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Shades of ViolenceChapter 3: Sorrow and Ignorance
The coffee-house is open from six in the morning till ten in the nighttime, but the two who arrive there are already at five minutes till the opening time. They have a lot to talk about. That’s what Suho says at least in the three paragraph text message on how he's sorry for his brash and brutal behavior towards Baekhyun’s extraordinary incident; also on how he has something that connects pieces together. Baekhyun remains skeptical since his explanation was archaic but he has nothing better to do on a Saturday morning in the beginning of May. Everyone else is studying so he, for once, wants to be different.
It smells of lemons outside, just mixed with a plentiful amount of vanilla and limes along with it, somehow sifting from the nearest abandoned home that was once full of citrus fruits. It’s sour though and it doesn’t mix well together, so it ends up being repugnant to the smells of the two. Cars rush by on with limits ignored as always and it’s a mild, spring day. It's not too scenic but yet it's on the serene, tranquil cherry blossoming vibe. Suho’s on a light-colored cardigan breeze while Baekhyun wears a simple t-shirt, both casual with dark jeans that blends in with the moods of the past few nights. It’s like a remembrance.
They wait in silence at first since it’s still early in the morning, both not able to sleep from the night before. Two days ago was Suho’s first notice of a strange occurring while Baekhyun’s was three days ago. Has it really been that long? It feels like they haven't slept for weeks, maybe even months if they're just that retracted from life.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Suho says, his eyes bearing down, more looking like they’re forced to be dampened. He can’t bear to tell Baekhyun the news but last night, he’s spent more time on the case. Baekhyun’s was the closest one to his and was the only one that has any traces of similarities but he wants to make sure or at least, talk over it. He’s uncertain but there’s nothing to lose, so he figures it might as well be a time to rekindle his unstable friendship with Baekhyun. Sleep loss induces a state of transmission and delusional behavior.
Minutes pass by and the clock chimes at six o'clock, noticed only by Baekhyun who’s been more aware of the times than ever before. The owner of the renowned coffee shop arrives a minute after six and he’s surprised to see two of his regular customers arrive so early. He does nothing to stop it though and instead, just smiles warmly and unlocks the door. Welcome, he says with a grin. They both give back a parting wave and walk into the shop, Suho going up to the counter to order the normality for the two while Baekhyun picks the booth they always sit at. It’s quiet for a bit but once the shop settles down from the noises of jangling machines, clanging bells, and door alarms being turned off, soft jazz music is tuned through the speakers on the outer corners of the outlet. It’s peaceful and Baekhyun likes it a lot.
Suho comes back to the booth seven minutes later, exactly, and in his hands are two coffee cups with fuming airs slurring out of it. He drops the coffees down onto the table shakily and takes a seat on the opposite side with something else in his hand. Baekhyun doesn’t ask yet but he’s about to.
“Here,” Suho says, pushing out the cup of delightness towards Baekhyun but the auburn doesn’t take a sip out of it yet. Instead, he stares at the letter within Suho’s hands. Is it crimson, he sees? Blood? It looks like splattered red crayon bits. Splattered rubies, more like. No, mark it as disintegrated bits of maroon mud. It’s slashed in some threatening manner that frightens the stationary letter. It’s on a realistic note, at least.
“What is that?” Baekhyun asks, dipping a straw into the foam and taking a small sip. It tastes the same as ever, extract and cocoa beans; there’s just a tiny hint of vanilla infracted into it, with cream filled a sixteenth of the way up.
Suho appears startled for a bit but then he looks down at the letter in his hands. He lays it on the table and points towards it. “This?”
Baekhyun nods, mouths perched a little open with eyes a little smaller.
The President looks at it uncertainly with his lips thinned out and his brows scrunched up but it’s inevitable now. He pushes it towards the auburn hesitantly and his fingers make sure not to touch the crimson parts. There’s a chance that it’s blood, he decides after taking more examination tests on it. Thanks to the courtesy of Kyungsoo the hour before who warned of him to not touch it in case of any probable diseases.
