Chapter 5

Eyes puffy, voice gone, head heavy and heart weighed down like a boulder dropped into the ocean.

Yixing lay soundlessly on his back, watching as the clouds drifted gently across the sky. His back continued to ache and throb, and his wounds seemed to have gotten worse due to an infection, in which it had begun to ooze yellow pus. Kris fretted over his wounds and made him lie facedown while he applied pressure to the wound with his own shirt. That had stopped the bleeding, but the dirt and sweat on the shirt had probably caused the infection in the first place.

A bright, sunny day greeted them right after the stormy night, and Yixing felt that it was unfair that Luhan wasn’t here to complain about the sun with them.

Oh, Luhan.

The thought of a helpless Luhan alone out there to fend for himself made Yixing nauseous, and he occasionally had to hold down his vomit when he thought of how they had just left him behind like that. Would Luhan have gone after them if they had fallen into the water? Yixing was pretty sure that he would have. Every now and then, Luhan’s accusing face came into his mind, and a fresh wave of guilt consumed him.

What wouldn’t Yixing have given to hear Luhan complaining about something at the moment. He had betrayed his friend, and Kris hadn’t let him go after him. It was all Kris’ fault. If he had been able to go after Luhan, the three of them would still be here together, like always.

But they weren’t, and it made all the difference.

Kris had been silently managing the boat all by himself, and there was nothing that Yixing had been able to say to him. The topic of Luhan sat between them, heavy and heart wrenching, and neither wanted to relieve the moment when they watched their friend go to his death before their very eyes.

Yixing closed his eyes and sighed softly as the illness continued to plague him.

And so, he didn’t react, when Kris cautiously approached him and placed down an apple next to him, the last apple of the lot. Yixing didn’t eat it. He had been saving it for Luhan, and he had promised that he would leave it for the older boy. His fingers closed slowly around the small, irregularly shaped apple.

Neither did he react when Kris had a difficult time managing the boat around a rocky area that could’ve shredded the wooden fishing boat to bits if Kris wasn’t careful. And still, he didn’t react when Kris gasped and gave a strangled cry when he saw dry land.

He still kept silent when he was being helped off the boat and brought to a huge village on the island that they had docked at. Even as the island’s witch doctor dressed his wounds and treated his illness, he refused to speak a single word. He lay numbly in bed as the witch doctor instructed him to rest for a few days at least.

Kris looked at him sadly, and then back down at his own interlaced fingers. And in that instant, Yixing knew that they were both thinking of how if Luhan had never fallen off that boat, they would’ve been here together. Luhan would be happily exploring the island in the same carefree manner that he normally approached life with.

And then Kris decided to break the somber silence.

“Luhan… would’ve been proud of us.” He said, in his low, gravelly voice, thick with emotion.

And that’s when Yixing reacted.

He didn’t yell, he didn’t scream. He merely turned his head in Kris’ direction and cast a cold glare filled with hatred at the tall man. “You killed him. It’s your entire fault that he died. He’s dead now, and he won’t be proud of us even if we managed to find a new place because we killed him.”

Kris looked taken aback, and he couldn’t seem to find the right words to say. He avoided Yixing’s face and a hurt expression was apparent on his face, but he chose not to reply. Instead, he got up and left the small straw hut soon afterwards without a word.

He never visited Yixing again.

Yes, another ridiculously dramatic title again, accompanying a ridiculously short chapter. 

I've recently written a bonus scene for the story, and I'm kind of playing with the idea of putting it up after the next chapter comes out. Yes people, this is the penultimate chapter. I've never written such a short series before. o.o But hey, it's fun, and I actually find it really fulfilling.

Thinking of writing an epilogue. Should I?