his cheek which was surrounded by dried blood and a large purple-yellow bruise. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. There was no way he was leaving the house looking like that. He’d always taken a certain pride in his looks, so he hoped none of it was permanent and that everything would just fix itself in the next few days.

Having finished assessing the damage to his face (which he wished he had known about before – he had just spent hours out in public looking like all hell), his eyes trailed down to his abdomen. There was a bruise just to the left-of-center of his stomach which looked almost the same as the one on his cheek, only much larger.

He sighed and went to the bathroom to clean himself up, thankful that his mother had stayed downstairs. He grabbed the packet of antibacterial wipes and cleaned the blood off his face, wincing slightly. He used the same wipe to clean the leftover blood off his wrist, too (which he had also forgotten about). There wasn’t really much else he could do, so he padded quietly down the stairs, snuck into the kitchen, grabbed two icepacks and a roll of paper towel, and snuck back up the stairs in under a minute. He mentally gave himself a pat on the back when he arrived back to his room and shut the door, feeling like a ninja.

He wrapped up the two icepacks individually in the paper towel and lay down on his bed, grimacing as he did so, and awkwardly positioned himself so he could place one icepack on his stomach and the other on his bruised cheek before falling asleep to the sweet sound of silence.