(Part 2 of the Night Cycling AU 🚴 🚵)

🎧 🎤🚺👠🇰🇷 

It isn’t a very Korean drama-esque scene. Her lips are not on his, and her head is somewhere on his shoulder. Her bike is strewn on the road somewhere, and she hears Takuya groan in agony.

She quickly scrambles off him and kneels before Takuya, trying to get him up. There’s a scrape on her knee and it does hurt, but it can wait. Takuya drags his leg from under the bike and rolls off his bike weakly, his face convulsed in pain. It’s she realizes why he hurts so much; he fell while he was still on his bicycle, and his right leg was crushed under the weight of her and his bike and himself, and rest of his body landed, and was literally pressed down, onto the arches and corners of the bicycle.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Hyosung asks worriedly, her eyes almost popping out of her sockets as she pushes Takuya’s bicycle away and lays his leg out for inspection.

“Nope, I’m not,” he manages, flashing her a grin that looks like a smile and a grimace at the same time.

“Yah, how can you smile like this?” she says but there’s a tremble in her voice and her tone is laced with worry. She can’t make it out clearly in the dark and in the pouring rain, but there’s a evident bruise on his thigh, and scrapes along his knee and shin, with one gaping gash along his calf that’s around 10cm long and 2cm wide in the middle. Hyosung cowers over his body, shielding his face from the rain and tries to recall the nearest place they can go to for medical help, panic bubbling within her.

Suddenly, she feels a hand on her cheek, warm, prodding and unsure. “Hyosung, are you hurt?” Takuya asks and his eyes search hers in concern.

“Is this seriously the time to ask that? You’re injured and I… I’m useless! ” she cries, her eyes filling with tears and blurring her already flawed vision. She even thinks of calling the hospital, but judging by how high, how far away and how rural the place is, combined with the various alleys, nooks, and crannies that an ambulance would never be able to squeeze through, she loses hope on that thought.

Takuya sees her panicking, and struggles to get into a sitting position. “You’re thinking of calling 911 right? Don’t, it’s okay.”

“But I-”

The rain pelts down against their backs mercilessly. “It’s super late now, and if we go in, they’d have to check our IDs. Which we’re kind of not supposed to reveal,” Takuya reasons, reaching out for his bike and checking for any damaged parts.

A streak of lightning lights up the gloomy night sky, followed by various claps of thunder that Hyosung definitely did not expect.

“What the hell!” she screams, and finds herself in Takuya’s arms. She almost loses herself in his embrace, his comfort, and then she registers his laboured breath against her neck and comes back to reality. He’s in pain, and it’s my fault.

She peels herself off him, helps him up and pushes both their bikes under a tree. Hurriedly, she whips out her phone and turns on the GPS. Where on earth is the nearest minimart?? What kind of district doesn’t have a minimart?

“Hyosung,” she hears Takuya say as he limps his way towards her, “you shouldn’t be under a tree in a storm…”

“Just give me a sec, I’m finding the nearest place to get bandages! The GPS is slow and there’s no 4G, or 3G in this place at all! There’s also no shelter around here other than goddamn trees!”

“No but the lightning’s getting worse! You’re going to get electrocuted!” he shouts as he moves the bikes and places them against a lamp posts and tries to nudge her out of her place.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming! You sure you can walk?”

“I think I can cycle,” Takuya says, his fringe clinging to his face with rainwater as he steels himself to sit on his bicycle, “and oh hey, the headlights on my bike are working!”

 “Are you crazy? How can you cycle like this?” Hyosung exclaims, the anxiety written on her features.

“Then what do you expect? Tell me, where’s the nearest 24-hour mini-mart?”

Hyosung hangs her head in defeat. “2.6 kilometres.”

“Exactly. I don’t think we can limp all the way there while pushing bikes and not get fried by the lightning or not get hypothermia on the way”

🍥🍙🚹🍣🇯🇵

Takuya’s hissing in pain as he gets on the bike, but whatever. He presses on behind Hyosung and cycles in unmentioned agony as he feels the wounds on his knee contract and squeeze then stretch wide open again at every pedal. At least she agreed to let us cycle, it’s good enough. We’re going to catch a cold like this.

Takuya knows Hyosung’s wincing at every boom of thunder that resounds in the sky. He wishes he could be holding her, like just now.

2.6 km is a distance Takuya usually covers in less than four minutes when he’s feeling competitive, but right now it feels like Hell had a party on his legs and it’s been dragging on for hours on end.

Thankfully, the white and green glow of the “24 H” sign from the mini-mart looms ahead. “We’re here!” Hyosung calls from o