A/N: Oops! Sorry! I forgot that I hadn't uploaded the chapter properly, yet ;n; My internet messed up the last time I tried to upload the next chapter, and so I kind of forgot that I hadn't /actually/ updated this yet oTL

Anyway... enjoy~? ^^;;
Also... I did a little research for this, but I may still have messed some things up because I'm stupid ;n; I hope you like it, anyway ^^;;
------------------------------------------------------------------------

A faint beeping sound echoes in his mind. It's soft and hardly even there. He strains to hear it better,
but it's just a quiet beeping. Just a single sound that means nothing, but somehow seems to be everything. And the longer he listens, the louder it gets.
It must have been hours, days, maybe even weeks, that he's been listening to this sound, now, and it's become his world. It's all he has. The simple beeping sound that is his life.
His life...
What had his life been before this?
It had been nice, much nicer than he had felt it was as the time.
He'd had no friends and no family, but that wasn't true. Sure, Donghae and he had fought, but he hadn't tried to work it out, had he? He'd just hidden himself away and hoped that the older boy would come to him. Then whenever Donghae would walk in his direction, he'd leave for fear of starting another fight. He had been too afraid to try to fix things.
It wasn't Donghae's fault. It was his.
And his parents... they were always busy and his father was an alcoholic.
But there was more to it than that.
His mother had started working again when Ryeowook was old enough to not need her around. She was making money to set aside in his fund for college and to help him achieve any dream he might wish to follow, no matter what. And his father had been an alcoholic for a couple of years when things had been tough, his business was failing and money was tight, but he'd reformed himself and now only drank once or twice a week, never enough to get drunk, Ryeowook just hadn't noticed that he had cut back. How had he not noticed?
Because he hadn't been paying attention.
He'd been so wrapped up in himself, so wrapped up in the things that he thought to be truth, that he never saw reality. He only saw the things he wanted to see, and because of this he had been destroying himself.
He remembers returning home from school, so excited to die. So happy with the idea of nobody ever having to see him again. It was the prefect day, he remembers, and he simply couldn't wait until Monday.
But he also remembers those last few minutes, alone, with his heart racing and his body trying to fight against his death wish. He remembers crying and choking on putrid vomit between failed screams. It hadn't been how he had planned at all, and his thoughts had only made the situation worse.
The last thing he remembers seeing is something black... something that he couldn't make out at the time and thought to be the beginning of emptiness. Only now, with nothing more than the loud beeping and his thoughts to keep him company, is he able to realize that they were sneakers...?
It slowly comes back to him... the sensation of being picked up just before everything was gone, and the sounds of two voices shouting to each other, each belonging to men.
His father and his best friend.
Which one had carried him? And had the other called the hospital in a vain attempt to help him survive?
The beeping gets louder and tries to drown out his thoughts.
Please go away. I'm trying to think.
But it keeps up, interrupting memories.
God, that's annoying...
Now probably isn't the best time to be mentioning God, actually. If he's dead, how can he be sure of where he is? Maybe he's in purgatory and that's where the beeping is coming from. But what, exactly, happens in purgatory?
Well, no matter. If he's dead, he's dead. And there's nothing he can do about that anymore.
He can't apologize for what he's done, and he can't hug his parents and tell them that he had been wrong. He can't see Donghae anymore, that smile, or even that look of concern he'd started wearing recently with the realization that Ryeowook was avoiding him.
He won't have anymore birthdays or Christm