[personally I don't know how graphic is too graphic but there are mentions of blood in this chapter]

The weekend came much faster than I expected and everything went…surprisingly well. It was somewhat awkward at first, establishing this “friendship” of ours. Jin Joo left after the second day, leaving Myungsoo to wallow about his broken sister bond. That kind of thing must run in our messed up family.

Jin Joo and Sehun strangely bonded, even though she kind of destroyed his office room. She just didn’t hate him as much as she hated everyone else. Maybe it was because he was a human and she knew that. The weak passed smoothly, as if the word “friend” alone was enough affirmation that the two of us could actually get along.

We began casually talking to each other very easily. Found out that he’s into sarcasm as much as I did. Despite the big fight between him and his girlfriend, the attitude around me was different than the one around me. Not that the idea around that was any different than before, but he acted…playfully. He liked to joke.

Maybe the reason I asked him about the place we first took pictures is because I was uncomfortable with this new part of Sehun. I needed a little reminding of the past as things began to really change. I wasn’t ready yet.

“Do you remember where the lake is?”

“You mean do I remember that one time you fell on me? Oh, sure.” Great, now he’s comfortable with sarcasm. It was his own fault I fell anyways. Funny that he’s looking back at it humorously.

I told him to meet there for the next lesson. No matter how awful of a failure our very first lesson was, I felt like going back to the lake. I felt like the water would calm me. I was tempted to meet Sehun there as ‘snow,’ to keep another secret moment just for myself, but bravery empowered me just because of the word “friend.”

Sehun took the liberty himself to start taking pictures on his own, expertly handling the camera like it was second nature to him. I stood a couple of meters behind him watching him play with all of the settings, bend down to get different angles, even throw things into the water to get a rippling effect. Even though I didn’t teach him that, it’s something I would have done myself.

He bent down and stuck his hand in the water with a different glint in his eye. I was paying attention to that less, more so looking at how close his camera was to the water. I stepped down, closer to the lake so he wouldn’t do anything stupid like drop one of my good cameras into a lake. Don’t need him paying for another one of my cameras.

“Oh, hey.” He greeted me, just like he’s normally done for the past week; a nod of the head, a tiny shy smile, and if I wasn’t mistaken…a small increase of his heart beating. He pushed himself up and brushed a little mud off his knees. Typically this rule applies to girls, but the hotter the weather got, the closer we got to summer, the shorter his clothes got. Exhibit right here, this strange…black and white patterned shorts and a black muscle tee. It fit his style, but it made me weak.

“Let’s skip the lesson today.” He placed his camera back into the bag draped on his shoulder and set it off to the side. He placed his hands on his hips and stood tall, looking smugly down at me.

“I came all this way…” The smirk on his face told me he knew he was being annoying, and he knew it bothered me. He didn’t care, because he continued to be annoying…but cute at the same time. “So we’re not going to do anything?”

He shook his head, but the smile was still there. He has something planned, I just know it. “Do you trust me?”

I chuckled, might as well give in if he’s actually planned something. “Sure Aladdin, what do you have in mind?” Without hesitation he threw his backpack off to the side and took his shirt off.

“Um…what the hell?”

Broad muscly shoulders, defined collarbones, perfectly shaped…abs, why is his body so perfect? As for me, the heat on my cheeks and the increase of my heart rate made it very very difficult to focus on anything other than…shirtless Oh Sehun.

“How about a little swim?” Just like that his shorts came off, thrown somewhere in the distance. And I refused to look. I could have fainted right there if I saw anything else other than seeing a man without a shirt on, especially when that man happened to be the love interest in this complicated story.

Seconds later a splash came from the lake, little trickles of water splashed on my shoes as Sehun waded around smiling to himself. His body may deceive me but he’s a child at heart, how adorable. But I only got a little glimpse.

“Have you ever been to the beach?”

I snorted, out in the middle of our town of nowhere? I don’t even know how many miles the nearest beach was. I wanted to go to a beach, but there’s no way I could. “Nope.”

“Neither have I, but I’ve been to a pool. And I don’t care. Now get in or I’ll drag you in myself.”

I stared down at the water, acting like I was worried about what could be found underneath. Sehun was quick to catch on. “Is…the water safe?”

I folded my arms and smirked at his floating body. I could only see down to his collarbones in the green water, something I didn’t know if I should curse or be grateful for. I mean how many times am I going to see him shirtless? This’ll be the only one most likely.

I shrugged my shoulders. “You’re swimming in it.”

He narrowed his eyes and raised those bushy eyebrows in question. “Is it…not safe?”

“Well, I heard piranhas are out this time of year.”

“, In Hye!” Sehun frantically splashed his way to the surface, while I burst out laughing. And he stared, that wondrous stare looking directly into my soul. His arms were moving back and forth to keep himself afloat.

