Jiyong woke up alone.

It was warm, probably because he’d successfully made it inside, he could tell that much. And yet. It felt so still and cold, in the midst of the early morning silence, with the rest of the world remaining unconscious in a deathly slumber.

And Jiyong was the only one left alive.

It was an icy, pre-emptive calm of sickening anticipation. Each second passed like a countdown to the explosion of memory, of realisation. The shock was lying in wait to ambush, before it finally hit Jiyong over his head like the sledgehammer currently pounding inside his skull. Images from the night before all came flooding back in moments and flashes of white lights.

Vodka shots. Rum puddles. Abandoned whiskey. Overflowing gin. Rattling pills all the colours of the rainbow. Chucking them down like Skittles. Kissing of smooth, soft cheeks. Her pursed rosebud lips pressed to Jiyong’s dark smudge of a mouth. His divine, whimsical Eurasian beauty. And then Youngbae.

Youngbae?

Youngbae’s face drawing closer, and closer, and even closer to hers, pulled by an invisible, undeniable magnetic force of attraction. Shadows cast over their entwined arms as secretive smiles illuminated their entranced faces. Youngbae’s arms skimming teasingly over the fluid curve of her luxurious body, she, too, reciprocating by leaning closer into his strong, lean frame. Her sweet little aristocratic chin tilting upwards as Youngbae reaches down so their mouths meet-

No. It couldn’t have ing happened. It wasn’t possible. Nowhere near it. Jiyong was absolutely certain that these images, events, whatever the they were, had not taken place. They just couldn’t have. It would be ultimately…No. Just no. Jiyong furiously shook his head in agony at the thought, as a wave of nausea suddenly swept over him and he passed back out.