Chapter 8:

There were certain techniques one would need to utilize when performing the task of avoiding certain things like they’re the plague. While yes, Kim Jongin did not happen to be the Black Death (though it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the physical form of it), evading his presence in every conceivably possible location was certainly necessary.

It’s not like he was about to initiate any conversation with me anyway. I’d totally pissed him off to an extreme and life threatening level. It was to the level where you don’t come back. You’re just gone. Absent. I knew it too, well aware. He was so ing calm. That’s how you could tell Kai was fuming.

When it appeared as if he wasn’t.

“Hey, your bruises are slightly fading,” Chanyeol told me while we sauntered towards the school in the early morning two days after I completely and utterly ruined the highly underdeveloped and questionable (nonexistent) relationship Jongin and I possessed.

“Yeah great,” I mumbled back, recalling my reaction from when I glanced innocently into the mirror in the morning and nearly squished my toothpaste to oblivion. “Now they’re just an awkward and unattractive puke color.”

Chanyeol glanced upwards as if the sky was actually assisting him in thinking of a response to that.

“But it doesn’t hurt right?” He wondered, his eyes trained on me again.

“Nah,” I remarked calmly. “Just this one.”

I took my palm and placed it over my stomach gently. The injury beneath the clothing was still as ugly and unwelcome as ever. The pain level either remained the identical or amplified because I felt it ache every morning. There was no way it’d gotten less excruciating.

Chanyeol met my eyes sympathetically and I patted his shoulder, clumsily smiling and trying to encourage him with a happy expression that’d I’d been recently plastering on my face more often than I’d like to.

“Ay guys!” Baekhyun’s unlikely scratchy voice greeted us with hurdling excitement.

“Hi,” we answered in unison, both wondering why he was unusually happy on this not so unusually drizzly and cold morning.

“What’s up?” Chanyeol greeted first, allowing Baekhyun to routinely slip under his arm.

“Mm, nothing,” Baekhyun responded casually, picking up his pace so he matched Chanyeol and me; also so he wasn’t awkwardly being dragged due to the arm draped over his shoulder belonging to a person walking faster than he.

“I guess it’s just because it’s high-five Tuesday!” Baekhyun cheered, immediately going for a high-ten with Chanyeol.

The two collapsed their hands together, allowing their entwined fingers to linger a few seconds before retracting back.

Baekhyun twisted towards me and reached behind Chanyeol with his liberated arm and high-fived me with a glowing smile that brightened my day slightly.

*

I just happened to notice at lunch (unintentionally) that Jongin appeared a little more than somewhat pissed as he had a (what looked like) heated argument with his, so-called, friend Kris, who was otherwise known as Wufan by fewer people.

My lips twitched into something that couldn’t have been considered a smile but more like an aspect of amusement and melancholy mixed into one sadistic emotion.

Today, sitting at our table was Chanyeol, Baekhyun and this new kid who went by the name of Tao (though his real name was Zitao). I was able to catch Kris stealing glances at Tao while Jongin followed suit but, however, had the mistake of looking at me instead.

“Guys,” Baekhyun insisted. “I’m feeling utterly creeped out.”

“Is it me?” Tao whined. “I’m really sorry! I just don’t have anyone else to sit with.”

We all pretended, including Tao, not to notice Kris and Kai occasionally taking a glimpse at our table, scowling, saying something probably mean to each other and then looking at their food.

“Definitely not you,” Chanyeol annoyingly muttered, shooting death-glares across the lunch room to no one in particular.

I knew better than that though. He was definitely thinking that Tao and I both had something to do with the uncomfortable glaring situation that we were into.

“Wanna, like, do something about your little animal over there?” Chanyeol asked me, stabbing blindly at his food while he turned his glare to a pissed looking Jongin.

“I don’t know,” I uttered, ignoring the fact that Chanyeol had referred to Kai as my animal. “He actually looks mad. I don’t know what’s scarier. Him looking deadly calm or him actually looking like he desires to snatch away the life of every imaginable living aspect of existence.”

“And you,” Chanyeol pointed directly to Tao. “We met you approximately twenty three minutes ago and we’re already being virtually shunned.”

“Not shunned,” Tao corrected. “Glared.”

It was hard to understand the new boy in front of us. He looked deadly, like his eyes were the sharpest of daggers, yet he was on the verge of tears.

Roughly twenty four (now twenty four) minutes ago, we met Tao. Roughly ten minutes ago, the glaring started. Roughly four minutes ago Chanyeol pitched the idea that I do something about it. Roughly two minutes ago, I brushed it off with a quick reply. Roughly one minute ago, Chanyeol got it through to me he was absolutely serious.

Currently, I was dying on the inside, wondering why my existence mattered, as I stalked up to the table that Kris and Kai occupied, and I earned some thoughtful (deathly) stares from my fellow classmates, who were still bitter about everything that had occurred to me fairly recently.

“Can I-“I was cut off by Jongin standing up unevenly, with a slight swagger than never seemed to abandon him, despite the situation he was in.

He began to walk and I was briefly convinced that he was deserting me but there was a slight tilt of his head that reminded me to follow. He already was aware that I was approaching to chat with him, awkwardly ask if we could go talk somewhere private, earn a few dirty looks from Kris while at it and utterly embarrass myself. So he was deciding to rescue me from that.

