My first B.A.P angst~
As everyone knows, I'm actually Angst Queen. And usually my stories are very creative (even if I do say so myself) and this one shouldn't be any different.

This is NOT a straight-up recovery fic.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

i

Daehyun spares a glance to his wrist watch as he’s stepping out of the theater doors. It’s 1am in the morning but he’s used to that. He’s a musical actor so rehearsals usually last until early morning and as opposed to what he displays, Daehyun is a night owl. He waves off the last of his colleagues goodnight and turns the corner to start his trek to his apartment complex.

A cab stops as he's reaches the street but he waves it off without a second glance. Usually he would call a cab, but tonight Daehyun feels melancholic, so he decides to walk back home.

He’s had a bad day today.

The boy had come an hour late for the practice and had earned a good thrashing from his director. In his defense, though, it wasn’t his fault. A frantic college student stole the cab he had waved over and seeing the panic-stricken boy give out instructions to the driver, Daehyun had held himself back. He must be in a hurry, he had told himself and had watched the vehicle had speed off.

Of course, his cry for justice was royally ignored by his acting director.  

It’s an easy forty five minutes walk to his apartment complex, so he juts his hands inside his jeans pocket. He’s almost reached his home’s street by the time the night  quietens to a whisper. Ducking his head further into his hoodie, Daehyun tries to ignore the cold breeze and waits for the signal light to turn red as he waits for a few cars to pass.

That’s when he sees it.

Not too far from the crossroad he is standing at, is an alley. Dimly lit and looking all sorts of creepy. And normally, Daehyun would just turn away, but something makes him move.

It might’ve been the whimpers he can hear echoing down the empty road. Maybe it’s all the trash that is spilled out on the streets; the garbage box, lying on it’s side in an obscure manner. Eerily blocking away the alley from sight. Maybe it is the scuffling noises he can hear.

He stops at a distance, still unable to look into the alleyway. Trepidation roots him to the spot as he eyes a man, buff and heaving, stepping out from behind the green city garbage box. Something in the way he is holding himself tells Daehyun that the man is either high or severely inebriated. He gulps, watching the man turn to something behind the trash can and sneer at the ground before turning back and walking away.

Daehyun watches the man walk up to a yellow cab parked beside a nearby tree. He stands stock still as the man drives by beside him. He doesn’t know why, but he peeps in through the man’s window as he passes him by, engraving the face to memory.

Lost in thought, Daehyun is just about to walk away when another round of pitiful whimpers makes him stop. Raising his eyes, Daehyun waits for the sound to echo again. A few cats jump out from behind the trash can and he rolls his eyes turning around. It’s just a few cats, Daehyun! He scolds himself. Relax, will you? The boy starts walking back to the curb.

He’s a few steps away when he hears it. Like a ghost calling out for help. Like an injured animal, wailing.

Like a kid, crying.

“H- help me.”

He freezes in spot. Daehyun’s eyes shiver in their sockets and he waits for the voice to call out again. And sure enough, like an ominous howling, a broken whisper reaches his ears.

“So- so- someone… He- Help…”

Daehyun, rooted where he stands continues staring at the traffic, his back facing the pathway that is blocked by the dumpster. Perspiration beads onto his forehead but he can’t make himself move. It’s like all of the world’s weight is settled onto his shoulders and he’s anchored to the entrance of this cursed pathway.

He’s scared. He’s terrified. In his defense, Daehyun has never been the most courageous person between his groups of friends. So, with regret stinging in every nerve of his body, Daehyun walks away without seeing the boy. The cats and a lone fluttering butterfly are the only ones privy to his cowardice.

He doesn’t look back.

ii

Daehyun wakes up with his breath choked in his throat and his heart burning with the remnants of last nights happenings replaying in front of his eyes. The dark haired boy lets out a groan and pulls at his hair remembering how he’d ran away from the crime scene. The whimpers and groans. The cries for help ring in his in his mind and he tries to block them out, slamming his hands over his ears but nothing seems to work.

A lone tear slides down his cheeks as he curses himself for being the coward he is. He stays like that for a while. Not moving. Trying to not breath. Soon, however, he’s up and getting ready for the day again. Oddly enough, he’s not in the mood to change his clothes.

*

Something is off, Daehyun can feel it in his bones. The day has been oddly… familiar. It feels like he’s seen the flowers of his neighbor’s flower pot wilting already. The strange familiarity he feels when the sun beats down on his back. The cat that cross his path is also strangely seen. Everything around him, carries a sense of hallucination.

And when he loses his cab to a certain college student, a haunting feeling of Deja vu settles into his gut. And when his acting director is yelling at him, Daehyun is sure he’s lived through this all.

