Clenching his jaw, Hyukjae scraped his metal chair roughly across the floor and advanced towards Siwon.

"You filthy little son of a !" he screamed as he grabbed Siwon's black polo collar and shoved him against the standard, white walls of the hospital room.

The jovial smile on Siwon's face remained intact as he stared straight back at Hyukjae, stumbling before feeling his back hit the hard plaster wall.

"That's not a very nice way to greet your guest," he said, dropping the white bouquet of flowers onto the ground.

"You're not welcome here," Hyukjae replied darkly.

How could Siwon have the nerve to show up and expect everyone to hug and happily sing kumbaya together when he was the prime suspect responsible for putting Cherie in an unstable coma?

He didn't know for sure if she would ever wake up.

"Oh? On what grounds? I didn't know I needed an invitation to visit a friend at the hospital."

Hyukjae shook his head in disgust as his friends instinctively circled around behind him, forming a protective barrier of support. The air in the room was so palpable with the built-up hatred Hyukjae harvested over the past few weeks that even the slightest move would set him off.

"Quit it with the false pretense. I know you were the one who did this," he snapped.

"So?" Siwon said, his lips curled upward in contempt.

Hyukjae's blood ran cold.

Siwon was challenging him.

"You have no idea who you're up against," Hyukjae said, his eyes narrowing.

"Touché. But Cherie adores me. I won't be going to prison anytime soon," Siwon said in a nauseatingly sweet voice.

"Go to hell," Hyukjae muttered, his fists tightening against Siwon's neck. Feeling bile rise up his burning throat, he resisted the urge to pummel the guy's face in and beat him up until his guts exploded all over the pristine, shiny hospital floor. "Don't talk like you know her."

"I know all the intimate details of her entire life that you never will," Siwon spat, pushing Hyukjae off of him as if he were a dirty parasite.

Hyukjae laughed loudly, his tone mocking, the venom never leaving his eyes. Siwon was obviously trying to agitate him. Get under his skin.

"Yeah, details you take note of when you stalk her and watch her shower in the morning or watch her sleep through the windows at night. That's some real deep stuff you have on her."

"Shut up."

"What? Am I making you upset? Do I need to go into greater detail on how she didn't even know you existed before that day on the beach?"

"She had it coming!" Siwon blurted, his brown eyes swimming in their sockets as he trembled with rage.

"I guess you just admitted you were stalking her," Hyukjae said with a shrug.

Siwon scoffed.

"I have good justification."

"I doubt it. But give it a shot," Hyukjae said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Even though Siwon was a good six inches taller, Hyukjae wasn't intimidated. He had him under his finger, right where he wanted him.

"You'll just love my story," Siwon said sarcastically as he sidestepped out of Hyukjae's periphery and tried to leave. But Leeteuk and Donghae quickly shifted to stand right in front of him, blocking his path out.

"Move." Siwon pressed his lips together, his pulse quickening as they refused to budge. He was trapped.

Bea stood up from Hyukjae's original seat beside the bed and motioned for Hyorin to keep an eye on Cherie. Walking to where Hyukjae was, she stuck a hand on her hip and faced Siwon.

"We already have enough evidence against you for several counts of harassment. If you own up now, we might even be lenient enough to dock a few months off your sentence," Bea stated. "Or if you'd prefer, I could get a couple of the Vogue employees to testify against you as witnesses. We have all the forensic lab report proofs of the rat poison found in the coffee you gave to Cherie."

"Let me out of here," Siwon said through his teeth.

"You don't want to mess with a prosecution lawyer with several decades of firsthand criminal experience under her belt, considering I already have a squad of cops waiting downstairs for me to turn your sorry over to them," Bea arched her right eyebrow.

Hyukjae sniggered under his breath, impressed.

his dry lips, Siwon tried to formulate another plan of escape as his face gradually turned more and more pale. His mind drew up a blank.

"It's all her fault."

"Who?"

"Valerie."

Hyukjae ran his hand through his hair, clearly confused. What did Cherie's sister have to do with this?

"She was the queen bee of the school. All the girls wanted to be her best friend. All the popular guys wanted to date her. At that time I was a nerdy loser with braces, thick glasses, and an embarrassing country accent. I wanted to believe that she would see something in me that made me unique to all the other guys out there, so I plucked up the courage to ask her out for homecoming in front of the whole cafeteria. We had been lab buddies for biology class, and I really thought she liked me. Do you know what she did?"

Dropping onto the couch, Siwon rubbed his temples in a steady, circular motion. Everyone else remained standing, unsure of what to make of the story.

"She said, and I quote: 'Uh, no? But you should really go take a shower. You're clogging my pores just by making me look at your ridiculously greasy hair,'" he mimicked in a snooty, high-pitched voice. "All her friends around her laughed. Kids who didn't know me started staring and whispering behind my back. I instantly became the school outcast just because the popular girl decided I wasn't worthy of her time. I was shoved in lockers, swirlied with urine still in the toilets, and eventually dropped out of school altogether."