I awkwardly coughed, “I was joking.”

He pushed his way out of the water and I averted my eyes at the last second, only getting a millisecond of his fully wet body. I wiggled my fingers to distract myself, but that didn’t last long. Arms were wrapped around my waist and I lunged forward and splashed into the water fully clothed.

“Oh Sehun!”

I was dunked under the water for a mere second, then brought back up to hear laughing. Laughing. It was the first time I had ever heard him laugh like that before, the child at heart and the joyous sound coming from his mouth.

My head was against his broad, bare shoulder. Water surrounded us and time stopped for us, in this little innocent moment we had. I felt his legs kicking underneath me, keeping the both of us floating, and moving to the middle of the lake. My turn to stare, the ever increase of the blush on my face spread to heat the rest of my body.

His laughter died down and his eyes changed from those perfect crescent moons to wide and curious. My hands were on his shoulders for balance; it was like his heartbeat pounded throughout his body, increasing to match mine.

His lips curled up again on one side, not as childish, but a bit wicked. His hand was on the top of my head and suddenly my head was submerged under the water again. I felt his body move farther from me and when I resurfaced he was a good few feet away.

I swam back and got out of the lake, dripping everywhere.

The first thing I took off was my boots. Sehun dragged my in wearing literally everything and wet shoes and socks were not fun. Laying those out to dry, I contemplated if I could actually take anything else off. I was wearing a black camisole underneath my long sleeved shirt, but I didn’t want to take that off.

Showing skin isn’t my thing. It never has been but neither am I a fan of getting sick. I ed and wrung it out, leaving out on a flat rock to dry. All the while, I felt eyes on me, and the lake was quiet. I pulled the hair tie out and let my soaking hair fall past my shoulders.

Sehun got out as I was trying to untangle the nest that was my hair, put his shorts back on and then sat down neck to me on the rock. “You have to admit that relaxing is nice.”

I caught a tangle on the webs of my fingers and hissed. “Hmm, nice for you maybe.”

He lay down next to me, letting the sun hit his glorious body. I felt his eyes once again, this time not ignoring it. Without paying attention to his distracting body I looked at his eyes, and they seemed kind of…sad. “What?”

“We’re friends now.” It sounded like he was asking for me to confirm it, so I nodded. “Well, ask me something.”

I tilted my head and gave him a confused look. “You don’t have questions? Or anything you have to say?”

He just asked me if there was anything I wanted to say to him, and my mind was completely blank. After all that the two of us had been through, this war we had been fighting for the past 8 years or so, you would think I wouldn’t know where to begin to ask why all the torment. But my brain fizzed out, and only a single memory came to my mind. I didn’t realize it, but that certain thing alone stuck out more than anything.

“A while back…you called me a child, but I know that you regretted it. Why?”

Back when we were still butting heads, when he thought that believing in werewolves was a silly, irrational idea. I remember that look clearly, it was so clear partially because that same look was on his face now.

Sehun assumes that I don’t know what it means to be a friend. He assumed correct. In exchange for the photography lessons that continue to go on, despite his girlfriend’s opinion of us, he’s teaching me how to be a good friend. A good friend will talk normally around someone. A good friend will share his or her interests with the other. A good friend won’t be afraid to answer questions. A good friend…shows that they care about the other person.

I wonder if he could see my type of care. I want him to be able to be comfortable around me too. For him, that means opening up what hurts him. “I turned into my brother when I said that, calling you stupid for believing that. I know I said I my biggest fear was my brother, but it’s really becoming him. I refuse to be like him.”

He sat up and found his shirt, putting it on and ruffling his still damp hair. “Sorry, I don’t expect you to get that.”

I scoffed, he really said that? He looked back at me with a bit of judgment. “You saw how my brother treated me. I’m the one person to get that.”

He softened his face; we’re more similar than he realizes, but I think he just figured that out. He was right about one thing though, relaxing like this made it a good day.

“In Hye what are you doing?!” My mother’s harsh voice was as fresh as it could be. The red painted on her pointy nails matched the red from my arm as I was dragged out of the house. My father was already in the car, waiting.

Woohyun, the confused teenager who couldn’t protest against them. He stood outside of our house and watched my 11 year old self get thrown into the back seat. There was a bag of my things in the trunk, a big bag. A child like myself could only think of one thing. They were sending me away.

I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to Woohyun, as the fear sank in that it was probably the last time I would see him. My mother spoke to him softly, and got into the passenger seat. As the car drove off, I turned around in the backseat, unsure if there was something in my brother’s eyes. To me…it looked like he was crying.

My parents didn’t speak to each other, nor did they speak to me. They just stared out to the long, outstretched road with one lane. Tall trees surrounded either side as we got further away from the place I desperately wanted to call home.

