Eunhyuk's POV 

My entire body burned with excruciating pain when I startled into wakefulness. My brain felt exceptionally heavy and the ceiling white lights swam dizzily the moment I opened my eyes. Reflectively, my eyelids shut quickly against it and a wave of nausea swept through me. I didn’t know where I was, why I was here, what was wrong with my body, why does it hurt so much? “Eunhyuk?” I instinctively flinched at the masculine voice and I struggled to open my eyes. When I saw the number of guys in the room, my heart began to race and the nausea surged. The man standing closest to my bed took a step forward and fear gripped me so tightly that I couldn’t even breathe. The rhythm line on the heart rate monitor was slowly straightening into a line as I subconsciously continued to hold my breath in fear. The buzzing in my ears grew louder as my lungs protested against the lack of air. I could no longer see what was in front of me when suddenly the bed shifted to an incline position. A pair of hands suddenly grabbed my face, “Eunhyuk! Breathe! Breathe!” The person shook me slightly, “Breathe, Lee Hyuk Jae! Open your mouth and breathe!” His instructions cut through my brain and my body reacted. My mouth opened to inhale a breath of oxygen from the mask on my face. Once that first breath went in, my lungs fought to get more air in. The black spots before my eyes began to clear and I slowly registered that it was a male voice that I heard, so the person touching me must be a man. My eyes widened at that revolting thought and my hands swung out to bat his hands away. I wanted to drag myself into a corner; any corner will do, as far away from the numerous people in the room. However, when I exerted force to shift my body away, I couldn’t move. I continued to gasp for breaths as I stared down at my legs in confusion. No matter how much my arms hurt, I exerted force to make my body move. There was no reaction from my legs. My legs refused to budge. The unfamiliar feeling of wanting to move but having a vital part of your body not reacting was extremely unnerving. Belated, I realised that for the few minutes that I was awake, for all the pain that I was feeling, none of them came from my lower body.

My heart began pounding against my chest as memories of the past few days started to stir at the back of my mind. I frowned at the broken pieces assaulting my mind and shook my head, trying to clear it. However something about my legs tugged at my heartstrings and I reopened my eyes slowly, looking at my legs under the blanket with dread. I swallowed whatever little saliva I had into my dry and parched throat before reaching out a shaking hand to hold the corners of the blanket covering my body. As I drew open the blanket, my spinning world slowed and narrowed down to the red patch of blood seeping out of a bandage around my left thigh. Something that sounded like a wail escaped from my throat. That was when the horror from the past few days flooded back into my memories.

I remembered hazily hearing Hae’s frantic voice through a dark, heavy mist. Hae… He sounded so far away. Was he really here? I felt like I almost could not remember his face anymore. There was just so much darkness down here. Darkness, pain, pleasure, despair, agony - all swirling in one deadpool.  Then an exchange of heated words drifted around for a while. I was about to slip back into the black abyss when I flinched at a sudden sharp pressure plunging into my inner left thigh. I could feel a sudden wetness gushing down my leg. I didn’t know what it was until the pain seared through the wound. I was jerked out of the haze and the only clarity was the blazing ache in my left inner thigh. At first the pain came in waves, sometimes so sharp it took my breaths away, other times a dull pounding. Then it escalated into an insatiable throbbing. There was a flurry of movements around me but I couldn’t see. My eyelids remained staunchly close; it was so difficult trying to open them. So difficult to even breathe through the pain. Another sharp, thin, metallic item was pushed into my skin, pressed down until a liquid flowed into my bloodstream before it was pulled out in a minute. I only felt the slight twinkling of a promised numbness before someone was touching the item embedded in my leg. Without any forewarning, it was ripped out of my thigh. Along with it, something unidentifiable tore out from my body through my throat and my mind exploded in white light.

At the onslaught of that excruciating memory, my body shook uncontrollably. My legs… My legs… I desperately needed to feel something from my legs. If my legs… I could feel my face crumbling at the horror of not being able to move my legs ever again. Not being able to walk. Not being able to dance. That last single thought hurts so intensely that it felt like someone has reached into my chest, took hold of my heart in his palm and squeezed until it burst. Despair clashed down onto my world like a meteor striking Earth; my entire existence was about to be wiped out. My legs... 

I began clawing at my legs, at the bandage, anywhere on my lower body that my fingers could reach; not caring that I was drawing blood on my fingers as my nails cut through the skin. “Hyuk!" Someone grabbed my arms, preventing me from inflicting more injuries to myself but I struggled violently against his grips. Tears streamed uncontrollably down my cheeks as I felt more hands on my body. Then I felt something else against my skin that set my heart plummeting. Something rough, long and slithery like a rope... I thrashed erratically against them, lashing out like the wounded animal that I was. My mind contrasted the rough textures of ropes and cold, large hands on my body in this blinding white room with that in a obliterating dark room with leering faces, and my chest heaved with unspoken terror. “No! NO!” My throat worked to push out the screams of agony and failing as my throat could not longer emit anything louder than a raspy squeak and so no one held my pleads. My fists clenched with blanched knuckles and my nails dug deeply into the palms of my hands and drew blood as I struggled futilely against them. In my terror, I couldn’t hear the cries of my members begging me not to struggle anymore; that they were trying to help.

“Don't! Stop it! Stop!!!!!!!” Someone shrieked in a high pitched, frenzied voice. The room was stunned into silence and in a moment, the pressures against me were gone. The bed sank a little with someone’s weight. Suddenly, I was wrapped in warm arms and a familiar voice, stretchy and strained with tears, sounded in my ears. It was a voice that accompanied me throughout the unfathomable times in the dark abyss. The one voice that still held a string to my consciousness. “Hyuk! Hyukjae, it’s okay! It’s alright! Teuk hyung won’t let them hurt you anymore! I won’t let them tie any of you up again. 잘 못했어! (Hyung did you wrong!) 형 잘 못했어! (It’s Hyung’s fault!) 미안해! (I’m so sorry!) 미안해! 미안해! ” He repeatedly apologised to me, cooing to me as if I was a child. In the instant when I recognised his voice, my previous unknown strength left me and I slacked against that shaking warm and thin body. Raising tears filled eyes to him, I blinked, trying to clear my vision. “Hyung?” I croaked out in a whisper, my voice raw and filled with uncertainty. He tightened his arms around me. “Yes, Hyuk! Hyung is here. Hyung is here.” I burst into uncontrollable sobs as his face focused in front of me and I clung to him as if I was drowning in the sea and he was a piece of floating wood. ““Teuk hyung!”