How could they expect me to go back to sleep afterwards as if nothing had happened?  As if I hadn’t watched three of the night staff forcefully restrain Ryeowook, who was crying and screeching like an animal being brought to the slaughterhouse.  As if I hadn’t noticed his bloodstains on the walls and floors, a result of his frantic struggles.  As if I hadn’t seen the way his entire body slowly went limp after they shot him with a tranquilizer gun so they could get him on the gurney and wheel him to the ER downstairs.

After they took him away, they mopped up all the blood and sterilized his side of the room using bottles of cleaning fluids.  They stripped Ryeowook’s bed of the bloody sheets and confiscated the knife on the ground.  As they walked out, they told me that Ryeowook was going to be okay and I should try to get some rest.

Rest, my .

I spent the remainder of the night staring at Ryeowook’s empty bed.  All I could think was ‘why?’.  It had been four days since our argument.  Four days since Ryeowook had started staying up ‘reading’.

How had I not noticed him cutting in the middle of the night?  I had been mere feet away from him during the entirety of those four nights.  I had watched him do it, under the impression that he was reading in bed.  I tried to picture how he must have done it: hiding it all underneath the blankets and that book, bent over so that I couldn’t see.

I could have prevented all this from happening.  If I had spoken to him earlier on, if I had gotten up and walked the five steps it took for me to reach his bed and peer over.  How could I have been so blind?

‘Please let Ryeowook be okay,” I found myself whispering as the early morning hours passed by and the sun began to rise.  “Please let Ryeowook be okay.  Ryeowook needs to be okay.  That person said he would be okay.”

The next morning, the entire ward was buzzing with the news that Ryeowook had been detained in the middle of the night.  Everyone was talking about it over the mung bean pancakes that we were having for breakfast.  I sat with CL and Tiffany and listened to them and the other patients as they tried to guess what had happened.

“My room’s on the opposite end of the hallway, but I heard screaming.  Screaming and crying,” CL muttered in a worried voice.  She looked at me and Tiffany.  “I hope they didn’t do anything bad to him.  I’m hope he’s okay now, wherever he is.”

Tiffany said nothing and stared at the plastic cup of banana milk in front of her, her eyes dull.  I didn’t know how close Tiffany had been to Ryeowook, but I knew that they talked pretty frequently.  They seemed like good friends.

“I didn’t hear anything.  I was asleep,” she said with a sigh.  Her forehead creased as she frowned.  A second later, she lifted her head and her frown deepened as she looked at me.  “Wait a minute.  Sungmin, aren’t you and Ryeowook roommates?”

I nodded and looked down at my plate.

“Do you know what happened?  You must have seen or heard something.”

“No, I’m a pretty sound sleeper.  I could sleep through a thunderstorm or a typhoon if I had to,” I lied through my teeth.  I absentmindedly stabbed at the pancakes with my chopsticks.  “I don’t know what happened, sorry.”

We patients usually didn’t talk about our issues or why we were admitted to the hospital unless someone asked us, and even then, not everyone wanted to answer the question.  With the exception of the doctors, who seemed to know everything about our symptoms, illnesses and daily living habits, I was the only one who knew that Ryeowook self-harmed because as far as I knew, he never told anyone else.  Likewise, Ryeowook was the only patient who knew I had insomnia.

Tiffany didn’t object to my statement.  She went back to frowning at her banana milk, jaw set and lips pursed in worry.  CL finished her pancakes and went back to the counter to get slices of egg bread.  I continued to pick at my food, for the more I listened to the other patients discussing Ryeowook’s outburst and their concerns about him, the less hungry I got.  I was too stressed do anything, let alone eat.

Sunny noticed as well.

“Sungmin, are you doing okay?  Is there anything you want to talk about?”

There were many things I wanted to talk about, but I didn’t necessarily want to talk about them with her.  I would be leaving in less than two days and from the looks of things, I would never get to see Ryeowook again.  My last memory of the roommate I had spent these otherwise unbearable months with would be the furious look of betrayal on his face as he struggled to tear himself away from the nurses.  That look stirred something inside of me that made my chest feel heavy.  Visualizing it like I was doing right now brought back that same feeling.

