You blink, hoping to force some tears that might be able to clear you vision but to no avail. You head unwillingly throws itself back. You reach your hand to that person’s face and slowly brush against it, managing a smile as tears trail down the side of your face.

And when you think that you’re safe in his arms, you feel yourself falling back onto the ground as his arms are violently wrenched away from you. You hear another loud thump against the wall while you try to crawl towards him, dragging your body along, reaching your hand out to him. The base of a heel land on your hand and you cry out in pain. You try to look up at your stepmother but your head feels too heavy for you to do so. The weak figure grabs onto your stepmother’s other free leg but she manages to kick him below his hip, forcing him to fall back onto the wall and you tear even more at that sight.

 “P-please,” you plead, grabbing onto her stick thin leg with your free hand. “L-let… let go of him.”

She scoffs, “Who is that? Your housemate?” She looks over to him and back to you. “It doesn’t matter,” she states and leans closer to you with the knife pointing at your face again.

You squint up at the sharp weapon, you see 3 images of it and they’re all floating, you can’t quite make out which is the real one. “Don’t kill me.”

She laughs, swinging the knife before your face playfully. “Who says anything about killing you?”

“W-what?” you say, perplexed.

“Your life means nothing to me, dear,” she says softly, trailing the tip of the knife across your cheek. “Your beauty does,” she says and slides the knife on your cheek without any warning, causing you to let out a sharp scream.

“Get away from her!” he manages to push your stepmother few steps away from you, still holding onto his waist.

You stepmother heaves out a breath and walks toward him, grabbing violently onto his hair and pull his head back, pressing the knife onto his neck. “Her life means nothing to me but I can make yours an exception,” she breathes into his ear while you lay on the ground helplessly. Your body doesn’t seem to cooperate with you at the moment.

You force yourself onto your feet and blindly move towards them with your blurry vision. Next thing you know, you fall onto her, with intention or not. She falls back onto the ground with you lying stiff on her, the knife flies out from her grip when the back of her hand hits the floor hard. Your legs aren’t strong enough to support your heavy body and so, resulting in that fall. Clearly, you don’t care since you still manage to keep her away from him.

She pushes you away and you feel your face landing hard on the dusty ground again. The dust rushes into your nose and the dirt burns your eyes. Coming back with wobbly steps and the pocket knife in her hand, she quickly strikes a line or two onto the same side of your face again before falling back into the ground. You squish your eyes, holding back the pain while blood trickles down your cheek along with your tears. It hurts. It’s indescribable but it hurts so badly. The open wound is stinging. You bite your lower lip forcefully, diverting the pain to your lips instead because the burning sensation on your cheek is unbearable.

You hear them shouting and some loud noises here and there but you can’t pull yourself to crack your eyes open. You just lay there like some soulless body, your body parts just can’t seem to move. Your breath even sound too soft, like you’re not breathing at all.

You hear a sharp scream and a voice calling onto Baekhyun’s name. Then, you feel a tight grip on your shoulder and slowly being turned around. That person force your right eye open and you vividly see a girl’s face up close to yours. You feel tears dropping onto your neck and shudder slightly when they trickle down your chest. She cups the left side of your face that is clear of wounds and presses her forehead against yours, sniffing. “Look at me,” she whispers.

You unconsciously smile. That’s the second time you heard that line in a day.

“What?” you hear someone exclaim, close to a whisper. “That can’t be true!”

“I’m afraid it is,” another sighs. “The doctor just broke the news to me and Tiffany.”

“How is that possible? Is Baekhyun that weak? Is—“

“Guys…”

“Trust Baekhyun to be the Prince Charming.” The person of the same voice scoffs. I can’t believe he’s that weak. He’s—“

“Guys…”

“She looks more injured than he is!”

“Kris! For Christ sake, can you please stop! She’s waking up.”

Everyone runs up to you and gather around the bed as you slowly crack your tired eyes open and blink a few. You push your fringe back, being aware of the tightness around your forehead, and feel the bandage wrapped around it. Why is there a bandage over your forehead? You slowly scan through the familiar faces before you, some of them have smiles plastered over their face while some just stare at you worryingly. You take in a deep breath and the familiar smell of medicine fills your nose, you try not to gag. Not the hospital again.

You close your eyes and sigh. “How long have I’ve been sleeping?”

“Your stay here will be three times the days you’ve spent in this same ward few weeks back,” Tiffany announces cheerfully with three fingers up as though it is a good thing. It’s not. You guess she sounds relatively happy only because she knows you can’t escape this time. Not when you can’t even move your neck. “Oh, and you’ve been sleeping for two days.”

Two days?!

You try to sit up but you just can’t seem to get up. You figure it might be because your body is still too sore from the accident back in your mother’s shop but you realized your wrists are tied up at the side. You narrow your eyes to your wrist and look up to Tiffany who is standing the closest to you.

“Why am I being tied up?” you question and Tiffany remains quiet, giving you a guilty smile instead. You glance to the others but no one dares to make eye contact with you. “Someone—“ you start with a loud voice bu