Twenty
A Worth Obsessing Over
Every single aspect of his life was his to control.
The friends he chose, the decisions he made, the adversaries he created and the journal he dedicated a good portion of his life to were, in a way, strung up like puppets Daehyun manipulated to his every whim. Youngjae was an exception, but everything else that started with the secretive content of his book, and the game that went on in a never-ending loop was his to steer in the direction that benefited him in the long run.
But when that control is snapped like the thimble threads a puppeteer possessed, there’s a sense of lost, a sense of emptiness and a sense of mayhem waiting to wash over him in a tide of emotions that eventually whipped his wrist out of Kris’s grasp.
“What do you have on him?”
The scrawled lines that made up Kris’s passive features always seem to piss Daehyun off in times when answers were of the necessities. “You’re quick to assume the worse of me.” Kris reversed his steps to leaned back against a nearby tree. “Besides, that’s the least of our problems right now. What did Kai want from you?”
“I’ll answer your question when you answer mines.” Within the long dramatic pause that brewed between them, Daehyun took a step forward and folded his arms over his chest. “What do you have on Yongguk?”
“What makes you think I have something on him?”
“He wouldn’t agree to whatever bet you two made unless you blackmailed him, or you have something he wants.”
Kris allowed his gaze to wander, eyes plastering upon nothing in particular. “You must know him quite well to come to that conclusion.”
“I know him enough.” And it wasn’t something Daehyun was proud of either.
“As it obviously shows by the concern you have for him.” Kris aridly agreed.
“I’m not concerned,” he shot back. “It’s just that when bets involve me, it’s natural that I’d question it. So give me a damn answer without your Yoda mind-craft bull.”
Kris smiled some. It wasn’t that of humor nor was the corner of his lips taken by the amusement of Daehyun’s reference to Star Wars. Instead, a soft, airy laugh shattered the dense atmosphere due to the younger’s ego.
“What makes you think the alleged wager involves you?”
Daehyun groaned in frustration. “I said stop with the mind-ery.”
“It’s not mind-ery, Daehyun. It’s a straightforward question - what makes you think it involves you?”
It took some time for Daehyun to come up with an appropriate reply that didn’t sound as uncomfortable as it made him feel just thinking about it. The arms he wrapped around himself tightened, his eyes shifted off to the side and lips fell open slightly as if he had something to say but, for some reason, he couldn’t enunciate his words.
Daehyun was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice Kris leaving until a branch snapped beneath his feet. It was like a split second decision was made from there, and Daehyun sprung forward to catch him tightly by the wrist before he could take another step away from him.
“Do you like me?” It was simple and, like Kris preferred most times, straight-forward as it’ll ever be.
“And if I do, what then?” Kris wasn’t Mr. Intimidating-as- for nothing. His officious demeanor reeked of trouble. It was a harmless kind of trouble, his stern gaze a very passive aggressive approach to drawing out everything that needed to be heard and said. Daehyun was caught in the snare that his stare portrayed. It was like looking into the eyes of a lion patiently waiting for the opportune moment for his escape. Kris turned to face him head-on, a single step forward causing Daehyun to take an equal stride back as the necessary inch between them brought forth the clarity Kris needed to complete his train of thought. “What are you going to do about it?”
If it was any other person, male or female, the stare that targeted him and locked onto him with the crosshairs of soul-crushing indifference would’ve brought them to their knees. But not Daehyun. He was too arrogant, too stubborn and too head-strong to get caught up in Kris’s attempt to slip out of his hold. There was a reaffirming tug of the limb that tried to escape his clutches, a vice grip that dared to never let him go.
“I’m going to call your bluff.” Daehyun slammed Kris back into the oak tree behind him and pinned him into the desiccated bark that nipped into his spine. The height difference was ridiculous. He hated how much of a damn ‘beanstalk’ Kris proved himself to be. It bothered Daehyun to some extent, but he decided to push his ego aside to readjust his hold on the forearms that kept him in control. “So, let me rephrase my question.” He took him by the front of his jersey he never bothered to change out of and impatiently yanked him down to eyelevel. “Do you want to me?”
