.

That only thought runs through Woohyun’s mind, and jumps around, squeals, screeches, punches at his own head for being so slow—

In reality he’s just running as hard as he can, sudden adrenaline pulsing through his veins. Woohyun doesn’t know why, but he’s running faster, much faster than his usual short legs bring him.

He has no sense of direction where he’s running, either. Woohyun’s only confirmation that he’s actually running in the right direction is when he bangs right smack into Sungjong. The two of them fall backwards, at the rate and energy that Woohyun has been running for the past five minutes, it’s a wonder that they are not rolling across the corridor.

“Hyung!” Sungjong catches him quickly, steadying the both of them, dread filling his voice. “You’re finally here, oh my gosh.” 

“What happened?” 

Sungjong flinches at the deathly tone in Woohyun’s voice. “S-Sunggyu hyung called me,” he stammers a little, but they still maintain their speedy pace as they walk down the corridor. “He was extremely upset. And hyung...” 

Sungjong falters off, before glancing outwards. The rain hasn’t stopped— in fact it is beating down even more heavily than before. The sound of the rain crashing down relentlessly on the grounds of the building covers almost every other sound; all you can hear is the rain. Sungjong’s shouting, but even so Woohyun can only just make out a few syllables.

Sungjong places a hand on his hyung’s arm, looking worried. Woohyun turns, just in time to see Sungjong mouth out, very slowly,

“It’s raining.” 

The sudden emphasis on the rain no doubt makes Woohyun’s dense block of brain spins more. 

And then, for once, Woohyun gets it.

They reach the door before he can confirm his suspicions with Sungjong. Woohyun pants, trying to catch his breath and at the same time fish the room card out of his pocket.

Damn himself for wearing skinny jeans today.

However, there is a sense of apprehension as Woohyun finally manages to fish the card out without his pants falling off. He sticks the card into the slot and waits, trying to catch his breath.

There is an oddly dark aura surrounding the room, and for the first time ever, Woohyun’s scared.

He’s scared of what he’ll find inside.

The door beeps, and clicks open. Woohyun twists the handle, and feels the intense pressure and atmosphere building up in him.

For some reason, he doesn’t want to know what is waiting for him inside.

He looks back, his eyes pleading for silent help from Sungjong, but Sungjong’s hard gaze only tells him that he can’t help Woohyun any further;

This is his own battle. 

Woohyun opens the door an inch, and calls out unsurely, “Sunggyu?” 

No response.

He continues, opening the door wider, and takes slow, steady steps. “Sunggyu?” He continues, “are you in—” 

And then Woohyun falls silent. Slumped on the room’s only table is a dark figure, a hood concealing his bright red hair. Though, Woohyun notices as he walks closer, his hair is no longer a bright red, but is dark, and dripping with water. He spots that Sunggyu’s hoodie is dripping wet too.

“Sunggyu, did you walk in the ra—” 

A sudden nauseating feeling pushes its way up Woohyun’s throat as he spots a shiny object a close distance from the huddled figure. The problem is, it’s no longer as shiny Woohyun thinks it used to be.

It’s speckled with dark spots of red, and the nauseating feeling bubbles dangerously at the bottom of Woohyun’s stomach as his eyes follow the dark blood trail. 

His eyes land on what seems to be once pale, white stretch of skin, dappled with bright red spots and a stream of darker red flowing steadily down his wrist. Woohyun’s speechless by the time he actually reaches Sunggyu.

“How, how,” he whispers quietly, disbelief filling his own voice. “How can you do this to yourself?” 

“It’s not the first time.” Sunggyu’s voice is quiet, even calm, but nothing can hide the slight tremble in it. He’s still slumped on the table, his head resting against the uninjured arm. His hood falls a little, revealing more wet, darkened red hair. His other arm though, has its sleeves rolled up, to which Woohyun notices, has a gallery of glaringly red lines. Glaringly red cuts.

And the thing that’s making him want to puke is that all of them look parallel to each other, and it is almost as though the space between each cut is carefully calculated, because to Woohyun, they all look equally spaced apart. 

His gaze fall on the stained blades. Woohyun’s misconception is that people actually use penknives to cut themselves.

But the stained blades on Sunggyu’s, or rather, their shared table, looks nothing like penknives.

“Sharpener blades,” Sunggyu mutters softly, as though as he can read Woohyun’s mind. “They cut better. I don’t know if that’s supposed to hurt more or less but...” 

“I’m going to throw them away.” 

Sunggyu chuckles. His laugh is hollow, and Woohyun feels defeated when he realises that this is, actually is the first time he sees Sunggyu laugh, and it’s not even for a good reason.

“I have a whole box of sharpeners,” Sunggyu retorts, the dark ghost of a smile not leaving his face. “And besides, how expensive are sharpeners anyway? I can always get another one. Throw them away. I don’t even care.” 