“Sungmin?”  I blinked and Sunny’s face came back into view.

“Yeah?”

“Anything on your mind that’s bothering you?”  Sunny sat back in her chair and waited for me to speak up.

I stared at the ground, unable to forget the look on Ryeowook’s face.  It was so similar to the look he had on the night I first caught him.  More than anything, I regretted not doing anything at the time to help him.

Was it too late?

I stopped myself.

This can't go on.  Don’t just tell yourself you need to change, go and ing do it.

“How does one stop cutting?”

“Cutting?”  Sunny raised her eyebrows.

“I haven’t been cutting,” I said quickly before she could get the wrong idea.  I took a moment to think about how to phrase what I wanted to say, choosing my words carefully.  “It’s… it’s about Ryeowook.  He relapsed.  I think he did cut several times in the past several days.”

“We realized that when he was brought to the ER early this morning.  He lost a lot of blood, but we were able to replenish it quickly with the donations we received a few days back.  He’ll be fine.  We don’t enforce full-body checks on most patients in order to give them some privacy, but maybe we should change that.”  She frowned at her hands and looked me in the eyes.  “What’s your opinion?”

At first, I didn’t fully process Sunny’s last few sentences.  Instead, my spirits lifted significantly and I was washed over with relief as I realized that Ryeowook was alive and well.  Thank God.

I allowed myself to smile at the good news, but the smile disappeared almost immediately as I began to think about the problem at hand.

Remember, Sungmin.  This cannot go on.  I forced myself to concentrate.  Full-body checks were definitely an invasion of personal space.  But then again, what if it was for the patient’s own good?

The procedure we were discussing right now could be performed on Ryeowook or other patients like him in the near future.  I tried to put myself in Ryeowook’s shoes and think about how he would feel if he was subject to this type of treatment.  How would he feel if nurses stripped him down on a daily basis to check for scars?  How would he like it if they put even more restrictions on what little freedom he had here?  I realized that the full meaning behind Ryeowook’s words that night had finally hit me, and I was finally beginning to put it to use.

Sungmin, it shouldn’t have taken you this long to realize you were such a selfish bastard: a sorry excuse for a friend that Ryeowook doesn’t even deserve.

Had I known what to do all along and never applied it?  Had I known that as his friend, I should have been more understanding about the situation?  Had I known that I should have been more considerate, but never ended up taking action to change that?

It was time to finally change action and take Ryeowook’s feelings into consideration.

“I guess it depends on the situation and the patient.”  I proceeded to voice what had just gone through my head, and when I was finished, Sunny nodded in approval.

“Interesting answer.  It connects back to your original question.  How does one stop cutting, you asked?  Well, as you said just now, it depends on the person who’s cutting and what’s going on inside their head.”

“What was going on inside Ryeowook’s head that made him relapse?  He was perfectly fine before.  What happened to him?”

“Unfortunately, there’s only one Kim Ryeowook in this world, so we don’t know any of that.  I’m actually glad we’re having this conversation because Joy and the rest of the staff will actually be having a similar conversation later on among ourselves.  That way, we can develop the best course to Ryeowook-ssi’s recovery.”

“Isn’t that just more therapy?  More of what we all of us already go through every day?”  I paused.  “I don’t think that’s going to help.”

“No, not quite.  Individual therapy is designed for the individual’s needs.  Ryeowook-ssi will be placed into a different ward several floors below and we’ll have different therapists help him along the road to recovery.”

“Will… will he be returning to this ward when that’s all over and he starts doing better?”  I knew that it didn’t matter to me because I would be long gone by the time he was done with his treatment, but I wanted to know.  What had he meant last night when he said that he wouldn’t be able to come back and that no one could trust him again?  Did he mean the doctors?

