Chapter 10 - Confusion

Waking up, I wanted to go back to sleep right away. There was pain throbbing behind my eyes when daylight pierced them and I groaned, trying to turn away, but I somehow couldn't move my arm. Is it numb? I tried not to panic. What if I can't use it anymore, like Kihyun? After a few moments of just lying there and adjusting to the brightness of the day, I tried examining my arm which proved to be difficult given the fact that there was someone blocking my view by lying only twenty centimeters away from my face.

Who is that, I wondered with a quiet yawn and it took me a moment to categorize the blonde hair and dark roots: Hyungwon, sleeping soundly with his head resting on my arm and his hand tightly holding onto my sweater. I just couldn't move my arm because he was lying on top of it and sighed in relief. After another moment, the realization of him lying right next to me sank in and my eyes widened when I suppressed the urge to pull away in surprise. I need to get away from him before he wakes up or he'll have a heart attack, I thought, carefully craning my neck to have a look around. It's not like I just had one myself.

The others were still lying around the fire pit and I figured that they were fast asleep judging by Jooheon's and Wonho's quiet snoring. Shownu was missing. He would always be the first to get up since the flower didn't have as much of an effect on him as it did on us. Wonho was splayed in a star pattern, his leg thrown over Changkyun's while the latter slept close to Kihyun in silence. What time was it? Maybe nine in the morning, maybe ten.

There was nothing unusual about the scene except for the fact that I couldn't move my damn arm because of a certain guy that normally had chiraptophobia. I untangled Hyungwon's fingers from my sweater as gentle as I could, but he only shifted closer at that, making ten out of the twenty centimeters of distance and I let out a quiet shriek. After two more minutes I had somehow managed to pull my arm out from under his head and sighed when I could feel how my blood began to circulate again.

Standing up as quietly as I could I tiptoed out of the tent and trudged through a small part of swampy garden while the drizzle created little droplets in my hair and on my face, waking me up in no time. I pushed the door to our corridor open with another yawn and Shownu glanced at me from the living room with a smirk. “Morning.”

“Morning, hyung”, I replied and walked into the kitchen to make myself some cereal with milk. Yup, we still had milk here, which was kind of unusual for a group like ours. We were quite well off with our living standard, but four of us had jobs after all while the two others, well, they stole whatever they couldn't afford to contribute to our income. We had somehow found our place in this house and I felt comfortable with the way I lived, no matter what political circumstances we had to deal with.

After having munched my breakfast in silence for maybe three minutes, Shownu put away the newspaper he had been reading. “I don't quite understand Hyungwon yet.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“He's the complete opposite of his usual self when high. That doesn't normally happen, the drug only intensifies our behavior, what is this guy?”

I chuckled in helplessness. “Tell me once you know an answer to that. He's a complete mystery to me.” I've got to work at eleven tomorrow, his voice echoed in my mind and I suppressed the urge to grin at his kind of stupid behavior while glancing at the clock.

“You like him.”

My spoon made a loud clunking noise when I dropped it into the bowl to stare at Shownu. “Like him?”

“When was the last time you didn't take your dose without consideration?”

I bit my lip and thought back to last evening when our newcomer's head had been heavy resting on my lap. “I took it in the end.”

“You know what I mean”, he kept digging and I placed my breakfast on the table.

“He doesn't let much information slip about his past. His personality did a complete turn and yet that one part I'm curious about remains locked inside of him.”

Shownu huffed and stretched his back with a yawn. “Give him some time, he's still not comfortable with any of us. It's only normal, why are you making a fuss over that?”

I ran a hand through my hair with a sigh. “You said it yourself the other day: I want him to keep his memories to make up for the loss of mine. That's got nothing to do with liking or not liking someone, it's plain redemption.”

“So you're just using him?”, he asked and I stopped, lowering my eyes to the ground. Am I?

A door opened in the corridor and after a few moments Jooheon came in sight. “Man I feel good”, was all he said before stretching his back like a cat and grabbing the rest of my breakfast.

“Yah-”

“Shut up, you wouldn't have eaten that anyway”, he argued and I puffed my cheeks, leaning back on the sofa as Jooheon his lips while raising the spoon to his mouth. The three of us then fell back into silence, the talk with Shownu still weighing me down.

The only valid reason for me to keep helping Hyungwon was to clear my conscience, nothing else. You like him, the oldest's words echoed in my head, but it was plain stupid. Why should I like a stranger, I literally didn't know anything about him apart from his name. His full name, if I may add that. It didn't make sense.

Right, it doesn't make sense.

________________

The hours of sleep I had were the most relaxing ones in days. I didn't have a nightmare, no dream at all to be honest, and my body felt light, my mind completely at ease. Yet, I knew that I had been sleeping for too long before I had even opened my eyes. There was no rain to be heard and the sun was shining from right above me, suggesting that it was noon. Sun? Noon?!

My eyes shot open – a terrible mistake – and I sat up in a hurry, trying to find out where I was while blinking furiously. My hands supported my body, resting on a soft patch of grass. Grass. Though there was nobody around and it all looked different during daytime, I recognized the small pit in the middle as the one we had sat around the evening before.

The evening I did drugs for the first time. Given the fact that I couldn't remember a thing about what I had said or done, it was weird how good I felt. There was neither a headache nor did I feel unwell in any way. I was just at ease. “Where are the others?”, I mumbled as I pushed myself to my feet, carefully taking one step after the other while trying not to trip.

I glanced at my watch, seeing that it really was a quarter to twelve. “I should have left the station for work an hour ago”, I concluded in shock and my heart skipped a beat. Did I say I was at ease? Scratch that, I panicked. Even though Minhyuk's house was closer to the store I would still be over fourty-five minutes late