"Look into my eyes

It's where my demons hide."

In the morning, we wake to see Mir curled up. He looked fine, but as I lift up the blanket we draped over his skinny bones, we see on his hand, the oval crescent of where his nail pressed into his skin, and dried blood, a dark, rusty red, surrounding the cut and dripping in streaks down his hand. Cheondung takes one look at it, and closes his eyes, swallowing slowly, as if his throat was tight, and puts his head in his hands. I don't understand. Why does Mir do this, the cutting, of himself? Is he trying to tell us something, that we can clearly see by the way he acts? Does he want to kill himself, to let his captures win? What does he want? What does he think, what are his wishes? 

What did they do to him?

What did they do to make him so lost, so gone? Who are those people that took him, and then abandoned him in the rain for us to find? Why did this happen to our sweet, innocent maknae? Who never wishes to hurt a thing, and yet is now digging a knife into his skin, digging a nail into a vein? Where is he? Where did he go?

Maybe, if we had Mir's captures tied up in front of us and a couple months, we could answer some of those. But some questions are never meant to be answered, and some questions are never meant to be asked. But I want to, I want to ask them, and I want Mir to answer them, because this is hurting me so much and I can't do something, I can't do anything, because this is a battle between Mir, and we, MBLAQ, are just onlookers that think we can do something. That think we can hold the tide back, that think we can take the moon in our hands, that think we can drink the oceans in a day. Some things are simply impossible. Some things are made to be unbreakable, to be an unreality infinitite steps away. I hope that Mir is not one of them, but now, I am not so sure. 

Seungho hyung, since he's the only one Mir seems to trust right now, wakes Mir up, touching him gently on the shoulder. I herd Joon and Cheondung out, not wanting Mir to have an audience, and lead them to the kitchen, pushing them down to sit at the kitchen counter. Having nothing to do, I busy myself in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, my mind on Seungho and Mir in the other room instead of the fruit in front of me.

A few minutes later, Seungho, looking relieved, leads the way into the bright kitchen, Mir, his arms wrapped around an aborable stuffed bunny and his eyes wide and shy, shuffles in silently afterward. It's dead silent, and I still my knife. Mir swallows, his right hand habitually wrapping around his bony left wrist, and his red hair is uncombed and matted, flopping in front of his eyes. Joon can't look at him, and instead keeps his focus on the counter, where he had pulled out a deck of hands and had dealt himself a single game of solitaire. Even from here, across the counter, I can see tears gathering under his dark eyelashes, but he blinks they away so they don't fall, and his face is shadowed from Mir, and I suddenly feel a terrible sadness for Joon. I know what Mir meant to him, and I know that that Mir is replaced by this new one, and I know Joon has always had a heart like glass: Crystal clear, but so breakable, and so hard to piece back together to what it was. 

Cheondung raises his head to give Mir a tentative smile, and when Mir sees that, his face stills, and his mouth goes slack. I can see the shine of tears under his eyes, and one falls, a lonely drop of salty water that carves a glistening trail on his cheek, but I pretend not to notice, and Cheondung does too, closing his eyes, and turns back to the counter. Seungho sits on the bar stool next to Cheondung, and gestures to the one next to him; will you sit? Mir doesn't, and instead stands there, his eyes that are surrounded by his chalky skin and dark circles, focused on the cards that are flipping by Joon's slender hand, switching, trading places, and his eyes follow every movement, like he knows the game, and he probably does. 

Joon and Mir were, suprisingly, the members that played a lot of cards. They would play all kinds of games; any with either two players or one. The competitions were loud and long, but the rest of us just ignored it, because... we just did. It was something that they did, together, and we didn't want to ruin it.

In the four months Mir was gone, Joon had bought a pack, the third day after his disappearance. Just a standard pack, black and red, spades and heart and clubs and diamonds, but Joon wore down those cards until the edges were soft and folded, the cards slightly bent and the paint rubbing off. I think he played every night, because I know he can never sleep, and I think he couldn't bare night after night with his thoughts. So he played, game after game, and it gave him a little peace, thinking that a part of Mir was with him, that Mir would come back to join him, that he could play those games with two again. I know at without those cards, Joon would have never made it as long as he did. 

