“Hey, Youngwoon! What did he say?” Kyuhyun asked me.

“It doesn’t concern you, brat,” I growled.

“You talked to him for a while didn’t you?”

“ThanKYU, Captain Obvious.”

“You’re so mean! Am I not your favorite dongsaeng?”

“You’re not. Kibum is nicer than you.”

Oops. Maybe I had just condemned Kibum to a certain death. I shrugged. Not my problem anyways. Sighing, I growled again: “Seriously, it has nothing to do with you. What he told me… of you really want to know, ask him.”

“I’m not stupid enough to go and talk to a cursed guy!”

“He’s not cursed! He has…”

“ Other than the doctors, you’re the only one who believed me.” I sighed again.

“He has… something. Something that you probably wouldn’t believe. But he’s not cursed.”

“Yeah right,” he chuckled. “That’s what you’re saying so I’ll go talk to him and get cursed too. Who knows, maybe he also cursed you so you’ll make us talk to him?”

I growled. That jerk! I wondered why I was even talking to him. Well, maybe because we were just a bunch of Korean guys in the middle of nowhere…

“Yeah, right,” I rolled my eyes. “You’re an idiot, I hope you know that. You believe in curses but not in personal problems…”

I walked away. Kyuhyun couldn’t understand. He was a cool little guy sometimes, but there were moments when he was just plainly annoying and not mature enough to understand things that needed to be taken seriously.

“Hey.”

That voice… I turned.

“Oh… hey.”

Sungmin was standing behind me, his big sad eyes staring at me, straight into my soul, like they were always trying to tell me something, or trying to call for help. Help he couldn’t get. I stopped, waited for him to join me. “Are you okay?”

He shrugged. “You don’t have to worry so much about me, you know. Nobody cared for years and I’m still alive.”

“You’re a cold person aren’t you? I’m just worrying about you and see how you’re treating me…”

“I’m sorry. I’m not used to people caring about me. People usually…”

“… don’t believe you. I know. You told me. But I believe you, so, will you let me worry?”

“You don’t need to.”

I sighed. “You’re so strong. I thought I was manly and all, but…”

“But?”

“You’re more of a man than I am. I’m a bit jealous.”

“You have no reason to be. People don’t like me. They tend to be mean with me. I even got bullied once and almost died from the stress.”

I found there an opportunity to be a manly man too. “Does that happen often?”

“Kind of. Why?”

“I’ll protect you then. So you won’t have to be stressed.”

“I don’t need protection.”

…………………. Stop killing my hopes in their egg. Please.

“Oh.”

“I know martial arts. I’m okay.”

“But… doesn’t it… you know…?”

“It depends on how much they insist. Usually, as soon as they understand that I can fight back, they leave me alone.”

“What if, someday, they insist?”

“Then I’ll die from the stress of the exhaustion. Nothing to be sad about, you know. Nobody’s going to cry.”

I sighed. He really was stubborn wasn’t he? “Is there really, really nobody who’ll cry for you?”

“My family is dead and I don’t have friends. The only ones who’ll cry will be the doctors who are trying to find a way to cure it. They’re lose an important test subject.”

“Oh come on…”

“What?”

“There has to be someone else.”

“Not really. Most of the time, I’m all alone.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. Seriously? Hopeless guy, really. I turned and started walking again. I was getting a bit pissed. And that wasn’t normal. I knew myself. I knew that, usually, I would’ve hit the offender a while ago already. But I still hadn’t done so. I was simply walking away. What the Hell was wrong with me? I was not the kind of guy who would talk with a weak guy…

“Do you hate me?”

Oh, dafuq was with this guy? Why was he following me if he didn’t want me to even care a bit about him? I accelerated, not saying anything. I knew he would probably not follow me if I hurried a bit more.

I was right.