Part 4 ⧫ Inopportune

in·op·por·tune

/inˌäpərˈt(y)o͞on/

adjective

Occurring at an inconvenient or inappropriate time.

_______

When you save a person from almost dying, give them a change of dry clothing and a warm place to sleep, the fact that they repay you with threatening to kill you is rather heartbreaking — and it wasn't fun to learn firsthand. Especially the threatening-to-kill-you part.

So when I woke up in the morning with Byun Baekhyun holding a kitchen knife over my head, it was, to say the least, rather startling. The other startling part was that his shirt was still backwards and inside out, though the amusement faded away because…well, I got the vague idea he was holding me hostage.

I was about to sit up when I remembered the knife over my head could very well split my skull if I did sit up, so I then decided that sitting up wasn't the best idea. The only thing that I had in reach was my pillow, and pillows didn't work as efficient weapons. I didn't need to know firsthand to know that he’d most likely stab me with the kitchen knife first before I successfully knocked him out with hitting him over the head with the pillow, if ever.

“What are you do—” I tried.

“Why am I here?” he demanded. His voice was raspy -- extremely. He sounded sick — like the effects of the cold last night had finally kicked in, full force. “Did you kidnap me?”

“What?”

“Why. Am. I. Here,” he repeated through grit teeth, saying each word exaggeratingly slowly as if explaining instructions to a toddler -- which was kind of ironic, because talking to him yesterday was practically like that or worse.

“Why are you holding a knife over my head?” I countered. His hands were trembling, to the point where I could see the knife moving back and forth, wobbling. I highly doubted Baekhyun would stab me -- the thing I was worried about was him dropping the knife, which would be probably even bigger a tragedy.

“Stop avoiding the question! Answer me.” He lowered the knife so the tip was pointed right at my forehead. I began getting seconds thoughts about him not stabbing me. I tried to shrink into my pillow even more, but the knife followed my movements. “I have a weapon, and I will use it!”

“I didn't kidnap you,” I groaned impatiently, eying the knife. Then, I couldn't help but add, “I’d chose a better person to kidnap if I had to kidnap someone. Please, lower the kitchen knife.”

“If you didn't kidnap me, why else would I be here?”

Looking at the positive side, he wasn't drunk anymore, which meant he could finally get out of my apartment. But looking at his half annoyed half angry face, I decided I preferred depressed drunk Baekhyun over whatever the thing standing in front of me right now was. And the quavering weapon that was still in front of me was getting unnerving. “Seriously, do you actually not remember? Besides, if I kidnapped you, why the hell would I leave knives out in the open and sleep with my door unlocked? You’d be locked in a room tied and possibly dead.”

He gave me a blank, nonplussed expression. “What?”

“God, is that too much for your simple brain to process?” I glanced at the knife that still hovered dangerously close to my head. “And get out of the room while I change. Then I’ll explain it to you later.”

***

“Did you poison this?”

I slapped the chopsticks onto the table in front of Baekhyun as hard as I could. “No,” I almost snarled. “Why are you so determined I’m trying to kill you? In case you forgot, you’re the one who almost did the killing with that knife.”

He muttered something rather insulting under his breath, and it took all of me not to whack him in the back of the head with the frying pan that was temptingly close and in reach.

After a moment of indecision, I went to retrieve my own breakfast from the counter and attempted to ignore the frying pan.

My grandmother slept until rather late on Saturdays, and miraculously, all of the ruckus Baekhyun had created didn't affect her.

Though was still early — not yet 8:30 — I managed to cook breakfast for the two of us. Despite him threatening me with a knife, Baekhyun still looked extremely pitiful. And not very threatening anymore -- now that I looked at him, he had smudges of ashen grey underneath his eyes, and his hair was sticking out in all directions. Besides, the knife was gone. I didn't have the heart to tell him the tear streaks were still visible on his face.

I desperately wanted to ask him about what had happened, now that he was sober, but he didn't look like he was in the mood to do so, nor was I in the mood to get yelled at. With Baekhyun coughing almost violently every ten seconds, he didn't seem like he wanted to talk. I could only conclude he caught a really be cold from staying out in the rain for god knew how long. He had pretty much lost his voice, and what was left was a little more than a croak. It had gotten worse in the past hour or so, since he threatened me with the knife. In the back of my mind, the nice part of me noted that Baekhyun was wearing a short sleeve t-shirt and shorts, and the thermostat wasn’t even and it was utterly freezing, and it probably wasn’t good for his cold, but the fact that I had been threatened by him with a kitchen knife in my own bedroom overpowered the part of me that wanted to be nice.