And for once, the helplessness hits Woohyun in the head like someone just threw a brick at him. He feels hopeless, helpless, useless— the guilty, useless feeling that one gets when their friend is extremely upset and they can’t even do a single thing to cheer them up? Yeah, that feeling. 

 “You can’t do this to yourself,” Woohyun mutters softly, a deadly tinge in his voice. “You can’t. It’s not right.” 

There is a moment of silence before Sunggyu pushes himself back up into a more comfortable seating position, before he turns a little, facing Woohyun.

They’ve only known each other for, what, a few weeks, but the look in Sunggyu’s glassy, dark brown eyes pierce through Woohyun’s soul completely.

Those glassy, dark brown orbs speaks of a tale, to which Woohyun can sense, is an extremely depressing and sad story, but somehow there’s this screen of fog covering some harsher reality that the eyes may bring. That the glassy, expressionless look reflected on those orbs are just a veil to something much more scarier inside.

Those eyes disappear completely, as Sunggyu scoffs, “since when was I ever right?” 

He doesn’t even give Woohyun a chance to reply before shooting back at him quickly, “which part of me looks right to you?” 

Sunggyu continues, laughing harshly. “The cuts? The hair? My personality? Tell me, Nam Woohyun, which part of me looks right to you?” 

There’s a deadly silence, but Woohyun gives Sunggyu back an equally hard gaze, before he says sharply, “why not you tell me, what is wrong with you? You tell me, what is so wrong with you!” 

Sunggyu flinches. Woohyun’s words ing kill.

Sunggyu stares at his own wrist, squeezing it slightly, making more tiny drops of dark red blood reappear. He stops, watching the drops as they roll down his ghastly pale skin, leaving behind a pale red trail.

Woohyun expects another of Sunggyu’s harsh laughs, or maybe a toneless retort, but nothing, absolutely nothing, prepares him for what happens next.

“I don’t know...” 

Sunggyu’s voice is low, and soft. A single, lone tear escapes his veiled orbs, and at that very moment, the veil drops. 

Woohyun doesn’t see an extremely depressed Sunggyu.

Instead, he sees an extremely vulnerable twenty-four year old, an extremely frightened, lost and lonely person, and his heart just aches.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Sunggyu continues, his words starting to sound a little strangled as his tears fall at an alarmingly fast rate, “but it just feels wrong. Everything I do feels wrong. Everything about me feels wrong. I feel wrong. A-And I know, it’s wrong to feel this way, but—” 

Sunggyu effectively shuts up when Woohyun wraps his arms tightly around him. Woohyun feels the wetness in Sunggyu’s wet hoodie seeping through his shirt, and he has never felt so cold before, but when Sunggyu breaks out into more uncontrollable sobs, he doesn’t care.

On the other hand, Sunggyu hasn’t felt so warm before, at least, not in the past few years.

__________________

An hour and a few pills later, Sunggyu returns to his usual, cold state. He avoids Woohyun’s gaze; he’s revealed too much in front of that stupid man, and Sunggyu feels extremely awkward.

The rain has stopped, and Sunggyu thinks that maybe he’s able to get a grip on himself without the rain rubbing salt onto his wound. But his maybe includes Woohyun getting out of the room so that at least he’ll have some breathing space.

Because damn, he feels so awkward.

Unfortunately, Woohyun doesn’t think along the same line as Sunggyu. He yelps when Sunggyu moves his wrist out of pure reflex, accidentally knocking out the cotton bud that Woohyun’s holding precariously in between his forefinger and thumb. The slightly blood-stained yet reeking of disinfectant cotton bud falls on the ground, and Woohyun steps on it to prevent it from rolling to anywhere else, because the thing stinks.

“Sunggyu-yah, keep still.” Woohyun gives up on trying to disinfect the wound and instead reaches out for a colourful, kiddy-like plaster. Sunggyu notes that it’s not just a colourful plaster, it has cartoons on it.

Pororo, Sunggyu frowns as he recognises the blue and white penguin that everyone seems to adore. The wound burns as Woohyun carefully spreads the plaster on his wrist, but it’s not like Sunggyu hasn’t experienced worse pain before.

Woohyun smiles as he finishes the plaster job with two light taps on Sunggyu wrist. Sunggyu doesn’t even flinch, and Woohyun wonders if it actually hurts, but in times like these, he learns to keep his mouth shut.

They sit like that in an awkward silence, with Woohyun itching to know more about Sunggyu’s past and Sunggyu feeling extremely happy that Woohyun’s not talking anymore.

But of course, knowing Woohyun, the silence doesn’t continue.

“Those pills you took,” he starts off, picking out his choice of words carefully. “What were they for?” 

“Anti-depressants,” Sunggyu replies, smoothening out the Pororo plaster with his forefinger. “One or two every morning. Enough to last the day.” 

Woohyun’s already moving on, pulling open Sunggyu’s drawer, his face turning rigid when he sees the amount of pill bottles stockpiled in the drawer. If any other person sees this, they may think that those are just exaggerated amounts of vitamins and health supplements. Woohyun picks up a bottle, turning it wryly in his fingers until he spots the prescription and the directions.

