But Serin doesn’t care. Not one bit. All she sees before her is Baekhyun’s figure making his way into the woods. He’s there. He’s right there, so why can’t she reach him?

She knows it’s not the real him, but in the clogginess of her mind and her desperation, she yells: ”Baekhyun!”

He doesn’t turn around, nor make a sign of acknowledgement.

”Come back!” Serin’s cries are imminent, and her bare feet are brimmed with scars all over. She can’t reach him. She can’t reach him.

She barely notices when the male suddenly halts, concentrating on a distant sound. While it is raining, in the specific memory it isn’t. Instead, the moonlight filters dimly through the trees and casts a soft light on his features.

His hair is styled, and his gaze is fixed. He looks absolutely breathtaking. But most of all—and most heartbreaking of all—he looks alive. His skin is lightly tanned, and his cheeks hold a pale tint of rose.

She watches as Baekhyun frowns, trying to concentrate at whatever he is hearing. Serin does the same thing.

It’s a male voice – deep and quiet, talking almost soundlessly in the deep of the forest. What kind of psychopath does that in the dark at night?

Serin hears a pair of feet shuffling in amid the dark, and admires how Baekhyun takes a frightened step back. The voice gets louder.

”Yeah, what’d you say? Don’t worry about it fella, I buried them right down here. Yeah, yeah. No blue pig is going to look for them in a town this decadent. Just send me one of your men to pick them up Monday morning, ’that clear?”

Buried them? Who is this? And what is he talking about?

Baekhyun emits a shaky breath and hides behind a tree. Serin is confused, until the other male steps into the moonlight and she gets a clear view of who he is.

It’s old lady Jun’s dead husband, who during the memory looks to be very much alive. He’s holding a shovel in his left hand, and the phone by his ear with the other. This definetly explains the reason to why Baekhyun looks so frightened at the moment; the man’s reputation is known all around town after all.

”Remember to be careful now, I don’t want any cops on my , alright? I have a family and that nuisance of a wife to take care of.”

Even if she is well aware that she can’t be seen or heard, Serin holds her breath. Her limbs have frozen in place, and her breath is stuck in because she knows. She knows where this is going, and she doesn’t like it one bit.

A minute or two passes as Baekhyun remains completely still, and the sheer fear is readable in his gaze.

”Remember, Monday morning. Monday morning. Don’t make me regret asking you this favor, alright?”

There’s something about his words – his voice, that sends shivers of alarm down her spine. It’s like her entire body is yelling dangerdangerdangerdangerdangerdanger, prompting her to run away from there as far as possible. If the threateningly kind tone of his voice, and heavy thumps of his boots already isn’t enough – there’s the fact that the rumors about him being involved in some organised crim ring seem a lot more plausible now.

But then, as fast as his voice is heard, it disappears. Albeit slowly, she can hear him hang up the call and slowly walk away deeper into the forest. Whatever he’s buried, is most probably illegal and very smartly hidden. The male’s right – no one would look for anything this deep in the forest, let alone something buried in the ground.

After a while, Baekhyun finally moves, and Serin hears herself cry out his name in desperation. Realisation strucks her.

Wrong place, wrong time.

Baekhyun witnessed something he wasn’t supposed to see or hear. One way or another, it’s going to cost him his life.

The male whips out his phone and turns the flashlight on, placing it by a tree to light up the surroundings.

Get out of there, her mind is screaming.

His hands are shaking, and his breathing is short and quick. He’s terrified, so what is he looking for?

Baekhyun’s fingers pat the soil beneath him frantically, until they land on a piece which is slightly bouncier or, well, emptier than the rest of the ground. Then it hits her.

He’s looking for whatever lady Jun’s husband buried.

Get out of there, get out, get out!