The charcoal black of Kris’s eyes resembled the darkest depths of an abyss. It was terrifying. Such a heart-rendering stare was compromising with Daehyun’s plans to keep with his own front of unflinching intimidation. He couldn’t fool him. No matter how hard he tried, Daehyun couldn’t pull Kris into the masquerade of his lies.
“You don’t have to hide behind your walls anymore.”
“Who said I’m hiding.” Even when Daehyun pulled Kris closer to the confident display of smiling lips, he didn’t move.
Kris saw no reason to resist the only source of warmth in arm’s reach. “You can stop playing into the webs of your own lies. Trust me when I say, you don’t have to be alone anymore. You don’t have to be your own worst enemy.” There were no walls, no barriers, not a single slab of concrete segregating him from the world of people capable of making him feel alive.
He wasn’t hiding.
The facades and the gilt masks of deceit was for the purpose of a game he wanted to win with every striated fiber of his being. It was all he knew, all he ever wanted in life because without the games, without the twist and turns that challenges brought him, he’d have nothing. Life would be boring. It would be redundant and mundane, and it was something he couldn’t see himself giving into. He needed this. To be more specific, he needed Yongguk for the purpose of filling the hole of monotony that everyday life burrowed within him.
Or at least, that's what he prevented himself to think.
“You can’t do this.” Daehyun’s smile faded, his heart raced, his lungs went into full remission and it was as though there was not an ounce of energy within him to revitalize the strength he needed to keep himself standing. “You’re making my life so ing hard and you‘re not supposed to screw things up like this.” Disturbing the harmonics of rustling leaves and the rattling of trees nature provided was the subtle clashing of his charms that sounded like the soothing symphonies of a wind chime. Kris had taken him gently by the his forearm before Daehyun’s fingers could unwind from the material of his Jersey that was stretched beyond repair. Kris kept him there, pulled him back to that close proximity where breathes intermeddled in a heated fog of confusion.
Like autumn leaves carried off with the wind, Kris‘s fingers brushed across the metal trinket bound around Daehyun‘s wrist. He fiddled with the charms that hung from its links, wisped full circles as he made sure not a single expanse of silver was left untouched.
“I don’t want this bracelet.” Daehyun said softly with eyes trained upon the spherical eclipse that sincerely looked back at him. “I didn’t need it from you. I didn’t need any of this. Not from you!” The escape from oblivion came easier than he expected. Daehyun had to only twist his arm out of his hand and Kris obliged to the other’s need to step away from him.
“I’m not forcing you to wear it. You can take it off if you want.”
As if it was that easy. Kris may have an exterior built like a rock, but he was still human, which made him somewhat sensitive to any form of emotion that conflicted with each other. Besides, Daehyun had his reasons to keep the charms close. It was special to Kris, special to him and special in ways that couldn’t be described.
“I hate feeling like this. I hate it when you of all people back me into corner.” He wanted to mummify himself. What he wanted was to stick a hot rod up his nose, scramble his own brains and pull it out right from his nostrils where the prodding began. He was so confused. He felt like he was on the verge of becoming bat- crazy over feelings, emotions and confessions that shouldn’t have existed.
"What the ." Yelling at Kris and maybe knocking some sense into him could’ve resolved all his problems. He could’ve been done with all of this by telling him it wasn’t going to happen, that everything he was feeling, everything he was experiencing and every thought that come to mind wasn’t blossoming like the ed up roses he use to stomp on when he was a child. "You want me to take it off?"
He wanted to be that child again. To throw tantrums, to ask question after question until the answers came about. If anything, the only childish thing he could succumb to was the quick shift of his eyes that darted between Kris and the bracelet that seem to outweigh him. “Well, I can’t do that.” And he walked away.
Daehyun turned his back on him and walked off with the disturbing sound of the bracelet clanking in the dead of night.
The lively hood of South Korea, especially in the populous city of Seoul, depended on a variation of apartment complexes known as an officetel. There was no room for houses and a front lawn unless you had one of two things: money and connections. Being able to have a one-story house was rare, so to see a crippling hospital with acres upon acres of land was a surprise. It was quiet for the most part, very serene in a sense that it provided Daehyun the silence he needed to sink to the floor, lean back against a wall and think things through.