Nothing makes sense to him. He wants to believe that all this is just a coincidence. Maybe it was all a bad dream. He’s never been precognitive but maybe it’s all just that, an ominous feeling. Maybe yesterday never happened.

Daehyun eyes his wrist watch with unbridled nervousness. He’s distracted. His feet tapping at the ground relentlessly. As soon as their director gives the okay, without sparing his colleagues a glance, he races out the theater doors.

Ignoring the cab that stops for him, Daehyun instead runs to the very crossroad from his dream. At least, he wishes it were a dream. He has no idea what he’s expecting. Maybe he’s expecting to get there and find out that all of it really was just a dream. Maybe that’s why he runs.

Because he wants to confirm that it’s just a bad dream.

*

He doesn’t even know how he managed to get there. The world is a blur around him as he runs for his life. For another life.

All Daehyun knows is that he’s late again.

Stopping short of the turning, he can see the man’s head from where he stands. He can also make out the desperate struggle of feet pressed underneath the man’s knees. Strangled voices echo off the alley walls that he’s just outside.

But he doesn’t move. He’s frozen. The boy, he can make out it’s a boy from his pleading voice, is grappling around the man’s body. Daehyun can’t make out his face in the dark, but he winces every time the man s into him. As if he can feel the pain the boy is going through.

He watches, horrified, how the act continues for the next fifteen minutes. During which, Daehyun can’t keep himself from crying. When the man is done, Daehyun watches him get to his feet and pull his pants up. He watches the man then wash his hands in the drain that’s flowing by the corner. It’s red by the time the water reaches Daehyun’s feet.

The black haired boy, taking cover of the night and the banyan tree he’s pressed against, watches the man drive away. Just like the last time he had. And he realizes, he’s at the same turning point he was at yesterday.

Trembling, Daehyun turns to the boy lying in the dirty sewage water. He still can’t place a face to the body, but he can make out the boy’s mangled limbs and bloodied lips calling for help.

It’s like he’s been paralyzed. Daehyun finds himself incapable of moving. He stands there watching the boy try his hardest to turn. To get up. To yell for help. But Daehyun doesn’t move.

He has no bearings of how much time has passed when he sees the boy’s chest stop heaving. A few flies, a pink butterfly, landing on his chest as it slows it’s beating.

Daehyun turns away when the boy stops breathing.

iii

Knives. Demons. Kids with clown masks. Bloodied skulls. Tombstones. A dark alleyway.

Daehyun heaves as he wakes up with a start. His entire body drenched in sweat. A nightmare. A horrible nightmare. The boy groans, crying this time, as he lands his head on the pillow with a thud. He doesn’t feel like working today.

*

It’s unsettling. Deja vu hits him like a train again when the same flower pot greets him in the morning and the same cat crosses his path. He prays to the God he doesn’t believe in for this to be a dream. Shuts his eyes forcefully when he’s at the street ready to hail a cab.

The same college student, whose face he misses yet again, jumps into the cab that stops for him, and Daehyun knows.

The day is repeating itself.

*

He once again races past the cab that is sitting outside the theater and rushes towards his home. This time, Daehyun runs with a purpose. He’s going to help the boy this time.

Yet again, he’s late and he watches the man drive away but doesn’t make to chase him. Daehyun, instead, races into the alleyway. He stops dead in his tracks when he actually sees the victim.

The boy looks barely eighteen.

The white dress shirt he is wearing has faded into a deadly red. His dress black jeans are torn in the most non-fashionable, brutal manner. His school bag, bright blue and neon green, lies crumpled in the drain, just near his head. He’s wearing black shoes. The boy is wearing a silver chain, that glistens with the words YYJ.

Daehyun slowly approaches the whimpering figure, letting the boy’s outstretched hands grab his own. They’re bloodied and shaking. He thinks he sees the boy’s bones piercing the skin from some. His lips tremble with the effort to speak but Daehyun doesn’t let him.

“It’s okay” he whispers to the boy, gingerly running his fingers across the boy’s chubby cheeks. Rubbing away tears and blood that cling to the skin. “I’ve got you, you’re fine.”

*

“Where did you find him, Mr. Jung?” The doctor asks him as Daehyun watches him exit the ICU. The boy is lying inside on the pristine white bed. His wounds, physical wounds, have all been cleaned off.

Daehyun turns his attention back to man in front of him and gulps. “I- in an alley at th- the turning of Kyungsan and Myungdong street.”

The doctor hums and wipes his brow tiredly. He had rushed the boy like a madman onto the gurney when Daehyun had arrived with him on his back. They had operated on him for almost two hours before the man took a break.

