BAEKHYUN

Three years later

This was certainly better than the last apartment. Smaller, but newer. The living room and kitchen were only divided by the four-foot-wide island, giving the illusion of a bigger space. The bathroom was a bit larger, but no tub, just a shower stall. Baekhyun loved to take baths, that was his relaxation time after a stinky day (nevertheless heartwarming and fun at the pet grooming salon, but that’s okay, he was going to manage. 

His previous apartment was no match to this one. Being that the landlord guaranteed that there were no rats and pests—his issues at the previous one, that was. Fingers crossed that she wasn’t lying. 

Well, it was too late to change minds now anyway. He already signed everything he had to sign and gave the deposit. It was a very spontaneous decision, picking the first place he viewed. 

Aside from the fact that he was desperate to get away from rodents, he loved the feeling of being spontaneous. It was thrilling. It was cool. And it was pretty darn liberating—just as he liked it. 

Baekhyun flopped on his mattress that was on the floor, he was yet to buy a proper bed frame that won’t give up on him after two weeks of use. He just needed to save up to buy the better and unfortunately more expensive one, that was all. 

For now, the floor would do. It was summer anyway. 

“This is nice.” He whispered to himself, throwing arms behind his head, eyes scanning the dust around and on the corners of the ceiling. 

It was already his second year of living on his own, but his stuff was still roughly the same amount as they were when he started, two pieces of luggage for his clothes and essentials. A loveseat and a thirty-two-inch television on two Ikea TV benches that he stacked together to make himself a shelf for his books and movies. He didn’t have a dining table and chairs, but he had a second-hand lift-top coffee table with hidden storage underneath when you lift its top—the main reason he bought it. Oh, also because it was on sale. 

His shift was not until three in the afternoon, he had time to spare. Perhaps, grocery shopping for his new apartment was a good plan. Getting off the bed, he pulled one of his suitcases and zipped it open. God, he didn’t even have the time to properly pack his clothes, now they were all a crumpled mess. 

But that was fine, they were going to eventually smooth out once he was wearing them. He changed into a random t-shirt and jeans before walking out of the room.

He didn’t own a car. He probably could, either finance one or get the cheapest and oldest one he could get, but he enjoyed commuting more. He loved riding trains and busses to get to work especially when he had his earphones on. He hadn’t driven a vehicle in three years, by choice—well, sort of. 

Commuting felt safer anyway. It was also a way for him to escape reality for a little while and observe people. He was part of them. He blended in. And he loved every bit of it.

Maybe it was because he didn’t grow up having to take them at all. He was like a grown man hoarding and enjoying kids’ toys he never had as a kid. The only difference was … he actually had everything as a kid—and now he was enjoying the feeling of not having everything and just being an individual who took the subway to get to work or rode the bus to get to the grocery store. 

It was more fun that way. It was more grounding. It was more him. Especially in the area that he was in. Away from the tall skyscrapers. Away from all the crazy crowd. Away from the hustlin’ and bustlin’ of the city. Away from home. 

His former home had never felt like home in three years, not even in his head. He hadn’t dared to go back ever since he ran away two years ago. He left everything behind except his clothes and some cash that he had accidentally saved up throughout the years playing the stupidest bets and games with his brother whenever they hung out.

That was all he had, he started with that small amount of money. He always found it funny that even after everything, Baekbeom was still the only one who supported him. He liked to think that, at least. 

If he was still alive, he would have supported his decision of living a normal life, right? Or maybe if Baekhyun listened to the other side of his brain, the bad side, Baekbeom would have preferred him to leave because it was all his fault that everything got screwed up, and he didn’t deserve to live an easy life after that night. 

Baekhyun didn’t plan to ever go back anyway. He didn’t want to relive three years ago, or the year following that. The painful year that went by after the car accident, a time in which he did nothing else but wish he died in his own hands instead of his brother. Not him. Not Baekbeom. Not his only best friend.

