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Length: 6.7k words

It’s August now, meaning more than a month has passed since Baekhyun told Ange to stay away. Technically, he only told her that she didn’t need to show up for “work,” but then he never answered any of her calls or texts, and in Ange’s head, it’s enough to mean “stay away.” Even after more than a month, he hasn’t tried to reach out to her.

Unfortunately, time still moves with or without Baekhyun. Things are the same while things have simultaneously changed. Ange has a message thread in her phone from Mark that hasn’t updated in weeks. Meanwhile, Ange’s message thread with Baekhyun used to be filled with gray bubbles of him asking where and when she wanted a ride, but more recently, it’s just her asking and getting nothing. As for Kyungsoo, Ange gets the feeling that he knows that something has happened, but in between his late-night shifts and overtime hours, he hasn’t asked or said much. The only person who regularly responds to Ange’s messages is Mimi—because the two of them have no one else.

“Did you take your meds?” Ange asks the moment she arrives at Mimi’s studio apartment. She has known it to be a small space, but lately, it seems…bigger. Things were piling up, but now things are disappearing.

“Yeah, I took them,” Mimi responds tersely. She seems more interested in packing boxes than she is in talking to Ange.

“What’s going on?” Ange tries to find the chair that she usually sits on, but it seems to have vanished from the room. “What are you doing?” Mimi doesn’t respond, so Ange takes another second to look around for familiarity. In the past few weeks that she has visited Mimi’s apartment, she always made a comment on how her shelf—the one by her door—looked like it was going to fall apart under music albums that she collected. Now that shelf is half-empty. “Mimi,” Ange mumbles, “are you packing up? And moving?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Well, there’s nothing left for me here anyways.”

Ange stares at the girl, but she’s still too busy taping up a box. “What are you talking about?” Ange asks, drawing closer. “You’re moving? Where?”

“I’m going back to live with my parents.”

“Don’t they live in Vietnam?”

“Exactly.” Mimi finishes packing a box and sighs as she tosses a tape cutter onto her bed. “Maybe I’ll go back to college too. Maybe I’ll, I don’t know, be normal.” She shrugs, and the crooked bun she styled her hair into droops a little further. “Why?”

Mimi goes back to packing, and Ange stands there, dumbfounded that things have really accumulated to this point. “Is this about—” Ange cuts herself off when she realizes that it’s too obvious. Nothing has been the same since Mark’s death. “You don’t have to leave, though,” Ange insists. “It’s better to have people around you to cope.”

“Cope?” Mimi scoffs. “There is no coping.” She turns to Ange, revealing her now reddened cheeks and puckered mouth. “What are you talking about?” she mutters in a breaking voice. “He’s gone, and I can’t make a fist with my left hand.” Mimi reaches behind her head and looks to the floor. She seems to trace lines on her scalp with her fingers for a moment. “I can’t even do my hair without feeling this scar.” She lifts her gaze slightly. “And there’s a photo album in my phone with pictures of him that I’ll never update again.”

“Mi…”

“It’s stuck at May 17,” Mimi mumbles, once more turning away from Ange. When it’s August, May is a lifetime ago, but clearly not so long ago that Mimi doesn’t remember. “I keep looking at his stupid face, and I keep thinking I could just text him first, but—” Mimi coughs, her voice having failed on her. “He’s gone,” she breathes, “and I’m still here.”

“I’m sorry,” Ange stammers. She rushes over to Mimi’s side by the foot of her bed, but other than that, she really doesn’t know how to offer any comfort. “It’s gonna be okay. It only gets better from here. Uh…”

“Talk about something else,” Mimi sniffles, pulling her jacket’s hood over her head. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t—”

“Can you just talk about something else?” Mimi demands through tears. Although Ange can’t see her face, Ange was there when Baekhyun broke the news of Mark’s death to Mimi, and she saw firsthand how a face can break so easily. In this moment, Ange imagines Mimi’s face, round and swollen and red from crying.

“Talk about what?” Ange asks softly. “I don’t have anything going on in my life.” Mimi’s sobbing only grows more uncontrollable, forcing Ange to continue talking. “Um, well, I haven’t seen Baekhyun in a while now. He hasn’t called or texted me, so I don’t know what’s up with that, but yeah.”

Mimi can’t stop herself from shaking. She bends inward on herself, sobbing into her sleeves with such pain that Ange winces with the shared pain. The two of them may sit in the same room, only a few centimeters apart, but they are so alone. Ange hasn’t talked to anyone about anything she has struggled with in the past month, and it’s clear that Mimi hasn’t either because no one cries like that unless they’ve bottled up their emotions. It makes Ange wonder—how long does it take for Mimi to sleep at night? Does she also find herself sitting in a bathtub, wondering what went wrong as the water runs for too long?