Besides, me feeding him was already pretty much all the niceness I could squeeze out of myself for Byun Baekhyun. Bonus that he was probably going to eat all the food, my share included. I had never been drunk or had a hangover myself, but I had had a sore throat before and eating was hard, swallowing was hard. I obviously would never be able to eat like how Baekhyun was eating now; practically inhaling the food. I wasn't even able to eat like that on normal days.

“Yeah, so,” I said awkwardly, prodding my chopsticks at my plate, the knife incident haven taken my hunger away. “So I kinda just saw you wandering around drunk in the rain and you kinda tried to commit suicide by going straight at the road.”

Baekhyun froze, chopsticks raised halfway to his mouth. He raised an eyebrow incredulously at me. “You don’t make sense.”

I glared back. “I’m trying to explain yesterday, okay? You obviously don’t remember a thing and if I don’t tell you, you’re going to keep on insisting that I kidnapped you. Uh, where was I?”

“I...tried to commit suicide…?”

“Oh. Yeah. I was coming back from the convenience store and I saw you near the front doors of the apartment. You were kinda just stumbling around aimlessly and…uh, I grabbed you from the road.” Involuntarily, my grip tightened on the chopsticks. God, how was I supposed to phrase this without sounding like I did some heroic feat? I just walked over to you and stopped you from dying, yay, good job, me! Impressing Baekhyun was probably the last thing on my bucket list… If it was even there.

Baekhyun didn’t look one bit impressed by the fact I had saved his life, which I was thankful for for a moment. In fact, he looked rather disbelieving…  which now felt rather insulting. Did he really think that low of me? “Firstly,” he croaked in a surprisingly skeptical voice, “why were you at the convenience store that late? I thought you’d be the kind of person who was never out after dark. Secondly—” he burst into another fit of coughing, which sent his whole body shaking. “Secondly,” he tried again. “Why did you even save me — if you even did it in the first place? You hate me.”

Part of me was rather glad that I had gotten the message through that I extremely disliked him -- the other part was now extremely insulted and hurt that he didn’t believe that I had yanked him from getting possibly smushed under a car. I dropped my chopsticks onto the table, finally admitting to the fact that I wasn’t in the mood to eat. “Same reason I called the police that day. It was the thing a perfectly logical person would do. Anyways, you fell over after I pulled you back and you started being super depressed. I dragged you home.”

“Why?”

“Truth? You looked pitiful.”

“Hey!”

I forced myself to shrug, though I was inwardly cringing. With a sore throat like his at the moment, yelling ‘hey!’ made him sound like a dying sloth. “It’s the truth. Stop whining; I had to carry you up four flights of stairs while you complained about how miserable your life was. That’s mostly it; I was going to call one of your friends but you didn’t have your phone and you fell asleep after saying a bunch of rubbish and stuff. I was also about to--” call your parents. I stopped myself just in time, suddenly remembering what I had heard last name about Baekhyun’s parents, them being dead. “And yeah. That’s about it. But seriously.” I glanced at him, hoping something would at least click in his head. If he could even slightly remember our conversation, maybe I wouldn’t have to be the one to ask the question I’d been dying yet dreading to ask.  “Do you not remember anything that happened last night? Actually nothing? Like, is your mind just blank or is it fuzzy or…?”

“Why is it such a big deal? You keep asking me that. Is there something I should remember? Besides, I was drunk, and my head still hurts from that,” he grumbled, mouth full. Then, all of a sudden, he froze again mid-bite, expression going from annoyed to confused to horrified in the matter of seconds. Baekhyun finally lifted his head and stared at me with wide horrified eyes. Slowly, he set his chopsticks down. His cheeks had turned pink. “I actually don't r-remember,” he stammered. “What do you mean? Did I… did we… did we… have …? I don’t —didn’t want to —not that kind of person —I’m—is that why I’m not wearing my clothes—”

The synapses in my brains felt like they were melting. I could literally feel myself flushing to the roots of my hair, and for at least five seconds, I was in a complete loss for words. Why was it that he had to think of something like this on such a inopportune moment? “God, no,” I finally choked out, though it probably sounded I was in desperate need of air and possibly dying. “Oh my god, no. You were just complaining about life and saying embarrassing things. You, uh…” unsure of how to explain the changing incident, I blurted out all in one breath, “I gave you a spare change of clothes and you changed in the washroom and I swear nothing happened if you want your clothes back I can wash them—” the thought finally occurred to me that I wasn’t breathing, so I forced myself to pause and take a breath. “You just said some really embarrassing things and I had to drag you upstairs. You also said something about…nevermind.”