The accident was still a blur to me. Something made my father swerve, something ripped the car in half, and something kept me alive instead of instantly joining my parents. There was blood dripping down my face, and my arm. The back half of the car was thrown in off the side of the road into this trench.

I clicked the seat belt off and climbed out, seeing the shards and remains of the other half of the vehicle, the fire that started and limped over to where my parents were. My father was already dead, there were bloody pieces of shrapnel sticking out of his stomach, his face…what was left of it was dripping onto the steering wheel.

One of my mother’s eyes were open, the other was shut from the blood dripping down her face. But the look…no remorse. No sympathy or any sense apology from her. Why did she have to look at me…so disappointed?

Nightmares about some fiction that had greater meaning behind it, I could handle that. I couldn’t deal with memories that were all too real. A cold sweat spread on the back of my neck as my eyes greeted the darkness of my room.

After such a good day, why do memories like that come back again? A sickening nauseated feeling bubbled up inside me, making me feel restless. I tossed and turned in my bed throwing off every, blanket but nothing helped.

Wrapping a blanket around me, as quietly as I could I walked down our stairs and into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. I gulped in down in a few seconds and sat at the island, resting my head against the cold marble.

I heard a pair of footsteps coming down the stairs, but I kept my head down on the island counter. The feet shuffled through the kitchen turning the light switch on, assuming to the stove from the light clicking of the fire.

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” Myungsoo…of course. Comes to my rescue when I least expect it.

“Sorry I woke you.” The metal stool right beside me scraped slightly against the tile floor.

“Well, that’s really not what’s wrong, is it?” He poked my head and then ruffled my hair. His affectionate side was coming out again, which I personally think has to do with Jin Joo being here just a few days ago.

“No…”

“Come on, In Hye. You know you are family. Enough with this pity party stuff.” He softly chuckled, getting off his seat to turn the kettle off before it whistled. I waited a few moments, all the while, hearing some cupboards open and close, little tinkling, and was then handed a cup of hot cocoa with three mini marshmallows.

“I had a nightmare.” I said, using my nails to pick out the marshmallows and pop them into my mouth one by one. For some reason, the sweetness was calming me down even though this is probably going to result in a sugar high.

“About?” he asked expectantly, taking a loud sip out of his own cup. I let out a heavy breath of air, there was no way I could maneuver my way of out this and not tell him anything.

“The day they died.”

He slowly set down his cup on the counter, eyes going dully dark. I knew he didn’t need any context at all. I rarely talk about that day, and when I do it’s only to him. When his mother first got involved with our family and what to do with me and Woohyun, the first thing she thought she could do was sending me to a physiatrist. Let’s just say she didn’t like me saying that my parents were trying to dump me off somewhere.

“You got over that.”

“I guess I didn’t.” I wrapped my hands around the hot drink and took a sip of the cocoa. Myungsoo told me to try and get some sleep and went back up to his own room. It wasn’t really possible for me to go back to bed; I was afraid to have any more awful memories resurfacing.

If the bags under my eyes weren’t evident enough, I tried drinking coffee in the morning to get me awake. Turns out it just made my stomach hurt.

“Well you look awful.” Sehun came up next to me, with Jongin who found it all too casual to see Sehun talking to me.

I glared at him and continued walking. “This whole friend thing means that we’re nice to each other right?”

I heard Jongin laughing and Sehun flushed pink. “Oh, wow In Hye you look so tired. Is anything the matter?”

The mockery in his tone was playful, masked behind this concerned face of his. Jongin ran off to his class, while Sehun continued to walk next to me. I looked around for Sera but neither she nor her scent were in range. They must still be in a bad place.

“So uh…my apartment is getting fumigated today. I’m staying at Jongin’s place with his sister but do you mind if we meet at your place for the next few days?”

I gulped back and bit down on my lip. I didn’t know if I had to refuse him because of my family issues or I had to say yes because of this whole friend thing. Then again, at my age of 21 I was pretty sure that I had a say in who comes over and who doesn’t…as far as whom I personally brought.

I gave him my address but he said he didn’t need it if we were just going to walk together anyways. I made it through my exhaustion on the idea of Sehun going into my house. It was probably not a big deal at all for me to be at his apartment, but I was worried about the two over protective men that were going to question why a younger male would be in our house.

Walking to my house with Sehun was giving me anxiety and the walk seemed so much shorter than it used to be. Maybe that’s because I had someone to talk to unlike how I normally am.

No one was home. Not that it was unusual to come home to an empty house, but it made me incredibly relieved that Sehun wouldn’t get immediately chewed up by my brother or my cousin.