“That will depend on many factors.  For now, let’s focus on how we might be able to help him.  Sungmin, I understand that you were not only Ryeowook’s roommate, but also a close friend of his.  Am I correct?”

I nodded.  Ryeowook was still my friend, even after the turmoil we had gone through in the last couple of days.  I just hoped that he still considered me his friend as well.  And if he didn’t… well, then there was nothing I could do about that, and I would have to learn to accept it.  Deep down, I knew that I didn’t deserve forgiveness at all.  What I could do right now was stop being the conceited I had been before and try to help him in this indirect sense.

The world didn’t revolve around me.  Ryeowook had his own world, and all I had done was it up.

Sunny began to explain.  “There’s no one reason why someone would choose to self-harm.  You might know that there are two broad types of depression: endogenous depression-- that’s depression caused by some sort of chemical imbalance in the brain that might trigger certain emotions.  Those are Ryeowook-ssi’s thoughts and inner conflicts he has with himself.  There’s also exogenous-- that’s a sort of ‘external’ depression that’s caused by outside factors-- certain events, people, places, or anything tangible that might have affected him negatively.  Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.  It’s important to understand that self-harm and depression do not necessarily go hand in hand.  While they are sometimes related, self-harm is not necessarily the product of depression.  Right now we’re going to try and brainstorm some outside factors that might have affected Ryeowook-ssi’s lifestyle and thoughts in unfavorable ways.  He might have self-harmed because of any difficulties he might have had.  Any sort of pressure from the people around him, any sort of abuse, anything really.”

“Okay, then.”

“Now, as his roommate and friend, you’re probably the person who spends the most time with him, whether it’s during therapy or break times.  Have you noticed any difficult or stressful experiences that might have caused him to self-harm?”

I thought back to the past few weeks.  When had it started?  After the talent show?  What had happened that could have triggered him?

“There was a new patient.  His name is J-hope,” I said at last.  “I’d been talking to J-hope more often than I’d been talking to Ryeowook, and I wasn’t paying attention to him as--”

“J-hope?”  Sunny interrupted me with a raised eyebrow.  “Who’s J-hope?”

“One of the new patients.  He got sent here a few weeks back for substance abuse.”  Sunny still looked confused and I tried to elaborate further.  “Black hair, bangs, long face, big smile--”

“Oh, you mean Hoseok-ssi?  Jung Hoseok-ssi?”

I shrugged.  J-hope had never told me his real name before.

“Hmm.”  Sunny moistened her lips.  “So what are you trying to say about him?”

“I don’t know, maybe… maybe Ryeowook was jealous that I was spending more time with J-hope instead of him?  Maybe he got lonely or mad.  All those emotions could have built up over time and he could have started cutting to release that anger.”

But Sunny was shaking her head.

“Ryeowook isn’t my patient, but that doesn’t sound like him.  From what I’ve heard from the staff and some of the other patients, Ryeowook doesn’t like being around people for long periods of time.  Before you got here, he mostly kept to himself.  He doesn’t seem like someone who would get jealous if he was left alone.”

This was news to me.  If Ryeowook didn’t like being around people, why would he have spent so much time hanging around me?

“Sungmin, did Ryeowook show any signs of anger or resentment towards you talking to Hoseok-ssi instead of him?”

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Sunny was right.  Ryeowook was usually good at hiding his feelings, but if there had been anything passive-aggressive about his actions, I would have noticed.

“Never mind then,” I said.  ‘I don’t think J-hope has anything to do with it.”

After that point, we didn’t get very far in our discussion because talking about Ryeowook wasn’t very effective unless Ryeowook was present himself, which he wasn’t.  All we could do was make speculations, which were also useless unless Ryeowook was there to confirm or deny them.

The conversation began to shift back to one of our usual talks, a typical one about how my day had been so far and what I planned to accomplish.  However, the conversation reverted back to the topic of Ryeowook because now Ryeowook was the only thing I could think about.

I ended up spilling everything that happened between us, partially because I thought the extra information might help Sunny figure out how to help him, partially because I wanted to tell someone.  Sunny sat through the entire thing with a straight face.  Once I was done with my story, she began to lecture me about what exactly I had done wrong.

