→ Chapter 25

Waking up after a nightmare was supposed to be comforting—the process of opening your eyes to something as mundane as your bedroom ceiling and realizing the horrible things you had dreamed of were nothing but a figment of your imagination brought a special kind of relief.

The moment she opened her eyes, Mina felt nothing of the sort. Upon seeing the large closet door across her, a supercut of last night’s events came rushing into her mind: from the second she set foot in Kodak, an unbeaten will of getting the tapes and catching Ilhoon, to when she clung to Baekhyun, shaking and struggling to breathe while an unknown person pulled and tugged at the closet doorknob.

Mina’s heartbeat picked up its speed at the thought that maybe, just maybe, the intruder might still be on the other side of the door they’ve tried so hard to pry open. They might be sitting on the floor, eyes alert to any sound that could signify that she and Baekhyun were awake, hands ready to strike, to hurt, to kill.

To kill.

A heavy wooden baseball bat, sweaty yet tense palms, the blood under the puppet that had just been released from strings, and the stillness of it all—it all came back to her, and before she knew it, she scurried to the corner of the closet room and closed her eyes. Her blood felt cool inside her veins, and so her body was engulfed in the coldness that she knew too well, a coldness of fear. Did she kill the man? The question alone made her breath hitch and a knot form in , and so she wasn’t so sure she wanted it to be answered. Last night, she felt—no, she knew it was the right thing to do. She defended herself and saved a life in the process, so why was she overthinking it now? When the darkness reminded her too much of that damn basement, she opened her eyes to see Baekhyun sleeping: His chest was heaving up and down as his head lie on the wall behind him, and to think after such a tiresome night, his lips wouldn’t quirk into the smallest of smiles, but they did. She wanted to move closer to him, to touch him, in hopes that his peace was contagious, but she moved too fast, forgetting the coldness still running in her system.

Blood.

All she could see was blood; blood on the once beige carpet underneath her body, blood smeared on her slender fingers, blood trickling down a pale neck that didn’t belong to the teenage boy that was once in front of her but to Yesung. Was he dead? He wasn’t. He was now looking straight at her, with such a piercing gaze that she couldn’t move an inch. He then uttered with a voice that wasn’t his, “You’re evil.”

Mina widened her eyes in disbelief and let out a thunderstorm of screams and shrieks. The more she yelled, the more the coldness surrounded her and soon, her body plunged in the freezing water. The icy feeling crept under her head, spreading across her skin like the lacy tide on a frigid winter beach. The walls around her turned and turned like waves and air mingling in a deathly waterspout, the ground beneath her shook harder than an earthquake, and yet the only thing she heard was silence.

And then came the warmth.

Her limbs slowly softened and her fingers let go of the fabric of her shirt. It felt familiar, almost like the moment when she returned home after a long walk in the rain, when the smell of her favorite strawberry pie would fill her nostrils, and when the plate would thaw her freezing hands. Fluttering her eyes open, she found herself in Baekhyun’s embrace.

“Follow my breathing.” He murmured in her ear, his breath warm against her ear and his hand rubbing up and down at her back. His chest pressed against her softly yet hard enough for her to follow his inhales and exhales without too much effort. “You’re doing a good job, sugar. That’s right, breathe in and then breathe out.”

Mina copied his breathing motions, and slowly, her heartbeat regained its original speed. She pulled away from the boy’s arms, blushing profusely at the situation they had found themselves once again. Her eyes stuck to the beige carpet—or anything that wasn’t Baekhyun’s eyes, really. This wasn’t the first time she had had a panic attack in front of him, nor was it the first time he comforted her either. The memory of a late-night encounter, back when she and Baekhyun didn’t know anything about each other, back when they despised each other, filled her mind. She couldn’t say she knew Baekhyun now, or that she didn’t despise him anymore, but things turned out differently than what she had expected. The glowing ten above his head became comforting to her now, but she has yet to let her guard down.