But who was he kidding.
He hated thinking, therefore he brought his phone to his ear to count the shrills that ended with a solemn ‘hello’.
“Where are you?”
Silence. Daehyun was sure the man on the other line was weighing his options that would either cut him off or earn him a reply. “Jung Daehyun.” It wasn’t the answer he was looking for nor did he appreciate the controlled quip of delight that strung through his name. “You miss me already?”
“Bang ing Yongguk.” He matched his tone, smugly replicated the amusement that trailed through the phone as a smile cracked the surface of austerity. “The day I miss you will be the day I get my face bitten off by your demon dog .”
“Sorry, my ‘demon dog’ is on a strict diet. He doesn’t indulge in stupidity.”
“Really? That’s the best you got?” Daehyun almost sounded disappointed. “Even I can come up with a better comeback than that.” If Yongguk was going to be this dull, then maybe he shouldn’t have gotten his phone number off of his sister who so happened to be at the gathering Yongguk had disregarded by his absence. “Anyways, where are you?”
“Home.”
Did he hear that correctly, or was that an answer to his defeat? “What the are you doing at home?”
“If you haven’t heard, I just lost the game, which means I have more than enough reasons to sulk.”
‘Sulk? Who the hell am I talking to?!’ This wasn’t the Bang-ing-Yongguk he knew. This wasn’t anything like the man who tortured him by his presence alone. Sure, Daehyun could practically hear the words as if it fell from smirking lips, but he was nowhere in sight. The so called ‘gathering’ was starting any minute and Yongguk was ‘sulking’ at home like a sore loser.
“So what are you telling me? You’re quitting? You’re done?!”
He hated prolong silence and dramatic pauses as much as he despised Kim-ing-Himchan (who was also at the gathering he obviously didn’t invite Youngjae to). Nothing was said, not a single utterance of hesitation sounded and Daehyun strained to hear him breathe just so he could reaffirm he was still on the line.
“What does Kris have on you?” It shouldn’t have concerned him. If the game was over then he could go about getting the secrets his book needed without Yongguk getting in the way. It was the reason why the competitive bout between them began after all.
“Are you worried?”
“Tch! Why should I be worried?”
“You’re losing me.” Daehyun would’ve commented on his ostentatious reply if the supposed 'truth' wasn’t so disarming. “And if it amounts to anything, I can say that I’m worried.”
“Why?” An answer from him wasn’t required. “Because it’s like you’re losing me?” His hand tightened around the phone. It was almost as though he could rip his hair right at the root and feel nothing at all. Maybe the cold night air sunk deep into the marrow of his bones. It would explain the numbness. He’d close his eyes, his face tilted up toward the sky hoping and praying he wouldn’t have to hear what was already echoing in his ear.
“Exactly. I‘m worried I‘m losing you.”
Daehyun’s laugh of disbelief faded into silence as soon as it escaped him. “You have to have me in order to lose me. So you better get your down here because the game is still on.” He didn’t care what emotional rollercoaster Yongguk was in. Once the rules were set and a wager was made, there was no backing down from it no matter what. “If I find that mirror, you’ll be spilling everything about the secrets you’re trying your damn hardest to hide. I‘m not giving up on that and if I have to win by default, then so be it.”
“As if you’d accept a win by default.” Yongguk said as soon as the line went dead.
Daehyun was a proud man. He didn’t want to reap the benefits of his rewards by taking the easier way out. After all, this was the guy who stayed out in the rain for hours on the tree branch just outside his window because following orders wasn’t his forte. Daehyun was the man who had kiss him, wrapped his tongue around his own and reveled in the resonant quality of unbridled moans just so he could seize him and lock him in a chair to make his escape. Jung Daehyun was the man who was much like Bang Yongguk in regards to games he’d play to the very end.
He was known for his amorality.
A ruckus embodying the eye of a storm if you will. There was no telling what went through his head or what he’d do when schemes conjured and manifested in his head. He was unpredictable and that unpredictability made him aware Daehyun would stop at nothing to get what he wants.