Perhaps the most suffocating and painful part of all is that there’s nothing she can do about any of this. She’s a bystander – fated to sit and watch as the gift of life is mercilessly torn away from the one man who deserves it the most. His nails dig in the soil and he breathes hard, digging and digging. She wants to cry, scream at him, and drag him out of there before its too late but there’s nothing she can do.

Baekhyun’s arm is around halfway into the dirt when he suddenly halts, pale and sweaty.

No tragic-like hero death.

Liar. Liar.

He pulls out a transparent zip-lock plastic bag, filled to the brim with small, opaque pebbles, though at a closer look they seem to resemble small crystal-like rocks.

And then realisation hits her – and it hits him too, because the male drops the bag and swats his hand away like he burned it, practically hyperventilating.

It’s crystal meth. He is smuggling it. Of course. The town is a perfect place to do it. He hides it, so that no one links it up to him. The safety control of their train station isn’t strict either, so it works perfectly as a half-way point to smuggle drugs into the city.

”Oh God, oh God, oh ! Oh !” Baekhyun whimpers, staggers up to his feet and grabs his phone. Her breathing is almost as frantic.

He gets ready to sprint away from the crime scene, but freezes to stone as soon as the same deep, bone-chilling voice rings through the air of the night.

”Oh, no, kid.”

An ice cold shiver runs down her spine and she, like Baekhyun, freezes too.

A single tear runs down his cheek as lady Jun’s husband gently grabs his shoulder, clicking his tongue disapprovingly.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

”Have your parents not told you to not stick your nose into business that does not concern you? Turn around, will you?”

Baekhyun doesn’t move a muscle, in fact, Serin doubts he’s barely breathing. The older male sighs in frustration and gently spins him around, dropping the shovel to grab his other shoulder.

Once he gets a proper look of his face, he says, ”you’re Byun’s kid, aren’t you?”

When Baekhyun doesn’t reply, the grip on his shoulder tightens. ”Answer me.”

”Ye-yes I am.”

”How old are you?”

He swallows thickly, his lips nervously before answering, ”I’m twenty one.”

”What a shame kid,” the male exhales, shaking his head in disdain. It’s like he’s almost sad about what he’s going to do— what a disgusting excuse of a man. ”You have a bright future ahead of you. Why did you dig up that dirt? Did you hear my phonecall?”

”I-I, I don’t know, I didn’t—”

”Don’t lie to my face kid, I don’t like that.”

He takes a sharp inhale, and she watches as his features contort in desperation. His hands are trembling, his lip wobbling, and his eyebrows are knitted together.

”I did,” Baekhyun is practically at the brink of tears, and Serin feels more lightheaded by the second.

”And were you going to call the police?”

He shakes his head agitatedly. ”I wasn’t, I swear I wasn’t. I was just going to go a-and, I swear I won’t tell this to anyone.”

The latter merely persists in shaking his head, moving his hand to pat Baekhyun on the side of his face. ”You know I can’t take your word for it, right? I can’t have a loose-lipped kid walking around town knowing where I hide my goods, can I now? If my mates find out I let you go unscathed like this they’re going to think I’ve turned soft and they’re going to take advantage of it. This town will burn, kid.”

Baekhyun shakes his head, his face breaking in a pained frown, following by a silent cry. It is the realisation – the crushing weight of him realising that he’s already dead, that he’s not going to make it out alive. She knows. God she knows how it feels all too well and it is devastating and suffocating, it’s as if someone rips your heart out right out of your chest and you just helplessly watch as they crush it, squeezing all the blood out. And all you can do is cry and wail, but you cannot move. You can’t help yourself. You can’t save yourself.

”You understand that I can’t afford this, right?”

But then, something shifts in his gaze, and Serin reads it. Survival.

In a split second, he tears old lady Jun’s husband’s grip from his shoulder and face and elbows him in the stomach, real hard. The latter groans in pain, stumbling back towards the ground. What follows is an angry growl, and before Baekhyun can even have the time to run away, the male grabs his foot and pulls him down towards the humid soil.