“Are you okay?” He asked, pulling her out of her trance. Mina finally gathered the courage to look him in the face; his eyes were glistening with something she couldn’t put a finger on, perhaps for the dark raven bangs covering half of his face if not sticking in any other direction except down. Not standing the sight, she reached to pat down his hair but he stopped her halfway. “Kang, answer me. What happened? What did you see?”

Mina looked at him in silence for a couple of seconds, her hands still a few centimeters away from his messy head of hair, and then sighed. She dropped her wrists and so did he. “I woke up and started remembering everything about last night and…and it scared me. I don’t know if I killed that man –Yesung—and I’m really ing scared.” She paused before speaking again, “At one point, I saw his face instead of yours. I think…I think I’m in shock.”

“It’s only natural after what we’ve been through.” Baekhyun moved closer to her as he spoke, “Last night, I had the worst nightmares imaginable and I couldn’t sleep, and it’s awful, it’s so awful that we have to go through this, but I genuinely meant it when I said we had no time yesterday. We’re now in grave danger, so please, I really need you to be strong this time.”

“I can’t-I don’t think I can bring back the old me, or at least not for now.” Mina managed to croak out.

Baekhyun moved even closer to her and held her face in his hands, his thumbs wiping away at tears that Mina didn’t know had fallen. “Look at me, Kang.” He began but didn’t continue until he was sure Mina was giving him her full attention. “You don’t need to bring her back because she’s already here. You just need time; time to understand that whatever you’ve done yesterday is right.” With the conviction swimming free in the way he talked and looked at her, Mina wondered if he had done this before—if he had gone through this before, resulting in a shiver running down her spine. “You know this, I know this. You didn’t kill Yesung. And even if you did, it was that or he kills you. This isn’t a game of morals anymore, Mina; this is a game of survival.”

This isn’t a game of morals anymore; this is a game of survival.

The fear was still eating up her insides, but Mina could say she finally understood. The puzzle pieces were already there, coming together to form a comprehensive picture, she just needed to look at it as a whole. Worrying if she had killed Yesung was only natural to her—that was what she had done her entire life: mulling over whether an action was morally just or unjust. This was different, and what could be natural in this situation is to feel euphoric that she didn’t die. She was still alive, and that was the only thing that mattered. She was still scared, but something much more pleasant filled her senses: relief.

“We survived.” She said once, looking around the closet room as if she had just woken up inside. “We survived!” She exclaimed for the second time and jumped into Baekhyun’s arms, wrapping her arms around his neck, as they both fell onto the carpet. It wasn’t until she felt Baekhyun’s hands on her waist that she realized what she had done—and what she was still doing. She pulled back only to see Baekhyun sporting a playful smile, one that he gave her every time he was about to say something stupid.

“Sugar, I know you’re happy we didn’t wake up buried in a grave but that’s still no reason to throw yourself at me.” He spoke and Mina immediately rolled her eyes as a response. There it was, the stupid thing she mentioned earlier.

“No, I did not!” She scowled at him, “I did not throw myself at you! You simply have bad body balance and so you couldn’t handle my weight, Byun, and you’d be a fool to disagree.”

Baekhyun only chuckled and glared back at her with the same intensity. “Maybe yeah, but the fact that you’re still on top of me isn’t really helping your case right now.”

Mina furrowed her brows at his annoying—yet correct—observation, and maintained her current position for a few more seconds, her eyes not leaving him; there was no way in hell he was going to win this game. Yes, the red tinting her ears and tear-stained cheeks would give her away and yes, there was no other point she was trying to prove besides her not being fazed by the messy-haired boy underneath her (which was not going well, as you can see), but she was Kang Mina and she never lost a staredown.

Baekhyun’s smile grew even more playful at her reaction.

“You’re so strange, Kang.” He muttered and shook his head, “One minute you’re screaming and crying and the next you’re trying to win an eye-contact match.” With no prior warning, Baekhyun then proceeded to put his hands on the sides of her waist, propping his arms on his elbows in the process, and then grinned, “If we’re going to do this, I have to make sure I’m at least comfortable.”