‘So why bother?’ The game of the year was lost and opportunities for a supposedly bigger and brighter future had already been taken away from him. Talent scouts were all there watching the outcome of a game he screwed up because unwanted distractions got the better of him. He was mad. He was angry. A part of Yongguk wanted to blame Daehyun, and yet the remaining side of neutrality refuse to care about basketball, about his parent’s scrutiny or what he’d face Monday morning when lividity and or disappointment struck the nerve of those who took pride in a winning streak that was lost.
There was absolutely nothing to hold onto and, now that he had time to reflect on what had occurred, he came to a conclusion he liked it that way. To feel nothing, to not worry about others or hold up to the expectations of a stringent society was great. In the long run he knew he had to face the repercussions of his failure - because losers had had those following them around like flies on . But for now, he tended to himself and beckoned to the needs of his own desires that went by the name of Jung Daehyun.
Yongguk stood from his seat and fell back on his bed wondering about the choices he had in front of him. He thought about the huddle before the game, his mind going back to that point in time where he was taken aside and offered a challenge he couldn’t refuse:
‘They say love is about self-sacrifice.’ Kris Wu, number forty-six, had come up with a proposition that started with a statement and ended with a bargaining chip that was metaphorically placed into his hands. ‘So, you’re infatuation is about to be put to the test.’ He had to choose whether to invest in the future or let go of everything that he wanted to break in two. ‘Intentionally lose the game and you’ll gain what you’ve been bending over backwards to achieve.’ It was confusing at first and Kris had to explain the terms without the wordplay that made things difficult to absorb.
But once he understood the stakes that were at play, he considered it.
He considered actually throwing his future away in exchange for Daehyun; not that it really mattered. Yongguk lost before he could actually decide whether or not Daehyun was worth it. Was he that pissed off at him that he’d go through all this trouble just to destroy him? Yongguk contemplated, took his time to reanalyze the situation between them until his thoughts were disturbed by his phone.
“What do you want?” He didn’t care to mask his irritation once he answered his informant’s call.
“Oooo~” The male crooned. “A bit stingy are we?”
“Don’t waste my time. What do you want?”
“I got you some information that you might be interested in?”
If it was anything like the Furby-phobia Daehyun so happened to harbor, Yongguk wasn’t interested. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to convince me to stay on the line.
He didn’t need thirty seconds or even ten to say the four words that eventually piqued his interest. “I found his diary.”
“Diary?”
“It seems like a diary but, seeing as you said he’s in a newspaper club and all, the format itself suggest it’s an autobiography or something along those lines.”
“And where did you find this? On his phone?”
“His PDA. I only got 6 or so pages out of it though. It’s going to take me some time to extract the others but I‘ll make it happen as soon as possible.”
With the money he was paying him, Yongguk was expecting nothing less. “Send me what you have now and keep me updated.”
As soon as he hung up the phone and fired up his laptop, Yongguk opened the files that consisted of a life once lived. Paragraphs made up of sentences were ameliorated with words beyond Daehyun’s intellectual capacity. His use of profanity was ever present but, from the content he had skim through, there laid a philosophical point of view, a very luminous, detailed and bewitching perspective that was far from what Jung Daehyun was capable of.
Written in first-person, the story did, as his informant explained, suggest his eyes scanned over the twist and turns that made up Daehyun’s past. It was hard to believe at first. He had the urge to sit down and consume every word splayed before him just to confirm it was indeed Jung Daehyun‘s ‘autobiography.' But he had somewhere to be. And so he sent the files to his phone, called up a cab and decided to feed his curiosity on his way to his next destination.
Himchan was an , which in turn made Jung Daehyun the same vile representation of an an could get.
Inviting his boyfriend to the festivities should’ve been the first thing that came to mind. Himchan had thought about it for days but, in the end, he decided to invite a girl instead. She was a very sweet girl, her buxom and the curvaceous lines of her figure modestly wrapped in what Himchan considered to be the latest fashion. She wasn’t clingy like most girls. In fact, her distance and homely disposition was comforting in the wake of guilt that slowly dwindled into nothingness; that was until he turned to see the glaring slits of Daehyun’s eyes.
“We’re about to go in Himchan.” Ailee informed, snapping Himchan back to the cavernous mouth of darkness waiting to consume them.