“What is it?” Baekhyun asks as he peers through the already ripped letter. Suho points towards it again and he gives a nod, signalling that it’s okay for Baekhyun to open it. He does so and once he reads the letter, he freezes up.
“I know what you did to get there,” Baekhyun repeats aloud. Suho cringes at the words. There’s something about the spelling and punctuation that resembles of a more crazed demeanor. “What is this?” Baekhyun asks for a third time with a puzzled expression. “Why’d you bring this to me?”
“They’re connected, Baekhyun.” Suho reasons casually, stealing the letter back from Baekhyun’s frail fingers. “Your phone call and this letter, I think they’re connected, somehow and someway. That’s why I called up you up here early.”
“What?” Baekhyun says, obviously confused still. He hadn’t thought about it for at least an hour and now it was there to haunt his morning already. “Stop talking about it, Joonmyun.” There it goes again. His name. It’s strained in an angered voice. “You were the one who told me it’s probably just my mind and now you say it’s connected, somehow. God, take your own words for once and stick to it.”
Suho takes a sip out of his espresso cup and gives a doubtful look, slightly looking apologetic. This time, Baekhyun notices the bags underneath Suho’s eyes. It’s a merciless sign of weakness and it all looks to familiar to Baekhyun.. “I know I said that but, how--”
“Maybe you have a serious case and mine was seriously a hallucination,” Baekhyun states adamantly, his arms crossing over his chest. “Mines had no caller I.D. and it was only connected to my line in the whole household. No other phones like my parent’s or my sisters’. Totally despicable and most probably a hallucination. How about your case? Now that you’re on your own, you come believing me.”
Taking a deep breath, Suho ignores the brisk retaliation from Baekhyun and thinks back to the night, imagining that Baekhyun told him to explain further on. “It was late at night but I didn’t notice the letter until I got really frustrated with the inquiry letter I had to type up for Council so I crumpled it up and threw it away. It was about four in the morning but it was still a kinda hazy night, I think. There was fog or something, I’m not sure.”
Silence as he struggles to go deeper into the memories. It’s like a line of straight bricks and as much as he tries to think about it, he can’t really pinpoint a main detail.
“I then found the letter hiding underneath my textbooks oddly. I opened up the letter and there was no return address or anything. No sign of any living human civilization from it. I asked my parents about receiving an unusual letter but they said they didn’t see anything weird in the pile that afternoon.”
There’s more silence.
The skies haven’t ever been this grey before, Suho notices as he waits for Baekhyun to say something back. He opens his mouth but then closes it, a small breath of air only leaving his flustered self.
“It was at four?” Baekhyun asks again, peering his eyes towards the letter.
Suho nods, as this simple gesture crumbles Baekhyun’s walls of defense. “Yeah, it was early in the morning. Maybe a few minutes past four. It was really foggy outside too--wait, I already said that.” His lips are thinned out, a corner raised in exasperation. “That’s all I remember though. I sent Kyungsoo a text on how to examine to see if the red on the letter was real blood but that’s all I got of contact. He didn’t reply back until next morning.”
If colors could paint over faces, it seemed to do it perfectly on this occasion. There’s a pitch of black, not pitch black but an especially dark hue of gray painted over them. The mood in the coffee shop has darkened and it feels especially humid in the room now. Even the owner peers over the counter to make sure that everything was alright since most of the times, the duo would always be seen laughing and making fits of jokes in that small booth. The jazz music stops for a bit too but Baekhyun assumes it’s just his own hearing acting up. Suho can still hear it clearly. Or maybe it’s just another hallucination. Maybe this really was just a prank.
“What does this mean?” he asks quietly, making sure that no one else could hear them. The shop had filled up ever since they had entered.
“I don’t know,” Baekhyun says unsurely. He really doesn’t know what it means either or what it will mean for the both of them but he knows, maybe Suho too, with no doubt, that this might not be a joke.
