Zaion’s POV:
I held back the urge to cry. My hand automatically found Baekhyun’s and squeezed until he hissed in pain. He stared at me with worried eyes and I pretended not to notice. Vianey watched closely.

“Girl, you haven’t changed a bit! Still short and still as pretty as we left ya!”

The way she spat the word pretty sent a chill down my spine.

“Well...Vianey, guys, it was...uh...nice...seeing you...again....we have to go.”

Vianey stopped me.

“Tell me, ZZ, do you still have those marks?” She asked me, her voice like acid in my ears. “Do you still have the burns and bruises? Do you still have the faint scars on your body from that night?”

With each question she took a step forward and I took one back. I felt my insides drop but I grabbed the pole of the swingset to keep myself from collapsing as well. I laughed nervously.

“I’d rather not talk about that. It hasn’t really been that long.”

She rolled her eyes and turned to leave. I was about to let out a sigh of relief but she stopped.

“One more thing, ZZ, I’m transferring to Rim Ridge High.”

When Vianey said that, I felt as if the world was spinning. Soon I realized that it wasn’t her words making me feel that way. I was getting sick again. The world went black.


When I woke up, the first thing I saw was Baekhyun’s face. He was crying and his face was red. I tried to sit up but my body felt like a heavy, painful lead block.

“Take it easy. The way you fell would have caused you horrible pain, probably much worse, had you been conscious.”

I looked at him blankly.

“I’m fine, just get my medicine.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in the downstairs bathroom medicine cabinet, yellow bag.”

He quickly ran downstairs and just as quickly, he came back, bag in hand.

“Zaion, what’s going on? What’s with that girl and why do you need this medication?”

I took the little white pill and drank some water. I honestly didn’t want to answer that question. I (painfully) turned away from him. He laid in the spot next to me where we were face to face. I was going to turn away but he stopped me.

“Quit doing that or you’ll hurt yourself.”

Baekhyun looked at me directly in my eyes and I closed them.

“Zaion, please tell me what’s wrong.”

I shook my head.

“Zaion.”

“Why should I?”

I opened my eyes and he looked hurt.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’ll ask again. Why should I?”

His hurt face turned mad.

“I seriously cannot believe the hypocrisy! You asked me what happened and I told you. I am asking you and you say nothing.”

I still said nothing and his eyes watered.

“Zaion, please tell me something. What’s bothering you? What’s with the medication? What does that have to do with Vianey? What did she mean by marks, burns, and scars?”

He sounded desperate but I didn’t say a word. He really wanted my answer but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. Crying silently, he scooted closer and held me.

“Zaion, Zaion, Zaion. I love you too much to see anything happen to you. I know that love is a very strong word but I say it because I mean it. If you need me or anyone else then tell me. I don’t want to lose you, just like I didn’t want to lose Su-Young. You two are all I have and I only want the both of you to be alright.”

Hot tears streamed down my face. There he was with those beautiful words. The words that made my heart skip a beat. He loved me. He truly loved me. I felt my throat tighten but I was going to try to get the words out anyway.

“Y-y-you.. w-wanna know w-what she m-..meant by marks, burns, and scars?” I asked him slowly so that I didn’t wind up crying before I could finish.

He looked at me.

“Please, tell me. You know you can trust me. I promise you that you can. I promise you.”

I got up, ignoring the pain in my legs and the burning pain in my side. I took off my shirt and he averted his eyes.

“Look at me. You would probably have wound up seeing them anyway.”

Slowly he brought his eyes to my body. His hand went over his mouth as he took it all in.

It was barely a whisper but I heard him say, “Oh my gosh.”

I looked down to try to hide my tears but he saw them anyway. Baekhyun got up and walked over to me. He walked around me, looking at the ones on my stomach, my back, my sides...

“I know. They’re grotesque, just like me. To think that they were once worse than that.”

I broke down into tears and my knees gave out.

“I remember saying,’Mom, I’m going to get better, I will heal’ but she told me that I wouldn’t. She told me I’d never be pretty as long as I had these ugly scars. I always looked at myself in the mirror, repeating her words, letting them sink in. The other kids teased me and laughed. I never wanted these marks. Vianey...she and her friends gave them to me. It was hard to trust people. So hard...all because of what she did. Trust me, she said. Trust me...”

