Chapter 8

Daesung finished his story as I was trying to take it all in. He looked at me waiting for my response, but when I didn’t say anything, he looked irritated. So the scientist caused the fire, but it was unintentional.

“Daesung…I’m sorry.” I sympathized.

“Oh, so now you apologize?” He sneered. “You don’t apologize when you look through my stuff, but once you hear my side of the story for the fire, all of a sudden you feel sympathetic!”

“It’s not like that! I’m sorry about everything that you went through, I am! And about going through your stuff, I know that I shouldn’t have done that, but I had to get answers considering you wouldn’t cooperate!” I explained loudly.

“How could I cooperate with someone who wouldn’t understand anything?!” he yelled. “And besides, you haven’t even heard half of the story.”

“Well, if you just explained and have me try to understand, you already explained the fire-” I started, but Daesung got up from his seat and started to go off the handle.

“NO!” He yelled. “The fire is a very different story than the beginning! You have no idea what I’ve been through! Sure you know about the fire, but before then, you don’t even know! The scientist kept telling us that we’ll get better, and you know what, Kelly? It hasn’t!”

The tattoos came back on his body and the lights began to flicker again, his eyes starting to glow once more. I backed up on the bed knowing that blackness would cover the building again, but this time I had to stand my ground.

“And you wonder why I get mad!” he yelled.

“Well you got to learn how to control your temper!” I crossed my arms.

Daesung remained silent as the lights slowly came back on and his light yellow eyes came back as well as the tattoos disappearing. I gave him a look knowing that I was right. He closed his eyes and sighed whispering something that I couldn’t quite hear.

“What?” I asked him.

He whispered the words again not looking at me slowly sitting back in the chair.

“Daesung, I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear what you just said.” I told him.

“I said I’m sorry!” he repeated louder this time, looking irritated. “Do you need me to say it again?”

I sighed and leaned against the bed pole taking this in. That was the first time I heard him apologize and, despite the yelling, he sounded serious. Instead of going on to the next subject, I leaned over and put my hand on his shoulder, making him look at my hand and then up at me. Daesung looked confused at my gesture; he was probably thinking that I’d do something else.

“It’s ok,” I smiled warmly; “I forgive you.”

Daesung opened his mouth slightly and I was waiting for his reply, knowing that it might’ve been mean or said in a sarcastic tone. But what he said next surprised me.

“It shouldn’t be me who is different…but you. You’re different.” Daesung replied looking in my eyes. And that’s when I saw it in his eyes. I saw sadness mixed with anger, but somewhere I saw happiness. Was it from my gesture? A knock on the door from one of the guards get us out of our trance as I removed my hand from his shoulder.

“Found her,” The guard talked into his communicator. “Miss, you are not supposed to be here!”

“I-I’m sorry, but I uh…got lost.” I lied.

“That’s no excuse; you’re not supposed to be here without any protection. And you! What are you doing here?” he asked pointing to Daesung.

“And that’s supposed to be a bad thing?” Daesung smirked. “Our exams were done, and I wanted to go to my cell. Don’t worry, I was escorted.”

“Oh, I don’t have time for this.” The guard sighed. “Your teammates got worried about you when you didn’t come back, but they had to go back and interview the boys again, so-”

“So we trusted her.” Heather’s voice came from the side door. “She’s a good investigator; Kelly knows what she’s doing.”

Heather entered the room followed by the rest of the girls. I got up from the bed and started to go towards the cell door, noticing that Daesung followed.

“I’m sorry if I scared you guys, I know that I should’ve told you where I was going, but-” Alice cut me off before I could finish.

“We kind of figured where you were going when you wanted to be excused.” Alice nodded.

“And you were ok with that?” I asked knowing that we should always tell each other where we are going.

“Yes.” Lucy answered, who looked a bit shaken up, I hope that she was ok. “But right now, we have to go.”

“Go? Already? But we just got here!” I mentioned.

“Kelly, we got to go.” Sarah looked at me seriously.

I was going to make an excuse, but I understood that our time was over. Before I left the cell, Daesung grabbed my wrist making me look back.

“Tomorrow?” He asked.

“Tomorrow,” I answered nodding my head.