Unwittingly, Hyukjae's heart went out to Siwon. No one deserved that kind of public humiliation.

"That deserved to die," Siwon said, his eyes flashing with hot fury. Rubbing his hands over and over again with his sweaty palms, his veins popped out of his strained neck as he flashed back to all those haunting memories.

Offended by the way Siwon regarded Valerie's death, the same Valerie whom Cherie had looked up to so much, Hyukjae knew the inconsistency with his statement and her recounts was an exaggeration on his part. He had to be lying, trying to make it seem like he was the victim, which caused him to turn into a deranged, stalking psycho.

Hyukjae caught Hyorin's eye, who looked utterly baffled. She would've known Valerie on a more personal level since she was Cherie's best friend, and if Cherie couldn't affirm the nature of Valerie's personality right now, Hyorin certainly could.

Hyukjae caught her eye.

She shook her head.

This was all Hyukjae needed.

Playing the sympathy card wasn't quite going to work.

Hyukjae tsk-ed in a disparaging tone as he shook his head. "Manners Siwon. Didn't your parents ever teach you to respect the dead? But why carry out your revenge now? And on Cherie no less?"

Siwon looked up at Hyukjae with a sneer.

"I only recently found out Valerie had a precious little sister. They're so creepily similar. Their smiles, that twinkle in their eyes when they first look at you, the way they talk... I couldn't say no to the opportunity. It's like a wet dream come true."

"You're sick, you know that?" Leeteuk said.

"Alright, that's enough. It's time for you to go," Donghae interjected, knowing that Hyukjae had heard more enough.

~*~*~*~

Getting the policemen to Siwon away, Bea followed close behind.

"Stay here with Cherie okay hun? I'll take care of it," she said to Hyukjae before leaving.

Everyone left the room to give him some time with her before visiting hours were over.

"Hey baby, hopefully you didn't overhear the horrible showdown with Siwon. I'm sure Valerie was a great girl just like you, my angel," Hyukjae whispered softly as he her cheeks with the pad of his thumb.

Checking his silver Mont Blanc wristwatch, Hyukjae let out a sigh.

"I can't believe I'm leaving you here all alone tonight while I have to trudge back home and pretend you're safe. The family-only policy is screwed up."

Tucking her snugly under the heavy cotton blankets, he kissed her forehead and turned around to leave after gathering his stuff when he heard a faint, muted sound.

He stopped.

'What was that?'

"You are... my family," Cherie rasped through her cracked, parched lips as she reached her left arm out of the covers to weakly grasp onto Hyukjae's fingers that were by his side.

"Cherie?" Hyukjae croaked, feeling his lungs constrict and tears spring to his eyes as he tenderly took her hand and laced her fingers with his, afraid of letting go.

She was alive. She was finally back.

~*~*~*~

Eleven Hours Later

"The defendant is charged with attempted murder with malice aforethought, premeditated voluntary manslaughter, two counts of private property trespassing, and the felony offense and perpetration of blackmail. The jury has unanimously agreed for the defendant to receive twenty years of imprisonment plus parole, in addition to three years of probation, a $390 000 fine, and one hundred hours of community service under warden supervision. Court is dismissed."

"Why would he go after Vince too? It just doesn't make any sense."

"I don't know, and I never want to. Crazy lunatics were never inclined to follow a logical path of destruction anyway," Hyukjae said as he rubbed Cherie's shoulders in a comforting way as they got up from their seats in the audience of the proceeding. "At least we're all safe now."

"It's all my fault that he's going to prison. It's my fault that he hit Vince," Cherie whimpered as she pounded her fists to his chest.

Hyukjae let her. It was painful seeing her beat herself up for someone else's miscreance.

"Why aren't you stopping me?" she pouted as he gazed into her watery eyes, glistening with tears of guilt.

"It's not your fault that he's serving time for the things that he did. You didn't entice him to do it, you didn't force him against his will to do, and you certainly did not expect to overdose in rat poison because of him. Your heart is too fragile and kind Cherie, but you need to see that he needs to do hard time to reflect on his crimes," Hyukjae soothed as he held onto both her hands tightly.

Cherie inhaled and let it all out.

"You're right. But then it's your fault."

"My fault?" Hyukjae asked incredulously.

"You jinxed me saying how I would turn into a vegetable yesterday morning!" Cherie said as she wiped away a stray tear, relieving the tense atmosphere.

Hyukjae stiffened, then squeezed his eyes shut.

'How stupid of me. Stupid stupid stupid!"

"Let me make it up to you. I would do anything you tell me to," Hyukjae pleaded, or more accurately, begged as he lowered his head, ashamed.

"Silly, I was just kidding," Cherie smiled, and stole a kiss from her boyfriend. "Come on. Let's go back home to get ready for the party tonight."

-----------------------------------------------------------