The dark haired boy led me to the rooftop of the school. I was seriously worried for a moment that he planned on going through with a devious scheme of murdering me via pushing me off the roof.

He slowly twisted around to look at me.

“Does the bruise still hurt?” He bluntly asked, catching me off guard.

I blinked in surprise, trying to decipher his indifferent tone and the words that opposed it.

“Y-You mean…” I trailed off, still puzzled as ever.

“The bruise on your stomach,” Kai continued, causing me to get dizzier than I should have.

“U-Ugh…kinda…” I was still mesmerized, not entirely sure of the reason either.

“Unfortunate,” Jongin remarked. He took a seat on the edge of the roof and I realized that this wasn’t a walk in the park for him either.

“You shouldn’t sit there,” I spoke up, looking at the sky that was painted grey. “You might slip and fall to your imminent death.”

Kai took a deep breath, looking at me with his so-tired eyes.

“Really, I wouldn’t mind,” he exhaled, for the first time, showing me slight emotion.

“Wh-What!” I gasped, suddenly finding myself breaking my own advice and taking a seat next to him, noticing that he didn’t flinch away this time. “You can’t just loosely say those things so apathetically!” I scolded.

Kai snorted.

“Really, no one would care,” he said so casually that it frightened me.

I couldn’t form a coherent response to such a statement that I kept my mouth shut for a full minute, allowing the wind to fill the toxic silence that passed between us.

“That day,” I started. “When you came into the coffee shop…” I had his attention now. “When I first met you, why did you want to stay awake?”

Jongin breathed heavily again, looking at me, his plump lips unmoving and his eyes uncaring and his hair that hung lifelessly, unstyled.

“Why do you always ask that?” He wondered.

“Because it’s not healthy,” I immediately responded.

“Do you care?” Kai continued the interrogation his eyes cold.

I wondered why he hadn’t brought up our argument over the fire.

“Yeah,” I answered. “I do. It’s only natural to care about other human beings. You stayed up all night didn’t you? You always do, don’t you?”

He his lips, watching me.

“I’m not gonna repeat this. Why do you care?” Jongin finally said again.

I folded my arms.

“Because no one else does,” I merely whispered, feeling his disgusted gaze.

Instinctively, I cringed backwards, closing my eyes, preparing to be attacked or something even worse, tossed off of the rooftop.

“I’m not going to hit you,” his low voice brought my eyes open again.

“So then tell me what’s up,” I remarked in a challenging tone.

A few seconds passed between us. Jongin unemotionally stared at me. I very emotionally stared back.

“I don’t sleep, okay?” He managed.

“Maybe you would if you didn’t drink all of that coffee so late at night,” I advised, trying not to sound like I was judging him but it was so hard not to when I talked to him.

“Alright, I don’t want to sleep,” Kai corrected himself.

I folded my arms, meticulously watching him as I got more comfortable on the cement wall.

“When was the last time you slept?” I interrogated.

“Sixty…what is it right now twelve…so sixty four hours ago,” Jongin answered, casually.

I nearly fell to my death right there.

“Th-That’s three days of no sleep!” I gasped in exasperation. “Why?”

For the briefest moment, the shortest moment, and probably one of the most memorable moments I would ever remember, I witnessed the softened and vulnerable expression that replaced the indifferent one Jongin normally wore. His eyes were in the pre-stage of being glazed and his lips looked pained.

And it was gone after about five seconds.

“I…” he didn’t answer.

“You can really tell me,” I responded. “What am I going to do? Who the hell would I tell? Just say it.”

“I…” Kai looked around a few times, feeling awkward and unnecessary. “I have nightmares.”

I found myself grabbing his wrists, pulling him closer to me and wrapping my tiny arms around his unresponsive, stiff, and unwilling body.

“Stop hugging me,” he emotionlessly muttered but I could feel the slight tremor in his voice and the miniscule shake in his body.

“No,” I argued. “You need one.”

“No, I don’t,” Jongin protested but he wasn’t even trying to weakly push me off.

“You’re not doing anything,” I pointed out after about another ten seconds.

“You’re too delicate,” Kai responded with annoyance in his tone. “I’d probably break you. Or just make your bruises worse.”

He still made no move to push me off.

I took a few sighs. It didn’t take an expert to know what he had nightmares about. I already knew without asking and for a brief moment, all I wanted to accomplish in my years of existence was to ease his pain, sooth his nightmares.

“You can talk about it,” I informed him.

“No, I can’t,” he answered, the vibrations of his low voice in his throat pressed into my shoulder, thanks to his height.

“Really,” I finally broke from the hug, realizing Kai didn’t look angry or unhappy, just as expressionless as ever.

“After school, come over to my house,” I said it more like an order. “We obviously need to catch up.”

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A/N: Sorry guys! This is so short. I didn’t expect school to be such a so yeah. So much unimaginable work it’s inconceivable. Anyway, I decided to make a short update because it’s my bday XD Lol hope you enjoy. What’s about to go down at the apartment O_O lololol. Comment with theories? Possibly?