They went in, beams of light illuminating the corridor littered with dirt, paint and foreign splatters of red dried thickly over the tables, chairs and silver trays that were either turned over or laid abandoned on the floor. The small group stopped at a three way intersection, each group fanning out to cover more ground as they slowly made their way into the depths of darkness.
“Scared yet?” Ailee asked, the others who decided to join them giggling.
“I’m terrified.” Yet his comical tone suggested otherwise. “I might have to hold onto you before I collapse in terror.” An unintentional flirt he was. The smile on his face wasn’t visible in the dim light that was provided. It was dark and the voices, the shuffling of feet and the occasional boom of fallen objects traveled and echoed throughout the little area everyone managed to cover since they entered the building.
“This was a children’s hospital, right?”
Himchan confirmed Ailee’s inquiry with a nod. “Yeah. But they say there was a psyche ward in the basement area where we’re going.”
“What? We’re going to the basement?”
“I guess. Where else would we go?”
“I don’t know.” Ailee pouted. “Maybe somewhere we won’t die from ghosts.”
Himchan would’ve been scared less at the very mention of ghosts if he wasn’t so concerned about Youngjae and every other troubled thought that strangely revolved around Daehyun as well. The prick was following behind him, keeping his distance so his boorish features appropriately lit up for him to see whenever Himchan looked over his shoulder. He had to do something. A task was set before him and now he had to see to it that it was sorted out and completed.
“What’s wrong? Having second thoughts about the basement?” Ailee questioned as soon as Himchan came to a stop, halting the whole group who followed close behind.
“If only you could get away from the creepy basement that easily.” He chuckled. “We’re still going, I just want you guys to go on ahead.”
“Why? You know if you pull a prank on me down there I’ll dish one out a thousand times worse.”
As much as it was tempting to scare the skin right off of her bones, he had other matters to attend to. “I need to make a call. That’s all. I swear I won’t scare you. Scouts honor.” After a two finger salute and a few more words of reassurance, the group set off, leaving Himchan and Daehyun behind.
“You lying scum.” The spite of Daehyun’s words resonated through the thick swath of black that surrounded them. “You told Youngjae you were having dinner with your family. He prepared for a movie night and you ditched him for a giggling .”
If only he could run through the halls and escape from the onslaught of verbal abuse Dahyun threw at him. He knew he deserved it, that he did lie to Youngjae just so he could spend the night at a supposedly haunted ward, but Ailee didn’t earn the label of a ‘’ when it was he would had invited her along. There was nothing said, nothing done and after a few moments of staring at Daehyun’s darkened silhouette, Himchan started walking off in the other direction, turning a corner that led away from the basement where the group ventured off to.
“Why don’t you save Youngjae the ing trouble and break up with him? He puts so much of his faith in you that it’s ed up to see you screwing him over by being here. Do you even love him? Do you care? Are you playing with him because I swear to God I’m going to send you to hell before you can break him.”
Daehyun was tailing him. He could hear the anger resonating from each booming step weighed with an evident desire to twist a verbal confrontation into something physical.
“Did you tell him?”
“I will eventually.”
Knowing Daehyun, ‘eventually’ most likely meant as soon as he got out of the building to make his call. Himchan was feeling the pressure, but it wasn’t enough to lose count of the doors he’d been keeping track of in hopes the numbers would distract him somehow. It didn’t help much. Himchan still felt the venom of Daehyun’s words, the poisons eventually ceasing all movement as he came to a halt in front of door number sixty-six.
“I care about Youngjae.” He meant the world to him. Youngjae made him feel comfortable in his own skin. Popularity meant nothing to him. It was simply a word that failed to define him in the eyes of the one who saw Kim Himchan for who he was: a caring, loving and humorous man. “Did he tell you how we met?”
“Gimnyeong Maze Park.” By the strict tone in Daehyun‘s voice, it was obvious he wasn‘t interested in reminiscing over a past that shouldn‘t have existed. He hated him, and in turn Himchan felt the same way. “He worked there over the summer and he found you crying like a little over complicated every single person goes through at least once in their life. He was there for you that night and look what it gets him: a cheating who decides to invite some chick to be by his side.”