I’m putting a warning here for descriptions of murder ahead. If you’re sensitive towards violence in fiction, please skip the next paragraphs. I’ll put stars at the end of the scene for direction.

”Help!” His voice is hoarse and loud, but not more than it is desperate. It cuts right through her heart, and Serin wants to scream. ”Somebody help!”

She can’t breathe, she can’t comprehend she can’t even utter or shout anything because the way he digs his hands in the soil at an attempt to crawl forward is so horrifyingly numbing yet seeringly painful at the same time.

He kicks, grunts, and fights back against the older male with all he has. But the latter is not only older, but bigger and stronger in stature. Once he manages to pull Baekhyun down by his ankles, he reaches to punch him square in the face, causing him to yelp. But he doesn’t give up.

”You little— I tried to be nice, kid. You leave me no damn choice.”

While Baekhyun himself doesn’t notice it in his struggle, Serin sees when the other man reaches for the shovel, raising it up in the air.

A yelp has the time to emit from her lips, before he brings its sharp tip down on Baekhyun’s leg, stabbing it unevenly. The rusty metal digs down in his leg with an apalling sound and he screams— whether its out of pain or fear, she can’t tell. But it’d s blood-curdling scream. She doesn’t want to watch anymore, she can’t watch any of it anymore.

With his leg incapacitated, all Baekhyun can do is crawl on the soil, wailing and clutching on the dirt in hope someone will come to his aid.

He whips around, right in time to block the hard hit of the shovel that is directed in his direction. But then he gits hit again, and again, and again, until all she can hear is the horrifying clang of metal against flesh and bone. Serin covers her ears, refusing to hear it. She blocks out everything – his yells, his whimpering and his pain. Baekhyun is a liar. He told Serin dying was just like falling asleep, when in reality it has been nothing short of traumatising. Liar. Liar! He only said that to comfort her.

”Help! Somebody—please! Dad! Dad!”

His screams subside when lady Jun’s husband brings the shovel down on his skull. Serin closes her eyes in the moment of impact. She doesn’t hear it, nor see it, but she knows. She knows it’s what lady Jun’s husband does. He hits Baekhyun’s head with the flat part of the shovel probably at least two times before his body stops twitching in pain. Or stops moving at all, for that matter. Forever. Unmoving. Stale. Dead.

Serin doesn’t see him in that state. She refuses to remember him like this. She can’t have the picture of his corpse engraved in her head as the last memory of him.

Everything remains quiet, but she doesn’t have the courage to open her eyes and see what’s going on.

And then, there’s a quiet, distant sound. It’s alluring and familiar, but it takes a few seconds before Serin realises that it’s the rain, and that’s she’s being brought back to reality again.

Her entire body is soaked, and it’s pitch black. She can’t see anything. But does it really matter?

It doesn’t. That’s the truth What matters now, is the fact that Baekhyun’s last words were a cry for help to his parents. That was his regret; he never got to say goodbye to them. He never got to build the motorcycle with his father. He died alone and scared, in the middle of the night. And the reason to why his body is yet not found, is because old lady Jun’s husband most probably buried it with the very same weapon he used to murder him.

It hurts – everything hurts. He’s nowhere to be seen. Baekhyun is gone, in the most brutal way imaginable. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.

It repeats in her head, it engraves itself in her bones and screams it through her ears and it writes with her hands. She is trapped but she is alive: yet she feels anything but that. Her lungs are burning.

********

It’s hard to tell how she even manages to get herself home in her current state, but somehow she does.

But what comes as a real suprise is the blinding light the moment she opens the door. A few seconds pass before she can make out her surroundings and realise that the reason to why the lights are on is because her aunt is up and waiting for her. She’s holding a phone to her ear, looking extremely distressed. Not only that, but all three of her friends are seated by the sofa, and they don’t look much more at peace. But then Eunjung stops in her tracks as she catches sight of her, and her lineaments morph in relief.