The dark haired boy watches the man look into the information pad in his hand, reviewing the injured boy’s vitals, before he looks back at him. “Look,” the doctor begins and Daehyun can sense the denial in his voice. “He’s in a bad state. Very bad. I could detail his injuries to you, but I’m not sure if I should.” He sighs and shakes his head, explaining, “you’re not exactly his guardian.”

“N- No, I… I understand.”

The doctor, Dr. Geum, nods his head in agreement and tucks away the notepad under his arm. “You will need to give a statement to the police. I hope you know that.”

Daehyun gulps and nods his head, whispering, “i know.”

“Good.” He continues looking at Daehyun then. Suddenly the man’s eyes soften. He pats his shoulders and Daehyun feels guilt bubbling inside of him. “He might not survive the night, Mr. Jung.” He gravely informs the boy, who can't help but look away. “Would you like us to… inform you-”

“No.” Daehyun whispers without even a second of thought.

*

By the time Daehyun stumbles into the apartment the sun is already rising in the horizon. He eyes the alarm clock near his bed and groans when the time shows 6am. With a thud, the boy slumps down into the covers.

His green grey hoodie is painted red but Daehyun doesn’t have the strength to pull it off. His body smells like the residuals of last nights deeds. There’s an awfully sinful scent of wafting from his body, coupled with the hints of mandarin. His entire body is shaking with cold sweat, dripping down his back.

3 hours. He tells himself. Let me sleep. Forget everything for 3 hours, please. Daehyun pleads to his heart.

Sleep, of course evades him.

I tried. I saved him. I took him to the hospital and that’s where my duty ends. His mind is splattered with thoughts about the boy. The injured boy he’d left back at the hospital.

Yoo Youngjae. That’s the name the police officer had told him. An eighteen year old freshman in KST. Acting major.

“He’s fine.” Daehyun whispers to himself. His eyes finally drooping as the time ticks to seven, an orange butterfly sitting on the alarm clock. “He’ll be fine.”

iv

The first thing Daehyun realizes when he wakes up to the screeching his alarm clock is that he smells like himself. The toxic smell of and citrus is nowhere to be found. The next thing he looks for is his cellphone.

The date is the same as it was yesterday.

*

This time, Daehyun decides to stay in.

He locks his apartment and pulls the curtains up. Surrounded by pillows and blankets, Daehyun watches the sun rise up and bloom to it’s fullest before it extinguishes into a soft glow.

He never moves away from the bed. Staring soullessly into the night sky. Eyes the garish sun give way to the cool moon. The owl hoots just outside his window and Daehyun squeezes his eyes shut when the clock strikes 1am.

He’s aware. Painfully aware.

Daehyun knows that right at this moment, when he’s hiding locked up in his bedroom, a boy, Youngjae, is being pulled behind the dumpster in a dark alleyway. He knows that the boy’s cries are being ignored by the quiet city, his words are being blocked away with calloused hands. Daehyun is fully conscious of the fact that Youngjae, eighteen year old and beaming with life, is being ruthlessly by a man three times his age.

But, Daehyun doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to move. As pitiful as it might make him seem, Daehyun just wants to forget this is happening. He wants eradicate the memory from his mind.

Who is he? He scolds himself as he watches the street light cast shadows on his apartment floor. He’s just some boy, Jung Daehyun! He’s a stranger! It’s not your duty to help him out!

The moon soon gives way to the sun again and Daehyun finds himself grappling onto his sleep strings. He blows away a tiny pink butterfly from his face and closes his eyes.

He thinks he’s solved the day.

v

The same day greets him when he wakes up and Daehyun can’t say he didn’t expect this. He thinks he’s figured out what makes him relive the day over and over.

Youngjae has to live for him to continue living.

*

He's late again. Once again he lets the man race away, instead choosing to run to Youngjae's side. Again he carries the boy to the nearest hospital.

Everything is the same as it had been that day. The doctor rushes Youngjae to the OT then the ICU. Just as he'd done before, Dr. Geum tells him that Youngjae might not make it. Everything is exactly the same.

Except this time, instead of heading back home after giving his statement to the police, Daehyun opts to stay.

Instead of introducing himself as a stranger, he introduces himself as “Youngjae's friend. I'm his college senior.”

*

It is all fate , Daehyun tells himself when Youngjae goes into a cardiac arrest. He watches the doctors and nurses hovering over the boy, trying to save him and it’s all a blurry to him. He stands in the corner of the ICU, watching the nurse break open a vial of epinephrine and fill the injection with it. He’s in a daze as Dr. Geum rams the needle in the middle of the