Her lecture lasted about fifteen minutes.  I bore it all willingly because I already knew that my actions were inexcusable.  What made the entire thing worse was that Sunny blamed herself.  Had she not yelled at me the way she did the day I approached her on my own, I wouldn’t have learned from her bad example, she said.

I understood.  I was a terrible human being.  I told Sunny this, and she just sighed.  By now, I knew enough to figure out what the implication behind that sigh was.  I couldn’t just acknowledge the fact that I was a terrible human being: I had to do something about it.  I resolved to visit Ryeowook as soon as I was allowed to.  I would help him.  I would change my self-centered ways.  I would not ignore Ryeowook’s problems and I would do better to prove to him that I was not inconsiderate and heartless.

Sunny watched me write down my goal in my notebook, commenting that I was making a good start and doing this would help me learn from my mistakes and become a better person.  My legs were stiff by the time I got up from the chair to leave for group therapy and I winced as I tried to move them.  The action left my head spinning a little.  I yawned a bit too loudly in an attempt to rid myself of my dizziness.

“You didn’t get much sleep last night, didn’t you?  Didn’t one of the night staff give you some sleeping pills after Ryeowook left so you could get back to sleep?”

I shook my head no.

“That’s funny, they were supposed to,” Sunny muttered as she gathered some file folders together and scooped them up.  All of a sudden, her hands stopped.  “Wait a minute, Sungmin.  Why were you still awake at the time Ryeowook was self-harming last night?  Your night meds should have kept you asleep the entire night.  You should have fallen asleep within fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“Oh.  I didn’t take my meds last night because I wanted to stay up to apologize to Ryeowook.”

“I see.  You really should have been asleep in the first place, you know.”  Sunny frowned again after a fraction of a second.  “But why wasn’t Ryeowook asleep too?  He should have taken his meds back at the common room.  Didn’t he take them?”

I tried to remember what had happened.

“I’m pretty sure he did.”  I looked back at Sunny to see her eyebrows knitted together tightly.  She was gnawing on her lip, and the sight worried me.  “Why do you ask?  Is there anything wrong?”

“The meds.  They should have…”  Her voice trailed off.  Then she cleared and her eyes came back into focus.  “No, it’s nothing.  Everything’s fine.”

The second I stepped out the room and began walking to group therapy, however, the troubled look slipped back onto Sunny’s face.  She stood and began rummaging through some file cabinets.

During lunch, J-hope approached my table, proclaiming excitedly that he was going to be my roommate from now on.  I was confused as to why the hospital would give me a new roommate when I was leaving within a few days, but I didn’t object.  It would be nice, having a friend with me during my last nights here so that I wouldn’t feel lonely.

Throughout the meal, I tried my best to appear happy and cheerful so that J-hope wouldn’t feel awkward that he was the only one trying to make conversation.  Despite my efforts to talk, it was mostly J-hope who was doing the talking.  He went on and on about the dance academy his uncle ran and how much he wanted to join once he got out of here.  He asked me what I was going to do after I got out, but I shrugged and muttered something about reverting back to my normal life.  Luckily, he didn’t ask me to elaborate.

J-hope continued talking even after group therapy was over and visiting hour began.  He took this time to move all his stuff to what used to be Ryeowook’s side of the room, all the time talking about how cool rooming with me was going to be, even though it was only going to be for a short amount of time.  Once again, I tried to immerse myself in what he was saying, but it didn’t work.

I missed Ryeowook.  But in a way, wasn’t this better for both of us?  Him seeing me could make him angrier.  It was probably best if I stayed out of the way.  Me seeing him would burden me with guilt over the fact that I hadn’t done something in time.  Maybe this was doing something.  I tried my best to help Sunny figure things out, and I had failed.  But it was the best I had to offer, and I was satisfied knowing that.  I was feeling resigned again, but it wasn’t as bad as the resigned feelings I usually got.  I could deal with it.  Nothing could faze me anymore, nothing unexpected or eventful was going to happen now that Ryeowook wasn’t here.  He would be going through the treatment he should have gotten from me at the beginning.  There were people at the hospital who were going to care for him and listen to him and make sure that everything would be okay and that he wouldn’t relapse.  All in all, everything I hadn’t been able to do.  Things would go back to normal, Ryeowook would recover, and I would leave.