Take 1 100msg tablet half an hour before sleep.

“Those are sleeping pills. Two or three a night.” Sunggyu states out calmly, opening his wardrobe and pulling out dry clothes. Woohyun puts the sleeping pill bottle back into the drawer and shuts it.

“But it says you only need one... and why do you need so many bottles?” 

Sunggyu pauses, his actions slowing down a little as he puts the dry clothes on his arm and the clothes hangers back into the wardrobe.

“One’s not enough. And who knows what will happen to me when I can’t get my hands on those pills fast enough.” 

Woohyun opens his mouth to ask another question, but his question is left unanswered when Sunggyu steps into the bathroom to change.

Woohyun’s unanswered question somehow bothers him, a little.

What actually happened today? Was it Dongwoo, or the rain?

He’s sure that Sunggyu won’t tell him anything about Dongwoo; given that if it’s Woohyun in Sunggyu’s shoes, he himself wouldn’t even tell others the story about himself and his ex-best friend, much less say Sunggyu will. So whatever happened between the two, Woohyun has to find out from Dongwoo.

And then there’s the rain.

The thing about the rain is simple yet complex. Woohyun’s sure of one thing; something bad must have happened to Sunggyu when it was raining.

But what exactly happened, Woohyun’s not really sure if Sunggyu will tell him anything more.

Or maybe if he’s lucky, Sungjong will tell him everything.

At the thought of Sungjong, Woohyun frowns. He’s partially angry at Sungjong for dumping him in such a situation, but somehow, he’s partially thankful that Sungjong didn’t interfere.

Woohyun has to give it to him because Sungjong somehow knows that Woohyun’s perfectly capable of handling it all by himself without screwing it up. 

Woohyun’s thought train derails when he hears the familiar click of the bathroom door opening. Sunggyu walks out, in completely casual clothing yet he looks like he’s going out.

“Where are you going?” Woohyun asks.

Sunggyu doesn’t even spare him a glance before he replies tonelessly, “somewhere.” 

“Can I follow?” He makes no attempt at masking how eager he sounds, like an excited kid asking to go on a field trip.

“No.” Sunggyu replies, effectively killing off the conversation. He picks up an abandoned, black jacket and puts the hood over his striking red hair. He doesn’t even bother to say bye to Woohyun and leaves the room, just like that.

And then it suddenly strikes Woohyun.

After all that just happened, Woohyun thinks that they’re somewhat back to square one.

And he can’t tell if it’s good, or bad. 

He decides to think positive. He walks over to the door and sticks his head out.

“Bye, Sunggyu-sshi~” 

The black figure that’s already a good ten metres away from the door pauses for a moment, as though he’s about to turn back and respond, but he just continues walking off.

Woohyun smiles. At least he thinks they’re off to a good start.

__________________

Sunggyu wants to pull all of his hair out; he actually, literally wants to do it, but something at the back of his mind tells him that that’s an extremely childish thing to do.

And childish conjures up an image of someone in his mind that Sunggyu quickly erases.

He hates the fact how they’re so similar, Woohyun and her. Both of them are so stubborn and childish. Both of them like bright colours. There’s just so much similarities that if Sunggyu doesn’t know better, he will think that Woohyun’s her older brother.

That’s impossible. But his mind conjures another image of another person of his past that he finds so easy, yet hard to forget.

He erases the image immediately.

She’s someone in the past. No longer there. Why can’t you focus more on the people in the present?

It’s difficult.

She’s ing dead. You spend all your time moping after her when there’s still ing alive people out there that needs you.

Shut up.

His mind refuses to let him go that easily. If you really spend all your time thinking about a dead person, you would be so much better off dead.

Sunggyu stops in his steps abruptly. As he stops, his mind stops telling him things he should be doing.

Sunggyu hates being controlled by a mind he cannot control. It’s almost as though he has two sides to him; one, the light side, and the other, the dark side. 

He hates it. He hates everything.

He sticks one shaky hand into his jacket pocket, pulling out a pill bottle and spills some pills onto his palm. Sunggyu doesn’t even care already how many anti-depressants that he has eaten in just this day; he needs to keep his game up.

He swallows the pills whole, without water, and feels his throat burn as the dry pills push themselves downwards. 

Sunggyu spots a nearby bench, and drags himself over. He’s getting dizzy, and in no state to visit her right now, but he needs to keep his game up.

Today is just a bad day, he tells himself over and over again. Today is not the day.

Because there is something that his dark side tells him every day. Something that Sunggyu’s really, really scared of.

That one day, the darkness will swallow him up, whole.

He knows that one day, that will happen. And he hates how he knows that when that day does come, he probably won’t be able to control himself anymore.

And then there’s still one more thing he hates.

The fact how depression is caused merely by a chemical imbalance in his ing brain.

Sunggyu laughs.