Part V: The Architecture of Belief

I wish I never found out who you were.

Baekhyun knows it’s pathetic that he’s looking through his photos of Eunju on his phone. He wants to stop, but his brain repeats her words like a broken record and it hurts at the same time it makes him angry. Because he hates Elektra and all her talk about justice and doing the right thing and helping victims, and he hates how she makes him feel insignificant and terrible because he’s too selfish to want to help others and just wants to hurt Hwang Chisoo like Baekhyun was hurt. Because he hates how he’d believed Eunju would finally understand after everything, but she hadn’t. Disappointment hurts some, but hope hurts some more.

Not that it matters anyway. She’d made it abundantly clear that she wanted nothing to do with him, and that’s probably for the best.

Baekhyun goes on a jog with Jongdae the next morning in an attempt to keep up appearances, makes an excuse about not being able to go to the coffee shop, and then returns home to study. It’s a semblance of normality he tries to cling to to keep himself sane.

Jongdae sees right through it. His friend invades his room at 8am and slams a cup of coffee down on his desk. “Did you two break up?”

Baekhyun looks up from the paragraph in his textbook that he’s been trying to read for the past fifteen minutes. “What?”

“Did you and Eunju break up?”

Well. That’s a good question. They’re definitely not dating anymore, but technically…

Deciding that his brain can’t handle more mental gymnastics, Baekhyun nods.

There’s a moment of silence before Jongdae reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. He doesn’t tell him he’s wrong and that they should get back together or press him on details, which Baekhyun appreciates because he really doesn’t think he can explain.

***

Wednesday, he patrols the city on his own. He doesn’t bump into Elektra—Eunju?—at all, and Baekhyun’s never been more confused between relief and disappointment. Thursday, he goes to their neurochemical behaviour course and he and Eunju sit at opposite ends of the classroom. He doesn’t allow himself to look at her, which means he can’t tell whether she’s sneaking glances at him in the way he so desperately wants to. Friday, with Hwang Chisoo’s date only three days away, Baekhyun feels anxiety creeping into his chest.

Saturday night, true to his word, Hwang Chisoo delivers another message to him. It tumbles out of the man’s coat pocket when he drops dead on the ground, and Baekhyun stares at the address feeling numb and terrified and empty at the same time. He’s waited for two years for this moment, but the thought occurs to him only now that it may be his own death sentence as well.

***

Baekhyun doesn’t leave the house on Sunday night, twenty four hours before Hwang Chisoo’s deadline, and for the first time in six days, he receives a text from Eunju.

Eunju, 2:06AM
it’s a trap, baekhyun. you’re doing exactly what he wants you to do.

He turns off his phone and tells Jongdae he’s caught a bad flu so his friend stays away from him.

***

It’s eleven, an hour before he’s supposed to head to Hwang Chisoo’s meeting spot, and Baekhyun is sitting on his bed with his suit on and trying to breathe. Jongdae is studying late at the library.

Two years of reliving that horrible moment when he’d seen his brother’s body slump like a ragdoll to the ground, two years of pain and fear and anger and why-couldn’t-I-do-something-why-wasn’t-it-me. Two years of promising himself that one day the pain and fear and anger would stop the moment he made sure Chisoo was dead. Two years for this moment.

He turns on his phone for the first time in a day. The moment it connects with wifi, a stream of notifications flood across the screen.

The top is from Eunju, demanding where he is, but Baekhyun ignores it. Then his screen flashes an alert, then another, then another. They’re both from a minute ago.

The city is on emergency lockdown. All residents are required to stay indoors or seek shelter immediately. Police are currently investigating what seems to be a related chain of bomb attacks.

The room drops in temperature. Baekhyun can hear his ears ringing, because he knows this is Chisoo’s work, and he knows it was on purpose, and terror crashes over him because despite all his newfound power, he’s still powerless.

What if I turn back now? The thought is quick and fleeting, because no one holds him back from it, and Baekhyun knows he can’t stop on his own.

He reaches for his mask, barely aware of his own actions. He turns around, about to climb out the window, when it opens on his own.

What.

Then Baekhyun realizes that it hadn’t opened on it’s own; rather, Elektra has pulled it open and crawled inside, and she’s standing there in her suit, masked.

“Baekhyun,” she says, and it’s not Elektra’s distorted voice but Eunju’s, painfully familiar in a way he wishes it weren't. “You can’t go there.”

Elektra, so adamant on doing what’s right, on justice and on helping. Baekhyun hates how it still makes him feel, because he’s exactly what she isn’t. The city is on fire, it’s his fault, and he’s ignoring it in favour of revenge. He’s an awful person, and i