Ange can account that for herself; she hasn’t slept normally, eaten normally, done anything normally in so long.

Baekhyun has been such an integral part of her life for some time now that nothing feels right without him. It’s not just the missing conversations; it’s everything else. It goes beyond his hand resting on her thigh when he drives her home. It’s the faint smell of burnt rubber, smoke, and leather that accompanies him wherever he goes. It’s how he never drives off unless he sees her walk into her apartment and shut the door. It’s him and how everything feels so shifted, so distorted without him. With him having left her so abruptly, Ange knows that there is simply no coping. She misses him so much that drinking water isn’t the same anymore.

Unfortunately, overthinking about Baekhyun also means overthinking what he had done.

It was supposed to be a normal night. Ange had requested for Kyungsoo to drive her to Baekhyun’s because he wasn’t calling her back, and she waited on his bed for hours, thinking about the ways to apologize until she fell asleep. She just wanted to apologize. She just wanted to make things right with him. It was just supposed to be a normal night.

No one was supposed to die—but then Ange woke up to the sound of gunshots.

At first, Ange feared for herself, and she almost ran down the stairs to run, but she snuck a peek over the railing to see where the gunshots came from. The first thing she saw was Baekhyun. Confusion followed, but she thought she knew him. Baekhyun wouldn’t just kill anyone out of cold blood. It had to be self-defense, right? That’s what she thought—until he took out a knife and slaughtered a person.

It only took Ange a second to look away. When Baekhyun’s knife entered the other man’s body, she nearly screamed but held herself down onto the floor to keep control. She shut her eyes, tried to imagine a happy place, but the sound of metal tearing through flesh was too loud. Even when she closed her eyes, she could still hear Baekhyun’s loud grunts as he stabbed the man repeatedly—to the point where he had to be dead. But it didn’t stop until minutes later, and at that point, Ange could only hear squelching, wet noises—like stepping in mud, or in that case, stepping in human flesh.

“I saw him…” Ange whispers, voice shaking lightly as she breaks the silence. “I saw him kill a guy.” Mimi lifts her head, but Ange doesn’t look at her just yet. “I saw everything,” she emphasizes. “He didn’t stop until I heard his knife break, and when he was done, he…” Ange places her palm over the right side of her face. “His face was all bloody, and he had this crazy look in his eyes like he didn’t want to be done.”

“Ange, what the …” Mimi mumbles. She sits upright, suddenly now concerned.

“It was like I didn’t know him at all.” Ange’s breath shakes. “So I just ran as fast as I could to get out, but then I saw what he did.” Ange breath hitches as she recalls the gruesome sight that greeted her downstairs. “That guy Baekhyun killed—he wasn’t even a person anymore. H-H-He didn’t even have a face.”

“Ange—”

“It was like someone took a shovel and just dug that guy’s face out. And-And I keep telling myself that no, Baekhyun wouldn’t do that, but he did. He did.”

“Ange, shut the up,” Mimi hisses to which Ange follows. “Listen to me,” Mimi says, grabbing Ange by her arm and forcing her to make eye contact. “I’ve known ‘Lux’ for a while now, and I’ve seen what he’s done and how awful it is, but that wasn’t Baekhyun.”

“What?” Ange shakes her head in disbelief. “Lux is Baekhyun, and Baekhyun is Lux. They’re not two different people.”

“Yes, they are,” Mimi insists. “Lux is the guy,” she mumbles, “that kills a person in front of you and convinces you that you need to a hide the body for him. And Baekhyun is the guy who apologizes the day after.”

Ange furrows her brows, not quite understanding what Mimi means—but the realization creeps up on her until it breathes down her back. “You mean…” Ange starts. “You saw? And-And you’ve hidden a body for Lux?” Mimi glares at her, so Ange lowers her voice. “What the ,” Ange curses out of shock, “are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t lie about this,” Mimi states in a dead tone. “Yeah, I hid a body.” Her eyes are just as dead as her voice. “I’ve hid and destroyed multiple bodies actually. Dozens. All for my boss Seulgi, but let’s face it. Her boss is him.” Mimi goes silent for a few beats before shaking her head profusely. “But you can’t be surprised. Lux dances with the devil. He’s done a lot more scarier things than kill some dude who probably deserved it.”

“Oh my, god.”

“You can’t be surprised, though. I mean, come on.”

