A foolish sole bird called in the night, perched on the high ledge of a window overhead. It watched without much interest as the the boys sauntered by below, before returning its attention to rearranging its feathers.

Ren and Baekho were calm now, given the circumstances. They had left the fear of the Lurkers behind, as Ren regained his senses after putting some distance between them and the party. They had wordlessly agreed not to mention it, in hope that it would all go away like last time as long as they paid the situation no heed..

"Baekho?" Now approaching the entrance to their dorm, Ren turned around curiously when he noticed Baekho had stopped moving. He found him standing frightfully still, staring at one of the pillars in the entrance hall.

"Baekho, what's wrong? Don't scare me like this, not now." He walked closer to come and see what it was that had captured his friend's attention so vehemently. It was a poster. Though it wasn't familiar, the location it hung was. It was in one of the many places where Baekho had personally put up the messages about Hoi-Hoi the beagle, to do that pushy girl a favour.

But Hoi-Hoi's poster had been torn down, deemed unimportant in the shadow of this new message that now took its place. Ren froze when he saw it.

A little girl, seven years of age, as the paper informed him, had not come home last Monday. The poster was clearly made by people who knew the girl personally, her parents probably. Depressingly so, as it referred to every small and likely unnecessary detail about her interests and even allergies that would probably aid no one in finding her. The more useful information, like that she was wearing a yellow sun dress on the day she went missing and that her mother had taken special care to tie her hair in pigtails didn't receive mention until the bottom of the page, right before the phone number to call for tips. Not that such details were necessary, as the photograph showed she was noteworthily cute, and not a face someone was likely to quickly forget.

"Oh, that's so sad," was all Ren could say, rather lamely.

The taller boy bit his lip and whimpered slightly. "It was the same day."

"What?"

"It was probably right after I-" He gulped, unable to finish his sentence.

Ren smiled carefully, not sure what had Baekho so worked up. "Say, wasn't this the same day of Mouse's accident? And when the Lurker's tried to catch us?"

Baekho took a long time to answer that, making Ren feel most uncomfortable.

"Yes. Yes it was,” he finally whispered. “That was the same day. There must've been a lot of hungry Lurkers about then." Before Ren could say anything, Baekho waved his hand dismissively and began to walk again.

They made their way up to the apartment in heavy silence, Baekho leading the way. He scanned his wristband at the door and the moment it opened Ren could tell something was off. Immediately, Mouse came running towards them -at surprising speed for one still getting used to missing a leg- and jumped into the hall to hide behind Baekho's legs.

"Something's wrong," Ren said, relaying this creeping feeling of wrongness to Baekho. "JR?" he called into the dark room. He flicked the light switch to try and bring some clarity into the situation but nothing happened when he did. Other than the light from the hallway which only marginally made its way inside, they had nothing to see by. But even this light was enough to see that many objects in the room had been moved and knocked over.

"Maybe the light's broken, but what the hell happened in here?" Baekho wondered, looking at the damage as he gathered Mouse in his arms.

"Let's find out." Ren walked inside, slowly moving along the familiar path to where he knew JR's bedroom was, but very careful not to step on anything that was out of place along the way. Making his way towards the room, he got a start when he bumped his shins into their sofa. It had been moved, and was nowhere near where it had been when they left. Stretching out his arms to break his fall, he managed to catch himself on what he presumed would be one of the arm rests before he could fall all the way to the floor.

"Are you all right?" asked Baekho from the doorway when he heard the soft thud.

"I'm fine." Ren frowned. "The sofa's actually been flipped over." He noticed this aloud as he d along it and realised why it felt different. Starting to move his feet again, he heard something crunch beneath his shoes. Glass.

The light, maybe? Did someone shatter the lamp? That would explain why it wasn't working.

After another minor stumble, he made it to JR's door and knocked, though only in convention, because he entered almost instantly. The light here was out of order just as that in the living room had been, but he should have expected that.

He tried to see as well as he could in what minimal light made it in here from the hall but nothing in the room seemed to move, nor make a sound.

"He's not here." Ren heard the distress in his voice much clearer than he had wanted it to sound. He hadn't realised he was quite this scared. "I don't-"

"Shh," interrupted Baekho and he ventured into the room himself, leaving Mouse behind on the doorstep. "Do you hear that?"

Ren stood frozen to listen. A sound like heavy breathing came from a distance, only barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of blood ringing in his ears and his racing heart. "I think it's coming from the kitchen." Baekho went on hesitantly, and looked behind him vaguely to where he thought Ren was, his eyes still not used to the darkness. Ren gulped, unsure what to do.

Then, very distinctly, a squeak interrupted the sound briefly before it went on.

That's JR, he realised suddenly, recognising the voice as his paranoia died down. And he's... crying?

"JR!" Ren cried out. They ran to the kitchen and sure enough, among the disarray of more knocked over furniture and the contents of the fridge splayed across the floor, found their friend there, from the looks of it fortunately unharmed.

He stood in front of the kitchen sink, leaning with his hands on the counter and his head hung low. In the faint secondary light that filtered through the blinds from outside Ren could see the muscles of his arms stand out flexed and shaking, under great pressure. The air practically buzzed with the strain with which he pushed down on the counter. He wasn't just leaning on it, he was exerting himself with all his strength as if trying to keep himself from collapsing under a large weight.

Tears streamed down his face and his chest heaved quickly and irregularly with his swift and tearful breathing.

“JR,” Baekho's voice was quiet as he carefully approached. “What happened here? Are you okay?”