At least, that was what I thought.

The last thing I expected was Sunny to do was pull me out at dinner, insisting that it was urgent that she talk to me immediately.

“It’s… it’s about Ryeowook,” she started once the two of us sat down in her office.  I realized that she was echoing my words from earlier this morning.  Although I knew that it was likely nothing, that specific word choice unnerved me.

“What about him?  Has there been any news?  Is he doing okay?”  I asked anxiously, immediately concerned for Ryeowook’s health.

“I haven’t spoken to Ryeowook or any of the doctors and nurses who are monitoring him, but I’m sure he’s fine.”

I raised my eyebrows.  Wasn’t that supposed to be her first priority?  Making sure Ryeowook was stable?  Surely that came before telling me whatever she was going to tell me.  I opened my mouth to tell her this, but she cut me off.

“Sungmin, after you mentioned earlier today how Ryeowook was taking sleeping pills but still wasn’t able to fall asleep at night, I did some research, and I found a few things.  As you might know, a while back, all the patients in this ward who had insomnia, meaning you and Ryeowook, were given a new sleeping pill that had just finished being developed.  We wanted to test it out to see if it was successful, and it was.  Do you remember that?”

I nodded.

“Do you also remember that the sleeping pills were working for both you and Ryeowook?  Both of you were sleeping fine, even though you hadn’t been able to do so before?”

I nodded again, not seeing where this was going.

“How does--”

“And do you remember what the social workers who hand out the meds tell all of you before they start passing them out?”

I thought for a second before answering.

“It’s extremely important that we don’t skip out on daily meds because it could mess up the entire treatment process.”

“I’m not sure whether or not Ryeowook ever mentioned this to you, but Joy-- that’s Ryeowook’s usual psychiatrist-- has been on leave for the past several weeks.  Her uncle has been recovering from a brain tumor and she had to go down to Busan to take care of him because no one was else was available.”

“Okay.  So what’s your point?”  I was trying to piece together the pieces of the puzzle.  How was all this related to Ryeowook?  Unless…

“You know the young interns?  Tzuyu and Yeri?”  Sunny’s voice sounded tense as she said the two names.  “They’ve been serving as temporary replacements for Joy.  The two of them are two very capable and very intelligent young ladies, and out of all the other interns we have in the entire hospital, I personally chose them to cover for Joy because I thought it would be good for Tzuyu and Yeri to start interacting with the patients on an even closer basis.  It’s a good experience.”

“But aren’t the two of them really young?  They’re both--”  My tongue twisted in on itself as realization dawned on me.

Was Sunny trying to say that… suddenly, my breath hitched and my entire body froze up.  No.  It couldn’t be.  For ’s sake, this was one of the best hospitals in the country.  They couldn’t have made such a glaring mistake.  The mere idea was preposterous.

“I haven’t questioned either of them, but I spent the entire afternoon looking through our records.  The side effects of all the types of medications we administer to our patients, which patient takes what and in what amount, how long they’re supposed to take a certain medication for, the whole lot.  And… and what I found was that--”  Sunny blinked a few times and took a deep breath before saying the very words I feared she was going to say.

“Either Tzuyu or Yeri mixed up the files and they’ve been assigning Ryeowook the wrong type of medication.  And as you know, taking the wrong medication and missing one’s usual medication can lead to unfavorable results.  There could be significant side effects, both physical and mental.  It doesn’t appear that receiving the wrong medication has hurt Ryeowook physically aside from the fact that his insomnia has returned, but--”

“You mean to tell me that you’ve been giving Ryeowook the wrong medication for weeks on end?”  I growled out.  My body began to heat up as I felt anger wash over me and I started to shake.  “Exactly how long has this been continuing?”  Ryeowook.  My mind flashed back to Ryeowook and how he must have… oh my God.