Jongin on the other hand, storms up to her and closes the door. He doesn’t look happy. At all.

”Do you have any idea what you did? It’s been two hours since your aunt called us. She said the door was busted open and you were gone. Do you even know how much you worried all of us!?” his voice is low and controlled, which somehow makes it ten times more intimidating.

Serin doesn’t reply. She can’t reply, because half of her mind is still stuck at her vision in the forest, while the other half is in complete shock because it doesn’t feel like she has been gone for more than twenty minutes. She switches her gaze to her aunt, who returns her look with disapproval.

”We thought something happened to you. It looked like a crime scene,” Seulgi fills in, though she sounds a lot more calmer. Her tone is rather concerned instead.

She opens to apologise, because a part of her does feel bad. They’re all shaken up and probably terrified given the cirmustances, and Serin herself is in terrible condition. 

Her lips and mind both fail her, and what comes out instead is a whimper before she grips the fabric of Jongin’s shirt and helplessly leans into him.

”I-It’s Baekhyun,” she manages to stutter out. ”I woke up and I saw him and he walked away— he was walking away from me and I had to reach him, Jongin, I just—” her voice breaks in the middle of her sentence. Actually scratch that – she breaks in the middle of the sentence. It feels like she’s dying. So ironic. So ing ironic.

A shaky sigh leaves Jongin as he wraps his arms around her, pulling her close to him. The warmth radiating from his body gives her shivers. Of comfort, of safety. It is something Baekhyun has always sadly lacked – warmth.

”Christ Serin, you scared the out of me. I told you it would end up destroying you.”

”What did you see?” Jongdae asks.

Her hands grip his shirt tighter, and her breathing feels short again.

”Serin?” Jongin questions, seemingly having noticed her distressed state.

”I saw him…” Serin’s throat feels dry and parched, as if there is a clog blocking her from uttering the words. She feels lightheaded, and every single aspect of Baekhyun’s life as a human slips through her fingers like sand through cracks in the ground. The vibration of his delighted laughter when he’s out with his friends, the sound of his liveful voice when he talks to his parents, and then the feeling of his cold fingers on her face, and in that moment Serin realises that she has never seen him smile when he was her guide as the way he did when he was alive. Because whatever fantasy they were all living in, Baekhyun was still dead all along. Mercillesly killed with a damn shovel, screaming for his life. There is nothing she could have done for him that would have given him back that warm, toothy smile because it was ripped away from him the moment he entered the forest that night. Baekhyun is dead.

”I saw him die.”

”You…” Jongdae trails off, and as soon as realisation dawns upon him, he looks up at her. ”What?”

”Oh, dear God.” Eunjung puts the phone back on the counter. ”And you witnessed it?”

”Almost all of it, a-at one point I couldn’t anymore and- he was murdered, oh my God he was murdered.”

”Serin,” Jongin’s warm, reassuring voice fills her senses and releases some of the tension tearing at her body. It’s like the feeling of a warm cup of tea descending down a parched throat. ”Let’s not talk about it now, you’re obviously not in the right state. Calm down and sleep first, we’ll talk about it tomorrow when you’re ready, okay? Either way, Jongdae and Seulgi managed to get ahold of the Byun’s new adress, so everything is already set out.”

She nods, grateful for his suggestion. ”Yeah,” is all she manages to mutter, and Seulgi stands up to envelop her in a big hug.

”Everything will be okay,” she reassures her. ”I think it’s my time to go. I left Jaehyun and Jaemin with my uncle, but I don’t know how trustable he is with them, you know, if they wake up and don’t find me at home and all.”

”Sorry for waking you in the first place,” Serin mutters hoarsely.

”Don’t apologise,” Jongdae fills in, patting her on the shoulder. ”I can’t even imagine what seeing something like that must feel like. Rest up, dumbo.” The male then grabs his umbrella and Seulgi’s car keys, pulling down the handle to the entrance. ”I’ll accompany you, let’s go Seulgi."