And here they are again, that pack, spread out in two rows of five, and Joon is so focused, so desperate to escape his own mind now, that he doesn't notice Mir's eyes on him, he doesn't notice the intent Mir has in his game. I wonder how he would react if he did. 

I lay out the breakfast, spooning portions onto the plates, and put the plates in front of each member, but Joon doesn't look at it. I slide the last plate over to Mir, who is standing, the stuffed bunny still clutched in his hand, the bandage still plastered on his cheek and white still wrapping wherever his skin split over his prominent bones, and raise my eyebrows. 

Will you eat? It implies, but to me, it also says this: Will you live?

Mir his lips, then darts his eyes to mine, than to the food, then back to me. His heavy gaze is not on Joon, which is unusual, and I didn't know how old his eyes were until now. I didn't know how much sadness he truly held until I can see his eyes, like this. So dark, so stained with sights that no one would want to see, so used to tears and dirt and pain and everything, that I can't meet his eyes for long. I drop mine, feeling suddenly ashamed, and when I dare to look up at Mir again, he is still watching me, and now he is watching me with a question. 

Are you strong? Are you strong enough to take the kind of pain I've endured for months? 

No. No, I'm not. I'm not strong enough to go through what Mir has gone through, and then to come out of it alive. I am not strong enough to fight the demons back for so long, as Mir has, and I have never respected what he is, who he is, quite as much as I am now, in this conversation that I don't know who I'm having it with.

Do you know what it feels like? Do you think you know what they did to me?

No. No. I don't. My life has been so easy, so pathetic, that I am humbled, humbled by the old eyes of this 22 year old who has been through the world, who has been through hell, and is standing, cut but not bleeding, in front of me. I don't want to know, and yet I do, but I am not strong enough to know.

Do you know what it feels like to fight back the demons, night and day?

I can't fight them for an hour. I am not strong, I am not strong like this person in front of me, the one that doesn't know he is asking me these questions, because somehow I am asking them of myself. 

And then he moves, and as an answer to the question he doesn't know I asked, he takes the plate, steps back. I hand him a fork, and he takes it, unwillingly, and lowers his head, and as he brings the plate closer to him, a strange expression comes over his face, and then it morphs into an expression I do know by sight; fear. He is afraid, of something, that I don't know and can't see and can't hear but he can, because he lives in a world, halfway between hell and earth. It must be a terrible place to be, trapped between. 

I want to wish I would take his place. I want to wish that I would take this pain instead, that I would take the weight of the world from Mir's skinny shoulders and put it on my own, and let him walk free. I want to know that I would make that trade in a heartbeat, if offered the choice. 

I want to. But I don't know what I would do if I was offered that, and I am afraid I would let Mir live, and I am afraid I would be a coward, and I am afraid of what I am capable of if I won't let this boy, this boy with so much ahead of him and such a life to live, fall to his knees because the weight is too much, and I am afraid I would let him be crushed, if I was offered this choice; me, or him.

Mir has backed away, but his eyes have suddenly calmed, and his face has smoothed over, and it is empty now, the fear is gone, and he is empty, again. And as he turns to leave the room, to leave us again, to leave Joon and Cheondung and Seungho and the cowardly me, he stops, his dark eyes catching something. He walks up to Joon, who hasn't looked up once, and has propped his chin on his hands, studying his cards like they held the answer to the world, and I can see him still forcing the tears to stay. Mir shuffles up to him, and with a slender hand and a quick touch, he flips a card, apparently the right one, because Joon starts with suprise, and Mir turns, his head bowed, and fades out of the room.

Joon, finally, with his eyes still fixed on that flipped card, he lets a tear fall. As Joon's shadow falls back, I can see the card, with the paint crisp and clear, the corners barely wrinkled, that Mir flipped over: An ace of spades.