Mina felt her skin burn at his touch, at the way his fingers gently pressed into the fabric of the shirt he gave her, at the way his eyes sparkled with more mischief as the seconds passed, at the way his cologne made her head grow dizzy, and then decided to do something she would have never imagined herself doing—she heaved a long sigh, gave Baekhyun one last glare, peeled his hands off of her body and helped herself to her feet.

Baekhyun lied on the ground, dumbfounded.

“Kang Mina, did you just give up?” He asked, almost as if he were worried or worse—scared.

She breathed in, disappointed in herself, and shrugged, though nothing seemed nonchalant about the way she said her next words. “Yeah, I think I just did.”

Baekhyun looked at her for a few seconds and, to Mina’s surprise, let out a boyish laugh. Throwing his head back, he inhaled and then cackled again, this time much louder. Mina knew he wasn’t done though, seeing the way he bit his lip and rolled his eyes. She crossed her arms and frowned at the thigh-slapping and closed eye picture of glee. Storming off was an option she started to consider, but before she could stop herself, her poker-straight mouth twitched upwards and she began giggling herself.

“Don’t laugh!” She warned in between inhales, pointing her finger at the boy who was dying of laughter on the carpet, yet he barely stopped moving before erupting into another fit of giggles.

“How can I not? Have you seen your face?” He managed to croak out after calming down, now sat up and looking up at her with teary eyes. He then said with a tilt of his head, “You’re a bad quitter.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re a really bad quitter. You looked like someone had you at gunpoint and forced you to say that you quit.”

Mina put her hands on her hips and said with pride, “I’m not a quitter. I just think there are more important issues we have at hand right now like, I don’t know, someone breaking into your house last night and them possibly still being outside this closet this very moment?”

At her words, Baekhyun’s face straightened and he hurried to his feet.

“Well, Kang, if you bothered to open your eyes half an hour ago when I tried to wake you up, you would have known that I already called the police.” He said, moving closer to her with each word, a disapproving frown painted on his face. His other hand motioned to the expensive-looking phone on the carpet.

Mina widened her eyes in embarrassment but later concealed them in a poor attempt to jab back at him, making her wonder if all the years spent as a debate club president were nothing but a tint of her imagination. “Well, Byun, guess you didn’t do a good enough job.”

Baekhyun took one step closer to her, arms crossed. “A good job at waking you up or calling the police? Because if you mean the latter, I’m happy to let you know that I did a fan-ta-stic job!”

Mina scoffed.

“Oh, really? Then why aren’t the police here? You said you called them half an hour ago.”

Suddenly, the confident façade Baekhyun had built for himself came crumbling down. “I…don’t know actually. They said they would be here as soon as they can.”

As if on cue, a loud ding resonated inside the vast house. Baekhyun and Mina rushed to the closet door and opened it, their hands pulling on the same handle the stranger from last night had tried to tug on. Their eyes squinted for the first few seconds, unused to the sunlight peering from the large window before them, and then took in the sight of the room.

Finally, they were free.

Baekhyun headed immediately to the door and Mina followed after him, but she has yet to get accustomed to the graffiti art on the wall: the portrait of his mother, Byun Sunmi. It was so colorful, so beautiful, but when memories of last night’s events—the pile of envelopes, the pictures, the conversation about her, the person who wanted to kill them—came back running inside her mind, chaotic and uncontrolled, the image leaked a bit of bitterness, longing even. Before she knew it, Mina found herself standing for she stopped dead in her tracks, eyes wide and focused on the splash of colors on the wall in front of her. If she had looked closer, she would have noticed the fear in the woman’s eye, and maybe just how talented of an artist Baekhyun was.

“Kang,” The said boy called out from behind the door, pulling her out of her trance, “We need to go.”

Mina shot one last glance at the graffiti work before her eyes, grabbed her toothpick from the pair of jeans on the luxurious leather chair, and scrambled to the exit. Now that it was morning, the hallways she encountered last night felt a lot less scary under the daylight. Her fingers ghosted over the fabric-covered walls, feeling the details of the embossed golden pattern she had missed to notice the previous night. There were paintings here and there as well as an extravagant chandelier down the corridor—something her family could have never afforded.

Hanging on