He let go of my wrist as I made my way out of the building and into the van with the other girls. As we drove out, I couldn’t help but notice that Lucy was still shaken up and looked very distrubed.

“Lucy, are you ok?” I asked.

She shook her head, putting her hand up to her forehead and sighed closing her eyes. I was about to ask her another question, but Heather put a hand on my shoulder shaking her head indicating that I shouldn’t ask another question. Lucy was the youngest of the group, so I would understand if she wants to keep something to herself for a bit.

“Don’t worry, Kell, we don’t know what’s wrong either.” Sarah whispered.

I leaned back in my seat leaning my head out of the window. Looking behind me, the prison got smaller and smaller until there was nothing but road behind us. My mind kept going back to Daesung and wondered what he was doing. So he had a girlfriend, but I’m guessing because of his transformation, she was scared of him.

“That’s why he was expecting a different answer when I first met him…” I thought.

From his story so far, everyone called him a monster and I didn’t. That’s why he said I was different.

“Kelly,” Alice said getting me out of my thoughts, “you do realize that we’re not coming over here tomorrow, right? We’re off tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said saddened. “I completely forgot.”

“You want to go back there?” Heather asked in a curious tone.

Getting to know Daesung today was a step up from yesterday and to be honest, I want to know more about him, especially his past. I seemed to trigger something in him that brought out his caring side, but only a little bit.

“Well, yes, I do.” I answered getting gasps from the others. “What? You guys want to go back there, too, don’t you?”

“No, Kelly, at least I don’t.” Lucy looked over at me, wide eyed and scared.

“Why? Lucy, what’s up with you today?” I questioned.

“We’ll talk about this back home.” Alice interrupted.

Nodding, I sighed leaning back in my seat thinking of the story. How Daesung explained how he saw everything in his room burn away, all he had went away, just like everything else in his life. It was a sad story, and I felt sorry for him and his brothers. Was I the first person since his transformation to show sympathy towards him? I know that he might seem like a monster on the outside, but somewhere deep down he’s nice. Was I the first one to see that in him? These questions haunted my mind until we got back to the city. We said our thanks to the driver again as we started walking.

“You guys ok if we discuss about today at Kelly’s house?” Alice asked.

“Sure, we haven’t been to her house in months!” Sarah mentioned.

“Sorry guys, I was cleaning it out!” I apologized.

As we were walking, Lucy was silent again looking disturbed. We were concerned about what happened to her back with Seungri at the prison, but we were going to wait until we got to my house. And if she wanted to go last, that was ok with us. As we were walking down the sidewalk, I noticed the streetlights kept flickering on and off, but it wasn’t just several, but it seemed to be every single one.

“Why are the lights flickering?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” Heather asked.

“The streetlights, they’re flickering…” I trailed off.

“You must be seeing things, Kelly, they’re not flickering.” Alice looked at me weirdly. “Daesung must be really getting to you.”

I know that I’m not crazy, the streetlights were flickering! I tried to ignore the lights as we got closer to my house. The sun was setting once we got to my house.

“Home sweet home,” I smiled as I opened up the door. The visible staircase showed to the left going upstairs with the living room to the right, showing the couch and TV in the left corner with a bookcase in the right corner with some pictures of all five of us hanging on the walls. The kitchen was straight ahead, a little messy from the other day considering I didn’t have any time to clean up. “Don’t mind the mess, help yourselves to drinks and food.”

“Yeah, because this is a real big mess,” Heather joked around, “this one picture is crooked. Everything is a mess!”

We laughed as the girls got something to eat and drink from the kitchen and came inside the living room. Everyone mostly had water, except for Lucy, having hot chocolate in a Halloween cup.

“No tea for today?” Alice noticed that I didn’t have anything.

“No, I don’t need it.” I smiled.

“Well that’s good, but we need to know what we collected, so…who wants to start out first?” Alice asked us.

Silence filled the room as I looked out the window, the light wasn’t flickering anymore. Maybe it was just faulty wiring. Or maybe there was a wreck somewhere and someone crashed into a pole making it go like that.

“I’ll go,” Heather spoke up making us turn our heads towards her ready to hear her side of the story.