REASONABLE EXPLANATION

Chanyeol flinches a little as the fabric of his shirt falls onto his wound. He walks over to the bathroom again and tries to smile, but all he sees is a tired figure looking back at him. Sighing, he reaches for a bottle of rubbing alcohol and spins the top to open it. Behind the mirror, there is a bag of cotton swaps, which Chanyeol uses to absorb the rubbing alcohol. He braces for the worst part of cutting himself, the cleaning. Gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes seem to help reduce the amount of pain received from the alcohol cleansing the wound. Chanyeol makes sure to dab all the parts of the wound so that there is no infection before bandaging it up and walking off to school.

***~~~***

He swings the door of the building open and then walks through he has been for the past three months. He has dreaded so much and has been so different. He knows it himself and he hates himself for it. The way he gets so irritable over small things and the nightmares that would consume his sleep. Chanyeol thinks about his nightmare that he just had and it makes him cringe at the fact that he felt so useless. 

I couldn’t help him…

Once again sighing, he spins the lock on his locker to the correct numbers and then pulls it off before opening his locker. His eyes scan the locker looking for the correct books before swapping out the ones in his bags for the ones he needs before visiting the locker again. 

Jongdae walks up to him with a cheeky smile and greets him good morning. Chanyeol does a half smile for a second before returning the greeting and making his way to class. The other boy doesn’t let him and grabs his arm to get his attention.

“What’s wrong? You seem so tired lately.” For the hundredth time today already, Chanyeol sighs.

“Please, just let go,” his voice is just so monotonous and dead that it makes Jongdae wonder if he’s actually dead in real life. Baekhyun waltzes up to the two and then greets them good morning. Jongdae smiles and returns the greeting whereas Chanyeol takes a glance at Baekhyun and pulls his arm away to head to class. Jongdae turns to Baekhyun while sighing and shrugging his shoulders.

“I tried.” 

“It’s alright,” Baekhyun also shrugs his shoulders and the two walk off to class together.

***~~~***

Once again, Baekhyun is too caught up in his thoughts about Chanyeol that he doesn’t realize that his teacher called on him for the answer. Jongdae coughs and nudges his partner’s elbow, which causes him to jump a little. 

“What?” Jongdae jerks his head to the direction of the front of the class and Baekhyun follows it to see his teacher with her arms crossed and looking at him impatiently. 

“Well…?” 

“Uh… I’m sorry, I-”

“Next time pay attention.” She returns to writing on the board and Baekhyun’s face feels hot from embarrassment. Jongdae pats his back and smiles reassuring Baekhyun that it’s alright. 

***~~~***

Phys Ed was next up on the dreaded schedule of the day and Chanyeol hated this the most after what he does in the bathroom. He has to be extra careful to get hit on the wound, or else it could cause suspicion. Baekhyun is sitting out unfortunately, so he can’t participate in the events that everyone else is in. His doctor had already informed the school of his situation and they made an agreed decision to have Baekhyun sit out for another week before he is allowed to go back and participate in any physical activity. The boy just sits there with his notebook in his lap recording his thoughts. For the most part, all that is written includes Chanyeol at least once. Which makes me realize that he can just get rid of his writing by just observing the real thing. 

Baekhyun watches intently as the kids play dodgeball and run around like crazy. He observes everyone as a whole, but Chanyeol more than others. After about 10 minutes of balls being thrown and whistles screeching throughout the gym, Chanyeol is the only person left on his team and the other team has two kids. Unfortunately, Baekhyun has already come to the conclusion that Chanyeol’s going to get out, but watches anyway. 

Chanyeol dodges the first ball thrown by turning his body and just as he was about to turn around to block his wound, the ball hit him right there on his side and he squeezes his eyes to reduce the pain. He holds onto his side, which makes Baekhyun furrow his eyebrows.

A hit from the ball doesn’t hurt that much…

***~~~***

Finally the school day has ended and all the tedious classes are finally finished for the day. Students are rushing to their lockers and scramming out of the building just so they can get home, or go to wherever they have their mind set to. Baekhyun has one place in mind: Chanyeol’s locker. He quickly grabs his books and then closes his locker before scurrying on down the hallway through the crowds of people to get to the corner of Chanyeol’s locker. He takes a peek and Chanyeol is there putting his books around and thinking about what other books he needed. The hallways empty out quick and eventually it’s just the two of them there, although only Baekhyun knows that. He walks up and closes Chanyeol’s locker.

What the- oh…

Baekhyun is staring at him right in the eyes and opens his mouth.

“I want you to hear me out before you start walking off again. I’m just wondering… Why? What did I do wrong that you aren’t even talking to me?” Baekhyun pauses and sees that Chanyeol is just staring at him with his dead gaze. Baekhyun’s head droops and the giant can hear sniffling coming from in front of him. Chanyeol’s hand begins to rise and is aimed at landing on Baekhyun’s shoulder, but is quickly retracted when the smaller boy speaks up again.

“I was hoping you’d want to see me… at the hospital… at my house… or even at school when I got back.” Baekhyun pauses for a couple of seconds and then looks up to Chanyeol with teary eyes. Chanyeol begins walking off and Baekhyun sighs.

I have to do it.

Baekhyun turned to the giant walking away and then his eyes scrolled down to his side where the ball landed before. He walked up and grabbed the area causing Chanyeol to groan in pain and turn around with an angry glare. He smacks Baekhyun’s hand away.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

“There’s no way a ball could hurt you that much and I wanted to figure out what is wrong.”

“I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME THE ALONE! WHY DON’T YOU ING LISTEN?!” Chanyeol’s voice resonated through the hallways and caused Baekhyun’s hair to shiver. He could feel himself shaking from the fear and nerves building up inside. He tightens his fingers together making a fist and was ready to fight back.

“What’s wrong with you?! Talk to me!” Baekhyun looks down again at the wound and then goes to pick up Chanyeol’s shirt. He only saw a glimpse of the wound that was now starting to bleed a little.

“Did you-” Chanyeol smacked his hand away before he got to finish and pushed him against the hard cold metal lockers. He leaned in with his glare and the two met eye to eye.

“I told you that if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll give you a reason to.”

I’m sorry I updated this so late in the day. I would’ve done it earlier, but there was a lot going on. Tomorrow I’m going to give you two chapters because I feel like the next one doesn’t have that juicy of an ending whereas the one after it does. Stay tuned. ^.^