Boom, boom, boom. 

Your eyes opened, adjusting to the dark. Something had pulled you out of your deep slumber, but what it was, you didn’t know. You rolled over and looked at the clock. It flashed in bright numbers 3:44. You couldn’t fight the weariness that ran through your body. Your eyes slowly closed again, yearning for the slumber.

Boom, boom, boom.

Panic shot through you, sitting you upright in your bed. Someone was at your front door, and it wasn’t a pleasant someone. It wasn’t a ringing the doorbell sort of emotion. It was urgency. It was panic. It was a threat. Quickly, you climbed out of bed and rummaged through the drawer of your nightstand until you felt your fingertips brush against the cool metal. Carefully, cautiously, you grabbed the weapon by the handle. With the lights off, you walked through your small house that your parents had left to you when they retired. 

Crackle.

Had it been raining when you fell asleep? If not, it was doing so now, and it was pouring. The house lit up from the flash of the lightning that followed so close to the sound. Without the lightning, you wouldn’t be able to see a thing. The moon’s light was covered by the storm clouds and your area wasn’t well lit with street lights or ambient lights. Readjusting your grip on the knife, you grabbed the handle of the front door. With the knife in your dominant hand, you unlocked the door and pulled it open.

“Hyerim,” the man gasped, practically falling into your house. Cautiously you took a step back, clutching onto your knife so not to drop it in surprise. Your heart was pounding while your vision narrowed. “Please help,” he whispered, his breaths ragged as he pulled himself up with the help of the door.

Instinctively, you pointed the knife at him. You weren’t one to openly trust people these days. “What are you doing here?” Your voice sounded foreign to your ears. Something unrecognizable. Was it the adrenaline? Or was it that you were scared?

“Hyerim, it’s me,” he said again, stepping closer but not close enough to be within slashing range. The voice was familiar, you could almost place it.

Crackle.

Lightning lit up his face.

“Jinyoung,” you gasped, your arm falling to your side. The rain fell harder. The knife fell straight into floor with a quiet thud. It stood upright at almost a perfect ninety-degree angle as you rushed to his side. He collapsed in your arms, water flooding into the house from the open door. His breathing was labored and you sat there, trying to hold up his weight until it became too much. Gently, you set him on the ground and closed the door. Flipping on the light, you quickly went to work untying his shoes and pulling them off. You looked up at his face, his eyes closed and his features soft, almost angelic. Blood ran from his lips and his nose. There were cuts on his left eyebrow and his cheeks.

Holy , you thought, standing up. You ran to the hall closet and grabbed towels and a first aid kit. When you came back, you assessed the damage, and it was bad. Nothing was broken, but Jinyoung looked rougher than any schoolyard fight he had gotten in on your behalf. You kneeled beside him cautiously, not wanting to disturb him. You rolled up one of the towels and pulled up him up from his neck, sliding the now rolled up towel under his head. You opened up his jacket and pulled his arms out of it. Unfortunately, the rain had seeped through the jacket and his shirt was already soaked through and through. There wasn’t anything you could do at the moment to remedy the drenchedness that was Jung Jinyoung. 

Once you opened the medical kit, you pulled out a cotton pad and the rubbing alcohol. You chewed on your lower lip as you must swiftly, but efficiently, over his cuts. None of them were too bad, in terms of needing stitches, but Jinyoung still winced in his unconscious state. When you were sure the wounds were clean, you pulled out a cotton swab and applied the antibiotic ointment. When you were young, your mother had taught you how to tend to wounds since Jinyoung was constantly protecting you.

“If you can’t stop him from getting in fights,” she had said. “Then you must learn how to repay him.”

A gentle, cool stream of air blew between your lips as you tried to soothe his pain. There wasn’t any bandaging you could do for his lips and eyebrow without it causing more trouble than necessary, but you managed to place a bandage over his cheek wounds. When all the attention that could be given to his facial injuries, your eyes swept over his body in search of other injuries. His knuckles looked bruised, but no cuts.

“You troublemaker,” you whispered softly. You took one of the towels and used it to dry his hair as best you could. You didn’t want to leave him in his drenched clothes, but you knew that he wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon. “Mianhae,” you breathed. From the hall closet, you retrieved a heavy blanket. 

Things were about to get very awkward for you. Jinyoung and you had been friends since childhood, yes. Not so much in the past few years due to his absence, but that didn’t change the way you felt. You had admired him for a long time. Perhaps it started when he became your protector in the schoolyard. Perhaps it started when he had dated another girl that one time during your high school years. Or, perhaps, it started from the moment you met him. It was hard to pinpoint the development of feelings, but you knew they existed even without acknowledging them. You tugged gently at the hem of his shirt, peeling it off of his skin. His ribs were purple, slowly turning blue. There were no wounds on his torso, which alleviated your concern a bit, but not enough to quell your concern. You positioned yourself on top of him, sitting on his hips. You pulled up his torso, which was heavier than you imagined, and slid his shirt over his head.

This is not what you expected undressing a man to be like. It wasn’t your first time, of course, but this wasn’t a scenario you had ever imagined in your days of living. You toweled off his body, making sure your eyes didn’t linger for too long on any specific part of his body. Slim and fit — just your type. You cussed at him in your head, not because you were mad at him, but because you admired him too much. Slim and fit was not your type. Jung Jinyoung was your type. It was as simple as that. But this wasn’t the Jung Jinyoung you knew.

“Mianhae,” you said again, grabbing the blanket and draping it over his torso. You moved onto his belt. You unbuckled it, your fingers shaking. Pull yourself together, you thought. Quickly, you went through the motions of pulling off his jeans. Without looking, you reached for the blanket and pulled it down over his lower half, just above his knees. They were scraped beyond belief. With your eyes shut, you took in a deep breath. Blood wasn’t a common sight for you nowadays, nor was it a comforting one to begin with. Pull yourself together, you thought again, but firmer than the first time. You grabbed your supplies and went through the process of cleaning up his knees. Once they were bandaged, you covered the rest of his legs with the blanket and went to put his clothing in the washing machine.

With the machine running, you went to your room and grabbed a sleeping pad, your blanket and your pillow. You set it up next to Jinyoung, making yourself a bed. You double checked to make sure the front door was locked and then headed to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, for when he woke, and you made yourself a cup of tea. If anything could calm you, it was a cup of tea. While the water heated, you watched Jinyoung’s chest rise and fall from the kitchen.

“You owe me,” you said softly, a gentle smile forming.