********

A hot shower and many breathing exercises later, Serin is sitting by the edge of her bed, feet dangling near the floor as Jongin wipes her hair dry with a towel. He offered to help auntie Eunjung and take care of Serin since the woman did look really tired. His fingers are a soft pressure against her scalp, rubbing gently over the rough fabric of the towel. It’s a nice sensation, and each touch seeps an eloping warmth that causes her to sigh in relaxation.

Her feet are bandaged, but the pain is still throbbing enough for her to not be capable of even putting her feet down before wincing. They’re filled with small shallow cuts and burns from all the friction and running.

But worst of all, is the picture of Baekhyun’s bloody and battered body twitching in pain as he screams for help. It’s engraved in her mind, clawed around and burned into her lungs. It’s all she sees every time she closes her eyes – it’s a haunting, and she doesn’t think she can lay down and even attempt to sleep. Not if she’s alone at least.

Jongin is quiet, but his gaze is a lot calmer than it had been just an hour ago. It seems as if the anger has somehow plaqued itself and a solemn tension has filled the air instead.

”I don’t think I can sleep,” she mutters in a low voice, chewing on her nails.

The male removes her hands from . ”Do you feel uneasy?”

”That’s an understatement,” she laughs. ”I feel terrified. I feel as if I’m going to see him…like that, the moment I close my eyes and open them again.”

He hums in understanding, and removes his hands from her head to take a step back and stare at her. ”Is there anything I can do?”

There is, actually. It’s a thought that comes to her even before she can process what it truly means. But then she does process it, and she heitates. ”Not really.”

Jongin nods curtly, before giving her a small smile. ”Then, Goodnight it is.”

But as he starts walking towards the door, panic shoots through her. Serin looks back at the bed, and a rush of cold sweat overwhelmes her. She can’t sleep alone. She can’t do it. Not tonight.

”Jongin!” Serin grabs his wrist before he can walk any further. The male stops, and turns to her, tilting his head in confusion. ”Actually could you, uh…” she trails off.

He raises an expectant eyebrow, which causes her to usher the last few words out of her lips. ”Stay? Could you stay with me…tonight?”

It doesn’t take longer than a few seconds for his cheeks to coat in a shade of light peach, and his eyes to widen. ”What?”

To be fair, it’s not directly his fault for misunderstanding. It does sound kind of bad. Even so, she sighs heavily, feeling warm all over in embarassment. ”I don’t mean like that, obviously. I just- I can’t sleep alone. Just for tonight. Please?”

Jongin is still red in the face when he pinches the bridge of his nose. ”Serin, I…what the hell, okay. Of course, I mean- sure, yeah. Sorry for misunderstanding you like that, it’s probably the last thing you need right now.”

”No, it’s fine,” she hurries. ”It was kind of sudden.”

”I’ll go ask auntie for some spare clothes, then,” and then he’s gone, and Serin releases a breath she didn’t know she is holding. What is this strange air around them?

*************

The lights in the room are already off and Serin is already tucked in when she hears the sound of the door clicking open, then close again. Not long after, she feels the bed dip beside her before she is enveloped by the presence of his warmth. Her heart is still poisoned with the sickening events of that day, which is what causes her to drift closer to him. She turns around, and meets his gaze.

One of his hand is resting on the pillow, while the other rests above the covers.

”I can’t get it out of my head,” Serin whispers, and her voice finally breaks. ”I don’t know what to do, I-I—”

Jongin hushes her, and ushers her closer. She complies, and releases a hitched breath when his arms brush along her back to wrap her in an embrace and bring her closer.

Her head is resting by his chest, and one hand finds its way on his shoulder as the other laces around his neck. His breath fanns the top of her head, but the best thing has to be the fact that she can hear his heartbeat. Her ear is right on his chest, and