There was no response, not even any movement in their friend. He just kept standing there, staring down at the sink letting out ragged breaths. Ren and Baekho looked at each other vaguely, before Baekho ventured again.

“It looks as if we've been burgled, why is this place such a mess?”

“I got... angry.” Finally some motion occurred in JR, as he lifted up his head, but not to look at them. He just gazed fixedly at the tiled wall in front of him. “I just... It's so frustrating, I couldn't stand it. I just got so angry.”

“What's frustrating?” Baekho continued calmly but Ren grew impatient.

“Come on JR, you look terrible, you shouldn't be out of bed!”

JR ignored him and went on in his own soliloquy between gasps.

“It's driving me mad. I'm so hungry, but I can't seem to eat anything. Everything makes me sick. Just the smell of food makes me wanna throw up. But I'm so so hungry.”

A reassuring but weak smile graced Baekho's lips as he moved a little closer still, Ren meanwhile took to cleaning the perishable foods off the kitchen floor to return to the refrigerator. “Hey, that's pretty normal if you have the flu or something, don't worry about it. But Ren's right, we should get you back to bed.”

“No, it's not normal! Why are you both so damn stupid? Why can't you notice a thing?” His head snapped sideways then, looking at them for the first time. His eyes were red and swollen from crying and his skin was even more faded and pale than when they had left him.

“Don't you yell at us! We're doing nothing but our best for you,” Ren objected.

He snorted. “Oh yeah, right. That's why you left me behind.”

He coughed up another mournful squeak and leant forward to retch. Baekho put a hand on his shoulder supportively, but was startled by the touch.

"Jesus man, you're burning up. Your fever must be through the roof!" JR didn't hear him, he was too focussed on his retching. Baekho had expected him to vomit, but to his even greater dismay, what trailed down from his lips was black and thick, like congealed blood.

"Is that blood?" Baekho practically screamed as he put a hand on the back of his friends head, trying not to flinch at how hot he was to the touch, and turned him around to look at him. Ren had stopped picking up the food from the floor and stood up now.

"Are you really coughing up blood? Is there blood in your lungs, is that why you're having such a hard time breathing?"

JR just sobbed again and pushed him away with surprising strength for someone in such bad shape.

"Please don't touch me."

The sheer wretchedness in JR's voice struck a chord within Ren's chest when he came to realise just how terrible he felt. Yet they did not know why.

“They didn't warn me about this.” JR continued in a hoarse whisper. He whimpered as he dropped to his knees in front of the counter and rested his head against the side.

“They lied to me. They said it was all going to be better. That it would stop hurting after a while.” He lifted up his head briefly before making it contact with the counter again, as if in punishment. “But it still burns and aches and the guilt won't go away!” He was becoming exceedingly angry and was steadily hitting his head against the counter with more force each time.
Baekho was baffled and jumped in to stop his friend from hurting himself. Grabbing hold of his shoulders he struggled to keep him in place and prevent him from smashing his head into the counter again, but met with surprising strength at his disfavour. “What guilt, JR? What are you talking about?”

Ren wasn't as uncertain as Beakho. He had the most uncanny feeling that he knew.

“It's the Lurkers, isn't it JR?”

JR stopped struggling and slowly turned his head to face Ren, looking at him utterly miserably.

“They did to you what they did to me, that hypnotising and alluring. Didn't they? But they... they got you.”

With wide eyes, Baekho looked from JR to Ren and back again, piecing it all together in his mind. Then, after biting his trembling lip, he asked the question on both their minds.

“What did they do to you, JR?”

With the most misery Ren had ever witnessed in a human being, JR smiled a smile of utter hopelessness and betrayal.

"I joined them."

It felt like a slap to the face. The realisation of something they should have seen ages ago, of something, deep down, Ren already knew he knew.

"You joined them?" Baekho didn't seem to have run into the same wall of truth yet. "What on earth do you mean?"

"Baekho," Ren said. "Lurkers are people."

There was a silence.

There was only JR's breaths escaping from his bloodied lips. His crying had stopped. He escaped from Baekho's grip without much protest, all he got was a stare from the other boy who did not understand but was clearly afraid. Very afraid.

Ren noticed suddenly that he'd been holding his breath in anticipation. He inhaled and addressed JR.

"That's why the lights are broken. You smashed them, because you can't stand the light. Because they hurt you."

JR nodded and gave him another sad smile as he got up, his anger seemingly subdued for now.

"I need to leave, Ren. I want to leave, but there's too much light outside."

"No!” Without understanding from what depths he conjured the courage, Ren wouldn't let him do this. “You're not leaving. We're not letting you go with them. We can fix this. We can cure you. We just need to get you to a hospital and-"

“There's no fixing it!” In a flash JR stood right in front of Ren and grabbed his shoulders roughly while he shouted in his face. “You can't change this! I have to leave!” Ren whimpered. JR took another deep breath and looked at his hands, digging painfully into Ren's shoulders. He let go, but did not allow his burning gaze to leave Ren's face. The very instant Ren was released Baekho had bolted forward and stood protectively in front of him. A flicker of movement in JR's eyes made him waver, but he stood his ground.

JR spoke to them both solemnly, now neither angry nor sorrowful.

"I don't want to hurt you, you're my friends. I have to leave here. I want you to stay safe. But I have to eat."

Ren could sense the answer before Baekho even finished the question. "What do you need to eat, then?"

JR looked into his face sadly, his jaw tightening with the restrain of a whole other emotion.

"People."

Author's Note: Look you guys, I'm finally revealing things. Aren't you proud of me? :P