What must it have been like?  How must he have felt?

Sunny swallowed nervously as she watched me.

“We’re-- we’re not sure, I haven’t--”

“You’re telling me that you don’t even know how long you’ve been giving Ryeowook the wrong ing pills?!”  My voice rose in volume and Sunny shook her head frantically.

“No.  No.  It was my mistake, and I sincerely apologize.  I should have--”

“WHAT TYPE OF HOSPITAL ARE YOU ERS RUNNING?!”  I screamed at the top of my lungs, bolting up from my seat and feeling adrenaline shoot through my body.  “WHAT DO YOU ING MEAN, YOU CAN’T EVEN KEEP TRACK OF YOUR OWN PATIENTS?!”

“Sungmin!  Please, calm down.”  She rose to her feet, an alarmed tone in her voice.

Calm down?  Calm down?  So it hadn’t been my fault at all-- it was Incheon Psychiatric who had ed up and given Ryeowook the wrong meds.  No meds meant that Ryeowook would revert to his old habits.  No meds meant that Ryeowook would become emotionally unstable.  Skipping regular doses for who knew how many weeks could cause serious psychological withdrawal effects.

I didn’t know what the exact effects were and how badly they had impacted Ryeowook, but that didn’t matter.  Tzuyu and Yeri had nearly killed him.

“How am I supposed to calm down after you tell me that your interns have killed my friend?  By not giving Ryeowook the right meds, those two es have ing DESTROYED HIM!”

Sunny flinched at how loudly I was shouting.

“Lee Sungmin, look at me.  Just take a minute and calm yourself.  What happened, happened, and it’s over and done with now.  We need to think about the future effects.  Besides, it’s not just lack of medication that could have caused something like this.  You--”

I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so angry.  I had failed Ryeowook again.  Why hadn’t I noticed something?  Why hadn’t the hospital noticed sooner?  What had they been thinking?  I shook harder and a red haze spread over my vision.  Didn’t Sunny realize just how serious this was?  She had never cared, hadn’t she?  None of them had and none of them would, ever.

Breathing harder than ever, I dug my nails into the skin of my fingers so hard that I drew blood.  I couldn’t do anything but stand there and stare at Sunny.

God, I wanted to ing kill her.  I wanted to grab her blonde hair and rip out chunks of it at a time.  I wanted to snap her arms and legs in half.  I wanted to hear her scream as Ryeowook had screamed when they dragged him away.

“Sungmin--”  Sunny tried one more time.  But I was done with everything she and anyone else in this hellhole had to say to me.  I was done with trying to cooperate, not when Sunny and everyone else here had betrayed my thoughts.  They were excellent liars, all of them.  They had managed to make me believe that they wanted to help us.  I hated them all.

They didn’t ing care, and they never would.

Without giving Sunny the chance to say whatever she had wanted to say, I pulled back my arm, reached across the desk that separated us, and punched her in the face as hard as I could.

It felt good, watching her cry out and stumble back with her hands over her nose.  The blood pounded through my ears, effectively blocking out all other sounds.  Time slowed down and my heart rate slowed.  Sunny removed her hands from her face.

“SECURITY!”  I didn’t hear the piercing shriek, but I saw form the word in slow motion.  A second after it left , my senses returned to me and the world became clear again.  Things went back to their normal speed.  My heavy breaths were audible again.  And Sunny was reaching for the landline phone on her desk.

I hurtled out the room as fast as I could.  My first thought was to get away from here as soon as possible, but then I remembered who had caused all this trouble in the first place.  I my heel and headed the opposite direction towards the nurses’ station on the other side of the hall.  I slammed the door open and crashed inside, ready to kill the two girls once I found them.  There was no one there.  Angry, I let out a scream of frustration.