It was like déjà vu, him coming into my house and sitting down on the couch, me giving him water like he did for me; just as awkward as the other time. I looked over our essay and realized we were almost done. Even though the point of our essay wasn’t something I agreed with, there were a solid 12 pages written on the document.

It made me start thinking about what would happen once these two projects were over. There wouldn’t be anything to connect us anymore, not in his mind. There’d be no reason for either of us to be around each other anymore. I let my hands hover over the keyboard on my computer before a scent picked up in my nose.

“Myun—L…who let you out?” The first name I could think of as a cover. Myungsoo was in his wolf form standing in the hallway. Yep, I’m in trouble. Big…big scary trouble. I didn’t even know he came in, let alone changed into his wolf form. You’re getting too good at masking your scent.

“You have a dog?”

Apparently so…Myungsooo walked over to the couch and jumped up on it. He then proceeded to sit directly on my lap. …And now my older cousin is sitting on my like the big idiot he is. “What are you—Ok no—this is not a thing—this is not ok.”

Sehun stifled a laugh, but it was considerably obvious he found this amusing. I was glad though, he found it amusing rather than shocking. Thankfully Myungsoo had a dog like characteristic about him, and looked more like that than a wolf. Or Sehun just liked to treat wolves just like dogs.

He was trying to tell me something, but he wasn’t going to do it like this…sitting on me. “I’m just going to…take him outside.” Myungsoo jumped off me and ran out to the back, quickly changing into his human self and dragged me out to the back patio. Kind of a big change from the little “family” moment we had.

“Calm down your hormones, you’ll set us all into mating season!”

Blood rushed to my cheeks. Not my intention. Definitely not my intention. “I-I didn’t mean-“

“This is why you don’t bring your mate home, In Hye!”

“What was I supposed to do? I can’t go into town and his apartment is getting fumigated. You and Woohyun aren’t giving me a lot of options.” Before storming back into the house to finish my project, I turned back to him again. “This whole thing is out of my control.”

I slammed the back door and marched into the living room, dropping myself down on the adjacent couch. Sehun didn’t say anything to me but he did give me a funny look. We finished our first paper that day. Technically we didn’t have to work together for the other one, but Sehun wanted to stick to both the weekday schedule and the weekend schedule.

We met again the next weekend, this time I was led by Sehun. He had his own bearings in the forest now, finding his own places and little nooks of his own. He was taking me somewhere, I just didn’t know where. He was taking an unusual roundabout way of doing it.

It was a bumpier terrain, lots of jumping down and climbing, and jumping down again. I wasn’t too bad at keeping up with the unleveled ground, my boots had much more friction than Sehun’s shoes. And he was risking walking closer to edges with his camera in his hand.

Well…he slipped. And the camera in his hand slipped out of his hand and over a small cliff. I heard it sliding down a rock, but no smashing. “Oh, God. In Hye I’m-“

“Save it.” I jumped down over to where the camera was, which seemed like a shorter drop than it actually was. I landed and stumbled on my own feet, landing flat on my but.

“What are you doing?!” Although Sehun’s voice was laced with concern, he peered over the edge afraid of the height.

“Much to your surprise I can fix this.” It wasn’t shattered like my lens was before, just a few cracks here and there, easily fixable.

“I don’t think jumping off a cliff is worth a camera.”

I looked back up at him and shook his camera in my hand. “Usually when one breaks a possession of another, an apology follows.”

He rolled his eyes instantly and flung his long legs over the cliff, attempting to slide down. It was hysterical watching his huge self getting down here, as he shirt started riding up from the rock behind him. He jumped down, almost knocking me over in the process, and latched onto my body for support.

With a simple change of the wind direction, a putrid, sour stench filled my lungs, but not Sehun. It wasn’t as strong for him. I plugged my nose immediately. The stench of rotten flesh threw off all my senses.

“What’s the matter with you?” I ignored him and followed the smell carefully. The smell got stronger as the terrain began evening out more. Sehun had been beckoning behind me asking me to slow down, but there was no stopping me when the smell of a dead animal was nearby.

What both of us saw almost made me throw up. They were dead for a long time already, but there was no sign of any dripping blood off any of the animals.

“Holy……” Any animal you could find in the forest was in that pile. A bear, a dear and her…doe, raccoons and rabbits. All dead. “In Hye is that the…” His eyes were locked straight on the little dear, and I knew it was the same one that I saw being born. His hand met my shoulder and squeezed it, his hand was shaking with shock. “What the hell kind of animal kills all these animals?”

So simple minded to think that an animal did this. Not an animal…some kind of monster. It got me thinking. The curfew that my brother put on me, something he is actually trying to protect me from. Woohyun knows what’s out here, and there’s no way he’s going to keep it from me now.

There's 2% battery left on my computer but I finished before the new year :D You know what they say: There's always a calm before the ____ ;)