Pressing the volume on his phone higher, Baekhyun drowned himself in the loud music and closed his eyes to meditate away from the dark thoughts. 

The music suddenly stopped getting replaced by his ringtone, his phone vibrating on his right thigh. A raspy grunt escaped his mouth as he fished his phone out, ultimately breaking away from his intentional stupor. His mother was calling. 

Now, Baekhyun hadn’t entirely cut ties with his whole family. He tried to, but it didn’t work. At least, not for his mother. They had a deal. She wasn’t going to bother him, she wasn’t going to offer him money or any sort of help, and she wasn't going to try and persuade him to come back home. In return, she had to know his whereabouts and his phone number. 

It was a pretty simple deal, so Baekhyun agreed. 

For the past two years, his mother had been keeping their contact a secret. Otherwise, his father was going to try and force him to come back. Or worse things could happen.

Well, Baekhyun always thought with his father’s power, he should have figured out where he was by now, but he didn’t want to question something that was benefiting him in every way. Maybe his father had given up on trying to change him. Or maybe he was the useless and disposable son who killed his brother anyway—he wasn’t that big of a loss. 

“Hey, Mom.” He answered while scrolling through his Instagram. His feed mainly contained pictures of the cats and dogs from the grooming salon. Some were pictures of food, and a few more were photos of him with his brother—the last one being the selfie they took that night at the ramen place.

For the past years, he had been considering deleting the photo. It was triggering in so many bad ways that it was difficult to even look at … but it was also Baekbeom’s very last photo. 

“Son, have you seen the news? Byun Group got involved in a scandal because of one of our affiliates.” His mother broke. 

Baekhyun’s initial reaction was a mix of surprise and a little bit of nothing. He didn’t care about the business, but he did care about what his family may be feeling at the moment. He immediately typed his family name on the search engine, something he hated doing the most. 

Numerous articles pop out about the COO of Well & Co., one of Byun Group’s biggest subsidiaries and shareholders,involved in embezzling money and mistreating their employees, he was also under inverstigation for ual harassment reported by a few female executives.

Holy , it was more serious than he thought. 

“Baekhyun, your father needs you. I’ve never seen him like this, he’s going through a lot of stress. Someone else’s wrongdoings can still tarnish our reputation and it’s already starting to.” She pleaded. 

Baekhyun closed his eyes again as he painfully listened to his mother’s cries. “Mom, I need to think about it. I have a job, I can’t just—”

“Your brother never liked that Wang Taehyuk, he always told me before that he couldn’t be trusted. But your father was too nice and too trusting, now look at what it has gotten us.” She bawled. Before she could even continue, the looming sentence was already playing in Baekhyun’s head, in a slow torturous tone. “If only your brother was still with us, he’d know what to do.” 

Was he a mind-reader? 

Or had he heard this sentence way too many times at this point? 

“How’s the new place coming along?”

Baekhyun earned a nudge from Sohyun, his boss and the owner of the pet grooming salon. It was too early to answer such a question, but he appreciated that she even remembered. Instead of answering a verbal meh, he just shrugged his shoulders and stretched his mouth into a lopsided frown. “What’s wrong?” She asked, taking his response as a red flag. 

It wasn’t the new apartment. It wasn’t the awful rainy weather either—although it was definitely not helping. It was his phone call with his mother a week ago. It was the stupid scandal. The supposed S-O-S from his family. It wasn’t like he knew what to do. He wasn’t as good as his brother was, he wasn’t as smart, and he wasn’t as passionate about the business as Baekbeom was. 

Sure, he felt bad. Sure, he had the right means, as in familiarity and credentials, to be by his father’s side at this critical moment. But what the was he supposed to do about it that would miraculously remove them from this mess? 

One, Byun Group only got dragged into it being the mother company of Well & Co. and two, whether it would affect their reputation and overall sales in the market or not after the backlash, he knew it would eventually die down sooner or later. People would forget