Daehyun had a one-track mind. “You think it‘s easy, don‘t you?” His interpretation of any given situation could not be swayed. Himchan was innocent. He wasn’t cheating, he wasn‘t going behind Youngjae‘s back nor did he intend to lie to him. He just needed his space and that was it! But would Daehyun understand that? Of course not!
“What? Being gay?” Daehyun rolled his eyes. “Save your breath. I already had this conversation with Youngjae and my answer to that question was, ‘yes‘. It is easy. If you love someone, if you care for someone, if you truly and wholeheartedly think that certain someone makes you feel complete and alive, then it is easy to be gay, to be a lesbian, transgender, or friken straight. It’s just so ing easy to love someone no matter what gender that special someone may be. Don’t you get it? He loves you. Youngjae loves you and when someone like him loves you, you don’t just skip out on him without telling him what’s going on. It's like a gave you this ing speech already but it's like it goes into one ear and out the other.”
He didn’t need Daehyun to tell him everything he already knew. Youngjae may have harbored the self-confidence to speak his mind when it came to group projects and presentations for school. But, when getting the grade wasn’t on his mind, he was truly a sensitive being with a heart made of glass.
“You made him happy and I didn’t interfere only because I saw a change in him that, I can admit, you were responsible for. But now, I don’t know if I can just stand on the sidelines and watch as you hurt him with these bimbo chicks you’ve been replacing him with.”
“I’m not replacing him with anyone.” He had so much to say. Defending himself was as instinctual as letting his brows fall with the weight of his anger. However, there were people approaching. Footsteps echoed from a distance and came closer with each passing second. Unlike them, there was no source of light to acknowledge the presence of human life coming their way. Instead, familiar voices crept up on them, circling them in a cage of bodies neither one of them could escape from.
“What the !” The glare from Himchan’s flashlight blinded him as soon as the storm of curses belched from deep within. It was low, threatening, Daehyun's growls of contempt as dark and hallow as the corridor he stood in.
His flashlight was taken away from him, the bulb smashed against the wall with a resounding thud of resentment that was just as overpowering as his own. Twisting and turning, bucking and thrashing, Daehyun fought against the arm that wrapped around his neck and pulled him hard against another’s chest. He didn’t know who he should damn to the pits of hell. The who restrained him from behind, or the son-of-a- who set him up for a downfall.
“You bastard!” If looks could kill, Himchan would find himself stabbed in the neck with the biggest, thickest and deadliest butcher knife he could find. Kai had pulled up the night vision goggles he had been wearing and casually wrapped an arm around Himchan’s shoulders. He wasn’t moving. The man who screwed him over stood in the other’s grasp unflinchingly. He yielded to him with a look Daehyun couldn’t identify in the darkness.
“You actually caged our wild fox.” Kai gave an extra pat to the blonde’s shoulder for a job well done. “You can leave now. You’re done here.” A pawn was the sacrificial lamb of the game. They were expendable pieces, very limited players to a game that wasn’t their’s to play. Himchan could abandon him, never look back and feel not an ounce of regret because, like Daehyun, he was a victim to the wickedness Exo K was known for. He understood that. Daehyun could practically read it in the statuesque form that was under their spell.
But leaving him like this was unforgivable.
“You walk away from me now, you’ll regret it!” Himchan didn’t look back at him. He did what Daehyun warned him not to do: He walked away with all forms of hope Daehyun had left, and the light that disappeared at the end of the darkened corridor.
“What the hell do you guys want!? Do I ing look like Luhan to you?”
“So you’re admitting it? Luhan stole our ?” It was Sehun who grappled an arm around his neck, demanding an answer with a heated hiss of resentment that burned at the lobe of his ear.
“He wasn’t there!”
“You sound so sure of yourself, Daehyun.”
He could hear footsteps, but his sense of sight was taken with the light Himchan escaped with. His heart pounded against his chest, the fierce thrums of discreet panic threatening to rip his racing organ right from his ribcage. “No one stole your drugs. It wasn’t Luhan, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t any of us.”
Kai took him roughly by the jaw and lifted his face as if the shift made a difference in Daehyun’s blinded line of sight. “You hear that, Daehyun?”