--
“What do you think it means?” Kyungsoo asks, holding the printed copy of the e-mail transcript within his trembling hands. “Horrible poetry grammar and horrible stanza patterns. It’s indignant to read but it’s custom made and it’s a death threat, practically. I can’t find it anywhere else on the internet and the worst part is that it’s directed towards me. Me. Kyungsoo. This letter. ”
The slender boy who sits besides Kyungsoo wraps an arm around the doe-eyed male, doing his best to comfort the frightened boy or presumably, his boyfriend. It’s been two years of the relationship but it’s been steady. Well, in Kai’s opinion at least. It’s more of a Kai thinks that it’s steady and that he’s more oblivious than ever to the bigger picture. But one could say Kyungsoo feels the same way.
“I’m sure it’s just another scam e-mail or one of those chain mail things, Kyungsoo.”
The thought still lingers within the air but Kyungsoo has always brushed it off. There’s too much more overwhelming evidence to prove that it’s not a scam. “But there’s no sender address. I can’t reply to them either and the weird thing was, that night, the power went out when I tried to click on the picture again. This morning it worked but I don’t know. It just feels weird. It feels like there’s something bigger around this picture more than I think. Like there’s something else that I need to know that’s still hiding.”
Kai frowns at his boyfriend’s acrimony within the subject. He entangles his hand with Kyungsoo’s right hand and squeezes it gently. “I’m sure it’s nothing Soo. Even if anything does happen, I’ll still be here.” He takes a deep breath and continues on, “Do you want me to stay with you tonight just in case you get another e-mail?”
Kyungsoo smiles warmly and nods timidly. “That would be nice and very much appreciated.” He’s thankful for where he is but perhaps too thankful. Too engulfed within thoughts to notice the stranger, much like a nobody. He’s too engulfed within his gratitudes with Kai to notice the stranger that stands outside his front door with a wire cutter. The sun’s going down but they’re too involved with lips pressed against one anothers to notice the phone lines going dead. It’s a perfect opportunity.
-
Later that night, it’s a dewy blue type of night where the moon is finally out, shining but not as bright. It feels a little timid and is still sore from isolation. It’s becoming a heavied vexation now but it does its job with little motivation. Light, not too heavy, but moonlight reflects against the city. Some of it bounces back onto the moon as a coda and in retrospect, the moon is unhappy. It frowns and eventually dies away to let the only stars keeping its bits live on. Too bad, really. It was too engaged into its own superego to notice the outer surroundings that really don’t care about it.
Kyungsoo’s back is against Kai’s chest and they’re both in deep sleep. It’s near three o’clock, almost but not yet and the stranger is a few minutes early before the town bell chimes. He’s outside the window, looking straight through the small flap of panes that was left opened. He doesn’t do anything but just stands there, motionless and white. Black if the stars weren’t there but it’s there, quivering dearly, so the light is unstable. His own appearance consists of goosebumps, slight widened eyes, and an expressionless purge of lips. Maybe a knife in his right hand, sharpened for his own pleasure at the edges.
At the same time, something awakens Kyungsoo. Some instinct, more like. He wakes up, startled and he backs up against whatever is behind him instinctively. Kai groans in discomfort and turns to the other side of the bed, the one facing the wall. The bed in the room is pushed against the wall so one’s facing the window and one’s facing the bedroom door. Kai’s facing the window but he still doesn’t notice the stranger despite the uneasy feeling. The stranger is now wearing a mask with blackness covering the rest of his body, ghost gloves and grinning persona. Something primal is sneaking up, something contingent but inevitable. Kai manages to escape it this time but Kyungsoo doesn’t. He hears a ballad of a piano playing outside but he can’t manage to turn his eyes. Mustering courage after a minute of a movement, he slowly turns towards Kai’s side where the curtains are open. There’s nobody there. And the music suddenly stops playing. He’s fallen into deep sleep again, forgetting about the fact that he never left the curtains open that night.
