"Cover my eyes, cover my ears."

I can hear them. I can. But I can hear them too. I can always hear them, when they are gone. When I'm sleeping, when everything is silent, when noise bursts and comes in and makes me weak, makes me think that I were really there. 

So even if they think I'm not, I am. I'm trying, but it's hard. When there's forever whispers in your ears and trains roaring past your eyes when you're miles from a station. I want to tell them that when I block my ears, when I fold in and blink out the light, it isn't them. It's them. But my mouth won't make words. I don't know why. It can't. My mouth is failing me, and I don't know why. I'm failing. I'm falling.

I'm falling.

~~~

Mir is hunched over, covering his ears, even though we haven't made a sound in minutes. His mouth is opened in a wordless scream, his eyes squeezed shut, but there's nothing we can do. The doctor says that physical contact would do nothing to help him, and so we sit, stiffly, while our dongsaeng suffers. This is all my fault. I'm the leader. I was responsible for Mir, and I let him down. I made him like this. So broken, so hurt, so untouchable. The van jerks a bit, passing a bump in the gravel road, and we're thrown a little to the side. Mir huddles down a bit further, giving a little moan as soon as he finally snaps his mouth shut. I close my eyes, trying to relieve the pain of seeing someone so young, so filled with boundless energy, now so broken, but I open them a millisecond later. I have to care for them now. I have to take care of Mir now, to make up for what I did to him. I have to do it. I have to find a way to fix him, to heal him from the pain. We don't know what happened. We just know it's bad. 

But I'm alone. You never truly realize how hard it is being the leader until you are one. You are alone, because the responsibility is yours alone. And then Byunghee, who's sitting next to me, slips his hand into mine, and gives me a small smile, as big as he can give, because no one could truly smile now. And I'm reminded that I'm not alone. I have him. I have Cheondung, and at least some of Joon, who's been to distraught to really do anything in the three days since Mir was found, soaking wet, alone, in our yard.

As we're no longer MBLAQ, we're being sent to some distant house on a calm, empty beach, because Mir can't deal with really any sort of noise right now, much less the noise of Seoul. So we are moving out here, left to our own devises. But I don't know how we're going to do this. I really don't know how. 

~~~

I try to sleep. I do. But even with the hours in the car, I can't. I just keep picturing the frantic G.O hyung, rushing in, soaking wet, Mir draped over his arms, the thunder still rattling everything outside, to be framed in the doorway by yellow light, illuminating them briefly before plunging the whole house into darkness. 

And I keep looking across at Mir, who looks so cold. So alone. The white bandages that wrap around his arms, his legs, his neck, aren't as prominent as they should be, against his deathly pale skin. I wasn't incredibly close with Mir, despite us being the two rappers, but still close, as groups with five members are bound to be. But we're not MBLAQ anymore. Not now. So what are we then? Really? Just five guys, sitting silently in a van, one so broken it might be forever. And what are we supposed to do about it? What can we do, really? 

So I just sit, watching the landscape flash past, trying not to look at Mir, even though I want to. But what would that do? Nothing. It would just make it worse, seeing him so gone. So I don't look. I focus on the trees, in all shades of green, fly past, and try to think that Mir was okay. That this was just a vacation, that we were still idols and MBLAQ, that we were all here, physically and mentally. That we would go to the beach and play in the water and relax, and maybe in a couple days we'd go back and preform Smokey Girl for our A+'s, and everything will be right again. 

And I can believe that. I almost do. I've almost convinced myself that everything was just a dream, that it was all fine. But then the driver spoke, softly, that we were going to be there in a few minutes, and I snap out of it. I finally look at Mir, and that illusion shatters. And it only makes the pain worse. It doesn't make it better.

~~~

I can't help it. I just keep staring at Mir. I don't know what I'm looking for; maybe something to reassure me that the old Mir was in there somewhere, something to help me heal him, or maybe I'm just looking. Four months. Four months is a long time, but I had always thought that when we found Mir, we would find Mir. Not this broken person, who flinches at the slightest sound, the slightest touch. He must feel the heat of my gaze. He must. I'm burning a hole through his head. But he doesn't look up. Not once, not even when the driver stops the car and announces, softly, that we're here. I stand up, ducking my head to avoid hitting it on the car's ceiling, when Mir doesn't respond.

I shake his shoulder, just a little, to let him know we were here, but he jumps like I have a knife in my hand and retreats, eyes now fastened on me and widened to record size. I back away, feeling some kind of terrible loss at his reaction. He was gone. He was truly gone.

I couldn't get out of the van fast enough. 

~~~

I watch Joon try to signal Mir to get up. But he did wrong. I don't know how to get Mir out of the van any quicker, I just knew that there must be a better way. But Joon jumps back to, and as he turns around, he looks so sad. Mir was clingy to him, I remember, and Joon took advantage of that, just a little. I think he liked the attention. But now Mir isn't that boy, and Joon doesn't know what to do. None of us do. So we just climb out, Mir moving robotically as we try to steer clear, to not make him more upset and afraid as he already is, and we file out of the van, one by one. 

The driver sweeps his arm back a little, and says in that same soft voice he's been using all along, "welcome home." 

It was a good-size, western style house, painted a mild yellow. A balcony hung out from the second story, and all around us I caught the sound of rustling grass, and the faint sounds of the sea. My shoes sunk into light colored sand, and as I inhaled, I caught the strong scent of salt, mixed in with a little bit of sickening sweetness.

It was a nice house, but something was forbidding about it, or at least it looked that way to me. This was were we were tasked with the impossible: getting Mir back. This was where we had to try, at least, to bring him back. This was where, I hoped, we would all heal. I hope.

________

Yeah, I know. I lied. I said I wouldn't start this in a while, but here I am, like two days later, starting it. I got so excited though, so I decided to write the first chapter!

So this is the first time Im writing this kind of story, so please comment and tell me what you think, and subscribe if you like it! 

THANKS FOR READING!!!