I stopped short and let out sorrowful wails. Baekhyun pulled me into his arms. I held onto him as if he were my life. I didn’t want to let go for anything.

“I want you to know that, to me, you are the most beautiful person in the world. Don’t ever let those cruel words stop you from believing so”, he paused, “you said Vianey and her friends gave you the scars. How did that happen?”

I was shaking from crying so hard but the words flew out.

“I was always the shy kid. I didn’t have any friends, so I was eager if anyone even talked to me. Vianey was the one person who sat with me during lunch or invited me over to her house after school. We were like that for years. It wasn’t until about sixth grade that she started to change. She began hanging out with this really popular group of kids. She tried to include me and it seemed that they welcomed me with open arms. They weren’t the type of people I liked but I did it for her.
One day they took Vi and me to this alley where they liked to hang around. I wasn’t getting a good feeling about it. She said that they weren’t gonna do anything bad. I trusted her. She’d been there before with them so she would know.”

He listened to me attentively.

“She was right. What they did wasn’t bad, it was much more. It was illegal and wrong on so many levels. Drugs, booze, cigarettes. I didn’t want to be a part of it so I tried to walk out. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy! I should have known! Of course they wouldn’t let me just go about my normal life. For that one time I tried to leave, they tormented me for all of middle school.

Freshman year of high school, I stood up to them. I told them if they didn’t stop I’d go to the police and tell them about what they were doing. At the end of the day, they dragged me over to an old construction site. It was dark and it was raining. I’m no match for a group of thug middle and high schoolers. They jumped me and left me there on the spot, but not before Vianey and one of the guys in that group injected me with some weird concoction they mixed together. There I was bloody, bruised, and writhing in the mud, looking up at the lightning cracking across the dark sky.”

I let out a sob and Baekhyun held me tighter. I didn’t want him to let me go. I wanted him to hold me forever and just protect me from the dangers of life.

“You can stop if you want to. You don’t have to say anymore if you don’t want to.”

“No, I’ve been hiding this too long! It’s been too long!”

I took a deep breath.

“Later I was found by one of the neighbors and they took me to the hospital. Stitched, sewn, stapled back together. That was the first line of one of my poems. They put me back together as much as they could but, like Humpty Dumpty, I couldn’t really be fixed. They called my parents and they came into my hospital room yelling at me. They told me how stupid I was, how ugly, how unworthy I was of the life I was given. They wished they could send me back to where ever I came from before I was born into their lives.
I cried at every word and yelled for them to stop but they kept ranting on and on. They were right about one thing. I was stupid. Stupid for trusting Vianey. Every day for as long as I was around her, she’d beat me up behind the school. I’d let her. I wouldn’t even fight back because I felt like I didn’t deserve to be whole, to be alive.”

“Remember when I said they injected me with that weird stuff? That is the reason for the medication. My body reacted in a way that doctors had never seen before. They couldn’t come up with a cure but they could come up with a pill that stalled all effects. Remember when I passed out in the bathroom?”

He nodded.

“That was one of my ‘episodes’”

As I sighed and went silent, he stared at me. He sat me up against the wall.

“Zaion, no one should ever have to live with that. You’ve kept this a secret? Why didn’t you tell anyone what happened?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

He blinked at me.
“What?”

“I could ask you why you didn’t tell anyone what happened to you and Su-Young.”

He didn’t say anything for long minutes.

“Because, I was scared out of my mind at what would have happened if no one believed me and my parents found out. I thought that maybe they’d do something even worse.”

I leaned my head against him.

“That’s exactly what I was afraid would happen with both my parents and Vi. What am I gonna do on Monday though? And something else occurred to me.”

“What would that be?”

“If your parents live across the street, why haven’t they tried to come over here?”

He looked out distantly.

“They don’t know where I went since they didn’t bother following me out of the house. They’re probably beating each other until someone dies. I’m just glad that Su-Young is okay.”

We sat in silence, holding onto each other.  Before we knew it, we were asleep. Nerves and worries followed me to my dreams but so did the love of Baekhyun.







A/N: Despite how dramatic and revealing this chapter was, it isn’t the end of the line yet. Although, that may be coming soon. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. My inspiration was Quasimodo by SHINee. Next chapter coming soon. Comment Upvote Subscribe in the name of love.....that was odd, even for me....

Til next time. Saranghae! <3