The door flew open under the force of nature that was Kang Baekho. It hadn’t been locked, as Baekho had grown to understand was typical of Ren. It made this easier physically but no less difficult as he stepped over the threshold into an apartment that could easily have been a murder scene. Silverware was everywhere, scattered over the floor along with clothes in a living room that had once been a perfectionist’s dream.

Blood dripped in a trail, small droplets scattered across pure white furniture and carpet. Though he wanted to stop and take a deep breath, prepare himself for what he might find, he knew he couldn’t. And so he ran headlong into Ren’s room, heart clenching as the very image he had imagined, only far worse and far too real, was laid out before him.

The white sheets of Ren’s bed were tangled, blood soaked, around the heap of broken beauty.

Baekho moved in a daze to his side, hearing sirens in the distance that didn’t seem to really register in his brain. This…couldn’t be real. This wasn’t reality, this was a parallel world where everything went wrong, and he would soon be back to the normal world where his Ren was safe and sound. He couldn’t even begin to look for a breath or a pulse, could only wrap a discarded shirt around the mangled arm that hung limply over the side of the bed. Could only kiss Ren on the lips, a chaste brush that resounded inside him with an echo of the past. Hollow. Lost.

He softly lay his forehead against Ren’s, breathing in the other’s scent buried underneath the smell of cosmetics and metallic crimson. He didn’t move until the police pulled him off as they loaded Ren onto a stretcher, performing emergency proccedures he couldn’t have reacted to if his own life had depended on it. He