“I guess—I guess I just saw him as someone else,” Ange murmurs, now deeply saddened by the truth. She may have tried to ignore it for some time now, but she can’t ignore reality for that long. After all, Baekhyun personally warned her about who he is and what he does. This isn’t a surprise; it can’t be, so it isn’t one. It still come off as a big shock anyways. “I just didn’t know,” Ange continues, “that he was capable of doing something like that, and now I can’t get past it.”

“That’s okay. It took me a while too.”

“What do you mean?” Ange queries. “You got scared off by him too?”

“Everyone,” Mimi emphasizes, “gets scared off by him. You don’t just sit at the top of the hill without looking down at everyone below you.”

Ange nods at Mimi’s well-put analogy about power. Since Ange has never really held much power of her own, she can only imagine what it’s like to be Lux—the legendary street racer with apparently deep ties to crime. He must endure so much pain from carrying that crown. With that in mind, Ange also has to worry because goddammit, it’s Baekhyun. Kingpins don’t stay kings for long. What would happen to him if he ever got caught? What would happen to him if his mental soundness degraded beyond function? Better yet, how does he keep going? How does he live with himself when he has committed such atrocities? How can he live when it seems that he houses so much pain?

“What do I do now?” Ange asks in desperation. “I-I-I need to d-do something.”

“Well, don’t ask me.” Mimi shakes her head and wipes her face with a sleeve. “I don’t know either. I just wanna cry.”

“Mimi.”

“Just go.” Mimi waves Ange away. “I’m done. I don’t wanna talk about the guy who got Mark killed.”

Ange freezes. “Baekhyun didn’t kill Mark,” she iterates slowly. “You can’t blame that on him. He wasn’t the one who—”

“Yeah, it wasn’t him behind the trigger, but he’s Mark’s boss,” Mimi snaps defensively. “Of course, it’s his fault. He’s the one involved in shady . He didn’t do enough to protect Mark or me, so now I have permanent brain damage, and Mark is dead.” Mimi scoffs, crossing her arms. “Of course, you don’t understand. You live in a little bubble that he put you in. You don’t know how hard and how awful it really is out here. You’re not like us.”

“Like ‘us’?”

“Like me. Like Mark. Like Taeyong. Like everyone else.” Mimi left eyes twitches, and she places a hand over it to cover it. Involuntary muscle action is just another symptom of her head injury, but Ange knows that an eye-twitch also comes from a place of anger. “So yeah. You don’t get it.” Mimi nudges her chin upward at her door. “Just go and cry to your boyfriend.”

Mimi doesn’t have to say more. Ange leaves her apartment, and before she can remind Mimi to take her medication, Mimi shuts the door with a loud slam.

- - - - - -

Later that night, Ange finds herself alone once again. Kyungsoo’s overtime night shifts have gotten so strenuous in hours that he comes home around 2 or 3 in the morning sometimes. Normally, Ange wouldn’t mind, but it’s not like she has Baekhyun to call or text anymore—which is why she starts debating on going to a club.

It’s late, and you shouldn’t go alone, Baekhyun would say if he were there. Clubs are filled with sleezy guys anyway. Let’s just go on a drive together.

“God, I miss you,” Ange mutters to herself. Somehow, Baekhyun always makes his way back to her. She can’t do things anymore without thinking of what he would say and how he would react. In this case, he would be so disappointed to know that she’s zipping up her thigh-high boots and getting ready for a night at a club. Of course, when she’s standing outside and getting ready to call a cab, she’ll probably back out and take another long bath, but maybe it’s different tonight.

Tonight, at midnight, someone is calling Ange—and not the other way around.

“Hello?” Ange sets her purse down. “Taeyong, why are you calling me?”

“It’s boss.”

Ange’s heartbeat picks up. “W-What about him? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Taeyong sighs. “We went to a bar to do this deal, and I thought—” Taeyong pauses, and Ange hears shuffling in the background. She mostly hears static, but she also hears voices. They’re indistinct, but she hopes that Baekhyun is with Taeyong. “I thought,” Taeyong continues, “that he would get the deal done quickly and just go home. But he didn’t. He got into a fight, so I had to drag him upstairs into the hotel.”

“Wait, what?” Ange frowns. “He got into a fight? That doesn’t sound like him.”

“Yeah, well maybe he’s had too much to drink,” Taeyong explains. Again, it doesn’t sound like Baekhyun to drink since he has placed so much emphasis on not drinking and driving, but obviously, Ange doesn’t know everything there is to know about him. “Can you come and just watch him or something? I didn’t know who else to call because…” Taeyong sighs. “Can you come? I have to go back and try to finish the deal.”

“Uh, yeah, s-sure,” Ange stammers. “I’ll, um, I’ll need a ride, though. It might take me a while to get there—”

“I’ll pick you up,” Taeyong answers quickly. “S