It took me three tries before I found Tzuyu and Yeri eating in the cafeteria.  The sight of them was enough to drive me over the edge.  For a second or two, I couldn’t do anything but stand breathlessly in the doorway.  I stared at the of them.

My mind flashed to a few weeks ago, when I had first introduced myself to them.  We had talked from time to time and I considered us friends of a sort.  All three of us were teenagers.  If circumstances were different, for all I knew, we could have gone to the same school or something.  We could have been classmates.  I hesitated for a split second, wondering if what I was going to do was the right thing.

Sungmin, they’re the two people who made Ryeowook become like this.  They tore your friendship to shreds.  They made him relapse.  They nearly killed him, and it would have gone on if Sunny hadn’t finally investigated.  They deserve it.

“Hey, Sungmin.  Is there anything wrong?”  Yeri spoke up, looking a little worried.

Anything wrong?!  Were the two of them blind?  Could they not see that there was most definitely something wrong with me?  Their expressions abruptly turned to ones of shock.  I realized that I had spoken my thoughts out loud.

“Are you oka--”

Before Yeri could finish her sentence, she was out cold.  I had already run over and kicked her in the stomach as hard as I could before punching her in the face as I had done with Sunny.  Tzuyu tripped on the table and it tipped over, causing the glass tupperware bowl she was eating out of to fall onto the floor and shatter.  Shards of glass and leftover fried rice were scattered all over the floor.

“YOU MURDERERS!”  I yelled at the top of my lungs.  “YOU AND YERI KILLED RYEOWOOK!  YOU LITTLE-- I SWEAR TO GOD, I’LL KILL BOTH OF YOU!  I’LL MAKE YOU SUFFER AS RYEOWOOK SUFFERED AND SEE HOW YOU ING LIKE IT!”  As I was screaming, at her, I grabbed and pinned her against the table, which was lying on its side.

“I-- I don’t understand,” Tzuyu stammered in accented Korean.  “What are you talking about?  How could we have--”

“!”  I roared, slapping her in the face as hard as I could.  She let out a shriek and clutched at her face, but I grabbed both her wrists and forced them against the ground.  “DON’T ACT LIKE YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!  YOU WERE THE ONE WHO MADE HIM CUT!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MUST HAVE FELT LIKE?”

I didn’t wait for Tzuyu to respond.  I let go of one of her wrists and snatched at a stray piece of jagged glass on the ground next to me.  My chest was heaving.  Tzuyu’s face, as well as the rest of the world, was blurry and tinted red.  Even with my clouded vision, I could see tears streaming down her face and terror in her eyes.

And that was no less than what she deserved.  Ryeowook had suffered so much, and now it was her turn.  I squeezed the glass shard in my hand as hard as I could, feeling the edges cut into my fingers.  But I had become immune to the pain by now.  All I could feel was the rage that was pulsing through me, faster and faster the longer I stared at Tzuyu’s crying figure.

Die.  Die!  DIE ALREADY!

With a drawn-out cry of both anguish and fury, I prepared to cut into the pale skin of Tzuyu’s forearm, inflicting on her the same cuts Ryeowook had inflicted on himself over the past several days.  But before I could bring the glass down, I felt something sharp pierce my neck.  Spots of white filled my vision and I turned around furiously, ready to kill whoever had interrupted me.  I didn’t get to see who had pulled the tranquilizer gun on me because I out almost immediately afterwards.

Hi my readers/subscribers ^^

I wrote most of this chapter ahead of time but kinda rushed the last part just tonight because I absolutely needed to update as soon as I could, and I told myself I would finish it today... I apologize for any grammar mistakes but I'll go back and fix those later in the morning.  And I'm sorry if the last part (and any part of this in general) seems rushed and messily written ._.

Lowkey begging for comments here... a pretty big turn of events took place and I'd love to hear what all of your thoughts on it?  Also lowkey dying because of school O.o one of these days I need to learn how to wake up on time lol

Thank you for reading, please comment, subscribe, and upvote if you haven't already, and have a lovely day everyone ^^