-
An hour passes by and they’re both in deep slumber again, only grumbles and snores separating the two bodies from colliding. It’s two minutes past four and Kai feels something heavy vibrate against his chest, rumbling slowly at first but then repetitively in a zig-zag hearing. He groans in annoyance, thinking that it’s Kyungsoo’s phone but he realises that it’s his after another minute goes on by, stealing life’s precious moment and taking it another step towards death. There’s a coarse complaint from Kyungsoo but Kai’s too tired to even tell him to go back to sleep. Instead, he rubs his eyes, both burning from instinct friction but once they relax, he turns on his phone. The instantaneous screen burns even more.
He’s received text messages, twenty-five…? And it’s from...he can’t read it. He assumes it’s from a friend or some sort of relative so he slides it open. He reads over it carefully, brushing off the message with a small reply at nimble fingers but then he discovers that these messages are unusual. There’s no number at the top either. No caller. No contact. No number. He shakes his head to hopefully fall out of his sleeping trance and he takes another look. His eyes didn’t play a trick. Maybe he’s just cynical right now. He’s hallucinating, maybe? But then, his eyes dart towards the message and he overlooks it.
“you’ll be dead sooner than you know it.”
They keep repeating. It starts from two to two seconds, and then four to three seconds, and then five to four seconds, and it just keeps on going. His phone is vibrating, still.
Breathing becomes hitched and ragged breaths become more jagged. He knows that this is similar to the case of the boy next to him but his throat is too clogged up to say anything. Kai doesn’t want to accept it. He opens his mouth, a few inches wide, to call out to Kyungsoo but only a weak scream can come out.
His phone begins to flicker on and off, his control of heavy fingers being futile. He attempts to shut it off but it slowly heats up, hot enough that it starts to singe his hand a little bit.
“Kyungsoo,” he whispers urgently, tugging his elbow against the other’s elbow. Kyungsoo groans and only moves a bit. Kai drops his phone onto the bed, silently relieved when the screen goes black and the sound of cooling down is present.
“Mmf,” his boyfriend mutters, pulling the blanket over onto his side. It was a habit but he needs to be awake now.
“Kyungsoo,” Kai repeats again with a more frantic cry. “Something’s not right. I just got a text and it said I’m gonna be dead. I don’t know if it’s a prank but my phone suddenly just ed up too and now it’s dead. I can’t turn it on anymore.”
The doe-eyed male pops his eyes open, one swift movement. “What?” he asks once his elbows are propped up against the bed high enough to let his body rise up.
There’s a deep breath but Kai finishes the statement with something eerie. The room’s suddenly greyed out and it feels tenser now. Maybe the humidity in the air. Or maybe the ignorance of Nobody outside Kyungsoo’s apartment door who has his head tilted.
“There’s something not right going on. What did you say the poem had in it? The one sent to you oddly,” Kai asks as his hands reaching up to the curtains to pull them close. It feels more safe but he still feels entrapped within a room that’s not his.
Kyungsoo struggles to remember the poem but he recites the summary, “Something about me stealing something and then being killed as revenge.”
A corner piece of a puzzle had been connected to another edge piece. Just like how the stranger outside connects the phone lines back into the pipes. It’s seven past four in the nighttime. The moon’s gone to hiding again. He’s seen too much. The chiming of the bells is slightly hearable today but it’s muted mostly.
“Kyungsoo,” Kai says with his eyes in horror. “I think...I think it’s the same guy who’s sent you that e-mail. I think he sent me this text.”
There’s a sadistic smile outside the window again.
Ignorance is simple bliss.
author’s note.
hello byuntae lol. ok. i mean i’m glad for him but seriously. lol. ok. just. ugh. -chanbaek ship falls apart and exhilarates into fumes of fire- :-) k.
6-19-14
how is the story guise. i feel like it's a big fail on horror and suspense but it's ok, i tried. :-) comment your criticism? what i should add? not add? community project ye? jk.
ask me questions! plz anything i'm so lonely ;_;
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