Nothing came to ear. It took him a while to register exactly what Kai was referring to, but when he finally heard the distant hums of police sirens leaking through the walls, he knew, at that moment, everyone in the hospital was screwed. Majority of the students there were on ’Senior Contracts’ which basically adhered them to certain rules and regulations that shouldn’t be taken so lightly if they hoped to graduate on time. They couldn’t ditch school, couldn’t stir up trouble with teachers and staff and most definitely couldn’t get themselves mixed up with the law.
“You called the cops?”
“Thought I serve up the same treatment you dished out on us.”
Daehyun twisted his head out of the other’s grasp. “You still can’t let it go, can you?”
“When you’re missing over fifty-thousand U.S. dollars, it’s hard to forget what broke us all up to begin with.”
Lips twisted, the very corners lifting into a sardonic grin. “You know what." Daehyun had enough of his games. "I did take your drugs just like I took your money all those years ago.” And just like Kai’s possessions, Daehyun proudly took the fist that swiped harshly across his cheek. The torturous heat of pain spread even further when nails clawed into his jaw and lifted his face to experience the haughty fumes of a demon breathing down his neck “I don’t know why you guys didn’t me up the first time I screwed you guys over. I was waiting for it, but as the years went by I figured you all ’d out.”
Like a snake, Sehun’s arm coiled into a vice grip around his neck, constricting all the air it took from him to breathe. “Y-You knew it was me.” Daehyun choked out, provoking the man who pressed his head back into the fleshy walls of his restraints. “You, Jongin,” he mocked, wrapping his name in a thick swath of sarcasm. “You should’ve known that I not only took away your cash, but I took Hyunjin as well.” It was more along the lines of pitting her against him but, by the way fingers dug even deeper into his jaw, he knew Kai got the jist of what he was getting at.
“You want to die, Daehyun?” Like a yapping Chihuahua, he was all bark and no bite.
“Sure.” He replied as soon as Kai retracted his claws. “I’d love to see hell in all its burning glory.”
Like a fool, Kai took the bait and drew in close enough for Daehyun to initiate what his provocations intended. He kicked Kai away from him, the treads of his sneakers sinking into his gut and sending him back against the dirtied floor. Fingers gained purchase on the arm around his neck before jabbing an elbow at Sehun’s side. He released him, pain becoming the key to his escape as Daehyun blindly ran in the direction of voices that were calling his name.
“Daehyun!”
Kris was always looking out for him even when he thought he’d long since abandoned him.
“Daehyun!”
Kris resembled the rough, charring surface of the wall his hand desperately brushed against as a means to guide him through the dark.
“Goddamn it! Daehyun! Where the are you?!”
But no matter how much times Daehyun tried to push him away, he’d always come back to save him from the folly of his own mistakes.
His efforts to escape into the light at the end of the tunnel went in vain. He was tackled face first into the floor, the heavy weight of another male’s body pinning him down into the soot and grime he thrashed against. “You want us to you up?” Kai took a fist full of his hair and pulled his head up from the floor. He held him into a steady, workable position, the struggle Daehyun put up not enough to refuse the cloth Kai pressed securely over his nose and mouth. The vapors Chloroform subjected to drift him off into total blackness where self-awareness and self-control escaped him. He was slowly fading away, but not without hearing the haunting claims that left a crushing impression on his soul. “Then we’ll give you what you want and you up more ways than one.”
A/N: So I really didn't know how else to end this chapter...It was going to get longer but I looked at it and was like...damn, I need to edit this big time. So here it is. the next few chapters are going to get a little dark from here so prepare yourself lulz
anyways~ got a new poster and I'd like to thank Overlord_Nim for the graphics <3 It's beautiful and romantic-esque lulz GAIZ IT'S A SIGN...THE ROMANCE IS COMING bwahahah jkjkjk psh....I'm kidding!...or am I ¬‿¬
I'd like to thank losted-soul, iamhisbaby, Kyaheartsyou, and ohvirusninjas for the upvotes... but what is this...luhan (I think that's luhan in the icon OTL I am a failure!), himjae and daekitty...oh my gosh....y'allz icons are just so cute OTL /sobbing
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